TITBITS OF THE HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN KOYA TEMNE CHIEF JOHN FREDRICK NAIMBANA, QUEEN YAMACOPRA AND SON HENRY GRANVILLE NAIMBANA: DID THE BRITISH GOVERNOR AND THE SIERRA LEONE COMPANY DECEIVE THE QUEEN TO GET THEIR WAY ?

THE ALIMENTARY END OF HENRY GRANVILLE NAIMBANA:  WAS THE KING'S SON POISIONED BY CHAMOMILE TEA IN JULY 1793? 

{Courtesey: Sierra Leone Nostalgia Experience -John Moses Kamara}

On a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Henry Granville Naimbana lay dying. It was July of 1793, and the vessel the Naimbana was wending its way from London to Sierra Leone. By the time it made landfall, Henry had lapsed into a fever from which he would never fully awaken. On July 18, 1793, British colonists living in Freetown, Sierra Leone received word of his death. Many of those colonists were former slaves—black Loyalists who ran to the British during the American Revolution, immigrated to Nova Scotia, and then departed from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. For them, as they once again attempted to begin their lives anew, Henry’s death may have barely registered, at first. 

Yet for the colony’s whites, and Henry’s friends and family in Sierra Leone, his story quickly boiled over. Freetown—the present-day capital of Sierra Leone—began life as a tiny British colony that stood in near-constant need of support from its neighboring West African neighbors, particularly the Koya Temne, from whom the British had purchased land when they first arrived. Henry’s death was about to turn into a drama about who could make whom drink what—and whose law ruled the land. Within a matter of days Queen Yamacopra, Henry’s mother, accused the captain of the Naimbana of killing her son with a weapon most vile, and most emblematic of the British presence at Freetown: a poisoned cup of chamomile tea. 

In life Henry had been “easy, manly, and confident,” the eldest son of King Naimbana, paramount chief of the Koya Temne. Born John Frederick Naimbana, in 1791 he travelled from Sierra Leone to England with two Britons named Alexander and Anna Maria Falconbridge. There, he studied the Bible and began to learn Hebrew. He was baptized into the Anglican Church as Henry Granville Naimbana in Clapham, London in October 1792. Soon afterward, he set out on his return, intending to preach Christianity in Africa. Henry’s foreign education reflected his father’s ambition to educate his sons in the metropoles of various imperial powers. King Naimbana had previously sent a son to France to learn about Catholicism, and another to learn Islamic norms before they returned home. It was on just such a return voyage that Henry became mysteriously ill. 

His mother, Yamacopra, put her accusations in a letter that Henry’s brother, Bartholomew, delivered to the British in Freetown. Events quickly accelerated. According to custom the Temne called a palaver, or meeting, to resolve the issue. Zachary Macaulay, future governor of Sierra Leone, noted in his journal that on August 2 the Temne and several other prominent African rulers met the British to discuss Henry’s death. 

The British sought to negotiate from a position of strength. Macaulay related that the Sierra Leone Council marshaled “a guard, and a party of constables” into one of their buildings in Freetown. By the time of the meeting the black Loyalists were also involved, as evidenced by their presence to ensure “the preservation of order.” The “gentlemen of the Colony”—most likely other white members of the Sierra Leone Council—gathered inside their hall, “which was lined with arms.” All of the doors, “one excepted, were so fastened that none could procure admission.” Macaulay and Governor Dawes stood in the doorway, while Temne headmen gathered in the piazza outside, and “formed themselves into a ring on each side of us.” Other colonists and Temne men stood about haphazardly. The African rulers in attendance probably came wearing some mixture of European and African clothing from coastal trading. Henry’s father, Naimbana, for example, first met the British wearing a silk jacket and ruffled shirt. 

A man the British called Signor Domingo, an African-Portuguese chief who lived at Foro Bay, “opened the business,” speaking “in the Timmaney language.” Because Yamacopra had yet to arrive, Signor Domingo conveyed the substance of her complaint: she accused Captain Woolis, the ship’s captain, of poisoning “her Son while at sea with a cup of tea.” Yamacopra “demanded that the sum of 600 bars Should be instantly paid to her, in which case she would drop all thoughts of war.” It was an interesting threat: although the Temne in general were capable of incapacitating the British, the colonials did not treat Yamacopra as a dominant ruler. It is unclear whether she could have raised a sufficient force against the colonists if they refused her some sort of compensation. Perhaps she knew this, because in her letter she also offered an alternative option: if Captain Woolis denied the charge and refused to pay the fine, Yamacopra suggested that he undergo the traditional Temne trial-by-fire experience: the drinking of “red water,” brewed from the noxious Calabar bean. 

