Futanari Village English Subs
Elisabetta Buendia
The Temne people migrated from the Futa Jallon region of Guinea, who left their original settlements to escape Fula jihads in the 15th century, and migrated south before settling between the Kolent and Rokel River area of Sierra Leone.[3][5] They initially practiced their traditional religion before Islam was adopted through contact with Muslim traders from neighboring ethnic groups. Though most Temne converted to Islam over time, Some have continued with their traditional religion.[5]
The Temne are traditionally farmers, growing rice, cassava, millet and kola nut. Their cash crops include peanuts and tobacco.[5] Some Temne are fisherman, artisans and traders. Temne society is patrilineal. It has featured a decentralized political system with village chiefs and an endogamous hierarchical social stratification.[7][8] The Temne were one of the ethnic groups that were victims of slave capture and trading across the sub-Saharan and across the Atlantic into European colonies.[9][10]
The Temne people constitute one of the largest ethnic groups of Sierra Leone. Their largest concentrations are found in the northwestern and central parts of Sierra Leone, as well as the coastal capital city of Freetown.[4][11] Although Temne speakers live mostly in the Northern Province, they also can be found in a number of other West African countries as well, including Guinea and The Gambia. Some Temnes have migrated beyond West Africa seeking educational and professional opportunities in countries such as Great Britain, the United States, and Egypt. Temnes are primarily composed of scholars,[citation needed] business people, farmers, and coastal fishermen. Most Temnes are Muslim.
In 1642, a Susu caravan of 1,500 people led by Tour, Fofana, Yansan, Youla, and Doumbouya from the North, invaded the city of Forcariah. Directed by Fode Katibi Tour and his brothers Fod Boubacar Fofana and Fod Boubacar Yansan, their primary mission was to Islamize the natives of the said locality who were Temne people. The Temne, who refused to convert to Islam, were massively conquered from their region, which resulted in forced migration to northwest Sierra Leone.[12]
According to Bankole Taylor, the migration of the Temne to present-day Sierra Leone goes far back as the 11th and 12th century, Mainly due to the fall of Jallonkadu Empire in what eventually became Futa Jallon. According to oral tradition, the Temne consider their ancestral home to be the Fouta Djallon highlands in the interior of present-day Guinea.[13][5] In the 15th century, their region was dominated by Fulani causing a southern migration of the Temne to northwest Sierra Leone.[3][5] Following their migration they came into contact with the Limba people, the Temnes fought and forced the Limba northeast and the Bullom southwards. The Limba, according to Alexander Kup, had settled in Sierra Leone at some point before 1400 CE invading land then-inhabited possibly by Gbandi people pushing them eastwards into Liberia.[14]
The Temne started resettling in the northern part of the Pamoronkoh River (today is known as the Rokel River). They followed the Rokel River from its upper reaches to the Sierra Leone River, the giant estuary of the Rokel River, and Port Loko Creek, one of the largest natural harbors in the African continent. This re-settlement remained precarious, as more ethnic groups arrived in the region to escape wars and jihads, and as wars began inside Sierra Leone in the coming years. In the mid 16th century, a Mand army from the east, referred to as the Mane or Mani, invaded and conquered the Temne lands, with the general Farma Tami becoming the ruler of the Temne. His capital Robaga by the Sierra Leone River, now near Freetown, became holy and an economic center for the Temne.[15] The Mane generals and captains divided Sierra Leone between themselves into four principal "kingdoms", with several subdivisions within each.[16] However, Kenneth C. Wylie states, the "kingdoms" were graftings atop existing local structures which continued to survive and which influenced the newcomers.[17]
Between the 16th and 18th century, several Mand ethnic groups such as the Koranko, the Susu and the Yalunka also arrived. A Fula ruler styled Fula Mansa seized power south of the Rokel River. Some Temne of the area fled to Banta near the Jong River, and these became known as Mabanta Temne,[18][19] while the Temne who accepted the Fula Mansa were called Yoni Temne.[20] The precise origins of the Mane remain intensely debated.[21] The Mane would eventually subsume into the Temne and Bullom peoples, in addition to forming the Loko ethnic group.[22]
The earliest mention of Temne and other ethnic groups of Sierra Leone are in the records of Portuguese financed explorers such as those of Valentim Fernandes and Pacheco Pereira who were traveling along the coast of Africa to find a route to India and China.[23] Pereira's memoirs written between 1505 and 1508 mention Temne words for gold ("tebongo"), water ("'mant 'mancha") and rice ("nack maloo," borrowed from Mandinka).[24] The Portuguese records describe the culture and religion of the Temne people that their ships met as communities living near water, worshippers of idols made of clay, and men having their gods, while women had their own".[24]"
