² In 1967 Hair, P.E.H., “Ethnolinguistic Continuity on the Guinea Coast,” JAH 8, 2(1967), 248CrossRefGoogle Scholar, noted that early sources were “vague” about extent of Baga occupation and cautioned that most reports described navigation landmarks that provide limited guide to appropriate coastal limits. From these records, however, he concluded (ibid., 254) that there was “no evidence in the early sources that the Baga in these centuries ever occupied more than the beaches and a very thin slice of the interior.” This paper attempts to suggest interior limits with reference to specific site locations or perceived zones of influence, as noted by Europeans who visited these rivers during the 1793-1821 period. The “Introduction” in Barth, Fredrik, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston, 1969), 9–38Google Scholar, is particularly helpful in defining boundaries as they relate to culture traits and ways many are modified or maintained when interacting with similar/dissimilar groups. In “The Internal African Frontier: The Making of African Political Culture” in The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies, ed. Kopytoff, Igor (Bloomington, 1989), 3–84Google Scholar, Kopytoff succinctly described dangers inherent in labeling groups as “tribes” or ascribing to them cultural and physical attributes or a group identity that might not have been apparent with the group before the coming of colonial regimes, those who found such anomalous rural communities not fitting the “tribal model.” European descriptions from the 1793 to 1821 period are reasonably suspect as falling into a similar European compulsion to group peoples where perhaps a notion of “tribe” or nation was non-existent. Despite these concerns, I have reported here their observation with an understanding that a self-consciousness of group identities may not have been present among the Baga themselves.

³ Mouser, Bruce L., “Trade and Politics in the Nunez and Pongo River, 1790-1865” (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1971).Google Scholar

⁴ I have not attempted in this paper to reconcile first-hand accounts from 1793 to 1821 with Baga/Susu traditions as interpreted by Arcin, André, Histoire de la Guinée Française (Paris, 1911), 129–35Google Scholar, nor his headmen lists of 167-68. I do not claim to be an ethnohistorian of this region of the coast. My research has focused on European, Euro-African, and African traders during the 1750 to 1865 period and on relationships that they established with indigenous hosts. In that writing, however, the identity and circumstance of particular hosts has been an important consideration.

⁵ Samuel Gamble, “A Journal of an Intended Voyage, by Gods permission, from London towards Africa from thence to America in the good Ship Sandown by me Samuel Gamble, Commander,” Log/M/21, Manuscript Division, National Maritime Museum-Greenwich (hereafter cited as “Sandown”). Indiana University Press will soon publish Gamble's journal, edited by me. Brooks, , Landlords and Strangers, 276–77Google Scholar, reviewed accounts by Almada (1594), Donelha (1625), and Barreira (1606), all of whom described Baga commerce and relations to Europeans/neighbors, without reference to specific site locations. In private correspondence, P.E.H. Hair cautioned about using linguistic and ethnographic designations for particular Baga groups when describing them ca. 1800, especially when such classifications did not appear in literature until a much later time. Hair considered it better to use geographic designations for groups; I have attempted to incorporate his suggestion in this writing by locating groups both according to river areas and to later-used ethnographic/linguistic groupings.

