Excerpt from The Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast: Their Customs, Religion and Folklore In these days, when the phenomenon generally termed "civilisation" is extending, to a greater or lesser degree, over the Continent of Africa, there is a growing tendency, that appears not only among European residents but among the natives themselves, to lose sight of the inner significance of the old-established native customs, which will, in course of time, inevitably disappear or become myths and "old wives' tales." It is for this reason that the publication of monographs on the ethnology of African tribes, such as that written by my colleague and friend, Mr. A. W. Cardinall, are to be welcomed. Many Europeans are too prone to sum up native customs as did the schoolboy, who, when replying to a question as to the manners and customs of the Ancient Britons, wrote, "Manners, vile; Customs, beastly." But even those African native customs that appear to us both degrading and repulsive have in them the germ of some mistaken duty to parents and superiors: of reverence to ancestors, or to an unknown Being who exercises supreme power for good or ill over the lives and destinies of his devotees. Let us take, for instance, the practice of human sacrifice that flourished for so long among the Ashantis and other West African tribes. This terrible custom signified, in its origin, nothing more or less than a blind desire on the part of the native to "honour his father," or to pay due veneration to superiors. 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.