According to Temne law, only innocent men and women could survive the ordeal of drinking red water. Anna Maria Falconbridge described how the “poisonous draught” was “prepared by the Judges themselves, who make it strong or weak, as they are inclined by circumstances.” ‘Guilty’ people died, whereas ‘innocent’ people merely became very ill. But the effects of drinking red water were so predetermined by the whim of those sitting in judgment that some people chose to be sold into slavery (an admission of guilt), rather than leave their fate to chance. The fact that the Temne at the palaver released “[s]uch a general burst of laughter” when Yamacopra suggested the red water ordeal convinced Zachary Macaulay that “they regarded it as absurd and impracticable.” Maybe so, but Macaulay observed that “Woolis’ distress during this conference” remained “truly laughable.” Macaulay may have been sure that Woolis would survive, and could thus laugh at the captain’s discomfort. Woolis, however, was a sailor, and knew how quickly the winds could change. 

Henry Granville Naimbana had recently met his end, but Captain Woolis, it seemed, meant to stay alive as long as possible. Although he was attending a Temne legal proceeding, Governor William Dawes asserted his authority as a British citizen and demanded, on Woolis’s behalf, to hear the evidence against him. They brought forward the original accuser, a man named James whom Henry had dismissed from his shipboard cabin and Captain Woolis had “put … before the mast … to do some duty.” James’s pride had been injured, it seems, leading him to suggest the poisoning attempt. Now, at the palaver, he admitted that someone had prepared chamomile tea for Henry, “but could not Say” whether someone “had put poison there.” 

The unfortunate Woolis was saved by Yamacopra’s physical appearance at the palaver the next day. British attendees convinced Henry’s mother that she needed a witness to confirm Woolis’s guilt. Zachary Macaulay knew that the Temne did not possess one besides James, which is perhaps why he felt so certain of Woolis’s chances. In light of the unconvincing evidence, Yamacopra let the poison charge drop, and Woolis was free to go. Woolis would have boarded his ship and returned to England, perhaps not looking back as Sierra Leone and its swathes of poisonous legumes hung innocently behind him. 

The story didn’t end there, however. And in fact, it may have started even before Henry became ill. Yamacopra, his mother, may have possessed her own motivations for accusing the British in the first place. She had embarrassed herself during a teatime meeting when the colonists first arrived in Sierra Leone. She came to Freetown and met John Clarkson, an early colonial official, for a drink. After she “took tea with us,” wrote Clarkson, Yamacopra “contrived to steal a teaspoon.” An unidentified British lady, “who suspected her majesty,” noticed “the spoon under the queen’s wrapping cloth” and “pulled it out.” These actions “gave her majesty much uneasiness, and she took great pains to convince us it must have got there by mistake.” 

Clarkson presented Yamacopra’s discomfort at being caught as humorous, but he wasn’t sensitive to how she may have experienced the same moment: a British woman literally reached into her bosom and retrieved the teaspoon in the company of a group of men. As a woman who already occupied a liminal position within her own society, Yamacopra must have felt humiliated that she had been caught breaching British etiquette. John Clarkson had accused her of being a teaspoon thief. Yamacopra, in turn, accused the British of poisoning her son with chamomile tea.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

Suspicious? Definitely.

There is no irrefutable link between Yamacopra’s accusation and Clarkson’s. We also have to allow for a parent’s grief, the sadness that can’t help but search for causes. Still, the two allegations grew from the same act: drinking each other’s tea. In one instance the Temne mistrusted British abilities to prepare and serve it without causing death, and in the other a Temne woman behaved improperly while taking the drink with other Britons. The Temne sought justice by trying to force an Englishman to drink their ‘homegrown’ poisonous draught. At the very least, tea drinking was a site of mutual misunderstanding.

And at most, it was disastrous. Even though it seems unlikely that the English poisoned Henry, the circumstances surrounding his death remained troublesome. After palaver attendees addressed the question of poison (but before Yamacopra arrived and formally exculpated Woolis), Henry’s will was read. Macaulay related that the reading of the will “staggered them all very much.” Some of the Temne began “manifesting doubt” concerning its authenticity. It seemed that Henry, on his deathbed, had chosen his adopted culture over his old. 

