Asafo companies originated several centuries ago among the Akan peoples of southern Ghana as military organizations. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century accounts by Muller (1662-1699, in Jones 1983), de Marees (1602), Ogilby (1987 [1670]), Bosman (1967 [1705]), and Barbot (1732; see also Hair, Jones & Law 1992) are replete with references to well-organized warrior groups established on the Gold Coast whose members were sometimes hired by Europeans as auxiliary soldiers. (1) Today, ...