African Art - Maurice Delafosse

Maurice Delafosse

African ArtAfrican Art

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Maurice Delafosse

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ISBN: 978-1-78042-883-3


African Art

Maurice Delafosse

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Preface 7

Origins and Prehistory 9

Development of Negro Civilisations in Antiquity 37

Negro Africa in the Middle Ages 55

West Africa from the 15th Century to Today 87

The Negroes of Central and Eastern Sudan 125

South Africa 147

Material Civilisations 161

Social Customs 179

Religious Beliefs and Practices 197

Artistic and Intellectual Expression 211

Appendix 246

Selective Bibliography 250

Notes 252

Index by Ethnicity 253

Contents

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Well-known and appreciated by Africanists, Maurice Delafosse (1870-1926) knew how to exceed therequirements of his environment and of his time for the benefit of an authentic Africa.

Colonialist administrator from 1894 to 1918, his degrees in naturalism and orientalism allowed him tolead historic, linguistic, and ethnographical research in the field and to restore the cultural values of theblack world, just as Léopold Senghor did. A major writer of négritude, Delafosse exhibited a particularinterest for these papers on which he established his first essays.

We chose to publish a selection of the research about the African civilisations which he explains inLes Noirs de l’Afrique (1922) and Les Nègres (1927). The writing style is authentic, the analysis fromthe time, and the vocabulary very frank and true to the time period in which it was written.Nevertheless, let there be no ambiguity: Maurice Delafosse, unquestionably, harboured a deeppassion for the African continent and her cultures.

Preface

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AAiimm aanndd OObbjjeecctt ooff TThhiiss BBooookk

The aim of this book is to furnish a general view of the history, thecivilisations, and the material, intellectual, and social character ofthe Negro race which inhabits the African continent.

There will be no question, therefore, of the peoples of the whiterace who, either in antiquity or since, have played such animportant role in the development of North Africa, and whom wefind today, more or less mixed and transformed, scattered from theRed Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and from the shores of theMediterranean to the southern limits of the Sahara: ancient andmodern Egyptians, Phoenician, and Punic peoples, Libyans orBerbers, Arabs, and Moors. More precisely, no mention will bemade of them except in the measure of their influence on theprogress of Negro societies, an influence which has often beenconsiderable and which could not be too emphasised.

For the same reason, there will be no study, except incidentally,of the peoples who, however dark their pigmentation hasbecome as the result of secular and repeated crossing with theNegroes, are nevertheless considered as belonging either to theSemitic branch of the white race, for example, the principalportion of the Abyssinians, or to an Indonesian branch of theyellow race, such as many of the Malagasy tribes. Moreover, theisland of Madagascar is outside the geographical limits which Ihave assigned to myself.

On the other hand, there are African populations which can claim,in part at least, non-Negro ancestry but who are in some wayincorporated into the Negro race and into Negro society: suchpeoples will find a place in this study. I will be content for themoment with citing from among them the Fulani of Sudan, theHottentots of southern Africa and a certain number of more or lesshybrid tribes of East Africa which are commonly called, withoutmuch reason, Hamitic or Chamitic.

OOrriiggiinn ooff tthhee NNeeggrroo PPeeoopplleess ooff AAffrriiccaa

The object of the present work being thus defined, we must nowbegin by seeking to find out whence came the AfricanNegroes. But is it possible to commit oneself as to their firstorigin? It seems that the actual state of our knowledge does not

permit us, as yet, to answer this question in a definitive or evena satisfactory manner.

Undoubtedly, one would not have even asked the question ifAfrica were the only part of the world to possess Negroes. Butsuch is not the case and without speaking, of course, of thecountries where the advent of the Negro race has taken place onlyat a recent epoch, as the result of migrations which were generallyinvoluntary and whose genesis and circumstances are known, asin America, we know that the reputed autochthonous inhabitantsof lands far removed from Africa and separated from it by theentire width of the Indian Ocean are considered as belonging tothe Negro race for the same reasons as are the Negroes ofMozambique and of Guinea.

HHyyppootthheettiiccaall LLeemmuurriiaa

If the natives of Australia, of Papua, and of the Melanesianislands are to be ranked in the same human category as theAfrican Negroes, it may be reasonably asked whether the firstcame from Africa and the second from Oceania, or indeed, ifone and the other had not in the first ages of the world, acommon habitat on some hypothetical continent, now dis-appeared, situated between Africa and the Oceanian archipel-agoes but having formerly constituted a connection and apassage between them. This continent, the supposed cradle ofthe Negro race, has its partisans, like that other one which

Statue (Kaka).Wood, height: 100 cm.

In African art, paternal statues are quite rare. The agressive expression displayedon this statue indicates its purpose to protect the child as well as the Africanpeople who created it.

Origins and Prehistory

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Edjo statue (Urhobo).Nigeria.Wood, pigment, height: 212 cm.

Each Urhobo community has its own protective Edjo statue,which embodies natural spirits or those of the Eshe foundingancestors. The tall Urhobo statues embody Edjo natural spirits orEshe founding ancestors, who were offered annual celebrationsand sacrifices in sanctuaries. Each community has its ownprotective Edjo, who lives in the wild and can also bematerialised by pieces of wood, metal, or clay. These statuescarry medecines on their belts and have military attributes.

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Statue (Vezo).Wood, height of the tallest: 57 cm. Private collection.

Sakalava rules the region in which the Vezo population resides.These uniquely shaped statues likely played a funerary role,though it is impossible to know whether the strange positioningis the result of time or the artist’s will.

