Gold-mining and trading among the Ashanti of Ghana - article ; n°1 ; vol.48, pg 89-100

Kwame Arhin

Description

Journal des africanistes - Année 1978 - Volume 48 - Numéro 1 - Pages 89-100
En examinant l'extraction et le commerce de l'or parmi les Asante, Kwame Arhin dresse d'abord l'inventaire des principaux gisements aurifères dont les Asante ont pu disposer à l'intérieur de leur empire ; il décrit ensuite les techniques mises en œuvre lors du repérage et de l'exploitation des gîtes, ainsi que les outils utilisés. Le mineur travaille avec le concours de sa femme et de ses enfants ; lorsqu'il est riche, il emploie également des captifs et des personnes mises en gage. Différentes sortes de taxes, frappant aussi bien l'extraction que la circulation de l'or, drainent une partie non négligeable du métal vers le trésor royal. En particulier, les pépites sont le monopole du souverain. La poudre d'or est investie du rôle de moyen de paiement et d'échange. Du point de vue social et politique, l'extraction et le commerce de l'or ont exercé des influences diverses : jusque vers 1875, en raison du poids des taxes et des amendes, l'or s'est avant tout accumulé dans les caisses de l'État, qui s'en est servi pour financer son expansion. C'est seulement à la fin du xixe siècle qu'est apparue une classe d'hommes riches, tirant leur fortune d'entreprises minières ou commerciales « privées ».
12 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: JOURNAL_DES_AFRICANISTES
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1978
• Nombre de lectures: 165
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Monsieur Kwame Arhin
Gold-mining and trading among the Ashanti of Ghana
In: Journal des africanistes. 1978, tome 48 fascicule 1. pp. 89-100.
Résumé
En examinant l'extraction et le commerce de l'or parmi les Asante, Kwame Arhin dresse d'abord l'inventaire des principaux
gisements aurifères dont les Asante ont pu disposer à l'intérieur de leur empire ; il décrit ensuite les techniques mises en œuvre
lors du repérage et de l'exploitation des gîtes, ainsi que les outils utilisés. Le mineur travaille avec le concours de sa femme et de
ses enfants ; lorsqu'il est riche, il emploie également des captifs et des personnes mises en gage. Différentes sortes de taxes,
frappant aussi bien l'extraction que la circulation de l'or, drainent une partie non négligeable du métal vers le trésor royal. En
particulier, les pépites sont le monopole du souverain. La poudre d'or est investie du rôle de moyen de paiement et d'échange.
Du point de vue social et politique, l'extraction et le commerce de l'or ont exercé des influences diverses : jusque vers 1875, en
raison du poids des taxes et des amendes, l'or s'est avant tout accumulé dans les caisses de l'État, qui s'en est servi pour
financer son expansion. C'est seulement à la fin du xixe siècle qu'est apparue une classe d'hommes riches, tirant leur fortune
d'entreprises minières ou commerciales « privées ».
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Arhin Kwame. Gold-mining and trading among the Ashanti of Ghana. In: Journal des africanistes. 1978, tome 48 fascicule 1. pp.
89-100.
doi : 10.3406/jafr.1978.1806
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/jafr_0399-0346_1978_num_48_1_1806Л des Africanistes, 48, 1 (1978), pp. 99-lWt .
Gold-mining and trading
among the Ashanti of Ghana
BY К WAME AR H I N
Before the slave trade began at the end of the seventeenth century,
sika S gold, was the lever of power for the budding Akan kingdoms
in the era of state formation in the central and southern territories
of modern Ghana (Rodney, 1969 : 13-28). Bono Manso, reputedly the
first of the powerful Akan kingdoms, developed on the basis of the
gold trade with the Mande of the Niger Bend and the Mossi of Waga-
dugu (Meyerovitz, 1974: 11), who supplied part of the gold riches of
the medieval Sudanese kingdoms (Levtzion, 1973 : 156). Denkyera, then
located near the site of the modern Obuase gold mine, established her
power on the basis of the gold trade with the Portuguese, the English
and the Dutch in the seventeenth century. Ashanti, Akim, Assin, Twifu
and Wassa had gold with which to obtain the sinews of warfare, other
than bows and arrows, from the European trade establishments (Daaku,
1970 a : 21-47). Gold was important not only as a means for obtaining
European weaponry. It was also the greatest component of regalia,
the complex of symbols of rank in the state, and hence the supreme
basis of the socio-political order (Arhin, 1968 : 34-52). The great stool
of united Ashanti, that of the Asantehene, king of Ashanti, was known
as the Golden Stool, Sika gua (Rattray, 1929 : 277 ; Kyerematen, 1969 :
1-5), and could not be duplicated elsewhere in the territories where
the Asantehene's writ ran 2. As the mark of his incomparable wealth
and position, the Asantehene was known as "the one who sat on gold" 3.
The Akan 4 ruler showed favour to subordinate power-holders and the
promotion of authority-holders by a grant of increase in their gold
ornaments (Arhin, 1974 a : 36 ; Bowdich, 1819 : 389).
This paper attempts to show (i) the sources of Akan gold in the
historic period, from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century ; (ii) gold
production ; (iii) the media of gold distribution, including trading and
