Asante Human Sacrifice or Capital Punishment a Rejoinder

8/2/2019 Asante Human Sacrifice or Capital Punishment a Rejoinder

1/11

Asante: Human Sacrifice or Capital Punishment? A RejoinderAuthor(s): Ivor WilksSource: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1988), pp. 443-452Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/219450Accessed: 09/12/2010 11:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=buafc .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Boston University African Studies Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto The International Journal of African Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=buafchttp://www.jstor.org/stable/219450?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=buafchttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=buafchttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/219450?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=buafc


2/11

ASANTE: HUMAN SACRIFICEOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT?A REJOINDER

By Ivor Wilks

Clifford Williams takes up a matter of very considerable interest and importanceto the student of Asante as such and also to the comparativist concerned withaspects of human behavior which, viewed from Judaic, Christian or Islamicperspectives, appear decidedly bizarre. Williams allows that E. Collins and I werecorrect in our belief that visitors to Asante frequently misdescribed the publicexecution of those condemned to death by due process of law as "human

sacrifices."l Williams is in error, however, in suggesting that we assign all killingsto this category. I specifically comment that "upon the death of a public figure, anumber of his close servants and wives would not only expect to be killed, butmight insist upon it in order to maintain the relationship which they had enjoyedwith him during his lifetime."2 The topic is one demanding much fuller treatmentthan it has hitherto received, and this note is intended as a brief addition to thedebate which Williams so usefully reopens.

Any inquiry into "human sacrifice" in Asante should start from thesensitive account of the topic published by the anthropologist R. S. Rattray in1927.3

Rattrayhad been able to discuss the matter with men

("severalold Ashanti

of high rank") whose memories reached back to the middle years of thenineteenth century. His inquiries were directed principally towards the nature ofthe slaughter which followed the death of an Asantehene. His informants lefthim in no doubt that the purpose of the killings was to ensure that the dead king"entered the spirit-world with a retinue befitting his high station." Among thoseslain were court officials, wives, relatives, and personal servants of the deceased.They might volunteer to die, or otherwise wait to see if the honor of beingselected was conferred upon them. They could choose the manner of their death,and would themselves be given full funerals. They were the privileged ones. In

terms of sheer numbers, however, the majority of those slain were criminals andprisoners of war (or more strictly, those taken in rebellion against the GoldenStool). After sentencing, they were settled in an akyerekuro, "village of thecondemned," there to await execution.4 They had no choice about the occasion orthe manner of their death, and they were afforded neither burial nor funeral.

E. F. Collins, "The Panic Element in Nineteenth-century British Relations with Ashanti,"Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, V, 2 (1962), 79-144; Ivor Wilks, Asante in theNineteenth Century. The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (London, 1975). As a matter of

record,Collins and I were

engagedin

dialogueon the

topicof "human sacrifice" for a decade or

so,from the

mid-1950s. We found ourselves in broad agreement, and this note owes much to those conversations.

2Wilks, Asante, 593.

3R. S. Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1927), 105-109.

4Rattray, Religion and Art, 106 n, writes as if there was only one such village. In Ashanti Law andConstitution (Oxford, 1929), 42-43, he corrects this erroneous impression.

The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 21, 3 (1988) 443


3/11

444 IVOR WILKS

Belonging to the wretched of this world, they were destined to swell the ranks ofthe wretched of the next.

Rattray made little attempt to consult the extensive body of informationon relevant Asante practices contained in the reports and diaries of nineteenth-century visitors to the kingdom. As one might anticipate, however, this materialsupports the gist of what Rattray was told. I shall draw upon a few of thesesources which relate to Kumase and to the reign of Asantehene Kwaku DuaPanin (1834-1867), when the power of the monarchy was perhaps more absolutethan it had ever been before and certainly was ever to become later. I shall do soprincipally to suggest that Williams takes insufficient account of matters oflanguage and meaning. To pose the question briefly, when nineteenth-centuryvisitors reported conversations about "human sacrifice," just what Asante term

were they using"human sacrifice" to translate?

