Emperor of Mali at the zenith of the kingdom’s power and nephew to the empire’s founder, Sundiata Keita, Mansa (king or emperor) Kankan Musa I made legendary journeys to Mecca and Cairo and established Mali as a center for Islamic learning and culture.
A devout Muslim, Kankan Musa made a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324-25. On this hajj (see Islam), he traveled across the Sahara to Cairo, where he expended so much gold in gifts and purchases that the city’s gold prices remained depressed for years. According to Arab historians, Mansa Musa’s entourage included more than 60,000 servants and porters, 500 of them dressed in gold and carrying gold staffs. Kankan Musa’s journey to Mecca, although primarily a religious pilgrimage, also served a political purpose by acquainting him with his growing empire. Under the leadership of Kankan Musa, the kingdom of Mali reached its geographic peak, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the middle bend of the Niger River and from the Sahara to the southern forests along the Gulf of Guinea. Kankan Musa’s Mali was geographically diverse, rich in valuable resources such as gold, and incorporated important trade centers such as Djenne-Djeno and Timbuktu. While the Mansa was on his pilgrimage, one of his generals conquered the Songhai city of Gao, an important trade center on the trans-Saharan route. Kankan Musa traveled to Gao to establish his power there, receiving the submission of the king, Za Yassibou. While there, Kankan Musa built a mosque designed by the Andalusian architect and poet Abou-Ishaq Ibrahim Es Saheli. Es Saheli, who also designed Kankan Musa’s great Dyingerey Ber mosque in Timbuktu, was only one of the many Muslim artists and scholars Kankan Musa attracted to Mali during his reign. Kankan Musa’s role in establishing Mali as a center of Islamic culture and religion was one of his most important accomplishments. His patronage of Islamic art, literature, and education laid the foundation for the African-Arabic literary tradition that came out of Timbuktu beginning in the 14th century. Kankan Musa died in 1337 and was succeeded by his son Magha I.
Further reading: Pascal James Imperato, Historical Dictionary of Mali, 2nd ed. (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1986); “Mansa Musa,” in Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1988); “Musa,” in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, eds. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 1,360.
—Lisa M. Brady
Manteo (fl. 1580s) Hatteras diplomat, ally of Roanoke colonists
A member of an important Croatoan Indian family, Manteo traveled to England, helped the RoANOKE colonists survive, and provided ethnographic and environmental information to Thomas Harriot.
Manteo and another man, WANCHESE, were brought to England, apparently willingly, by Arthur Barlowe and Philip Amadas in 1584. While in England they learned English and taught some Algonquian to Harriot. Both Manteo and Wanchese returned to Roanoke with the 1585 colonizing expedition. There, Manteo seems to have tried to help the colonists and Indians understand each other, although he was unable to stop hostility from arising. His mother was apparently the leader of the Croatoan Indians, and the Croatoan may have been glad to have a representative within the English colony, one who could keep them informed about English actions and intentions. In 1587 Manteo was baptized at Roanoke and received the title “Lord of Roanoke and Dasemunkepeuc.” By ordering this ceremony, Sir Walter Ralegh apparently intended to establish Manteo as a lord over his people and so formalize his authority. Nothing is known of Manteo after the disappearance of the Roanoke colony.
Further reading: Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, N. Y.:
Cornell University Press, 2000);-, Roanoke: The
Abandoned Colony (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984); Michael Leroy Oberg, “Gods and Men: The Meeting of Indian and White Worlds on the Carolina Outer Banks, 1584-1596,” North Carolina Historical Review 76 (October 1999): 367-390; David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).
—Martha K. Robinson
Mantoac
The Algonquian of what is today North Carolina believed in the existence of spiritual forces known as Mantoac, Montoac, or Manitou.
When English colonists settled at Roanoke, they met people who believed in a variety of spiritual powers. The term Mantoac has no precise translation in English, but European observers, most notably Thomas Harriot, wrote that the Indians believed in both a single god who had always existed and in other gods and spirits. Similar beliefs seem to have been commonly held by Algonquian peoples along the Atlantic seaboard. In the 17th century Roger Williams reported that the Narragansett in Rhode Island called “Manittooes, that is, Gods, Spirits, or Divine powers, . . . every thing which they cannot comprehend” and when seeing “any Excellency in Men, Women, Birds, Beasts, Fish, &c, they cry out Manittoo A God.”
Indians who negotiated with the English sometimes took names that apparently indicated having Montoac or having a relation to Montoac. Thus, the name Manteo appears to be related to Montoac, as did Pocahontas’s name Amonute and one of her father’s titles or names, Mamanotowick.
Further reading: Christian F. Feest, “North Carolina Algonquians” in Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., vol. 15, Northeast, vol. ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 271-281; Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (New York: Dover Publications, 1972); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca,
N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000);-, Roanoke:
The Abandoned Colony (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman & Allan-held, 1984); David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).
—Martha K. Robinson
World History
