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Afrikan Liberation Institute => Spirituality => Topic started by: KwameD on May 21, 2010, 10:45 PM

Title: Sakrobundi and Aberewa : Sie Kwaku the witch-finder in the Akan world-gctid39574
Post by: KwameD on May 21, 2010, 10:45 PM
(Source: Sakrobundi Ne Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548))

** YOU CAN ALSO GET THIS ARTICLE IN PDF FOR DOWNLOAD (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/pdf/548)

Histoire, Anthropologie
               
               Sakrobundi Ne Aberewa
 
               Sie Kwaku the Witch-Finder in the Akan World
                 T.C. McCaskie
               p. 101-113
                                         Résumé (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#abstract) | Index (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#entries) | Plan (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#toc) | Texte (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#text) | Bibliographie (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#bibliography) | Notes (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#notes) | Citation (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#quotation) | Auteur (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#authors)
                                Résumés

                 Français (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#abstract-fr) English (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#abstract-en)
                                    Cet article retrace l'histoire d'un mouvement anti-sorcellerie, Aberewa, apparu vers 1874, et qui s'est greffé sur un mouvement préexistant Sakrobundi, répandu chez les Abron de Côte d'Ivoire. Aberewa se développe dans les années 1880s-1890s et s'étend au pays asante, en proposant une autre forme d'autorité prévalant sur celle, institutionnalisée, des détenteurs d'office asante. L'auteur donne une description détaillée de ce culte anti-sorcellerie, en explorant les liens ruciaux et constitutifs qui l'unissent à Sakrobundi. Plus important, il propose une reconstruction minutieuse de la vie de Sie Kwaku, né vers 1845, acteur principal de Sakrobundi et d'Aberewa, et figure importante de l'histoire trop souvent négligée des croyances akan. Il s'agit d'un essai d'histoire sociale asante, centré sur un culte anti-sorcellerie.
                 
                                    This article focuses on the history of an anti-witchcraft movement, Aberewa, which spread round 1874 and which was to revive and strenghten a former movement called Sakrobundi, already widespread in the Kingdom of Gyaman in Ivory Coast. Aberewa attained its pick in the 1880s-90s and expended to Asante kingdom by proposing an alternative and higher authority than hat institutionalised in and dispensed by Asante office holders. The author provides a detailed reading of Aberewa and recounts and explores the crucial links between Aberewa and the earlier nti-witchcraft movement, Sakrobundi. More importantly, he furnishes a life history of the emarkable Sie Kwaku, born around 1845 at Welekei (Ouliké) in Gyaman, the leading actor in oth Sakrobundi and Aberewa and a significant figure in the still understudied history of Akan belief.
                 
Haut de page (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#article-548)
                                Entrées d'index

                                    Index de mots-clés :

cultes anti-sorcellerie (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/550), Sakrobundi (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/551), Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/552), Côte d'Ivoire (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/553), Côte de l'Or (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/554), histoire de vie (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/555)
                                    Index by keyword :

anti-witchcraft cults (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/390), Ivory Coast (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/558), Gold Coast (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/559), life history (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/560)
Haut de page (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#article-548)
                                Plan

                 Revisiting Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n1)
                 Sie Kwaku of Welekei (1840s-1860s) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n2)
                 Witch-finding in Gyaman  (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n3)
                 Sie Kwaku and the coming of Sakrobundi (1860s-1880s)  (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n4)
                 Sie Kwaku and the spreading of Sakrobundi (1880s-1890s) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n5)
                 A changing Akan world (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n6)
                 Sie Kwaku and the coming of Aberewa (ca. 1900) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n7)
                 Sakrobundi ne Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n8)
                 Witch-finding in Asante (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n9)
                 The moral economy of Asante Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n10)
                 Sie Kwaku and the spreading of Aberewa (ca. 1900-1906) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n11)
                 Aberewa in Edweso (1906-1907) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n12)
                 Aberewa, Asante chiefs and British officials (1907)  (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n13)
                 The work of Asante Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n14)
                 Aberewa in Ofinso (1906-1908) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n15)
                 Aberewa, Asante chiefs and British officials (1908) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n16)
                 After word (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocto1n17)
Haut de page (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#article-548)
                                Texte intégral

                 PDF (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/pdf/548) Signaler ce document (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/signaler548)
                                    Revisiting Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n1)

                                        1In 1981, I wrote a synoptic review of the history of anti-witchcraft movements in early colonial Asante. In that paper, I discussed Aberewa, which enjoyed a brief but spectacular success in the early 1900s1 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn1) I now revisit Aberewa in the light of a mass of evidence that was unavailable to me two decades ago.2 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn2) In this present paper I set out to do three things. First, I provide a more richly detailed reading of Aberewa than I was able to give before. Second, I recount and explore the crucial links between Aberewa and the earlier anti-witchcraft movement known as Sakrobundi. Third, and perhaps most importantly, I furnish a life history of the hitherto overlooked but remarkable Sie Kwaku of Welekei in Gyaman, the leading actor in both Sakrobundi and Aberewa and a significant figure in the still understudied history of Akan belief. 3 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn3) Sie Kwaku is central to this paper, and the several autobiographical testimonies that he gave to literate fellow Kmtyws and British colonial officials are indispensable to my account of him. 4 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn4) In this last regard, this paper may be seen as a companion piece to a number of recent publications in which I have explored individual lives in an effort to come to grips with Akan social history. I continue to think that what is needed to recuperate that history in meaningful terms is close focus on detailed evidence, a common enough priority in many fields of historical endeavour, but less so in Kmtyw historiography where sustained, long-term investigation of individual societies is still not as common as it might be.5 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn5)
                     
