ROOTS: DISCOVERING YOUR AFRICAN ORIGINS, PT. V

VIII. STATISTICALLY MOST LIKELY AFRICAN TRIBES OF ORIGIN OF MODERN-DAY BLACK AMERICANS

Tribe names are in bold face type.

1. Yoruba: (Benin, Nigeria)
2. Hausa: (Niger, Nigeria)
3. Ovimbundu: (Angola)
4. Malinke: (The Gambia, Guineau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone)
5. Wolof: (The Gambia, Senegal)
6. Ashanti: (Ghana)
7. Ewe: (Ghana, Togo)
8. Fante: (Ghana)
9. Mende: (Sierra Leone)
10. Dyola: (The Gambia, Senegal)

Note: As stated previously, likelihood of a current-day black American being descended from a particular African tribe depends on several different factors, which include but are not limited to:

1) sheer numbers of that tribe in slave trading times;
2) the popularity of that tribe's home region with slave traders and American buyers;
3) the area in the United States/British North America to which the black American’s ancestors were originally transported.

IX. STATISTICALLY MOST LIKELY AFRICAN COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN OF MODERN-DAY BLACK AMERICANS

1. Nigeria
2. Angola
3. Ghana
4. The Gambia
5. Senegal
6. Sierra Leone

Note: These countries are, given a number of factors that include but are not limited to:

1) tribes indigenous to the area, numbers of those tribes in slave-trading days and in the present day;
2) the popularity of the slave-trading region in which that country is located with United States slave states and with British possessions in the Western Hemisphere;

the most likely present-day African countries of origin of present-day black Americans. No conclusions about a particular individual’s ancestry can validly be drawn from this list or the other lists in this report, however, by persons who have not yet done their personal genealogical homework (possibly including genetic testing).

Compiled by Thomas A. Pearson, Reference Librarian
Special Collections Department
St. Louis Public Library
http://www.slpl.org/

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