The Fall of the Asante Empire (5 page)

When the welcoming ceased, the British-led column moved on to deposit their supplies and gifts in a large house that had been assigned to them.
As they did, they were serenaded by various bands that this time melodiously played drums, horns, and flutes in concert.
The visitors were soon ordered to walk toward the king’s palace while much of the population of Kumase gathered around to stare at the white men.
As they made their way through the throng, they were exposed to the spectacle of a man being led along to his execution.
He was made to walk with his hands tied behind his back, a knife passed through his cheeks to prevent him from uttering a curse that could endanger the king.
One ear had been cut off and was carried by a man who walked ahead; the other ear hung by a small strip of skin.
His bare back was gashed and bleeding, and small knives had been thrust up under each shoulder blade.
The wretched man was being led along by a cord that had been passed through his nose.
It is likely that he was paraded before the British visitors as an object warning of what would happen to malefactors.

After this unfortunate man had been led away, the four Englishman and their interpreters were led down a very broad street toward the marketplace, where they were stunned by the “magnificence and novelty” of the next scene that “burst” upon them, as Bowdich put it.
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As they entered the market area, which Bowdich estimated to be a mile in circumference, they were confronted by an enormous throng of people, and they had to avert their eyes to escape the blinding glare produced by the sun reflecting off masses of gold ornaments worn and carried by the king, his
court, various attendants, and thousands of soldiers.
As the British visitors were staring in frank amazement at the display of gold, no fewer than one hundred bands began to play, alternating between drum and horn motifs and softer, more melodic tunes featuring long flutes and instruments that resembled bagpipes.
As the music continued, scores of huge silk umbrellas, each large enough to provide shade for thirty people, sprung open, adding bright splashes of scarlet and yellow to the scene.

The Britons were invited to come forward to take the hand of each military officer, chief, noble, and important figure in the king’s entourage.
Most of these men wore heavy silks thrown over the left shoulder like a Roman toga, and they displayed so much gold and silver that the British visitors continued to be dazzled.
Some wore ornamental lumps of gold attached to their wrists that were so heavy they had to be supported by boy attendants.
Others had solid gold, life-size wolves’ or rams’ heads suspended from their gold-handled swords.
Bowdich noted that these swords were apparently not reserved for ceremonies: their blades were rusted in blood.
Large numbers of young officers bedecked in leopard skins, equipped with elephant-hide cartridge boxes encrusted with gold, silver, blue agate, and shells, and carrying gold-handled swords and long Danish muskets, also ornamented with gold, sat on the ground.
Next, the Britons were startled to find themselves facing seventeen men of apparently superior rank who were dressed as Arabs.
As the Englishmen passed by, these men, whom the British interpreters called Moors, glared at them with undisguised hostility.
As the visitors passed by the master of the bands, the keeper of the royal burial ground, the gold horn blower, and many other dignitaries, there was a prolonged clamor of horns and drums announcing the presence of King Osei Bonsu.

Before they could approach the king, the white visitors met the royal executioner, a huge, heavily muscled man wearing a gold breastplate and holding before him the execution stool, which was clotted in blood and nearly covered by a thick deposit of human fat.
He shook the stool in a clear warning of what awaited anyone who violated Asante law.
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Four of the king’s spokesmen came next, then finally the keeper of the treasury, who ostentatiously displayed the boxes, scales, and weights of his office, all made of solid
gold.
Finally, the white men reached the king, who courteously extended his hand.
About forty to forty-five years old, the heavyset Osei Bonsu was every inch a monarch.
His dress was magnificent but restrained.
He wore a rich green silk toga, and his golden ornaments were of the finest workmanship.
Even his white leather sandals were delicately ornamented with gold and silver.
There were gold castanets on his finger and thumb, which he clapped to enforce silence.
His head was shaved except for a quarter-sized tuft of hair on his temple, and he had a three-inch-long beard.
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All the European visitors characterized him as handsome, friendly, and dignified.
When another English visitor was introduced to him four years later, he was too drunk to carry on a dignified conversation, but he was nevertheless courteous and his bearing was regal.

After the king greeted the Englishmen, they were passed on to meet beautiful female attendants, small boys holding elephant tails whose job it was to clean up the king’s spit, and obese eunuchs who oversaw his hundreds of wives.
Prominently displayed under a protective umbrella was a stool, entirely encased in gold, whose significance the Englishmen did not understand.
This was the Golden Stool, the most powerful and sacred symbol in Asante culture.
The Asante believed it had been conjured down from the skies during the reign of Osei Tutu, over one hundred years earlier.
The stool not only symbolized the king’s authority to rule, but it was thought to contain the soul of the Asante people and to assure their well-being.
As the English visitors moved farther from the king and his retinue, they were greeted by numerous older men of high rank who were carried by their slaves, as well as the children of chiefs and nobleman who were so weighed down by their golden jewelry that they too had to be carried.
Finally, as the white men were escorted to their quarters, they were entertained by royal dancers, dwarfs, mimics, and buffoons.

At eight that evening, his way lighted by hundreds of torches, the king paid a visit to the Englishmen, asked their names for a second time, and wished them a good night.
Bowdich and his colleagues could not agree on how many people they had seen in Kumase, but they all estimated the number of soldiers alone at thirty thousand.
When Huydecoper visited a year earlier, he estimated that he had been greeted by fifty thousand people and had been introduced
to sixty generals in a single day.
Still astonished by the power and pomp of the Asante court but exhausted by the excitement of the day, the four Britons slept for the first time in Kumase.

