The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast

Record summary

A. B. Ellis’s The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast presents late-nineteenth-century descriptions of Akan-speaking societies, religious beings, proverbs, origin traditions, ritual practices, and oral historical material. It can serve as a comparison lead for the classification of gods, spirits, legendary ancestors, and social institutions by European ethnographers. The account is useful precisely because it preserves an early printed attempt to organize traditions that remained locally varied and performative. Researchers should verify terminology, identify the communities represented, and distinguish Ellis’s interpretation from later Akan scholarship.