Note 70 — Chapter II

The principal districts of Fantee, are, the Affettoo, the Braffoo, and the Essecoomah; Cape Coast is in the former. The Dey of Affettoo (a title probably introduced by the Portuguese) was formerly supreme in Fantee, so far as summoning the other kings and caboceers at pleasure, prescribing their political conduct, and being appealed to and sentencing in all cases of life and death, wherever or by whomsoever the crime may have been committed; witchcraft excepted. Upwards of a century ago the small pox almost depopulated Affettoo, then the largest town and capital of all Fantee, (it is about 10 miles inland from Cape Coast,) and all the immediate heirs to the stool being cut off, the supremacy was transferred to Mankasim. The present Dey, however, preserves a spiritual authority over the other kings and caboceers, and is esteemed as the superior fetish man; when they desire rain, for instance, they apply to him to procure it, and they look to him solely for their chronology, which he preserves by knotting strings. Mankasim then became the capital and largest town of Fantee, but it was almost destroyed by the Ashantees in their first invasion of 1807. Any Fantee caboceer who did not attend the summons of the King of Mankasim, was suspended by him, and afterwards displaced by the diet. Adoo, the last King of the Braffoos, despoiling all his subjects of their most valuable property, and countenancing the individuals of his family in the same assumption and violation, without any regard to persons; they were all seized, on his death, by a simultaneous rising of the people, and sold off the coast as slaves, to get rid of the race. Adookoo, one of the leading men, was then called to the care of the stool, with the title of caboceer only, it being still considered as an interregnum, but he exercised the same supremacy and privileges which the King had done, and was acknowledged by the whole country. During his retreat and wanderings in the bush, after several defeats by the Ashantees, the Fantee towns have assumed many political and judicial rights before centered in Mankasim; but Adookoo is now expected to summon them all, and re-establish the ancient order of things, which they deem too sacred to think of resisting. It was not the Braffoos, or the whole people of that district, who had the privilege of living abroad at the public expense, and who took whatever they pleased of the property of others, as Mr. Meredith has stated; but the state officers of that district called Brofoos, who acquired that name from the hide in which the tobacco is rolled, being formed into a seat peculiar to them, never using a wooden stool. They were the executors, and not the organs of the law, and always sat to the right and left of Adookoo, but had no voice. The number was twelve, and the dignity immemorially hereditary in as many families. These men were allowed to take whatever they pleased at home and abroad, but since Adookoo’s misfortunes, and inability to support them, they have been content to beg for their tithes in the large towns, and only exercise their rapacity in the small crooms of their own district.