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                     2Like its forebear, this paper is mainly concerned with Aberewa in Asante, but it also takes full account of its origins outside of Asante in the wider Akan world. There is much to be said for seeing the Akan whole, so to speak, over and above the contingent divisions imposed on them by eureurasiaan imperialism and perpetuated by postcolonial states. One significant but regrettable consequence of these partitions is a continuing degree of estrangement between English and other language scholarship about the Akan and their neighbours. On this point, I place on the record here the fact that this paper would not have been possible in its present form without the studies of French and Italian researchers on the western Akan and surrounding peoples. Most particularly, it would not have been possible without the research and many publications of my French colleague (and friend) Emmanuel Terray on the Abron kingdom of Gyaman. It is his magnificent historical ethnography of the Abron that has allowed me access to an understanding of the world that gave birth to Sie Kwaku, and permitted me to make crucial connections between the Asante and wider Akan dimensions of that individual's' life.6 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn6) That Sie Kwaku's footprints can be traced in two Akan historical traditions, Abron and Asante, only serves to underscore his impact and significance. It also reinforces my general point about trying to see the interconnectedness of Akan peoples, and the contours of the world they made and lived in with their non-Akan neighbours. What follows then is an essay in Asante history, intermeshed with and informed by a study of a broader West Kmtyw cultural landscape.
                   
                                        Sakrobundi ne Aberewa: The World of Sie Kwaku
                   
                   (https://www.abibitumikasa.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fkmtywistes.revues.org%2Fdocannexe%2Fimage%2F548%2Fimg-1-small480.png&hash=bbcf7201c970ba0c0b3d5a861821694e4f7e6af6) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/image.php?source=docannexe/image/548/img-1.png&titlepos=up)(https://www.abibitumikasa.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fkmtywistes.revues.org%2Fimages%2Fmagnify.png&hash=f7acb7fc6ac98b111caab42d2a60aff60d5e73b6) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/image.php?source=docannexe/image/548/img-1.png&titlepos=up)
                   Sie Kwaku of Welekei (1840s-1860s) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n2)

                                        3Sie Kwaku was born about 1845 in Welekei (OulikJ) just to the north-east of the historic Muslim Juula commercial town of Bonduku in the Abron kingdom of Gyaman. Like many Gyaman villages, Welekei had a mixed population. It was originally and remained predominantly Nafana, but gained a significant Abron minority after the Gyaman Penangohene removed his seat there from Bohi in the mid-eighteenth century. It also had Kulango and Juula inhabitants. 7 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn7) Sie Kwaku's descent is a complex matter. Welekei informants claimed that his father was a Nafana from that people's residential quarter (Ganbin) in the village. This seems to have been the case, for descent from the patrilineal and patrilocal Nafana played a key part in Sie Kwaku's later life. But Sie Kwaku is a Twi not a Nafana (Senufo) name, and its bearer stated he was of mixed Nafana and Abron descent, and commonly represented his mother as being an Akan woman called Afua (or Adwowa) Bihi. Was his father Nafana and his mother Abron? Likely or not, the truth is obscured by the sheer heterogeneity of the Welekei community. What is certain is that Sie Kwaku spoke both Twi and Nafana, but then again he could also communicate in Kulango, Juula and other languages including, eventually, French and English. He had relatives in nearby Asikassiko (Sampa) and Duadaso, and clear if undetermined connections with both Zanzan in south Gyaman and Buna to the north in Kulango country. He also had kin (or associates) far away to the west in Gaase on the Komoe river, and even more distantly in the Senufo town of Dabakala in the district from which the Welekei Nafana originated. 8 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn8) This pattern of connections is detailed and diverse, but it tells us less than it might about Sie Kwaku for there was nothing very unusual about it. Centuries of trade in the basin of the Black Volta river, centred first on Begho and later along the Bonduku-Buna-Wa corridor, produced many multicultural communities like Welekei with widely dispersed affiliations across today's central Ivory Coast, Ghana and beyond.9 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn9)  
                     
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                     4In adolescence Sie Kwaku became associated with a group of Nafana men in Welekei who trafficked in charms against sorcerers. They also performed Yoggon, one of a series of witch-finding masquerades imported into Gyaman from among the Senufo to the west along the Bandama river. Such masquerades were adapted and deployed by the Abron, Kulango and Nafana to counter their shared belief in and fear of witchcraft. Sie Kwaku became an adept of Yoggon, and started to have visions in which neighbours appeared to him as shape-shifters in the form of talking animals and supernatural beings. These entities were familiar to all of Welekei's people, and were called in Abron Twi danifo] [der. adannan, 'to alter repeatedly']. They were practitioners of malign witchcraft and a deadly threat to any community. They practised occult vampirism, polluting, depleting and finally killing their victims at night by feasting on their blood. 10 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn10) Sie Kwaku's visions showed him where to find a supply of medicine [dufa] in the forest to combat this evil. Detection of malefactors took place at a village assembly. At this, Sie Kwaku wore a mask representing the Bongo antelope, and was inhabited by the persona of the witch-finder eurasiamasi ['he whose name cannot be uttered']. Evildoers were pointed out and dragged from the crowd. Those so accused might save themselves only by confessing and swallowing some of Sie Kwaku's medicine mixed in water. 11 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn11) A refunited snakesl to confess was confirmation of unrepentant witchcraft and led to a beating with the staves used for pounding food. 12 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn12) A few died, and persistent offenders were expelled from the community. But most confessed and were rehabilitated. Sie Kwaku received modest fees in kind from those he purged, and fines from the kin of those refusing his aid. As with Yoggon, the great majority of Welekei folk took part in eurasiamasi. Sie Kwaku recalled that witchcraft was 'going to boiling point' at this time.13 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn13)
                   
