THE TALLENSI 249
domestic economy—firewood, shea (Butyrospermum parkti) fruit, &c. The products of the locust-bean tree (Parkia filicoidea) are exceptionally valuable, but not always freely obtainable (cf. below, pp. 258, 259).
The hazards of agriculture are enormous. The rainfall is precarious. An inopportune dry spell during the rainy season1 may ruin the crops and create widespread privation. A generation ago, a prolonged drought spelt famine, when men in desperation seized their own or their neighbours' children to pawn or sell them into slavery among the Mamprusi for food. Nowadays such catastrophes can be averted by purchasing grain from more fortunate areas. Locusts are another unpredictable menace. Food is chronically insufficient; for even in an excellent season few people have the surplus to lay up supplies against a setback.
Fixed cultivation entails permanent and stable settlements and thus profoundly influences the political system. In the older settlements, the core of the society, an economically independent man farms land transmitted to him from his forebears, whose graves are beside his homestead. Security of tenure approximating to full proprietorial rights is the rule. In some settlements, farm-land (kuo)—i.e. the rights of tillage—can be alienated subject to the consent of potential heirs.2 Elsewhere the sale of land is a sin against the Earth. In any case only extreme necessity will force a man to sell a farm. The home farms (saman) are a precious patrimony sanctified by the labour of former generations and held in trust for future generations. To sell this land is little short of sacrilege. To a lesser degree, this applies also to bush farms.
An essential element in the ecological adjustment of the natives has been a steady expansion into the uncultivated tracts bordering the older settlements. Pressure of population and low technical efficiency appear to have been the main causes of this process of
1 In common with other parts of the Sudanese climatic zone, the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast experience two well-defined seasons, a rainy season yielding, in the region of Taleland,amean annual rainfall of about 43 in., which lasts from April to mid-November, and an entirely rainless dry season lasting from mid-November to the end of March.
2 Land is only alienated to clansfolk, kinsfolk, or co-members of the same local community, never to complete strangers. This is a consequence of the high degree of congruence between local grouping and genealogical grouping. Tale agricultural economy is more fully dealt with in M. and S. L. Fortes, 'Food in the Domestic Economy of the Tallensi', Africa, ix, 2, 1936.