"Johannes Müller to Basel"

Müller is the District Praeses (chairman). Proposing the stationing of Basel Mission personnel in Nkonya and other districts. In the first part of the letter Miller argues that there is spare missionary strength on the Gold Coast available for work in new districts. The background to this appears to be a handing over of responsibility in the Akwapim area to local workers, and he also considers it easy to overstaff the Begoro-Kibi and Abetifi stations. The obvious new area for the mission is the trans-Volta Twi-speaking tribes. Not only has their opposition to the Asante overlordship prepared people, Twi has spread as a common language, and their tribulations .have disillusioned them about their fetishes. From Krepe to the neighbourhood of Salaga they have put themselves under the protection of Dente and honour the Sundays. The fetish priest of Dente did not hinder them, so that they have a new area for mission work spreading 100 or more hours into the interior. The Krepe area though and Ewe area, is one where Twi is spoken. It would be necessary to have a linking station in it between Anum and the north, staffed by a local worker. Amfoi is suggested - the people there had already asked David Asante for a teacher. In Nkonya they visited Prapraasi, Ntschumuru, Kogyabi, Antomada, Tapo, Wurupon, and calculate a population of 10,000. The gospel is not completely strange to them because Nkonya people will spend weeks or even months in Larteh, and say that they notice the life, conduct and liturgies of the Christians there. A woman who had lived in Akropong brought them a small present and asked them to set up mission stations like those in Akwapim in Nkonya. In a conference with the chief of Nkonya and his subchiefs (20 Jan 84) the chiefs wanted to know what the contents of the gospel were, and what directions the missionaries needed to give them as to what to do and not do (in reply to which they were directed to remember the situation vis-a--vis the stations in Akwapim). In his preaching connected with this occasion Müller writes that he stressed the blessings which follow from following Christ, and what the Europeans have become through accepting Christianity. The towns visited in Boem were: Gyasekan I & II, Broada, Guamang, Kogye, Worawora. The latter he suggests would be best for a mission station if it were not on the edge of the district. The poverty of the people impressed him - he presumes that this is because they have been cut off from the coast by Akwamu and Anglo. They were given a good welcome, by the fetish priests as well as the people (a fetish – priestess in Broada and the chief-fetishpriest in Gyasekan are specifically cited - the latter's invitations to them to stay with him were very pressing, and in the end they had to accept a gift of cowries food etc. from him). The letter ends with a firm suggestion that Anum be taken over by a European missionary, while David Asante devotes himself to the work further inland, based on Nkonya.

23.03.1884

23.03.1884

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