Mpatapo: A Knot That Depicts An Actual Peacemaking Gesture

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.