Ethnic groups · pre-1822 and continuing
Mende people
Southwestern Mande of the north-western borderland, whose expansion reshaped Poro and Sande across the Vai and Gola country.
Biography
Mende-speaking communities settled the north-western border zone of present-day Liberia in the course of a long southward movement from the seventeenth century, absorbing and allying with the peoples already there rather than displacing them. Their instruments were the war-fence town, the alliance marriage and the initiation society: where Mende influence reached, Poro and Sande were reorganised on a Mende model, and the Sowei masking tradition of the women's society took the form still seen today. Mende towns in the Gallinas hinterland were tied into the salt, rice and captive trades of the coast, and the cultural continuity across the modern Liberia–Sierra Leone line is the residue of this movement.
Historical significance
One of the sixteen principal peoples mapped in the atlas; Mande (southwestern) in language, with an economy built on rice farming and sowei mask carving.
Timeline
- 17th c.Southward Mende movement begins from the Sudanic margin
- 18th c.War-fence towns established in the Vai and Gola borderlands
- 19th c.Poro and Sande reorganised on the Mende pattern
On the map
Associated with Vahun. Open the historical atlas.
Related entries
References
- Abraham 1978; Jones 1983; Boone 1986
Suggested reading
- Dunn, Beyan & Burrowes (2000). Historical Dictionary of Liberia.