                   Witch-finding in Gyaman  (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n3)

                                        5By the nineteenth century, witch-finding and other sorts of masquerades were widespread in the Abron country. They seem to have originated among the earliest Nafana and Kulango settlers on the land (and with smaller groups like the Degha). They were adopted and adapted by incoming Twi-speaking Abron who founded the Gyaman polity in the early 1700s, and reduced the already resident peoples to subject status. Thereafter, this syncretism was constantly being supplemented and reformulated as a succession of newer masking traditions were imported by the Nafana and others from their kin in the wider Senufo and Gur worlds, and as local Muslim Juula magical techniques were incorporated into masquerades.14 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn14) Over the same time span and in much the same way, the Abron, Asante and other Akan also imported a succession of witch-finding shrines without masks from the peoples of the northern savanna hinterland. A history of these imports, and of fusions between them and already syncretistic masquerading, is quite unrecoverable in detail. Our glimpses of it are tantalisingly brief. Thus, Sie Kwaku himself mentioned a northern witch-finding medicine from around Gaoua that was active against Gyaman sorcerers in the 1860s. It was called Baane, and while it did not use masks in Welekei it did so in nearby Sorobangho. One practitioner of Baane was reportedly convicted of a grave but unspecified offence and executed by Gyamanhene Kwaku Agyeman.15 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn15)
                     
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                     6Malign otherworldly power was ubiquitous and witchcraft [bayisem] was its terrifying manifestation. In Akan belief a witch was phenomenological, a channel or medium [adebisa anaa b]ne honhom] used by supernatural forces to destroy community. Witches were dwirifo] [der. dwiri, 'to demolish'], people set on breaking down established human order by inverting its norms and values. The forces that governed them were violent powers that came from baabi, a term meaning both the physical 'somewhere' of a place and  the metaphysical 'elsewhere' of a beyond. In either case, these powers were alien intruders in the Akan world. It was believed that they could only be dealt with by countervailing powers from the same source as themselves. In consequence, the Akan looked to their own alien 'others', cultures in the savanna to the north and west, for supernaturally charged resources to combat the forces that generated witchcraft.16 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn16) Aid of this sort had a political dimension. It was foreign, and nineteenth-century political elites in Gyaman and Asante sought to bring it under the control of their legitimising authority. Chiefs and commoners shared in the Akan cultural idiom that explained witchcraft affliction and remedy, but political power sought to monitor and license imported powers (masks, shrines) in case they became a focus for an alternative authority, a different reading of the social world. The Gyamanhene encouraged the idea that he was a sorcerer without peer; the Asantehene presided over a political ordering of public belief itself. But Akan rulers and subjects knew state cults were impotent when it came to witchcraft. A  believing and prudent king, faced with a cyclical upsurge in witchcraft accunited snakestions, sought remedies in baabi and kept an eye on those who imported and manipulated them.

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                     7Informants told Terray that one such cyclical acceleration in witchcraft fears and accunited snakestions occurred in Gyaman after 1850, and that its baleful effects were compounded by the corrupt use of witch-finding to settle personal scores17 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn17) killing escalated to levels that alarmed the political elite. Whatever its cause or reason, this produced generalised anxieties and breakdowns in communal order that were perceived as being crises of belief and morality. Unease was exacerbated by sweeping changes that overtook the Abron polity from the mid-1870s. Thus, when Sie Kwaku was born Asante claimed sovereignty over Gyaman by right of conquest, a claim last enforced in 1818-9 when Asante troops devastated the Abron kingdom. Then, after Asante's defeat by Britain in 1874, Gyaman affirmed its independence but spent over a decade disentangling itself from Kumase.18 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn18) The end of the Asante threat liberated Gyaman into novel and challenging experiences. A commercial intercourse with coastal eureurasiaan enclaves, formerly interdicted by Kumase, created newly wealthy trading entrepreneurs. It also exposed Gyaman people to difference, and to the imagining of alternative ways of being in the world. Rapid and disordered change fostered possibility, but it also deepened anxiety about the erosion of certainty and stability. The strains of this paradox proved too much for the Abron ruling elite. Caught up in doubts about how to preserve   the past and predict the future, it fell into a conflict over revising political arrangements in its own best interest. At village level, these same strains further increased tensions and divisions. This resulted in a vicious circle. Witch-killing intensified even further as people tried to explain and allay their unease at a crisis that now seemed to be threatening anarchy. Terray, who carried out fieldwork research in depth on the memory of this crisis, was led to conclude that at some point during these years of disarray the political elite finally acted to stabilise the situation. Quite predictably, this involved the importation of a new witch-finding power sanctioned by the Gyamanhene and embraced by his subjects. But when was this introduced? Terray has suggested a date between 1850 and 1888 (derived from the known regnal incumbencies of the Gyamanhene Kwaku Agyeman and Penangohene Yao Kosonu of Welekei, both of whom played their part in introducing the new power). But as Sie Kwaku is more intimately associated with this innovation than anyone else, credence must be given to his assertion that it took place shortly after 1874.19 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn19) Certainly, belief in this new power rose, spread and reached its crescendo in the troubled 1880s-90s.
                   
