Qualla: Creek Town

Creek Town: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two peoples claim to have settled here first, and neither can prove it. The Efut say they arrived before anyone else. The Efik say they displaced an earlier community when they fled the island of Ndodoghi after a succession of unexplained deaths drove them to the mainland. What is certain is that by the time European traders reached the lower Cross River, Creek Town -- known to its inhabitants as Obio Oko -- was already a functioning city-state, one of several that together formed Old Calabar. It would become a place where the slave trade flourished, where it was abolished, and where the first missionaries to the region set up their schools.

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Creek Town: Founding in Disputed Centuries

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How old is Creek Town? The answer depends on whom you ask. Chief Efiong Ukpong Aye placed the founding as early as the fourteenth century. The historian A.J.H. Latham favored the late sixteenth century. P.A. Talbot split the difference, estimating the first half of the seventeent...

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Creek Town: The Trade in Human Lives

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Like many coastal communities in West Africa, Creek Town became enmeshed in the transatlantic slave trade. The Efik were the principal traders; there is no evidence that the Efut Abua community participated in the exportation of enslaved people. Creek Town sat about eight miles n...

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Creek Town: The King Who Invited the Missionaries

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eyo Honesty II was pragmatic. Having signed away the slave trade, he recognized that Creek Town needed new economic foundations. Together with Eyamba V, he wrote letters to Liverpool ship captains and supercargo merchants, requesting that teachers and missionaries be sent to Old ...

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Creek Town: Two Divisions, One Legacy

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the colonial government reorganized Old Calabar, Creek Town became the seat of its own division, encompassing the communities of Mbiabo, Adiabo, and Ibonda. Duke Town anchored the other division, which included Henshaw Town, Cobham Town, and Aqua Town. The 1904 declaration t...

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