Kante created N'Ko in response to what he felt were beliefs that Africans were a cultureless people, because before then, no indigenous African writing system for his language existed.
New findings[REF] on N'Ko came to light through the investigation of an anecdote by French officer Colonel Malenfant,[REF] who spoke of a mysterious script written in June 1791, in Boucassin, (near Port-au-Prince, Haiti) by a Saint Domingue colony slave named Tamerlan.