The Temne
Total population
1,843,368
Regions with significant populations
Southern Province
Languages
Mende language
Religions
Islam, Christianity

The Mende are an ethnic group living in Sierra Leone, primarily in the Southern Province, that makes up 30% of the country's total population. Most of the Mende live in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone's politics have been dominated by the Mende.

Their cultural and oral traditions indicate that they migrated to the area from the western Sudan in several waves between the 2nd and 16th centuries and are part of greater Mandé society.

The Mende are generally known as growers of rice and several other crops, practicing crop rotation to protect soil productivity. They are also known as traders. The upper classes may be descended from the Mane, former soldiers of the Mali Empire.

Regional warfare throughout the 19th century led to the capture and sale of many Mende-speakers into slavery. Most notable were those found aboard the Amistad in 1839, who eventually won their freedom and were repatriated. This event involved fifty-two Mendi tribesmen, purchased by Portuguese slavers in 1839, who were shipped via the Middle Passage to Havana, Cuba where they were sold to Cuban sugar plantation owners, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez. After working the plantation, they were placed on the schooner Amistad and shipped to another Cuban plantation. On the way they escaped their bondage and were led in a rebellion by Sengbe Pieh (later known as Joseph Cinqué). They set sail for Africa. Their efforts to return home were frustrated by the ship's remaining crew, who ensured that no progress was made, and the ship was intercepted off Long Island, New York, by a U.S. Coastal brig. Ruiz and Montez denounced the Mende and asserted that they were their property. The ensuing case, heard in Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut, affirmed that the men were free, and resulted in the return of the thirty-six surviving Mende to their homes.

In the 1930s African American linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner found a Gullah family in coastal Georgia that had preserved an ancient song in the Mende Language ("A waka"), passing it down for 200 years. In the 1990s two modern researchers located a Mende village in Sierra Leone where the same song is still sung today. The story of this ancient Mende song, and its survival in both Africa and the US, is chronicled in the documentary film The Language You Cry In.

Now, in Sierra Leone, Mendes are mostly found in the southern and eastern part of the country. Some of the main cities the Mende occupy are Bo and Kenema.

The Mende are a group of people who live primarily within the southern third of Sierre Leone. Historically, they are rather recent arrivals to this area, appearing no earlier than the sixteenth century as invading forces advancing from the south. Linguistically, the Mende are related to Niger-Kordofanian and Niger-Congo groupings; they have at least two major dialects—Kpa and Ko—and two less prominent dialects—Waanjama and Sewawa. In 1987 the Mende numbered about one million, of whom 75 to 80 percent were Kpa Mende and most of the remaining portion, Ko Mende. The Mende comprise about 30 percent of Sierre Leone's total population.

The small country of Sierre Leone, of which the Mende occupy the southern portion, lies very close to the equator on the western coast of Africa. The climate is distinguished by a dry season from October to May and a wet season from June to October. There is much variation in humidity, sunshine, and rainfall, depending on the terrain, the distance from the coast, and the time of year. Until the twentieth century, much of the terrain consisted of forests, which have since been greatly reduced by clearing for farming. Farm-bush is the dominant vegetation type of the southern part of the country, where the Mende reside.

The Mende live primarily in villages of 70 to 250 residents, which are situated from 1.5 to 5 kilometers apart. There is little or no mechanization over the greater part of rural Mende country. Mende farmers use hoes and machetes, but few other tools. Coffee, cocoa, and ginger are grown as cash crops, whereas rice, pepper, groundnuts, beniseed, and palm oil are grown for local consumption. Rice cooperatives have been formed in some rural areas.

Work is divided by gender: men attend to the heavy work of clearing the land for planting rice while women are occupied with cleaning and pounding rice, fishing, and weeding the planted crops. This routine is followed during ten months of every year, with a couple of months left around the New Year, when they can spend more time in the village engaging in domestic pursuits like house building.

The household unit is represented by at least one man and perhaps several of his brothers, with all of their wives and children. One or more brothers and married sisters usually leave sooner or later and are incorporated into other residential units. The senior male has moral authority—the right to respect and obedience—over the family as a whole, especially with regard to the negotiation of debts, damages, and bride-wealth.

Because of their recent origins, their contact with other peoples in the area, their involvement in the slave trade, and the strong influence of Islam and later colonial powers, as well as missionary contact, it is difficult and perhaps misleading to speak of the traditional culture of the Mende. Mende culture is an eclectic blend that has resulted from all of these different influences. Mende religion, likewise, has native elements—a Supreme Being, ancestral spirits, secret societies, and witch finders—that coexist with and are sometimes interspersed with adherence to Christian or Islamic beliefs.

Notable Mende

• Sir Milton Margai, lead Sierra Leone to independence in 1961, and became nation's first prime minister from 1961-1964
• Sir Albert Margai, was the second prime minister of Sierra Leone from 1964-1967; and the brother of Sir Milton Margai]], and the father of current Sierra Leonean politician Charles Margai
• David Lansana, former Head of State of Sierra Leone
• Solomon Berewa, former vice-president of Sierra Leone
• Julius Maada Bio, former Head of State of Sierra Leone
• Francis Minah, first vice president of Sierra Leone
• Major General Edward Sam M’boma, Chief of the Defence Staff of The Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces
• Emerson, an internationally recognized Sierra Leonean musician
• Joe Robert Pemagbi, Sierra Leone ambassador to the United Nation
• Samuel Hinga Norman, former head of the Civil Defense Forces
• Charles Margai, a Sierra Leonean politician and leader of People's Movement for Democratic Change, a newly formed political party in Sierra Leone; he is also the son of Sir Albert Margai, and nephew of Sir Milton Margai
• Sergeant Solomon Musa, was the vice chairman of the NPRC, a military government that rule Sierra Leone from 1992-1997
• Julius Gibrilla Woobay, football star
• Aluspah Brewah football star
• Emerson Samba football star
• Joseph Ganda, a Sierra Leonean Archbishop
• John O. Benjamin Finance Minister (2007) of The Republic of Sierra Leone from Segbwema.
• Augustine Jusu Lecturer and Writer. Most recent book pulished: Tears Of Happiness.
• Festus Minnah Head of The Sierra Leone Teachers Union

References

• Fage, John D. History of Africa. Routledge; 4th edition (2001).

Notes