56 MAN I PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



inland power, perhaps the conquering Muhammadans of the 

 Ghana or Mali empire. They were saved, however, some by 

 eating of the s/ia?i, others of the fan plant, and of these words, 



with the verb di, "to eat," were made the tribal 

 Folklore* 1 names Shan-di, Fan-di, now Ashanti, Fanti. The 



seppiriba plant, said to have been eaten by the 

 Fanti, is still called fan when cooked. 



Other traditions refer to a time when all were of one speech, 

 and lived in a far country beyond Salagha, open, flat, with little 

 bush, and plenty of cattle and sheep, a tolerably accurate descrip- 

 tion of the inland Sudanese plateaux. But then came a red 

 people, said to be the Fulahs, Muhammadans, who oppressed 

 the blacks and drove them to take refuge in the forests. Here 

 they thrived and multiplied, and after many vicissitudes they 

 came down, down, until at last they reached the coast, with the 

 waves rolling in, the white foam hissing and frothing on the 

 beach, and thought it was all boiling water until some one 

 touched it and found it was not hot, and so to this day they call 

 the sea Eh-huru den o nni shew, "Boiling water not hot," but far 

 inland the sea is still " Boiling water 1 ." 



To Col. Ellis we are indebted especially for the true explana- 

 tion of the much used and abused term fetish, as applied to the 

 native beliefs. It was of course already known to be not an 

 . African but a Portuguese word 2 , meaning a charm, 



its true amulet, or even witchcraft. But Ellis shows how it 



came to be wrongly applied to all forms of animal 

 and nature worship, and how the confusion was increased by 

 De Brosses' theory of a primordial fetishism, and by his statement 

 that it was impossible to conceive a lower form of religion than 

 fetishism, which might therefore be assumed to be the beginning 

 of all religion 3 . 



1 The Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 332 sq. 



2 Feiti$o, whence also feiticeira, a witch, feiticeria, sorcery, &c., all from 

 feitifo, artificial, handmade, from ~La.\..facio 2cn.&factitius. 



3 Du Ciilte des Dieiix Fetiches, 1760. It is generally supposed that the 

 word was invented, or at least first introduced, by De Brosses; but Ellis shows 

 that this also is a mistake, as it had already been used by Bosnian in his 

 Description of Guinea, London, 1705. 



