Berti speakers migrated into the region with other Nilo-Saharan speakers, such as the Masalit and Daju, who were agriculturalists practicing varying degrees of animal husbandry. They settled in two separate areas: one north of Al-Fashir, while the other had continued eastward, settling in eastern Darfur and western Kurdufan by the nineteenth century. The two groups did not appear to share a common identity, the western group differing noticeably in its cultivation of gum arabic.