⁶ ”Sandown,” 52^r-53^v. See also Matthews, John, A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone (London, 1966[1788]), 12–13Google Scholar, for a 1785 account of stock/poultry raising among these Baga. Matthews also described them as “very industrious in planting rice, making cloths, salt, and in fishing, and trading for ivory…” A report similar to that given by Gamble is found in Gray, Major William and Dochard, Staff Surgeon, Travels in Western Africa, in the Years 1818, 19, 20, and 21 (London, 1825), 4–5.Google Scholar Dochard was a member of an expedition that attempted to reach Timbo and Segu through the Nunez path in 1816-1817. In December 1816 Dochard noted the following: “While waiting for the tide at the mouth of that river [Nunez], we visited a small island formed by the alluvial matter brought down with the stream, and collected by a ridge of rocks which run nearly across its embouchure. It is called Sandy Island, from its soil being almost wholly composed of that substance. It is about a mile in length, and from a quarter to half a mile in breadth, having a gentle rise towards the centre, where it is covered by a grove of palm trees. We met on it a party of about twenty of the Bagoo tribe, who had come thither to collect palm wine, for the celebration of a mournful ceremony over one of their chiefs, who had died a short time before. At a little distance from the spot where we met them, there is an arbour, on approaching which we were stopped, and told the place was sacred, as it contained their idols; of those we could not obtain even an indistinct view. Tallabunchia, which we also visited, is situated on the north bank of the river, about four miles above Sandy Island, in a plain, beautifully shaded with lofty palm trees, and a great profusion or orange, lime, plantain, and bananas. The town is straggling and irregular, and contains about 200 inhabitants. The houses are about sixteen feet high, and divided, by a partition of split cane, into two apartments, one of which serves as a store for their rice, &c. and the other for a dwelling. The men are strong and well formed, but of an extremely savage appearance; their whole apparel consists of a fathom of cotton cloth wrapped around their waists; they practise cutting the incisor teeth and tattooing the breasts and arms; holes are pierced through the whole circle of the ear, in which are inserted bits of a course kind of grass. The dress of the women is still less decent or becoming; a strip of cotton bound round the loins, in the shape of what surgeons call a T bandage, is their only covering; a band of twisted grass round the upper parts of the thigh, one immediately above, and another below the knee, with one over the ankle, constituted the female ornaments. The children were quite naked, and had large copper rings hanging from the cartilage of the nose.” In Passavant's translation, the impression is given that both Gray and Dochard were members of the 1816-1817 Nunez Expedition. That error resulted from unclear writing on my part. Passavant also translated the textual material from both Gamble and Gray/Dochard into French; while I find no particular fault with her translation, I believe that it would have been better to have left quoted material in English, especially that selection written by Gamble.

⁷ “Sandown,” 55^r-55^v.

⁸ In Canot, Theodore, Adventures of an African Slaver (New York, 1969), 124Google Scholar, Canot, (ca. 1827) noted that the Baga “neither sell nor buy each other, though they acquire children of both sexes from other tribes, and adopt them into their own, or dispose of them if not suitable.” (Canot's emphasis). According to Afzelius, Adam, Adam Afzelius: Sierra Leone Journal 1795-1796, ed. Kup, Peter (Uppsala, 1967), 104Google Scholar, Thomas Cooper, who operated a factory near Tokekerren in the Rio Pongo, made a distinction between the Kapatchez people and the Baga and told him that neither “the Baggos nor the Capatches sell any of their own people or Nation.”

⁹ ”Sandown,” 72r. In An Account of the Colony of Sierra Leone (n.p., 1795), 134Google Scholar, there is an account of a slave rebellion onboard a vessel (ca. 1794) in which the slaves captured the vessel and attempted to escape to shore, but then were recaptured and resold to slavers. This may have been the vessel mentioned in Gamble's record.

¹⁰ Littlefield, Daniel C., Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (Baton Rouge, 1981), 92–97.Google Scholar

¹¹ Portères, Roland, “Un problème d'Ethno-botanique: relations entre le Riz flottant du Rio-Nunez et l'origine médinigérienne des Baga de la Guinée Française,” Journal d'Agriculture Topicale et de Botanique Appliquée 2/10–11 (1955). 539.Google Scholar

¹² Watt, James, Journal of James Watt: Expedition to Timbo Capital of the Fula Empire in 1794, ed. Mouser, Bruce L. (Madison, 1994), 5^v, 12^v, 31^r, 32^v, 98^v.Google ScholarAfzelius, , Sierra Leone Journal, 31^vGoogle Scholar, noted that salt and rice were bartered near Bassaya in the Rio Pongo “at equal measure.”

¹³ Watt, , Journal, 80 ^v.Google Scholar

¹⁴ “Sandown,” 73^v.

¹⁵ Ibid., 71^v, noted that a salt ship had arrived at Walker's factory from Liverpool, the Zephyr. In the original version, this sentence concluded with the words “from England.” Subsequent research has clarified that a likely source of salt was the island of Maio in the Cape Verdes. By the late seventeenth century, a major shipping center on that island became known as Porto Inglez. It is likely that British vessels carried salt and other goods to the coast. For the latter see Brooks, , Landlords and Strangers, 163Google Scholar; Duncan, T. Bentley, Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth Century Commerce and Navigation (Chicago, 1972), 186–89.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Watt, , Journal, 13^r, 14^v, 16^r, 26^r, 31^r.Google Scholar

¹⁷ In about 1827 Conneau, Theophilus, A Slaver's Logbook or 20 Year' Residence in Africa (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976), 103Google Scholar, reported that “a Foulah law protects them [Baga] from foreign violence (being salt-makers, this is their prerogative). Salt is regarded in the Interior as one of the greatest necessities of life, and its makers are under the safeguard of this law.”

