3-065-784 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ashantee War: selling Indian corn in the streets of Cape Coast Castle, 1874. 'The market at Cape Coast Castle is a lively scene when the Fantee housewives are bargaining over their small purchases of food and other domestic stores. Of these perhaps the most important is maize or Indian corn, which they have many ways of cooking with different relishes, soups, and stews of whatever flesh they can get. The word "Fantee," the name of their nation, is said to have originally signified "eater of cabbage" or green vegetables, which is Fan-didi in the Otyi language; whereas the eater of grain was called Shan-didi, or Ashantee, in the same common speech of their ancient progenitors. Grain, however, of such kinds as maize, sorghum, and Guinea grain, is cultivated by the Fantees, in a slovenly manner; but they produce more of yams, sweet potatoes, the brinjal or egg-plant (solanum esculentum), the cassada [sic], plantain, and banana, and other fruits of a tropical clime'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.