The Land of Fetish

by A. B. Ellis

There was yet another cause of dissension in Coomassie. Not a few of the chiefs, at the head of whom was Opokoo, chief of Becquai, and Awooah, chief of Bantami and general of the Ashanti army, were anxious to declare war against Adansi. They had re-conquered Djuabin, their chief feudatory, and had nothing to fear on that side. On their western or north-western border too there was now nothing to fear, for although King Ajiman of Gaman had contrived to regain a portion of his kingdom, and had fought several undecisive skirmishes with the Korkobo faction, still the latter was quite powerful enough to neutralise any hostile movement on the part of the former against Ashanti. Further, these chiefs knew that they could drive the handful of Adansis across the Prah without any trouble, and they considered that to do this would wipe out the disgrace of the defeats of 1874.

In fact the only thing which at this time prevented the actual invasion of Adansi was the belief held by King Mensah and his chiefs that any act of aggression against Adansi would be equivalent to war with Great Britain; and they were led to this belief by the action taken by Capt. Lees in the spring of 1879, and with which the then Secretary of State for the Colonies had found fault. Notwithstanding this belief, the war party in Coomassie were desirous of invading Adansi, and were quite willing to take the risk of another war with England. Opposed to the war party were the king, the queen-mother, and the court party. Mensah remembered that he owed his present position to the downfall of Quoffi Calcalli, who had lost the throne in his conflict with the British; and, being advised by Prince Ansah at Cape Coast, he knew perfectly well that should hostilities break out between Ashanti and Great Britain his own ruin would be the result.

Although Mensah was not prepared to face the Colonial Government in the field, yet he was as desirous as any of his chiefs to recover Adansi, which would do so much to re-establish Ashanti in her former position of supremacy, and so he pursued the traditional policy of the country. The new Governor of the Gold Coast Colony, Mr. Ussher, sent presents to the king on taking up his appointment, and the latter seized the opportunity to send messengers down to Accra, nominally to thank Governor. Ussher for his presents, but secretly to ascertain the views and position of the Government with regard to Adansi. These messengers were duly received and dismissed by the Governor and returned to Cape Coast, where they remained, collecting information and watching events on the coast, explaining their delay in returning to their own country by a number of frivolous excuses.

It appears that about this time Mensah also sent a second mission to Gaman, for in October or November, 1880, Gaman messengers came to the Lieutenant-Governor, Mr. Griffith, who had administered the Government since the death of Mr. Ussher, at Accra, saying that the King of Ashanti had sent a message to the Ajiman section of the Gamans to the effect that he, Mensah, had paid a sum of money to the Queen of England in order that the Gaman country should be placed under his rule, and that, the Queen having consented to it, the Gamans were now his people.

While all this was going on, the war party in Coomassie had fast been gaining the upper hand. The bellicose chiefs spoke of Quoffi Calcalli as a man who, whatever might have been his other shortcomings, was, at all events, not afraid of the white men, and recommenced their intrigues with that individual. Matters became so serious that, in December 1880, Mr. Buhl, the Secretary of the Basle Mission Society, reported to the Lieutenant-Governor that there were rumours in Ashanti that the country was going to war; and, in the same month, Chief Taboo of Adansi informed the District Commissioner at Cape Coast that Chief Opokoo of Becquai had publicly sworn before the king at Coomassie that he would force Adansi to become again subject to Ashanti. Confusion began to reign in Coomassie, and the struggle for supremacy between the court and the war party was fast approaching a crisis, when the events which led to the sending of the golden axe to Cape Coast in January 1881 occurred.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Demands that they should return to their own country.

[2] The Treaty of Fommanagh was the one signed by Sir Garnet Wolseley after the burning of Coomassie. The third article provided for the independence of Adansi.