2. Vansina, Jan, The Children of Woot: A History of the Kuba Peoples (Madison, 1978), 78.Google Scholar

3. Jebate, Sherif, “Kelefa Saane” in Innes, Gordon, Kelefa Saane: His Career Recounted by Two Mandinka Bards (London, 1978), 109, 111.Google Scholar

4. A number of books--too numerous to mention--could be included in a category of those making more critical use of oral traditions to reconstruct African history.

5. Miller, Joseph C., ed., The African Past Speaks (Folkstone, 1980).Google Scholar Another useful volume to consult for similar issues is Bernardi, B., Poni, C., and Triulzi, A., eds., Fonti orali (Milan, 1978)Google Scholar, especially the article by Claude Meillassoux and Abdoulaye Sylla on interpretation of epics among the Bambara.

6. Miller, , “Listening to the African Past” in The African Past Speaks, 47–48.Google Scholar

7. In addition to Vansina, Children of Woot, see, for example, MacGaffey, Wyatt, “Oral Traditions in Central Africa,” IJAHS, 7 (1974), 417–26Google Scholar, and MacGaffey, , “African History, Anthro pology, and the Rationality of Natives,” HA, 5 (1978), 101–20.Google ScholarHenige, David, Oral Historiography (London, 1982)Google Scholar, chapter 1, is a concise treatment of different ways historians and others have viewed oral history.

8. Oral traditions about Koli Tenguela can be heard from the Senegal river through the upper Gambia. Siré Abbas Soh translated two Arabic manuscripts that contain much of what traditionists in Senegal relate about Roll Tenguela. See Soh, , Chronique du Fouta Sénégalaise, ed. by Delafosse, M. and Gaden, Henri (Paris, 1913).Google Scholar Traditions about Tiramakan Traore can be heard from the lower Gambia to Guiné-Bissau. For versions of the Traore tradition see Innes, Gordon, Kaabu and Fuladu: Historical Narratives of the Gambian Mandinka (London, 1976)Google Scholar, or B.K. Sidibe, “Tiramakang: Background to the Migrations from Manding to Kaabu,” paper presented at the Kaabu Conference.

9. Summaries of translations of such traditions can be read in Abdoulaye Sokhona Diop, “La genèse de la royauté Gueleware au Siin et au Saalum,” paper presented at the Kaabu Conference; Innes, Kaabu and Fuladu; and Wright, Donald R., ed., Oral Traditions from The Gambia, (2 vols.: Athens, Ohio, 1979/1980Google Scholar).

10. Innes, wonders about this very thing in Kelefa Saane, 7–9.Google Scholar

11. This is a condensed blend of several versions of the epic. Sources used are Innes, Kelefa Saane; Kuyateh, Sana, Kelefa Saane, Trilling, Alex, ed., (Banjul, 1980)Google Scholar; and my interview with Jebate, Sherif in Oral Traditions, 1: 95–116.Google Scholar

12. Kuyateh begins many of his refrains of priases for Kelefa with “Jola Kelefa, Badora Jola lay down. …” Jebate refers to Kelefa as “the Jola” throughout his narration.

13. Baringyakoto (“old Baringya”) is presently known as Baria. It is located in Senegal, just north of the Gambian boundary, near the Miniminyang Creek. See Map 1.

14. Suso, Bamba, “Kelefa Saane” in Innes, , Kelefa Saane, 61.Google Scholar

15. The spear, purported by traditions to be the one Kelefa used at Baringyakoto, was removed from Juffure a few years ago and taken to the Gambian National Museum in Banjul, where it hangs on display.

16. Information on western Mandinka origins in this and subsequent paragraphs is a condensation of arguments I made in The Early History of Niumi: Settlement and Foundation of a Mandinka State on the Gambia River (Athens, Ohio, 1977), chapters 1-3Google Scholar, but, as discussed in “The Socio-Political Background of the Epic” below, some of my ideas have changed since I wrote the initial study of Niumi.

