The Ga of the Volta delta are here bracketed with the Tshi because A. B. Ellis, our great authority on the Guinea peoples[160], considers the two languages to be distantly connected. He also thinks there is a foundation of fact in the native traditions, which bring the dominant tribes—Ashanti, Fanti, Dahomi, Yoruba, Bini—from the interior to the coast districts at no very remote period. Thus it is recorded of the Ashanti and Fanti, now hereditary foes, that ages ago they formed one people who were reduced to the utmost distress during a long war with some inland power, perhaps the conquering Muhammadans of the Ghana or Mali empire. They were saved, however, some by eating of the shan, others of the fan plant, and of these words, with the verb di, "to eat," were made the tribal names Shan-di, Fan-di, now Ashanti, Fanti. The seppiriba plant, said to have been eaten by the Fanti, is still called fan when cooked.
| Tribes of Tshi and Ga Speech | Tribes of Ewe Speech | Tribes of Yoruba Speech |
|---|---|---|
| Gold Coast | Slave Coast West | Slave Coast East and Niger Delta |
| Ashanti | Dahomi | Yoruba[161] |
| Safwhi | Eweawo | Ibadan |
| Denkera | Agotine | Ketu |
| Bekwai | Anfueh | Egba |
| Nkoranza | Krepe | Jebu |
| Adansi | Avenor | Remo |
| Assin | Awuna | Ode |
| Wassaw | Agbosomi | Ilorin |
| Ahanta | Aflao | Ijesa |
| Fanti | Ataklu | Ondo |
| Agona | Krikor | Mahin |
| Akwapim | Geng | Benin (Bini) |
| Akim | Attakpami | Kakanda |
| Akwamu | Aja | Wari |
| Kwao | Ewemi | Ibo[161] |
| Ga | Appa | Efik[161] |
Other traditions refer to a time when all were of one speech, and lived in a far country beyond Salagha, open, flat, with little bush, and plenty of cattle and sheep, a tolerably accurate description of the inland Sudanese plateaux. But then came a red people, said to be the Fulahs, Muhammadans, who oppressed the blacks and drove them to take refuge in the forests. Here they thrived and multiplied, and after many vicissitudes they came down, down, until at last they reached the coast, with the waves rolling in, the white foam hissing and frothing on the beach, and thought it was all boiling water until some one touched it and found it was not hot, and so to this day they call the sea Eh-huru den o nni shew, "Boiling water not hot," but far inland the sea is still "Boiling water[162]."
Fetishism—its true inwardness.
To A. B. Ellis we are indebted especially for the true explanation of the much used and abused term fetish, as applied to the native beliefs. It was of course already known to be not an African but a Portuguese word[163], meaning a charm, amulet, or even witchcraft. But Ellis shows how it came to be wrongly applied to all forms of animal and nature worship, and how the confusion was increased by De Brosses' theory of a primordial fetishism, and by his statement that it was impossible to conceive a lower form of religion than fetishism, which might therefore be assumed to be the beginning of all religion[164].
On the contrary it represents rather an advanced stage, as Ellis discovered after four or five years of careful observation on the spot. A fetish, he tells us, is something tangible and inanimate, which is believed to possess power in itself, and is worshipped for itself alone. Nor can such an object be picked up anywhere at random, as is commonly asserted, and he adds that the belief "is arrived at only after considerable progress has been made in religious ideas, when the older form of religion becomes secondary and owes its existence to the confusion of the tangible with the intangible, of the material with the immaterial; to the belief in the indwelling god being gradually lost sight of until the power originally believed to belong to the god, is finally attributed to the tangible and inanimate object itself."
But now comes a statement that may seem paradoxical to most students of the evolution of religious ideas. We are assured that fetishism thus understood is not specially or at all characteristic of the religion of the Gold Coast natives, who are in fact "remarkably free from it" and believe in invisible intangible deities. Some of them may dwell in a tangible inanimate object, popularly called a "fetish"; but the idea of the indwelling god is never lost sight of, nor is the object ever worshipped for its own sake. True fetishism, the worship of such material objects and images, prevails, on the contrary, far more "amongst the Negroes of the West Indies, who have been christianised for more than half-a-century, than amongst those of West Africa. Hence the belief in Obeah, still prevalent in the West Indies, which formerly was a belief in indwelling spirits which inhabited certain objects, has now become a worship paid to tangible and inanimate objects, which of themselves are believed to possess the power to injure. In Europe itself we find evidence amongst the Roman Catholic populations of the South, that fetishism is a corruption of a former culte, rather than a primordial faith. The lower classes there have confused the intangible with the tangible, and believe that the images of the saints can both see, hear and feel. Thus we find the Italian peasants and fishermen beat and ill-treat their images when their requests have not been complied with.... These appear to be instances of true fetishism[165]."
Ancestry Worship and the "Customs."
Another phase of religious belief in Upper Guinea is ancestry worship, which has here been developed to a degree unknown elsewhere. As the departed have to be maintained in the same social position beyond the grave that they enjoyed in this world, they must be supplied with slaves, wives, and attendants, each according to his rank. Hence the institution of the so-called "customs," or anniversary feasts of the dead, accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims, regulated at first by the status and afterwards by the whim and caprice of chiefs and kings. In the capitals of the more powerful states, Ashanti, Dahomey, Benin, the scenes witnessed at these sanguinary rites rivalled in horror those held in honour of the Aztec gods. Details may here be dispensed with on a repulsive subject, ample accounts of which are accessible from many sources to the general reader. In any case these atrocities teach no lesson, except that most religions have waded through blood to better things, unless arrested in mid-stream by the intervention of higher powers, as happily in Upper Guinea, where the human shambles of Kumassi, Abomeh, Benin and most other places have now been swept away.