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certain people claim to have anciently existed between thepresent European and the American seas; it has even received aname, Lemuria, as the other has been called Atlantis, and we areshown its remains, represented by Madagascar, the Mascarenes,and a number of islands of various sizes, just as the Canaries andthe Azores are regarded as the debris of the ancient Atlantis.

The existence of Lemuria remains problematical. Even if it wereproved it may be that this continent had already disappeared fromthe face of the globe before the appearance of the first man.Moreover, there is no need to have recourse to such a hypothesisin order to justify the theory according to which the AfricanNegroes come from Oceania. We know today with certainty thata very important portion of the population of the island ofMadagascar originally came from Indonesia and it seems welldemonstrated that, for a part at least, the migration took place atan epoch when there were no more facilities of communicationthan exist today between Oceania and Madagascar, and that themigrations alluded to, took place by sea. One will object, it istrue, that some one and a half million Malagasy of the Indonesianrace should be put on a parallel with the 150 millions of Africansof the Negro race. But this latter figure has not been reached in aday and it is permissible to suppose that migrations, comparablein total importance to those which have brought the Malays andother Oceanians to Madagascar, but having taken placethousands of years previously, had also imported a Negro elementof sufficient numbers to Africa, who, after multiplying in the newhabitat, from millennium to millennium, and amalgamating with

Figurine, 9th century CE.Northern Province, South Africa.Clay, 20 x 8.2 x 7 cm.On loan from the National Cultural History Museum, Pretoria.

From a much larger collection, originally excavated from the Schroda farm alongwith the Lydenburg Heads, these figures are thought to be the best knownartefacts from the Early Iron Age which indicate ritualistic behaviour.Ethnographers suggest that unusual figurines such as these likely imply the sitesof former initiation schools for girls. Schroda, serving as a regional capital, wasoccupied by 300 to 500 people, which means large initiation schools wereprobably there and further explains the copiousness of these small claysculptures. As a whole, they can best be divided into three groups, realistic andstylised anthropomorphic (male and female), zoomorphic (including birds,elephants, cattle, and giraffe), and mythological.

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autochthonous elements, arrived in the long run at the abovefigure, which is only roughly approximate.

OOcceeaanniicc MMiiggrraattiioonnss

In principle, there could be no opposition to the proposal thatthe current of population flowed in an inverse direction and thatthe Negroes of Melanesia should be considered of Africanorigin. But an attentive examination of native traditions tends tofavour the first of the two hypotheses. However vague thesetraditions, whatever their apparent incoherence and withwhatever highly supernatural garments they have been clothedby the imagination and the superstition of the Negroes, theystrike the most biased mind by their concordance and lead oneto think that, once disengaged from their accessories, theypossess a basis of truth.

All the Negro tribes of Africa claim that their first ancestors camefrom the east. Of course migrations have taken place in all direc-tions; but, if we analyse methodically all the circumstances ofwhich we have knowledge, we ascertain that the movements inany other direction than to the west took place as the result of localwars, epidemics, droughts, and always at an epoch later than thatat which the particular group dates the beginning of its history. Ifwe push the natives whom we interrogate to their last retrench-ments, they invariably show us the rising sun as representing thepoint whence departed their most ancient patriarch.

Statuette (Léga).Ivory, height: 15.5 cm.

Léga figurines were often used in the ceremonies of the Bwami society. Thecarved scarifications on this statuette are typical of this use.

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It appears then, that one may, until proof to the contrary be forth-coming, admit as established the theory according to which theNegroes of Africa are not, properly speaking, autochthonous, butcome from migrations having their point of departure towards thelimits of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. It is better to abstainfrom specifying the precise epoch or epochs of these migrations.All that we are permitted to affirm is that, when the existence of theAfrican Negroes was revealed for the first time to the ancientpeoples of the Orient and of the Mediterranean, they alreadyoccupied, and undoubtedly for a very long time, the same regionsin which we find them in our day and they appear to have lostsince that time the precise remembrance of their original habitat.

AAuuttoocchhtthhoonnoouuss AAffrriiccaannss

Who were, then, the people inhabiting the African continentbefore the Negroes, whom the latter found there at the moment oftheir arrival, and what has become of them?

Here again we are reduced to suppositions.1 However, they canbe supported by some facts, though of an altogether relativecertitude, some furnished by local traditions, others by theaccounts of ancient authors and the observations of moderntravellers, and still others by the works of prehistorians andanthropologists.

These latter have scientifically demonstrated that the dwarfs orpygmies, who have been pointed out at all times in certainregions of Africa, belong to a human race distinct from theNegro. Not only are they lighter in colour and slighter in buildthan the generality of Negroes, but they are differentiated fromthem by a number of other physical characteristics, notably by themore disproportionate relation of the respective dimensions of thehead, the trunk and the limbs. Scientists refuse to call them“dwarfs”, a term which is suitable rather to exceptionalindividuals in a given race and not to the whole of a race; theyreject the term “pygmies”, which represents to our mind anextremely small stature as an essential and predominantcharacteristic, because the men in question, although rarelyexceeding 1.55 metres [61 inches], are not generally shorterthan 1.40 metres [about 55 inches]. They have, therefore, beengiven the name of “Negrillos”.

