The great section of the Negro family, which comprises, besides the Fantis Proper, the Ashanti, Boroom, and several other populations, is Fanti in the wide sense of the term.
The Fanti, Ashanti, and Boroom forms of speech are merely dialects of one and the same language.
A great proportion of the vocabularies of "Bowdich's Ashanti" are the same.
So are the Fetu, Affotoo, and other vocabularies of the "Mithridates."
The inhabitants of the Native Town of Cape Coast, a mixed population of Krumen, Fantis, and Mulattoes, amounting to as many as 10,000, are no true specimens of the African of the Gold Coast. European influences have too long been at work on them. Before the town was English it was Dutch; and it was English as early as 1661.
More than this. It is not certain that their fathers' fathers were the exact aborigines; in other words, a tribe akin to, but slightly different from them, seems to have been the earlier possessors. These were the Fetu—the remains of which can doubtless be met with among the populations of the neighbourhood; since we find in the "Mithridates" a Fetu vocabulary and an Affotoo one as well.[47]
Now the Fantis that thus displaced the Fetu, were themselves fugitives from the conquering Ashantis; all, however, being the members of one stock, and the pressure being from the highlands of the interior towards the lowlands of the coast.
All three are truly Negro in conformation, and miserably Pagan in creed, the best measure of their political capacity being the organized kingdom of the Ashantis; and the lowest form of it, the system of clanships, chieftainships, or captainships of the proper Fantis of the coast. The details of these are of importance.
I cannot ascertain upon what principle those different divisions which are sometimes called tribes, sometimes clans, are formed; since it is by no means safe to assume that they necessarily consist of descendants from one common ancestor. The investigations concerning the tribes of ancient Rome show this.
It is easier to enumerate their external characteristics, and material elements of their union. In the Native Town there are four quarters, each occupied by a separate section of the population. This section has its own proper head, its own proper standards, and its own proper band of music.