Mende people

The Mende are a large West African ethnic group (population approximately 2 million), speakers of the Mende language, living primarily in Sierra Leone, where they make up 30% of the population but some also live in Liberia.

Their cultural and oral traditions indicate that they migrated to the area from the western Sudan in several waves between the 2nd and 16th centuries and are part of greater Mandé society.

The Mende are generally known as growers of rice and several other crops, practicing crop rotation to protect soil productivity. They are also known as traders. The upper classes may be descended from the Mane, former soldiers of the Mali Empire.

Regional warfare throughout the 19th century led to the capture and sale of many Mende-speakers into slavery. Most notable were those found aboard the Amistad in 1839, who eventually won their freedom and were repatriated. This event involved fifty-two Mendi tribesmen, purchased by Portuguese slavers in 1839, who were shipped via the Middle Passage to Havana, Cuba where they were sold to Cuban sugar plantation owners, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez. After working the plantation, they were placed on the schooner Amistad and shipped to another Cuban plantation. On the way they escaped their bondage and were led in a rebellion by Sengbe Pieh (later known as Joseph Cinqué). They set sail for Africa. Their efforts to return home were frustrated by the ship's remaining crew, who ensured that no progress was made, and the ship was intercepted off Long Island, New York, by a U.S. Coastal brig. Ruiz and Montez denounced the Mende and asserted that they were their property. The ensuing case, heard in Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut, affirmed that the men were free, and resulted in the return of the thirty-six surviving Mende to their homes.

In the 1930s African American linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner found a Gullah family in coastal Georgia that had preserved an ancient song in the Mende Language ("A waka"), passing it down for 200 years. In the 1990s two modern researchers located a Mende village in Sierra Leone where the same song is still sung today. The story of this ancient Mende song, and its survival in both Africa and the US, is chronicled in the documentary film The Language You Cry In.

Now, in Sierra Leone, Mendes are mostly found in the southern and eastern part of the country. Some of the main cities the Mende occupy are Bo and Kenema.

References

• Fage, John D. History of Africa. Routledge; 4th edition (2001).