Baden-Powell brought many ideas home from the Ashanti campaign, in what is now Ghana in West Africa. Many of them are still in use in Scouting today.
The Gold Coast, now Ghana, was a colony of the British Empire. B-P was sent there in 1895 to raise a native force to oppose the powerful Ashanti tribe. The Ashanti (Asante) were well known as fierce fighters, with the slogan
If I go forward I die
If I go backward I die
Better go forward and die
Baden-Powell’s force was made up of hundreds of warriors from the Krobos, Elima, Mumford and Adansi tribes. They had to scout out a new route through the jungle, in enemy territory, and pioneer a new road which the main British force could follow to attack the Ashanti capital of Kumasi.
Pioneering in the jungle
Making a road through the jungle meant clearing the thick growth, laying roads through marshes, and constructing bridges over rivers and streams. B-P made sure his force was trained in skills of axe-manship, pioneering and knotting. They built more than 200 bridges from spars and lashed together with vines.
The Ashanti used drums for signalling over long distances, and the intricate language of the drums could be heard every night booming through the jungle.
Scout patrols
From the people of Ghana, Baden-Powell learnt the phrase “softly softly catchy monkey” – and he learnt that he could get the best work out of his force by dividing it into small groups, or patrols, and giving responsibility to the captain of each group.
The Scout Staff
The Scout Staff was copied from one used in the Ashanti campaign, to test the depths of swamps, to feel the way at night while secretly scouting out the enemy positions, and also used to hang telegraph wires from the branches of the jungle.
“It was in Ashanti, on the West Coast of Africa where my particular job was to organize and command a corps of native Scouts and Pioneers.“We were accordingly working two or three days in advance of the main body of European Troops and in the densest primeval jungle and forest, without roads or paths of any kind to guard us.
“In order to circumvent the enemy much of our advance had to be carried out by night, which meant difficulties at nearly every step among fallen timber, boggy streams, tussocks of reeds and bushes, etc.
“Without a staff, one could not have got along at all.”
– B-P
The Left Handshake
There are two stories about the origin of the left handshake in Scouting. The first is simply that the left hand is closest to the heart. But there is also a much more interesting story, which comes from the Ashanti tribe itself.
When B-P entered the Kumasi, the capital city of the Ashanti, he was greeted by a warrior chief who held out his left hand. He told B-P “the bravest of the brave shake with the left hand.” So began the left handshake which is used by millions of Scouts all over the world.
The explanation of the left handshake is that a warrior uses the left hand to hold the shield, while the right-hand holds the spears. So to show your trust in someone, you put down the shield and greet them by holding out your left hand.
An African Scout
Baden-Powell learnt many of his Scouting skills in Africa. During the Matabele Campaign in 1896, he frequently mentioned the name of Jan Grootboom, a Xhosa from the Eastern Cape (although Baden-Powell refers to him as a Zulu). Grootboom had come to Matabeleland as a wagon driver for a missionary named Helm. At the height of the campaign, Grootboom distinguished himself as a courageous and exceptional man especially when it came to scouting around the Matabele camps and outposts. Grootboom had great respect for Baden-Powell, and as we shall see below, the feeling was mutual.
Baden-Powell writes:
He had the guts of the best of men. Though I knew Zululand, I was new to Rhodesia and its people and I needed therefore a really reliable guide and Scouting comrade.
To do our job he and I used to ride out from our outpost as soon as night had set in. This enabled us to get through the intervening 25 miles of country in good time to conceal ourselves near the enemy position at dawn, then to ascertain his exact whereabouts by observing his camp-fires as they lit up for cooking the morning meal. Our work lay among rocky kopjes. I found with my rubber-soled shoes I was able to get about more rapidly than Jan and in fact the enemy. In this way the enemy got to know me fairly well; they gave me the name of ‘Impeesa’- the beast that creeps about at night.
One night we had crept down to near the enemy stronghold and were waiting there to see his morning fires so as to ascertain his position. Presently the first fire was lit and then another and yet another.
Jan suddenly growled: “The brutes are laying a trap for us.” He slipped off all his clothing and left it lying in a heap and stole off into the darkness practically naked.
The worst of spying is that it makes you suspicious, even of your best friends; so as soon as Jan was gone I crept away in another direction, taking the horses with me, and got among some rocks where I would have some chance if he had any intention of betraying me. For an hour or more I lay there while the sun rose until, at last, I saw Jan crawling back through the grass – alone. Ashamed of my doubts, I crept to him and found him grinning all over with satisfaction while he was putting on his clothes again.
He said that he had found, as he had expected, an ambush laid for us. The thing that made him suspicious was that the fires, instead of flaring up at different points all over the hillside simultaneously, had been lighted in steady succession, one after the other, apparently by one man going around to light them. He himself had pressed in towards them by a route from which he was able to perceive a party of them lying out in the grass close to the track which we should probably have used had we gone on.
Source: Scouting.org.za||
