EDO RELIGION. The Edo-speaking peoples live in a tropical forest region of southern Nigeria. Their language formerly belonged to the Kwa family of Niger-Congo languages and is now classified with the South Central Niger-Congo group (Ruhlen, 1991). The Edo proper, centered in and around Benin City, are of long standing in this region. Oral traditions suggest that by the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the Edo were united into a powerful kingdom that by the fifteenth century had embarked on a course of aggressive military expansion in southern Nigeria. At the end of the fifteenth century, Portuguese explorers made contact with them, recording for the first time the name Benin, which has been used since to refer to the kingdom (the people are sometimes referred to as the Bini). In the ensuing 500 years following contact with Portugal, the Benin traded with many European nations until, in 1897, Benin fell...