Osei Tutu I

Osei Kofi Tutu I was born around 1660 at Kokofu, in the Akan forest country of what is now Ghana. By the matrilineal custom of his people, he was the nephew and heir of Obiri Yeboa, ruler of the small state of Kwaman, later renamed Kumasi. As a young man he was sent to the court of Denkyira, then the dominant Akan power of the region, where he learned the ways of statecraft and war before circumstances forced him to flee to the powerful state of Akwamu.

At Akwamu he studied the most advanced military and political organization of any Akan state, and there he formed his enduring alliance with the priest Okomfo Anokye. When his uncle died, Osei Tutu returned to take the stool of Kumasi, and Anokye came with him. Together they forged from scattered, rival chiefdoms a single nation bound by shared purpose against the domination of Denkyira.

According to Asante tradition, Okomfo Anokye called down the Golden Stool — the Sika Dwa Kofi — as the resting place of the soul of the whole people, the sacred symbol of a unity no single chief could claim. Around it Osei Tutu built a confederation, a capital at Kumasi, the Odwira festival, and a constitution flexible enough to endure for generations.

In 1701, at the Battle of Feyiase, his united forces crushed Denkyira and its king Ntim Gyakari, ending that empire's supremacy and founding the Asante state that would stand for nearly two centuries. He fell in 1717, struck down crossing the River Pra on campaign. May the founder of a nation, who taught scattered peoples that they were one, be honored across the ages.