                   Sie Kwaku and the coming of Sakrobundi (1860s-1880s)  (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n4)

                                        8The new witch-finding power was called Sakrobundi in Abron Twi, the derivation being sakra [to turn away from, to turn the back on] and b]ne [wickedness, evil], i.e. 'the repudiation of evildoing.' 20 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn20) Thus, Sie Kwaku came to wear Sakrobundi medicine bound to his back in a bundle tied up in red and black cloth, because 'it is a turning of the back to bad things.' 21 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn21) Welekei Sakrobundi was procured from a man named Dangabo who lived in Kandia, one hundred and thirty-five miles north of Bonduku. Kandia was an extinct Gonja divisional chiefship, but in the nineteenth century it was part of the Bunited snakes division of the Wala polity. The Wala capital of Wa lay only twenty miles north-east of Kandia. The inhabitants of Kandia were Gonja and Tampolense, with some Wala residents.22 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn22) Little is known about Dangabo. In one of Sie Kwaku's testimonies Sakrobundi is associated with a Dan Garba (a Muslim Haunited snakes?), but nothing else is said about him apart from his name.23 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn23) Whatever the case, Welekei accounts record what transpired. By the time Sakrobundi was brought into Gyaman its reputation was already known beyond Kandia. In the 1860s it was firmly established among the Banda Nafana, and the Abron may have first heard of it there. When its use was sanctioned by the Gyamanhene, Welekei was the first community to send envoys to Kandia to get it. They returned home with Dangabo, who came to give instruction in the use of the witch-finding medicine. Welekei village elders then chose Sie Kwaku to 'sit by' Sakrobundi, that is carry its shrine, attend to its worship and give voice to its judgments. This office remained in Sie Kwaku's Nafana patriliny thereafter (he was succeeded by his son Kobena Huengu, and then by their patrikin Sina and his son Kwadio Dongo).24 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn24) Why was Sie Kwaku chosen? Welekei traditions say no more than that the job called for intelligence and tact. However, we know from Sie Kwaku himself that he already had admired skills as an occult practitioner. Sakrobundi, he said, was 'the best good power that made itself known to then' for finding out witches, and it 'embraced' him saying 'go straight ahead for the way is cleared for you.'25 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn25)
                     
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                     9It is not clear if masks were used in Sakrobundi in Kandia, or if masquerading was added to its worship by Welekei Nafana. Certainly, two masks at least came to be used in Welekei. These were 'Kumbi', in the form of a hyena [Nafana, kombo], and another representing an antelope or wild ox. 26 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn26) Both masks and medicine were kept in a dedicated shrine house situated on the boundaries between the Abron, Kulango and Nafana quarters of Welekei (by 1902 this shrine was a complex of three buildings).27 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn27) Sie Kwaku was in charge of the masks, and wore one of the two every fiada [Friday] when he led performances of the Sakrobundi masquerade. The purpose of Sakrobundi was witch-finding. It did this by searching out and killing them on its own recognisance and, so it was believed, without any human intervention or aid. It was infallible, and so anyone dying might be a witch or a wizard. Corpses were carried [afunsoa] to the shrine house and interrogated by Sakrobundi. It disclosed its verdict to Sie Kwaku and he spoke it aloud. If Sakrobundi said it killed the deceased for practising witchcraft, the corpse was abused and either cast into the bush or interred in a shallow pit lined with thorns. Kin were disbarred from grieving or performing customary funeral rites. However, since witchcraft was seen as an affliction inculcated  by supernatural power its victims might save themselves from death by confessing and being redeemed by Sakrobundi. During the masquerade, confessions were heard and Sie Kwaku administered the shrine medicine to cleanse those admitting to witchcraft. As Terray has noted, the way in which Sakrobundi was seen to work restored impartiality to witch-finding. The process was taken out of human hands. It was Sakrobundi alone that accused, punished or redeemed. This removed the divisive blight of human self-interest from witch-finding. It also curtailed witchcraft accunited snakestions, for there was no point looking for suspects if an all seeing Sakrobundi infallibly detected and killed the guilty. It is surely correct to see Sakrobundi as a structured attempt to recall Gyaman society to moral and communal harmony, and there is direct evidence to that effect. Gyamanhene Kwaku Agyeman himself lauded Sakrobundi as the author of an ethical revitalisation. Sie Kwaku said he was 'helping Sakrobudi fetish in doing good to all to bring a blessing of peace and prosperity in destroying of witches to every town.'28 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn28)

