Krumen people

The Krumen (also Kroumen, Kroomen) is an ethnic group living mostly along the coast of Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. Their numbers were estimated to be 48,300 in 1993, of which 28,300 were in Côte d’Ivoire. They are a subgroup of the Grebo and speak the Krumen language.

They are also called Kru, and are related to (but distinct from) the Kru people of the Liberian interior.

There has been much scholarly debate on the origin of the term, since there is little evidence of use of the term outside of the maritime environment in which the Krumen served as sailors, and the fact that many Grebo served in this capacity. Hence the belief that its root was from "crewmen" in English (a pidgin form of which was a lingua franca among them, thanks to their service as on European vessels). One theory, advanced in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica was that it derived from Kraoh, which is the name of one subgroup in their home area.

The coast of eastern Liberia and western Ivory Coast were rarely visited by European vessels until the nineteenth century, and for that reason there are very few written texts that can illuminate its early history or the origin of the Krumen communities there. There has also been very little archaeological work that might illuminate events or societies of the more distant past. For that reason, oral tradition remains the most important key to the origin of the Krumen.

Traditions recorded in the mid nineteenth century by James Connelly relate that the Kru communities that lived along the shore of what is today southern Liberia and the reputed core settlement of the Krumen came down to the coast from the interior "some three generations back--say one hundred to one hundred fifty years..." from an original place he called Claho. Coming down the Poor River they "learned the value of salt" and founded the town of Bassa, the subsequently moved again to Little Kroo, and then were subsequently joined by whole communities from the interior. These events likely occurred in the 1770s and are believed to be connected to more intensive European interest in trade in the region at about this time. The original settlers from the interior eventually established five towns, Little Kroo, Setra Kroo, Kroo-Bar, Nana Kroo and King Will's Town, that came to be regarded as their home district, though soon other offshoots developed along the coast, and particularly in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

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