VOLUME XVI 1991 NUMBER 1 LIBERIAN STUDIES JOURNAL 1 1 0°W 8 °W LIBERIA -8 °N 8 °N- MONSERRADO MARGIBI -6 °N RIVER I 6 °N- 1 0 50 MARYLAND Geography Department ION/ 8 °W 1 University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown 1 Published by THE LIBERIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION, INC. PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor Cover map: compiled by William Kory, cartography work by Jodie Molnar; Geography Department, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor VOLUME XVI 1991 NUMBER 1 LIBERIAN STUDIES JOURNAL Editor D. Elwood Dunn The University of the South Associate Editor Similih M. Cordor Kennesaw College Book Review Editor Alfred B. Konuwa Butte College EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Bertha B. Azango Lawrence B. Breitborde University of Liberia Beloit College Christopher Clapham Warren L. d'Azevedo Lancaster University University of Nevada Reno Henrique F. Tokpa Thomas E. Hayden Cuttington University College Africa Faith and Justice Network Svend E. Holsoe J. Gus Liebenow University of Delaware Indiana University Corann Okorodudu Glassboro State College Edited at the Department of Political Science, The University of the South PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor CONTENTS ABOUT LANDSELL K. CHRISTIE, THE LIBERIAN IRON ORE INDUSTRY AND SOME RELATED PEOPLE AND EVENTS: GETTING THERE 1 by Garland R. Farmer ZO MUSA, FONINGAMA, AND THE FOUNDING OF MUSADU IN THE ORAL TRADITION OF THE KONYAKA .......................... 27 by Tim Geysbeek and Jobba K. Kamara CUTTINGTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DURING THE LIBERIAN CIVIL WAR: AN ADMINISTRATOR'S EXPERIENCE ............. 79 by Henrique F. Tokpa BOOK REVIEWS Germain, Jacques. Peuples de la Forêt de Guinée ........................... 95 by Martin Ford Harden, Blaine. Africa: Dispatches From a Fragile Continent ....... 98 by C. William Allen Kappel, Robert and Werner Corte. Human Rights Violations in Liberia, 1980 -1990: A Documentation ..................... ............................... 101 by Arthur J. Knoll Saha, Santosh C. A History of Agriculture in Liberia 1822 -1970 . 103 by Alfred B. Konuwa Sisay, Hassan B. Big Powers and Small Nations: A Case Study of United States Liberian Relations ................. ............................... 106 by George Klay Kieh, Jr. RECENT PUBLICATIONS AND THESES ............ ............................... 109 NEWS AND NOTES ........................................ ............................... ...... 111 DOCUMENT ............................... 116 CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE ......................... ............................... 170 A referee journal that emphasizes the social sciences and humanities, the LIBERIAN STUDIES JOURNAL is a semiannual publication devoted to studies of Africa's oldest republic. The annual subscription rate is $25.00, $12.00 for students and $40.00 for institutions, and includes membership in the Liberian Studies Association, Inc. All manuscripts and related matters should be addressed to The Editor, Liberian Studies Journal, Department of Political Science, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN 37375. Subscriptions and other business matters should be directed to The Executive Secretary, Liberian Studies Association, P.O. Box 671, Bloomington, Illinois 61702-0671. The views expressed herein are those of the individual contributors and do not necessar- ily reflect those of the editor or the Liberian Studies Association, Inc. Copyright 1991 by the Liberian Studies Association, Inc. ISSN 0024 1989 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor About Lansdell K. Christie, The Liberian Iron Ore Industry and Some Related People and Events: Getting There* Garland R. Farmer By Way of Introduction Lansdell K. Christie's Liberian Mining Company was the first fruit of Liberian President W. V. S. Tubman's "Open Door Policy." Company and Policy, entrepreneur and politician were linked from the day in 1945 when Tubman's opponents took to the streets of the capital city to block legislative approval of the concession agreement which would create the Liberian iron ore industry and, like it or not, reshape the nation. Before they met, each man's future had become interwoven with the other's; some felicitous design had it that each would also like and respect the other. Liberia witnessed something of that respect and friendship upon Christie's death twenty years later, in November, 1965, when the President declared the nation to be in mourning and presided over a memorial service in the Centennial Pavilion, where Liberia inaugurates and bids farewell to its Presidents, honor- ing a daring and innovative risk-taker who first risked his own money, first had African directors on his company's board, first provided for African govern- ment participation in the profits of a mining venture, first set participation as high as 