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MENDE 513
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to Raymond Firth, edited by M. Freedman. London: Cass, 1967.
. "Slaves, Aristocrats and Export of Sago in Sarawak." In Asian and African
Systems of Slavery, edited by J. L. Watson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.
Pringle, Robert. Rajahs and Rebels. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970.
Runcilman, Steven. The White Rajahs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.
H. S. Morris
MENDE One of the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone is the Mende,
who comprise some 31 percent of the population. The other is the Temne, who
are perhaps 35 percent (see Temne). Less than one-third—346,000—of the 1.2
million Mende are Muslim. Mende inhabit roughly 12,000 square miles of coastal
bush and central forest country in southern Sierra Leone, where they are grouped
into more than 60 chiefdoms. A few thousand live in Liberia, most in Guma
Mendi chiefdom.
Specialists recognize three major subgroups on the basis of dialectical and
cultural differences: Kpa-Mende in the west, Sewa Mende in the center and east
and Ko-Mende in the north and the center. Linguistically, they belong to the
Manding-speaking subgroup of Greenberg's Congo-Kordofanian family; culturally,
they are included by Murdock in his Kru and Peripheral Mande culture
province (see Manding-speaking Peoples).
The Mende, like most Sierra Leone peoples, welcomed itinerant Muslims,
often traders, who settled among them. Known as mori men, they provided a
valued service such as in making charms and divining for the Mende, especially
chiefs and warriors. These traders were Sunni Muslims of the Maliki rite, but
prior to the twentieth century there seem to have been few converts. In this
century, the spread of Islam among the Mende and other Sierra Leone peoples
is probably related to anti-colonial feelings.
The Ahmadiya sect of Islam was introduced to Sierra Leone in 1937 and into
the Mende area in 1939 at Baomahun, then a gold-mining center. By 1945, the
Ahmadis moved to Bo, which remains their base. A 1960 estimate indicated
about 3,000 Ahmadis in Sierra Leone, the majority being Mende.
More than 80 percent of the Mende are primarily farmers who produce a range
of food and cash crops. Rice, both wet and dry varieties, is the staple; cassava
is virtually a co-staple in some areas. Dried fish, various leaves and vegetables
are added to a stew base of palm oil to flavor the rice. The diet of most nonelite
Mende is starchy and often protein deficient. The labor demands of cash
crops, such as palm kernels, coffee, cocoa and ginger together with an expanding,
urban-based, wage-labor market have created an agricultural labor shortage in
some areas that has not been overcome through technological innovation. It
becomes progressively more difficult for a growing population to feed itself.
Nearly all food and cash crop production is in the "domestic mode," although
traditionally the work force of the farming household was augmented at times