THERE WAS ONCE a hunter. After he got up in the morning he used to go to the bush to seek for game to kill so that he might get some to eat and some to sell.

Now one day he went to the bush and he heard Kokotee, the bush pig, call out to its kinsman, “Kokotee Asamoa!”

He replied, “Yes, brother, yes.” Kokotee again called, “The time for work on our farms has arrived. Let us go to the blacksmith’s forge that he may fashion the iron and put an edge on our cutting tools, so that, if we have to cut down any trees, we may be able to do so.”

When the bush pig called to his brothers, the hunter crouched down and hid, and he heard all the conversation. Now Kokotee’s brother asked, “And to what village shall we go to have the iron struck?”

Kokotee replied, “We shall go to the village called Across-the Stream.”

And his brother said, “what day?”

He replied, “Monday.”

The hunter heard all this arrangement and set off for home. When he came home, he told the headman of Across-the-Stream the news, namely, what he had heard when he had gone to the bush. And the hunter said to the headman of the village, “Let the children go and cut logs and bring them, and when, on Monday, the bush pigs change themselves into people and come, we shall take them and fasten them to the logs.”

The children went and cut the logs and brought them. The headman of the village went and told the village blacksmith to beat out iron staples for him. And the blacksmith asked the headman, “And all this quanity of iron staples which you say I must beat out – what are you going to do with them?”

And he told him the news – how a hunter had gone to the bush and come back to report that on Monday certain beasts would turn themselves into people in order to come to his forge to have tools forged. The blacksmith ran off to beat the iron staples quickly. As soon as chief had finished collecting the logs and staples, he caused the town crier to beat the iron gong, saying, “On Monday, be it woman , or be it man, no one must go anywhere.”

Monday arrived, and in the morning an old woman said to the hunter, “Go and grind peppers, salt, and onions at the place where the beasts will peel off their skins and lay them down. Do you also, when you go there, take the peppers and rub them on. When the beasts come there, and we catch them, should some escape and go to take their skins again and put them on, then the peppers will hurt them, and they will throw the skins off and will become people again.”

The hunter went off to the bush and he hid there. And he heard the bush pigs calling, “Kokotess Asamoa, Monday has arrived, let us go.” So they all came. They peeled off their skins and put them down. Now one of the pigs, who was a doctor of herbs, was among them and let them go away. He went and took all the skins and rubbed on them the peppers which they had mashed, and then took the skins and pout them in the stream, letting the water take them away. The skin of the medicine-man, however, which had been out aside from the rest, the hunter did not see.

The hunter went home, and the chief called the people gathered round the blacksmith’s forge and made them come to his house. When these people came to the chief’s house, they inquired of the chief, “Why have you called us?”

The chief said, “You were once my men, and you ran away to settle elsewhere. Today you have come back – that is the reason I say you must come, for I will not permit you to go away any more.”

The beasts said to the chief, “What you have said we have heard. But we know that the Creator’s hunter came and told you all about us. However, that does not matter. We and you will live together, although we know that what you say is false. Nevertheless that, also, does not matter; we thank that hunter. So we and you will live together. But there is one thing which we taboo, namely, that you disclose our origin, of that any of your subjects should disclose our origin. Should that happen, we shall break up this, your tribe, and depart.”

Now at the time the chief went to call them, the medicine-man and some others ran away. And the medicine-man went to take his skin and he escaped; but the rest turned back. That was because they could not find their skins. The chief agreed to the conditions laid down by the beasts, and the human beings and the beasts lived happily together.

After a while the men of the village married some of the beasts’ women-folk and they bore children. Now one day one of the beasts and one of the villagers were fighting with their fists. Thereupon the villager said to the beast, “Take yourself off from there – an animal like you who belongs to the bush-pig tribe!” No sooner had he said this than the eyes of all the beasts became red, and they went to the chief’s house to tell him, saying, “The possibility about which we told you has now actually come about, so what are you going to do?”

The chief made them go and call the people who had caused the dispute. The chief looked closely into the matter and gave judgement that the beasts should drop the charge because, he said, it was a long time since they had come and this, moreover, was the first occasion on which anyone had ever said anything to them about their origin.

But the beasts said, “We do not agree.”

And the chief said, “You will not listen, and you think that what this man said is a lie. Are you not bush pigs?

And the beasts said, “Oh! We have heard.”

Thereupon the beasts and the Across-the-Stream people fought. The beasts destroyed the village until there remained only about ten people. These begged for mercy and told the beasts that they had right on their side. The beasts listened, and then informed the people, saying, “A case already stated is not difficult to understand. Now if you and we are to live together, we taboo all allusion to our origin. If you ever think of or mention it again, then we will ask you to point out to us the very thicket whence we came to this place, that we may return thither.”

And the people said, “We will never so such a thing again. What we have done has caused our tribe to be ruined; we shall never do so again.”

So they caused a public proclamation to be made by beating the odawuro gong to the effect that now one should ever tell of another person’s origin, lest the disclosure should cause the town to be ruined.

[ ASHANTI ]