Category: Bopolu

Bopolu was founding prior to 1200 AD by the ancestors of the Dei. It was a trade town where products brought from the Sahel were exchanged for their salt, which was made by boiling sea water. Originally called Taabli (“Taa’s town”), it became a regular stop for trade caravans from elsewhere in West Africa. 

The town was far from the coast, where the Dei lived, so the name was changed to Bopolu because people kept complaining “bo po mole” (meaning “only foot will put you there”).

Footnote: Bureau of Folkways, 1955, p. 44. As explained by Dr. Dougbeh Nyan, the phonology of “Bopolu” in Grebo is almost identical to Dei; in Grebo “bo” is foot, “po” is put and “lu” is there.

Bopolu was just one of many such towns established by people in the forest and woodlands just for trading. Located miles away from their homes, workshops and raw materials, these towns provided a place to meet with visiting traders without allowing outsiders access to the sources of their resources.

As is still done by companies around the world, local producers went to great lengths to protect their trade secrets. For example, a Dei ruler named Duwan reportedly made the Gola pay to taste salt water –– although his mother was Gola!

The ancestors of the Dei seem to have migrated from the present-day Guinea down along the St. Paul, then westward.

According to a Dei founding legend told by Gbii Woso, a descendent of the landholding lineage, the group descended from the marriage of a father, Zie, who emerged from the water, and Dewulo, a mother who previously lived with her parents in a cave.

Footnote: Bureau of Folkways, 1955, p. 41.

As expressions of their mutual affection, Zie gave Dewulo a silver coin and she gave him a gold ring. Zie’s dowry for Dewulo was a carved iron drum decorated with brass and copper, which fell from the sky near the town of Millsburg, then called Dalon.

After the original drum disappeared, leaders of the Poro power association created a replica in wood, called foivo, which is the chief musical instrument in all Dei higher-level ceremonies of the Poro power association.

Footnote: Bureau of Folkways, 1955, p. 41. 

Putting aside the fantastical elements that accrue to such stories retold over centuries, the legend offers several intriguing clues regarding the origin of the Dei.

First, it traces their origin to the mixing of a local woman (or, more probably, women) and a migrant man (or men), who apparently arrived from up north via the St. Paul River. Second, it points to knowledge of metal smelting as central to the identity of the new people that emerged.

Footnote: For the use of stereotypes and formulaic elements in oral traditions, see Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 88-91, also pp. 12, 21, 28, 47, 50, 52-53, 71, 86, 137, 139-140, 144-146.

The exchanged items were probably different in earlier versions of the story, but was updated to a ring and a coin to suit recent audiences. Third, the multiple metals used in making the dowry drum, as well as its elaborate decoration, suggest the men who descended from north brought a knowledge of metal working.

Dei oral traditions cite a town called Kambai Bli (on the current road to Bomi Hills) as one of their oldest and most economically important. This town was the site of a large clay pit for producing pottery products that attracted buyers from afar.

Footnote: Bureau of Folkways, 1955, p. 43.

Far more important than pottery was the production of salt from sea water for sale to northern markets. According to Dei oral traditions, it was principally their wealth from salt boiling that attracted other groups to join them.

Important salt boiling towns were located along the beach from the mouth of the St. Paul to Cape Mount. They included Duojena, Dugbei, Gakpoja and Mbaanwoin.

Footnote: Bureau of Folkways, 1955, pp. 50, 53.

Several routes linked the Niger to the salt-producing coast as well as the kola forest of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

All of those routes passed through Kankan, which was the main transit point for the flow of goods between the Buré gold-working region and forest societies on the one hand and the Sahel on the other.

Footnote:  Massing, 1985, pp. 36-37, 41; George E. Brooks, Kola Trade and State Building: Upper Guinea Coast and Senegambia, 15th and 17th Centuries (Boston, MA: Boston University, African Studies Center, 1980), p. 268; Person, 1968, p. 558; Beávogui, 2001, p. 54.

One route went from the Niger through Kankan to the Sierra Leone peninsula. The Dyula ancestors of the Vai ethnic group apparently took this route to the Sierra Leone peninsula before slowly moving east toward Cape Mount

A second path ran from Kankan to Musadu to Bopolu to Jondu to Gowolo to Gowolonamalo to Cape Mount.

Footnote: Massing, 1985, pp. 36-37, 41; Brooks, 1980, p. 268.

West African societies appeared self-contained because they produced their basic necessities. But, even in this early period, they were tied together by trade with distant markets.

At the west end, one trade route ran from Senegal through southern Mauritania to Sijilmasa in present-day Morocco. Meanwhile, seafaring groups along the Atlantic ferried goods to the mouths of navigable rivers. A central route went from Kwakaw up to Tahart in Algeria.

Footnote: Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1978, pp. 271, 276; Brooks, 1985, p. 5.

In the east, a track connected Lake Chad located between Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon to Jabal Nafusa in present-day Libya. A horizontal route ran from the Niger through the Aïr Mountain to Cairo, Egypt, which was a major stop for Muslim pilgrims en route to Mecca.

This network was probably connected to an early route that ran from the mouth of the St. Paul River through Bopolu (both in what is now Liberia) to Musadu (a town in present-day Guinea currently called Beyla), then up to the Niger River.

Footnote: Hunwick, 2006, p. 15: d’Azevedo, 1959, p. 54.

The African-American repatriates arrived along the Liberian coast just as slave trading was increasing in the area. In 1807, the British had outlawed human trafficking. One year later, the British navy began patrolling high-volume slave marts along the West Africa coast and seizing suspected slave ships.

Those actions unintentionally drove slaves buyers from major ports like Elmira and Bonny to previously underutilized areas like the coast of present-day Liberia.