Hawkins' description of the influx of Manes in coastal Sierra Leone echoes travellers' accounts for the region recorded as late as the early seventeenth century. European visitors observed Mani armies made up of recruits from speakers of Kruan languages, whom they called Samboses and Sumbas, fighting the Sapes or Sapi who spoke languages from the Atlantic group. The Temne and Bullom inhabitants of the Iles de Los, 'who were before Sapies', however, had already been 'conquered by the Samboses, inhabitants beyond Sierra Leone' (Williamson, 1970, pp. 16-17; Brooks, 1993, p. 288; Green, 2012, pp. 236-37). The Sumbas had arrived before Hawkins and his men, conquered the territory by force, 'tooke [the Sapies] in warres, as their slaves' (Williamson, 1970, p. 17; de Almada, 1984, pp. 16/7, 16/9, 16/10, 18/2, 18/5). The Sumbas paid tribute, but allied with and were not enslaved by the Manes. On the contrary, the Manes conquered the Sapes and enslaved them, making the Sapes 'till the ground' because they 'neither have the knowledge thereof, nor yet will work themselves' (Williamson 1970, p. 17). Using involuntary Sape labour, the Sumbas cultivated millet, rice, root crops and palm wine, transforming the islands into 'a veritable granary' (Williamson, 1970, pp. 17-18). The Sapes may have been an easy target for defeat by the Manes and their Sumba armies, because a lack of good-quality iron on the coast made it difficult for them to build strong defences against invasion (Green, 2012, p. 241; Hawthorne, 2003).