As he lay dying on July 14, Henry had dictated that his brother Bartholomew pay thirteen tons of rice and three cows to the Sierra Leone Company—in effect, to the same group of men that the Temne accused of poisoning Henry. If Bartholomew could not procure those cows, he was to “purchase three cows and give them in my name.” After this bequest, Henry “complained of fatigue” and said, “he would postpone the remainder till he had taken a little rest.” Shortly thereafter, however, “his fever and Delirium returned with increased violence,” and he died. Although the Temne did not know about this unexpected offering of grain and animals before they accused the British of poisoning Henry, they must have found the will strange nonetheless. Why had Henry bestowed such generosity upon the British colonists? Why had he left no gifts for his brother or mother? Was there a chance that his conversion to Christianity had committed him so fully to the British that in the face of death he neglected his own brethren? 

For the British, the reading of Henry’s will came at a particularly opportune moment. The colonists had struggled to feed themselves from their arrival in the spring of 1792 up through September of that year. Although they had been doing better since then, the May to August rainy season always threatened their food security. This gift not only allowed the fledgling Sierra Leone Company to survive, it also, in effect, guaranteed a continuing British presence in Freetown. 

The will was highly suspicious. It seemed unlikely that Henry had breath enough only to ensure that Governor William Dawes and the rest of the colony were well fed before he died, while forgetting his family. Yet the Temne had only recently retracted an accusation of poisoning, and in the absence of a witness to confirm a forgery, they had no recourse but to accept the will as genuine. As Yamacopra watched the British walk back to Freetown, she may have been filled with doubt: had the British tricked them? Or had her own beloved son turned away from his people? 

Relations between the colonists and the Temne were stained by mutual distrust. If fears about poison abounded, so too did worries about fictitious documents. John Clarkson may have successfully caught Yamacopra in the act of stealing a teaspoon, and the Temne may have allowed the British to rely on Anglo-European rather than Temne forms of justice during Captain Woolis’s exculpation—yet ultimately the British colonists desperately needed Temne gifts of food to survive. The British position in eighteenth-century Africa was weak, and Freetown was no exception. Yet in August 1807 the British Crown gained command of Freetown, assuming formal rule in January 1808. Henry Granville Naimbana’s death—whether by chamomile tea or natural causes—was his definitive end. For the British, however, it was merely one of many beginnings.

CREDIT: Rachel Hermann,

 The Appendix

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Did The British Kill  Sierra Leonean?

http://www.josephkaifala.com/blog/john-frederic-the-prince-who-could-have-been-king-of-sierra-leone

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Who was Chief Naimbaa?

{Courtesy: The Sierra Leone Web}

NEMGBANA (ca. 1710-1793) LAST TEMNE RULER OF THE SIERRA LEONE PENINSULA Nembgana, often written Naimbana, was regent of the Koya Kingdom from 1775 to 1793. It was Nemgbana who signed the treaty making way for the establishment of the British colony on the Sierra Leone peninsula. He was a progressive ruler who was opposed to the slave trade, though he could do little to fight it under the circumstances. He joined the advance of Western influence by sending two of his sons to Europe to be educated. Nemgbana became regent of Koya at the death of the Koya king in 1775. By Koya custom, when the Obai (king) died, the leading sub-rulers became rulers as regent in turn until the last of them died, when a new Obai was crowned.  Nemgbana was sub-ruler of Rogbana up the Sierra Leone estuary. He was described in one account by the name of Panabouro, but all other accounts call him Nemgbana. It seems clear that "Gbana" was his title as sub-ruler of Rogbana, "ro" being a Temne prefix meaning "to" or "at". One account indicates that when Europeans first wanted to record his name and asked for this in English, he replied "name Gbana ("my name is Gbana"), and this was recorded as Nemgbana. Nemgbana was a ruler ahead of his time. Against the increasing suspicion of his elders, he continued to allow the British to stay in the peninsula which had been unwittingly ceded to them by his sub-chief, Tom. Nemgbana later signed the treaty in 1788 giving this land to the colony. He, himself, may have done so unwittingly, as he could not read or write, and may not have realised that the British meant to take permanent possession. In any case, his other actions showed that he was not totally opposed to the presence of the colony in his territory. In fact, in 1785, before the colony was founded, he had granted a French officer land on Gambia Island, close to what is now Hastings, though the French had abandoned the island soon after. Nemgbana was, however, opposed to the slave trade, and expressed his resentment on a few occasions to colony officials. Many of his subjects and the European traders on the coast did, however, depend on it, and he wisely realised that there was nothing he could do at the time to halt it. Nemgbana did not stop at verbal protestations of interest in contact with Europeans. While negotiating with the French, he sent one of his sons to be educated in France. He also later sent another son, John Frederick Nemgbana, under the care of the directors of the Sierra Leone Company, to be educated in England. A third son was sent northwards to acquire an Islamic education. Nemgbana must, thus, have had foresight as to the usefulness the education his sons acquired would have in dealings with his neighbours, both the Europeans at the colony and his Islamic neighbours further north. In fact, he employed one of the settlers from the colony, one Abram Elliot Griffith, as his clerk and later, chief adviser. Griffith was given one of his daughters, later named Clara, in marriage. Nemgbana has become something of a folk legend over the years, and his name is recognised by many who do not know exactly who he was or what he did. Nemgbana was, in fact, the last traditional Temne ruler in the area that ultimately became the city of Freetown.

