FON AND EWE RELIGION. The Ewe and Fon, related linguistically and culturally, live along the coast and in the hinterland of Benin (formerly Dahomey), Togo, and eastern Ghana in West Africa. They number some three million; depend on fishing, intensive farming, and crafts (especially weaving); and live mostly in towns and large villages.

Europeans in contact with the Fon of Dahomey late in the seventeenth century left an exotic and exaggerated picture of kings, wealth, women soldiers ("Amazons"), brutal human sacrifice, and slave trading; such a picture has fallen into disrepute. Today the seat of the royal family is still centered in the towns of Abomey and Kana, which differ somewhat in both social organization and religion from the hinterland. The people today are organized into dispersed patrilineal clans in each of which the oldest living man is said to be "between...