The Gallinas people is a name applied to an ethnic group in eastern

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

, which formerly existed as an independent kingdom. "Gallinas" is an exonym applied by Europeans to the inhabitants of the Gallinas River in southeastern Sierra Leone. In the 19th Century, the Gallinas people dominated the coastal area roughly between the Waanji river to the west and the

Mano River The Mano River is a river in West Africa. It originates in the Guinea Highlands in Liberia and forms part of the Liberia-Sierra Leone border. The districts through which the river flows include the Parrot's Beak area of Guinea, Liberia's Lofa ...

to the east. Ethnically and linguistically, Gallinas are the northern part of the larger

Vai people The Vai are Mandé peoples that live mostly in Liberia, with a small minority living in south-eastern Sierra Leone. The Vai are known for their indigenous writing system known as the Vai syllabary, developed in the 1820s by Momolu Duwalu Bukele an ...

which overlap

and

Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...

.S.W. Koelle (1854) ''Outlines of a grammar of the Vei language, together with a Vei-English vocabulary''
p.3
/ref> In 1868 and 1869, the

n government raided the chiefdoms of the Gbenmah and Gallinas. In 1882, the king and chiefs of Gallinas ceded a piece of coastal territory to the British government.

Kings and chiefs of the Gallinas people

King Siaka was king of the Gallinas in 1840, when

Joseph Denman Vice Admiral Joseph Denman (23 June 1810 – 26 November 1874) was a British naval officer, most noted for his actions against the slave trade as a commander of HMS ''Wanderer'' of the West Africa Squadron. Early life Denman was born on 23 Ju ...

contacted him as regards the plight of Fry Norman, a

Black British Black British people or Black Britons"Black Briton, N." ''Oxford English Dictionary''. Oxford UP. December 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1136579918. are a multi-ethnic group of British people of List of ethnic groups of Africa, Sub-Saharan ...

woman who he understood had been seized by Siacca's son Prince Manna. Another prominent ruler was King

Momulu Massaquoi Momulu Massaquoi (1869–1938) was a Liberian politician, diplomat, and monarch of the Vai people of Sierra Leone and Liberia. He served as Liberia's consul general to Germany 1922–1930, and appears to be the first indigenous African diplomat t ...

, whose descendants constitute the contemporary royal family.

References

Ethnic groups in Sierra Leone {{SierraLeone-stub