Note 4 — INTRODUCTION

The following is from a recent work on the Gold Coast, and presents a slightly different view from that in the quotation above: “The general sum of these traditions [regarding the origin of the tribes] is that the Fantis, Ashantis, Wassaws, and in fact all the Twi-[Tshi] speaking, or Akan, peoples, were originally one tribe. They were a pastoral race and inhabited the open country beyond the forest belt and farther north than Salaga. A northern and lighter-skinned people, which is commonly supposed to have been the Fulanis, commenced to encroach on their territory, and, being stronger than they, seized their cattle and young women and made many of the others slaves.… The subdivision of the united Akan race into its main branches, the Fantis and Ashantis, is variously accounted for.… One story very plausibly explains that the constant raids of their northern enemy, who burned all the farms, reduced the Akans to great straits for food. Some of them subsisted on a wild plant named fan and others on a plant named shan, and thus gained the names Fan-dti and Shan-dti (dti, to eat).”4 A possible alternative explanation is that the same stock occupies the coast and the hinterland, and that differentiation has come about as the result of malaria affecting that portion of the race inhabiting the region of the lagoon marshes along the coastal plain. It has now been fairly well established that malaria can and does have a deleterious effect on races, and that even in the case of Greece and Rome the malarial factor must be taken into account in discussing the causes which brought about their fall.5 It may be that the marshes round Salonica and the swamps of the Campagna have their counterpart in the long line of lagoon swamps that lie between the surf-wall and the forest wall of ‘the Coast.’ Medical science alone, perhaps, will be able to solve the problem, but folk-lore can and does render valuable assistance toward a solution. A conquered people do not give up their ‘lore’ with the land, but carry their customs and traditions with them to their new homes.