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846 VAI
activities. Chattel slaves as well as their children remain socially distinct from
all others in the society, engaging in only the most menial tasks. They are not
permitted to participate in any political activity. At certain points in Vai history,
this prohibition has led to slave revolts.
The Vai economy depends on a combination of swidden agriculture, with
particular emphasis on rice as the staple food, and trade as middlemen between
the peoples of the interior and ships stopping along the Vai coast. With these
two activities, it has been possible for the Vai to overcome the usual limitations
of tropical forest environment. Most forest-dwelling swidden agriculturalists have
been unable to sustain any great social stratification, but for the Vai it has been
possible because of their access to the additional economic base of trade. Thus,
an artisan class has developed. (In about 1830 an indigenous Vai script was
invented which permitted the Vai to establish a tradition of literacy. As a consequence,
Vai scholars left manuscripts detailing Vai life and history.)
Vai religious activities at the early period of their arrival on the coast encompassed
an omnipotent but somewhat distant supreme being, Kongba. The more
immediate needs of individuals were supposedly met by a variety of spirits who
populated the forests and waters. Ancestors, the "living dead," maintained the
most significant place in Vai belief. Old people were venerated, and that veneration
continued after death. As parents, the elders-ancestors oversaw and guided
the lives of their children, and the strongest manifestation of the ancestors'
concern and control was through the men' society, the Poro. It was within this
secret society that the ultimate sanction of death, as determined by the will of
the ancestors through high-ranking Poro members, was meted out.
Beginning in the middle to late eighteenth century, Islamic influences began
to reach the Vai area. The first contacts seem to have been as a direct result of
ongoing trade and cultural contacts between the savanna Mandinka and the coastal
Vai. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Vai, particularly in the northern
areas, were also coming into contact with Muslim Fulani traders from the Futa
Jallon (see Fulani).
Initially, Islam made little impact upon the Vai. Individual political leaders
who had consolidated several clans into an unstable confederation might turn to
a Muslim divine to sanctify and therefore help sustain their positions. These
divines were recognized as powerful, but the precepts of Islam held little interest
for Vai people in general.
Beginning in the twentieth century, the central governments of Sierra Leone
and Liberia extended increasing political control over the Vai. Political units
were stabilized and select individuals and their lineages were designated as the
legitimate rulers. Authority to mete out penalties, particularly the death penalty,
which had resided with the Poro elders, was taken over by the central governments.
Finally, in 1928 in Sierra Leone and 1930 in Liberia, the various forms
of internal servitude were abolished. Vai society, resilient through former periods
of changing circumstances, for the first time was shaken to its core. The legitimacy
of the ancestors' power was undermined. As a consequence, mass con-