‐-------------------------------------------------------- The Man Who Would Be King or Vicar Was the new king of Sierra Leone poisoned on his return voyage from England? Joseph Kaifala | Published in History Today Volume 67 Issue 10 October 2017 Village people: view of mountains and houses in Sierra Leone, Jakob Van Der Schley, 1748. © akg-images. By the late 18th century, King Naimbana, the most prestigious monarch on the coast of Sierra Leone, had developed a long-distance friendship with the British abolitionist Granville Sharp. Sharp wrote regularly to seek the king’s assistance in protecting the Black Poor, the freed British slaves who were resettled in Sierra Leone in 1787. In 1791 Naimbana sent his son, Prince John Frederic, on a reverse journey to receive a western education under Sharp’s guardianship. Frederic was not the only son Naimbana sent abroad. He had sent one of his other sons to France and offered another to Islamic scholars. It was Naimbana’s intention that Prince Frederic would return home and lead his people with knowledge from the West. After arriving in England, Frederic proved a diligent student, often reading for eight to ten hours a day. His assessments stated that ‘he was uncommonly pleasing in his behaviour, showing much natural courtesy and even delicacy of manners’. The prince became a devout Christian and associated with only those he believed could improve his knowledge. While Frederic was appreciative of his benefactors, he never missed an opportunity to enlighten those who attempted to disparage his people. At one gathering, he flew into a temper when the name of a known advocate of slavery was mentioned. He screamed and cursed, compelling his benefactors to remind him of his Christian duty to forgive those who wronged him. Frederic said: If a man should rob me of my money, I can forgive him; if a man should shoot at me, or try to stab me, I can forgive him; if a man should sell me and all my family to a slave ship so that we should pass our days in slavery I can forgive him. But, he continued, rising from his chair: ‘If a man takes away the character of the people of my country, I never can forgive him’. Asked why he was unwilling to extend his forgiveness to those who tarnished the character of his people, the prince responded that 77 times seven was an acceptable dose of Christian forgiveness for other sinners, but not for impenitent slave holders. As he explained: If a man should try to kill me, or should sell me and my family for slaves, he would do an injury to as many as he might kill or sell; but, if any one takes away the character of Black people, that man injures Black people all over the world; and when he has once taken away their character, there is nothing which he may not do to Black people ever after. That man, for instance, will beat Black men, and say, ‘oh it is only a Black man, why should not I beat him?’ That man will take away all the people of Africa, if he can catch them; and if you ask him, but why do you take away all these people? He will say, ‘oh, they are only Black people – they are not like White people – why should not I take them?’ That is the reason why I cannot forgive the man who takes away the character of the people of my country. From Frederic’s perspective, the dehumanisation of others is the foundation of all bigotry. In a year and a half, Frederic surpassed expectations to obtain extensive knowledge in science and religion. As he demonstrated his knowledge and wisdom to his British hosts, ‘sanguine hopes were naturally entertained that the education of the son of an African chief in England might be of the greatest assistance in cementing a confidential union between the people of his country and the European colony of Freetown’. Unfortunately, Frederic’s stay in Britain was cut short following news of his father’s death. He left for Sierra Leone on the Naimbana with his servant James, a Mr Graham of the Sierra Leone Company (SLC), a business venture established to facilitate commerce between Britain and Sierra Leone, and Captain Woollis. Frederic fell ill as soon as they reached warmer climes, possibly of malaria. He was anxious, too, about the difficulties of implementing his newly acquired ideas. He was excited about spreading Christianity, but agonised over the possibility of severe disappointment. When the fever became violent and the prince realised his end was near, he drafted a will, which included a request that his brother take all necessary measures to oppose the slave trade. He died soon after his arrival back home. Rumours soon spread that the prince was poisoned by the British during his return voyage to Sierra Leone, perhaps motived by the acquisition of valuables that had been sent back for the king, including royal robes and a gold crown. Frederic’s servant, James, testified to his people that he had witnessed Captain Woollis give the prince a cup of poisoned tea. The Naimbana family conducted a divination ritual in which they placed the prince’s body upright and asked whether Mr Graham, Governor Dawes or the doctor who saw to him had poisoned him, but there was no response. The corpse did, however, nod when Captain Woollis was named. The locals were agitated and Freetown was placed under armed guard. Violence seemed inevitable. Two senior chiefs, Signor Domingo and Chief Jimmy, called a palaver (an 18th-century discussion between tribespeople and traders) to settle the dispute, which was attended by regional chiefs and their entourages in Freetown on 2 August. All the men of the capital were armed and ordered to attend the meeting. Tension was high. Zachary Macaulay, the Scottish governor of Freetown, remembered how the ‘chiefs formed themselves into a ring on each side of us. Without them stood crowds of their followers, and a body of our settlers stood at hand to prevent disorder and confusion’. When recalled to the stand, the star witness, James, recanted his testimony, saying instead that the captain offered the prince chamomile tea. The queen arrived the next day with Pa Yabba, Naimbana’s brother, and was satisfied with the palaver’s conclusion. The death of Frederic was a shocking blow to his people and members of the SLC, who believed in his potential to become a Christian king, an educated and friendly monarch in Sierra Leone. The prince left such an impression in Britain that, ‘notwithstanding his untimely and much to be lamented death, he has rendered at least one important service to his country, by furnishing a memorable instance of the effect of education on the mind of Africans’. It will never be known whether Frederic would have chosen his father’s throne over the life of a vicar, but his intelligence was used by Granville Sharp and his abolitionist friends to persuade those who still portrayed Africans as savages, lacking mental faculty, of the common humanity shared by all people. Joseph Kaifala is the author of Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). POPULAR ARTICLES Medieval Icelandic Feasts Books of the Year 2023 RECENTLY PUBLISHED On the Spot: Chris Clark ‘Theoderic the Great’ by Hans-Ulrich Wiemer review ‘The Life & Death of States’ and ‘Vienna’ reviews