At present, the number of Negrillos relatively free from allcrossing is not considerable in Africa. They are met, however, ina dispersed state, in the forests of Gabon and the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo, in the valleys of the high effluents of theNile and in other portions of equatorial Africa. Farther south,under the name of Hottentots or Bushmen2 that is to say, “men ofthe bush”, they form more compact groupings. Elsewhere, partic-

Rock engraving (San), c. 2000-1000 BCE.South Africa.Andesite rock, 53 x 54 x 24 cm.McGregor Museum, Kimberley.

Southern Africa has an immensly diverse and abunant wealth of rock art.These engravings, though less widely awknowledged than the rockpaintings, exhibit an incredible variety of technique, content, and history.Spanning centuries, the oldest dated rock engravings go back to around12,000 BCE, while oral history leads us to believe some were made asrecently as the 19th century.

Human, animal, and geometric forms, as seen here, were found in variousareas, starting with just a few on hilltop boulders and ranging to manyhundreds or thousands in larger sites, like near Kimberley close to wherethese were found. It is believed that the symbolism of San art is associatedwith religious beliefs and trance experiences. It is possible that theseengravings are the result of trance-enduced visions, which were displayed onstrategically chosen rocks that were meant to spirtually inspire others. Today,extensive efforts are made to preserve these rocks, especially for theircontribution to the landscape in honour of the topophilia which is discussedin some 19th-century San folklore.

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ularly on the Gulf of Guinea, many travellers have pointed outthe presence of tribes of a light colour, a well developed head,an abundant hairy system, which seem to come from a relativelyrecent crossing between Negroes and Negrillos, sometimes witha predominance of the latter element. It seems very certain thatthese are the remains, destined to diminish from century tocentury and perhaps one day to disappear totally, of apopulation which was formerly much more extensive.

There is no accord as to the point which marked the terminus ofthe famous voyage accomplished in the 6th century BC by theCarthaginian general Hanno along the west coast of Africa.Extreme estimates place it, at farthest, in the neighbourhood of theisland of Sherbro, between Sierra-Leone and Monrovia, but themore rigorous not far from the mouth of the Gambia. However itmay be, this hardy navigator terminated his so-called periplus ina region where Negrillos are no longer found today, but wherethey still existed in his time. For it is impossible not to identify withthe Negrillos that we know, whose arboreal habits have beenmentioned by all who have studied them, those little hairy crea-tures similar to men and living in trees, described by Hannotowards the end of his voyage out and called gorii by his inter-preter. Of this word, at least as it has come to us from the pen ofGreek and Latin authors who revealed to us the adventures ofHanno, we have made “gorilla”; we have applied it to a speciesof anthropomorphous apes, which are not met with, at least in ourday, except very much to the south of the southernmost point thatwas attained by the Carthaginian general, and we havesupposed that the little hairy creatures resembling men, which thisnavigator mentions, were gorillas, without considering that thegorilla, even seen from a distance, has in no resemblance theaspect of a little man, but indeed much more that of a giant.Perhaps it is not presumptuous to recall that gorii or gor-yi, in themouth of a Wolof of Senegal, corresponds exactly to ourexpression “these are men” and to suggest that Hanno’s inter-preter, probably hired on the Senegalese coast, spoke thelanguage that is still employed there in our day.

In the following century, the Persian Sataspe, condemned togo around Africa in order to escape the death penaltypronounced against him, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar andtook sail during many months in the direction of the south. Hecould not complete his periplus and, on his return to the courtof Xerxes, was crucified by the king’s order. Before dying herecounted that, on the farthermost coast he saw, he perceived“little men”, clothed in garments made of the palm tree, whohad abandoned their cities and fled to the mountains as soonas they saw him approaching. These little men were most likelyNegrillos, but we cannot know at what point of the westerncoast of Africa Sataspe met them. The story is told byHerodotus (Book IV, § XLIII).

Rock engraving (San), c. 2000-1000 BCE.South Africa.Andesite rock, 48 x 52 x 12 cm.McGregor Museum, Kimberley.

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Lydenburg Head, c. 500-700 CE.Eastern Transvaal, South Africa.Clay, traces of white pigment, and specularite, 38 x 26 x 25.5 cm.University of Cape Town Collection, South African Museum, Cape Town.

Seven fired earthenware heads, named after the sitewhere they were discovered, were reconstructedfrom unearthed fragments which were dated usingthe radiocarbon method to the 6th century CE.According to later excavations which confirmed thisdate, it seems that the heads were intentionallyhidden when they weren’t in use.

Moulded pieces of clay for the unique facialfeatures. All of the heads have cowrie-like eyes,wide mouths, notched ridges that may representcicatrisation, and raised bars across the foreheadand temple which define the hairline. Of the sevenheads, two of them are large enough to be worn ashelmets and are surmounted by animal figurines,while the other five have a hole on either side of theneck which was likely used to attach them to acostume or structure.

While their actual use continues to be a mystery,archeologists have suggested that they were likelyused during initiation rituals as in during the rites ofenactment which signified the transition to a newsocial status or membership into an exclusive group.

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Lydenburg Head, c. 500-700 CE.Eastern Transvaal, South Africa.Clay, traces of white pigment, and specularite, 24 x 12 x 18 cm.University of Cape Town Collection, South African Museum, Cape Town.

As one of the smaller heads, this is the onlyLydenburg Head which exhibits animal-like facialfeatures. The aestheic power of the heads,enhanced by the white slip and shimmeringspecularite, adds validity to the argument that theywere used in ritual drama to captivate an audience,and also to visually mediate between the spiritworld and that of daily life.

