ABSTRACT
This study examines ethnographic data and the reconstruction of African history, with special focus on the Ugep people in Yakurr Local Government Area of Cross River State. The general conception was that history begin when man begin to write and since African in general and Ugep people in particular had not developed any form of writing prior to the era of European contact, it was assumed to have no history worthy of any historical documentation and preservation. The study argued that most of the Europeans scholars that wrote about Ugep were more concerned with the rooting out of Yakurr gods than documenting Yakurr oral tradition. Colonial administrator wrote Yakurr intelligence report more as a spare-time interest than a duty. The result is that these documents have glaring gaps. The information contained in them is painfully inadequate and imprecise about some important matter of historical values. To have an in-depth understanding of Ugep history therefore one has to rely almost entirely on die use of ethnographic data such as material remains for the reconstruction of the pre-colonial history of the Ugep people. The study adopts the historical method of data collection using primary and secondary sources. The study concludes that in the absence of written document, it was oral tradition that the people of Ugep like most traditional African society depend on for the preservation of their history, this was so because Ugep history is embody in their traditional dance and music, arts, traditional institution, proverbs, artifacts, rites of passage such as marriage, birth-initiation, burial to mention but a few.
