Ethnic groups · pre-1822 and continuing
Kpelle people
The largest interior population, farming the high forest between the St Paul and the Ya.
Biography
The Kpelle are the most numerous of Liberia's peoples and occupied a broad belt of high forest and rolling savanna edge in the central interior. Their economy rested on upland rice, iron and the kola trade northward to the Mande markets. Political authority sat with town chiefs and lineage elders under a strong Poro, with larger confederations forming and dissolving around able leaders. Kpelle smiths supplied hoes and blades along the interior roads.
Historical significance
One of the sixteen principal peoples mapped in the atlas; Mande (southwestern) in language, with an economy built on upland rice and iron smelting.
Timeline
- 15th–16th c.Mande migration into the central forest
- c. 1800Kpelle towns tributary to or allied with Bopolu
On the map
Associated with Palala. Open the historical atlas.
Related entries
References
- d'Azevedo 1959; oral tradition
Suggested reading
- Dunn, Beyan & Burrowes (2000). Historical Dictionary of Liberia.