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Encyclopédie des historiographies : Afriques, Amériques, Asies

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Nathalie Kouamé
, 
Éric P. Meyer
, 
Anne Viguier

B

Black Stools for Historians

Les sièges sacrés (nkongua tuntum), documents pour l’historien

Michelle Gilbert

Résumé

L’autel ancestral akan prend la forme d’un siège en bois, noirci avec du sang sacrificiel, à l’origine celui d’un membre du lignage, ainsi qu’avec de la poudre et une toile d’araignée, ce qui renvoie respectivement à la guerre et aux connaissances généalogiques des femmes. Les sièges sacrés appartiennent à la famille. Ils représentent la chefferie et l’histoire d’un groupe. En tant que point central des croyances et des pratiques religieuses ainsi que des rites d’intronisation d’un roi ou un chef, ils font le lien avec le passé du royaume. Les sièges sacrés étaient apportés lors des guerres ; ils pouvaient être volés par une branche ennemie de la famille et, au début du xxe siècle, servir parfois de garantie pour un emprunt.

Texte intégral

Introduction

1Historical documents come in various forms. Among the Akan‑speaking peoples of southern Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, an ancestral shrine in the form of a wooden stool blackened with sacrificial blood is such a “document”. It is a tangible object that represents the history of a group of people. Until the late 20th century in Ghana, chiefs and commoners sat in public on small wooden stools and an elder always sat on his own stool. A black stool [nkongua tumtum] is different. No one sits on it. It is a consecrated object, a sacred memorial entity believed to contain the ancestral spirit of one or more leading members of a family. A black stool represents chieftaincy. Thus, it is the focal point for religious beliefs and practices, a symbol of unity and authority, and a link to a family’s past.

2The matrilineal Akan kingdoms include Asante, Akwapim, Akyem and Fante among others. Although these kingdoms vary somewhat in their structure and rituals, the Akwapim kingdom in south‑eastern Ghana provides a good example of the meaning and use of black stools.

Who is memorialized?

3The king, and every chief, in an Akan kingdom has a black stool, generally only one. The royal Asona lineage in the Akwapim kingdom has seven black stools representing former kings. In form and function they are the same as the black stools owned by chiefs. In general, there are as many stools as there are families in an Akan kingdom. The stool belongs to the chief and his matrilineage: it is a family property. It may be taken from one kingdom or from one town to another because of marriage, or it may be stolen by one branch of a lineage in a family dispute. It was customary in the past for a warrior to go to war with his stool; if he was caught or killed, the stool would be taken as war booty. During the 1920s two Akwapim king’s (Nana fwk Akuffo and Nana Ado Dankwa ii) reigned without the royal black stools and a destooled king from the opposing faction was detained because he disobeyed a Privy Council order to hand them over. Such events are unconstitutional, but they happen. Over time the precise identity of the ancestor for whom a black stool was made may even be forgotten, or if a black stool was captured in war as booty it may not be known, but the power is still acknowledged and undiminished.

4The privilege to possess a stool is given by a king to his sub‑chiefs, as happened when the Akropong king set up an Akan kingdom over the indigenous Guan and Okere in Akwapim in the early 18th c. Or, a black stool may be created with the consent of the king, in which case an everyday stool used by a recently deceased family member will often be used as it is believed his spirit will be in the stool. It is not usual to create new stools for present‑day chiefs but, in times of chieftaincy disturbances, if family members refuse to give up the old stool, a new one may be created. The king also has the power to destroy the stool of a subordinate chief - but only under extraordinary circumstances.

Creating a black stool

5Stools are carved from osese or odum [Chlorophora excelsa] wood (a large tree with white latex and red roots: symbolically significant colors). Blackening the stool is done in secret. Formerly human sacrifice was involved. Following prayers and libation, blood drawn from the neck of an important member of the lineage was mixed with other ingredients and smeared on the stool. The original stool of the particular matriline is named after the man whose soul is sealed inside, though his name actually reflects his group of patrifiliation. During rituals when the stool is carried, the appellations of this man are called out and the carrier generally goes into a state of trance.

