4 - Tales of Cowries, Money, and Slaves

Summary

The trade in shell money cowries started in the fourteenth century and ended by the 1880s. The shells arrived from the Indian and Pacific oceans and were traded all over the world. This chapter presents three versions of the widely distributed myths about cowries. The first was collected by Gregor Elwert in Ayizo region in Benin. It represents the voices of the Ayizo, a people who fought to escape enslavement. The second tale was collected by Louis Adotevi in southern Togo. It expresses the traders' point of view. The Guin-Mina people were able to enrich themselves from slave trade by both selling humans beings and profiting of the natural growing of cowries on the bodies of drowned slaves. The Tchamba Tale is the third version of cowrie's tale in Lomè from Kokou Atchinou. The tale expresses the voices of the masters' descendants who remember their grandfathers' past.