THOMAS PETERS (ca. 1738-1792) TRUE FOUNDER OF FREETOWN Thomas Peters was a courageous Afro-American whose efforts made possible the founding of Freetown. He was born a slave in the North American colonies and worked in his master's flour mill in North Carolina. During the American Revolution, Peters ran away and joined the British Army, becoming a sergeant in the Black Pioneers. When the British lost the  war, they evacuated Peters and hundreds of other Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia—but after seven years in Canada, the former slaves had still received no land and were living only on a meagre government ration and suffering from the cold. Peters, though poor and uneducated, found the courage to travel to England in search of help for his people. He was in grave danger from the moment he left Canada, as he was still legally a slave in the newly-independent United States, and could have been taken there and sold back into slavery by an unscrupulous sea captain. But Thomas Peters managed to reach London, and he convinced the Sierra Leone Company to send ships to help his people establish a colony in Africa. He then returned to Nova Scotia and, by sheer force of personality, persuaded over eleven hundred former slaves to join him in the voyage to Sierra Leone. Thomas Peters and his "Nova Scotians" founded Freetown in 1792 near the site of the Province of Freedom, which had been destroyed several years earlier. But problems soon developed when the white men of the Sierra Leone Company insisted on running the colony as they saw fit. Thomas Peters confronted the English commander, demanding that his people run their own affairs through an elected committee, but he was unsuccessful in his attempt to establish self-rule. He died shortly afterwards, a victim of malaria in the colony's first rainy season. Thomas Peters was totally committed to freedom, and fought for it until the very last day of his life. More than anyone else, he exemplifies the spirit of hope and determination that gave birth to the city of Freetown.