In Akan, to make a sacrifice is bo afodee. The sacrificial act is aforebo andthe object sacrificed is aforebodee. It is my impression that these concepts had todo with rites involving the gods, who were offered libations of wine, rum, and thelike. They were also partial to yam and eggs, and sacrifices of fowl, goats andsheep were in order. The gods were for the most part associated with water (thatis, ultimately rain), and were invoked as guarantors of abundant harvests and, byextension, of the general well-being of the human community. Rattray reportsthe consecration of a shrine to a Tano river god: "we are setting you (here), thatwe may have long life; do not let us get 'Death'; do not let us become impotent;life to the head of this village; life to the young men of this village; life to thosewho bear children, and life to the children of this village."5 I suspect that thenotion of human beings as aforebodee, as sacrifices, would have appeared a quiteperplexing and perhaps contradictory one to a nineteenth-century Asante.

The term "human sacrifice" in the nineteenth century literaturemistranslated, I think, either one of two Asante expressions. The first was twaetire, literally, "to cut off the head." The second was wura ano sepo, literally, "to

pierce the mouth with a dagger," or more simply, bo sepo, "to inflict the dagger,"referring to the practice of pinioning the tongue of a person to be killed toprevent him or her

utteringcurses. The relevant context, I

suggest,is not that of

sacrifice at all, but of the power of life and death which was the prerogative ofthe Asantehene and which served to underwrite his authority.

The Rev. Thomas B. Freeman of the Wesleyan Missionary Society arrivedin the Asante capital on 1 April 1839, which was in the fifth year of the reign ofKwaku Dua Panin. It was Freeman's first visit, but his perceptions were alreadydeeply affected by reports he had heard. At his reception, for example, hemistook the nkonnwasoafo or stool carriers for the adumfo or executioners andwrote of "the blood-stained stools on which hundreds, and perhaps thousands, ofhuman victims have been sacrificed by decapitation."6 On the morning of 5 April

Freeman was told that a relative of the Asantehene had died, and that fourpersons had already been slain. The Asantehene sent a message to suggest thatFreeman stay at home since "he was making a 'custom' for the departed relative"and, as Freeman put it, "knew Europeans did not like to see human sacrifices." By

5R. S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), 148.

6T. B. Freeman, Journal of Two Visits to the Kingdom of Ashanti (London, 1843), 47.


4/11

ASANTE: A REJOINDER 445

evening Freeman understood that twenty-five people had been killed, and thenext day he believed the tally to have reached forty. He knew, however, that thekillings were intended to provide the dead person with companions and servants.Indeed, he talked with the Asantehene's senior counselor, Akyeamehene KwamePoku Agyeman, and tried to convince him of the great error in supposing thatthose slain "would attend on the deceased relative of the King, in some otherstate of existence."7 For Freeman to argue that the Asante were misguided intheir view of the connections between this world and the next was one thing. Toassert on this basis that they practiced "human sacrifice" was to read more intothe situation than was there. An Asante would no doubt have thought theChristian practice of drinking the blood and eating the flesh of their saviordecidedly peculiar, but to have accused Christians of "cannibalism" wouldlikewise have involved a

misunderstanding.No other "custom" occurred during the remainder of Freeman's ten daystay in Kumase, or if it did he knew nothing of it. He returned to Kumase in 1841,entering the town on 13 December. Four days later a functionary died. Freemanheard only of three people being slain ("three human sacrifices"). He did,however, speak with one of the executioners, a youth in his upper teens, whoclaimed that during his career to date he had put to death some eighty persons.8Freeman's long private conversations with Kwaku Dua Panin ranged over manytopics, from education and Christianity to slavery and from railroads andsteamships to botanical gardens. "Human sacrifice" was not prominent among

them. It was touched upon, however, at least once. Kwaku Dua Panin assumedthat judicial executions (including those of rebels) were in question. "If I were toabolish human sacrifices," Freeman reported him as arguing, "I should deprivemyself of one of the most effectual means of keeping the people in subjection."We may be sure that in the context "human sacrifices" translated twa etire or wuraano sepo, and not bo afodee. Indeed, Freeman remarked that the Asante "wereevidently under an impression, that because the English have such an horror ofhuman sacrifices, they do not make public examples of the greatest violators ofthe laws," and he maintained that Kwaku Dua Panin had thus "confounded thesacrificing of hundreds and thousands of innocent victims, with the punishmentof those who may have forfeited their lives on account of flagrant transgressionsof their country's law."9