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About the same epoch, probably around the year 450 BC, thepresence of Negrillos in the northern part of the country of theNegroes was noted by the same historian. He reports in BookII of his work (§ XXXII) that some young Nasamonians inhabit-ing Syrte, that is to say, the province situated between thepresent Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, traversed, as a wager, theLibyan desert and attained, at the other side of a vast extent ofsand, a plain where there were trees and which was separatedby marshes from a city watered by a great river containingcrocodiles; the inhabitants of this plain and of this city were littlemen of dark colour, a stature below the medium, who did notunderstand the Libyan language. Some have wanted to identifythe “great river” mentioned by Herodotus as the Niger, othershave seen in it Lake Chad, still others, an arm or a westerntributary of the Nile. However that be, the Nasamonians metthe Negrillos at the southern limits of the Sahara, that is, at thenorth of a zone beyond which this race no longer exists.

Native traditions clarify the question with a ray of light that is notaltogether negligible, almost permitting us to pass from the domainof simple conjectures to that of probabilities.

Everywhere, but principally in the countries where the Negrilloshave already disappeared for a long time, the Negroesconsidered as the most ancient inhabitants of the soil say that thisland does not really belong to them and that when their distantancestors, coming from the east, established themselves there, theyfound it in possession of little men of reddish tint and large headswho were the veritable natives and who had, by means of certaintreaties, accorded to the first Negroes arriving on a given pieceof land the authorisation to use and cultivate it. In the course oftime these little men have disappeared but the memory of them hasremained fairly vivid. Generally they have been deified andidentified with the gods or genii of the soil, the forest, themountains, great trees, stones, and waters; often it is claimed thatthey live in certain species of animals having strange customs,such as the lamantin and varieties of little antelopes (Limnotragusgratus and Hycemoschus aquaticus). Sometimes, as among theMandinka, the same word (man or ma) serves to designate theseantelopes, the lamantin, the genii of the bush, the legendary littlered men, and signifies equally ’ancestor’ and ‘master’, and moreparticularly, ‘master of the soil’. Thus the traditions of the nativestend to prove that the Negrillos preceded the Negroes on Africansoil and recognise the formers’ suzerain rights to the land – rightswhich the present occupants consider themselves to be only theprecarious holders and usufructuaries.

In the absence of all certitude in this regard, it seems then thatwe should be permitted to suppose that the habitat of theAfrican Negroes was originally peopled by Negrillos. Theirdomain probably did not extend much beyond the limits of what

today constitutes in Africa the domain of the Negroes; however,it might have been prolonged a little more in the direction of thenorth, covering at least the southern part of the Sahara, whichwas undoubtedly less arid than it has since become,possessing, perhaps, rivers which in the course of centurieshave dried up or been transformed into subterranean waters. Itis probable that North Africa, very different already from therest of the continent and in closer contact with MediterraneanEurope than with central and southern Africa, was inhabited byanother race of men.

According to all probability, the Negrillos of the epoch anterior tothe coming of the Negroes into Africa were hunters and fishermen,living in a seminomadic state suitable to people given exclusivelyto hunting and fishing. Their customs were probably similar tothose of the Negrillos who still exist at present, and undoubtedlylike these, they spoke languages which were half isolating, halfagglutinating, characterised, from the phonetic point of view, bythe phenomenon of “clicks” and by the employment of musicaltones. The great trees of the forest, grottoes of the mountains, rockshelters, huts of branches or of bark, lake dwellings constructed onpiles might have served them, according to the region, for moreor less temporary habitations. Perhaps they were given to theindustry of chipping or of polishing stones and it might be properto attribute to them the hatchets, arrowheads, scrapers andnumerous instruments of stone that are found nearly everywhere incontemporary Negro Africa and which the present Negroes, whoare ignorant of their origin, consider as stones fallen from the skiesand as material traces left by the thunder. It is possible againwithout being permitted the formulation of definitive affirmations,that the Negrillos knew only chipped stone, while their prehistoricneighbours of North Africa had already arrived at the art ofpolished stone.

Kwayep maternity figure (Bamileke).Wood, pigment, 61 x 24.9 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Statue (Bamileke).Cameroon.Wood, encrusted patina, crust, height: 59 cm.S. & J. Calmeyn Collection.

Dschang, home of the Bamileke and western Bangwa, iswhere these ritual sticks of the Lefem society were foundlining the path to the chefferie’s sacred area, which wasforbidden for villagers. The Lefem secret society wascomposed of important people who paid a high price forthe right of entry; therefore, along with other communalactivities, they are in charge of organising the royal andprincely funerals.

The stick is topped with the shape of a seated Fwa king,his face is proportionally oversized with large eyelids and ahalf-open mouth, he is adorned with a hat and braceletswhich were common attire of the time.

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Crest (Ekoi).Wood, plant fibres, hair, leather, and ivory, height: 25 cm.Private collection.

With a wooden core, this frightening crest is stylistically typical of the Ekoi’s artistic production. Thehead is covered with antelope skin and further adorned with hair, teeth, and eyes.

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Statue (Tubwé).Wood, height: 36 cm.Leloup archives.

Regretably, only the top portion of this statue wasmaintained; however, the pulled back hairstyle andprotruding eyes are common of Tubwé art. The richoily finish of the statue adds to its mystery and mayrepresent an ancestor.

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Nyibita mask (Ngeendé).Wood, height: 63 cm.Private collection.

Extremely rare, this Ngeendé mask exhibits largeeyes which are empty of expression, adding to itsmysterious presence. The encrusted finishsuggests that numerous libations were offered tothis statue.