6During periodic adae rites (every 42 days) and during the annual purification rite, called Odwira, the black stools were anointed anew, generally with the blood of sheep. Formerly, during the annual celebration, slaves or war captives were sacrificed in the stool room of the king’s palace, the victims were often those kept in a special village belonging to the king. Human sacrifice ceased towards the end of the 19th century due to British ordinances and today castrated rams are used. Recent stools that have been “created” with the blood of sheep are not considered by many people to be sufficiently strong.

  • 1 Rattray, 1923 p. 92; Sarpong, 1971.

7In addition to blood, gun‑powder and spider’s web are used to smear on a black stool. Gun‑powder is associated with men who went to war with members of their group of patrifiliation, and spider’s web is gathered in the kitchen and thus associated with the wisdom of women and the mythical trickster Ananse. Wisdom in this context refers to the genealogical knowledge of the matriline held by women. In Asante, stools are said to be blackened with eggs mixed with soot1 formed in the kitchen from the web of the spider and smoke from the fire.

Ritual use

8Black stools are shrines to which periodic sacrificial offerings and prayers to the ancestors are addressed. They are never placed directly on the ground. They are kept in a special room screened from public view and possible pollution; the doorway is covered with a precious cloth called nsaa, woven in Mali by the Fulani as a domestic cloth and then sold in Ghana second‑hand where it acquired sacred connotations. On important social and ritual occasions, libations are poured to make a contact with the ancestral powers and to inform the ancestors of the impending events.

  • 2 Gilbert, 1994.

9At the periodic adae rites and the annual purification rite of Odwira2, the stools are taken from their storage places, unwrapped and put on top of an ordinary stool or a sheep’s skin in preparation for libations and prayers from supplicants. They are smeared with the blood of a sacrificial animal (generally sheep, sometimes a fowl) and then mashed yam and pieces of the sacrificial meat, both raw and cooked, are left before them. The ancestors eat the spirit [sunsum] of the meat offered to them and the attendants eat what remains and thereby gain power from the ancestors. Those who care for the stool are generally sons and grandsons of the stool occupant; they must be ritually clean. Those who come for prayers or to give thanksgiving are anointed, with the sacrificial matter that was smeared on the stools for protection and strength, on their forehead, chest, small of their back and bottom of their feet.

10The Akwapim king is set apart by those over whom he will reign and sacralized by a series of installation rites, central of which is his transformation into a visual summation of the state of the kingdom by means of these blackened stools. During these rites the authority of the Akwapim king is endorsed by the ancestors and his being invested with invisible, immortal powers that are protective and punishing. In short, he is made “holy” [kronkron], as are lesser chiefs who “sit on stools” who are similarly empowered with enhanced moral status, though to a lesser extent.

  • 3 Gilbert, 2012.

11Central to the king’s installation is the enstoolment rite that occurs at night in great secrecy. At this time, the king‑elect, stripped of the clothes he wore as an ordinary social person and temporarily outside all social life, symbolically and politically in a state of new‑born, is taken to the palace stool room, where he is blindfolded and told to choose one of the stools that variously represented reigns of peace, war, disputes or disorder in the state. The choice of the stool gives him a new identity and suggests the character of his coming reign. After another libation is poured, the stool chosen by the new king is anointed (formerly with blood from human sacrifice -now with blood from a sheep) and the king‑elect himself is anointed with this blood. It is said that on this day he is now a king. After this rite of transformation and acquisition of ancestral identity, the stool is removed to a place where a king is brought when dead and here the king‑elect is lowered onto the stool three times. When his buttocks have lightly touched the stool, the king has been given the power and sacredness of his ancestors, he has been reborn.3

The black stool as a valuable for pledges.

