Manjaco
The weavers and migrants of Guinea-Bissau's north-west — cloth producers whose strip-woven panels were currency along the coast, kingdoms at Bassarel and Caió, and a community that has sent its young to Dakar, Lisbon and Paris for a century and built its villages on what they sent back.
Identity
Population: Around 200,000 in Guinea-Bissau with large communities in Senegal, Portugal and France
Location: Cacheu region — Canchungo, Caió, Bula and Pecixe island
Language: Manjaku (Mandjak)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Atlantic (Bak)
Traditional governance: Kingdoms with a regulo and a council, whose installation is controlled by shrine priests; age grades; Bissau-Guinean administration today.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Bassarel
One of the historic kingdoms of the region.
Caió and Pecixe
Coastal and island communities with distinct traditions.
Diaspora communities
Manjaco populations in Dakar, Lisbon and Paris, central to the home economy.
Culture
Clothing: Manjaco strip-woven cloth, with narrow bands sewn into panels and worn as wrappers, used historically as currency and as burial cloth; imported fabric for daily wear.
Food: Rice from bunded paddies, palm oil, cashew, fish and shellfish; palm wine central to every ceremony.
Ceremonies: Funerals with cloth display and days of drumming; the regulo's installation with shrine sanction; the initiation cycles; the return of migrants for ceremonies as a structuring event of the calendar.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth including quantities of woven cloth; migration shapes marriage timing, with young men marrying after their first period abroad.
Initiation rites: Age-grade initiation with seclusion and instruction; weaving apprenticeship for boys of weaving lineages.
Stories & Oral Literature
Cloth as MoneyEconomic history
Manjaco strip cloth was a currency along the Upper Guinea coast, accepted in trade, used for bridewealth and required for burial. Portuguese traders bought it to sell elsewhere on the coast. The looms are still worked, and the panels are still the correct thing to wrap a body in, which keeps the craft alive where fashion would not.
The Village Built from AbroadMigration history
Manjaco men have migrated for wage work since the early twentieth century, first to Senegal's groundnut basin and Dakar, then to Portugal and France. Remittances built the concrete houses, the wells and the schools of the home region, and migration became so normal that it functions as a stage of life rather than an exception.
Proverbs
“Cloth wraps the living and the dead.”
Weaving as the material of every stage of life.
“The one who leaves is measured by what returns.”
Migration and obligation.
“A loom is inherited, not bought.”
Craft as lineage property.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A high creator with shrine powers beneath; the shrines control land, rain, illness and the legitimacy of rulers.
Beliefs: Shrine cults with priests who sanction the regulo; ancestor veneration; Catholicism widespread through mission and migration; Islam present.
Ancestors: Burial in the correct cloth is an obligation to the ancestors; migrants' bodies are returned home for it at considerable expense.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The creator
Distant high god
Shrine powers
Local forces controlling land, rain and the installation of rulers
Ancestors
Honoured at funerals and in lineage decisions
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses with thatch and now sheet or concrete, built with remittance money; shrine sites at fixed points in the landscape.
Building techniques: Mud and thatch traditionally, concrete block increasingly; the horizontal strip loom; bunded rice paddies on the estuary margins.
Village layout: Compound around a courtyard with granary; village around the shrine and the regulo's compound; paddies below.
Artifacts
Manjaco strip cloth (pano de pente)
Textile
Narrow-band woven panels used as currency, dress and burial shroud.
Horizontal strip loom
Craft
The narrow loom on which the cloth is woven.
Shrine objects
Ritual
Posts, pots and figures of the powers that sanction rulers.
Remittance-built housing
Architecture
Concrete houses funded from Dakar, Lisbon and Paris.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1500
Manjaco kingdoms established in the Cacheu region.
1500s–1800s
Cloth production supplies the coastal trade; Portuguese contact through Cacheu.
1900s–1940s
Labour migration to Senegal begins on a large scale.
1963–1974
The liberation war; the north-west is heavily contested.
1970s–present
Migration to Portugal and France; remittances rebuild the home region.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: Guinea-Bissau — peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
- West African strip-woven textiles — museum scholarshipThe British Museum
Premium & scholarly sources