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PPeeoopplliinngg ooff AAffrriiccaa

Next came the first Negroes, who reached the African continentby the southeast. They also must have been nomads or semi-nomads and hunters, principally because they were in a period ofmigration and were looking for territories in which to establishthemselves, being obliged, in the course of their continualdisplacements, to nourish themselves with game; but they hadalmost certainly a tendency to be sedentary and to cultivate thesoil as soon as they found favourable ground and could installthemselves upon it. It is probable that they practiced the industryof polishing stone, be it that they had imported it or that they hadlater borrowed it from the natives of the north during the time thatthey had been in contact with them, or finally, that they hadperfected the processes of the Negrillos. They must havepossessed fairly pronounced artistic aptitudes and a strongreligious impregnation. Perhaps it is to them that one must attributethe stone monuments that have been discovered in various regionsof Negro Africa, monuments which have so greatly puzzledAfricanists and whose origin remains a mystery, such as theedifices of Zimbabwe in Rhodesia and those raised stones andcarved rocks of Gambia in which traces of a sun cult areconsidered to be revealed. They probably spoke languages em-ploying prefixes, in which the names of various categories ofbeings or objects were divided into distinct grammatical classes.

Filtering themselves through the Negrillos without really mixingwith them, they must have seized all the grounds which werethen unoccupied. When they could not do this, either becausethere were no available lands or because of the resistance ofthe Negrillos, they pushed back the latter and installedthemselves in their place, driving these Negrillos towards thedesert regions, such as the Kalahari, where we still find themeven to this day, or towards the forests of equatorial Africa;difficult areas to cultivate, where they have subsisted up to ourtime in sparse groupings, or else again towards the marshyregions of Lake Chad and of the upper Nile, where later theywere met by the Nasamonians of Herodotus, or at last, towardsthe maritime coasts of northern Guinea, where they were seenby Hanno and Sataspe.

These first migrations of the Negroes must have been composedof the type called Bantu, whose almost pure descendants are stillfound in a compact group, with the exception of an island formedby the Hottentots, between the Equator and the Cape of GoodHope. Subsequently to this first wave of Negro immigrants,another one was unfurled over Africa, of the same origin and inthe same direction, but made up of slightly different elements.However, this difference is undoubtedly attributable only to thelong lapse of time between the first and second invasions, a spaceof time that cannot be evaluated but which perhaps was repre-

Ekpu statue (Oron).Nigeria.Wood, height: 117 cm.Private collection.

Upon the death of an important member of society, Ekpu ancestors arerepresented with statues which carry in hand a familiar object. They embodiedlineage identities and their rights of property and were lined in sanctuaries andhonoured biannually.

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Statue (Vezo).Wood, height of the tallest: 57 cm. Private collection.

Sakalava rules the region in which the Vezo population resides. Their uniquelyshaped statues likely played a funerary role, though it is impossible to knowwhether the strange positioning is the result of time or the artist’s will.

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Statue (Lulua), 19th century.Democratic Republic of Congo.Wood, 74 cm.Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin.

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Asie Usu statue (Baoulé).Wood, height: 40.5 cm.Private collection.

Meant to represent a spirit, this statue seems tohave been carved for a particular person whomaintained it well in his home. The encrusted finishappears to have been left behind by chicken bloodand egg libations being poured on it.

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sented by thousands of years, during which an evolution neces-sarily took place in the primitive Negro stock.

If we presume that the new arrivals reached the African continentat about the same localities as those who preceded them, that isto say, on the east coast and about as high up as the ComorosIslands, we are led to think that they found the best lands alreadyoccupied by the first immigrants. Thus, the newcomers foundthemselves constrained to push farther towards the north andtowards the west and to settle among the Negrillos, remainingthere in possession of the soil, demanding a hospitality of themwhich probably was not refused: hence the tradition, reportedabove, of the Negrillos being regarded by the Negroes ofSudan and of Guinea as the real masters of the land. They chosetheir domicile by preference in the uncovered regions, wellwatered and easily cultivated, situated between the Equator andthe Sahara, absorbing the few Bantu elements which werealready settled there or pushing them back towards theNortheast (Kurdufan) or towards the northwest (Cameroon, Gulfof Benin, Ivory Coast, Grain Coast, Rivieres du Sud, Gambiaand Casamance), where today we still find, here and there,languages, such as certain dialects of Kurdufan, for example theDiola of Gambia and Casamance, which are closely related tothe Bantu type.

This second wave must have mixed with the Negrillos much moreso than did the first Negro immigrants and little by little becomeassimilated with them, at the same time that they perfected thetechnical processes of the natives and of the Bantu, developingagriculture, introducing a rudiment of cattle and poultry raising,domesticating the guinea-fowl, importing or generalising thepractice of making fire and its utilisation for the cooking of food,inventing the working of iron and the making of pottery. Theirlanguages must have possessed the same system of classifyingnames as those of the Bantu but proceeding by means of suffixesinstead of employing prefixes. From the linguistic point of view aswell as from the anthropological, both the Negro and theNegrillo elements, in all places where they became fused, verycertainly reacted upon one another in variable proportions,accordingly varying as one or the other predominated. Ofthese unequal fusions were probably born the often profounddifferences that we note today between the various populationsof Guinea and a part of Sudan, such as the differences betweentheir languages.

