74 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
tall conical roofs. There is an Americo-Liberian compound outside this village, 
which is occupied by the government District Commissioner when he is present. 
Tappi Town is situated on the summit of a plateau, and to the eastward the 
country is more open and rolling. There are many farms about this center, and 
cattle, although still not plentiful, are more numerous. Notwithstanding the 
good appearance of the village, it became quite obvious after living among the 
Gios that they are a savage people, superstitious, low and degraded. Like 
the Mas they also displayed the greatest curiosity about almost everything that 
we did. 
Travelling still farther to the eastward after crossing to the right or north 
bank of the river Cess, we next encountered the tribe of the Gibis. They are 
a distinctly more indolent people than the Gios, and very superstitious. ‘Their 
villages are of poorer appearance. The trails through their country are few and 
badly kept, and they have very little intercourse with their nearest neighbors, 
the Manos and Gios. Their physical appearance is also generally much poorer, 
and there are many undernourished people among them. 
In addition to the larger tribes already referred to, there are a large number of 
smaller ones. The De people have occupied chiefly the country west of the St. 
Paul River, to the north of Monrovia, and south of Boporo (Bapore). They have 
almost disappeared as a distinct tribe. It was with the De and the Mamba 
tribes that the agents of the American Colonization Society in 1821 carried on ne- 
gotiations for the ownership of the Mesurado strip of coastline, one hundred and 
thirty miles long and forty miles broad, which they wished to have reserved for 
the settlement of American freed slaves. Hostilities soon broke out between the 
De tribe and the colonists over the occupation of this and the surrounding land. 
Johnston states that since the war which the De and Gola tribes carried on in- 
termittently from 1838 to 1840, in which the Golas were victorious, the Des 
have held an inferior position and become a diminishing tribe. They practice 
cicatrization, but many of their other customs are somewhat similar to those of 
the Krus, and they speak a related dialect. They are said probably to represent 
a western extension of the Kru group. The remaining Des are negroid in ap- 
pearance, but as a rule do not show as marked a tendency to shortness of leg, 
and the women on the whole have better features than the Kru women. In 
recent years the Des as a tribe, have been almost absorbed by the Americo- 
Liberian community. Johnston states that it is a tribal custom among them to 
extract one or two incisors in the upper Jaw, and he gives a photograph of a boy 
with those teeth missing. 
The Gbandi tribe probably sprang from one of the combinations of Mandin- 
goes with stock containing pure negro blood. They are a Mohammedanized 
tribe and are so closely related to the Vais that they need not be considered 
separately. As a group, however, they are less civilized than the Vais and for- 
merly were said to be much addicted to cannibalism. They occupy territory to 
the north of the Vais and extend to the northeastern border of Liberia and into 
French Guinea. 
The Buzi people who also live in the northeastern part of the country be- 
