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Friday, April 16, 2010

Akan: The Story of the Asante Stool

Source: www.youtube.com
Project for Literature & Arts B-27
War of the Golden Stool:
common sense & critical thinking,the British who were conquers gave us the KJB bible.

Deception,
beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth (as in half-truths or omission). Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment. There is also self-deception.Deception is a major relational transgression that often leads to feelings of betrayal and distrust between relational partners. Deception violates relational rules and is considered to be a negative violation of expectations. Most people expect friends, relational partners, and even strangers to be truthful most of the time. If people expected most conversations to be untruthful, talking and communicating with others would simply be unproductive and too difficult. On a given day, it is likely that most human beings will either deceive or be deceived by another person. A significant amount of deception occurs between romantic and relational partners[1].

fool (fl)n.1. One who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding.2. One who acts unwisely on a given occasion: I was a fool to have quit my job.3. One who has been tricked or made to appear ridiculous; a dupe: They made a fool of me by pretending I had won.4. Informal A person with a talent or enthusiasm for a certain activity: a dancing fool; a fool for skiing.5. A member of a royal or noble household who provided entertainment, as with jokes or antics; a jester.6. One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth: a holy fool.7. A dessert made of stewed or puréed fruit mixed with cream or custard and served cold.8. Archaic A mentally deficient person; an idiot.v. fooled, fool·ing, fools

Deceiver \De*ceiv'er\, n. One who deceives; one who leads into error; a cheat; an impostor. [1913 Webster]
The deceived and the deceiver are his. --Job xii. 16.
Syn: Deceiver, Impostor.
Usage: A deceiver operates by stealth and in private upon individuals; an impostor practices his arts on the community at large. The one succeeds by artful falsehoods, the other by bold assumption. The faithless friend and the fickle lover are deceivers; the false prophet and the pretended prince are impostors. [1913 Webster]
Source

Authorized King James Version
The Authorized King James Version is an English translation of the Christian Holy Bible begun in 1604 and completed in 1611 by the Church of England.[3] Printed by the King's Printer, Robert Barker,[4] the first edition included schedules unique to the Church of England; for example, a lectionary for morning and evening prayer.[5] This was the third such official translation into English; the first having been the Great Bible commissioned by the Church of England in the reign of King Henry VIII, and the second having been the Bishop's Bible of 1568.[6] In January 1604, King James I of England convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans,[7] a faction within the Church of England.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorized_King_James_Version
The British never did capture the Golden Stool; it was hidden deep in the forests for the duration of the war, although efforts by the British to find it lasted until 1920. Shortly after this it was accidentally uncovered by some labourers who took the golden ornaments which adorned the stool, rendering it powerless in the eyes of the Ashanti people. The labourers were sentenced to death by an Ashanti court which had jurisdiction over them, but the British intervened, and the accused were exiled instead. The war cost the British and their allies 1,007 fatal casualties in total. Ashanti casualties are estimated to be around 2,000.

The Yaa Asantewaa War, also known as the War of the Golden Stool, the Third Ashanti Expedition, the Ashanti Uprising or variations thereof, was the final war in a series of conflicts between the British Imperial government of the Gold Coast (later Ghana) and the Empire of Ashanti, a powerful, semi-autonomous African state which fractiously co-existed with the British and their vassal coastal tribes.When the Asante began rebelling against British rule, the British attempted to put down the unrest. Furthermore, the British governor, Lord Hodgson, demanded that the Asante turn over to the British the Golden Stool, i.e. the throne and a symbol of Asante independence. Capt. C. H. Armitage was sent to force the people to tell him where the Golden Stool was hidden and to bring it back. After going from village to village with no success, Armitage found at the village of Bare only children who said that their parents had gone hunting. In response, Armitage ordered the children to be beaten. When their parents came out of hiding to defend the children, he had them bound and beaten, too.The war ended with the Ashanti maintaining their de facto independence. Even though the Ashanti were annexed into the British Empire, they ruled themselves with little reference to the colonial power. However, when the British colony of the Gold Coast became the first independent, sub-Saharan African country in 1957, Ashanti was subsumed into the newly created Ghana. This war was the last conflict in Africa in which one of the sides was commanded by a woman.