(iv) the socio-economic significance of gold-mining and among
the Akan in general and the Ashanti in particular.
1. Sika is the Akan word for both the raw gold and the legal tender, whether gold, silver,
copper pieces or paper money.
2. Wars with the Gyaman kingdom (Ivory Coast and Ghana) in 1745 and 1818-19 were, in
part, precipitated by the attempts of the king of Gyaman to make "golden" stools. 90 KWAME ARHlN
i) Sources of gold.
The gold belt in Ghana stretches northwest from the Akwapim-
Akim border in eastern Ghana to the border with the Ivory Coast,
and north to the middle banks of the Black Volta. Nearly all the
Akan forest states, as well as the Brong states of the forest-savannah
fringes had access to alluvial gold (see map ; also Dickson and Benneh,
1970 : 71). But some of the Akan territories were more auriferous than
the others. Dcnkyera, Wassa and neighbouring Sehwi were richer in
the precious metal than Assin, Akim and Kwahu. The Amansee district,
which included Manso Nkwanta, the area of concentrated Asante gold
mining in the historic period (Arhin, 1970 a: 101-109) 5, Adanse, which
includes Obuase, the site of modern Ghana's richest gold mine, and
the Konongo area in Asante Akim had more gold than other parts of
central Ashanti. The Ashanti themselves gave Dupuis (1824 : lii-lvi)
the following order of prolificity in gold among the territories of Ghana :
Eastern Gyaman including Dormaa (i, Denkyera and Wassa were the
richest of all the areas. Dupuis' informants stated as the evidence
for this, that whereas in the Gyaman districts a nine-feet shaft yielded
gold returns, in Ashanti, Dcnkyera and Wassa, the miner had to reach
twenty-two feet below ground before he saw the metal. Again, Gyaman
mines yielded more sika pokowa, gold nuggets, than the other mines.
However, modern mining technology has shown that the richest gold
fields in Ghana are Obuase in Adansi in Ashanti, Konongo in Ashanti-
Akim and Tarkwa in Wassa in the Western Region (Dickson and
Benneh, 1970 : 9).
ii) Gold production.
In discussing gold production the main questions that come to
mind are, the tools used ; categories of producers ; and the labour.
A major problem due to the undeveloped technology of gold mining
in the historic period was how to identify the gold-impregnated areas.
When I put the question to them, the elders of Manso Nkwanta made
the following suggestions. Areas of potential gold finds were indicated
during the rains when pebbles to which sika futuru, gold dust, and the
gold nuggets were attached, were washed out gleaming in the sun.
The beds of certain streams known from experience to contain
3. In the Ashanti-Akan dialect, Ote kokoo soo.
4. This paper is as much about the Ashanti as the Akan in general. "Ashanti" is mentioned
in the title because the bulk of the reference cited refers to them.
5. I made enquiries on traditional mining at Manso-Nkwanta in 1968. Much of my oral
information in this article is based on those reported in the paper to which reference is made
here.
6. Dormaa in the Brong Ahafo region may have split off Gyaman early in the eighteenth
century. It is now an autonomous traditional state in west-central Ghana. A Dormaa ruler
was known as "Kyereme Sikafo", "Kyereme, the wealthy" (Reindorf, 1895:50). AND TRADING AMONG THE ASHANTI OF GHANA 91 GOLD-MINING
gold. Gold prospectors dug shafts in places where nuggets had been
washed out during the rains and where, therefore, gold was suspected
in the soil (Arhin, 1970 a: 104-109). Ferguson (1890) reported that as
a result of intense prospecting in the Kibi, Akim, district, "so honey
combed is the ground that it is dangerous to walk on it" (Arhin,
1974 a: 6). Lastly, the soils of market places in the areas where gold
dust was the currency, such as the two market-places in Kumasi, the
capital of Ashanti, were washed at intervals for gold collection (Bow-
dich, 1819:319).
The nature of the suspected source determined the type of tool
used in the search for gold. Surface or shallow digging, known as
mmoaboa, was done at places where gold was suspected to be close
to the surface. For this operation, miners employed soso toa, a narrow
shovel. The heap of pebbles or sand mixed with the gold nuggets and
Apoa, the dredging of river beds, was done with soso tupre, another
shovel. The heap of pebbles or sand mixed with the gold nuggets and
dust was put on а кого, a broad wooden bowl, and the two elements
separated by panning.
The more serious mining was digging the amenapeaa nkron, shafts
of 3-4 feet in diameter and of depth said to range from fifty to
hundred feet. Information from the elders of Manso Nkwanta on shaft
mining did not differ from the observations of Ferguson who wrote :
A native miner has few implements : a long-bladed spud or digger, a wooden
bucket for bailing out the water or hoisting up the stuff, and a bowl for
washing or "vanning" make up the list [...]. He rarely makes up his shaft more
than three feet in diameter. Planting one end of his digger into a recess in the
shaft he places the other end diagonally against the opposite side of the shaft,
and supporting himself by it, his foot is placed in another of the recesses. Thus
supported, he removes the digger, plants it in recess below the fi