Ethnic groups · pre-1822 and continuing

Kissi people

Wet-rice cultivators of the far north, and the makers of the kissi penny.

Biography

Straddling what are now three national borders, the Kissi farmed the swampy headwaters of the Niger and Moa in the far north — among the few peoples of the region practising true wet-rice cultivation. They gave West Africa the kissi penny, a twisted iron rod that served as currency across a wide interior zone and whose value lay partly in ritual: a broken penny was said to lose its soul until a smith restored it.

Historical significance

One of the sixteen principal peoples mapped in the atlas; Atlantic (Mel) in language, with an economy built on wet rice and iron currency (kissi penny).

Timeline

c. 1400–1600Stone figures carved in the Kissi–Sapi sphere
pre-1822Kissi pennies circulating as regional currency

On the map

Associated with Foya-area towns. Open the historical atlas.

References

Archaeology of the nomoli figures; regional numismatics