Carl Christian Reindorf produced the first general history of the Gold Coast peoples written by an African and using a judicious selection of published and oral sources from “more than two hundred persons of both sexes.” Carl Christian Reindorf (ca. 1834 – 1917) was a Basel Mission pastor and historian. His use of oral history to write African history in the late nineteenth century was unprecedented, as well as his methodology for combining oral sources with available documentary sources.