A Short History of the Kono People
The Kono People derive their heritage from blood relations or from the fact of their birth in Konoland. The heritage of the Kono People dates back to 450 years when they migrated from the sub-Saharan highlands in the Upper Guinea Coast to their present geographical location. Historians tell us that the Konos belong to the Mande, a sub-
family of the Niger-Congo family of languages which include Malinke, (Mandingo), Dyalonke, Koranko, and Bambara. There are a number of traditions that recount the history of the Kono People.
The MA KONO Tradition relates that when the Kono People left the sub-Sahara highlands at the fall of the Mali Empire to look for salt, some of them settled in their present location while a group of them continued south towards to the ocean for salt. The traveling group promised the batch left behind to wait for them: Ma kono. The group that journeyed on to look for salt became the Vai tribe. They settled in two chiefdoms there at Solo and Bema and others continued on to Liberia in Cape Mount.
It is also told that the Kono People left their ancestral heartland in a place called Kono sukor in the Upper Guinea Coast after a controversy involving their king’s son. They fled to the areas contiguous to the Meli Valley with their cattle and settled into villages and cultivated the land for rice farming.
Modern Konoland is geographically delimited and established into Chiefdoms as follows: Fiama, 150 square miles, (1951); Gbane, 150 square miles, (1940); Gbane Kando , 63 square miles, (1952); Gbense, 150 square miles, (1953); Ngorama Kono, 170 square miles, (1952); Kamaa, 85 square miles, (1948); Lei, 180 square miles, (1952); Mafindo, 100 square miles, (1954); Nimikor, 180 square miles (1940); Nimiyama, 170 square miles, (1951); Sando, 378 square miles; (1946); Soa, 175 square miles, (1948); Tankor, 140 square miles, (1942); Toli, 85 square miles.
Modern Konoland, or Kono District, is a dense tropical rain forest cradled by the Nimi Hills rising to the west, to the Gori Hills to the east and to the north by Tingi Hills.