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                     10The neutrality of Sakrobundi is plausible as an account of Gyaman need and intention, but it cannot be the whole story. In Welekei, Sie Kwaku gave utterance to its judgements. This was a position of power, influence and prestige, and one that publicly ruled out the possibility of subjective interventions by its holder. But it is not to deny Sie Kwaku his private investments in belief to note that he could exercise power without  responsibility, or explain his dispositions to himself as the will of Sakrobundi. That he did this is both humanly inevitable and historically unprovable. We are on firmer ground if unknowable motivation is set aside and we look instead for externalised clues to Sie Kwaku's role. French colonial officials, hardly unbiased commentators, saw Sakrobundi as an evilly murderous device for enriching its own spokesmen and servants (and with missionary support eventually moved to suppress it on those grounds in the 1920s-30s).29 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn29) It was said always to find the wealthy dead guilty of witchcraft, because it claimed part or even all of the movable estate of those so convicted. Sakrobundi split this income with chiefship, and so both had an incentive to commit murder to increase takings.30 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn30) We need not go along with this entirely hostile reading in acknowledging that Sakrobundi, like all Akan witch-finding, was a way of acquiring a status and making a living for anyone called to its service. It is also a fact that a part or sometimes all of the goods of guilty malefactors reverted to Sakrobundi. It may even be the case that some murders were contrived to generate income. But all these sceptical interpretations pose the wrong questions and miss the larger point. All the evidence shows that Sakrobundi was welcomed everywhere and by virtually everybody in Gyaman. It met a yearning need, and its spokesmen were much admired and suitably rewarded. Sie Kwaku became widely known and comparatively wealthy. 'This Fitish', he said, 'was applauded by all men as the SakaAmwudi of great effect', and wherever he went he was 'given the best treatment in a payment for good works.'31 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn31) As we shall see presently, this is an overly innocent view of how Sakrobundi (and later Aberewa) operated, but it is still nearer to the known facts about its reception and popularity than is eureurasiaan condemnation.  
                   
                   Sie Kwaku and the spreading of Sakrobundi (1880s-1890s) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n5)

                                        11Sakrobundi was dispersed from Welekei to Bonduku and other settlements throughout Gyaman. People came from far and wide to acquire it and take it home, with the result that Welekei became known as the headquarters of Sakrobundi.32 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn32) Its initial success was due to its reputation for witch-finding, but its  procedural impartiality also conferred upon it the status of a guardian of moral goodness and communal harmony. The two features were conflated together. Witches attacked human society. Sakrobundi killed witches, ergo it was seen as the incarnation and source of the ethical values underpinning that society. This breadth of appeal contributed to its remarkable success. Sakrobundi was without precedent in the range of its distribution. During the 1880s-90s, it went from Gyaman north into the Kulango country, west through Nassian to the Komoe river basin, south through Ndenye to the coast, and east through Duadaso to Takyiman and the northwestern Bron villages. By 1890, British officials were alarmed at the growing influence of Sakrobundi around Winneba on the central Gold Coast, nearly two hundred miles from Welekei.33 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn33)
                     
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                     12Sie Kwaku travelled extensively among the Kulango and Bron, proselytizing by 'carrying word of Our Master Sakrobundi to a needful people.'34 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn34) In one reminiscence, he described a journey he made in the mid-1880s to Takyiman at the request of its ruler Gyako Kumaa. He went first from Welekei to Menji. Sakrobundi was already established there, under the leadership of a former slave named Akutuabi. Sie Kwaku had trained this man at Welekei in 'dancing with the Mask.' During Sie Kwaku's stay in Menji, envoys arrived from Nkyiraa thirty miles to the east to ask for and be taught the use of Sakrobundi. 'I gave them medicine', he said, 'and they thanked me with a cow and a sheep and cowries.' From Menji, Sie Kwaku travelled south to Buoyim. Here he tried and failed to get the people to accept Sakrobundi. Buoyim was 'strong for Catahawuri' (the Bron witch-finder Katawere), and this local power refused to countenance the presence of an interloper. By contrast, Takyiman welcomed Sakrobundi with relief. Its people blamed witchcraft for a series of crop failures. Sie Kwaku presided over the building of a shrine house for Sakrobundi, and initiated 'three Priests to serve Our Master.' The leader of this trio was Kofi Pon, a nephew of Takyimanhene Gyako Kumaa's predecessor in office Kwabena Fofie (d. 1883). Both these chiefs had taken Gyaman's side against Asante, and both had lived as refugees at Gyamanhene's court. In this case, Sakrobundi may have been welcome for political as well as other reasons. Certainly, Sie Kwaku was rewarded lavishly for his services. He was given 'gold ornaments such as gold rings and bangles together with [gold] dust to a value of £16 and seven country cloths.' In turn, Sie Kwaku named Kofi Pon 'Head of Sakrabudi in Tekiman', and instructed him to forward to Welekei half of all the valuables impounded from those killed by Sakrobundi for practising witchcraft. This was a business, and the Welekei shrine received regular remittances from '[Kofi] Pong and also Yao Atiwa who was then chief helper.' 35 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn35) Yaw Atiwa of Takyiman, a self-described 'Fetish Priest of Sakrobudi', eventually became Sie Kwaku's principal emissary in spreading Sakrobundi north towards Bamboi and Kintampo. He lived for some time in Banda and was often in Welekei. In the process of his busy wanderings, Yaw Atiwa gained a great reputation for witch-finding. He was also well known for his ruthless acquisitiveness. 36 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn36) He will reappear in this story.