Freeman left Kumase on 31 January 1842. He heard of only one other"custom" during his stay there, that on 5 January for the death of a daughter ofthe Asantehene. He understood that three persons were killed.10 Even the greatfire of 22 January, which left thousands of people homeless and at least one dead,was not followed by any slaughter. Since the fire was an act of the gods ratherthan of the state, killings would have been quite inappropriate.1l On 17 January1842, however, Freeman learned that two criminals were about to be executed. He

7Ibid., 52-54.

8Ibid., 128.

9Ibid., 164.

1lIbid, 151.

Illbid., 169-174.


5/11

446 IVOR WILKS

made a point of appearing at the scene and of remarking to AkyeameheneKwame Poku Agyeman, "that those who were guilty of treason in England, weregenerally made public examples of, and that it was a sad thing to see men sorebellious."12 Freeman thus used the opportunity to make it clear that by "humansacrifice" he meant not judicial executions but the killings at the "customs." IfFreeman referred to the latter by the use of the expression bo afodee, whichseems likely enough for one familiar with biblical concepts of sacrifice, it is notdifficult to see how he and his informants found themselves talking at crosspurposes. Trapped in his own rhetoric, moreover, Freeman seems not even tohave entertained the thought that many of those slain at the "customs" were thosepreviously sentenced to death by legal process.

Freeman's sojourn in Kumase scarcely bore out his image of it as the"blood-stained

city,"and he left not a little bemused

bythe contrast between the

image he could not abandon on the one hand, and the civility and urbanity thathe had everywhere witnessed on the other. His successor, the Rev. G. Chapman,was a man cast in a different mold. He was in Kumase from 2 September 1843 to19 November 1844 and again briefly from 8 March to 22 April 1845.13He wasgreatly troubled by the number of "human sacrifices" he witnessed over thatconsiderable period of time. He reported them in some detail, exhibiting acombination of abhorrence and fascination that brings to mind Plato's story ofLeontius, son of Aglaion, who,

on his way up from the Piraeus under the outer side of thenorthern wall, becoming aware of dead bodies that lay at theplace of execution, at the same time felt a desire to see themand a repugnance and aversion, and that for a time he resistedand veiled his head, but overpowered despite all by his desire,with wide staring eyes he rushed up to the corpses and cried,"There, ye wretches, take your fill of the fine spectacle!"

Whatever term Chapman used to discuss the matter of "human sacrifice,"he seems to have been able to make himself rather better understood than his

predecessor. His informants, some of whom were not unreceptive to hispreaching, consistently treated the issue of killings at the "customs" as oneessentially to do with status. "When a great man dies he requires attendants in theplace to which he is gone," explained the royal messenger (and later BremanGyaasehene) Dagyawa.14 "Chiefs and Kings," observed an elder of the heir-apparent Osei Kwadwo, "require attendants and slaves in another world.'15 Twounnamed officials commented, "a man who has plenty of Gold, and numerous

2Ibid., 164-165.

13Chapman's diary, preserved by the Wesleyan Mission Society, London, is currently being prepared for

publication by T. C. McCaskie, and I am grateful to him for making a text available to me.

4Chapman's Diary, entry for 13 October 1843.

15Ibid., entry for 29 December 1843. Osei Kwadwo himself was receptive to Chapman's preaching. Sixmonths later, engaged in a further conversation on the topic, he nevertheless still felt obliged to argue that "a

great man would need a few slaves in the other world," see entry for 5 June 1844.