17. Wright, , “Beyond Migration and Conquest: Oral Traditions and Mandinka Ethnicity in Senegambia,” HA, 12 (1985), 335–48.Google Scholar

18. On the nyancho see Sidibe, , “The Nyanchos of Kaabu,” unpublished paper, Indiana University African Studies Program, 1974Google Scholar; Sidibe, B.K., “The Story of Kaabu: Its Extent,” paper presented at the Conference on Manding studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1972 [hereafter cited as Manding Conference]Google Scholar; S.M. Cissoko, “Introduction à l'histoire des Mandingues de l'Ouest: l'empire du Kabou, xvx^e-xix^e siècle,” paper presented at the Manding Conference; and Mané, Mamadou, “Contribution à l'histoire du Kaabu des origines au XIX^e siècle,” BIFAN, 40B (1978), 88–159.Google Scholar

19. The best brief study of the Mandinka model of state organization is Hopkins, Nicholas E., “Mandinka Social Organization” in Hodge, Carleton T., ed., Papers on the Manding. (Bloomington, Indiana, 1971), 99–117.Google Scholar See also Weil, Peter, “Mandinka Mansaya. The Role of the Mandinka in the Political System of the Gambia,” (Ph.D., University of Oregon, 1968).Google Scholar

20. Walter Rodney asserted that the increasing trade and coastal peoples' growing dependence on that trade formed basic structures of political and social interaction that would lead to the Africans' underdevelopment from that time onward. See his A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (London, 1970), especially chapters 7, 8, and 10.Google Scholar

21. This process fits generally the model of early state formation described in Cohen, Ronald, “State Origins: A Reappraisal” in Claessen, H.J.M. and Skalnik, P., eds., The Early States (Hague, 1978), chapter 2.Google Scholar

22. A discussion of all the client states of Kaabu, based almost exclusively on oral tradition, is Winifred F. Galloway, “A Listing of Some Kaabu States and Associated Areas: Signposts Towards State-by-State Research in Kaabu,” paper presented at the Kaabu Conference.

23. Sidibe discusses the importance of matrilineal descent in determining nyanchoya in “The Nyanchos of Kaabu,” 9-10.

24. Rulers of Kaabu were from one of two large clans, Saane and Maane. Numerous branches of each of these clans exist, however, and many of these branches were not eligible to provide a Kaabu mansa. Thus, Simbiring Saane was not necessarily a member of a “royal lineage.” This is explained in Mané, , “Contribution,” 109–13.Google Scholar

25. Such dates must be approximate. It is not possible (try as I might) to determine from oral data when the ruling lineages of Niumi consolidated power in the state. Early Portuguese materials suggest there was some form of political organization in Niumi prior to 1500, but it is not likely the seven lineages shared political control of the state much before the sixteenth century. See Wright, Early History, chapters 2 and 3 and appendix.

26. Niumi's rulers controlled a good amount of shipping that went up the Gambia River. Traded in these ships were such commodities as salt, dried fish, grain, and probably kola nuts from the coast of Sierra Leone. For this last item see Brooks, George E., Kola Trade and State Building: Upper Guinea Coast and Senegambia, 15th-17th Centuries [Boston University African Studies Center Working Paper No. 38] (Boston, 1980).Google Scholar The larger phenomenon of coastal and river trade in Senegambia is described in Curtin, Philip D., “The Abolition of the Slave Trade from Senegambia” in Eltis, David and Walvin, James, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison, 1981), 83–97.Google Scholar

27. Curtin estimates the size of these tolls and rents to have been 10-20% of the value of goods exported. See Curtin, “Abolition,” and Curtin, , Economie Change in Precolonial Africa: Supplementary Evidence (Madison, 1975), 78–80.Google Scholar

28. Excellent discussions on the relationship between horses and the prestige of the ruling strata of precolonial West African states are Goody, Jack, Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa (London, 1971), 34–38, 47–48, 66–72Google Scholar; and Law, Robin, The Horse in West African History: The Role of the Horse in the Societies of Precolonial West Africa (Oxford, 1980), 192–96.Google Scholar Information on the role of horses in a precolonial Senegambian state is found in the interview with Manneh, Jere in Wright, , Oral Traditions, 2: 65.Google Scholar

29. Senegambian oral traditions are full of stories of young “princes” traveling among the courts of states in the region to “learn about mansaya” and to help other ruling families in battle. See, for example, the interview with Kuyate, Kemo in Wright, Oral Traditions, 1: 79ff.Google Scholar Evidence of wild behavior (by the standards of eighteenth- or nineteenth-century European merchants on the spot) is plentiful. See “Détails sur l'é;tablissement des francais dans la rivière de Gambie et sur le caractère de quelques rois de ce pays,” 1776, Archives Nationales de France [hereafter ANF], C⁶17; or Antoine Blain to Commandant particulier à Gorée, 12 December 1852, Archives Nationales du Senegal [hereafter ANS], 13^G317, no. 78.

30. For a sample of goods exchanged for slaves in the Gambia in 1740-41 see Curtin, , Economic Change, 172.Google Scholar For the effects of trade and trade goods on rulers' prestige see Goody, , Technology, 32, 24.Google Scholar Walter Rodney's views on the dependence of the elites on luxury goods obtained in trade are found in Upper Guinea Coast, 253ff.

