Kunta Kinte (also known as Toby Waller) (c.1750-c.1822) is a character in the novel by American author Alex Haley. Haley claimed that Kunta Kinte was based on one of his ancestors: a Gambian man who was born in 1750, enslaved and taken to America and who died in 1822. Haley said that his account of Kunta Kinte's life in Roots was a mixture of fact and fiction. However, doubts on the claimed factual aspects arose when it was discovered that Haley had plagiarized Kunta Kinte's story from another author's work.