Ethnic groups · pre-1822 and continuing
Vai people
Coastal Mande traders between Cape Mount and the Mano, later authors of the Vai script.
Biography
The Vai reached the Atlantic from the Mande interior in a movement usually placed in the sixteenth century, settling the lagoons and river mouths around Cape Mount and the Gallinas. Their position gave them the two things an Atlantic middleman needed: salt pans and a lagoon system navigable by canoe far inland. They dealt in salt, cloth, kola, camwood and — increasingly and destructively after about 1700 — captives. Vai lineages held both Poro and Sande, and their towns were among the first on this coast to keep written accounts, once Dualu Bukele's syllabary appeared in the 1830s.
Historical significance
One of the sixteen principal peoples mapped in the atlas; Mande (northern) in language, with an economy built on salt boiling and cotton weaving.
Timeline
- 15th–16th c.Mande-speaking migration reaches the Cape Mount coast
- c. 1800Vai towns dominate the salt and coastal carrying trade
- c. 1832The Vai syllabary devised at Jondu
On the map
Associated with Gon. Open the historical atlas.
Related entries
References
- Holsoe 1990; Dunn, Beyan & Burrowes 2000
Suggested reading
- Dunn, Beyan & Burrowes (2000). Historical Dictionary of Liberia.