It is also highly probable that the Negro invaders who hadadvanced the farthest towards the north found themselves incontact with the primitive natives of the white Mediterranean racewho were, from the central Sahara onwards, in the countrieswhich later became Egypt and Libya, the contemporaries of theNegrillos of the southern Sahara and of the rest of Africa.

Classical style statue (Nok), 4th century BCE-2nd century CE.Terracotta, height: 66 cm.

The enlarged head, almond-shaped eyes, and precise details of this terracottastatue classically distinguish it as being of the Nok style. Its unmatchedsophistication is a clear testimony to the talent of the Nok sculptors of 2,000years ago.

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This contact could not have taken place, or above all beprolonged, without resulting in mixtures and unions between theprehistoric whites of North Africa and the Negro immigrantssucceeding the Negrillos or already partly mixed with them. It isvery probable that to these far-off unions, to these very ancientmixtures, it is necessary to seek in greater part for the origins ofthose peoples or divisions of peoples, sometimes called Negroid,who are met with in an almost continuous line along the southernlimit of the present desert zone and sometimes even farther to thenorth, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, and who appearto us sometimes as populations of the white race strongly crossedwith Negro blood (Bishari, Somali, Galla, Danakil, Sidama, etc.),sometimes as populations of the black race more or less mixedwith white blood (Masai, Nuba, Tubu, Kanuri, Hausa, Songhoy,Sarakolle, Tukulors, Wolofs), the traces of hybridisation revealingthemselves in the anatomical or physiological aspect, sometimes inthe intellectual aptitudes, sometimes in the language, or in all threeelements at once. It is even possible that the elements of the whiterace which incontestably manifest themselves among certain Fulanifamilies indicate by this circumstance an appreciable part of theirorigin. It is also possible that to the same cause must be attributedthe very ancient traces of Negro blood revealed as much amongthe Egyptians of the epoch of the Pharaohs as among the modernAbyssinians and among many Berber and Arabo-Berber tribes,independently of the hybrids produced subsequently by unionswith Negro slaves.

To sum up, in remaining within the limits of our study, this is moreor less how one may suppose that the peopling of Sub-SaharanAfrica took place, at least in its broad lines. To the south of theEquator, the Negroes of the first wave of invasion settled almosteverywhere, conserving in their midst islets of Negrillos whoremained almost pure, and remaining themselves almost free fromall crossing with the Negrillos as well as with the Negroes of thesecond invasion and with the autochthonous whites of the north:these are the Negroes of the type called Bantu. To the north of theEquator, in the southern part of Sudan and along the Gulf ofGuinea, the Negroes of the second migration, more or less mixedwith the Negrillos and with the most advanced elements of theBantu, have constituted the extremely varied type that we call theNegroes of Guinea. Farther to the north again, Negroes comingequally from the second wave of invasion, by mixing with theNegrillos and with the autochthonous Mediterranean race, formedthe type, also highly varied, which we designate as Sudanese. Inmany regions the passage from one of these three primordial typesto the other takes place by gradations which are often impercep-tible, giving birth to a great number of intermediate types whichare very difficult to define.

Many facts corroborate the hypothesis which tends to relate thefirst formation of the Sudanese populations known as Negroid to

Statue (Sokoto), c. 400 BCE.Terracotta, height: 74 cm.Kathrin and Andreas Lindner Collection.

The conical shape of this terracotta implies that it may have once been used asa cover for a funeral urn. The heavy eyelids constitute one of the archetypes ofthe terracottas found north of Nigeria in the Sokoto region.

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an epoch far more remote than that which is generally assigned toit and to attribute to the prehistoric peoples who preceded theEgyptians, the Libyan Berbers and the Semites in North Africa, theinfluence which has often been accorded to these latter. It does notfollow that the role of the Egyptians, the Libyan Berbers, and theSemites has been of no consequence in the definitive constitutionof certain Negroid peoples labeled, the one as Chamites orHamites, the other as Sudanese. But if this role cannot be deniedin the development of the civilisation of such peoples, or in acertain measure regarding the evolution of their languages, itseems very likely that it has been much less important, from thephysiological point of view, than the role played by the mostancient populations of whom, after all, it must be remembered, weknow almost nothing except that they already existed before theepoch of the first Egyptian dynasty.

In general we have a tendency to place much too near to us factswhose date we ignore and to put into periods with whose historywe are approximately familiar, events which generally have pre-ceded these periods by many centuries or even by manythousands of years and which, moreover, have required severalcenturies or even several millennia for their integral development.This tendency may be remarked in many authors who deal withthe formation of countries or peoples, and it is necessary to reactagainst such an unfortunate habit.

It seems indeed that the Sahara has not always been the desertthat it is today, but its drying up probably occurred no morequickly than the transformation into dry land of the ancient seawhich extended where now the Isle of France is found. We

should not forget that the limits assigned by Herodotus to thearable portion of Libya about five centuries BCE were sensiblythe same as those which we observe today in Morocco,Algeria, Tunisia, Tripolitania, and in Cyrenaica. In the sameway, the little that the Egyptian monuments reveal to us of theNegro populations of Africa tends to establish that these werenearly in the same condition and that they occupied nearly thesame territories six thousand years ago as today. In reality, theformation of the Negro and Negroid peoples must have beenaccomplished in its broad lines at the time of Sesostris andperhaps even still earlier.

Changes have assuredly intervened since then. Groups have beenbuilt up, others have become dissociated. Portions of them havemoved from one point to another, and conquests and migrationshave taken place, which have caused the disappearance ofancient tribes and the birth of new ones. States have appearedand crumbled away. In a word, Negro Africa has lived like allother parts of the human world. But without any doubt, it hadalready arrived at adulthood long before the epoch of the firsthistoric document that has come down to us.

