Eastern Kru

The Eastern Kru are the easternmost Kru-speaking peoples of central and southern Ivory Coast: the Dida, sixty-odd tribes of the Fresco and Sassandra lagoon coast, and the Bété, over ninety clans of the inland forests around Gagnoa and Daloa.

Dida tradition says they reached the shore in the 1000s, first fishing, then spreading into the forest as hunters and farmers, and they claim common ancestors, the Magwé, with the Bété. Bété oral history recalls an earlier Sahel and Sudanian savanna home, from which warfare drove them southwest in the 1600s.

Neither knew kingship: loyalty stopped at the village or clan, and each settlement governed itself. From the 1700s the Bété adopted customs from their Akan neighbors, while the deep forest sheltered them from Sahel slave raiders, and Kru groups won fame fighting off every slaving expedition entering their country.