“Castor, interpreter of the government at Assinie”, Ivory Coast, 1892.

Engraving by Édouard Riou, from “Du Niger au golfe de Guinée, par le pays de Kong et le Mossi”, by Louis-Gustave Binger, a French officer and explorer who claimed Ivory Coast for France.

Castor facilitated communications between the French on the coast, and interior peoples and polities, such as the Anyi of the Kingdoms of Sanwi and Indenie. The Anyi, an Akan people, originated in modern-day Ghana, but fled from an expanding Ashanti Empire in the early 1700’s, towards eastern Ivory Coast. 

Castor was probably an Anyi himself, depicted here as a gentle and protective father, balancing his sleeping child in one arm, and a musket in the other. He wears a luxurious Kente cloth, indicative of his status within the traditional system, while also wearing a European hat, following the international fashion of the time.      

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