Sierra Leone Creole people

Creole people of Sierra Leone
(Krio)

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Total population
104,311 (2022)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Sierra Leone, Gambia, United States, United Kingdom
Languages
English • Krio
Religion
Anglican • Methodist • Catholic • Baptist
Related ethnic groups
African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Americo-Liberians, Atlantic Creoles, Black Britons, Black Nova Scotians, Gambian Creoles, Gold Coast Euro-Africans, Jamaican Maroons, Krio Fernandinos, Saro people, Tabom people.

The Sierra Leone Creole people (Krio: Krio pipul) are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown.^[2] Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.^[1]

The Creoles of Sierra Leone have varying degrees of European ancestry,^[3][4] similar to their Americo-Liberian neighbours and sister ethnic group in Liberia.^[5][6] In Sierra Leone, some of the settlers intermarried with English colonial residents and other Europeans.^[7][8] Through the Jamaican Maroons, some Creoles probably also have indigenous Amerindian Taíno ancestry.^[9][10] The mingling of newly freed black and racially-mixed Nova Scotians^[11] and Jamaican Maroons from the 'New World' with Liberated Africans – such as the Akan, Bakongo, Ewe, Igbo and Yoruba – over several generations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, led to the eventual formation of a Creole ethnicity.^{[12][13][14][15]}

The Americo-Liberians and Sierra Leone Creoles are the only recognised ethnic group of African-American, Liberated African, and Afro-Caribbean descent in West Africa.^[16][17][1] Thoroughly westernized in their manners, the Creoles as a class developed close relationships with the British colonial administration; they became educated in British institutions and advanced to prominent leadership positions in colonial Sierra Leone and British West Africa.^[18] Partly due to this history, many Sierra Leone Creoles have first names and/or surnames that are anglicized or British in origin.

The Creoles are overwhelmingly Christian^[a] and the vast majority of them reside in Freetown and its surrounding Western Area region of Sierra Leone.^[21] From their mix of peoples, the Creoles developed what is now the native Krio language, a creole deriving from English, indigenous West African languages, and other European languages. It is the most widely spoken language in virtually all parts of Sierra Leone. As the Krio language is spoken by 96 percent of the country's population,^[1][22] it unites all the different ethnic groups, especially in their trade and interaction with each other.^[23][24] Krio is also the primary language of communication among Sierra Leoneans living abroad.^[25]

The Sierra Leone Creoles settled across West Africa in the nineteenth century in communities such as Limbe (Cameroon); Conakry (Guinea); Banjul (Gambia); Lagos, Abeokuta, Calabar, Onisha (Nigeria); Accra, Cape Coast (Ghana) and Fernando Pó (Equatorial Guinea).^[26] The Krio language of the Creole people influenced other pidgins such as Cameroonian Pidgin English, Nigerian Pidgin English, and Pichinglis.^[27][28] As a result of their history, the Gambian Creole people, or Aku people of the Gambia,^[29][30] the Saro people of Nigeria,^[31][32][33] and the Krio Fernandinos of Equatorial Guinea,^[34][35][36] are sub-ethnic groups or partly descended from the Sierra Leone Creole people or their ancestors.

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