6/11


Slaves, must not be allowed to leave the world without attendants."16 An Asantesense of propriety was clearly involved. It had nothing to do with sacrifice, andcertainly not with the spilling of blood for reasons of propitiation. "Attendants,"in Chapman's diary, unquestionably translates the Asante asomfo, "those whoserve." It was seen as entirely unfitting that a notable should depart this life forthe next unaccompanied by persons to serve him or her there. The Rev. Hayfron,who accompanied Chapman to Kumase in 1843, was later to put the matter veryclearly. The Asante, he wrote,

honestly believes in a future state, a world of spirits, where thesame social scale as that which exists here will be strictlyobserved; that there, as here, royalty and headmen and chiefsand

generals musthave

stool-bearersand

slaves, andthat to let

them depart from this earth unattended would be to inflict onthem public and unending disgrace in the Ashanti worldbeyond the grave.17

W. Winniet, governor of the Gold Coast, paid an official visit to Kumasein 1848. Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin received him with much ceremony,lavishing gifts upon him. Winniet seems to have felt somewhat embarrassed inraising the topic of "human sacrifice" with his host. He first did so on 24 October,after he had been in Kumase for two weeks. He told the Asantehene that it was

the desire of Queen Victoria "that these sanguinary rites should be abolished." Inresponse, Winniet reports, Kwaku Dua Panin

enquired whether I had seen any instance of human sacrificetaking place since I had entered his dominions: I certainly hadnot seen or heard of any, and therefore expressed myself tothat effect; and he then observed that although humansacrifices were customs of his fore-fathers he was reducingtheir number and extent in his kingdom; and that the wishesof Her Majesty should not be forgotten.18

Winniet raised the matter again two days later, when taking leave of theAsantehene. On this occasion Kwaku Dua Panin remarked "that the number ofhuman sacrifices made in Kumasi had been greatly exaggerated and thatattempts had thus been made to spoil his name." The Asantehene pressed thepoint. "I remember," he said,

that when I was a little boy, I heard that the English came tothe coast of Africa with their ships for cargoes of slaves forthe purpose of taking them to their own country and eatingthem; but I have long since known that the report was false,

16Ibid., entry for 24 January 1844.

17British Parliamentary Papers, Further Correspondence Regarding Affairs of the Gold Coast,C. 3386, 1882, p. 40: Watt to Ag. Col. Sec. dd. Cape Coast, 2 February 1882.

18Winniet's Journal, National Archives of Ghana, Accra, ADM.1/2/4, Governor's Despatches to

Secretary of State, and Public Record Office, London, CO.96/14: ntry for 24 October 1848.


7/11

448 IVOR WILKS

and so it will be proved, in reference to many reports whichhave gone forth against me.19

Winniet was convinced of the Asantehene's sincerity and expressed the hope thathe would finally abolish "this sanguinary custom." It is, however, quite unclearwhether the Asantehene was speaking of reducing the number of offensestreated as capital ones, or of restricting the number of those of whatever

category slain to attend the ancestors, or of both.The word "custom," common throughout the nineteenth century literature,

was clearly used in a technical sense.20 It translated the Akan amanee, literally,aman adee, "things of state." It had particular reference to funerals and the regularAdaes, that is, to those occasions when the living reached out to the dead and

mightdespatch some of their number to join them. The killings at such "customs"

were by royal assent and had to be carried out by the king's executioners, the

adumfo. The fact was that killings of any sort were highly regulated in Asante.Matters of status and rank were involved, and the customs were "things of state"

precisely for that reason.I have argued elsewhere that status in Asante was a function primarily of

achievement as measured by wealth.21 The higher the rank of a dead person, the

higher should be the cost of the "custom" that ensured the maintenance of his orher status in the domain of the ancestors. That cost could be assessed in terms ofthe monetary value of the "custom": the value of those slain, of the drink

supplied, of the gunpowder consumed, and so forth.22 To be unable adequately todischarge one's financial obligations at the appropriate level disgraced both the

living and the dead. An important chief died in mid-1850. The missionary J. Hart,then in Kumase, counted twenty-seven persons slain. "The son of the late chief,"he reported, "having no money to obtain slaves with for sacrifice for his father,shot himself...." The act was salutary (in the context). Within a few days another

fifty or sixty had been killed to join the deceased. The cost of the "custom" hadthus been tripled.23 The incident returns us to the matter of the identity of thosewho could, apparently, so readily be obtained to swell the numbers of those

despatched from this life to the next.

