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The Senufo people, also known as Siena, Senefo, Sene, Senoufo, Syénambélé and Bamana, are a African ethnolinguistic group. They consist of diverse subgroups living in a region spanning the northern Ivory Coast, the southeastern Mali and the western Burkina Faso. One sub-group, the Nafana, is found in north-western Ghana.
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The Senufo people are predominantly animists, with some who are Muslims. They are regionally famous for their handicrafts, many of which feature their cultural themes and religious beliefs.
Demographics and languages
In the 1980s, estimates placed the total ethnic group population of Senufo people somewhere between 1.5 and 2.7 million. A 2013 estimate places the total over 3 million, with majority of them living in Ivory Coast in places such as Katiola, and some 0.8 million in southeastern Mali. Their highest population densities are found in the land between the Black Volta river, Bagoe River and Bani River.
The Senufo people are typically studied in three large subgroups which have been relatively isolated. The northern Senufo are called "Supide or Kenedougou", found near Odienne, and who helped found an important kingdom of West Africa and challenged Muslim missionaries and traders. The southern Senufo are the largest group, numbering over 2 million, who allowed Muslim traders to settle within their communities in the 18th century who actively proselytized, and about 20% of the southern Senufo are Muslims. The third group is very small and isolated from both northern and southern Senufo. Some sociologists such as the French scholar Holas mentions fifteen identifiable sub-groups of Senufo people, with thirty dialects and four castes scattered between them.
They speak the various Senufo languages. It belongs to the Gur-branch of the Niger-Congo language family, and consists of four distinct languages namely Suppire in Mali, and Palaka, Dyimini, and Senari in Côte d’Ivoire. Korhogo, an ancient town in northern Ivory Coast dating from the 13th century, is linked to the Senufo people. This separation of languages and sub-ethnic groups may be linked to the 14th-century migrations with its founding along with the Bambara trade-route.
History
The Senufo people emerged as a group sometime about 15th to 16th century. They were a significant part of the 17th to 19th-century Kénédougou Kingdom (literally "country of the plain") with the capital of Sikasso. This region saw many wars including the rule of Daoula Ba Traoré, a cruel despot between 1840 to 1877. The Islamization of Senufo people began during the Kénédougou rule, but it was the chiefs who converted, while the general Senufo population refused. Daoula Ba Traoré attempted to Islamize his kingdom, destroyed many villages within the kingdom such as Guiembe and Nielle in 1875 because they resisted his views. The Kénédougou dynastic rulers attacked their neighbors as well, such as the Zarma people and they in turn attacked back many times between 1883 to 1898.
The pre-colonial wars and violence led to their migration into Burkina Faso in regions that became towns such as Tiembara in Kiembara Department. The Kénédougou kingdom and the Traoré dynasty was dissolved in 1898 with the arrival of French colonial rule.
Slavery
The Senufo people were both victims of slavery, and they victimized other ethnic groups with slavery. They were enslaved by various African ethnic groups as the Denkyira and Akan states were attacked or fell in the 17th and 18th centuries. They themselves bought and sold slaves to Muslim merchants, Asante people and Baoulé people. As refugees from other West African ethnic groups escaped wars, states Paul Lovejoy, some of them moved into the Senufo lands, seized their lands and enslaved them.
The largest demand for slaves initially came from the markets of Sudan, and for a long time, slave trading was the most important economic activity across Sahel and West Africa, states Martin Klein. Sikasso and Bobo-Dioulasso were an important source of slaves captured who were then moved to Timbuktu and Banamba on their way to the Sudanese and Mauritanian slave markets.
Those enslaved in Senufo lands worked the land, herds and at home. Their owner and his dependents also had right to have sexual intercourse with female domestic slaves. The children of a female slave inherited her slave status.
Society and culture
The Senufo are predominantly an agricultural people cultivating corn, millet, yams and peanut. Senufo villages consist of small mud-brick homes. In the rainy southern communities of Senufo, thatched roofs are common, while flat roofs are prevalent in dry desert-like north. The Senufo is a patriarchal extended family society, where arranged typically cousin marriage and polygyny has been fairly common. However, succession and property inheritance has been matrilineal.
The Senufo are regionally famous as musicians and superb carvers of wood sculpture, masks and figurines. The Senufo people have specialized their art and handicraft work by subgroups, wherein the art is learnt within this group from one generation to the next. The Kulubele specialize as woodcarvers, the Fonombele specialize in blacksmith and basketry work, the Kpeembele as brass casting specialists, the Djelebele are renowned for leatherwork, the Tchedumbele are masters of gunsmith work, while Numu specialize in smithing and weaving. Outside the artisan subgroups, the Senufo people have hunters, musicians, grave-diggers, diviners and healers who are called the Fejembele. Among these various subgroups, the leatherworkers or Djelebele are the ones who have most adopted Islam, and even those who convert retain many of their animist practices.
The Senufo people have traditionally been a socially stratified society, like many West African ethnic groups with castes. These endogamous divisions are locally called Katioula, and one of the strata in this division includes slaves and descendants of slaves. According to Dolores Richter, the caste system found among Senufo people features "hierarchical ranking including despised lower castes, occupational specificity, ritual complementarity, endogamy, hereditary membership, residential isolation and the political superiority of farmers over artisan castes".
The Senufo villages are typically independent of each other, and each has a male secret society called Poro with elaborate initiation rituals in a patch of forest they consider as sacred. The initiation rituals involve masks, figurines and ritual equipment that the Senufo people carve and have perfected. The secrecy has helped the Senufo people to preserve their culture in the times of wars and political pressure. They wear specially crafted brass jewelry, such as those mimicking wildlife.
The Sandogo are women diviners among the Senufo people. They too have their own rituals and secret order. In addition, the Senufo people have Wambele and Typka who perform sorcery and rituals.
The traditional Senufo religion is a type of animism. This Senufo belief includes ancestral and nature spirits, who can be contacted. They believe in a Supreme Being, who is viewed in a dual male-female: a male Creator God called Kolotyolo or Koulotiolo, and an Ancient Mother called Maleeo or Katieleo.
Influence
The art of Senufo people inspired 20th-century European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger. The cubism and masks found in Senufo pieces were a part of Pablo Picasso's African period. The term Senufo has become a category to art collectors and scholars, a symbolism for the artistic traditions of West Africa, starting with the early twentieth century. Old pieces of Senufo art are found in many leading museums of the world.
Cornélius Yao Azaglo Augustt, a photographer, created a photo journal of Senufo people from 1955 onwards.