Colonial rule came late to northern Ivory Coast. Indeed, with the sole exception of Rene Caillé, who passed from Odienne to Tingrela disguised as a Moor on his way to Timbuktu, it remained unvisited by Europeans until Binger's exploratory mission in 1888. Almost immediately afterwards, with the intensification of the campaign against Samory, French penetration began in earnest. In 1895, the French established a post on the Bandama River, not far from Korhogo. In 1898, Samory fled westwards with many of the Kadioha Dyula following in his wake. (The Kadioha Dyula had allied themselves quite closely with Samory in quelling a revolt among their own Senufo subjects as well as their neighbors; they were less afraid of the French than of bloody Senufo reprisals once their ally was in eclipse.) Samory was quickly defeated, captured and deported, and the French were left as undisputed masters of northern Ivory Coast. In 1903, the administrative post moved from the Bandama River to the village of Korhogo, and there it stayed. Within fifteen years, a whole region which had never before seen a white man became part of a French colony.

The early twentieth century saw bloody revolts against French authority. The ‘pacification’ of the Baoule, the Gouro and other peoples of southern Ivory Coast lasted almost twenty years. Throughout all this agitation, northern Ivory Coast stayed calm.