The Brutality of the British
Below is an eyewitness account of Kwadwo Afodo'The white man asked the children where the Golden Stool was kept in Bare. The white man said he would beat the children if they did not bring their fathers from the bush. The children told the white man not to call their fathers. If he wanted to beat them, he should do it. The children knew the white men were coming for the Golden Stool. The children did not fear beating. The white soldiers began to bully and beat the children.'This act of brutality was the instigation for the Yaa Asantewaa War for Independence which began on March 28, 1900. Yaa Asantewaa mobilized the Ashanti troops and for three months laid siege to the British mission at the fort in Kumasi. The British had to bring in several thousand troops and artillery to break the cordon. Also, in retaliation, the British troops plundered the villages, killed much of the populace, confiscated their lands and left the remaining population dependent upon the British for their very survival. They also captured The Queen Mother of Ejisu, Yaa Asantewaa whom they exiled along with her close companions to the Seychelles Islands off Africa's east coast, while most of the captured chiefs became prisoners-of-war. Yaa Asantewaa died in exile 20 years later. However, the exiled Asantehene (King of all Ashanti), Prempeh I eventually returned to Ashanti, alive and well.The Stool was so important to the Ashanti, that they allowed the Asantehene Prempeh I to be exiled, rather than let it be stolen. Moreover after the war, the Ashanti were able to proclaim victory because their pre-war goal of protecting the Golden Stool was accomplished.

The 'Golden Stool' speech
Thus Hodgson advanced towards Kumasi with a small force of British soldiers and local levies, arriving on the 25 March 1900. Hodgson, as representative of a powerful nation himself, was accorded traditional honours upon entering the city and after ascending a platform, he made a speech to the assembled Ashanti leaders. The speech, or the closest surviving account which comes through an African translator, reportedly read:Your King Prempeh I is in exile and will not return to Ashanti. His power and authority will be taken over by the Representative of the Queen of Britain. The terms of the 1874 Peace Treaty of Formena which required you to pay the costs of the 1874 war have not been forgotten. You have to pay with interest the sum of £160,000 a year. Then there is the matter of the Golden Stool of Ashanti. The Queen is entitled to the stool; she must receive it.Where is the Golden Stool? I am the representative of the Paramount Power. Why have you relegated me to this ordinary chair? Why did you not take the opportunity of my coming to Kumasi to bring the Golden Stool for me to sit upon? However, you may be quite sure that though the Government has not received the Golden Stool at his hands it will rule over you with the same impartiality and fairness as if you had produced it.Not understanding the significance of the stool, Hodgson clearly had no inkling of the storm his words would produce; the suggestion that he, a foreigner, should sit on the Golden Stool, the very embodiment of The Ashanti state, and very symbol of the Ashanti peoples, living, dead, and yet to be born, was far too disrespectful for the crowd. Almost immediately, the queen mother of the Ejisu dominion within the Ashanti kingdom, Yaa Asantewaa, was collecting men to form a force with which to attack the British and retrieve their exiled king. The enraged populace produced a large number of volunteers and as Hodgson's deputy, Captain Cecil Armitage, searched for the stool in nearby brush his force was surrounded and ambushed, only a sudden rainstorm allowing the survivors to retreat to the British offices in Kumasi. The offices were then fortified into a small stockade which housed 18 Europeans, dozens of mixed race colonial administrators and 500 Nigerian Hausas who possessed six small field guns and four Maxim Guns. The Ashanti, aware that they were unprepared for storming the fort settled into a long siege, only making one assault on the position on the 29 April which was unsuccessful. The Ashanti then continued to snipe at the defenders, cut the telegraph wires, blockaded food supplies and attack relief columns.As supplies ran low and disease took its toll on the defenders, another rescue party of 700 arrived in June. Recognising that it was necessary to escape from the trap and to preserve the remaining food for the wounded and sick, some of the healthier men were evacuated along with Hodgson, his wife and over a hundred of the Hausas. 12,000 Ashanti abrade (Warriors) were summoned to attack the escapees, who gained a lead on the long road back to the Crown Colony and avoided the main body of the Abrade. Days later the few survivors of the Abrade attack, took a ship for Accra, receiving all available medical attention.

