by Brooke Wolfe

Created on: April 14, 2009   Last Updated: September 17, 2009

The term Wolof refers to the ethnic group in West Africa and may not be familiar to most Americans but it is a comparatively large and historically significant group of people. Most of them live in modern day Senegal but some spread into the bordering nations of Mauritania to the north and Gambia to the South. Their recorded history goes back over 500 years ago when the first explorers came. Since then historians have an idea of what happened with Islamic and French colonizers as well as their migratory patterns. Modern day ethnographies of Wolof are not uncommon but the people remain fairly anonymous to the rest of the world for some reason. This brief summary of the Wolof covers segments of their history, politics, economics, social relations, religion, slavery, language, leaders, and literature (with an emphasis on folklore).

David Gamble makes the diversity of Wolof known. First of all we cannot place them in a single country, though they make up over a quarter of Senegal's population; they are "negligible minorities" in Mauritania and Gambia (Gerteiny 101). In 1960 the Wolof population was at its largest, making up one half of the population of Senegal. In 1984 there were 493, 197 Wolof in Gambia making up about 12% of the population there, 85% of those Wolof living in traditional, or rural environments. Gamble reminds us that as of recently, we cannot logically define "traditional" elements of Wolof culture because they range from anywhere between two extremes. They range from university students to the illiterate, lineage village headship to political parties, and small farming communities to international cities in Dakar. Martin Klein, a professor at the University of Toronto and expert on Africa, said Senegal has "long been a land of peasants dependant on land for livelihood" but clearly times change and develop into the diversity we see today on the streets of Dakar (Klein 2). Besides these differing characteristics, Gamble has noted most of their traits today are shared with neighboring peoples. Sometimes it is difficult to determine indigenousness.
With regard to wariness on the topic of generalizations, some physical traits of the people can be classified as typical Wolof. They maintain a general sense of ethnic identity and pride; most likely one of the reasons their group remains so large today after all that time. The men are well-built and of medium height. The women are known as some of the most beautiful in the world and are therefore careful

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