Temne

The Temne are a West African people of northwestern Sierra Leone, who speak Temne. Their oral traditions place their ancestral home in the Futa Jallon highlands. Migrations south began after the collapse of the Jallonkadu state and accelerated in the fifteenth century under Fula pressure, until they settled between the Kolenté and Rokel rivers.

Around 1505 Temne migrants founded the Kingdom of Koya, whose Bai kings traded with the Portuguese. In 1642 a Susu army overran Forécariah and tried to force Islam on the Temne, driving more of them into Sierra Leone; Islam later spread peacefully through Muslim traders.

Koya ceded the Sierra Leone peninsula in 1788, where freed slaves founded Freetown in 1792. Koya lost Port Loko fighting the British and Susu from 1801 to 1807, but retook it in 1815.