Ewe

The Ewe are a Gbe-speaking people of the Kwa branch living on the coast between the Volta and Mono rivers in present-day southeast Ghana and southern Togo.

Their tradition remembers an earlier home at Ketu on the Benin-Nigeria border; breaking away from the Aja confederacy, they founded the walled town of Notsie before dispersing westward in the 1600s to escape the tyrant Agor Akorli, and archaeology places Ewe communities in the region as early as the 1200s. They settled as independent village chiefdoms under elected elders rather than kings, farming, fishing the lagoons and weaving cotton.

Lying between Asante, Dahomey and Oyo, Eweland suffered slave raiding and itself sold war captives to European ships, and in 1784 clashed with the Danes over new coastal forts. A written Ewe standard formed in the 1800s from coastal dialects for schools and churches.