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The Baoule, estimated to number I million at the beginning of the a century, form part of the Akan group of the Ivory Coast. They occupy a part of the eastern Ivory Coast that is both forest and savanna land. The Akan created a series of kingdoms and city-states that progressively occupied the entire forest region all the way to the Gulf of Guinea. During the eighteenth century, the queen, Abla Poku, had to lead her people west to the shores of the Cornoe, the land of the Senufo. In order to cross the river, she sacrificed her own son. This sacrifice was the origin of the name Baoule, for baouli-ineans "the child has died." (I. N. Loucou, 1984) Since the regime was rnatrilinear, at the queen's death her niece succeeded her and ruled over the kingdom of Sakassou, which brought together the tribes that had followed the queen in her exodus. Yet, as the political system was a decentralized one, the relations of Sakassou were limited to the payment of tributes, to appealjudgments, and to matters of religion. The effective authority of the queen did not reach beyond the village in which she resided and her role was nothing more than one of prestige. The regional powers were entrusted to members of the royal Wareho clan. They exploited the regions rich in gold, and developed a new civilization, a synthesis of the Akan and the conquered autochthones. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the administrators, A. Nebout and then a few years later M. Delafosse, judged the Baoule to