¹⁸ Watt, , Journal, 62^r-63^r, 94^r, 101^r.Google Scholar

¹⁹ “Sandown,” 67^v, 71^r, 71^v.

²⁰ CMS, CA1/E2/103, Butscher to Secretary, 22 October 1811. Donnan, Elizabeth, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (4 vols.: New York, 1965), 4:513Google Scholar, noted that the Doris imported 70 slaves to America in 1806, composed of “Mandingos, Soozees, Ballams, Bagos, Naloose Negroes,” but did not provide relative numbers of Bagas within that list. Letters and reports from missionaries attached to the Church Missionary Society are crucial sources for information about the Baga and Susu peoples of the region. In my research I read these materials primarily to learn more about non-African merchants and their activities; missionary reports are particularly rich, however, in information about indigenous religious and customary practices. No serious ethnohistorian should avoid reading these materials.

²¹ In “Les langues de la Guinée,” Cahier d'études de langues Guinéennes 1 (1996), 6–8Google Scholar, F. K. Erhard Voeltz wrote that the Baga-Kakissa, Baga-Marara, and Baga-Sobane were virtually identical to Baga-Sitem. Voeltz suggested that the term Baga may derive from the Susu bae (sea), plus raka (of the)=baeraka (those of the sea), used to designate those who lived along the Guinea coast. Maps drawn before 1850 show Marara Island as located south of the Sand Bar or main entrance to the Rio Pongo at that time.

²² Matthews, , Voyage, 12–13Google Scholar, called these the Caxa Islands. Perhaps following his lead, McLachlan, Peter, Travels into the Baga and Soosoo Countries in 1821 (2d. ed.: ed. Mouser, Bruce L. and Sarró, Ramon (Leipzig: University of Leipzig Papers on Africa, History and Culture Series, No. 2 1999), 1, notes 5 and 46Google Scholar, called the Baga-Kakissa the Caxas.

²³ See Lamp, Frederick, Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention (New York, 1996), 142–43Google Scholar; United States, Army Map Service-Corps of Engineers, Map Series 1501, Sheet NC 28-7, Edition 1.

²⁴ Church Missionary Society records are kept in two depositories: the society's headquarters in London and the University Library, University of Birmingham. Earliest records are housed at the Birmingham site. The latter are arranged in categories of committee minutes of the home society, sub-committee minutes for committees that dealt with particular mission stations, outgoing correspondence to missionaries, incoming letters from the missionaries, and miscellaneous/special reports. Missionaries were required to maintain regular correspondence with the patron society and to keep journals in which they summarized observations over a longer period. Ail these records are indispensable to a reconstruction of Pongo history. The society also published periodic reports that contained extracts of missionary letters. Lengthy selections are found in Walker, Samuel Abraham, Missions in Western Africa Among the Soosoos, Bulloms, Etc. (Dublin, 1845)Google Scholar and Church Missionary Society, Missionary Records: West Africa (London, 1836).Google Scholar

²⁵ Bickersteth, Edward, “Journal of the Assistant Secretary,” Missionary Register (03 1817), 102Google Scholar, entry dated 22 March 1816. See also Afzelius, , Sierra Leone Journal, 100–01Google Scholar, for preferred use of the mud bar.

²⁶ Ibid., 103.