19Ibid., entry for 26 October 1848.

20See the Oxford English Dictionary: Custom - "Applied to specific usages of particular peoples;e.g., the periodical massacres in Dahome." The usage is traced to Quarterly Review, XXII (1820), 296:"Dahomeans do not make war to make slaves, but to make prisoners to kill at the Customs." See, however,T. E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 279, having reference to theannual Odwira: "About a hundred persons, mostly culprits reserved, are generally sacrificed, in different

quarters of the town [Kumase], at this custom," and p. 289, referring to the funeral of Asantehene Osei

Kwame,"I was assured

by several,that the custom for Sai

Quamina,was

repeated weeklyfor three

months,and that two hundred slaves were sacrificed, and 25 barrels of powder fired, each time."

21Ivor Wilks, "The Golden Stool and the Elephant Tail: An Essay on Wealth in Asante," in G. Dalton,ed., Research in Economic Anthropology, II, (Greenwich, Conn.,, 1979), 1-37.

22For another way in which status was quantified in monetary terms, see Wilks, "Asante Officialdom:A Note on Scaling by Rank," n Asante Seminar '75 [later Asantesem], No. 2, April 1975, 18-20.

23Methodist Mission Society, London, Correspondence: Hart to General Secretaries, Account of his

Journey to Kumasi, commencing 13 May 1850.


8/11


It was possible to buy slaves in Kumase solely for slaughter at "customs."A license to have them killed was, as it were, part of the purchase price. Such atleast was the case in the late 1840s.24 n view of the Asantehene's powers overmatters of life and death, it is quite out of the question that this was a privateenterprise. It seems likely that those offered for sale were akyere - those alreadyunder sentence of death for criminal offenses, rebellion and the like, and broughtinto Kumase from their akyerekuro by functionaries of the Asantehene. Therewas, in other words, money to be made from the sale of akyere surplus to theAsantehene's own requirements, and there was clearly a ready demand for them.In this context it may be significant that it was Kwaku Dua Panin who,according to Rattray's informants, established the institution of the akyerekuro.25The question is, was there any other category of people who could, like the

akyere,be sold for

slaughterat the customs"?

The nnonkofo (singular, odonko) were slaves purchased in the northernmarkets or received as tribute from northern provinces. They had neithercommitted any criminal offense nor had taken up arms against the Asantehene.There is little doubt that they were regarded as inferior beings by the akanifo, thenative-born Asante. Kwaku Dua Panin is himself on record. "The small tribes inthe interior," he remarked in 1841, "fight with each other, take prisoners and sellthem for slaves; and as I know nothing about them, I allow my people to buy andsell them as they please: they are of no use for anything else but slaves; they arestupid, and little better than beasts."26 Many were sold at the markets of the

British Protected Territory of the Gold Coast, whose erstwhile judicial assessorand acting governor, Brodie Cruickshank, could refer to them in terms even moredisparaging than those used by the Asantehene.27 Those who were retained inAsante constituted a menial class, supplementing family labor as farmworkers,porters and the like.

There is no doubt that on the death of their master or mistress a numberof nnonkofo would be among those selected to accompany him or her to thehereafter. This is not, however, to assign them a status comparable with that ofthe akyere, but rather to place them in the category of wives and other servantschosen for death. There is also no doubt that many if not most of the nnonkofofailed to appreciate the privilege afforded them, of exchanging the status of slavein this world for that of slave in the next. Some became runaways and usuallymade their way into the British Protected Territory where killings at "customs"(though not slavery) had been made illegal. To avoid repatriation, however, therunaways had to convince the British authorities that their lives were truly injeopardy in Asante.

Six runaways had their cases heard in Cape Coast Castle in mid-1858.Acting colonial secretary R. D. Ross represented the British governor andKankam (possibly the Nkonnwasoafohene Kankam Kyekyere) the Asantehene.

Most of the six maintained that they had fled Kumase because their masters or

24Methodist Mission Society, London, Correspondence: Hillard to General Secretaries dd. Kumase, 16

January 1849.

25Rattray, Religion and Art, 106n.

