76 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
tween the Gbandi and Kpwesi and extend as far east as the St. Paul River, are 
much more closely related to the Kpwesi tribe of central Liberia than to the 
Vais, though they have a different dialect and have been said to be more tur- 
bulent and quarrelsome. The greater part of this tribe now live across the border 
in French Guinea. 
The Gola tribe is of some interest, since ethnologically it seems to be consider- 
ably isolated. Its members dwell chiefly in the basin of the St. Paul River north 
and west of the Kpwesi. Their language is almost distinct and is probably a 
direct descendent of the mother tongue of West Africa; it shows no direct re- 
lationship in its roots to adjoining forms of African speech, and in its vocabulary 
has only a slight resemblance here and there to the Kru, Mandingo, and Fula 
groups, and even to the Bulom dialect. According to Johnston the Golas prob- 
ably were an invading race, and may be a people of the high Sudan, driven south 
through the Liberian forests by some race movement, due to conquests. His- 
tory tells us that they have been a turbulent, aggressive people and sturdy op- 
ponents of Liberian rule in the early days, and also of the De and Kpwesi tribes. 
They are usually somewhat lighter in color than the Krus, but are often of a 
Sudanese type of countenance, with rather prominent cheek bones, but only 
occasionally are they somewhat markedly prognathous (No. 55). 
In many of their customs they resemble the Kpwesis. Their women, how- 
ever, cicatrize, usually on the back, in a similar way to the Vais. Many of them 
are Mohammedans and practice circumcision. The women have hair of moder- 
ate length, not markedly kinky, and they usually part it in one or several places. 
They are inclined to be lazy. A few of the Golas are found cultivating coffee 
on the small, poorly-kept plantations in the region of Kaka Town. It is said 
that they hold themselves superior to the Kpwesi tribes, but there is no evidence 
that they are superior except that they have come more under the civilizing in- 
fluences of the coast. Formerly they are said to have had many Kpwesi slaves. 
On the edge of the northern border of Liberia, adjoining Sierra Leone, are 
two tribes known as the Mendis, and the Kissis or Gizis. They apparently 
stray back and forth along the border in this region. Evidently, they play a 
part of little importance in Liberia, and the great majority of them, estimated 
at 25,000, live in Sierra Leone and French Guinea. Johnston believes that in 
its word roots the speech of the Kissis is related to the Bulom group of languages 
of southeastern Sierra Leone. However, it has a very different grammatical 
construction, for its nouns change from singular to plural by alteration of termi- 
nals and not as in Bulom by the application of a prefix. Although it has not 
been carefully studied, Westermann associated it linguistically with the Gola 
tongue, the characteristic feature of which he believes to be the division of the 
nouns into classes by means of prefixes and suffixes in a manner analogous to 
that of the Bantu languages. We observed only a few members of the Kissi 
and Mendi tribes during our travels in Liberia. 
Returning to the eastern part of Liberia, after travelling for several days 
south from Tappi Town and then on to the coast, we come into territory occu- 
pied by a number of smaller tribes, some of which have had exceedingly little 