31. In this time of serious drought and starvation across the African savannas, it is easy to understand how stores of foodstuffs played perhaps the most important role in establishing security and cementing alliances of mutual obligation. That this was the case in precolonial Senegambia is discussed in Galloway, W.F., “A History of Wuli from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1974), 345–47.Google Scholar In his Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (London, 1799), 248Google Scholar, Mungo Park noted meeting Senegambian women forced to sell their children to rulers for provisions to help the remainder of their families through times of drought.

32. For the basic Mandinka social structure see Hopkins, “Mandinka Social Organization.” See, too, Biddulph, R.G., “A Memorandum on Native Customs Regarding Land Tenure in the Kombo Districts of the South Bank Province,” 1940, Gambia Public Record Office [hereafter GPRO] 76/20.Google Scholar The ruling aristocracy recognized the importance of the work of the lower classes in maintenance of their way of life. A popular oral tradition says that several centuries ago an old woman advised the mansa of Niumi, “the head that rests in the shade is supported by those heads that are out in the sun.” The mansa and those of his class who followed him continued to insure that there were sufficient heads out in the sun, enabling the elite rulers, figuratively speaking, to rest their heads in the shade. This is from an interview the author had with the late Landing Nima Sonko in Berending, The Gambia, 1 November 1974, a recording of which is on deposit in the Archives of Traditional Music [hereafter ATM], Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, catalog number 0T4369.

33. The ruling families of Niumi were important participants in the Gambia-Atlantic trade and had family alliances that covered lower Senegambia through much of the eighteenth century. This is evident from French and British commercial records. See, for example, M. Le Brasseur to M.M. Bellecombeet Cherreau, April 14, 1776, ANF C⁶ 17, as well as Curtin, , Economic Change, 122–23.Google Scholar

34. Festing, A.M., “Niumi and Niumi-Bato, etc.,” Bathurst, 20 August 1887Google Scholar, British Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], Kew Gardens, CO 879/26.

35. It is not at all clear how long Jokadu was a dependent territory of Niumi. Informants from Jokadu say it was never dependent; those from Niumi say it was dependent on Niumi for a long time. Compare the account of Kadi Sekan Demba of Tambana (Jokadu), The Gambia, in Wright, , Oral Traditions, 2: 95ffGoogle Scholar, with that of the griot, Sherif Jebate, once patronized by a Niumi chief, in Wright, , Oral Traditions, 1: 97ff.Google Scholar Opinions of British colonial officials are no more enlightening. See Macklin, R.W., “Jokadu,” n.d. [c. 1935], GPRO 77/5Google Scholar; Maj.Brooks, L.A.W., “Report on Jokadu District, North Bank Province,” 31 October 1932, GPRO 77/5.Google Scholar

36. Oral traditions confirm that tribute was normally payment in kind of the produce of the area. See the interview with Manneh, Jere in Wright, , Oral Traditions, 2: 38ff.Google Scholar More complete discussion of Niumi's dependent territories and the tribute they paid to the state's rulers is in Wright, , “Niumi: The History of a Western Mandinka State Through the Eighteenth Century,” (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1976), 240–46.Google Scholar

37. From the evidence, the relationship between Niumi and its dependent states seems to have been generally a peaceful one. Nothing in oral traditions or archival materials suggests hostilities between Niumi and either Niumi-Bato or Jokadu before the nineteenth century (whereas episodes of warfare between Niumi and other states in the region--Saloum, for one--are duly noted).

38. Curtin, , “Abolition,” 93.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., 92, 95.

40. Ibid., 93; George E., Brooks, “Peanuts and Colonialism: Consequences of the Commercialization of Peanuts in West Africa, 1830-1870,” JAH, 16 (1975), 29–54.Google Scholar

41. Mbaeyi, Paul, British Military and Naval Foroes in West African History, 1807-1874 (New York, 1978), chapter 5Google Scholar; Gray, J.M., History of the Gambia (London, 1966), chapter 23Google Scholar; Lt. Gov. Rendall to Lord Viscount Goderich, Bathurst, 24 August 1831, PRO 85/5, no. 46. Terms of the cession are in “Convention between…George Rendali…and Brunay King of Barra…,” 5 January 1832, GPRO 1/4. For several centuries Europeans called the state of Niumi “Barra,” because it was the land beside the narrow strait--in Portuguese barra--of the Gambia river.

