Baden-Powell of Mafeking

by J. S. Fletcher

THE ASHANTI EXPEDITION, 1895-6

Amongst the vast collection of relics, trophies, and curiosities which Baden-Powell has housed at his mother's residence in London there is one object at sight of which those who know its history may be forgiven for feeling some slight qualms. It is a large brass basin, about five feet in diameter, ornamented with four lions and with a number of round knobs all round its rim. If the spirits of blood-lust, of unholiness, and cruelty abide anywhere on earth, they ought to be found in this bowl, which Baden-Powell found at Bantama when he went out with the Ashanti Expedition of 1895-6, and which in its time had received the blood of countless victims to the inordinate love of human sacrifice which has distinguished the kings of the Ashanti empire for centuries. It looks, that bowl, as innocent as an ordinary kitchen utensil as it hangs in its place on the wall, surrounded by trophies of a more fearsome nature, but not even the guillotine of the Reign of Terror had seen and smelt more blood than had run over its rim to putrefy in its depths and to be eventually turned, mixed with certain herbs, into fetish medicines. To Baden-Powell, whenever he sees it—he has had small chance of seeing it since he brought it back to England, though!—it must needs recall many things in connection with that foul corner of the earth into which he journeyed some five years ago in order to assist in bringing a reign of bloodshed and violence to an end.

Sketch Map of the March to Kumassi showing the Camping Places

We are often told that we, as a nation, are much too ready to interfere with the affairs of other folk, and there are candid people amongst us who are not afraid of hinting that our interference is usually with nations not quite so big and powerful as ourselves—that we are, in short, something like the schoolboy bully who wants to fight, but only with a boy several sizes smaller than himself. There were whisperings and hintings of this sort when we sent out our Ashanti Expedition of 1895-6—but no nation, surely, ever had better reasons for undertaking such an expedition. There were more reasons than one why it should be undertaken, and every reason was a most potent one, but one towered above all in its strength and urgency. Human life was being sacrificed in Ashanti to an extent which civilized folk can scarcely comprehend. The following extract from Baden-Powell's work on the Ashanti Expedition of 1895-6 gives one some notion of what was going on in and around Kumassi before the British Government stepped in:—

"Any great public function was seized on as an excuse for human sacrifices. There was the annual 'yam custom,' or harvest festival, at which large numbers of victims were often offered to the gods. Then the king went every quarter to pay his devotions to the shades of his ancestors at Bantama, and this demanded the deaths of twenty men over the great bowl on each occasion. On the death of any great personage, two of the household slaves were at once killed on the threshold of the door, in order to attend their master immediately in his new life, and his grave was afterwards lined with the bodies of more slaves who were to form his retinue in the spirit world. It was thought all the better if, during the burial, one of the attendant mourners could be stunned by a club, and dropped, still breathing, into the grave before it was filled in. In the case of a great lady dying, slave-girls were the victims. This custom of sacrifice at funerals was called 'washing the grave.' On the death of a king the custom of washing the grave involved enormous sacrifices. Then sacrifices were also made to propitiate the gods when war was about to be entered upon, or other trouble was impending. Victims were also killed to deter an enemy from approaching the capital: sometimes they were impaled and set up on the path, with their hand pointing to the enemy and bidding him to retire. At other times the victim was beheaded and the head replaced looking in the wrong direction; or he was buried alive in the pathway, standing upright, with only his head above ground, to remain thus until starvation, or—what was infinitely worse—the ants made an end of him. Then there was a death penalty for the infraction of various laws. For instance, anybody who found a nugget of gold and who did not send it at once to the king was liable to decapitation; so also was anybody who picked up anything of value lying on the parade-ground, or who sat down in the shade of the fetish tree at Bantama. Indeed, if the king desired an execution at any time, he did not look far for an excuse. It is even said that on one occasion he preferred a richer colour in the red stucco on the walls of the palace, and that for this purpose the blood of four hundred virgins was used. I have purposely refrained elsewhere from giving numbers, because, although our informants supplied them, West African natives are notoriously inexact in this respect. The victims of sacrifices were almost always slaves or prisoners of war. Slaves were often sent in to the king in lieu of tribute from his kinglets and chiefs, or as a fine for minor delinquencies. Travelling traders of other tribes, too, were frequently called upon to pay customs dues with a slave or two, and sometimes their own lives were forfeited.

Human Sacrifice at Bantama.