Americo-Liberians, descendants of Black American settlers who arrived from 1822, ruled Liberia as a small elite from independence in 1847 until the 1980 coup. They excluded indigenous majorities from citizenship until 1904 and voting until the mid-1900s, seized land, imposed forced labor (including shipments to Fernando Po that a 1930 League of Nations inquiry called near-slavery), suppressed native cultures, and used force against resistance.