"Lodholz' Report for the Third Quarter of 1869"

Reports a great deal of activity in fetish customs, especially led by a woman of the royal house, the matron Sekyira. He interprets this as intended to restore fetishes to their earlier reverence, and also to hinder street-preaching. Their reception in street-preaching has not been injured by the Asante incident. Lodholz offers the biographies of two Kibi-young men who quite of their own free-will had registered as baptismal candidates. The men had been once in an organic connection with the mission, but were now in no connection with it, other than baptismal candidates: (i) Kwaku Sakyi - from the house of the elder Kwasi Amoako. His sister is a wife of the king - she had in the past year born twins (a boy and a girl) and these had been quickly drowned in secret, for the king had also become the father of twin boys shortly before, and this new birth was thought to be a threat to the family. He had been at school for a time in the early 1860s, but about 1863 was forced to carry out custom for his mother by the head of the family and since then had contracted a debt and taken to drink. Lodholz interprets his conversion as coming from a desire to live free of his adults. (ii) Kofi Doku. The man who had accidental struck the Okyenhene. He had become part of Kwasi Amoako’s household through his father, who had been assigned as part of the annual tribute of men for Asante and had been bought free of this by Amoako. (The father was from Akim-Akropong). He also had spent some time in the Basel Mission school, but had been persuaded to withdraw.

13.10.1869

13.10.1869

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