Liberia «♦• 



Liberian peoples, though in one district and another there 

 are animals that men or women may not eat, such as the 

 black Cephalophus antelope, elephants, monkeys, fowls, cat-fish, 

 or goats. Children, too, at birth are often dedicated to some 

 animal or vegetable, and may not eat or destroy the same 

 during their lives. On the other hand, totemism, according 

 to Binger and other authorities, was at one time well marked 

 amongst the Mandingo on the north, and through them had 

 penetrated to the coast of Western Liberia with the Vai tribe. 

 Muhammadanism seems to have killed out this practice to a 

 great extent, in Liberia at any rate. Binger gives the following 

 list of animals and plants that were regarded by the Mande 

 peoples as totems, as things considered more or less sacred 

 in the clan which adopted the particular totem : Crocodile, 

 hippopotamus, elephant, snake (in general), " broken calabashes 

 or gourds," lion, dog, milk of wild animals, the green monkey, 

 leopard, paradoxure or palm civet, monitor lizard, ground-rat, 

 python, and puff-adder. 



It is said that the word Mali or Madi, which sometimes 

 seems to be the root of the word Mandingo (the name, which 

 is really pronounced Madina or Mandina), is really the word 

 for hippopotamus ; that the original Mandingo people took 

 the hippopotamus of the Upper Niger as their totem. The 

 word is certainly the term for hippopotamus in several of the 

 Mandingo languages, but it is not yet certain that Mali or 

 Madi is the same word as Mande, Mende, or Melli (the Melli 

 Empire), though it seems probable. 



1090 



