Krumen

Krumen (Kroomen, Krus) are a people of the west coast of Africa.

Word Origin

This word has been incorrectly thought to derived from the English word "crew", thus making reference to the fact that Krumen were the first West African people to serve on European vessels. Much more likely, it derived from Kraoh, which is the name of one of their own tribes.

Location

They dwell in villages scattered along the coast of Liberia from below Monrovia nearly to Cape Palmas. Under Krumen are now grouped many kindred tribes, the Grebo, Basa, Nifu, and others, who collectively number some 40,000. The Krus proper live in the narrow strip of coast between the Sino river and Cape Palmas, where are their five chief villages, Kruber, Little Kru, Settra Kru, Nana Kru and King Williams Town. They have numerous settlements along the coast. Sierra Leone, Grand Bassa and Monrovia all have their Kru towns.

Culture

They are traditionally from the interior, but have long been noted as skillfully seamen and daring fishermen. They are a stout, muscular, broadchested race, probably the most robust of African peoples. They have skin of a blue-black hue and woolly and abundant hair. Politically the Krus are divided into small commonwealths, each with an hereditary chief whose duty is simply to represent the people in their dealings with strangers. The real government is vested in the elders, who wear as insignia iron rings on their legs. Their president, the head fetish-man, guards the national symbols, and his house is sanctuary for offenders till their guilt is proved. Personal property is held in common by each family. Land also is communal, but the rights of the actual cultivator cease only when he fails to farm it. At the age of 14 or 15, the Kru boys eagerly contract themselves for voyages of twelve or eighteen months. Generally they prefer working near at home, and are to be found on almost every ship trading on the Guinea coast. As soon as they have saved enough to buy a wife they return home and settle down. Krumen ornament their faces with tribal marks: black or blue lines on the forehead and from ear to ear. They tattoo their arms and mutilate the incisor teeth.Concerning their work on board of foreign vessels we cld say that they were able seamen in any kind of job under any circumstance but really unreachables in loading tree-trunks from sea to the ship's holds. The ships were used to anchor on open roads at the river mouths along the west coast of Africa from Freetown in Sierra Leone till the Congo river mouth waiting to be approached by small tugs towing many trunks floating and secured one each other by small steel ropes passing in double through one iron ring stuck with a tongue more or less on the middle of each trunk. Since these trunks, due to their long stay in water, was very slipperies and adding to this the swell moovement of open sea water, it was very dangerous to walk them on top.

The Kru languages

Wilhelm Bleek classified the Kru language with the Mandingo family, and in this he was followed by R. G. Latham; S. W. Koelle, who published a Kru grammar (1854), disagreed.

References

*A. de Quatrefages and E. T. Hamy, Crania ethnica, ix. 363 (1878-1879)
*Schlagintweit-Sakununski, in the Sitzungsberichte of the academy at Munich (1875)
*Nicholas, in Bull. Soc. Anthrop. (Paris, 1872)
*J. Büttikofer, Reisebilder aus Liberia (Leiden, 1890)
*Harry H. Johnston, Liberia (London, 1906).
*1911