ABSTRACT
There appears to be a high degree of cultural uniformity among the peoples of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, of North Togoland and of the immediately adjacent areas in the French Haute Volta. The peoples have been grouped below according to an amended version of Rattray’s classification, based primarily on linguistic criteria, but it must be emphasised that there are in general no sharp linguistic or other cultural boundaries between the majority of the so-called ‘tribes' listed below. Nor, in many cases, are there precise political or structural boundaries between neighbouring ‘tribes’. Nevertheless, each ‘tribe’ is considered by its neighbours and by its own members to be in some way a distinct territorial, linguistic and cultural group. But this largely implicit sense of difference from neighbouring dialect areas does not involve a conception of tribal unity. Society in this region is built up on a segmentary principle, and social groups become manifest in relation to one another in terms of contraposition.(2)
1. KUSASI (sing. Kusa) Dialect: Kusal or Kusale.^ They occupy the north-east corner of Manprussi Administrative District, west of the B’Moba and south and south-west of the Bussansi tribes.
