People · c. 1788–1858
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He started as a cabin boy on English ships and a worker for his father's rival. He ended up the richest trader in Calabar, crowned at Creek Town, and when another king said he had no right to rule, he paved a street with brass rods and walked on them.
Creek Town was one of the Efik trading towns of Old Calabar, on the Cross River. Its most famous ruler was born Eyo Eyo Nsa. Nobody knows exactly when. An epitaph on a tower of the Creek Town Presbyterian Church gives 1788, though the historian Ekei Essien Oku thinks it could have been earlier.
His father, Eyo Nsa, was a big name in Efik trading history. European traders knew him for his honesty, so much that they nicknamed him "Honesty", and the name stuck to the family at Creek Town. His mother, Princess Inyang Esien Ekpe, was a royal daughter. Tradition says his father won her hand by beheading a pirate.
None of that made the son's life easy. As a youth, Eyo worked as a cabin boy for English captains and sailed with them during the slave trade. That was where he learned to speak and write English, and where he learned how business with Europeans worked. When his father died in 1820, the family fell on hard times. Eyo ended up working for his father's great rival, Efiom Edem, known to the British as Great Duke Ephraim of Duke Town. It cannot have been comfortable, but he used the time to sharpen his English and his trading.
Years later, he told the missionary Hope Waddell how he did it. "When young I was nobody, for I was poor," he said. "I put my mind to my trade and worked; at first a little, and then more. What profit I made I put down. When ships come I trade with their money, and when they go away I trade with my own." By the time he spoke those words, he said, he passed every man in Calabar in wealth.
When his uncle Ekpenyong Nsa, who had squandered much of the family fortune, died, Creek Town needed a new leader. Eyo's elder brother, Tom Eyo, was head of their father's ward. But Tom stepped aside. He judged that Eyo was the best person for the job, because of his wealth, his experience, his contacts, his business sense and the fact that he could read and write. Around 1835, Eyo was crowned and took the name Eyo Honesty II.
Waddell describes the coronation. Eyo threw a feast and invited the whole country. For two weeks he fed and entertained everyone who came. Then he took his seat in the marketplace, crowned, surrounded by his family, friends and armed bands, and was proclaimed rightful king.
Not everyone was pleased. Over in Duke Town, King Eyamba V did not like the idea of two kings in the region, and sent messengers to say so. Eyo's answer has become the most famous story about him.
He had the street from his house to the town hall laid with hundreds of boxes of brass and copper rods. These rods were the money of the merchants, and Waddell says each box was worth about five pounds sterling. Eyo walked the whole way on them, without his feet touching the ground. Then he told Eyamba's messengers that his walk proved he had money enough to be king, and needed nobody's permission.
Eyamba did not give up at once. He refused to recognise Eyo, forbade ship captains to salute him when he visited their ships, and fined anyone who did. Eyo's reply was simple: he would not trade with anyone who withheld his honours. Since his trade was the most important in the country, captains were stuck. Eyamba's order was hard to obey.
The last straw came when Eyamba threatened to "catch and chain" him. Eyo quietly got his war canoes ready and sailed to Duke Town without warning. He told his men not to attack until he gave a signal. Then, with only a few bodyguards, he walked to Eyamba's house. Eyamba was delighted to see him, until Eyo said he had come to give Eyamba the chance to chain him. Eyamba, caught off guard, said it had all been a joke and offered him a drink. Eyo refused, went back to his boat and sailed home, leaving Duke Town astonished at his nerve.
Eyo's power came from more than money. He inherited his father's high rank in Ekpe, the society that held authority over the Calabar towns, as Obong Ebonko. That position let him enforce laws in his territory. It mattered later, when treaties to end practices such as twin killing and funeral sacrifices had to be enforced.
The world around him was changing. Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807, though shipments from Calabar went on until 1840. That year, Eyo and Eyamba signed anti-slave-trade treaties with a British commander. They then wrote asking Britain to send teachers and missionaries. The first missionaries arrived in April 1846. Eyo helped them, translated their services, and changed laws in his domain: human sacrifice ended, widows and twins were allowed to come back to Creek Town, and Sunday markets stopped. Yet he never became a Christian himself, and he protested when the missionaries meddled in affairs of state.
He preferred to settle disputes without fighting, but he made sure everyone saw he could fight. When he went to make peace with Umon, an island community in the Cross River that charged traders passing by, he led about sixty canoes, many with big guns in the bows. The palm fronds around his Ekpe canoe, he explained, meant they came in peace. Creek Town agreed to pay certain Umon chiefs an annual gift, and its traders passed freely after that. When Duke Town fell into chaos after the death of King Archibong I, Eyo crossed over with a small guard and calmed an armed crowd before nightfall.
Eyo Honesty II died on 3 December 1858, and his son became Eyo Honesty III. The cabin boy who once had nothing had become, as he put it, the richest man in Calabar, and a king who settled his quarrels with nerve rather than blood.
