An invasion near Cape Mount — and the political unit it created — were recorded by Dutch geographer Olfert Dapper. They were included in a book he published in 1668.
Dapper began his description of societies in present-day Liberia with a “Kingdom” called Quoia. The origin of the “Quoia” name is not explicitly addressed by Dapper’s informant. However, it is worth noting how similar it is to Quoja, the Vai word for “bushcow,” suggesting an oblique reference to the invaders’ origin in the direction of the forest.
Footnote: John D. Fage, A Guide to Original Sources in Precolonial Western Africa Published in European Languages, for the Most Part in Book Form (Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison,1994), pp. xi; Hallett, 1965, p. 67; P. E. H. Hair, “Barbot, Dapper, Davity: A Critique of Sources of Sierra Leone and Cape Mount,” History of Africa. 1 (1974): 25-54, especially pp. 33-39; P. E. H. Hair, “An early seventeenth-century vocabulary of Vai,” African Studies, 23, 3-4 (1964): 129-139.
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