the gods until the chosen day So, for many days thousands of men and women of the Amantoo nation came to Kwaaman, all wearing beads and woven or printed cloths and ornaments of gold and copper and brass. Some wore the well-prepared skins of forest beasts; some wore kilts of palm leaf fiber; many brought food and drink, driving in sheep and goats or carrying sacks of meal and roots, or great calabashes full of palm wine, and gave them to Osei Tutu, who was able in this way to feed all that multitude. The lesser henes came with their queen mothers who were delicately marked with fine blue tattooing so that they were perpetually veiled. The drums sounded all day and all night; dancers danced, and the dust rose between the thick clay walls of the houses of Kwaaman, splendidly decorated with raised patterns, and in the great open space where King Osei Tutu sat with counsellors and drummers and horn blowers, his executioners and his speakers, who when he wished to speak to the people, made themselves his voices. They carried staves of gold and ivory, splendidly carved into animals and fruits and symbols. But the Kwaamanhene Osei Tutu wore the most wonderful golden ornaments; on his fingers were many weighty rings, each made into some figure about which there was a story or saying. His wrists were weighted down by nobbled gold bracelets, so that he must support his hands on the shoulders of his servants. Round his head was a circlet of pure gold, and his sandals were heavy with golden lumps. His chest was bare so that all could see the strength of his breathing, and round his waist was the cloth woven in thin stripes of many colors which proclaimed him as Amantoohene, just as the Kente worn by his chiefs proclaimed their lineage. His mother, Manu, also wore gold, but she was old, and her hair grey and lost the beauty of her youth, for she had borne many children. Yet for not her, this great festival would not have been set up. Okomfo Anokye had spoken to them both, the Hene and Queen Mother, in the dark of night. He had spoken of a way of overcoming Denkyira, of making the Amantoo into a great nation, ruler of all the Akan states, trading with the caravans of the north across Bornu and