The Ashanti system of tracing descent is matrilineal and matripotestal, that is, clan descent is traced through the female, and authority in the family lies mainly in the hands of the mother’s brother, the maternal uncle (wofa). We have seen that:

1. Abusua (clan) is synonymous with mogya or bogya (blood).

2. A woman alone can transmit blood to descendants, male or female.

3. Under no conceivable circumstances whatever can a male transmit his blood, which he derived from his mother, and in consequence no Ashanti can, according to orthodox belief, have a drop of the male parent’s blood in his or her veins.

4. The male parent transmits to his children his ntoro—which I have translated by "spirit"—and the male alone can transmit this ntoro, which is present in every person, male and female.

5. Both the abusua and ntoro are exogamous.

6. The abusua and ntoro together account for all the marriage prohibitions.

7. The raison d’être given by the Ashanti for tracing bogya (blood) through the female line alone is to be found in certain physiological conditions which they have observed, i.e., the presence of blood at childbirth and during menstruation.

8. The presence of blood on these occasions has given rise to the supposition that "blood alone can be transmitted by and through a female."

While discussing this matter with three old women, one of whom was the "Queen Mother" of B——, I asked why, if a male had blood in his body, as they acknowledged he had, he could not then transmit it to his offspring. I have indeed repeatedly asked this question and always been told such a thing was impossible and had never been heard of. On this occasion the answer was that "if a male transmitted his blood through the penis he could not beget a child."

I can conceive no possible answer that would show more clearly the underlying belief in the minds of these people, but if further evidence be needed, then the fact that the word for the male-transmitted ntoro (spirit) seems sometimes used in the sense of semen supplies that proof.

To the Ashanti mind therefore the word bogya (blood) in the wider sense we now use it, as being something that may be transmitted by either or both parents, is incomprehensible.

As a result of this belief as seen in daily practice, abusua, i.e., clan or blood, in all cases decides the succession to stools and the inheritance of property. The ntoro, while regulating, by exclusion, certain unions of the sexes, is of lesser practical importance; its action in certain other respects being spiritual rather than material.

The most obvious results of a social organization framed on such lines is to raise immediately the status of women in the community, and when matrilineal descent is found in a society which is frankly communistic, we seem to have in these two factors in many parts of Africa the key to the importance of women, which has been noted by numerous observers.

A proverb, that may be heard as often as the question is put to an Ashanti man or woman why a woman should be of such account, runs as follows: Oba na owo obarima, "A Woman gave birth to a man." . . .

[The fact that wives are inherited and that the native idiom for "to marry" is "to buy a wife" might seem to point to a servile condition of women] but in Ashanti no woman stands alone, for behind the woman stand a united family, bound by the tie of blood, which has here a power and a meaning we can hardly grasp. "If you see one parrot do not throw a stone at it, for there are many others," runs one of their sayings.

The whole conception of "mother right" affords the woman a protection and a status that is more than an adequate safeguard against the ill-treatment by any male or group of males.

Her children belong to her and her clan, not to that of her husband.

All her individually acquired and inherited property is hers and her clan’s, and her husband cannot touch it. Not only is this so, but when she dies, no male even of her own clan may be her heir until all her female blood (clan) relations are extinct.

From these facts it is clear that the position of woman in Ashanti is one of great importance.

"I am the mother of the man," she says, and her meaning we cannot understand until a fuller knowledge of Ashanti social and religious organization shows us what is meant.

"I alone can transmit the blood to a king."

"If my sex die in the clan then that very clan becomes extinct, for be there one, or one thousand male members left, not one can transmit the blood, and the life of the clan becomes measured on this earth by the span of a man’s life."

Yet again, unless we understand the full significance underlying that aspect of the Ashanti religion which enjoins that the spirits and memories of famous ancestors be venerated and propitiated, we cannot fully grasp what a calamity in the Ashanti mind, the extinction of his clan entails.

For not only are human beings divided into exogamous clans and ntoro, but in the spirit world (samando) the ghosts continue to be concerned with and able not only to confer good upon, but to receive benefits from, those members of the human community alone who were their clansmen on earth. I believe also it may yet be shown that the only hope the inhabitants of the "cold shadowless spirit world" have of reincarnation upon "the warm sun-bathed earth" lies in being born again into that abusua (and just possibly also ntoro) of which they were members on earth. The extinction of the clan would therefore mean the extinction of all hope of return to this world.

