Kwa and the Ape People by Perley Poore Sheehan

MEANTIME, as the animals had reported to Kwa, that group of white strangers had been drawing closer and closer to the Valley of the Mu, under the guidance of the queer black man who'd called himself Anansi.

Anansi! It was a name--so Professor Carl had said--like that of some spider Pharaoh. What the name of Pharaoh was in the history of the early Egyptians, so Anansi was in the legends of Obeah--the Spider Cult of Equatorial Africa.