“It is a difficult task that he is set to, but in this matter he has all-powerful helpers in the female members of the family, who will be either the aunts, or the sisters, or the cousins, or the nieces of the headman; and as their interests are identical with his in every particular, the good women spontaneously train up their children to implicit obedience to the headman, whose rule in the family thus becomes a simple and an easy matter.  ’The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.’  What a power for good in the native state system would the mothers of the Gold Coast and Ashanti become by judicious training upon native lines!

“The headman is par excellence the judge of his family or ward.  Not only is he called upon to settle domestic squabbles, but frequently he sits judge over more serious matters arising between one member of the ward and another; and where he is a man of ability and influence, men from other wards bring him their disputes to settle.  When he so settles disputes, he is entitled to a hearing fee, which, however, is not so much as would be payable in the regular court of the king or chief.

“The headman is naturally an important member of his company and often is a captain thereof.  When he combines the two offices of headman and captain, he renders to the community a very important service.  For in times of war, where the members of the ward would not serve cordially under a stranger, they would in all cases face any danger with their own kinsman as their leader.  The headman is always succeeded by his uterine brother, cousin, or nephew—­the line of succession, that is to say, following the customary law."[49]

We may contrast this picture with the more warlike Bantus of Southeast Africa.  Each tribe lived by itself in a town with from five to fifteen thousand inhabitants, surrounded by gardens of millet, beans, and watermelon.  Beyond these roamed their cattle, sheep, and goats.  Their religion was ancestor worship with sacrifice to spirits and the dead, and some of the tribes made mummies of the corpses and clothed them for burial.  They wove cloth of cotton and bark, they carved wood and built walls of unhewn stone.  They had a standing military organization, and the tribes had their various totems, so that they were known as the Men of Iron, the Men of the Sun, the Men of the Serpents, Sons of the Corn Cleaners, and the like.  Their system of common law was well conceived and there were organized tribunals of justice.  In difficult cases precedents were sought and learned antiquaries consulted.  At the age of fifteen or sixteen the boys were circumcised and formed into guilds.  The land was owned by the tribe and apportioned to the chief by each family, and the main wealth of the tribe was in its cattle.

In general, among the African clans the idea of private property was but imperfectly developed and never included land.  The main mass of visible wealth belonged to the family and clan rather than to the individual; only in the matter of weapons and ornaments was exclusive private ownership generally recognized.