^ Anthropology : Historical 



The languages used by the various peoples of Liberia will 

 be described in due course. I propose now to treat of the 

 anthropology and ethnology ot the Liberian Negroes. So far 

 as these peoples have come under the observation of the author 

 of this book or of the very few travellers, such as Captain 

 d'Ollone, who have recorded their impressions either in words 

 or with the camera, they may be divided roughly into three 

 main stocks : Man dingo, Kpwesi, and Kru, with various 

 interminglings of the different racial types where one impinges 

 on the other. 



So very little is as yet known about the central parts of 

 Liberia that it is too soon to say that we have found no trace 

 of any older Pygmy stock in the dense forests. A Pygmy 

 race, indeed, is reported to exist in the Central Liberian 

 Forest, north of the Farmington River. Hitherto, however, 

 no traveller has seen any example of these dwarfs or any 

 type that recalls the Pygmy peoples found here and there in 

 the basin of the Congo, in the tar interior ot the Cameroons, 

 in Southern or Eastern Africa. 



In fact, it may be stated generally that no trace of the 

 Congo Pygmy ^' or of the Bushman type has ever yet been 



by itself and the surrounding tribes, it has generally been rendered " Golah " by 

 tlie Americo-Liberians. The first person to record the existence of these people 

 was Koelle, and he writes the word Gura. The name is pronounced as though it 

 was written in English Gohra. 



* In the northern regions this tribe is generally known as Bella, Gbele, or Bere, 

 and in the north-west as Gbalin, a name incorrectly rendered in early maps of Liberia 

 as "Barline." This congeries of peoples generally knows itself as Gbele, but 

 for some reason is called by most of the surrounding tribes Kpwesi. Other sections 

 of this tribe north of the Beila or Gbele are known as Gizima or Buni. 



^ These peoples are inserted on the authority of Captain d'Oilone's De 

 la Cote d'lvohr, etc. Very little is known about these peoples, who may be 

 affiliated to the great Kpwesi race or to tiie Kru stock, more probably to the 

 former. 



" British anthropologists seem to be arriving at the conclusion that the 

 Congo Pygmies do not constitute a homogeneous type of Negro clearly marked 



