West African Narratives of Slavery: Texts from Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Ghana

1. Enslavement Remembered

1. Enslavement Remembered In 1929, the Ewe Evangelical Church minister Samuel Quist recorded the life history of Aaron Kuku, an evangelist who had been enslaved by the Asante more than fifty years earlier, in 1870.1 Captured as a child, Kuku related to Quist memories of his enslavement, his relocation to Asante, where he had two different masters, and his eventual escape and return to his hometown of Petewu some sixteen years later. Kuku’s experience was far from unique, however. Thousands had been captured during the Asante’s 1869 to 1871 campaign east of the Volta.2 This group included the Basel missionaries Ramseyer and Kühne as well as the French trader M. Bonnat, all of whom wrote vivid accounts of their experiences.3 Kuku’s narrative—while of little literary value—is, however, quite unusual. It is one of the few life histories recorded in West Africa that documents the experiences of someone who was enslaved but not exported to the Americas. Like the East and Central African slave narratives collected and published by Marcia Wright and Edward Alpers, Kuku’s account tells us a great deal about the enslavement experience: who was captured, when and how; the fear and terror that accompanied not only one’s capture but also the suffering and humiliation endured during the transfer to a new home; the uncertainty and unpredictability of life for first-generation slaves that could have significant psychological impacts on the enslaved.4 But Kuku’s narrative does more than this. It raises fascinating questions about the discursive terrain that shaped both the content and the character of the narrative. Why would a former slave want to share his life history with a missionary? Why did Kuku’s amanuensis, Samuel Quist, have an interest in recording this life history, and what purposes did the narrative serve? AAroN kUkU ANd THE rEvErENd SAMUEL QUIST: A gUIdEd CoLLAborATIoN Aaron Kuku first came to the attention of the Bremen Mission c. 1900 when he converted to Christianity after hearing two local traveling missionaries preach Aaron kuku 22 in the area. In responding to the Christian message he heard, Kuku was not unlike many Ewe-speaking individuals during this period. As the historian H. Debrunner and anthropologist Birgit Meyer have noted, “after the Asante wars, confidence in the tribal guardian spirits was a good deal shaken. . . . The new religion provided new ideal orientations and material prospects in a situation of crisis.”5 What was unusual was that Kuku also agreed to relate in remarkable detail his life history to Rev. Quist. Why he did so and why his amanuensis was interested in recording the narrative probably had to do with their close friendship , Kuku’s deep interest in education, and Quist’s role in deciding, as a leader of the Ewe Evangelical Church and its schools, what materials should be adopted. Texts such as local Ewe fables and proverbs had long been used in the local schools run first by the North German Missionary Society (the Bremen Mission), andthenlaterfrom1922byitsAfrican-runsuccessor,theEweEvangelicalChurch with which Quist was affiliated. But the autobiographical statements that the Bremen Mission and then the Ewe church encouraged its members to write about their own spiritual development had never been incorporated into the curriculum . The Bremen Mission had published spiritual biographies of its Christian Evangelist Aaron Kuku, 1929. Courtesy of Norddeutsche Mission. Enslavement remembered 23 African converts and associates in the 1860s. These, however, were written in German and printed in the Bremen Mission’s publications largely to enlighten their supporters in Germany. Little of this kind of material had been produced in the Ewe language for a local audience.6 Yet if biographies, autobiographies, and life histories were developed, they could serve as models for the kind of life church members were expected to lead. Thus in 1929 and 1930, the Ewe Evangelical Church began to produce Ewe-language studies of notable Ewe-speaking Christians that could be used to encourage others to lead an exemplary Christian life. Quist’s work with Kuku was part of this initiative. The production of Kuku’s life history was clearly a collaborative effort. Without Kuku’s cooperation, there would have been no narrative at all. Still, it was Quist who structured the interviews and who then recorded and edited Kuku’s life history. Using as one of his templates the autobiographical conversion narratives that both the Bremen Mission and the...