Source: University of Chicago
Date: 1868 AD
Title: West African Countries and Peoples, British and Native With the Requirements Necessary for Establishing that Self Government Recommended by the Committee of the House of Commons, 1865; and a Vindication of the African Race
Pages: 189 – 190
Author: James Africanus Beale Horton
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“The ten tribes of Israel, after they were left to follow the dictates of their own mind, and during the commotion and destructive warfare which ensued, to escape utter extermination, migrated, according to the usage of the times, in vast numbers into various countries, but principally into Northern Africa, as it then presented the safest and easiest route. Once settled, every commotion and intestine war had the most powerful effect of inducing these migratory bands to shift their abode still further, and so lose all connection with the other branch of the tribe. As hundreds of years pass on, and generation after generation roll away, they lose a great many of their habits and customs, becoming more amalgamated with the population with which they associate. But when Mohammedanism overspread Northern Africa, destroying by fire and sword all those of another religion, the Israelitish descendants, or the inhabitants occupying the central portion of Africa, passed forward, seeking shelter to the south and west; namely those from the east central, crossing the Binue or Joliba branch of the Niger, descended gradually southward, and became intermingled with the original inhabitants. Protected from incursion on the north by the Binue River, and quietly settled between the Great Niger and Old Kalabar Rivers, they remained in peace, and grew from one generation to another in idolatry, but still leaving tangible proofs in the form of their religion of the Judaistic origin of the inhabitants. After this slight digression, we will now proceed to investigate more particulars, relative to the tribe under consideration. The language, or the little of it that is known, is full of Hebraisms; … Ancient mythology has proved that through it extensive migratory movements took place several thousand years ago from Asia Minor to Africa. From a little study of the ethnology of the language of Western Africa and the Hebrew tongue, one is involuntarily brought to trace out a similarity in one of them to that of the tribes which, from disobedience to the will of God, were dispersed, and the greatest number of them possibly went to Africa – I mean the lost tribes of Israel…”