PA DEMBA (1794) A MAN OF COMPASSION Pa Demba was a simple village headman whose generous offer of help may have saved the Freetown colony. When Freetown was founded, Pa Demba ruled a small village near the junction of modern Campbell Street and Pademba Road; and his little town was probably the closest Temne village to the Freetown settlement. In  September, 1794, five French warships sailed into the harbour and attacked the tiny colony. The French fired their great cannons time and again at the fragile houses, driving the British officers and Nova Scotian settlers into the surrounding countryside. Then they landed and looted the houses and storerooms and set fire to every building, including the church, governor's house, and apothecary shop. The Nova Scotian settlers were in a desperate situation. The rainy season had not yet ended, and they had no shelter and no food to last them until the harvest. Worse still, they were in constant danger of attack by the Koya Temne, who felt the British had cheated them to obtain land for the new colony. The settlers were helpless and surrounded by enemies, and in this volatile situation, Pa Demba stepped forward. He offered his little village as a refuge for the Nova Scotian school mistress and all the children of the colony, and agreed to take in as many of the other homeless as he possibly could. He made this compassionate gesture despite the fact that it was the hungry season for his own people and despite the bitter feelings of the other Temne chiefs who would have liked to see the Freetown colony destroyed. Pa Demba set aside political differences and did what was humanly right. He is a  powerful symbol of reconciliation among the ethnic groups, and his example shows that when times are difficult, Sierra Leoneans come together as one people, and one nation.

GUMBU SMART (ca. 1750-1820) LOKO RULER AND ENTREPRENEUR Gumbu Smart was ruler of Rokon in Masimera Country by the end of the 18th century. By dint of hard work and enterprise, he built up a large and thriving centre at Rokon. Though Loko, he did not hesitate to join the Wunde, a Kpaa Mende secret society, or to settle in the heart of Masimera Temne country. Smart's real name was Koko and he hailed from Kalangba in what is now the Gbendembu - Gowahun Chiefdom in Bombali District. He had accidentally killed his brother as a boy and had fled from home. Captured and sold as a slave to British slave traders on Bunce Island, he displayed so much industry there that his new masters gave him the name of 'Smart' and kept him as an employee, rather than selling him off like the other slaves. The British traders regularly advanced goods to Smart to go inland as a slave-buying agent, after they had built up a lot of confidence in him. Instead of always buying slaves for his British owners, he sometimes bought his own Loko people, not to be sold as slaves, but to become his own followers. By this process, he built up a powerful force around  the middle Rokel River, and ultimately severed connection with his former British masters at Bunce Island. He had become too powerful for them even to ask him for a refund of the goods they had advanced him. In fact, in 1806, one of the British employees of Bunce Island visited Gumbu Smart at Rokon and then wrote about him admiringly in a book he published the following year. To enhance his military skills and build up alliances, Smart joined the Wunde society, which specialises in military training. He then took the name of "Gumbu" meaning "fire" in Mende. When war erupted between the Temne of Masimera and Marampa, Gumbu Smart was called to help Masimera and, as a reward, was given control of the Town of Rokon, where he settled with his followers. Rokon under Gumbu Smart became a large, well-laid-out town with wide streets and well-built houses. It became the most powerful settlement in the area and a major commercial centre. Gumbu Smart played an important role in regulating the commerce passing down the Rokel River on the way to the Atlantic coast. After the founding of the Freetown colony, he was also engaged in active trading with the new settlement. Gumbu Smart, an accomplished diplomat, was careful to maintain alliances. In the 1790s, he made friends with the officials of the Sierra Leone Company which ruled the Freetown settlement. European missionaries of the London Missionary Society were sent to Rokon, and Gumbu Smart received them warmly. Though the missionaries did no conversion, one of them, Henderson wanted to marry Gumbu Smart's young daughter. Smart even helped the Sierra Leone Company in its wars against the Koya Temne, led by King Tom in 1801. Gumbu Smart died about the 1820s and he left behind a rich legacy of dynamism and enterprise. Indeed, it is not surprising that the Smart family, descended from Gumbu, has given Sierra Leone so many outstanding leaders down through the years.

