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| A. Coombes, "Rapport sur la
tournée de recensement dans la circonscription de
Baraouéli" (October 31, 1912)
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| © 1999 by Jim Jones, Ph.D. |
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This report was written by Adjoint des Affaires Indigenes A. Combe, who counted the population in the area between Baraouéli, So‹a and Tamani. He noted the race (Marka, Bambara, Peul), religion (Muslims except for the Bambara), crops (mil, gros mil, Karité, cotton, corn, cows), animals, and diseases (lots of eye diseases, leprosy, syphilis and elephantasis of the lower limbs, but no trust in white man's medicine) and types of vegetation.
Generally, the people were peaceful and welcomed the census taker. He hoped that his figures were not subject to too much trickery on the part of chiefs, but knew that there was no way to verify them, since the last census was over seven years old. He thought that the nomadic Peuls were especially hard to count. Coombes recorded a total of 7536 people in 48 villages, an increase of 410 since the last census. He counted a total of 880 children under 6, all of whom paid tax as well.