²⁷ For extensive treatment of Thomas Cooper's career in the Rio Pongo from 1795 to 1800, see Mouser, Bruce, “Trade, Coasters, and Conflict in the Rio Pongo from 1790 to 1808,” JAH 14(1973), 45–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁸ Bangura, Mahawa, “Contribution à l'histoire des Sosoe du XVIe Siècle” (Mémoire de diplôme de fin d'érudes supérieures, 1971–1972: Institut polytechnique Gamal Abdel Nasser, Conakry), 70ff.Google Scholar, suggested that the growth of Susu influence in the Pongo region was not the consequence of violent collision between Baga and Susu, but rather the result of slow assimilation and accommodation. This is more in line with my “Accommodation and Assimilation in the Landlord-Stranger Relationship” in West African Culture Dynamics, ed. Swartz, B. K. and Dumett, R. A. (The Hague, 1980), 497–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ For a recent interpretation of proto-Baga or Baga migrations, see Hair, P.E.H., “The History of the Baga in Early Written Sources,” HA 24(1997), 381–91.Google Scholar

³⁰ Goerg, Odile, Commerce et Colonisation en Guinée (Paris, 1986), 26–27.Google Scholar

³¹ Bangura's description (“Contribution,” 83-84) of assimilation and accommodation between Baga and Susu, of Susu acceptance of Baga patterns, and of Baga acceptance of Susu as the language of commerce is very helpful to understanding the dynamic of accretion and change occurring on this coast. Bangura (ibid., 90) observed that the problem of Susu identification is unique because everyone is Susu; but if asked, everyone will identify himself more specifically as Baga, Nalu, Landuma, Susu, or other ethnic group. Bangura (ibid., 99-100) also made a distinction between “right of soil” and “right of use.” In 1821 McLachlan, , Travels, 17, notes 79-80Google Scholar, identified the Pongo Susu as “Yamfa Susu.” Along this coast, yamfa/yamfu is a creolized word that translates as “trouble.” Perhaps McLachlan used the term to mean that these Susu were “troublesome,” or he may have meant that they were different from other Susu, with institutions and traits that brought direction/cohesion to Susu and Baga in the area. In effect McLachlan may have been describing a distinct newly-fused group of Susu/Baga whom he called “Yamfa Susu.”

³² In his Fifty Years in Western Africa: Being a Record of the Work of the West Indian Church on the Banks of the Rio Pongo (London, 1900), 127Google Scholar, Alfred Barrow mentioned a report by the Reverend P.H. Doughlin, ca. 1885, who divided the Baga into the Koba Baga, Kakisa Baga, Black or Naked Baga, the Mikh-ii Fori, and Kalum Baga, and described the peoples of Bouramaya as Susu. In 1875 Thomas George Lawson, an official of the Sierra Leone Colonial administration, submitted a report, “Information relative to the neighbouring countries,” in which he divided territory between the Rio Pongo and Ile Tumbo into three regions—Kobah Bagga Country, Bramaiah Country, and Carlome Bagga Country. The Kobah Bagga (Rio Pongo to Konkouré River) he described as occupying the coast, having a “King,” being good seamen, and producing palm nuts, palm oil, groundnuts and Beniseeds for export. He described Bramaiah (Bouramaya) Country as having headmen of Luso-African descent and bordered on the east by the Konkouré, on the west by the Bouramaya, and “on the north by the mainland.” Perhaps this was the way that Europeans divided the region at the time, but it is uncertain whether such divisions were as clearly drawn by 1821. For Lawson see Skinner, David E., Thomas George Lawson (Stanford, 1980), 85–87.Google ScholarPaulme, Denise, “Des riziculteurs africaines: Les Baga,” Les Cahiers d'Outre-mer 10 (1956), 260Google Scholar, also described the Baga-Koba as occupying the islands south of the Rio Pongo.

³³ Matthews, , Voyage, 13–15.Google Scholar Matthews' map shows the Baga as occupying all the shoreline from Tumbo Island to the Kapatchez River.

³⁴ Mouser, “Trade, Coasters, and Conflict.” An 1814 reference (CMS CA1/E3/74, Wilhelm's Journal, entry dated 6 December 1814) to a conference called by Mangé Baké indicated that Susu headmen from “both sides of the [Fatala] river” should join forces to oppose Fula incursions into the river.

