In Akan tradition, all of the world's stories once belonged exclusively to the sky god Nyame, who kept them for himself; there were no Anansi stories or any other kind, only sky-god stories, told by no one. The spider Anansi, wanting the stories for his own people, comes to Nyame and asks to buy them. Amused at the presumption of a small spider making such a request, Nyame sets a price meant to be impossible to pay: Anansi must bring him, alive and unharmed, four of the most dangerous things in the forest, the python Onini, the leopard Osebo, the hornets Mmoboro, and a forest spirit or dwarf, variously named Mmoatia.
Anansi succeeds at each task through cleverness rather than strength. He goads Onini the python into arguing whether he is truly as long as a nearby palm branch, then ties him to it under the pretense of measuring, capturing him in the process. He digs a deep pit disguised as ordinary ground and lures Osebo the leopard to fall into it, then offers to help him out with a web that instead binds him fast. He tricks the Mmoboro hornets into flying into a hollow gourd he has wetted down to simulate rain, sealing the opening once they take shelter inside from the false storm. Finally, he carves a wooden doll, coats it with sticky tree gum, and sets it out beside a bowl of pounded yam, and when the greedy, silence-hating dwarf-spirit strikes the doll in anger at its refusal to answer, its hands and feet stick fast to the gum.