Origins

The coast of eastern Liberia and western Ivory Coast were rarely visited by European vessels until the nineteenth century, and for that reason there are few written texts that can illuminate its early history or the origin of the Kru communities there. Oral tradition remains the most important key to the origin of the Kru.

Traditions recorded in the mid nineteenth century by James Connelly relate that the Kru communities that lived along the shore of what is today southern Liberia and the reputed core settlement of the Kru came down to the coast from the interior "some three generations back — say one hundred to one hundred fifty years..." from an original place he called Claho. Coming down the Poor River they "learned the value of salt" and founded the town of Bassa. They subsequently moved again to Little Kroo, and then were subsequently joined by more Kru-speaking communities from the interior.^[7] These events likely occurred in the 18th century and are believed to be connected to more intensive European interest in trade in the region at this time.^[8] The original settlers from the interior eventually established five towns: Little Kroo, Setra Kroo, Kroo-Bar, Nana Kroo and King Will's Town, that came to be regarded as their home district, though soon other offshoots developed along the coast, and particularly in Freetown, Sierra Leone.^[9][10]

Seafaring

From the late eighteenth century onward, Kru men (from whence the term Krumen derives) began working on European ships. By the 1790s the inhabitants of their original region were being hired as free sailors on European ships.^[11] As the so-called "legitimate trade" replaced the slave trade in the nineteenth century and as trade along the West Africa coast increased, many Kru sailors signed on to the new vessels as seamen. In the process there developed Kru communities around all the major trading factories of the coast, from Sierra Leone around to the mouth of the Congo River.^[12]

A number of Kroomen (between 20 and 30) are buried in the Seaforth Old Burial Ground in Simon's Town, South Africa, where their graves can still be seen, and Kroomen is the name used to describe them on their gravestones.^[13] They were active in the Royal Navy from 1820 to as late as 1924; for example, HMS Thistle landed a camp party with 12 Krumen in Elephant Bay in June of that year. Many Kroomen joined the dockyard staff, while others remained on board RN ships as seamen. They were given Westernized or diminutive names by the men on the ships, Tom Ropeman, Bottle of Beer, and Will Cockroach amongst them.^[14] They were clearly commonly employed, and the names bestowed were not original, since the cemetery contains for example the remains of Tom Smith Number 1, to distinguish him from another Tom Smith.

Kru sailors were organized as small companies under a headman. They would paddle in small canoes as far as a dozen miles out to see to meet ships as they arrived and negotiated their employment on the spot. Headmen often carried credentials from previous stints of employment in boxes or other containers, and negotiations were conducted rapidly. During the earlier part of the nineteenth century foreign observers often gave the Kru high praise for their honesty, courage, efficiency and willingness to do hard work. Later observers, however, had more disparaging comments to make, though either way, few ships plied African waters without many Kru sailors on board.^[15]

Although initially Kru men were interested only in sailor's work, in time some took up land based employment doing all sorts of work in the many trading factories that grew up all along the African coast from Sierra Leone to the mouth of the Congo River. They were also recruited as soldiers and common laborers, some traveling as far as India and the Malayan peninsula to the east. Krumen workers served French employers in the French attempt to dig the Panama Canal, others were employed in Jamaica.^[16]

Culture

In the late nineteenth century, reports described the Kru as divided into small commonwealths, each with a hereditary chief whose duty was simply to represent the people in their dealings with strangers. This remains the case in many enclaves today. Power was vested in the elders, who wore as insignia iron rings on their legs. Their president, who held religious authority as well, guarded the national symbols, and his house was sanctuary for offenders until their guilt is proved. Personal property is held in common by each family. Land also is communal, but the rights of the actual cultivator cease when he fails to farm it.^[17]

Religion

The first descriptions of core group of Kru religion were done by missionaries, notably James Connolley,^[18] But these accounts can also be augmented by more detailed accounts of the Grebo of nearby Cape Palmas who were linguistically and culturally related. The central elements of the spiritual universe of this region included a figure identified by missionaries as a high, creator God, named Nyesoa, spirits or deities associated with territories called, familial spiritual guardians called ku and finally kwi or the souls of the departed who remained near by and could influence events.

These spiritual entities were contacted through a class of people called deya, who underwent long and specialized training and apprenticeship to take up their office. They addressed problems both medical and spiritual using pharmaceutical and spiritual remedies.^[19][20]

Kru language

Wilhelm Bleek classified the Kru language with the Mandingo family, and in this he was followed by R. G. Latham; S. W. Koelle, who published a Kru grammar (1854), disagreed.^[17] Now Kru is considered a primary branch of the Niger-Congo family.