Yoruba Matches

Looking at our Haitian parent's Yoruba matches is also interesting. Many of these matches received Haiti in their journey on Ancestry, probably since Ancestry uses Yoruba samples for both the Benin/Togo and Nigeria regions, both areas being major sources of the Haitian people's ethnogenesis. Of course, the Yoruba (known as "Nago" in Saint-Domingue) were present in our colonial period, too. But their numbers were usually smaller than those of the "Arada" and various other peoples sold to Europeans along the Bight of Benin. Of course, actual Yoruba ancestry among Haitians is still likely, though we assume many of these matches are not identical by descent ones. It is likely many are due to the genetic and ethnolinguistic overlap between Benin and Nigeria, as well as historical migrations, military conflicts (think Dahomey and Oyo, or Allada and Ouidah), and cultural influences that brought various peoples together. For instance, the prestige of the Yoruba language in Allada, according to European reports, or the spread of Ifa divination into Benin attests to long-standing cross-cultural ties and interactions between the Yoruba and the other peoples of Benin. In other words, the various peoples brought to Saint Domingue during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade included peoples we nowadays refer to as Fon, Ewe, Adja, Yoruba and, in smaller numbers, the Bariba, Nupe, Hausa, and others. In the Haitian case, oral traditions and the Vodou religion sometimes include very specific references to groups like the Gedevi or a pantheon of spirits or deities associated with different peoples or regions of Benin and southwestern Nigeria. 

What is most striking here is the very high Benin & Togo score for the closest match, at 16 cM shared on one segment. This Yoruba person, whose last name is common enough among that group, appears to be from Nigeria. Nonetheless, their high Benin & Togo score suggests that they very well could have ancestry from Yoruba groups in or near Benin rather than Nigeria. Other possibilities exist, too, but we suspect their match with or parent is based on Benin & Togo (our parent's estimate is 27%). Of course, the next largest Yoruba matches was with someone who only received an estimate of 16% for Benin & Togo and another at 39%, so the possible ways of being related here are complex. Note how one person, whose surname is Yoruba but may be of multiethnic background, received no Benin & Togo in her results. All but one of these persons, however, did receive some minor estimate for the largely useless "Yorubaland" category (our parent also has an estimate of 1% for this dubious region). 

As for our own feeble attempt to track down Yoruba matches, I only found 2. However, like those of my parent, they both have substantial Benin and Togo estimates (35% and 36%). Since our own Benin and Togo estimate (15%) is much higher than our "Nigeria" category and my Haitian origin, I suspect these matches are via the Benin and Togo region. Sadly, I could not find a Yoruba match shared by myself and my parent, but we do share a match with a Ghanaian person whose results indicate a largely "Benin & Togo" estimate. Our hope is to one day find more testers with roots in Benin and Togo to compare our results to.