I believe in all this we shall find the secret of that irrevocable law among the Ashanti which decrees that none but a clansman (or clanswoman) may ever sit on the clan stool, a belief which, when all the relations are exhausted, causes them to seek a successor from among a group whom they may never have seen, living in a remote part of the country, but bearing the clan’s name and thus "all one blood." . . . A king’s son can never be the king, but the poorest woman of the royal blood is the potential mother of a king. I purposely reiterate this fact because I think its import has never been fully grasped. Moreover, in olden times when a chief had to be chosen it was the Queen Mother who had most to say in the choice to be made. She would summon her clan mates, male and female, and they would discuss the matter apart from the subchiefs and elders belonging to other clans.

Having chosen the chief the Queen Mother sends a message to the subchiefs and elders who now discuss the nominee, and when they have agreed, as I am told they generally do—no one can be put upon the stool against whom the Queen Mother gives her veto—the Queen Mother is informed.

The new chief-to-be is admonished in the presence of all the clan and given much excellent advice by "his mother" as to his future mode of life, and then conducted into the presence of the assembled chiefs.

After the usual ceremonies he is taken to where his stool stands apart. He is set upon it the customary three times, and after his sandals have been placed upon his feet and a robe thrown over his shoulder, all the attendant officials with the stool move up to where the Queen Mother sits. Then the new chief takes the customary oath and sits down on the right of the Queen Mother to receive the homage and oaths of allegiance of the assembled chiefs. Ever after, as long as he is king, the Queen Mother’s place is on his left hand. She is the "old woman" of Miss Kingsley’s picture.

Whenever the chief travels abroad, except to war, she must accompany him and when the chief sits in court her place is beside him. She alone has the privilege of rebuking him, his spokesman (okyeame), or his councilors in open court, and of addressing the court and questioning litigants. To her, too, petitions are addressed praying for pardon or mitigation of a sentence.

Every Queen Mother has the right to choose one wife for the chief, who becomes his "senior wife," and to replace her if she dies. The senior wife or, if she has grown very old her daughter, is the potential regent When the king goes to war. She takes the chief’s name and the Queen Mother calls her me ’ba (my child), and she calls the Queen Mother ena (mother). The regent, originally only a woman of the royal harem, has, however, from her want of training, no knowledge of customary law and of court procedure, and the whole of these duties devolve upon the Queen Mother, who holds court and decides cases with the full powers of the chief. But more than this, for in the ordinary way, when the chief is in residence, the Queen Mother seems to have jurisdiction in her own court over women connected with her own attendants and also in all cases of disputes between the chief and his wives. Moreover, the Queen Mother has her own "spokeswomen." She appears to have jurisdiction also in certain cases where males are the litigants; it was and is, I believe, still the practice, on application being made by both parties, to have cases transferred from the chief’s to the Queen Mother’s court where litigation is cheaper. The Queen Mother was entitled, I am imformed, to a share of the court fees (oath fees) derived from cases heard in the chief’s court.

The Queen Mother’s share of oath fees at Bekwai was formerly as follows. The fee was divided into three parts; one-third was allocated to the male stool, and of the remaining two-thirds, one-third was handed over to the woman’s stool. The Queen Mother, as most of us know, has her own stool, but she is also custodian (with her stool officials) of the blackened stools of departed Queen Mothers, and she performs the rites in connection with these at the wuku and kwesi adae ceremonies.

Every Queen Mother has to be in daily attendance at the chief’s "palace," and should she not put in an appearance, the chief sends to inquire after her health every day that she is unable to attend.

At the ceremonies at which the departed ancestral ghosts are propitiated (the adae), when the chief has completed the ceremony in the stool house and received his subjects, he may not return to his room until the Queen Mother has come to salute him, and if this old lady cares to do so she will keep him waiting for a considerable time before she puts in an appearance.

The Queen Mother had and still has in an ever lessening degree, a great influence over all the women. She attends ceremonies connected with birth and puberty, and is (or was) personally concerned with the morals of the young generation. Today the Queen Mothers are unrecognized by us and their position and influence are rapidly passing away. Many of us have only been made conscious of her presence by her "troublesome" activities in stool palavers; some of us may have been in the habit of going out of our way to speak to the old lady, feeling rather than knowing she was a power to be reckoned with. Official recognition she has none.

I have myself been surprised at the results of my investigations. I found it difficult to believe what is here described is still in some measure alive today. I have asked the old men and women why I did not know all this—I had spent very many years in Ashanti. The answer is always the same: "The white man never asked us this; you have dealings with and recognize only the men; we supposed the European considered women of no account, and we know you do not recognize them as we have always done."¹

¹Rattray, R. S.n/an/an/an/a, , 77–80, 82–84 (Clarendon Press. By permission).