On the whole, the civilisation of the Negroes themselves doesnot appear to have undergone very profound modificationsduring thousands of years. Even in our day, there exist more orless numerous Negro peoples whose material developmentseems to have remained at the same stage where we find it atthe time of the Pharaohs; their garments, arms, and utensilsbeing identical with the garments, arms and utensils carried bythe Negroes represented on the paintings and bas-reliefs ofancient Egypt.

However, in this matter evolution has been inevitably moremarked than in the domain of physical anthropology. It has alsobeen very much aided by contact with superior civilisationswhich developed in North Africa at the historical epoch and, ifcertain Negro elements have not been able or have not knownhow to profit from this contact, others, indeed, have certainlybenefited from it.

TThhee NNeeggrrooeess ooff AAffrriiccaa aatt tthhee TTiimmee ooff HHeerrooddoottuuss

I have said above that it would perhaps be proper to attribute thelocal invention of working in iron to the Negroes of the secondwave of immigration. It does not necessarily follow that theyalready knew this metal when they reached Africa or that theyhad not borrowed the secret of its manufacture from a foreigninfluence. In this regard, a passage from the History of Herodotusis very instructive. In Book II (§§ XXIX and XXX), the Greek authorhas given us approximately the northern limits attained at his time

Detail of a funerary statue (Dakakari).Terracotta, height: 73 cm. Private collection.

The marks on the face of this terracotta are characteristic of the Afo peoplefrom Nigera. This statue was honoured once a year with ritual libations from itsplacement on the grave of an important person.

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by the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, whom he calls“Ethiopians”. These limits are sensibly identical with thoseattained by them in our day. The Negroes were already found,he tells us, “above Elephantine”, upstream from the first cataract,some sedentary, others nomadic, living side by side with theEgyptians; but their true homeland began a little farther to thenorth of the present city of Khartoum, at Meroe, which, accordingto Herodotus, was their capital, and to the south of which livedthe “Automoles”, Egyptians in the service of the king of the“Ethiopians”, who had established themselves in the adoptedcountry, marrying Negro women and causing the Negroes of theregion to benefit by Egyptian civilisation.

Further on (Book VII, § LXIX), passing in review the cosmopolitancontingents who made up the army of Xerxes, Herodotus tells usthat the “Ethiopians” – a word which must always be under-stood to mean the African Negroes – were “clothed in leopardand lion skins, had bows made of the stems of palm-leaves atleast four cubits in length, and long arrows of reed at theextremity of which was, instead of iron, a pointed stone whichthey also used for carving their seals. Besides this, they carriedjavelins armed with the horns of antelopes, pointed and workedlike an iron lance-head and clubs full of knots. When they wentinto battle, they rubbed half of their body with chalk and theother half with vermilion”.

Who would not recognise in this portrait of Negro warriorsmany of the present tribes of the Gulf of Guinea, of the bend ofthe Niger and of equatorial or southern Africa? Apart from thearrow-heads and the javelin points which are now of iron in-stead of stone or horn, and by replacing the terms “chalk” and“vermilion” of the French translator3 with “white earth” and “redearth”, it is striking to ascertain how little the equipment of theNegroes of the army or Xerxes, four and a half centuries BCE,differed from that which we can see, twenty-four centuries later,on many of their descendants. And we make no mistake aboutit: the “Ethiopians” in question were indeed the Negroes and notthe ancestors of the present Abyssinians, to whom we commonlygive the name Ethiopians. Herodotus himself specifies this detaila little further on (same Book, § LXX) by designating theAbyssinians as “Oriental Ethiopians” and in observing that theydiffered from the other “Ethiopians” in that they had straight hair,while the Negroes or western Ethiopians, whom he calls simply“Ethiopians” or “Ethiopians of Libya”, had hair “more frizzledthan all other men”. He adds that these two peoples spokedifferent languages.

According to these diverse testimonies of Herodotus, joined tothose of Hanno and of Sataspe, it can be inferred that, since the5th century BCE, the Negroes occupied in the same territories ofAfrica where we meet them today, that they had almost achieved

their ethnic formation, although their absorption of the Negrilloswas not quite as complete as it has since become, and finally,that the customs and the material civilisation of the mostadvanced among them were essentially that which can beobserved in our day among the Negroes who have remainedthe most primitive.

This will be the conclusion of the first chapter, which, as can beseen, is more filled with conjectures4 than with facts. As the titleindicates, we are dealing with prehistory, and prehistoryremains inevitably within the domain of hypothesis, whatever bethe human society to which it pertains. Only, in what concernsthe Negroes of Africa, prehistory has lasted much, much longerthan history and history does not begin until an epoch very nearto our own time.

Eyema Byeri statue (Fang).Cameroon.Wood, brass, mirror, black patina, height: 50 cm.ABG Collection.

All of the communities among the several groups which make up the “Fang”area practised the same ancestral worship. These groups are comprised ofpeople from the three countries of the African Atlantic Equatorial and werenamed after the 19th century population of the North-Gabon and EquatorialGuinea. Their worship consists of preserving the skulls of the dead which aresymbolically guarded by wooden statues and include several levels of initiation,as found in So.

