# Becoming native?  
This Creole community - literate, Christian, merchant and law-abiding - was it not called to lead Sierra Leone to independence? In fact, the colony had the first non-Islamic university in Africa, Fourah Bay College, which was affiliated with Durham University as of 1876. Its press published quality newspapers, half-owned by Africans and read all over the coast (Alie, 1990, p. 82; Wyse, 1990, pp. 23-25). The Nova Scotians, already Baptists or Methodists when they first arrived, were competing in proselytism with the Church Missionary Society (CMS), particularly in the villages of the liberated. Before the establishment of the Lebanese state, the Creoles, women in particular (White, 1987, p. 3), controlled the regional trade. Along with Samuel Lewis, Freetown's first mayor and member of the country's legislative council, they supported the railroad (which, incidentally, would generate new identity categories) ${ }^{5}$ for better access to the protectorate's palm oil, cocoa and rubber. In addition, they created civic and political rights organizations such as the Sierra Leone Mercantile Association, the Sierra Leone Bar Association, and the Sierra Leone branch of the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) which, led by H. C. BankoleBright, ensured the relay of petitions and delegations to London on behalf of the first settlers.
'Creoledom', a counter-model of local chieftaincies (Spitzer, 1974, p. 12) and a critical ally of the colonial administration, would have seen its aspiration for self-government left unrealized. The destruction of Granville Town in 1790 and the cheap trade of settlers seemed to usher in a series of 'native' hostilities  
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[^0]:    4 See the work of Fyfe, Peterson, Porter, Spitzer. This interpretation is sometimes still valid: see the chapter written by N. Blyden in Ojukutu-Macauley and Rashid, 2013, p. 62.
5 For example: 'up-line/city' in the chapter by Sengova in Dixon-Fyle and Cole, 2006, p. 173.