In the ensuing days the visitors exchanged gifts and pleasantries with the king, to whom they had been instructed to give pledges of harmony, friendship, and goodwill.
Surrounded by his councilors, interpreters and large retinue, Osei Bonsu met his visitors in any one of the many round rooms that made up a five-acre palace complex dominated by a large European-style two-story building made of stone.
Despite the intimidating ambience Bowdich did his best to convince the Asante King that British motives were wholly altruistic, consisting of nothing more than a desire to share the benefits of British civilization with the Asante.
King Osei Bonsu readily acknowledged the superiority of British technology, but wryly observing that one of the northern provinces that the Asante had conquered was as inferior to the Asante as the Asante were to the British, he assured Bowdich that there was not a single person in his kingdom who would go there solely to share Asante art and technology.
This being so, the king pointedly asked, “Now, how do you wish to persuade me that it is only for so flimsy a motive that you have left this fine and happy England …?” The next day an Asante prince asked Bowdich why, if Britain were so selfless, it had behaved so differently in India.
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Bowdich was astonished that the Asante had heard anything about India and was at a loss for words.
Events would soon confirm the Asante suspicion that altruism was not Governor Smith’s motive for sending his representatives to Kumase.

As the days passed, the British visitors continued to be impressed by the size of Kumase, the complexity of its court and government, and the novelty of Asante life, but initially they were severely limited in their ability to learn much about the Asante state because, unless they were summoned to meet the king, they were usually restricted to their residences.
Even so, there were memorable experiences.
When they were invited to dine with the king and members of his court, they were first served what they referred to as a “relish … sufficient for an army” consisting of soups, stews, plantains, yams, rice, wine, spirits, oranges, and “every fruit.” Next, dinner was served on a large table under four scarlet
umbrellas.
The plates were gold, the knives, forks, and spoons were silver.
The table held an entire roast pig, roasted ducks, chickens, stews, vegetables, and fruit, accompanied by port and Madeira wine, gin, and Dutch cordials served in glasses.
Bowdich was an educated Englishman from the port city of Bristol who read Latin, Greek and French, but he wrote that “we never saw a dinner more handsomely served, and never ate a better.”
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Two decades later, when another English visitor was received in Kumase, he was served an equally impressive dinner while being serenaded by a Dutch-trained brass band wearing blue dress uniforms trimmed in red.
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Osei Bonsu sometimes wore European clothing to dinners like these, a custom that some of his successors continued.

Bowdich was much impressed by Osei Bonsu’s good nature and by his shrewd, inquiring mind.
Huydecoper wrote that though he could “argue like a lawyer” and had a quick temper, he usually was in good humor and fond of joking.
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Bowdich was also quite taken by the Asante upper classes, or, as he referred to them, the “higher orders.” They were not only wealthy—some owned vast estates and thousands of slaves and lent huge sums to the government from time to time—they were courteous, well-mannered, dignified, and proud of their honor to such an extent that a social disgrace, including something as unintended as public flatulence, could drive a man to commit suicide.
While Bowdich was in Kumase, the king publicly reproved one of his many sons for minor misconduct.
The ten-year-old boy’s pride was so wounded that he promptly killed himself by putting a blunderbuss in his mouth and firing it with his foot.
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Bowdich was struck by the physical stature of men among the “higher orders.” Many were over six feet tall and powerfully built.
He was also taken by the beauty of the women of this class, whom he described as having the “finest figures,” elaborately shaved heads (with a single tuft of hair surrounded by several concentric circles on the left side), and beautiful clothes.
A British visitor four years later also commented on their beauty and gentility.
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Other observers attributed the size, strength, and physical beauty of the upper classes (known as
sikapo
, “people of wealth”) to the ability of wealthy Asante men to choose only the most beautiful women as wives.
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Although he did not say so directly, Bowdich seemed disappointed
that these elegant women were so aloof to the English visitors.
When Bowdich described the social freedoms enjoyed by Englishwomen of his class, the Asante women were delighted, but the husbands of these higher-order women were so horrified that they ordered their wives away.
He also wrote approvingly of the grace of upper-class Asante men and women as they danced, not wildly as “primitive” Africans were expected to do, but in a stately, even staid, fashion that resembled a waltz.
More than two decades later another British visitor made almost identical observations about the beauty, elegance, and grace of the king’s wives, whom he was allowed to watch parade past, a sight no Asante man except the king could witness.
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The king’s wives were even more remote than women of the higher orders.
In fact, no one other than the king and his harem eunuchs was permitted to see the six or so wives who lived in the vast royal palace at any given time.
His two or three hundred other wives lived in seclusion away from the palace.
Bowdich did report that there were many prostitutes in Kumase, that many lower-ranking Asante women made open sexual advances toward the British visitors, and that several nobles offered them women as well.
He did not, as one might expect of an Englishman of that era, indicate whether any of these offers were accepted.
Huydecoper was much more open in his journal.
Although his Christian wife and children were waiting in Elmina, when an Asante general offered him a “very young girl for my wife,” he accepted with the “greatest pleasure.”
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Men and women of the higher orders bathed every morning with soap and warm water, wore scrupulously clean clothes, and ornamented themselves profusely.
They cleaned their teeth several times every day with a brushing stick (chewed on the end until it was furred) and shaved their armpits to reduce body odor, which they found repellent.
They also regarded belching and flatulence as disgusting.
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The lower orders (known as ahiato), on the other hand, were said to be small in stature, filthy, ungrateful, insolent, and licentious, an opinion strongly expressed by Osei Bonsu.
Bowdich had little contact with these poorer members of Asante society, and he did not fully understand that, while some poor people were free, most were slaves, of which there were at least five different categories.
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