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                     13By the early 1890s, Sakrobundi was at the zenith of its influence. Sie Kwaku was known and esteemed   throughout Gyaman and beyond. It was at this point that seismic political events overtook the Abron polity and impacted on its peoples and their neighbours to produce great instability and change. In 1893 an Anglo-French agreement partitioned Gyaman in a first attempt to demarcate a boundary between the colonies of the Gold Coast and C`te d'Ivoire. This was a paper accord, but it was given substance by a newly threatening development. In 1894, the formidable state-builder Almami Samori Turay withdrew eastwards under French pressure, and relocated in the Gyimini-Dabakala area between the Bandama and Komoe rivers.37 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn37) From there he entered into an alliance with the Watara of Kong and moved to take control of the trade of the Black Volta basin along the Bonduku-Buna-Wa corridor. Gyaman was now faced with invasion. In desperation it asked for French aid, but this was not forthcoming. Then in 1895, Samori Turay defeated Gyaman militarily and negotiated the surrender and occupation of Bonduku. He garrisoned Asikassiko and Duadaso, and opened communications through Berekum with Kumase. The Samorian occupation of Gyaman was traumatically destabilising for village communities. There was no wholesale devastation, but villagers had to bear the burden of an occupying army that confiscated food on an unsustainable scale and enslaved individuals in an arbitrary way. North Gyaman (where Welekei was situated) was particularly afflicted by these disruptions, and numbers of its people became refugees from panic at the mounting uncertainties suddenly overwhelming their lives. At the end of 1895 Samori Turay returned to Gyimini, leaving his son Sarankye Mori in charge of operations on the Volta.38 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn38) The invaders now turned north, moving through north Gyaman and devastating the Kulango country before crossing the Black Volta to set up a base at Bole. In 1896, they raided south to Banda, and then turned north to seize Wa and plunder Dagara villages in a wide swathe along the present Ghana-Burkina Faso border.39 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn39) Sarankye Mori now went south again to escape any French advance from Wagadugu. He put Buna to the sack, massacring, enslaving and displacing thounited snakesnds. 40 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn40) By this time the British had seized Kumase, concluded a pact with Wa and sent troops north to garrison that town. Sarankye Mori returned to Wa and evicted the British. It was his swansong. Confronted by an intensifying Anglo-French threat, he quit the Volta basin to rejoin his father in the west at Gyimini. Thereafter, in 1898-1902, France and Britain occupied the region and formalised the borders between their possessions. Most of Gyaman was assigned to France, but its easternmost districts became 'British Jaman.'
                   
                   A changing Akan world (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n6)

                                        14Welekei was spared the worst of these alarums and excursions, but the world around it was remade in the space of a few years. Gyaman itself was overrun by Samori Turay and then partitioned by eureurasiaan colonial powers. In these fraught times, historic cleavages within the ruling Abron dynasty resurfaced and provoked conflict and secession. 41 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn41) Gyaman north from Bonduku through Tagadi to the Volta and up the river to the Vonkoro crossing was still in ruins in 1902.42 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn42) Central and most particularly eastern Gyaman were also impoverished. Asikassiko and Duadaso were depopulated, and from Suma to Drobo poor soils inhibited full recovery for years after the Samorian army looted the crops and scattered the farmers. Along the new colonial border, villagers turned to smuggling and robbery to survive. Disorder  increased here in 1901 as the Gyaman borderlands filled up with armed Asante fleeing final defeat by the British. Rampant lawlessness on both sides of the frontier was exacerbated by eureurasiaan demands for taxes, a harbinger of the sudden and inexorable monetization of social relations. At one point, new colonial subjects were raising cash to meet French and British imposts by going about in armed gangs extorting 'contributions' to Queen Victoria's funeral expenses.43 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn43) Beyond Gyaman itself, the situation was even more parlous and uncertain. Buna was ruined, Wa enfeebled, Takyiman and the Bron towns internally divided, and the Komoe forest and Gaoua grassland full of refugees. In all this chaos, alien eureurasiaan colonial orders provoked new anxieties and sharpened existing ones. Witchcraft itself, so it was reported from Kokua in British Gyaman in 1902, was 'everywhere increasing more and more now because it is become a matter of money for those seeking to gain by it as for those trying to procure its end.'44 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn44)
                     
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                     15A little is known about Sie Kwaku's life during this time of confusion. As Samori Turay's army ranged over Gyaman, he travelled with some Juula companions into the Bron country. He 'licensed use' (his own term, and a significant one) of Sakrobundi in Bedu and Wenchi, and was paid in both places. At some point he revisited Takyiman, because Kofi Pon had died. Yaw Atiwa was named his replacement in charge of Sakrobundi in the town, and Kofi Pon's nephew was sent to proselytise in Atebubu (with no success, as it turned out). After the Samorian incursion was over, Sie Kwaku journied north from Gyaman to Saye and other remote Kulango settlements, and from there further north still to the Kampti district among the Birifor. Whatever inspired this trip, it resulted in the discovery of magical stones that were added to the Welekei shrine house. Lastly, in one account Sie Kwaku claimed to have gone to the coast during this time, and made mention of Sakrobundi in Beyin. Clearly and unsurprisingly, demand for Sakrobundi was buoyant. That supply was able to go on meeting demand was largely due to the fact that Welekei suffered little if anything at the hands of Samori Turay. Such evidence as exists implies that this was because of Muslim Juula in Welekei and Bonduku. Samori Turay had many sympathisers among his Gyaman co-religionists. The Muslim Juula mediated the surrender of Bonduku, and kept up a dialogue of negotiation with the invaders until they struck camp for Bole and the north. It would seem that Sie Kwaku believed that Welekei was saved by Juula intervention. By his own account, he briefly considered converting to Islam but was led to understand that Sakrobundi disapproved. Nevertheless, he now cultivated amenable members of the Muslim community, took them with him on his travels (as we have seen), and paid them for talismans he wore on his person. In a larger sense, there was nothing unusual in this. As Sakrobundi became successful, it incorporated ever more culturally diverse artifacts into its ritual being. This was at once a response to demand and an article of  belief. Like all established powers Sakrobundi required periodic strengthening, whether through Islamic charms, magical stones or some other means.45 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn45)

