ARRIVAL AT KOLIKORO.
Sundiata was the seventh son of a hunter of Kita and a native woman of Toron. He was stunted and deformed from his birth, and could never go with his brothers to the chase, or bring home game for his mother. She was ashamed of him, and went so far as to curse the boy who did her so little credit. “Better death than dishonour,” said Sundiata. “Moun kafisa malo di toro,” so runs the refrain sung by the negroes. He fled to the woods, and there he met a sorceress, who by means of her charms converted the cripple into the strongest warrior of the district. He went back to his father, and pretending to be still infirm, he asked for a stick to lean upon. The hunter cut him a branch from a tree, but Sundiata broke it as if it were a straw; then his father gave him a small tree stem, next a gigantic trunk, and lastly a huge iron rod, which all the blacksmiths of the country had been at work on for a year, but the young fellow broke them all. In face of this evident miracle his father and brothers admitted his superior strength. His courage, his power, and the knowledge of magic which had been bequeathed to him by the sorceress, drew all the Malinké to Sundiata, and Samory himself, who is a Malinké, claims at this present day to be Sundiata returned to earth.
Somangoro, a mighty warrior, and, moreover, learned in witchcraft, reigned on the banks of the Niger. Certain terrible and mysterious nostrums rendered him invincible, and he could only be beaten by an enemy who should succeed in snatching from him the first mouthful of food he raised to his lips. Now Sundiata, who had made up his mind to possess himself of the lands belonging to Somangoro, and knowing the magic power which protected his enemy, pretended to seek his friendship and alliance by offering to him his own sister Ma in marriage.
Somangoro had fallen in love with Ma, so he married her, and took her to his own land. He soon trusted his wife so entirely that he allowed her alone to prepare and serve his food.
BANKS OF THE RIVER AT KOLIKORO.
Well, one day when the Soninké chief had drunk rather too much dolo or mead, Ma brought him his food, and having placed before him the calabash containing the tau (boiled millet or maize), just as he was raising the first handful to his mouth she sidled up to him as if about to caress him, and, by an apparently accidental movement, made him drop it.
“Leave that bit, dear friend,” she said, “it is dirty!” and she flung it into a corner of the hut. Somangoro, intoxicated with love as well as with liquor, did not take any notice of what the traitress had done. Then the cunning Ma, when her husband had left her, picked up the mouthful of tau, and sent it to her brother. Sundiata could now march against his rival.
This is what happened. The two armies met at Massala; the Soninkés were beaten. Somangoro hung his weapons on a tree, which is still pointed out opposite the entrance to the village, and fled to Mount Kolikoro, where his rival changed him, his horse, and his favourite griot into stone.