50 per cent, built Liberia's first railroad, first offered and financed the purchase of mining company shares by the Liberian public, and first led another company which, in running of the Freeport of Monrovia, pushed the Open Door further ajar. A true, larger-than -life pioneer, Christie has been mis -seen, ill -used and all but libeled by most studies of post -World War II Liberia. Neither he nor Tubman nor Liberia in the '50s, '60s, and '70s can be accurately perceived through writers who, even at this remote date, feel compelled to repeat without attribution or sustantiation back alley gossip claiming that Christie "paid Tubman" to do this or not to do that. Christie and I were friends for more than 12 years before he asked me to join him in developing the Mano River mine, at which I continued for nine years after his death. Even so, I try in what follows to achieve a degree of objectivity that has been absent from most of what has so far been written about him. I may not succeed in being completely impartial, but I shall try to make this an accurate recital of events as I lived through them myself or as I learned of them from the participants. Perhaps, then, this account will partially balance those which have been created at greater remove in time, place and sentiment from what actually took place during an exciting and creative era in Liberian history. Liberian Studies Journal, XVI, 1 (1991) 1 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 2 GARLAND R. FARMER The Long Road from Brooklyn to Bomi Hills It was a long and tortuous passage to West Africa from Christie's childhood in turn -of- the -century, well -to-do Brooklyn Heights, overlooking a New York Harbor that was plowed by oaken scows built in his father's shipyard. Restless and venturesome, he rode freight trains across the country and tried mining in Alaska at age 17he could quote Robert Service's picaresque poems ever after. In 1923, he entered the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. It was not the likeliest choice for one so averse to authority; ineluctably, a rebellion against the mindless assertion of power brought his expulsion: An upperclassman had demanded to see his roommate's cufflinks, taken them and then penalized the roommate at the next inspection for having no cufflinks. Christie stepped from line and thrashed the oppressor. The Congressman who had first nominated him got him reinstated in school, but another conflict with the system soon brought final dismissal. Earlier, at a West Point dance, he had met the daughter of a scow owner customer of his father, and they were married in 1926. His father -in-law hired him, setting a course which would lead, however circuitously, to Liberia. The collar of that stern and exacting man proving no easier to wear than West Point's, Christie started his own Christie Scow Company, using funds raised partly by hypothecating his wife's jewelry. (He often said that when they dined with her parents, she kept one hand in her lap to hide the absence of a ring they had given her.) The scow and tug business in New York Harbor was a quasi -monopoly of Irish owners, who vigorously resisted this interloper. (Scow owner's association meetings commonly opened, he said later, with the president saying, "Well, gentlemen, let's hear what the Protestant bastard has to say so we can get on with business. ") He and his Irish number two man often had to brawl on piers with competitors for room for his vessels. Only ingenuity kept Christie's Scow working: he stationed his feisty and devoted factotum, Charlie Ormsby, who had sailed to Japan in his early teens aboard a four-masted schooner, on a houseboat tied to a buoy in the harbor from which he dispatched scows on orders relayed from offices on the 58th floor of 70 Pine Street, then the highest building in the Wall Street area and later known to many Liberians as headquar- ters for LMC. Christie early saw war coming to Europe and the U. S. With characteristic enterprise, he sent Ormsby up the Hudson River to Albany, to buy freight - hauling vessels of whatever kind or condition, beached or afloat. The time was coming, he said, when great amounts of material would have to be moved and there were not going to be enough bottoms for the job. He spent freely to reconditon Ormsby's purchases and, when the U. S. war effort began, Christie's Scow was ready to haul rock, gravel, coal, and a profitable gamut of other cargoes. PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor ABOUT LANDSDELL K. CHRISTIE 3 He joined the Army in August, 1942, being assigned to the transportation corps and the Pentagon. He was later sent to construct air fields in Africa and, in the Belgian Congo, to arrange to transport raw materials required by the war effort, including copper and a heavy ore moved with caution and secrecy: uranium. These activities caused him to stop in Liberia several times, usually at Lake Piso (know then as "Fisherman's Lake ").