SORI KESSEBEH
- 4 Min Read
Sori Kessebeh (who flourished in the 19th century) was a powerful Loko warrior of Sierra Leone who left his country with several refugees after the defeat of the Loko by the Temne in the early 1840s.
Through his assistance in war to Chief R.C.B. Caulker of Bumpe, he became chief of Rotifunk, on the higher reaches of the Bumpe River. Despite his affiliations with Islam he was friendly to the Christian missionary movement and sent his son to be educated in Freetown. Originally known as Sori Kanu, Sori Kessebeh was the son of Sori Kutu, a great warrior king of the Loko who lived around the middle of the 18th century. The Loko at this time had a famous warrior training center in Malal, and their territory spread over an area occupying much of present-day Kambia, Bombali, and Port Loko districts.
Most Loko warriors trained in Malal, and Sori Kanu was no exception. He had also come under Muslim influence, and was in the habit of covering his war dress with charms called “Sebbeh’ – hence he came to be known as Sori Kessebeh.
The Loko were slave traders and their major port is still called Port Loko to this day. Soso immigrants who had been allowed to settle in the area gradually usurped power. The neighbours of the Loko, the Temne, plotted secretly and overthrew the Soso hegemony of Port Loko in 1815, installing their nominee as Moriba Kindo Bangura.
He died in 1825 and his successor, Fatima Brimah Kamara, mediating in a quarrel between Loko and Temne, made a fateful decision in favour of the Temne that led to a war between the two peoples which lasted for 15 years. At its conclusion, the Loko were vanquished, pushed north, and hemmed in between the Mabole and Little Scarcies rivers. Only the Smart family, including Charles Smart, remained in a small Loko enclave surrounded by Temne at Mahera.
At this time, the Loko king was Gbanga Koba-Wa, brother of Sori Kessebeh, who ruled till about 1860. Sori Kessebeh did not get on well with his brother Koba, and being a renowned warrior he accepted the invitation of R.C.B. Caulker, chief of Bumpe, a coastal area south of Freetown, to help him fight his wars. Thus, he emigrated with his followers and was rewarded for his services to Caulker by being given land at Rotifunk, where he became chief. Here he encouraged farming, and many Loko refugees flocked to the neighbourhood of Rotifunk, which soon became an important centre of trade. In 1878, Sori Kessebeh allowed the Women’s Missionary Association to open a mission station in Rotifunk, under his protection. This was despite his exposure to Islamic influences.
In the 1880s, the Yoni Temne threatened the Bumpe district, and in 1882 raided it, but were repelled by Sori Kessebeh with the assistance of police from the Colony and his own 200 Fula residents. In 1886, Yoni, Ribbi, and Bumpe chiefs met in Freetown to make a truce. But there were many personal jealousies existing among them. Even Richard Caulker Kessebeh’s overlord, was suspected of inciting Yoni attacks on Ribbi.
After the rains, hostilities broke out but were more limited in scale, being confined mostly to Yoni desires for a trading centre and petty rivalries among the Ribbi and Bumpe chiefs. Yoni attacks continued, however, and in 1887, after incursions into Bauya and Senehun, towns under British jurisdiction, to the south of Rotifunk, followed by an attack on Rotifunk itself, also “British territory,” it was decided that the Yoni, formally declared by the British to be the enemy, must be punished.
An expedition was sent under Colonel Sir Francis de Winton, supported by over 700 irregulars – Loko under Kessebeh, Mende, Koya Temne, and Fula. The Yoni were defeated and peace concluded at Momaligi. After the Yoni defeat, Sori Kessebeh took advantage of his friendship with the British and of the missionary presence to extend his territory. When he died in 1897, he was succeeded by his son Santigi Bundu, who had already received his education at the Church Missionary Society Grammar School in Freetown.
ARTHUR ABRAHAM