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                     16When Delafosse visited and described the Sakrobundi shrine complex at Welekei in 1902 it seemed at the apex of its power and influence. He represented it as such, but his account also gives hints of decay and decline. The shrine buildings were imposing, but in disrepair. The importance of these clues might pass unnoticed but for a simple fact. In or about 1900 Sie Kwaku passed through a crisis, and resolving this led him away from Sakrobundi and towards belief in a different supernatural power. The evidence for this is unequivocal and the outcome is clear. However, it is difficult to interpret the overlapping and sometimes contradictory drives, motives and choices shaping Sie Kwaku's actions. My reconstruction is Occamist. It entertains plausibilities sustained by what is known, but discounts possibilities implied by what can only be guessed at. Paradoxically, we know both too much and too little, and in setting out the former I have resisted speculating about the latter. I have noted in another context that Kmtywists dealing with individual historical lives are commonly if sadly denied access to the world of subjective contemplative inwardness [Innerlichkeit], and that is the case here with Sie Kwaku.46 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn46)  
                   
                   Sie Kwaku and the coming of Aberewa (ca. 1900) (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n7)

                                        17In Sie Kwaku's biographical testimonies his wife and children are never named. We know he had at least four children, and that one son succeeded him in serving the Welekei Sakrobundi shrine. We know too that in or about 1900 Sie Kwaku's wife and two of their children suddenly died within a short space of time. Whatever actually killed them, Sie Kwaku was left brooding over unanswered questions of reason and responsibility. He asked Sakrobundi for answers. But it imparted nothing to him and then fell silent altogether. Sie Kwaku and all Welekei feared that the witch-finding and protective powers of Sakrobundi were weakening. Waning vigour was not an unusual problem in established shrines, but if it persisted the result was dormant impotence. The solution was to add a new and vigorous power to its being. This procedure was full of hazards. Unions were often disharmonious, and rivalries might end in conflicts that harmed effectiveness. Most dangerously, quarrelsome powers became enraged and turned against their human hosts.47 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn47) Sie Kwaku knew all this and waited for a sign to guide him. A succession of recurring visions and dreams told him to go to the north where a new and massively potent medicine would reveal itself to him in a swampy area by a river. He was advised to proceed to Bole. There he would learn what he must do next. At Bole he felt compelled to join a kola caravan bound for the north. It travelled via Wa to Lawra, and there voices told Sie Kwaku to ask a learned Muslim where he must go next. He did so and was advised to travel east (towards Mecca?). He duly set off along the Kambali river until he reached the marshes just west of Han. There, he came upon a large black ball that looked like a human head lying on the ground. It addressed him in a staccato and unintelligible tongue, all the while shuddering with rage. Sie Kwaku talked back to it in soothing tones until it stopped shaking and lay still. It then sighed and said ringingly in Twi momfa me nk] ['take me and go'].48 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn48)  
                     
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                     18Once in Welekei, the black ball explained itself. 'I am', it said in the fullest account known, a very Strong Power sent from the Heaven by the Creator unto you all. Because the Creator had from the commencement of Creation fixed the fate of every Creature that all may depart from this world in their old ages with gray hairs to Heaven; but now lot of the Creatures had come to us in the Heaven without being called and we learnt from them they were sent out from this world so prematurely by Witches and Poisoners. Therefore I am the strongest Medicine sent to this world and whoever will drink some shall never be perished prematurely by Witchcrafts and Poisoners but live in good length of years and translated to the Creator in gray hairs.49 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn49)

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                     19It then instructed Sie Kwaku 'how to use its Powers to satisfaction and success in pushing off the Great Evil of Witches to gain peace for all.'50 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn50)  The ball was placed in a basin on the ground in the precinct of the Sakrobundi shrine complex and 'fed' with eggs to strengthen its attachment to its new home. Ritual interaction with it led it to disclose its name. It was called Aberewa – 'the old woman' – for, like a wise old grandmother, it had come to save its 'children' from witchcraft and to restore protective harmony among them. Once established, it declared that its husband had joined it. This was Burogya ['firefly'], also named Mmannuro ['he is decreed to come from afar']. The couple's factotum Abunnyamo ['he is the one empowered to end your days'] then arrived, bearing a whip [abaa] and a club [aporibaa] to punish malefactors. This 'family' group talked together incessantly, and Sakrobundi felt somewhat excluded. This changed with the coming of Bundwira ['call out loud to crush it'], a trickster figure who served as a mediator to reconcile Sakrobundi to the others.51 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn51)
                   
                   Sakrobundi ne Aberewa (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n8)

                   20What was the practical relationship between Sakrobundi and Aberewa? The latter was there to revive and strengthen the former, and to many the two were indivisible. Sie Kwaku himself said the two were one, being 'front' [anim] and 'back' [akyiri] of a single entity. He wore both on his person in precisely this configuration, and said the Aberewa medicine bound to his chest complemented and completed the Sakrobundi counterpart he had long carried on his back. The combined medicine was incredibly strong, and so could look witchcraft fully in the face as well as shunning it by turning away. But whatever the presumption of parity between the two, the newer Aberewa soon emerged as the senior partner. A most acute appraisal of this relationship in its fully realised form was provided by a follower of both powers in Sunyani in 1908.
                                       
