ABSTRACT
The importance of the wide distribution of the Mande languages in the past history of West Africa needs no stressing. It has been the subject of several recent discussions of Ghanaian history, as well as of the wider cultural history of the whole region. The population consists of groups speaking Ashanti, Dumpo, Senufo, Koulango, Degha, and Mande languages. The Ashanti hinterland was the focus of this long-distance trade partly because of its gold. But at this time the red kola of that region was more important, for it had such long-lasting qualities that it could be carried to places as distant as the Niger bend, Hausaland, and even across the Sahara to the shores of the Mediterranean as far as Tripoli. In the Ivory Coast the southern Mande form small groups of peoples with political systems which are limited in scale, characterized by the institution of the Earth priest.