42. The importance of Niumi's loss of tolls and taxes, the “frequently troublesome” nature of Niumi's mansa and his retinue, and problems this caused the British in Gambia are related in Mbaeyi, , British Military, 74–78.Google Scholar See, too, Gray, 338-39, 344-52; and Quinn, Charlotte A., Mandingo Kingdoms of the Senegambia: Traditionalism, Islam, and European Expansion (Evanston, 1972), 82.Google Scholar

43. By the 1830s slaves were only about 2% of total exports in Senegambia. Other commodities, mainly hides and wax, were being exported from the Gambia in some quantity, but the rulers of Niumi were not reaping taxes and tolls from the trade as they once did. Curtin, , “Abolition,” 92.Google Scholar British and French on the scene attest to the increasing predatory behavior of the ruling class of Niumi at the time. See, for example, Lt. Gov. Rendali to R.W. Hay, Bathurst, 28 April 1830 and 14 July 1830, PRO CO 87/5.

44. Festing, “Niumi and Niumi-Bato.” The success of Maa Baa and other religious revolutionaries brought many disaffected people in Senegambia to rebel against their oppressors: Klein, Martin A., Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847-1894 (Stanford, 1968), 73.Google Scholar

45. French and British concern over hostilities in Jokadu and the effects of the fighting on peanut production in the region attest to this. See Commandant de Gorée to Gouverneur du Sénégal, Gorée, 13 November 1850, ANS 4^B16, no. 82; M. DePeralo to M. le Resident d'Albréda, Gorée, 29 August 1851, ANS 4^B34, no 43; Luke Smythe O'Connor to Duke of Newcastle, Bathurst, 12 August 1853, PRO CO 87/55, no. 63. The Jokadu region remains one of the prime peanut-growing regions of The Gambia.

46. It is an oversimplification to say merely that guns and gunpowder were exchanged for peanuts. Sometimes other legitimate products, hides and wax mainly, were provided in exchange for firearms; sometimes the trade was indirect and involved exchanges of local produce that never reached the European merchants. See Curtin, , “Abolition,” 92ff.Google Scholar But what mattered in this argument was that from at least 1820 onward in the Gambia, firearms and gunpowder could be obtained in abundance. Gambian Blue Books tell part of the tale. Between 1830 and 1850 the British imported on average 562 cases of guns and 2344 barrels of gunpowder per year, at the respective annual average values of £5354 and £5067. In a twelve-month period of 1838/1839 (when a healthy horse sold for £13), British traders brought 875 cases of guns (worth £10,276) and 4136 barrels of powder (worth £7910) to the Gambia. French merchants, also importing firearms, complained that without more gunpowder and guns for trade they could not compete with the British for Gambian peanuts from their outpost at Albreda on Niumi's riverbank. Gambian Blue Books are in PRO CO 90. For the French perspective see M., Blain to Commandant de Gorée, 23 February 1845, ANS 13^G317, no. 15.

47. Fired in volleys, the muskets traded in west Africa in the middle of the nineteenth century could be effective against the typical cavalry raids of the ruling groups. Traditional warriors on horseback had a disdain for guns; their weapons were the spear and sword. Law, , Horse in West Africa, 127–33.Google Scholar

48. See the interview with Jebate, Sherif in Wright, , Oral Traditions, 1: 95–116.Google Scholar For the length and seriousness of Niumi-Jokadu hostilities see O'Connor to Duke of Newcastle, Bathurst, 12 August 1853, CO 87/55, no. 63; Antoine Blaine to Commandant Particulier à Gorée, 12 December 1852, ANS 13^G317, no. 78.

49. Brooks, “Jokadu District.”

50. G. Rendall to R.W. Hay, Bathurst, 19 January 1834, PRO, CO 87/10, Confidential; [Col.d'Arcy, G.A.K.], “Gambia Colony and the Civil War,” Colburn's United Service Magazine, 419 (October 1863), 245.Google Scholar

51. Wright, “Beyond Migration,” passim.

52. Of course, such marriages are commonplace in Senegambia of today and yesterday. See the discussion in ibid., 338.

53. Ibid., 339.

54. Boulègue, Jean, Les Luso-Africains de Sénégambia, xvi-xix^e siècle (Dakar, 1972)Google Scholar; Brooks, George E., Luso-African Trade and Settlement in the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau Regions [Boston University African Studies Center Working Paper No. 24] (Boston, 1980).Google Scholar Treasury records (T70) in PRO are full of evidence of the European assimilation in African societies.

