Liberia <*- 



took place in the trihal arrangements of Western Liberia (accord- 

 ing to Dapper), due to the invasion from the north or north-west 

 of a people whom he calls " Karou." This race seemingly had 

 no connection with the Kru stock — at least Dapper gives no 

 encouragement to such an idea, though with a little twisting 

 of geographical indications the invasion he describes might 

 represent the westward march of the De tribe. Biittikofer 

 inclines to the idea that the Karou under the war chief " Floni- 

 kerry " were a section of the Kpwesi people which attacked and 

 subdued the pre-existing "Gala" and the Vai and Kwia, and 

 then established themselves in the Kpwesi country to the east 

 of the St. Paul's River. They might of course have been a 

 section of the warlike Buzi tribe, a people which plays a promi- 

 nent part at the present time in North-western Tiberia. But the 

 Kpwesi to the east of the St. Paul's River seem much more 

 to represent a race long settled on the Liberian soil, and more 

 aboriginal in its features than the Cora. It is more likely that 

 the " Kwoya " were a section of the Kpwesi people, perhaps 

 identical with the Kwia tribe (on the Dukwia River), and that 

 Dapper's invading Karous may have been the Gora people. It 

 is true that Dapper writes of the "Galas" as being one of the 

 races conquered by the Karous, and Biittikofer assumes that 

 "Gala" is equivalent to Gora. This may be so ; but it might 

 then follow that the Karou adopted the name of the race they 

 conquered, with whom undoubtedly they mingled. Ever since 

 the seventeenth century the people dwelling in the Gora country 

 seem to have been a turbulent, aggressive, advancing race, which 

 furnished very sturdy opponents to Liberian rule during the 

 first twenty years of the State's existence.^ 



The last ot the race movements in Liberia consists in the 



■ President Barclay considers the invading " Karous " of Dapper to have been a 

 Kru people, probabl}' the ancestors of the De and Mamba tribes. 



C^26 