26Freeman, Journal, 132.

27B. Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa (London, 1853), II, 243-245.


9/11

450 IVOR WILKS

mistresses had threatened to hand them over to the Asantehene's executioners tobe killed. One said that he thought this merely a threat to frighten him, thoughhe added that his master sometimes did buy slaves from the interior to donate tothe Asantehene for the "customs." A second said that he was one of about ahundred slaves owned by his master, and that three or four of them had beenkilled "for Custom." A third was owned by a sister of the Asantehene. She had, heclaimed, killed a hundred people on the death of her daughter, but heacknowledged that only three of them were from among his fellow slaves. Headded: "whether a slave behaves well or ill his life is not safe - frequently casesare trumped up against him in order to have an excuse to hand him over to besacrificed." The implication of this last remark is that at least a semblance oflegal process was necessary to convert the status of an odonko to that of an akyere.A fourth runaway said that his master's wife had warned him that he was to bekilled. The Asantehene's representative dismissed this as a fabrication. "He ranaway because he was a Slave and it is the habit or custom of Slaves to do so," hetestified; "it is not true that his master was going to give him up for Custommaking. His master has but 4 slaves and how could he kill one of them."28

Cruickshank has what may be a gloss on these very hearings. The Britishagreed to repatriate a number of runaways but only after the Asantehene'srepresentatives had taken oaths that they would not be slain. The runawaysinsisted that oaths were also sworn on "the white man's book," that is, the Bible.When they arrived in Kumase, Cruickshank reports,

and the king found that they had bound him, not only by hisown, but also by the white man's oath, he became alarmed, lestany accidental injury might happen to the persons thusprotected, which might bring him under the penalty of itsviolation; and to get rid of the liability, he sent the refugeesback to the Fante country, preferring to lose them to the riskof incurring an unknown danger.29

It was Rattray's understanding that "if you wished to kill a slave, you had

to ask the permission of the Chief, who, if he agreed, would send his ownexecutioners."30 This is attested in Chapman's account of what was something ofa cause celebre in 1844. Two chiefs put to death one of their slaves for havingcommitted a sexual offense against a young girl from their household.Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin then had the two chiefs executed for killing theslave without his permission.31 The burden of the evidence is such as to suggestthat, although an odonko might in certain circumstances be slain at a "custom," hisor her position was vastly different from that of an akyere. I incline then -Williams's arguments notwithstanding - to hold to my earlier view that themajority of those slain at Asante "customs" were indeed those previously found

28Public Record Office, London, CO.96/43, Original Correspondence: Depositions of Ashantee

Refugees, hearings commencing 25 June 1858.

29Cruickshank, Eighteen Years, II, 238.

30Rattray, shanti Law and Constitution, 6.

31Chapman's Diary, entries for 7 and 14 February 1844.


10/11


guilty of capital offenses, and that to refer to the killings as "human sacrifices"involves a serious misunderstanding of the context in which they occurred.

Williams is correct, I believe, in suggesting that Asante attitudes towardsthe killings were not unchanging ones. Practice was affected by political, socialand economic considerations. Osei Kwame became Asantehene in 1777 and wasremoved from office probably only a few months before his death in December1803 or January 1804.32 The later years of his reign were ones of much turmoil.Central to the political debates of the period was precisely the issue of the royalprerogative over matters of life and death. Reports reached the Danishmerchants on the Gold Coast in 1797 to the effect that Osei Kwame's excessivekillings had alienated even the Asantehemaa (or "queen-mother"), KwaaduYaadom. Mustering support, she was able to seize effective power and tointroduce reforms. Measures were

taken, reportsof the time have

it,to curtail all

killings. In particular transportation for life (by sale on the Gold Coast) was tobe preferred to execution as the extreme penalty in criminal cases.33 In 1820Joseph Dupuis, British consul in Kumase, was led to understand that towards theend of his reign Osei Kwame "prohibited many festivals at which it was usual tospill the blood of victims devoted to the customs." Dupuis's informants wereMuslim residents in the capital who appear to have wished to take some creditfor the reforms. It is possible that they told Dupuis that the changes occurredtowards the end of the reign of Osei Kwame, and that it was the consul whoassumed that the initiative came from the Asantehene himself. Whatever the

case, the Muslims acknowledged their failure to have the "customs" ("thebarbarous practice of watering the graves of his ancestors with human gore")totally abolished.34