The rescue column
As Hodgson arrived at the coast, a rescue force of 1,000 men assembled from various British units and police forces stationed across West Africa and under the command of Major James Willcocks had set out from Accra. On the march Willcocks's men had been repulsed from several well-defended forts belonging to groups allied with the Ashanti, most notably the stockade at Kokofu where they had suffered heavy casualties. During the march Willcocks was faced with constant trials of skirmishing with an enemy in his own element and maintaining his supply route in the face of effective guerilla opposition. In early July, his force arrived at Beckwai and prepared for the final assault on Kumasi, which began on the morning of the 14 July 1900. Using a force led by Yoroba warriors from Nigeria serving in the Frontier Force, Willcocks drove in four heavily guarded stockades, finally relieving the fort on the evening of the fifteenth, when the inhabitants were just two days from surrender.In September, after spending the summer recuperating and tending to the sick and wounded in captured Kumasi, Willcocks sent out flying columns to the neighbouring regions which had supported the uprising. His troops defeated an Ashanti force in a skirmish at Obassa on the 30 September and also succeeded in destroying the fort and town at Kokofu where he had been previously repulsed, using Nigerian levies to hunt Ashanti fugitives into the forests once the defenders fled after a stiff engagement. Following the storming of the town, Captain Charles John Melliss was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the attack, the only such award of the campaign although a number of other officers received the Distinguished Service Order.

Yaa Asantewaa
Yaa Asantewaa was the queen mother of Ejisu in what is now modern day Ghana. At that time, the Gold Coast, as it was then known, was a British protectorate. The British supported their campaigns against the Ashanti using taxes they levied upon the local population. Additionally, they also took over the state-owned gold mines thus removing considerable revenue from the Ashanti State government. As missionaries established schools and began interfering in local affairs, the Ashanti began to deeply resent the British.In a speech, Yaa Asantewaa rallied resistance to the colonialists:Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward to fight for our king. If it were in the brave days, the days of Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye, and Opoku Ware, chiefs would not sit down to see their king taken away without firing a shot. No white man could have dared to speak to a chief of the Ashanti in the way the Governor spoke to you chiefs this morning. Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more? I cannot believe it. It cannot be! I must say this, if you, the men of Ashanti, will not go forward, then we will. We, the women, will. I shall call upon my fellow women.
We will fight the white men. We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.

Return of the King Prempeh I to Ashanti
'Thousands of people, white and black, flocked down to the beach to welcome him. They were sorely disappointed when the news flashed through that Nana Prempeh was not to be seen by anyone, and that he was to land at 5:30 pm and proceed straight away to Kumasi by a special train. Twenty minutes after the arrival of the train, a beautiful car brought Nana Prempeh into the midst of the assembly. It was difficult for us to realise even yet that he had arrived. A charming aristocratic-looking person in a black long suit with a fashionable black hat held up his hand to the cheers of the crowd. That noble figure was Nana Prempeh.' Extract from the Gold Coast Leader newspaper, 27 Dec 1924.

Aftermath
The Ashanti were defeated on the battlefield, but they won the war. Even though, Kumasi was supposedly annexed into the British empire, the Ashanti still largely governed themselves. The Ashanti goal of protecting the Golden Stool from the British was successful. However, the following year numerous chiefs including the Queen Mother of Ejisu, Yaa Asantewaa were arrested and exiled to the Seychelles, not being allowed to return for twenty five years by which time many, including Yaa Asantewaa, had died. Kumasi City still retains a war memorial and several large colonial residences, although it, with the rest of the former Gold Coast, eventually became part of Ghana.The British never did capture the Golden Stool; it was hidden deep in the forests for the duration of the war, although efforts by the British to find it lasted until 1920. Shortly after this it was accidentally uncovered by some labourers who took the golden ornaments which adorned the stool, rendering it powerless in the eyes of the Ashanti people. The labourers were sentenced to death by an Ashanti court which had jurisdiction over them, but the British intervened, and the accused were exiled instead. The war cost the British and their allies 1,007 fatal casualties in total. Ashanti casualties are estimated to be around 2,000.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww_YoLNyKoU&feature=related
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