Baga

The Baga are a West African people of Guinea's Atlantic mangrove swamps. Their name comes from a Susu phrase meaning seaside people. Oral tradition says they came from inland highlands, pushed west by stronger neighbours; as first-comers they held landlord rights over later settlers and lived in kingless communities.

They speak Atlantic-branch Baga languages related to Temne, many using Susu as a trade language. Mangrove rice, kola and salt supported them; their animist ritual sculpture became prized in distant museums. From the sixteenth century Portuguese traders and mixed Portuguese lançados marrying chiefs' daughters tied them into coastal commerce, the Gomez and Fernandez families founding dynasties.

From the 1720s Futa Jallon's Fula jihad state raided them for slaves; Susu migrants took over inland trade, and a Futa tax officer sat at Bara. Under Mandé missionaries most had converted to Islam by the later eighteenth century.