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From: Natasha Gray
List Editor: Mel Page <africa@ACCESS.ETSU.EDU>
Editor's Subject: Homosexuality in Asante Culture: Query
Author's Subject: Homosexuality in Asante Culture: Query
Date Written: Fri, 01 Dec 2000
Date Posted: Sat, 01 Dec 2000 17:06:39 -0500

         <natasha.gray@lawrence.edu>

I would like to take advantage of this discussion to bring up a
question I had about Rev. Carl Christian Reindorf's book,
_History of the Gold Coast and Asante_, published in 1895. In
the first edition of this book Reindorf describes the founder
of Asante, Osei Tutu as being the male consort of the King of
Akwamu.  This episode was expunged from later editions of the
history, I believe, by Reindorf's son.

Reindorf wrote that Osei Tutu fled Denkyira and sought refuge
in Akwamu. The King of Akwamu, Ansa:

"hearing of the arrival of a good looking Asante prince in one
of his towns, invited him to his house.  His bold and majestic
appearance as well as his personal beauty attracted Ansa's love,
that he there and then took him to be his male-consort.  It is
fashionable with the Tshi kings that any woman, to whom they
take a fancy, becomes a wife of the king.  With a male person in
a similar case a connection is formed of tender love, estimation
and protection.  On account of this love shown to the Asante
prince, all the monarchs of Akwamu considered the kings of
Asante their male-consorts."

This seems to me a remarkably frank and tolerant, especially
for a Presbyterian minister in 1895, description of a
homosexual love affair. It seems highly doubtful to me that
Reindorf, who was born on the Gold Coast and lived his entire
life there, was misapplying the western ideas about homosexual
identity (which were still very much in formation at the time
this work was published) to Akan culture.

I wonder if anyone else has written about this account or
inquired into it?  Is there such a tradition between the kings
of Asante and the kings of Akwamu?

For the full reference see:

Rev. Carl Christian Reinforf
_History of the Gold Coast and Asante: Based on Traditions and
Historical Facts, Comprising A Period Of More Than Three
Centuries From About 1500 to 1860_
Basel: 1895  Citation from page 49

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