Kru People
The Kru, Krao, Kroo, or Krou are a West African ethnic group who are indigenous to western Ivory Coast and eastern Liberia. European and American writers often called Kru men who enlisted as sailors or mariners Krumen. They migrated and settled along various points of the West African coast, notably Freetown, Sierra Leone, but also the Ivorian and Nigerian coasts. The Kru-speaking people are a large ethnic group that is made up of several sub-ethnic groups in Liberia and Ivory Coast. In Liberia, there are 48 sub-sections of Kru tribes, including the Jlao Kru. These tribes include Bété, Bassa, Krumen, Guéré, Grebo, Klao/Krao, Dida, Krahn people and Jabo people. History During the Atlantic slave trade, Kru people were considered more valuable as traders and sailors on slave ships than as slave labor, and Kru oral traditions strongly hold that they were never enslaved. To ensure their status as “freemen,” they initiated the practice of tattooing their foreheads and ...
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