Mpatapo

Mpatapo, knot of pacification or knot of reconciliation, depicts the actual knot historically used to tie the ends of a peace agreement or truce, a design Willis is explicit refers to a real, documented physical gesture rather than to a purely metaphorical binding: Akan dispute settlement traditionally involved a literal knotting or binding act at the moment a settlement was formally sealed, and the Adinkra symbol reproduces that specific gesture's visual form rather than inventing an abstract knot shape unconnected to any real practice, in the same way Sepow depicts a real historical implement rather than an invented emblem of justice in the abstract.

Willis notes the knot's exact rendering, the number and arrangement of loops shown, varies between carvers more than in some of the corpus's other geometric designs, a range of variation he attributes to the knot lacking one single canonical historical form even in the underlying peacemaking practice it depicts, several regional variants of the actual binding gesture having existed side by side. Willis records this regional variation in the underlying gesture as itself evidence of how widespread and locally adapted Akan peacemaking practice was.

Willis records Mpatapo used in contexts of mediation, forgiveness, and formal peacemaking between individuals or groups, carrying an implicit endorsement of negotiated settlement over prolonged conflict; where Bi Nka Bi warns against provocation before or during a dispute, Mpatapo is specifically the after-the-fact symbol, invoked once a settlement has actually been reached rather than as a general call for restraint. Willis notes the two symbols are sometimes used together on cloth commissioned around a specific, resolved conflict, one naming the caution that should have prevented it and the other marking the peace that ultimately followed, a paired use that treats prevention and resolution as two stages of one continuous concern rather than as separate, unrelated virtues.

Willis records Mpatapo remaining in active use today in Ghanaian mediation and alternative dispute resolution contexts specifically, cited by name in some documented community reconciliation programmes, giving it a continued practical relevance beyond cloth and decorative use that few of the corpus's other symbols retain to the same documented degree. Willis treats this continued practical use as unusually strong evidence that the symbol's meaning remains a living reference rather than only a historical one.