Tano

Also Known As: Twi Tanoɛ; true name Ta Kora, also Ta Akora, Tano Akora, Tano Kora and Asuo Tano in the Bono and Techiman country; Tando among the Fante; the Ta- prefix marks every god reckoned to his line
Region/Culture: West Africa
Mythos: Ghanaian Mythology, West African Mythologies
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is the water of the Tano itself, able to divide into a separate local presence at every ford and crossing along its length, to speak through the mouths of possessed priests, and to raise or lower his own river.
Role in Mythos: The greatest of the abosom, the lesser gods sent down by the sky god Nyame, and the father of the whole Atano family of river divinities worshipped across Bono, Asante, Ahafo, Aowin and Anyi country.
Relation to Humans: He heals, warns and fights for the towns along his banks, and his priests are made rather than trained, seized without warning by the sound of his voice. In return he demands that his crocodiles, baboons and mudfish go untouched, that his temple stand empty on Wednesday and Thursday, and that nobody carry his water into a rival river.

The Tano comes out of a cleft of sandstone north of Techiman, and the people who live at the rock will tell you that the god is not inside the stone. He is the stone. When the colonial anthropologist Robert Rattray went looking for the greatest of the Akan gods, working in Asante through the 1910s and 1920s, he was taken first to the spring, then to the outcrop above it, then to a shrine that human hands had built and consecrated, and given to understand that all three were one being and that the being had a name older than the one strangers used. Tano is the river. Ta Kora is the god.

Every water of consequence in the country is somebody’s son. Rattray recorded a myth known from one end of Asante to the other, in which Nyame, the sky god, sent his children down to earth so that they might receive benefits from mankind and confer benefits back, and those children took the names they still carry: Tano the great river, Bosomtwe the lake near Kumasi, Bea, Opo the sea. Their tributaries are grandchildren. A priest put the theology to Rattray more neatly than any of it deserved. As a woman gives birth to a child, he said, so may water to a god.

The division of the land between the brothers is the story every Akan child gets, and the ethnographic version of it is oddly thin. Rattray declined to tell the whole thing, noting only that the machinations of the goat meant the final resting place of the waters was not what Nyame had actually intended, and that the goat is hateful to this god and forbidden to his priests. The fuller tellings, gathered later, fill in what he left out. Nyame meant to give the good forested country to one son and the dry western land to the other. The goat who carried the message had a favourite, so she went to him at nightfall and told him to present himself before dawn, then went to his twin and told him there was no hurry. The favoured son arrived in the dark wearing his brother’s cloth. Nyame, who could not see well enough to be sure, handed over the fertile land. By the time the mistake surfaced it was a gift already given, and gifts from the sky god are not returned. Which brother did the cheating depends on who is telling it. Among the Anyi of the Ivory Coast the roles reverse, and Bia is the one who came early. Either way the two rivers have hated each other ever since, and carrying water from one into the other is held to be lethal.

His other famous contest ended in a draw. Tano and Owuo, who is death, both wanted the same hunter, and they agreed that whichever of them reached him first and was asked in to supper would have the claim. Tano took the shape of an antelope and let himself be chased, which got him to the man’s door in company rather than alone, but Owuo was already there. The accounts disagree about what happened next, some describing a fight and some a contest of songs. None of them gives anyone a win. What they settle on instead is an arrangement: death arrives when he arrives, and where Tano gets there first, the sick recover. It is a strange bargain for a god who is supposed to be the strongest of the abosom, and it is also the reason the Asante made him a god of war.

He works, in practice, by multiplying. Rattray found offshoots of Tano in villages that had never seen the river, and noted that every ford and important crossing seemed to hold a local emanation of his spirit, each one with its own priest, its own shrine and its own name in the family style: Ta Kwame, Ta Kojo, Ta Kwesi, Ta Bonia, Ta Amoa. At a shrine ceremony he watched, the singers made the claim directly. I have water, I have water, I come from the Tano river. I am he who was created son of God. Priests are not recruited into this. They are taken. Most of the Asante akomfo told Rattray they had been going about ordinary business, or standing at somebody else’s ceremony, when they heard the voice of Tano and dropped where they stood.

The river repays the arrangement. When the Aowin fought the Anyi at Sutri, an island in the Tano south of Jema, the god is said to have dropped the water level far enough for them to wade across and win, and that island has been their principal Tano shrine ever since. His great shrine holds the regalia of a king, because he is one: swords, staffs, a brass pan, beads, the ornamented state umbrellas.

Almost everything alive in the river belongs to him. Fieldwork among the Bono around Techiman found mudfish, tilapia, crocodiles and baboons all protected by absolute food taboo, on the grounds that they are Tano Akora’s guards, his messengers and his children. The fish in particular are never spoken of with the ordinary Asante appetite for mockery. There is a maxim about it: from the river whose fish we do not eat, we do not take even a nugget of gold, which in that country is a serious sentence. At intervals the priests hold what is called a fishing, and it is the opposite of one. They bail a pool down, lift the live fish out by hand, and carry them across to another pool. If a fish touches the ground, the god is offended.

His limits are written into the same practice. His temple is shut on Wednesday and Thursday, days that are bad for him, and his oath is kwakuo, the Wednesday word. Women may not approach the shrine while menstruating, and a girl coming into womanhood may not cross the river until she has spent six days out at a bush village. Any of his streams that dries up in the hot season stops being his and becomes what the Asante call a rely-upon-God water. And a goat outwitted him, or outwitted his brother on his behalf, which for the king of the abosom is not a flattering origin. Nobody has ever seen him. What people describe when they describe him is a rock, a spring, a crocodile lying across a road where no crocodile should be, and a voice that arrives without warning and does not ask.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Tano in Akan mythology?

Tano, whose true name is Ta Kora, is the Akan river god of the Tano River in Ghana and eastern Côte d’Ivoire, and the greatest of the abosom, the lesser gods sent to earth by the sky god Nyame. He is worshipped by the Bono, Asante, Ahafo, Aowin and Anyi. Every Atano river divinity in Akan country is counted as one of his children.

Why are Tano and Bia enemies?

Nyame intended to divide the land between his two sons, but the goat who carried his message favoured one brother and told him to arrive before dawn in his twin’s clothing, while telling the other there was no rush. The disguised brother received the fertile forest country and the other was left with dry land. Akan tellings usually make Tano the cheat and Anyi tellings reverse it, and the two rivers have been enemies ever since.

What animals are sacred to Tano?

Mudfish, tilapia, crocodiles and baboons are all under absolute taboo along the Tano, and killing or eating them is forbidden because they are held to be Tano’s guards, messengers and children. Crocodiles appearing on land are read as a warning that trouble is coming to the community. Priests periodically bail a pool and carry the live fish to another pool by hand, taking care that no fish touches the ground.

What happened between Tano and Death?

Tano and Owuo, the personification of death, competed for a hunter, agreeing that whoever reached him first and was invited to supper would hold the claim on humanity. Tano turned himself into an antelope and let the hunter chase him home, but Owuo had already arrived, and neither god won. The compromise they reached is why death takes some people and not others, and the struggle is why the Asante also honour Tano as a god of war.

Where is Tano worshipped?

His fountain-head is a sandstone outcrop at Tanoboase near Techiman, held to be the cradle of the Bono people, and the Aowin keep their principal shrine on the island of Sutri in the river. Beyond those, Rattray found that almost every ford and important crossing of the Tano carried a local emanation of the god with its own shrine and priest, along with offshoots in villages far from the water.