Henna has been a part of West African culture for at least a thousand years. According to the Nigerien archaeologist Djibo Hamani, henna is still found growing in the ruins, although it is not found anywhere else in the immediate vicinity. Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period, henna was grown in Hausaland (today comprising southern Niger, northern Nigeria, and parts of Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Benin) with indigo, tobacco, onions, cotton, millet, sorghum, maize, and millet.
The powder of these leaves is used by women of the Country to dye their nails. The Powder, when mixed with water to the consistency of paste, and left on for 4-6 hours on the nail.
The Wolof language still uses the word fudden today, and the related word puddi in Fulfulde, to refer to henna. And in the 17th-century Bornu Empire (today northeastern Nigeria) referred to henna as nalle , borrowed from the Tamasheq (Tuareg) anella . This was later borrowed into Hausa and Yoruba as lalle , which is how it is still known in Nigeria today.
In the early 20th century, the British historian Sidney John Hogben recorded an amusing folktale about the origins of henna in Nigeria, which connected the introduction of henna to the conquest of Nigeria by North African Tuareg nomads: claiming to use leather straps to create reverse patterns, the Tuareg tied up the locals and gained control! As Hogben writes:
There is a story that has come down from the past and is still told in several parts of the country which illustrates how the nomad immigrants cunningly gained domination over the local Sudanese people. First they got permission from the chief to live peacefully alongside them. Then after years of increasing familiarity with the newcomers the local inhabitants began to admire the way in which the foreigners painted their nails with henna, and they asked to be shown how it was done. The process was duly explained by which the hands were stained with henna and then wrapped in strips of leather. Allowing themselves in this way to become tightly bound, they fell easy victims to the treacherous Berber nomads, who then had no difficulty in establishing their rule.