IDNO

N.102197.MF

Description

In the foreground there are two Tallensi men wearing loin cloths and hoeing farm land. In the background a Tallensi compound and trees are visible. The compound consists of several adobe and thatched huts with boundary walls

Place

W Africa; Ghana; Upper East Region [Gold Coast; Northern Territories]

Cultural Affliation

Tallensi

Named Person

Photographer

?Fortes, Meyer

Collector / Expedition

Fortes, Meyer

Date

?May - ?June 1934

Collection Name

Fortes Collection

Source

Drucker-Brown, Susan

Format

Glass Negative Halfplate

Primary Documentation

Other Information

N.102188.MF - N.102198.MF were kept in the box now numbered C552/.

Context: Reference to the table previously given shows that, on an average, a single unit of food economy is dependant upon the labour of two men and comprises 1.4 households and two primary families. The head of the unit of food economy is entitled to as much assistance as is necessary for the cultivation and harvesting of his compound farms from the junior men, his brothers, sons or nephews belonging to that unit, and to the help of all the women of the unit in sowing and harvesting. He is responsible for the supply of seed, for most of the implements, and he stores the grain in his granaries. In return, all who help him are entitled to share in the produce. Boys and unmarried young men, dependant upon the wives of the head for cooked food, always assist him in the cultivation of his valley and bush lands. A junior householder need not. If he is ambitious, industrious, or merely planning for the day when he can break away from the control of the head, he cultivate his own bush farm. He supplies his own seed and the produce is his to dispose of as he pleases. Even an adolescent boy may be given a small plot (sinsiar) on his father’s compound farm to cultivate, the produce of which is absolutely his own. This is one of the ways in which a boy acquires a few chickens and lays the foundations for economic independence which he gradually reaches in the course of years. Every independent cultivator thus augments the food supply of his own household and family, but not of the whole unit.
This differentiation is even more marked with subsidiary crops, of which the most important is ground-nuts (sukpaam: arachis hypogea). The head of a self-supporting unit interplants ground-nuts with his early millet on the compound farm. The crop yielded is his property, though any member of the unit can help himself to some for food. But, in addition, almost every man and boy able to wield a hoe and most adult women have their own ground-nut fields (sukpalan). These are made on patches of compound land unsuitable for other crops and not required at the time, and always borrowed specifically for this purpose from kinsmen and friends. Women rarely obtain their ground-nut fields from their husbands. They prefer to beg land from their own cognatic kinsmen, thus emphasizing their absolute independence of their husbands as regards this crop.
For this reason they never receive assistance from their husbands with the hoeing and planting of their ground-nut fields. A son often assists his mother; or young women ‘invite’ (pooh) a couple of young kinsmen of their husband to hoe their ground-nut fields in return for a very good meal, the grain for which the woman generally provides from her own resources. Many, again, have simply to rely on their own skill with the hoe. The ground-nut crop thus gained is the woman’s to consume or sell, as she pleases.” Fortes, 1936.

Bibliographical Reference: Fortes, M. and Fortes, S. 1936. “Food in the Domestic Economy of the Tallensi”. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 9, No. 2, Problems of African Native Diet. pp. 237 - 276.

Fortes, Meyer, 1945. Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi (London: Oxford University Press).

Fortes, Meyer, 1949. The Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi (London: Oxford University Press).

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 20/3/2008] [Alicia Fentiman, 30/4/2008]