The Land of Fetish

by A. B. Ellis

After Captain Lees’s mission to Coomassie and Djuabin the subtle Ashantis remained quiet until about July 1875, satisfying themselves with storing up supplies of salt, powder, and lead, and re-organizing their army, to the chief command of which Awooah, the brother of the late general, Amanquatia, succeeded. King Mensah also placed on record how keenly he felt the injustice of the British in not calling upon the king of Djuabin to pay a fair proportion of the war indemnity which had been inflicted on the entire kingdom by Sir Garnet Wolseley, the whole of which Ashanti, though reduced to half her former area, had now to pay.

In July, King Mensah addressed a letter to the European merchants of Cape Coast Castle, complaining of the action of the king of Djuabin, that he was kidnapping Ashantis living on the Djuabin frontier, and closing the roads to trade. This letter was duly forwarded to the Government, but only elicited from the Governor the reply “that he would act with reference to the affairs of the interior as seemed to him advisable.”

There can be no doubt but that the head of the king of Djuabin was turned by his sudden accession to power; he sent insulting messages to Mensah, invited the tribes within the protectorate to come and share the spoils of Coomassie with him; and by the middle of August 1875 the excitement on each side had become so intense that no mere negotiation or mediation could have averted war, whatever it might have effected if it had been employed at an earlier period.

Matters were further complicated by the mission to Coomassie of a Monsieur Bonnat, who was desirous of opening trade with Salagha, a large and populous Mohammedan town, said to be eight days’ journey to the north-east of Coomassie. M. Bonnat visited the Ashanti capital in company with Prince Ansah, the uncle of the king, and appears to have mixed himself up a great deal with native politics. From Coomassie he went to Djuabin, where he very naturally was regarded with suspicion, on account of the circumstances under which he had visited Coomassie. M. Bonnat was accompanied by a number of Ashantis as carriers and servants, and some sixty of these were murdered by the Djuabins. In extenuation of this outrage King Asafu Agai afterwards said the murder was ordered by the Keratchi fetish, which is the great fetish of Djuabin and of several other tribes of the interior.

War was now inevitable, but Osai Mensah was so afraid that Great Britain would interpose that he still delayed. Towards the end of September a fresh casus belli occurred. The inhabitants of five villages on the borders of Djuabin notified to King Mensah their desire to secede from the kingdom of Djuabin and to be incorporated with that of Ashanti. Mensah accordingly sent some of his officers to these villages, where they were attacked by the Djuabins. In the skirmish which ensued the Djuabins were forced to retire, and the inhabitants of the five villages migrated into Ashanti.

When the news of this affair reached Cape Coast Castle the Government at last awoke to the fact that something ought to be done. They accordingly despatched an army surgeon, who was temporarily in their employ, with instructions, first, to proceed to Eastern Akim, and warn the king of that territory, who had been tampered with by the Djuabins, that he was not to take part in the probable hostilities; and, secondly, to proceed from Akim to Djuabin and Coomassie, and forbid the war, reminding the two kings of the oaths they had sworn to Captain Lees.

This officer left Accra on October 23rd, 1875, but his mission had been kept so little secret that his intended departure had been known for some time; and, a week before he left Accra, both Djuabin and Ashanti messengers had started from Cape Coast Castle to carry the intelligence to their respective masters, and to inform them that if they wanted to fight they must do so at once, “for the white man was coming to palaver.”

The Colonial envoy reached Kibbie in Eastern Akim on October 29th, and next day Djuabin messengers reached him with the intelligence that the Ashantis had invaded their country in two divisions, one of which was encamped within a few miles of the capital. On October 31st the town of Djuabin was attacked by the Ashantis, the conflict raged during the next two days, and on November 3rd the Djuabins were put to flight in every direction.

The envoy at once proceeded to Djuabin, which town he found in the hands of the Ashantis. Foreseeing that the prestige of this victory would do much to restore Ashanti to her former position, and cancel the beneficial results of the war of 1873-4, he wrote to the Governor at Cape Coast Castle recommending that Djuabin should be occupied by a British force. This proposal was not entertained. Indeed, it would have been injudicious in the extreme, with the handful of troops at the disposal of the Government, to endeavour to snatch the fruits of victory from a warlike people in their hour of triumph. Action of this kind should have been taken earlier, but the opportunity had been allowed to pass, and it was now too late.