Among the Asante and other Akan peoples, stools play an important role in each person’s life milestones.
When children learn to crawl, they receive stools as their first gift from their father.
For young women, puberty rites entail sitting on their stools. A husband presents his wife with a stool when they marry.
A deceased person is bathed on a stool before burial. Ceremonial stools are blackened and enshrined after the death of an important leader—an illustration of stools’ ability to represent a person’s soul.
Not only are stools ever-present in the lives of Asante peoples, but their basic form also remains constant.
All Asante stools—whether for domestic use or public display—are carved from a single block of wood. The seat is typically curved and supported over a rectangular base by a central column and four corner posts.
The midsection may be geometric or figurative but the motifs used on ceremonial stools represent associated proverbs.
State (or ceremonial) stools are the most important of all Akan royal regalia.
Only chiefs and high-ranking officials are given the Asantehene’s permission to have their stools decorated with strips of intricately patterned silver or gold. Silver was only accessible through trade, often in the form of silver European coinage that was melted down.
The most important and sacred Asante stool is the Golden Stool.
It represents the authority of the Asantehene (king), enshrines the soul of the nation, and symbolizes the kingdom’s unity. Made of solid gold, the Golden Stool never touches the ground; it is carried in processionals and has its own throne.
Prior to the establishment of the Asante kingdom, Akan peoples were organized in small independent states, each headed by a paramount chief.
Around 1701, in the city of Kumasi, several of these states united under the military and economic strength of the Asante.
According to Asante oral tradition, the kingdom was founded when Chief Priest Komfo Anokye miraculously caused the Golden Stool to descend from the sky onto the knees of Nana Osei Tutu, thereby designating him Asantehene Osei Tutu I, king of all the chiefdoms he had conquered.
The priest then ordered the chiefs of the formerly independent states to bury their existing regalia to signify their loyalty to the supreme Golden Stool.
For the Asante of Ghana, stools are integral components of social and political
life.
They are vital identity markers and sacred mediums for honoring and communicating with ancestors.
Like the paramount political symbol of the Asante peoples, the Golden Stool or Sika Dwa Kofi (“Golden Stool born on Friday”), stools are frequently mobilized to symbolize Asante identity more broadly.
Every chief and queen mother has a stool or set of stools, which both mark status and serve as vehicles for political messages about the nature of his or her leadership.
These objects are so central to the positions of local leaders that when a chief or queen mother takes office, he or she is said to have been “enstooled.” Many lineages also have a sese dwa that is identified with their lineage or Stool (here, in the sense of a political division such as the Silver Stool of Mampong.
In some cases, this is the stool used for all enstoolment rites performed in that group, both male and female. For example, the current Mpobihene and Mpobihemaa were both publically enstooled on the same sese dwa that they use for everyone in their lineage.
It features their Aduana abusua symbol, which is a dog with fire in its mouth.
When an extraordinary leader passes away, his or her sese dwa (traditionally, the
one used for bathing) is “blackened” and placed in the ancestral stool house or
nkonnwafieso.
Most often, this process is reserved for chiefs and queen mothers but some
heads of lineages (abusuapanin and obaapanin, male and female head, respectively) and priests and priestesses have their stools blackened, too.
The blackening process involves
coating the stool in a mixture of soot, spider web, and egg yolk, which is then layered.
over time with sacrificial offerings such as sheep’s blood. Peter Sarpong (1971) suggests
three key reasons that ancestral stools are blackened: to keep them from becoming ugly or visually distressing when they receive sacrifices, to represent the relationship between the living and the deceased ancestors through color symbolism (in certain contexts, black
is a sign of mourning, in others, it is frightening, which calls for respect and veneration, both of which are appropriate for ancestral stools), and, finally, for durability – the blackening process acts as a kind of preservation agent that helps keep the stools in good form for successive generations.
However, the ingredients used to blacken stools are the same as those used to
“consecrate” the underside of “white” stools destined for the court of the Asantehene.
After he was enstooled in 1995, Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II, told his Chief Carver, Nana Frempong Boadu, to restrict use of this consecration process because “it is one of our most serious oaths.”
The parallel use of materials in blackening and consecrating
suggests that they have significance beyond the reasons outlined by Sarpong.
As A. Kyerematen has explained, “the black stool is believed to be inhabited by
the spirit or sunsum of the head of the lineage for whom it was consecrated, and therefore to possess the magical quality of being able to protect the living members of the lineage.”
Duties that must be performed in relation to ancestral stools include making
offerings of sheep, chickens and liquor to them on a regular basis. Because ancestors are understood to be capable of participating actively in the affairs of the living, they must be kept happy and satiated.
The Akwasidae and Awukudae festivals, which are held at six-week intervals on Sundays and Wednesdays, respectively, are designated specifically for celebrating the ancestors, though leaders may engage with them on less official occasions
as well.
Each lineage has a special area for housing the blackened stools of ancestors and
the individuals permitted to enter it are few, even on festival days.
In my experience, for some lineages, the queen mothers’ stools are kept separate from the chiefs’ stools while in others they are housed in the same room.
It is a taboo for a menstruating woman to enter the nkonnwafieso and some queen mothers who are pre-menopausal have akyeame (linguists) perform their duties in the stool house, in addition to their own, on their behalf.
