Waalo

Waalo was the kingdom of the lower Senegal River, holding the valley proper with lands north and south to the Atlantic, in what is now Senegal and Mauritania. Oral histories run its Brak kings back to 1287. Moorish emirates pressed from the north, Cayor from the south and Jolof from the east, and Waalo survived by playing all three against the French post at Saint-Louis in its very mouth. The Brak ruled from Nder and at times from Ndiangue, through a council of electors drawn from three royal matrilineages who chose each king, and the kingdom's gum and grain trade enriched every party. In the nineteenth century Governor Faidherbe resolved to own the river: the French disarmed the Brak, annexed the valley piecemeal, and in 1855 the kingdom ended, its queen Ndatte Yalla fighting to the last year. The Waalo name endures in the riverlands that both states still dispute in song.