By the 1590s, however, a social, political and cultural transformation had progressed even further. André de Almada, a Luso-African born in Cabo Verde, traded along the Upper Guinea Coast rivers. His first-hand account written in the 1590s, but recorded in the 1560s, provides a rare glimpse at Portuguese and Afro-Portuguese commercial relationships with coastal villages and insight into the Sapes cultural and linguistic traditions in a time of great regional change. Contemporary observations from as early as the sixteenth century in present-day Sierra Leone and the Cape Mount region of Liberia also describe a transformation occurring among the subregion's Atlantic and Mande inhabitants.  
According to de Almada, among speakers of languages the Atlantic language group, Nalus, Bagas, Cocolins, Sapes and Sumbas, and the Mande language group, Manes, cultural distinctions were breaking down, because the Mani-Sumbas had incorporated so many captives. Nalus, along with Bagas and Cocolins, 'dress[ed] like