Book Description

Excerpt from The Ewe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa: Their Religion, Manners, Customs, Laws, Languages, &C The kindly manner in which the Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, my first essay in anthropology, was received by the press, has encouraged me to persevere in the task which I had proposed to myself when I commenced to write that book, and which was to show, by examples taken from certain negro peoples of the West Coast of Africa, how the evolution of religion may proceed. The peoples I had in mind were - (1) The Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast;(2) The Ga-spcaking peoples of the Gold Coast; (3) The Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast; and (4) The Yoruba-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast; whose languages all belong to one family, and who have apparently all sprung from one common stock. These peoples are situated on the West Coast of Africa in the above order, beginning with the most westerly, and the date of their separation into their present lingual groups must have been rather remote, as Tshi, Ga, Ewe, and Yoruba are now four distinct languages, whose common origin can only be determined by their construction and roots. The people of these four groups have not progressed equally since their separation. Speaking generally, it may be said that, proceeding from west to east, we find a gradual advance in civilization; the Tshi-speaking peoples being the least, and the Yoruba-speaking peoples the most, advanced. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.