A Portuguese citizen from Cape Verde named Andr lvares de Almada wrote an extensive handbook on Sierra Leone in 1594, urging the Portuguese to colonize the region. This handbook also described Temne society and culture in the 16th century.[25] The text mentions villages, their courts of justice, and lawyers who represented different parties while wearing "grotesque masks", with the chief presiding. Culprits convicted of serious crimes, claimed de Almada, were killed or enslaved. He also described the rituals of chief's succession involving goat blood and rice flour, marriage dances, and a funeral involving the burial of the dead within one's house with gold ornaments.[25]
The Dutch and French colonial empires were not interested in Sierra Leone, and left the Temne land to the interests of the Portuguese and the English.[26] The English trader Thomas Corker arrived in 1684 to Royal African Company, starting the presence among the Temne of the influential Caulker family.[27]
The Futa Jallon Jihad of early 18th century caused major sociopolitical upheaval among the Temne, because it triggered slave raids and the sale of war captives into the Transatlantic Slave Trade, plus generated a major influx of Susu and Yalunka people from the north and west. It also marked the rise of the Solima Yalunka kings.[18] The Temne king Naimbana (also spelled Nembgana) of the Kingdom of Koya was hostile to slave trading until his death in 1793.[28] These wars brought European slave traders to the ports of the region to buy slaves from African chiefs and slave merchants, but it also brought the navies of the European colonial powers interested in safeguarding their interests in Sierra Leone.[29]
The Temne king, Naimbanna II, opposed slave trading but supported other trade and amicable relations with the European powers. He allowed the British to remain in the peninsula which had been ceded to them by his sub-chief, Tom. Naimbana signed the treaty in 1788 giving this land to the colonists. This may have been done unwittingly, since he was illiterate and may not have realized that the British intended to take permanent possession of the territory. Some of his later actions indicate that he was happy with the presence of the colony in his territory. In 1785, he also granted a French officer land on Gambia Island, close to what is now Hastings.[30]
After its founding in 1792, Freetown became the site of the settlement of freed slaves from Britain (Black Poor), North America (Black Nova Scotians), the Caribbean (Jamaican Maroons) and large numbers of Liberated Africans rescued from blockaded slave ships by the Royal Naval Squadron.[36][37] These efforts had been inspired and financed by philanthropic British abolitionists, African-Americans, and Christian missionaries.[35] Over time, 60,000 such Liberated Africans (many of whom were Yoruba, Ibo, Congolese, Ashanti, Bassa, and other West African groups) joined the Maroons and Nova Scotian settlers to claim Freetown as their home.[28][35] But this fast-growing center of newly resettled men, women, and children[35] was regarded ambivalently by the Temne. Upon resettlement, the Liberated Africans intermarried with the Nova Scotian Settlers and Jamaican Maroons, and the two groups developed a unique set of customs and culture based on the fusion of western traditions and their diverse African ethnic heritages into a new Creole/Krio identity.[38][39][31][40] Freetown also became a center for Christian missionary activity setting up schools and churches from the coastal south. Around the same time, Fouta Djallon had become a popular destination for higher studies and Islamic learning, with sons from several notable families being sent there to study.[18]
The Temne were a source of timber, groundnuts, palm kernels, palm oil, rubber and other goods which fed the trade between Sierra Leone and the Europe.[41] However, the Temne kingdom of Koya was engaged in regional wars between 1807 and 1888, such as with the Loko, Mende and Susu rulers. The British intervened between the 1830s to 1870s, arranged numerous cease fires to help stabilize the socio-economic situation and trade. The treaties between the different rulers in and around the Temne lands were erratic and intermittent.[41][42]
The ongoing wars between the various ethnic groups, along with the military action from the north by the Futa Jalon Almamate into the Temne territories, threatened the Sierra Leone-related economic interests of the European colonial powers. The French and the British then intervened militarily, with the French expanding into Guinea in the early 1880s and the British expanding from the south through Freetown. In 1889, the French and the British had brought the region under their effective control, and they negotiated a boundary between the French Guinea and British Sierra Leone. The Temne territories went to the British.[41][43]
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