3-053-415 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

An Ashantee village, 1873. Sketch showing '...the ordinary aspect of daily household life among these savages, whose habits are like those of other n*gro populations, in Guinea, except where Mohammedan craftsmen, from the more civilised countries north of this region, have introduced some useful arts. Their houses, indeed, as seen in our view of an Ashantee village, are rather neatly constructed of bamboo wicker-work, with a thatch of palm-leaves, rising to the height of 15 ft. at the central ridge, from eaves 4 ft. 6 in. high. A woman is observed pounding maize in a wooden mortar; others strip the fibre off plantain stalks; and one is cooking, while a man lies sleeping on a mat under the tree. Goats and pigs, fowls and ducks, run about the place; while vultures are perched on the house-roof, and other birds have made their nests of grass in the tree. To the right hand is a fetish-house, a sort of temple for their abject heathen superstition, which has been defined as "the worship of everything but God".' From "Illustrated London News", 1873.