Sections of Asante opinion in the late eighteenth century may well, forhumanitarian reasons, have been concerned to see killings regulated and reduced.It is without prejudice to this observation to note that in the period a cash valuecould be set upon a human life by reference to the prices paid for men, womenand children at the trading posts on the Gold Coast. The existence of theAtlantic slave trade made the taking of life readily accountable. It would havebeen common knowledge in Kumase in the late 1790s, for example, that eachadult male killed, in whatever circumstances, might otherwise have been sold onthe Gold Coast for around 10 oz. of gold.35 Material considerations, in otherwords, are likely to have been relevant to the reforms of the late eighteenthcentury. The withdrawal from the slave trade of Danes (1803), British (1807) andDutch (1815), however, led to a sharp decline in the price of a life. It becameuneconomical to market even prisoners of war, who were apparently slain

32Larry Yarak and Ivor Wilks, "The Chronology of the Asante Kings: A Further Revision," inAsantesem: The Asante Collective Biography Project Bulletin, 8 (March 1978), 39.

33J. K. Fynn, Asante and Its Neighbours 1700-1807, (London, 1971), 137; Wilks, Asante, 252-253.

34J. Dupuis, Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824), 245.

35Useful figures are provided in J. R. LaTorre, "Wealth Surpasses Everything: An Economic History of

Asante, 1750-1874" Ph. D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1978), 421-435.


11/11

452 IVOR WILKS

instead.36 By 1817 the Exchequeur Court in Kumase could set the value of a manslave at rather less than an ounce.37 By the reign of Asantehene Kwaku DuaPanin the price had recovered somewhat and appears to have fluctuated aroundtwo to three ounces.38 It is arguable that with the fall in the value of a slavethere was a rise in the number of those killed at the "customs." In 1820 Dupuisdrew attention to the problem Asantehene Osei Bonsu faced in knowing how to

dispose of those taken in rebellion against the Golden Stool once the majormaritime markets on the Gold Coast had disappeared.39 There can be little doubtthat many were killed who would earlier have been sold on the Gold Coast.

Nevertheless, the inference that life was more expendable simple because it was

cheaper must be resisted. It was, I believe, rather that the monetary value of the"customs" had to be sustained for reasons of status, necessitating the killing of

more slaves as their value on the market fell. The data, unfortunately, do notpermit this thesis to be put to a quantitative test. If such was the trend, however,Kwaku Dua Panin could scarcely have been unaware of it, and the assurances he

gave Winniet of his intention to reduce the number of killings should perhaps beunderstood in the context.

The argument of this note is that it is inappropriate to refer to the

killings at Asante "customs" as instances of human sacrifice. They were, I suggest,quite rational procedures granted the particular form that the belief in anafterlife took in Asante and the way in which this belief was articulated withnotions of the status of both the living and the dead. It is not that the ancestors

desired blood; they wished for companions and servants. The matter becomes oneof much importance for the study of Anglo-Asante relations later in the century,for the British vigorously propagated the view that the Asante practiced "humansacrifice" in order to legitimate their interference in the affairs of that nation,and their ultimate occupation of it. The myth of "human sacrifice" became, inother words, a powerful instrument of British policy. A full study of the topic ismuch needed.

36R. A. Kea has drawn my attention to the testimony of the Danish Governor Schionning on this point,State Archives, Copenhagen, Diverse arkivalier fra Guinea, letter dd. Christiansborg, 5 June 1811: "Since theend of the slave trade all prisoners of war are murdered."

37Bowdich, Mission, 296.

38LaTorre, "Wealth Surpasses Everything," 440-441; Cruickshank, Eighteen Years, II, 244.

39Dupuis, Journal, 162-164.

Asante Human Sacrifice or Capital Punishment a Rejoinder

Documents

Transcript of Asante Human Sacrifice or Capital Punishment a Rejoinder