³⁵ CMS CA1/E1/E5A/68, List of Children in Canoffee School [1816]. Baké's son was named Henry. The extent of Baké's influence in the area south of Bassaya is unclear in the sources; however, Bickersteth, , “Journal of the Assistant Secretary,” Missionary Register (1817) 108–10Google Scholar, noted that when he sought to travel from Bassaya to Bouramaya overland, it was necessary to go by canoe to the Tibola Creek, upstream to Ganganta and then overland to Kambaya, then to Bouramaya. This report may indicate that Baké's authority extended only to settlements along the Fatala River and not more than a few kilometers southward. See also CMS CA1/E2/90, Wenzel's Journal, passim; on one occasion the headman of Kalara threatened to “set down” under Kati of Tiyé, should Mangé Baké not honor a promise given to the missionaries. In CMS CA1/E3/39, Renner to Secretary, 24 December 1812, every reference to Baké suggested that he had authority to summon Susu headmen to palavers at Bassaya. Baké (CMS CA1/E3/116, Wilhelm to Secretary, 19 February 1814) again summoned an exclusive “Susu palaver” to meet at Lisso at which charges against the missionaries would be discussed. An earlier report, An Account of the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1795, 137, described Bassaya as a town surrounded by Baga peoples. In 1826 Baké witnessed a legal document drawn with reference to the estate of John Fraser, signing his name in Arabic script. I am indebted to Daniel Schafer for this 1826 reference that he located in the Florida State Archives and that I have not yet seen. In 1796 Afzelius, , Sierra Leone Journal, 104, 108Google Scholar, wrote that the Baga/Susu ruler of the Bangalan branch had attempted to obtain relief for a relative who was then in Baké's control, but was unable to accomplish it. This would suggest that a clear distinction separated the powers and territories of the Bangalan Susu and those of the Baga of the Fatala. Later Afzelius noted that “he [Baké] is a Bagga-man it seems the only one remaining of the Chiefs, since the Bagos were drove out of the Country—Mungo Kerrepha's [Susu] [d]ominions are extended to Hells [G]ate, to the Bagoes, over Kissing etc. Bangalan etc.”

³⁶ See Mouser, “Trade, Coasters, and Politics.” Recently discovered genealogical data in the archives of the Congregation du P.P. du St. Esprit also suggest an independent center of landlord relationships in the Bangalan branch of the river; these records are currently undergoing analysis with Victoria Bomba Coifman. See also CMS CA1/E3/39, Renner to Secretary., 24 December 1812; CMS CA1/E3/99, Renner to Secr., 5 November 1813; CMS CA1/E6/53, Renner to Secretary, Journal, 5 February 1817. In “A Map of the Pongas Country in West Africa, Shewing the Stations of the West Indian Mission,” (ca. 1860) six royal towns are listed—Tiah (King Katty), Bara (King Bango), Lisso (King Bango), Bashia (King Allafah), Yenungia (King Simor), and Bramia (King Jelloram [Fernandez]), suggesting a polycentric political system. Reconstruction, based on data from this map, West Indian Mission records, and Congregation du P.P. du St. Esprit records, remains to be completed.

³⁷ Bickersteth, , “Journal of the Assistant Secretary,” 106.Google Scholar

³⁸ CMS, CA1/E2/92, Wenzel to Secretary, 12 July 1811; CA1/E2/103, Butscher to Secretary, 22 October 1811; CA1/E4/70, List of Wenzel's students [1814]; CA1/E4/74, Wilhelm's Journal, Account of the Children at Bashia; CA1/E5A/68, List of the Children in Canoffee School.

³⁹ CMS CA1/E2/39, Butscher to Secretary, 24 October 1810; CMS CA1/E2/102, Butscher to Secretary, 22 October 1811; CMS CA1/E3/99, Butscher to Secretary, 5 November 1813; CMS CAl/0/105/62, “Extracts from the Journal of a Missionary Tour … ,” 8. In CMS CA1/E3/99, Renner to Secretary, 5 November 1813, Fernandez is identified as Baké's landlord.

⁴⁰ CMS CA1/E3/83, Butscher to Secretary, 16 June 1813.

⁴¹ McLachlan, , Travels, 10, note 47.Google Scholar

⁴² Most descriptions of the Baga portray them as rice and palm-oil producers. The precise market for Baga rice is less clear. Settlers at Freetown, for instance, preferred white rice that Fula bearers brought from the interior or polished rice produced in Sumbuya. Husk or red rice generally brought only half the price of white rice at the Sierra Leone Company's Pongo store, clearly suggesting that Baga rice had limited market appeal. Its low price, relative to other food products along this coast during the heyday of the slave trade, however, may have make it very attractive to captains who needed to provide inexpensive food for their slave cargos during the period of loading and transporting to the Americas. Portuguese traders were the brokers between these two groups and gradually gained for themselves a position within the power structure of this coast.

