African Art

French Guinea, the Timne and Bulom of Sierra Leone, sometimes
isolating them in more or less extensive islets in the interior of the
land, like those formed by the Tiapi, the Bassari, and the
Koniagui to the north of the Futa-Jallon, the Kisi, makers of stone
statuettes, to the northwest of Liberia, and the Golo in the west of
this latter country. Of the history of these diverse tribes we know
very little aside from the fact that their more powerful neighbours
have drawn from them thousands upon thousands of slaves who,
sold to the slave-traders, crossed the Atlantic to clear and cultivate
the grounds of the former Spanish, Portuguese, French, and
English colonies of America.

From French Guinea onwards, peoples related to the Mandinka
contributed with them to push the above tribes towards the sea in
the process of attaining it themselves: such were the Susu or Soso,
who formerly inhabited the Futa-Jallon, and who were driven back
on the Atlantic side; such again were the Mande of Sierra-Leone,
half Islamised today like the Susu and gifted like them with an
enterprising spirit; such also were the Vei or Vai of the region of
Gallina and of Cape-Mount (Sierra-Leone and Liberia), who write
their language with a syllabic alphabet made out of whole cloth
by a few of them towards the end of the 18thcentury or the
beginning of the 19th.

I have mentioned the name of the Futa-Jallon and I cannot pass
on without saying at least a word about this country of mountains
and valleys, where a mingling of Susu, who claim to be
autochthonous, of Fulani coming from the Massina and the
Termes, of Sarakolle from Diakha (Massina), of Tukulors from the
Futa-Toro, and Mandinka from the upper Senegal succeeded in
forming a sort of nation, called the Fula, relatively homoge-
neous, principally pastoral but also agricultural, speaking the
Fulani language and, in the immense majority of cases, prac-
ticing the Islamic religion, who built up a theocratic State
analogous to that of the Torodo of the Futa-Toro and among
whom the taste for study and belles-lettres has been in favour up
to our day.

I have also mentioned Liberia. Its origin and composition are
known. Negro slaves liberated by philanthropic societies
were brought there from North America after 1822 and there
they multiplied. In 1847 they constituted themselves an
independent republic whose constitution was copied from that
of the United States and recognised by all the powers of
Europe and America. The Liberians, properly speaking, that is
the Negroes and mulattoes of American provenance, living in
European style, having English for their mother tongue, number
hardly more than 15,000 and exercise only a very limited
control over some 700,000 natives who have been accorded
to them as subjects by treaties concluded with France and
Great Britain.

To the southeast of the Futa-Jallon, on the border of the dense

forest, we meet with a series of peoples who are in general very

primitive, sometimes even cannibalistic, who have specialised in

the cultivation of kola-trees, selling the fruit to their neighbours of

the north, the Malinke and the Jula. These are, in going from the

country of the Kisi to Bonduku, the Toma, the Guerze or Pessy, the

Manon, the Dan or Mbe, the Tura, the Lo or Guro, the Muin or

Mona, the Ngan, and the Gbin.

To the south of this series of tribes, confined in the dense forest, are

a people perhaps still more primitive, except for the portion living

at the border of the sea. They are in large part given to canni-

balism and are still divided into a multitude of tribes which extend

from the Saint-Paul River to beyond the Sassandra. Those who

inhabit the coast, known under the generic name of Krumen, given

them by the English, have been used during almost five centuries

by the navigators and merchants of all nations to furnish workmen

for ships and rowing crews for trading stations.

To the east of the Krumen, the equatorial forest and its borders are

inhabited principally, from Bandama to the Volta, by a group of

populations remarkably developed intellectually, although of a

material civilisation which is sometimes very rudimentary and often

debased because of the immoderate use of strong liquor. They

surprise all who approach them with a meticulous bodily clean-

liness and a worldly and complicated etiquette. Certain groups

have attained a relatively advanced political level, while others

live in the most absolute anarchy. The portions Christianised by

Protestant missionaries from the British Gold Coast furnish an aston-

ishing number of doctors of theology, barristers, lawyers and

writers. This group contains notably: the Baoulé, the Agni, the

Zema or Apollonians, clever merchants; the Abron, who in the 15th

century founded a well organised State in the region of Bonduku,

which still exists; the Ashanti, or better the Assanti, who had

created a powerful and very well constituted kingdom, with

Coomassie as its capital, which lasted from 1700 to 1895; and

finally the Fanti, among whom the English have found a fruitful

Uhunmwum elao memorial head of a Queen Mother, 18th-19thcenturies.

Benin Kingdom, Nigeria.

Rautenstrauch-Joest Musum, Cologne.