Tieba Traoré was a king of the Kénédougou Empire

Kénédougou Empire

The Kénédougou Kingdom, also referred to as the Kenedugu Kingdom, was a pre-colonial West African state established in the southern portion of present-day Mali.-Traoré Dynasty:...

 who reigned from 1876 until his death in 1893. Son of the previous king, Mansa Douala, Traoré moved the Empire's capital to Sikasso

Sikasso

Sikasso is a city in the south of Mali and the capital of the Sikasso Region. With 130,700 residents, Sikasso recently passed Ségou to become Mali's second-largest city.-Geography:...

, building a palace on the city's Mamelon

Mamelon

A mamelon is a French name for a breast shaped hillock. At the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimea War the French called a strategic hillock the Mamelon...

 hill. Traoré fought a number of battles with both Dyula

Dyula

The Dyula are a Mande ethnic group inhabiting several West African countries, including the Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau....

 conqueror Samory Touré

Samori

Samory Toure was the founder of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic state that resisted French rule in West Africa from 1882 until his capture in 1898.-Early life and career:...

 and the rapidly advancing French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 colonial

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 army, including a prolonged French siege of Sikasso from 1887 to 1888. In 1890 Traoré constructed his celebrated tata (fortified wall

Fortification

Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...

) around Sikasso. In the same year, he accompanied French Colonel Louis Archinard

Louis Archinard

Louis Archinard was a French Army general at the time of the Third Republic, who contributed to the colonial conquest of French West Africa. He was traditionally presented in French histories as the conqueror and "Pacifier" of French Soudan . Archinard's campaigns brought about the end of the...

 to witness the destruction of Ségou

Ségou

Ségou is a city in south-central Mali, lying northeast of Bamako on the River Niger, in the region of Ségou. It was founded by the Bozo people, on a site about from the present town...

 under French heavy artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

; nonetheless he continued to struggle to maintain Kénédougou's independence.

Following his 1893 death, his brother Babemba Traoré

Babemba Traoré

Babemba Traoré was a king of the Kénédougou Empire. Following the 1893 death of his brother Tieba Traoré, Babemba assumed the Kénédougou throne. The capital, Sikasso, was beset at this time by both the Dyula forces of Samory Touré and by the rapidly advancing French colonial army...

assumed the throne.

External links

• Notes on the Conquest of Western Sudan