⁴³ CMS CA1/E4/40, Wenzel to Secretary, 10 November 1814. Wenzel warned that these extracts might find their way into the hands of headmen whose continued support might, thereby, be placed in jeopardy.

⁴⁴ CMS CA1/E3/99, Butscher to Secretary, 5 November 1813; CMS CA1/E3/100, Butscher to Secretary, 10 November 1813; CMS CA1/E3/108, Wenzel to Secretary, 12 December 1813; CMS CA1/E3/113, Klein to Secretary, 6 January 1814; CMS CA1/E3/116, Wilhelm to Secretary, 19 February 1814; CMS CA1/E4/63, Butscher to Secretary, 14 December 1814.

⁴⁵ CMS CA1/E3/113, Klein to Secretary, 6 January 1814; CMS CA1/E3/116, Wilhelm to Secretary, 19 February 1814; CMS CA1/E4/10, Wenzel to Secretary, 14 April 1814; CMS CA1/E4/74, Wilhelm's Journal, 6 December 1814.

⁴⁶ Bickersteth, , “Journal of the Assistant Secretary,” 161–63Google Scholar, noted that Fernandez had defended mission stations in the Fatala River during discussions with headmen, but had privately recommended new schools only in towns supervised directly from Bouramaya.

⁴⁷ McLachlan, , Travels, 10Google Scholar, stated, in totality: “The Coba Baga are a race of people who inhabit a part of the north bank of the river Dembia [Konkouré], near its mouth: what I have already said regarding the former tribe [the Baga-Kalum] may be applied to this, and also, with every degree of propriety, to those in the Rio Pongos, with this exception, that the two last tribes are a much more brave and warlike people [Kalum and Koba].” In Sierra Leone Archives, Colonial Secretary's Letter Book, Colonial Secretary to King Jellorum Fernandez, 28 September 1860, Bouramaya and the Bouramaya [Konkoure] River are specifically designated as belonging to the “Cobah Baggars.”

⁴⁸ Bangura, , “Contribution,” 161–65Google Scholar, wrote that Mangé Demba [Boye Demba] was the descendant of Mangé Tomboli who married his daughter, Maboye, to Sumba Tumani Dumbuya, a Susu. Three sons of this union, Demba, Kanta, and Sangara, were given sections of the coast to rule, but Demba was given jurisdiction over them all. Demba was, according to Bangura, of mixed descent and this perhaps helps to explain the preponderance of Muslim headmen among the Baga-Kalum during the period covered in this paper. Voeltz, , “Langues de la Guinée,” 6Google Scholar, wrote that the Koba and Kalum languages are essentially the same.

⁴⁹ Bickersteth, , “Journal of the Assistant Secretary,” 100.Google ScholarBangura, , “Contribution,” 161Google Scholar, stated that his residence was at Tomboli, perhaps Tomboleya.

⁵⁰ Whether Muslim clerics or visitors came to Bouramaya in large or frequent numbers is unclear at present. See CMS CA1/E5A/60, Klein to Secretary, Kaporo, 1 September 1816, for entries mentioning Muslim clerics visiting Kaporo.

⁵¹ CMS, CA1/E5/147, Reports of the Missionaries, Klein. In his journal of 1817, CMS CA1/E6/101, Klein mentioned many other towns, but failed to give their ethnic group. This journal needs to be read more carefully.

⁵² Bickersteth, , “Journal of the Assistant Secretary,” 100.Google Scholar

⁵³ McLachlan, , Travels, 18–22Google Scholar, identified the Susu of Taban as Kabitah-Susu (black-smiths).

