Saint Louis and Segou (Sikoro): Broad Historical Sketches

Saint, Louis, Senegal

Today Saint Louis is a UNESCO World Heritage site celebrated for its faded, but elegant French colonial architecture.

       The oldest French colonial settlement in western Africa sits on the end of a long narrow peninsula extending south from Mauritania. The peninsula appears on some maps as the "langue de Barbarie" (literally "the tongue of Barbary"). The coastal region had been visited by traders from Portugal beginning in the 15th century, followed by those from Holland and England in the 16th century. But it was the French who first settled on nearby Bocos island in 1638. Because of repeated flooding there, the French moved about 25 km away to the current settled on the peninsula where they built a fort in 1659.

The fort at Saint-Louis around 1780. Notice the thatched-roofed buildings nearby. There is a range of architectural styles in this depiction.

Wolof speakers referred to the land as N'Dar ("island"). One source said that local people did not settle on the island because they believed it to be inhabited by spirits. Nevertheless, a local notable, the Diagne of Sor, allowed the French to settle there in exchange for an annual customary payment of "three pieces of blue cloth, a measure of scarlet cloth, seven long iron bars and 10 pints of 'eau de vie'.” (Biondi, 37)

The peninsula settlement enjoyed natural protections on all sides from surprise attack including rough surf at the mouth of the river. As the staging ground for trade with the African interior upriver, the settlement attracted a growing population of boatmen (laptots), fisherman, traders and a burgeoning "metis" or mixed race population.

 Some sources say that the French named the settlement for King Louis XIV (1638-1715), the Bourbon monarch known as the Sun King, who took power in 1661. However, other sources note that the name actually honors the Sun King's patron saint, an earlier King Louis IX (1214-1270) who is the only French monarch to have been canonized. Interestingly, Louis IX led two Crusades against Islam in Africa, one in Egypt and the other near Tunis, both of which ultimately failed. Louis IX was member of the Trinitarian religious order that dedicated itself to redeeming Christians held captives by non-Christians. He died in North Africa in 1270 but he is remembered by Catholic faithful as a "selfless warrior for Christ." (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Several colonial settlements in the Americas and Asia from this early period and later periods are named for Saint Louis including San Luis Potosi in Mexico, St. Louis, Missouri (formerly French territory), Sao Luis do Maranhao in Brazil, lake Saint Louis in Canada and rue Saint Louis in the former French colony of Pondicherry, India.

But for Saint Louis, Senegal, biographical details of its namesake and the questions of slavery and religious conflict seem to resonate with the later history of this French settlement, as well as that of the broader region.

Perhaps not coincidentally, 1659 was also the year the French officially established a colony on the mainland of Saint Domingue (later Haiti) in the Caribbean. Other islands that the French already occupied in the eastern Caribbean (St. Christopher, Guadeloupe, Martinique) were being supplied with African slave labor by the Dutch. The settlement at Saint Louis was thus if not the first then part of an early effort for French companies to supply the French Caribbean islands with enslaved labor.

Negress of quality from the Island of Saint Louis in Senegal, accompanied by her slave, Illustration from Costumes civils actuels de tous les peuples connus, Paris, 1788, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur.

        A community of African and metis (racially-mixed) residents were key to trade interactions throughout the region.  For example, African-born women known as "signares" from the Portuguese word "senhoras," became key to the process of intercultural trade in Saint Louis and on Goree island. Sometimes they were referred to as "gros bonets" for the large and colorful turbans they frequently wore. These women frequently were the wives of traveling French merchants who spoke local languages and helped establish trade linkages. When their husbands left the island or died, they inherited wealth. Also, key among the African residents were "laptots" who were local canoemen and servants who facilitated trade.



      Here is a view of Saint Louis from above. The area of the original seaside settlement appears distinctive from this view:

Now a bit about Segou (Sikoro). 

Street scene in Segou 

Located far inland, in the middle Niger river Valley, Segou's eighteenth century trajectory is related to Saint Louis in ways that I am still trying to better understand. The Bamana-speaking peoples who live there were formerly part of the much larger Mali empire that began in the 13th century and flourished until about the 15th century. Here is a snapshot of the region circa the 14th century.

      The large orange shape shows the approximate reach of Mali in the 14th century. But not represented here is that the authority of its rulers stretched at its peak to the Atlantic coast and included the territories of the Wolof (and what became Saint Louis). Mali had grown on the relative strength of its trans-Saharan trade in gold, slaves and other commodities. Not only material goods but ideas, books, technology and religion also circulated across this vast space linking this part of Africa to developments in southern Spain, for example, as well as to Tunis, Cairo, Baghdad and perhaps beyond.

The fall of Mali is perhaps related to a number of factors including shifts eastward in trans-Saharan traffic, favoring Songhay and Hausa-speaking areas, internal disputes over succession and the rise of trade on the Atlantic coast that dissipated the empire's hold over peoples with new potential sources of income from trade.

The 18th century founding of Segou is surrounded in mythical legend. There is some disagreement about its original name which some say was Sikoro (Bamana for "under the shea tree") and others say was "Sekou" the name of a Koranic student who studied there. One source notes that the settlement was founded by Bozo fisherman. The question of the naming indicates the many interactions that the region has interacted with Islam and Islamization over the longue duree.

That said, many historians agree that what became the state of Segu was started around 1712 by Mamari Koulibaly, a hunter of low birth who, together with young men of his age, staged a generational revolt against local rulers. The Bamana are agriculturalists who grow millet, sorghum and other cereals. The state grew quickly on the Koulibaly's military strength and wealth gained from raiding for slaves that were sold across the Sahara and to ports on the Atlantic coast. By the 1840s, Segu's power stretched far across the savanna, but so to was the power of the French encroaching for their original hold on Saint Louis.

In between the two forces, were settlements of Fulani pastoralists at Futa Toro, Futa Djallon, Bundu and at Macina. They would become important to events in the 19th century as an Islamist reform movement swept the region impacting both the fate of Segu (which fell to the Fulani jihadist Umar Tall in 1860) and of the French who sought to promote their own interests while negotiating a terrain marked by differing engagements with Islam.

Here is a map produced in 1868 for a book by French Lt. Eugene Mage who traveled to Segu-Sikoro in 1868. It is noteworthy that Segou is located at the center of a dense network of towns.

The reference to a depopulated area to the east of Segou is an interesting detail that perhaps refers to the impact of wars and slave raiding but I will need to follow up to know more. Finally, a couple of shots to remind us of the relative locations of the 18th century settlement and todays city of Segou. Even in the contemporary city (I am not clear as of this writing on exactly when it began to be settled), neighborhoods near the river seem to have had an earlier vitality and focus than the newer, more checkerboard neighborhoods further inland.

Bibliography

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