Generally, it is the linguist who is responsible for pouring libations to honor the ancestors, though these responsibilities may be shared with the Kontihene or others.
While queen mothers sit on asese dwa in public, generally, when a chief appears
in an official capacity, he sits on an asipim chair.
It is the asipim that indicates to the
public that he has the right to rule and should be approached according to specific
protocols.
Asipim is the term used to describe chairs of European style that are composed of a wood frame with hide stretched across the seat.
Like the sese dwa, the asipim chairs
belonging to higher-ranking chiefs tend to be larger and more elaborately decorated than those of lower-ranking individuals. Brass tacks and studs placed along the legs and back support are among the most common forms of decoration on these seats, along with metallic finials.
Malcolm McLeod lists two other types of chairs used by high-ranking chiefs, the
akonkromfi and the hwedom.
Both chairs are generally larger than asipim.
The akonkromfi features crisscrossing legs and an openwork support that resemble imported folding chairs and hwedom are upright chairs with “flat backs and seats with legs and stretchers copied from turned prototypes.”
In addition to their uses by chiefs, asipim,
akonkromfi, and hwedom chairs are now employed to seat top-tier religious officials in churches in the Kumase area.
For example, I observed these chair types at St. Peter’s Basilica in Kumase, on which bishops and other leaders of varying ranks were seated before the congregation.
Although McLeod lists the specific types of
chairs used by chiefs by name, most individuals I encountered in the Ashanti Region used the term asipim to refer generically to all official chairs used by men, regardless of their particular shape or decoration.
For the matrilineal Asante peoples, since their earliest histories, stools have been
intimately connected with women, and queen mothers in particular. Many of the origin stories outlined in the Ashanti Stool Histories highlight the important roles of
ancestresses (the first queen mothers) and their relationships with stools, many of which predate the birth of the famous Golden Stool.
For example, the ancestress, Ankyewa Nyame, known as “the true angel of God,” is said to have come down from the sky at a place called Asiakwa in the Akim district at some point before the eighteenth century founding of the Asante confederacy.
She brought her ancestral stool
with her and her retinue followed.
Nana Ankyewa Nyame is held to be the ancestress of both the Oyoko and Aduana mmusua (sing. abusua) lineage.
The Golden Stool today is identified with the former group.
Another female ancestress, Asiam Nyankopon Guahyia, foundress of the Bretuo lineage (abusua), accompanied by her relatives and subjects, is believed to have descended from the sky on a silver chain carrying her silver
stool.
She is remembered as having landed either at Adanse-Ahensan right away or
having arrived here following a migration from Adanse-Ayaase.
She, too, is said to have appeared prior to the confederation of Asante.
In yet a third example, the Mampong stool,
second in power only to the Golden Stool, traces its lineage to another ancestress, Asiam Nyankopon Guahyia.
After her arrival, Asiam Nyankopon Guahyia announced that her
sister, Nyinampong, the queen mother of Denkyira and the Agona abusua, was making her way to the same location.
A short time later, Nyinampong descended from the sky with her “bead-stool” in hand.
These are just a few of the abusua origin stories that foreground women and their
stools.
Many more individual stool histories feature key female ancestresses and their
arrival on earth with stools, a number of which date to the era prior to the Golden Stools’ descent, or somewhat later, under the reign of Asantehene Opoku Ware I (1700-1750).
Thus, Nana Yaa Asase, ancestress of the Akyawkrom stool, is said to have come up from the ground at a hole called Ayano Bong (alt. Ayano Tokoromu) at Akyawkrom.
With her she brought her brother and the Ankyawkrom stool.
Ampoma Tim, ancestress of the
Dadiesoaba stool, for her part, is said to have migrated from Denkyria to Kumase
carrying a miniature stool after the Asante defeated Denkyira in 1701.
The Dadiesoaba stool itself is said to have been created by Opoku Ware I during the first half of the eighteenth century.
Oral histories outlined in the Ashanti Stool Histories offer other evidence of the
relationship between female ancestors and stools.
Here we read explanations of the
transmission of authority from women to men, a phenomenon said to have occurred in the decades and centuries that followed initial matriarchal foundations.
Nana Kyerew Akenten, ancestress of the Mamponten stool, is identified as both the queen mother of Mamponten and the female chief. According to related oral traditions, she “reigned for a long time, but because of the intermittent wars that faced the nation it became necessary to appoint a male substitute.”
It was Nana Kyerew Akenten’s brother, Nana Saasi Ayeboafo, who was selected as the first male occupant of the Mamponten stool.
Similarly, Nana Dufie, ancestress of the Fehyiase stool, “handed over the administration of this village, as well as the ancestral stool, to her son, Toku Kumanin, who was then a minor” because of the ongoing wars in the area.
Apparently, once her son came of age,
Nana Dufie decided to divide their responsibilities by ruling over the women while Toku Kumanin dealt with the administration of the men.
These oral histories are in line with
Emmanuel Akyeampong and Pashington Obeng’s (1995) observation about the
prominence of war (male activities) in the new Asante nation, as key factors impacting a shift from female to male authority in the period after the confederation’s founding.
The other crucial reason for the change cited by Akyeampong and Obeng is that of taboos around menstruation that restricted female participation in certain spheres.
We can see in these various examples the strikingly important role that gender is seen to have played in Asante stool history and ongoing signification.
To be continued…
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