Bulu

The Bulu are the southernmost of the Beti-Pahuin Bantu peoples of the Cameroonian forest, their clans spread across the wooded hills between the Sanaga River and the Gabon border, including the Bulu proper around Sangmélima, Ebolowa and Kribi.

They speak Bulu, a Beti language intelligible with Ewondo and Fang, and trace their ancestry to Bantu groups who from the 700s drifted south from the central Cameroon grasslands into the equatorial forest, a movement still under way in the early 1800s as related Fang clans pushed on toward Río Muni and Gabon.

Bulu society had no kings: patrilineal lineages formed independent villages under clan heads who also led the ancestral rites. Farmers cleared the forest for manioc and maize, hunters supplied bushmeat, and carvers were noted for their masks and work in wood and ivory.