DALA MODU DUMBUYA (ca. 1770-1842) SOSO RULER, BUSINESSMAN, AND DIPLOMAT Dala Modu should be remembers as the single most important liaison between the British Colonial Government and the local rulers in the interior in the early decades of the British Colony at Sierra Leone. His efforts helped in solving many a conflict  between the Colony and interior rulers. His reputation as a major commercial force was enhanced in the process, and he built up the prominent Soso community around Lungi in the Kafu Bullom country. Dala Modu was born into a family of traders at Wonkafong in Sumbuya near Conakry, where his father, Fenda Modu, had been advisor to the King of Sumbuya and Headman of Wonkafong. Dala Modu first came to Freetown with his father in 1794. Desirous of fostering his commercial contacts with the new colony, Fenda Modu sent his son Dala Modu with fifty followers in 1795 to settle on the outskirts of Freetown. The town Dala Modu built up there, named Dalamodiya after him, quickly became a commercial centre, and he became landlord for many traders from the interior, mostly from his own Soso ethnic group. Dala Modu was welcomed by the governor, who was also keen on developing the trade with the interior on which the colony's survival depended. In Freetown Dala Modu learnt English and studied the colony's monetary system and weights and measures. Dala Modu's business activities became very extensive, involving colony officials, both European and African, and the local traders, for whom he acted as agent. He became the primary landlord to visiting traders from the distant interior, giving them advice and assistance on how to get the best out of their trade goods in the colony. In this process, he developed close contacts with the Freetown merchants to whom he directed the interior traders. Dala Modu became the local agent to the European firm of Macauley and Babington in 1826. The European agent of that Company, Kenneth Macauley, was a close associate of Dala Modu when he acted as governor in that year. Modu organised the felling and processing of timber for the company from his base at Madina on the Bullom Shore, where he had lived since 1806. This was done with a large band of servile labour he retained there. For the 1826 season alone, he received £1,000 as partial payment. In 1834, many gold traders from the interior came to the colony through him, bringing him much wealth in broker's fees. Dala Modu used his wealth and business contacts to build for himself a prominent position in the relations between the colony officials and the local rulers in the interior. He was helped in this by his powerful family connections in the Northern River areas (north of the Scarcies), where his family owned parts of the major trading islands. These came in handy in treaties of cession he negotiated in 1818 and 1825 with the colonial government, which was eager to use these islands, like Matacong and the Isles de Los, as customs posts. But Dala Modu's personal qualities of diplomacy undoubtedly played a major role in winning the favoured position he came to enjoy. As early as 1802, soon after the rebellion of the Nova Scotian settlers in the colony, Dala Modu was instrumental in convincing the Mandinka chiefs to withdraw their support for the rebels and to hand over the leaders of the uprising to the British. But, in 1806, he was accused of slave trading and other charges. When called to answer these charges, he appeared in Muslim robes rather than the European dress he was used to wearing in Freetown. This angered the British authorities, who proceeded to expel him from the colony. Dala Modu then moved to Madina on the Bullom Shore from where he continued his business activities. It was there that he built up the Soso community with migrants coming from the interior. Dala Modu thus because effectively the King of Kafu Bullom and Loko Masama, but his influence extended as far as the Port Loko areas. In fact, he became ruler of Rokon on the Rokel in 1837. The colonial government in Freetown soon realised that it needed Dala Modu's services in settling disputes in the interior. From 1818, when he arranged the cession of the Isles de Los to the British, he started receiving an annual payment from them. Between 1820 and 1841, Dala Modu arranged peace talks on a number of occasions to settle local disputes the Colony Government felt were inhibiting trade. These included the rebellion on the north Rokel in 1835, and the Temne/Loko war in 1836. Though he did not get along well with some of the governors, succeeding ones were quick to realise his worth and do business with him. Governor Henry Dundas Campbell visited him in 1835 and was struck by his intelligence and affluent style of living. When Dala Modu died, over eighty cows were slaughtered during his funeral ceremonies, attended by British and African officials from the colony and by many local rulers from the interior. Dala Modu was among the first indigenous entrepreneurs  to take advantage of the new business  opportunities arising after the abolition of the slave trade. His dynamism, commercial acumen, and sound political judgment remain as examples for us today.