Sierra Leone – Pre History

Archaeology findings show that Sierra Leone has been inhabited for thousands of years. The above and some other discoveries suggest that people have had a permanent settlement in what is now called Sierra Leone from around 2500 BC.
Traditional historiography has customarily presented it as a people by successive waves of invaders; but the language pattern suggests that the coastal Bulom (Sherbro), Temne, and Limba have been in continuous settled occupation for a long time, with sporadic immigration from inland Mende-speaking people including Vai, Loko and Mende.
They organised themselves in small political units of independent kingdoms or chiefdoms, the powers of whose rulers were checked by councils. Secret societies, notably the Poro society also exercised political power as well as instructed initiates in the customs of the country.
Muslim traders brought Islam. Portuguese sailors, Alvaro Fernandez (1447) and Pedro Da Cintra (1462), were among the first European explorers to detail their adventures along the coast of Sierra Leone. Located near present day Freetown, the Rokel estuary was established as an important source of fresh water for sea traders and explorers. Over the next 30 years, sea traders opened a bay for trading goods such as swords, kitchen and other household utensils in exchange for beeswax and fine ivory works. By the mid 1550’s, slaves replaced these items as the major commodity. Though the Portuguese were among the first in the region and their language formed the basis for trade, their influence had diminished by the 1650’s. English, French, Dutch and Danish interests in West Africa had grown. Trade was established through coastal African rulers who prohibited European traders from entering the interior. Rent and gifts were paid for gold, slaves, beeswax, ivory and cam wood.
British traders of the Royal African Company established Forts along the coast for trading in 1672 but the British did not have monopoly on the area. Rival European nations attacked the Forts. Admiral de Ruyter is noted to having sacked Tasso Island in 1664 as a reaction to the maltreatment of Dutch traders. In 1728, Afro-Portuguese traders captured the New Royal African Company’s fort at Bunce Island.

 

 

A brief time line of the early history of Sierra Leone – 1400 - 1700

1456 - In 1456, they were at the mouth of the Gambia River. Here, they exchanged Andalusian silk, crude arms and horses for African gold, ivory and slaves. To protect their shipping, they built strong forts in, Sierra Leone,

1460 - In 1460, Pedro da Cintra, a Portuguese explorer, first called the region Sierra Leone (meaning Lion Mountains) when he visited its coast. The specific ancient history of Sierra Leone, however, is shrouded in mystery, but we do know of the great cultures and ...

Nov 13, 1460 - Prince Henry died November 13, 1460. A few years later, the work of discovery on the African coast had been extended to Sierra Leone and beyond Cape Mezurada.

1462 - In 1462, Portuguese explorer Pedro da Cintra mapped the hills surrounding what is now Freetown Harbour, naming the oddly shaped formation Serra Lyoa (Lion Mountains) and Akintola Wyse's The Krio of Sierra Leone. Certainly, this is far from the complete

1462 - The Portuguese sailors discovered it in 1462 - and named it Serra Loya (Lion's Mountain). At the beginning of the 18th century the British colonized it and made it a centre for the cartage of the slaves.

1462 - Cidade Velha (Old City) was founded as Cape Verde's original capital in 1462. Cidade Velha was an important trading post – handling thousands of slaves from Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone who were shipped to the Caribbean or Brazil. Originally the island ...
1463 - Sierra Leone was known to the Portuguese as early as AD 1463, and shortly afterwards became a centre of the Negro slave trade (see chap, iv. in the March number

Nov 1469 - "Thus, the Portuguese Crown gave to individuals the direct responsibility for the exploration of the coasts of Africa beyond Sierra Leone. By a contract signed on November of 1469, the King granted to a certain Fernao Gomes, a rich merchant of Lisbon, the

1482 - In 1482, Portuguese colonists found bananas growing in Africa, in the present- day countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Gambia. The Portuguese took suckers from mature plants and brought them to their colonies in the Canary Islands, off the northwest coast ...

Jul 8, 1497 - On July 8, 1497 the fleet set sail from the Tagus River with great pomp and ceremony and with the same emotions as the first flight to the moon. They headed for the Cape Verde Islands then continued south to Sierra Leone. Dias accompanied them in his

 May 10, 1501 - He sailed from Lisbon May 10, 1501, and ran down the coasts of Africa as far as Sierra Leone and the coast of Angola, and then passed over to Brazil in South America, and continued his discoveries to the south as far as Patagonia. He then returned to Sierra ...

Sep 7, 1502 - At Sierra Leone one of the caravels, no longer seaworthy, was abandoned and burned; after a fortnight's rest ashore, the party went on in the other two ships to the Azores, and thence after some further delay to Lisbon, where they

May 10, 1503 - Such an expedition did sail about this time, under the command of Gonzalo Coelho. The squadron sailed according to Vespucci on the 10th of May 1503. It stopped at the Capede Verd islands for refreshments, and afterwards, sailed by the coast of Sierra Leone ...Such an expedition did sail about this time, under the command of Gonzalo Coelho . The squadron sailed according to Vespucci on the 10th of May, 1503. It stopped at the Capede Verd islands for refreshments, and afterwards, sailed by the coast of Sierra Leone, but was prevented from landing by contrary winds and a turbulent sea. Standing to the southwest, they ran three hundred leagues until they were three degrees to the southward of the equinoctial line, where they ...

1505 - Early in the sixteenth century, in the year 1505, an army of Temnes came southwards, led by Farama Tami, who defeated the Lokkos and Limbas, and after driving out the Capez, occupied the south bank of the River Sierra Leone. In a short time the new Temne ...

