The Gambia
Mandinka
Mandinka Dancing
A fiercely proud and nobel people with a rich ancestory. The Mandinka have a presence and personality that dominates others around them.
What they are and who they are, is more important to them than what they have got
Updated 8/4/2000
The Mandinka are known outside Gambia mainly because of Alex Haley's book Roots and its later TV dramatisation about his slave ancestors. Each Mandinka group is dominated by a hereditary group of noblemen, unusual among the other more egalitarian tribes.
One group, the Kangaba, has one of the world's most ancient dynasties; its rule has been virtually uninterrupted for 13 centuries. Beginning in the 7th century AD as the center of a small state, Kangaba became the capital of the great Malinke empire known as Mali.
The modern Mandinka are an agricultural people, farming crops like millet and sorghum and tending small herds of cattle, which are kept primarily for trade, bride-price payments, and prestige.
Their houses are predominantly cylindrical, with thatched straw roofs, and are often grouped in substantial numbers and surrounded by a fence. An excellent example can be sen at the Tanjii Village Museum. Inheritance, and succession are passed via the male line and seniority and power is strictly age related
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