Junk River

The mouth of the Junk River on the Liberian coast became the subject of negotiations with the American colonisation settlement in October 1826. The colony sought a station on the peninsula between the Junk and Red Junk rivers, intended for a trading factory and a resident colonial agent. Local leaders included Prince Will of the Junk, Tom of the Red Junk, Peter Harris, Tom French and Junk Pepper.

The commissioners’ initial proposal to purchase part of the peninsula failed at a council on 10 October. A different arrangement followed on the next day: a perpetual grant of use and jurisdiction over a defined tract at the river mouths. The colonial report itself recorded the chiefs’ distrust of the settlement’s intentions. This encounter reveals a contested negotiation over a particular landing and trading place, rather than an uncontested transfer of an empty coast.