They form a majority or a significant minority in Liberia's Grand Bassa, Rivercess, Margibi and Montserrado counties.

[4] They had their own pictographic writing system but it went out of use in the 19th century, was rediscovered among the slaves of Brazil and the West Indies in 1890s, and reconstructed in early 1900 by Thomas Flo Darvin Lewis.

Early European traders had trouble pronouncing the entire phrase, and the shorter form Bassa has been used in Western literature ever since.

As well as a set of categories that had hierarchies based on practitioner skill, consisting of blacksmiths, carvers, weavers, potters, and other craftsmen.

[11]: 46 The Bassa people acquired the Port Society and "Gree-Gree" bush traditions of education and initiation of children, from their neighboring Dei and Kpelle tribes.

[9]: 57 The traditional religion of the Bassa people has a moral and ethical foundation, one that reveres ancestors and supernatural spirits.

[8] The Sande / Bondo helmet masks, worn by a society official during special ceremonies, represent the idealized beauty of a female primordial ancestor spirit, believed to reside in bodies of water.

[13] In contemporary times, the Bassa people predominantly practice Christianity, but they have retained elements of their traditional religion.

The choice of location is determined by simple factors, access to fresh water, good farmland, and the presence of certain reeds for use as roofing material.

Those were ma go, "small head", miniature masks that featured protruding open lips, flared nostrils, and pierced slit eyes, as well as a tattoo pattern from forehead to chin.

the top of the staff features a woman's head, with five rows of hair that run from front to back, as well as an encircling herringbone pattern.

One type of Bassa masks are made with the intent of projecting reverence and fear with monstrous face with protruding eyes, swollen lips and contorted human and animal features.

A mask in their likeness was made and used by a performer that danced with crowds and told jokes, giving the features of the individual's disfigurement positive association, as part of deliberate act of social to prevent a member of the village from becoming an outcast.