Western Kru

The Western Kru are the Kru-speaking peoples of the coast around the Cavally River, from southeastern Liberia to southwestern Ivory Coast, including the Klao, Grebo, Bassa and We. They reached the sea between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, partly to escape Manding slave raids; Bassa oral history dates their arrival between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.

They lived in decentralized villages without kings, governed through the Poro and Sande bush schools; Grebo clans were led by a high priest called the Bodio. The Pepper Coast forests largely shielded them from enslavement, and men marked their foreheads with indigo tattoos as freemen.

From the 1790s Krumen, as the Grebo were called on the Ivorian shore, signed on as free sailors aboard European ships. The Bassa kept a pictographic script, and in 1827 American colonists settled among the Glebo at Cape Palmas.