ABSTRACT
Kayor, now a province of Senegal, is inhabited mainly by Wolof, an ethnic group speaking a West Atlantic language, who numbered more than a million in 1965. Oral traditions indicate that the Wolof originated in Walo about the turn of the twelfth century from a fusion of Serer, Sose, Fulbe, and Tucolor elements. Walo and Dyolof are the oldest Wolof states. Yet Lat-Dyor himself had been converted to Islam, and his example led to the mass conversion of the Wolof of Kayor. On 16 January 1877 Briere de l'Isle announced to Lat-Dyor his intention of building a line from Saint-Louis to Dakar through Kayor, with halts for the collection of groundnuts—now one of Senegal's principal exports, already totalling two and a half thousand tons in 1850. Lat-Dyor felt the railway would bring the end of the Darnels and ring a death knell for Kayor independence.