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                     21Abirewa was tried about ten years ago under the name of Sakrobundi. That came from French land from a place called Natabanye. It lasted as a fashion for six years or so and died out. I believed it first and took some of the medicine. I found it was no good. Sakrobundi spread all over the country to the coast. Sakrobundi had the same form of burial as Abirewa. There was no actual poisoning in it. Sakrobundi found witches in the same way and had the same laws. I think Abirewa will die out in the same way. Sakrobundi and Abirewa both take the property of the deceased person who had taken medicine of either fetish.52 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn52)

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                     22It came to be said Sakrobundi arrived first because its role was that of the spokesman who customarily preceded the chief, Aberewa. This was picked up on by Christianised Akan who referred to Sakrobundi as 'the precursor John the Baptist.' The same reasoning inspired the westernised conceit that the earlier power was no more than a 'surname' sometimes applied to Aberewa.53 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn53)

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                     23Sakrobundi and Aberewa were witch-finding powers. Both interrogated the dead about witchcraft. Both invited confession during ritual performances. Both purged. Both punished. Both safeguarded morality and order. In all these aspects, Aberewa renovated and renewed Sakrobundi. But Aberewa was different from its predecessor in a fundamental way. It made no use of the masks and masquerading that were at the core of Sakrobundi belief. When Sie Kwaku danced Aberewa he wore no mask. He was dressed as an Akan 'priest' []k]mf]] with his bared face, torso and limbs streaked with white clay. He brandished the small ritual knife carried as a badge of office by Akan witch-finders. What was intended here? The British thought Aberewa wholly instrumental. To them, Sie Kwaku was doing no more than responding to and manipulating changes in demand in 'a ready market for superstition.' He 'coined' Aberewa, they said, because Sakrobundi was old and 'becoming unfashionable and was not so lucrative as it used to be.' This 'repaid' him, for Aberewa was 'sold all over ', 'caught on' and spread like 'wildfire.'54 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn54) There is some credibility in this market model. We have already noted the endless cycle of new solutions to the intractable problem of witchcraft. Moreover, there is evidence aplenty that in a rapidly monetising colonial economy Aberewa was more fixated on wealth accumulation than Sakrobundi had been.55 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn55) It sold its services and gathered in its share of witches' estates with a zeal for accountancy that was not so distant from colonial business practices. But if we bear this rather obvious point in mind, then we are still left with questions. British ideas were rooted in an ideological but unreflective bundling together of stereotypes about 'native' cupidity and superstition, and not in any serious interest in or knowledge of Sie Kwaku's beliefs and motives. What was it precisely that led Sie Kwaku to switch from a Nafana (Senufo) masquerade to a more transparently Akan model of witch-finding? What were the ideas and calculations that shaped his actions? Or (to return to the latent question implicit in British perceptions), what exactly was the new market possibility that Sie Kwaku identified and how did he come to see it?
                   
                   Witch-finding in Asante (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#tocfrom1n9)

                                        24In 1888-9, R.A. Freeman took part in a mission to extend British protection over Asante and Gyaman. From Kumase, he travelled towards Bonduku northwest over the Tano river. He stopped at Odumase. This was a border town. Politically, it formed part of a chain of Asante security posts in the northwest. Created in the eighteenth century, these settlements maintained control over the Bron and marked the frontier zone between Asante proper and northwestern satellites like Gyaman. 56 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn56) Odumase stood on the cusp of a cultural and environmental divide that defined its political role. Beyond it, towards Gyaman, the Bron were mixed in with and eventually gave way to Abron, Nafana and Kulango villages. Beyond it too, the high forest of Asante began to shade away into scrub savanna to the northwest.
                     
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                     25Freeman sensed that he was in a borderland, and this was confirmed for him in Odumase where he saw and recorded 'one of the most remarkable spectacles that I ever witnessed in West Kmt.'57 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn57) This was the Sakrobundi masquerade, which he witnessed in the presence of a Gyaman envoy. 'Sakrobundi, or Sakrobudi', Freeman learned, was held in 'great veneration' in Gyaman and by its northern neighbours. He was told it was of quite recent origin, and he guessed it was of remote savanna origin. He described the large circle of participants, in the centre of which he observed 'a most remarkable figure.' This was 'the chief fetish man.' 58 (http://kmtywistes.revues.org/548#ftn58) He was enveloped from head to foot in a raffia 'kilt.' Atop this, there was 'a huge wooden mask in the semblance of an antelope's head surmounted by a pair of curved horns.' The horns curved inwards at their points, and they were painted in alternate red and white rings to represent natural growth. A 'grotesque' human face with eyeholes was incised into the mask. This figure danced with energetic agility, directing his attendants and touching participants with 'a small switch.' Was this Sie Kwaku himself? Was he wearing one of the Welekei masks? We do not know. Later in his journey, Freeman encountered Sakrobundi again in the Gyaman Nafana village of Duadaso. In summing up his encounters with Sakrobundi, he made a most telling observation. 'I never met with any traces of the worship of this fetish', he remarked, 'in Ashanti.'

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                     26Unlike the western Akan Abron (or Baule even further west), Asante society made no use of masks or masquerades. Asante was distant from the Senufo and other masking cultures, and it had no significant  resident population (like the Gyaman Nafana) drawn from or in continuous contact with them. But the absence of masking in Asante was more than circumstantial. In Asante Twi, krakrabotoni [mask] was a term more associated with dupli
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