A Traditional History of the Konyan (15th-16th Century): Vase Camara's Epic of Musadu

In an oral discourse passed down through many generations, the village elder Vase Kamara describes how a slave named Zo Musa Kòma founded the ancient town of Musadu in Guinea-Conakry, and he explains how the legendary Kamara ancestor Foningama later became a leader in Musadu. We tentatively date some elements of the Zo Musa stories to about the fourteenth and fifteenth century, when the Manding began to assimilate and push the Southwestern and Eastern Mande-speaking peoples from the Musadu area in the Konyan to the forest. Some of the Foningama related accounts seem to correspond to the era when the Kamara who settled in the Konyan became active in the sixteenth-century Mane “invasions.”Stories about Musadu's founding provide information about these movements and help bridge the histories of the savanna and forest peoples who live in Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, and Liberia. The Musadu legend links the Konyaka to their kinsmen who live in the traditional heartland of the Mali empire in present-day northern Guinea and southern Mali. In addition, some Manding, Vai, Loma, Gola, Kpelle, Konor, Dan, and Mano trace their origins to Musadu, and reflect one Loma writer's claim that “all of the tribes in Liberia are from Musadu, or have some association with Musadu” (Korvali 1960:7).The main actors are Manding (Mandekan) speakers who migrated to the Mau/Gbè and Konyan regions of western Côte d'Ivoire and southern Guinea respectively. The Mauka/Gbèka and Konyaka are members of the Northern Mande language group and are classified as Maninka (Malinke). The Bamana (Bambara), Dyula (Jula), and Vai are other Northern Mande speakers. Vase claims that Foningama was Manding, and that Zo Musa was Kpelle. The Kpelle, Loma, and Konor are Southwestern Mande speakers, and the Dan (Gio) and Mano are Eastern Mande speakers.