[9][10] The mingling of newly freed black and racially-mixed Nova Scotians[11] and Jamaican Maroons from the 'New World' with Liberated Africans – such as the Akan, Bakongo, Ewe, Igbo and Yoruba – over several generations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, led to the eventual formation of a Creole ethnicity.

[12][13][14][15] The Americo-Liberians and Sierra Leone Creoles are the only recognised ethnic group of African-American, Liberated African, and Afro-Caribbean descent in West Africa.

The English word creole[b] derives from the French créole, which in turn came from Portuguese crioulo, a diminutive of cria, meaning a person raised in one's house.

The word creole has several cognates in other languages, such as créole, creolo, criol, criollo, crioulo, kreol, kreyol, krio, kriol, kriolu, and kriyoyo.

[14][42] In Africa, the term Creole refers to any ethnic group formed during the European colonial era, with some mix of African and non-African racial or cultural heritage.

Perhaps due to the range of divergent descriptions and lack of a coherent definition, Norwegian anthropologist T. H. Eriksen concludes: “A Creole society, in my understanding, is based wholly or partly on the mass displacement of people who were, often involuntarily, uprooted from their original home, shedding the main features of their social and political organisations on the way, brought into sustained contact with people from other linguistic and cultural areas and obliged to develop, in creative and improvisational ways, new social and cultural forms in the new land, drawing simultaneously on traditions from their respective places of origin and on impulses resulting from the encounter.”[14] Today, Creole communities have more in common with each other than they have with any African ethnic groups.

In the coastal areas of mainland Africa, Creoles acquired economic and political leverage due to their education, culture and close relationships with the colonial administration.

The Maroons mainly descended from highly military skilled Ashanti slaves who had escaped plantations and, to a lesser extent, from Jamaican indigenous people.

These Black Americans included Perry Lockes and Prince Saunders from Boston; Abraham Thompson and Peter Williams Jr. from New York City;[56] and Edward Jones from Charleston, South Carolina.

The Liberated Africans were multi-ethnic and were largely Akan, Aja, Ewe, Angolan, Wolof, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Bambara, Nupe, and Fulani people who had been enslaved by illegal slave traders.

[16]: 5 Initially the British colonial administration intervened to ensure the Recaptives became firmly rooted in Freetown society; they served in the army with the West India Regiment, and they were assigned as apprentices in the houses of Settlers and Maroons.

The Liberated African ancestors – principally of Akan, Bakongo, Ewe, Igbo and Yoruba origin – settled across the Western Area peninsula of Sierra Leone.

By the 1850s, they had already established Aberdeen, Bathurst, Charlotte, Dublin, Gloucester, Goderich, Grafton, Hastings, Kent, Kissy, Leicester, Murray Town, Regent, Ricketts, Sussex, Waterloo, Wellington, Wilberforce and York.

Between the late 18th and early 20th centuries, immigrants from the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Liberia and the Gold Coast likewise settled in Freetown and eventually coalesced into the Sierra Leone Creole identity.

[61] In the 21st century, the majority of Creoles in Sierra Leone continue to reside in Freetown and along the surrounding Western Area peninsula[21] where their language and culture have a disproportionate influence relative to their population.

A small number of liberated Africans returned to the land of their origins, such as the Saros of Nigeria who not only took their Western names with them but also imported Krio words like sabi into Nigerian Pidgin English.

They were influential in intellectual, technocratic, artisanal, commercial and public life in general, actively participating in multiple fields of scholarly and civic importance.

[18][71][72][73][74][75][47] From their earliest presence in Sierra Leone and British West Africa, the Creoles, or their ancestors, have significantly contributed science,[76][77] literature,[78] art,[79] agricultural skills,[80][81] cuisine,[24] clothing styles,[82] music,[83] language,[69] pan-african christianity[65] and cultural innovation.

[84][13] Notable examples include Nova Scotian settlers such as Thomas Peters,[85] David George[86] and Moses Wilkinson[87] who were founding figures of the nation of Sierra Leone.

[81][89][90] Other notable Creoles, or their ancestors, made significant contributions to Sierra Leone and British West Africa, and were pioneers in several categories of human endeavour.

Among the gifts presented by the future groom's representatives are a calabash, some kola nuts, various domestic items a wife would use (such as needles and some thread), but also a Bible, a ring, and some money.

Creoles marry in church weddings and in the Victorian and Edwardian era, relatives sought out and introduced prospective suitors from desirable families to their kin seeking a spouse.

[24] Sunday dinner is a West African one-pot meal, jollof rice or couscous and stew or peanut soup, including some plantains and salad.

Awujoh[c] meals on Fridays or other festive occasions are usually accompanied by sweet potato cooked in palm oil, black-eyed beans, eba, oleleh, agidi, plantain, rice bread and akara with ginger beer.

[20] More recently, some scholars consider the Oku to be a sub-ethnic group of the Creoles, based on their close association with British colonists and their adoption of Western education and other aspects of culture.

Despite their dilapidated appearance, some of the remaining traditional Creole board houses have a distinctive air, with dormers, box windows, shutters, glass panes, and balconies.

[13][14] Often involuntarily uprooted from their original home, the settlers were obliged to develop and creatively merge the desirable elements from their diverse backgrounds, to produce new varieties of social, linguistic and cultural norms that superseded the prior forms.

[124] After the American Revolutionary War, the Book of Negroes listed approximately 3000 "black and mixed-race" loyalists who sailed from New York City to Nova Scotia in 1783.

[8] The settlers generally married endogamously, although individuals from mixed and European groups recorded a much higher proportion of women and men involved in exogamous marriages.

[8] Alongside the Americo-Liberians, the Creoles of Sierra Leone are the only recognised ethnic group of African-American,[17] Liberated African, and Afro-Caribbean descent in West Africa.