⁵⁴ After this section was written and submitted for inclusion in the conference proceedings, I located and annotated a brief 24-page report compiled by Leopold Butscher in which he summarized observations about peoples located between the Scarcies and Nunez river. That narrative may have been intended for Bickersteth's use in preparation for his visit to west Africa in 1816/17. In the report (Account of the Mandingoes, Susoos, & Other Nations, c.1815, ed. Mouser, Bruce L., University of Leipzig Papers on Africa, History and Culture Series, No.6(2000), 12–14, notes 50-62Google Scholar), Butscher linked the region between Ile Tombo and the Dubréka River directly to the Sumbia/Zumbia Susu whose political center was located at Wonkapong in the upper Quiaport/Soumbou River. Butscher described Dubréka as one of the three “considerable towns” of Sumbuya and as having a population of about 1,000, most of whom were Moslems. Butscher's ca. 1815 account, while ostensibly contrary in analysis to those provided by Klein (1816), Bickersteth (1816-17), arid McLachlan (1821), reflected the ambiguous nature of reality within the region as described in the text above. Whereas others apparently linked “Susu-ness” to Islam and “Baga-ness” to animism, Butscher appeared to have emphasized political and economic associations rather than language or religion. Butscher also described the region between Dubréka town and Bouramaya as occupied by a separate people whom he called Kanias. McLachlan, , Travels, 21–22Google Scholar, in 1821 mentioned that the Susu of Taban were “considered by the chiefs as a distinct tribe,” perhaps rephrasing the ambiguity described in the text. In a private discussion with Ramon Sarró, Sarró mentioned that a resurgent Baga identification has recently occurred within this region, partly in consequence of increased migration into the area and urban development from Conakry and partly in reaction to a perceived loss of property rights by those who claim privilege as “first comers.” In this instance, Baga-ness does not refer to language identification, for the use of Baga has nearly disappeared. In effect, an identity transition from Baganess to Susu-ness which occurred among the Baga-Fatala between 1793 and 1821 might have been occurring among the Kalum peoples at the same time or may have already taken place, with political and economic ties more firmly installed with the Susu of Sumbuya than with peoples of Bouramaya or elsewhere in the Rio Pongo.

⁵⁵ Brooks, , Landlords and Strangers, 279Google Scholar; and numerous articles by P.E.H. Hair.

⁵⁶ See Hair, , “History of the Baga,” 288–91.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Mouser, Bruce L., “Iles de Los as Bulking Center in the Slave Trade, 1750-1800,” Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, 83/4 (1996): 77–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Bangura, , Contribution,” 161–65.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ ”Sandown,” 118^r.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 71^r, 88^v, 89^r, 118^r.

⁶⁰ McLachlan, , Travels, 7Google Scholar, described Amurah as the best scholar among the Baga. See CA1/E5/123, Klein to Secretary, 27 May 1816.

⁶¹ Brooks, George E. and Mouser, Bruce L., “An 1804 Slaving Contract Signed in Arabic Script From the Upper Guinea Coast,” HA 14(1987), 341–47.Google Scholar In “Treaty of Peace and Amity,” signed between Britain and Mangé Demba on 6 July 1818, Dala Mohamed Dumbuya was listed as a “chieftain” of the Baga-Kalum, a status suggesting more than minor Dumbuya influence in this area. See PRO, CO267/47/156, McCarthy to Bathurst, 20 July 1818, enclosure. I have intentionally concluded analysis of property rights on the Iles de Los before the signing of the 1818 treaty that, following the protocol of European treaty-making, technically ceded the islands to Britain.

⁶² Letter and journals from missionaries at the Iles de Los need to be researched more systematically for a clear understanding of the nature of landlords on the islands during this period. In CMS CA1/E3/108, Wenzel to Secretary, 12 December 1813, Amurah was described as a Bullom whose father had sent him to Fula country for an education; he was a “Mahomedan preacher, and a teacher of Arabic. At the death of his father, he obtained his paternal inheritance the Isles and established it by a decision of arms.” The above is unsubstantiated by other sources and contains contradictions of normal inheritance patterns along this coast. The status of Amurah and Tom Williams is further complicated by two other documents. In Alexander Smith, “Journal of a Voyage from Sierra Leone to the River Kisi Kisi… 1805,” ms.9, Sierra Leone Collection, the University Library, Manuscript Division, University of Illinois at Chicago, Smith noted the arrival at Forékariah of “Amara King Tom of the Isles de Los.” In this case it is unclear whether Smith meant that Amurah and Tom were different persons or perhaps the same person. In PRO, CO267/47/156, McCarthy to Bathurst, 20 July 1818, enclosure “Treaty of Peace and Amity,” dated 6 July 1818, Tom's name is absent from signatories to the treaty of cession. For this paper, I have intentionally refrained from discussing terms of cession contained in the 1818 Treaty and continuing payments to hosts, despite the claim of “absolute cession” of the islands to Britain.