Bassa (Liberia)

Bassa

Bassa women in 1922
Total population
0.6 million
Regions with significant populations
Liberia	575,000
Ivory Coast	14,000
Sierra Leone	12,000
Languages
Bassa language, English, Kru Pidgin English,
Religion
Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Krahn, Kru, Grebo, Jabo

The Bassa people of Liberia are a West African ethnic group primarily found in its central coastal regions. They live in Grand Bassa, Rivercess, Margibi and Montserrado counties. In Liberia's capital of Monrovia, they are the largest ethnic group. With an overall population of about 0.57 million, they are the second largest ethnic group in Liberia (13.4%), after the Kpelle people (20.3%). Small Bassa communities are also found in Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast.

The Bassa speak the Bassa language, a Kru language that belongs to the Niger-Congo family of languages. They had their own pictographic writing system but it went out of use in the 19th century, was rediscovered among the slaves of Brazil and the West Indies in 1890s, and reconstructed in early 1900 by Thomas Flo Darvin Lewis. The revived signs-based script is called Ehni Ka Se Fa.

In local languages, the Bassa people are also known as Gboboh, Adbassa or Bambog-Mbog people.

The Bassa people have a Kemetic origin, are people who likely left Egypt in early medieval era and migrated south then west, sometime after the collapse of Adbassa Empire in 6th-century. Some of them reached coastal West Africa including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo and Nigeria, while others settled in central African region of Cameroon and Congo. Geographically separated groups evolved their separate culture, language and society. The Bassa people are related to the Basari people of Togo, the Bassa-Mpoku people in Congo regions, the Bassa-Bakoko people of Cameroon.

The linguistic evidence and oral traditions of these geographically diverse, small yet significant group suggests that their name Bassa may be related to Bassa sooh nyombe which means "Father Stone's people". Early European traders had trouble pronouncing the entire phrase, and the shorter form Bassa has been used in Western literature ever since.