1513 - The next group of people to influence the culture of Puerto Rico were the African slaves brought from countries such as Sudan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and the Ivory Coast in 1513. These slaves were brought to the country to work the plantations and provide ...

Aug 10, 1519 - The little fleet, composed of the La Trinidad, commanded by Magellan himself, the San Antonio, Victoria, Santiago, and Concepcion, left San Lucas, the port of Seville, on August 10, 1519, and mapping a course along the African coast and past the Canary ...

1520 - Sometime in the year 1520 a Spanish explorer, Vasquez de Allyon found a cluster of islands off the coast of South Carolina. The very fertile ground, aesthetics, temperature, humidity, and diseases of those islands resembled that of Western Africa. De Allyon ...

1526 - The royal ship Santiago purchased goods from them in Sierra Leone in 1526, and travelers all along the coast noted their presence. By the late sixteenth century some held important positions in Sene-gambia states, and most of them in the Rivers of Guinea region ...

1536 - Official name Republic of Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. The written history of Sierra Leone began in 1536, when the Portuguese explorer Pedro da Cintra landed and named the country.

1545 - After this lady3 died, her principal captains continued their march and invaded the lands of Sierra Leone in the year 1545. They had many conflicts, wars, sieges, skirmishes and battles with the native Sapes, 4 in which many people were killed.

1562 - In 1562, with influential backing, he sailed from England with three ships, secured a cargo of 300 negroes on the coast of Sierra Leone, and then crossed the Atlantic to (he West Indies, where he forced the Spaniards to take slaves in exchange for hides ...

 

1562 - Sierra Leone has a memorable history. Through more than two centuries the haunt of slave-dealers and pirates, who followed the example set by Captain John Hawkins in 1562, it was the site chosen the first practical attempt to make some reparation the grievous wrongs previously...

Oct 1562 - John Hawkins and Thomas Hampton, in October, 1562, fitted out three vessels, the largest a hundred and twenty tons, and sailed with a hundred men for Sierra Leone.1 After hanging some time about the coast, partly by the sword and partly by other means," they

Sep 1563 - And so, with prosperous success, and much gain to himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the month of September, 1563."* Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkins again captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, and ...

Jan 1568 - Hawkins' account does not say how many slaves he hoped to load, but he was very disappointed when, after hunting along the coast as far as Sierra Leone, he had taken only a hundred and fifty by January 1568. The fleet had separated for a while, the Angel

Sep 26, 1580 - Thereafter the voyage was fairly uneventful. Passing by the Cape of Good Hope and touching Sierra Leone for water and provisions, the Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth on 26 September 1580.

1582 - From the early sixteenth century, Islanders carried out extensive trade with the mainland, from the Petite Cote to Sierra Leone. In 1582, Andrade wrote that along the entire coast from Sierra Leone to S. Domingos, "There are many Portuguese who carry out ...

1586 - to the coasts of Sierra Leone in 1586. The passage that draws Greenblatt's attention, concerns the events of the fourth of November, the day in which Sarracoll, together with a number of the Earl of Cumberland's soldiers (he financed the expedition), set foot ...

1606 - In 1606 he urged his superiors to support Sierra Leone as the most suitable place for Christianity in West Africa, although his effort to establish a seminary there was opposed by the king of Portugal, who wanted it in his own land.
1619 - The first ship carrying Africans arrived to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Estimates are that 20 Africans who were snatched from the Western part of Africa, the area where Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast are, were aboard that fateful ship. It ...

1635 - In 1635, two Spanish ships carried West African peoples captured from the Yoruba, Ibo, and Ashanti tribes of what is now Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Both vessels were shipwrecked near St. Vincent, an island north of Venezuela in the Lesser Antilles.

1652 - Sierra Leone History European contacts with Sierra Leone were among the first in West Africa. In 1652, the first slaves in North America were brought from Sierra Leone to the Sea Islands off the coast of the southern United States.

1664 - There was a conflict between the Dutch and British in 1664. Then the Dutch desidered to destroy all slave fort/Castles built by the British in the West Coast of Africa. The Captain in charge was De Ruyther. They sailed in to Sierra Leone then destroyed ...

1666 - Candish, or Cavendish, Captain Lister, and Sir Francis Drake. In 1666 the Sieur Villault de Bellefons tells us that the river from Cabo Ledo, or Cape Sierra Leone, had several bays, of which the fourth, now St. George's, was called _Baie de France_.

1670 - Ogilby does indeed mention a number of Mane kings who were alive in 1670, but they were all born in Sierra Leone. No further invasions had occurred since Dornelas wrote—to the best knowledge of later seventeenth-century writers.

1672 - The Portuguese in the late seventeenth century still traded extensively in Cacheo and the Great Scarcies River; this left the English little option but to settle in the Gambia and Sierra Leone. The Royal African Company, founded in 1672, was soon established ...

1678 - The first from Jean Barbot, describes various peoples along the coast of present -day Sierra Leone in 1678. Barbot states that during every new moon, the Temne abstain from all work and do not let strangers stay with them. Otherwise their maize would grow red...The first from Jean Barbot, describes various peoples along the coast of present -day Sierra Leone in 1678. Barbot states that during every new moon, the Temne abstain from all work and do not let strangers stay with them. Otherwise their maize would grow red, the new moon being a day of blood. The men commonly go hunting that day.