55. Innes, , Kelefa Saane, 6.Google Scholar

56. Many individuals who are aware of their ancestors having gone through this assimilation process know something about their former ethnic identity. See Peter Mark, “Conquest, Assimilation, and Change in Northern Basse Casa-mance,” and Baum, Robert, “Incomplete Assimilation: Konjaen and Diola in Pre-Colonial Senegambia,” both papers presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, San Francisco, December, 1983.Google Scholar

57. Curtin, , Economic Change, 30–31.Google Scholar

58. This, of course, remains true throughout Senegambia today. For an interesting discussion of this see Klein, Martin A., “Seerer Tradition and the Development of Saalum,” unpublished paper, Gambian Oral History and Antiquities Division, Banjul, [1974], 5.Google Scholar

59. Technically--and for political purposes--a nyancho was only a son of a nyancho woman. Families related to nyancho through other than the maternal line sometimes held a share of political power and prestige. See Man', , “Contribution,” 109–13.Google Scholar

60. On several occasions when I asked an individual if his family were related to another family, the answer was that they were indeed related because their ancestors were all soninke. Lang Manu Sanyang said, “All soninke were the same. They were just like the Jahanka. If you troubled one, you troubled the whole group.” See my interview with Sanyang, January 20, 1975, Kwinella, The Gambia, ATM OT4386. An interesting study of the soninke [sonongui] in northern Ivory Coast is Green, Kathryn L., “The Foundation of Kong: A Study in Dyula and Sonongui Ethnic Identity,” (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1984).Google Scholar

61. This, of course, belies John Gray's assessment of the Gambian states in his History, 327-28: “Many of them also lacked the unity and stability which really qualifies a territory for the title of kingdom. … Rule in those regions was generally speaking that of war lords, who rose and fell very often with astonishing rapidity.” Actually, through several centuries of the potentially-disruptive Atlantic commerce, the Gambian states achieved remarkable political and social stability. Many of the states were in existence by the time Portuguese came to settle in the Gambia and were still viable political units at the time of the British takeover. Gambians still know which families were those of the rulers. They were hardly warlords.

62. See interview with Landing Nima Sonko, Berending, The Gambia, 1 November 1974, ATM OT 4369. There is a suggestion that mansa Demba was Kelefa's uncle--his mother's brother. The uncle-nephew relationship is one of the closest bonds in Mandinka society. The father-son relationship tends to be a suspicious and competitive one, but the uncle is often the practical guardian and tutor of his sister's son. Thus, mansa Demba may have had a special relationship with Kelefa.

63. Interview with Jebate in Wright, , Oral Traditions, 1: 107.Google Scholar

64. Technically, the falifo is the leading family of “strangers” in the state, the most important of the families who came after the ruling families and took up residence there under protection of the mansa. More complete treatment of the position is in Wright, , “Niumi,” 236–38.Google Scholar

65. The best studies of the Soninke-Marabout Wars in Senegambia remain Quinn, Mandingo Kingdoms; Klein, Islam and Imperialism; Klein, , “The Muslim Revolution in Nineteenth Century Senegambia” in McCall, Daniel, Bennett, Norman, and Butler, Jeffrey, eds., Western African History, vol. IV of Boston University Papers on Africa (New York, 1969), 69–101Google Scholar; and Klein, , Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia,” JAH, 13 (1972), 419–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66. Klein, “Social and Economic Factors.”

67. B.K. Sidibe, “The Story of Kaabu: The Fall of Kaabu,” paper presented at the Manding Conference; Mané, , “Contribution,” 138–49.Google Scholar The epic of Janke Wall, which describes the fall of Kaabu and the death of its last mansa, is probably the most popular oral tradition in the interior regions of Guiné-Bissau that once formed the heart of the Kaabu Empire-- no doubt for the same reasons the epic of Kelefa Saane is so popular in much of Senegambia.

68. Cissoko, “Introduction;” Mané, “Contribution;” Sidibe, “Story of Kaabu;” Sidibe, “Nyanchos of Kaabu.”

69. Of course,some have used such sources with noted success--for example, Cohen, David W., Womanafu's Bunafu (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar, or for a study from Senegambia, Hunter, Thomas C., “The Development of an Islamic Tradition of Learning Among the Jahanka of West Africa,” (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1977).Google Scholar

70. Wright, Donald R., “Darbo Jula: The Role of a Mandinka Jula Clan in the Long-Distance Trade of the Gambia River and Its Hinterland,” African Economic History, 3 (1977), 33–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. One need hardly note that there is nothing wrong with studying the history of a dominant minority per se. But it is wrong to treat the history of a dominant minority as if it were the history of a whole people.