  • 4 National Archives Ghana, Koforidua. File ADM/KD 29/6/15

12The early 20th century in southern Ghana was a time of change and development. There was little help from the colonial government. In 1917, the Akwapim Nifahene, an important divisional chief, incurred huge debts by contracting Italian engineers to construct a motor road from the town of Adukrom leading to cocoa villages in the Densu valley. As security, he listed stool properties including, gold, chiefly‑regalia and his ancestral black stools.4 At nearly the same moment, the king of Akyem Abuakwa allegedly mortgaged his paramount stool to the Colonial Bank. Court costs were high at this time and stool property, even towns could be sold at auction. A chief does not pledge stool properties unless he is sure his supporters will redeem the loan. In these two cases, an ancestral black stool while of little intrinsic value to the Europeans, was recognized to be a reliable pledge because of its position as the family’s most cherished possession.

Recent changes

13Belief in the power of ancestors (as embodied in the black stool) continues despite the increasing influence of Christianity; the black stools are a set of explanations that complement those of Christian doctrine. Christian ministers reject deities [asuman, abosom] but have more difficulty rejecting the ancestors who are directly linked to history, chieftaincy and the order and structure of the kingdom, and so they ignore or redefine what they can and euphemistically say, for example, that the stools are covered with “soot” for preservation.

14A black ancestral stool is a multifaceted symbol that represents the identity of a group of people as well as being a recognized valuable and a focal point for religious practices. As with more readily identifiable historical documents, black stools may be said to actually bring the past into the present.

Figure 1. Black stool from Abiriw‑Akwapim, Ghana

Figure 1. Black stool from             Abiriw‑Akwapim, Ghana

Figure 2. Black stool from Abiriw‑Akwapim, Ghana

Figure 2. Black stool from Abiriw‑Akwapim,             Ghana

Figure 3. Black stool from Akropong‑Akwapim

Figure 3. Black stool from             Akropong‑Akwapim

Bibliographie

Books

Djan Oheneba Sakyi, 1936, The ‘Sunlight’ Reference Almanac’, The author, Aburi.

Rattray R.S., 1923, Ashanti, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 454 p. [9789333411035]

Sarpong Rev. Dr. Peter, 1971, The Sacred Stools of the Akan, Ghana Pbl. Corp., Tema

Papers and Contributions to Books

Gilbert Michelle, 1989, “Sources of Power in Akuropon‑Akuapem: Ambiguity in Classification”, in Arens William & Karp Ivan (eds), The Creativity of Power: Cosmology and Action in African Societies, p. 59‑90 Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC and London, 400 p. [9780874746174]

Gilbert Michelle, 1993, “The Leopard who Sleeps in a Basket: Akuapem Secrecy in Everyday Life and Royal Metaphor”, in Nooter Mary H. (ed), Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, p. 123‑39, Museum for African Art, New York. [9780945802129]

Gilbert Michelle, 1994, “Aesthetic Strategies: the Politics of a Royal Ritual”, Africa 64/1 p. 99‑125.

Gilbert Michelle, 2012, “The Sacralized Body of the Akwapim King”, in Brisch Nicole (ed), Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, p. 171‑190, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Seminars, 4, Chicago (second printing with corrections), 271 p. [9781885923554]

Archives

National Archives Ghana, Accra. Files 11/1101; 1920 Privy Council hearings.

National Archives Ghana, Koforidua. File ADM/KD 29/6/15.

Notes

1 Rattray, 1923 p. 92; Sarpong, 1971.

2 Gilbert, 1994.

3 Gilbert, 2012.

4 National Archives Ghana, Koforidua. File ADM/KD 29/6/15

Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. Black stool from Abiriw‑Akwapim, Ghana
URL http://books.openedition.org/pressesinalco/docannexe/image/23133/img-1.png
Fichier image/png, 62M
Titre Figure 2. Black stool from Abiriw‑Akwapim, Ghana
URL http://books.openedition.org/pressesinalco/docannexe/image/23133/img-2.png
Fichier image/png, 12M
Titre Figure 3. Black stool from Akropong‑Akwapim
URL http://books.openedition.org/pressesinalco/docannexe/image/23133/img-3.png
Fichier image/png, 23M

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