-■^i 



Anthropology : Social 



Slavery is still in force as a social institution throughout 

 Liberia, except in the regions near the coast which are under 

 the effective administration of the Liberian Government. Need- 

 less to say, it is not recognised by the Liberian Government 

 as a legal condition ; but it would only involve the Govern- 

 ment at Monrovia in a long series of costly and bloody wars 

 if they commenced too soon a crusade against the Slave Trade 

 in the far interior. It is clear, for example, that a considerable 

 traffic in slaves still goes on between Western Liberia and 

 the civilised blacks of Sierra Leone, " who take over the war 

 captives of the Buzi and Mandingo tribes as labourers and 

 domestic servants at a price of about £/\. each " (Mr. Conrad 

 Viner's report). 



Amongst the aborigines, the farther one retreats from the 

 settled coast belt the more evident is it that slavery is still 

 a powerful institution. According to Mr. Gow, who travelled 

 amongst the Kpwesi people on the Dukwia River in 1904, 

 there is constant civil war between various Kpwesi tribes or 

 communities, in the course of which prisoners are made. As 

 it would be easy for these prisoners to run away back to 

 their own homes, the desire of their captors is to dispose of 

 them for large or small sums to Mandingo traders, or to hire 

 them as apprentices to Americo-Liberian settlers. At one time, 

 no doubt, the Mandingo did a very good business in the 

 Liberian hinterland. They bought hundreds — ^possibly thousands 

 — of slaves every year, and took them to the Mandingo 

 Plateau, whence they were dispersed amongst the Arab, Fula, 

 and Hausa traders who frequented Samori's empire before 

 it was conquered by the French. But there has been a marked 

 decrease in the demand for slaves by these Mandingo merchants 

 since the whole of the Upper Niger Basin was occupied by 

 the French Government. No doubt the simultaneous British 



107? 



