According to the oral histories of the Duala and related Sawa peoples of the Cameroon coast, Ewale hailed from a place called Piti.
Although many of the stories ascribe this move to a desire to trade with Europeans on the coast, a more likely reason may be that Piti had simply become too crowded.
Driving away the Bassa and Bakoko is believable in that these peoples were farmers, not traders or fishermen, so a coastal homeland was not a necessity for them.
He had reached the lower Sanaga River when a fight with family members drove him yet farther north to Piti.
For example, one tale says that Ewale and his followers hid their true numbers as they settled the area only to take control through their trading activities.
[7] Trade with Europeans features prominently in the Ewale narratives, a development that is said to have split the early Duala settlers.
[6] Historians and anthropologists such as Edwin Ardener, Ralph A. Austen, and Jonathan Derrick suggest that the Ewale narrative is "quite plausible because it is not very pretentious in either chronological or ideological terms."
The gap between Ewale and the first Duala leaders corroborated in European sources is logically sound and does not suggest a great deal of mythology.
Based on this inference, Ewale's migration from Piti may be dated to the late 16th century, a point just prior to the first European explorers reaching the coast of Cameroon.
This view finds support in the versions of the tale that ascribe Ewale's departure from Piti to a row with his family, although this reasoning may only be a recasting of the later split of the Duala into the rival Bell and Akwa lineages to a more ancient time.