The Mende Language Containing Useful Phrases Elementary Grammar Short Vocabularies, Reading Materials

The Mende nation is located in the eastern part of the Sierra Leone Protectorate. As to its origin I have been unable to obtain any information, but if its recent movement be any indication, the general direction of its migration would seem to have been southerly. In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century Mendes were apparently little known on the seaboard, except as slaves brought down from the interior. The late Reverend Dr. Schoen, of the Church Missionary Society, and the author of books on the Hausa, Ibo, and Mende languages, states (1882) that “it seems that the nation is pressing on to the seashore, as they occupy at present the country where, in 1839, the slave-dealers had their depots of slaves in the Sherbro country. Their baracoons were destroyed on the banks of the great river Bum by Captain Denman, of the British Navy, in 1840 or 1841, and since that time the country is open to British commerce and missionary operations, and the Mende are the principal occupants of the place, and their language has all but superseded, and will erelong supersede, the Sherbro altogether.” This movement has continued, but the Sherbro language still exists.

The imposition of peace on the country after the war of 1898, when the nation endeavoured to throw off European control, seems to have been the immediate cause of large numbers of the young men leaving their country. The suppression of local feuds deprived them of their chief activities. When there was constant local warfure the safety of the town depended on its male inhabitants being always at homo. With the abolition of the necessity for their presence the young men began to look around for some direction in which to turn their energies, and finding none at home they were necessarily compelled to go abroad; and they are now to be found in all parts of West Africa, including the French and German colonies. As regards the Gold Coast, they were first introduced to that country through being brought in small numbers in the capacity either of soldiers or carriers for the local wars, beginning with the Ashanti war of 1873.