Sherbro

The Sherbro are an indigenous people of the Sierra Leone coast, centered on Sherbro Island and the creeks of Bonthe and Moyamba, where they live by fishing and coastal trade. They speak Sherbro, a Mel language, and in pre-colonial times were one of the dominant peoples of the coast.

Portuguese ships first reached them in the fifteenth century, and by the 1620s English factors were buying goods in the Sherbro Country; Sherbro chiefly families intermarried with Europeans, producing some of the region's leading ruling houses. In the eighteenth century the Sherbro grew powerful in the slave trade, hiring Mende parties inland to supply captives.

After Freetown was founded in 1792, the western Sherbro intermarried with liberated African settlers who became the Krio, while the eastern Sherbro drew close to the Mende and adopted much of their language and custom.