Tallensi, also spelled Talensi, are a people of northern

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Tog ...

who speak a language of the Gur branch of the Niger-Congo language family. They grow millet and sorghum as staples and raise cattle, sheep, and goats on a small scale. Their normal domestic unit is the polygamous joint family of a man and his sons (and sometimes grandsons) with their wives and unmarried daughters. Married daughters live with their husbands in other communities, commonly nearby.

Rituals and traditions

Surrounding the first-born son

The Tallensi are

polygamous Crimes Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is marri ...

and follow a

patrilineal Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...

system of

kinship and descent In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...

. Great emphasis is placed on inheritance and the tensions surrounding parents' relationships with their children. It is considered essential for a man to have a son if he is to achieve fulfillment and be venerated as an ancestor after his death. However, the birth of a first-born son, and to a lesser extent a first-born daughter, is held to mark the culmination of a man's 'rise' in the world, and the start of his decline. Meanwhile, the son grows to replace and supplant the father. The resulting ambivalence between father and son plays an important role in Tallensi

ritual A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized ...

s and

taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

s. Taboos begin when the first-born son reaches the age of five or six. From this time on the son may not eat from the same dish as his father, wear his father's cap or tunic, carry his father's

quiver A quiver is a container for holding arrows, bolts, ammo, projectiles, darts, or javelins. It can be carried on an archer's body, the bow, or the ground, depending on the type of shooting and the archer's personal preference. Quivers were trad ...

, use his father's bow, or look into his father's

granary A granary is a storehouse or room in a barn for threshed grain or animal feed. Ancient or primitive granaries are most often made of pottery. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the stored food away from mice and other animals ...

. When the son reaches

adolescence Adolescence () is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age of majority). Adolescence is usually associated with the ...

, he may not meet his father in the entrance to the house compound. Similar taboos exist to regulate the relationship between mother and first-born daughter. The daughter, for example, may not look into her mother's storage pot. Upon the death of a father, his first-born son and daughter lead the rituals involved in his

funeral A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect ...

. The son, at this point, puts on his father's cap and tunic. A tribal elder, carrying the dead man's bow, ritually guides the son to his father's granary and shows him the inside. After his father's death the son is considered a mature man for the purposes of ritual, and it is his responsibility to make sacrifices to the ancestors, chief among them being his own father, who being recently dead is held to act as an intermediary between those still living and the more remote ancestors. It is believed that these taboos and rituals serve to channel ambivalence and resentment between generations into culturally defined and culturally acceptable means of expression.

Sacred Crocodile

Among the Tallensi tribe there is a belief in the sacred crocodile. As Meyer Fortes highlighted in his ethnographic work "The concept of the person", special crocodiles in special pools are considered persons among the Tallensi. No local man, indeed no Tallensi would dare kill or injure a sacred crocodile. Every Tallensi knows that these crocodiles are the incarnation of important clan ancestors. To kill one of these is like killing a person. It is murder of the most heinous kind and it would bring disaster on the whole clan. However, not all crocodiles are considered persons (''ni-saal'') for instance, in the rivers that are fished in the dry season - is not a person, not sacred. It can be killed and eaten.

References

* Fortes, Meyer (1974). "The First Born". ''Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry'' 15, 81–104. * Keesing, Roger Martin (1981). ''Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective'' (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. .
"Farefare"
''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

''. Retrieved 12 May 2005. The report mentions Talni as a dialect of Farefare.

Rituals and traditions

Surrounding the first-born son

Sacred Crocodile

See also

References

Further reading