Beyond Cults and Witch-Hunting: The Alatingas’ Therapeutic Network in Nigeria, Gold Coast, and Dahomey, 1940s–50s

Scholars have long described the Alatingas, early twentieth-century African therapeutic professionals, as merely “witch-hunters” or a “religious cult.” These labels have erased Alatingas’ therapeutic roles. Scholars have also overlooked how the 1940s and 50s decolonization movement in Nigeria, Gold Coast, and Dahomey shaped the Alatingas professionalization and organization as a transnational therapeutic professional network who operated across the colonial constructed West African borders. I use “therapeutic” to refer to healing practices that address both spiritual and physical well-being. In the 1950s, anthropologists Peter Morton Williams and William Bascom were among the first scholars to describe the Alatingas as an anti-witchcraft group that relied on the Atinga deity, prepared protective medicines against witches, and possessed the power to identify and punish them. Subsequent scholars have reinforced this interpretation, portraying the Alatingas as witch-finders. Historians and religious studies scholars, including Andrew Apter, George Simpson, and Jacob Olupona, have further classified them as a religious cult due to their worship of the Atinga deity. Drawing on archival sources, I challenge these dominant labels and argue that the Alatingas were professional healers who diagnosed physical illnesses, collaborated with herbal medicine practitioners to develop fever suppressants, and rebranded themselves in response to the decolonization movement. Alatingas’ transnational therapeutic network across West Africa positioned them within broader debates on African healers’ politics of professionalization in the twentieth century.