Mane people

The Manes (so called by the Portuguese) or Mani or Manneh were invaders who attacked the western coast of Africa from the east, beginning during the first half of the sixteenth century. Walter Rodney has suggested that "the Mane invaders of Sierra Leone comprised two principal elements — a ruling élite originating in the southern section of the Mande world of the Western Sudan, and numerical forces drawn from the area around Cape Mount"; the first half of the sixteenth century would have taken Mande clans to the Liberian coast "from the region around Beyla and perhaps even from the hinterland of modern Ghana," followed by more incursions during the third quarter of the century, bringing both exploitation of the local peoples and improved military techniques and iron and cloth manufacture. "They also profoundly influenced religious and social patterns, particularly with respect to the secret societies of the area." Yves Person identified the early Mane leaders with the Kamara or Camara clan, "with traditions relating to the sea," from "the Konyan highlands around Beyla." George E. Brooks says they were originally led by "a woman of reputedly elite status from the Mali Empire named Macarico," who "left the Konyan highlands around the mid-1500s and traversed present-day Liberia in a south-southwest direction... Along the way the Mani allied with Sumbas, people speaking Kruan languages."

The widest deployment of political and economic power in the Sudan before the seventeenth century was that stemming from Mandé initiative in the successive empires of Ghana and Mali (and to some extent of Songhai also). This had political consequences in the lands immediately to the west and south of the Mandé heartland around the upper reaches of the Niger and Senegal rivers. One result was the Fulani dispersion eastward past the farthest reaches of Mandé influence, and the other was the settlement of Mandé-speakers along the West Atlantic coast.

Mandé-speakers moved west and south of their homeland as traders and conquerors. In the case of traders, an incentive was probably access to the supplies of salt obtainable from the coast. This move towards the coastlands led to a number of Mandé pioneers carving out kingdoms for themselves in emulation of the major model of Mali. There seem to have been two major axes for the Mandé expansion. One was along the line of the river Gambia, a useful artery for trade, which rises within a few miles of the sources of the Falémé, a major tributary of the Senegal, whose headwaters were in Mande occupation. The other, separated from The Gambia by the Fouta Djallon massif which the Fulani were occupying, ran south into modern Sierra Leone close by the Susu settlement. In both areas, political organizations were established under rulers called farimas. Initially they paid tribute to Mali, and even after the decline of the Mali power in the later fifteenth century, they maintained some idea of its previous supremacy.

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