Cotton Tree (Sierra Leone)

The Cotton Tree is a Ceiba pentandra, also known commonly as a kapok tree, a historic symbol of Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone. The Cotton Tree gained importance in 1792 when a group of formerly enslaved African Americans, who had gained their freedom by fighting for the British during the American War of Independence, settled the site of modern Freetown.[1][2] These former Black Loyalist soldiers, also known as Black Nova Scotians (because they came from Nova Scotia after leaving the United States), resettled in Sierra Leone and founded Freetown on March 11, 1792.[3] The descendants of the Nova Scotian settlers form part of the Sierra Leone Creole ethnicity today.[1][4][2]

Street-level view of Freetown and the Cotton Tree.

History

People first landed on the shoreline and walked up to a giant tree just above the bay, where they held a thanksgiving service, gathering around the tree in a large group and praying and singing hymns to thank God for their deliverance to a free land. The tree's exact age is unknown, but it is known to have existed in 1787.[3]

It is the oldest cotton tree in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It stands near the Supreme Court building, the music club building, and the National Museum. The Nova Scotian settlers prayed under this tree upon landing, to start their new lives as free people. They regarded it as the symbol of their liberty and freedom. Before these newly freed Africans arrived, Sierra Leone had already been inhabited. These newly arrived Africans gave the capital the name it bears today, Freetown. Sierra Leoneans still pray and make offerings to their ancestors for peace and prosperity beneath the Cotton Tree.

See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cotton Tree (Sierra Leone).

References
  1. Walker, James W. St. G. (1992). "Chapter Five: Foundation of Sierra Leone". The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 94–114. ISBN 978-0-8020-7402-7. Originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).
  2. Taylor, Bankole Kamara (February 2014). Sierra Leone: The Land, Its People and History. New Africa Press. p. 68. ISBN 9789987160389.
  3. LeVert, Suzanne (2007). Sierra Leone. Marshall Cavendish. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-7614-2334-8. Retrieved 27 October 2010.
  4. Hargreaves, J.; Porter, A. (1963). "The Sierra Leone Creoles - Creoledom: A Study of the Development of Freetown Society". The Journal of African History. 4 (3, 0000539): 468–469. doi:10.1017/S0021853700004394. S2CID 162611104.
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