The Mandinka language (Mandi'nka kango) Manding, is a Mandé language spoken by the Mandinka people of Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau and Chad. It is a language of the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo family. Mandingo , African DNA, Mandingo African DNA
Mandinka history is customarily passed down through griots using oral traditions, rituals, and ceremonies. Griots are repositories of oral information and serve as historians, storytellers, praise singers, poets and musicians. Mandingo Mandingo Mandingo

Mandingos are historically known as cross-border migrant Muslim traders. Today in West Africa over 90% of the Mandinka are Muslim but they do practice a mixture of their indigenous religion and Islam. Anthropologists have noted both Muslim and non-Muslim Mandinka captives arrived in the Americas in great numbers which resulted in Mandinka cultural variety in both Muslim and non-Muslim traditions. (Schaffer). In his paper, Bound to Africa: The Mandinka Legacy in the New World, Matt Schaffer writes:

"The name 'Mandingo' has a certain...cachet in different parts of the Americas. An economist from Argentina told me the term in his country means, "black devil", or person of African origin with mysteriously threatening or magical qualities...In Brazilian Portuguese a Mandinga is a fetish, object or charm used to protect the body [which some slaves commonly wore during various Latin American slave revolts]....The [mutiny on] the slave ship Amistad by Mende captives must also have enhanced the reputation for leadership of this ethnic group in the ante-bellum United States...."  Schaffer goes on to note the Mandinka solidified their reputation in Africa for prowess in warfare and in trading and they were well known by other Africans in the Americas.

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Initial waves of slave buyers in the Americas preferred the Mandinka and other Mende peoples because of their knowledge of rice cultivation and other professional skills deemed important to the success of the buyer's business endeavors. As the practice of slavery expanded, slave buyers also sought Africans who could communicate with and therefore integrate faster with the existing enslaved populations. Perhaps more importantly, the prevailing wind patterns and the westward bulge of the African continent and its proximity to the Americas made West Africa a desirable slaving area.  In the Mandinka regions, slave ships could leave the major Trans-Atlantic slave ports of embarkation such as Goree Island, Senegal and reach slave markets in the Caribbean and in Charleston, South Carolina much faster than from anywhere on earth.  Shorter sea voyages meant more captives were left alive after durations that typically lasted one to six months, depending on weather conditions. The African captives that arrived in the Americas also tended to have a natural immunity to certain infectious diseases commonly found in Europe, diseases that decimated indigenous populations already living in the Americas on whom New World slavery was first attempted.

In the Americas, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term "Mandingo" was generically and often incorrectly used to denote any west African Muslim that could perhaps read or write Arabic. For the purposes of the Mandingo DNA project, the term "Mandingo" is to specifically encompass the descendants of the "Mandinga", "Mandinke", "Malinke", "Madinko", and "Mandenka" people from the various West African nations. These terms are variations in the spelling of the same name which change depending on the region. The Mandinka as an ethnic group are spread across several West African countries. Ethnic groups existed centuries before the creation of the physical borders of African countries that exist today, borders created at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, which marked the sharp rise of colonialism in Africa.

Mandinkan Historical Figures:

Mansa Sundiata Keita 
Mansa Musa
Kunte Kinte
Bayano
Martin Robinson Delany
Samory Toure

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