Between the Nyong and Lokounjué rivers, north of the Ntumu area inSouthern Cameroon, many Beti populations (Ewondo, Ngumba, Eton) and theircostal neighbours (Mabea) developed. The geometric stylisation of their originalstatues is easily recognisable with rounded, hull shoulders, conical breasts, andan abundance of metal adornment. The round head, reflective heart-shapedeyes, hat of shells, and remarkable femininity make this particular Byeri effigyamong the most beautiful examples of the Ngumba style.

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Statue (Mbole).Wood, height: 58.5 cm.Private collection.

Generally, Mbole statues portray hanged people. Held onwooden sticks, these statues are lined outside initiationcamps as social regulators. Here, the support poles are animportant part of the sculpture while the curve of her armsand legs provides a fantastic energy.

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Ancestor statue (Hemba).Wood, height: 64 cm.Private collection.

Hemba artists provide a mysterious elegance and expressionto their work, as seen in this serene statue. The calm powerit exhibits clearly shows the respect which the Hembapeople show their ancestors.

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PPaauucciittyy ooff HHiissttoorriiccaall DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn

I was obliged in the course of the preceding chapter to almostexclusively use the hypothetical mode. In this one and thefollowing, I will again be forced to have very frequent recourseto it, so rare are the documents on which we can rely with suffi-cient confidence to make deductions from them. Until now, infact, Negro Africa has revealed to us no monument except forsome ruins which do not recount their history or their creators, andsome tombs which might go back from fifty to five thousandyears, in which everything is found except precise indications, un-less an Arabic inscription informs us that we have to do withmodern burial places. The Negroes have written nothing with theexception of rare works in Arabic, the most ancient of which wepossess dates from the 16th century. Marginally copied one fromthe other, they do not contain more than a few pages on thehistory of the country and whatever may be true is obscured bylegend and the pains taken to relate everything to Islam and thefamily of Mohammed.

Much more numerous and rich are the traditions conserved orallyamong the natives, but they become very confused as soon asthey relate to facts going back several centuries and, without inany way denying their value, this source of information cannot beused except with the utmost prudence.

From the Greek and Latin authors, bits of documentation, oftencontradictory and supported by nothing very solid, can at leastfurnish some vague and incohesive indications, sometimes a fewbenchmarks. The names of the countries, localities, and peoplesare generally difficult to identify and when they are examinedimpartially it is found that they all refer to countries, localities andpeoples belonging to North Africa and not to Negro Africa.When, by chance, geographical or ethnical information seems torefer to the Negroes or to their country, it is drowned in anamalgam of impossibilities or obscurities from which it is extremelydifficult to obtain any light.

For the period of the Middle Ages, we are a little better informedby Muslim geographers and historians of Berbery, Spain, Egypt,and the Arabian Peninsula, and by some works later re-edited inArabic by the Sudanese, to which I have alluded above. This infor-

mation is also very imperfect and entirely fragmentary, being limitedto the borders of the Sahara and the west coast of Africa whichwere in more or less direct relations with the Arabs of theMediterranean or the Gulf of Oman. Concerning the more distantNegro peoples, those of Guinea, of the Congo, of southern Africa,there is almost absolute night up to the day when they began to bevisited by Europeans, that is to say, up to the 15th century CE. In thepreceding chapter we saw how much we are permitted toconjecture as to the situation of the African Negroes at the time ofHerodotus. We have also seen – according to the testimony of thisauthor – that Egyptian civilisation was not without influence on thatof the Negroes in the region of Meroe. It may be admitted that theinfluence of ancient Egypt went still further and penetrated even intothe upper part of the valley of the Nile. Perhaps, gradually, it madeitself felt as far as the Great Lakes, as certain artistic manifestationsseem to testify by recalling the manner and processes of ancientEgypt. It is even possible that, transmitted indirectly from people topeople, infiltrations of an industrial or religious order, having theirpoint of departure at Memphis or Thebes, had gained the farthestlands of the Nile, probably without ever having been in directrelations with Egypt, such as certain regions of the Gulf of Benin orthe neighbouring lands.

““AAggggrryy BBeeaaddss””

One meets nearly everywhere in Africa, either in the tombs orin the tumuli reputed to be ancient, or on the bodies of the

Mask (Kongo-Yombe).Democratic Republic of Congo.Wood, 24.8 cm.Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren.

Development of Negro Civilisationsin Antiquity

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living who claim to have received them from their most distantancestors, beads to which the Negroes attribute a very greatvalue which strangely resemble in form, colouration andmaterial, analogous beads worn by the Egyptians and withwhich they often decorated their mummies. In the 16th and 17th

centuries, this sort of bead, generally cylindrical, was theobject of an active commerce on the part of English and espe-cially Dutch navigators, who bought them from the natives ofthe countries where they were relatively abundant and soldthem at a profit in the countries where they were rarer. Thesenavigators gave them the name of “pierres d‘aigris” or “aggrybeads”, the exact origin of which is not known. At varioustimes the glass-workers of Venice and of Bohemia havemanufactured counterfeits by which the Negroes did not allowthemselves to be deceived.

However it be, the presence among the African Negroes of thesecertainly very ancient beads, the value which they represent intheir eyes and the mystery which surrounds their original prove-nance are not sufficient for forming a conclusion as to the existenceof commercial relations between the Egypt of the Pharaohs andwestern and central Africa. On the one hand, in fact, Assyrian andPhoenician tombs contain identical beads, so that we are leftperplexed as to the place of their manufacture and, in conse-quence, as to the point of departure which might be sought atNineveh or Tyre as well as at Memphis. On the other hand, theyhave been found in northern Europe and eastern Asia, whichindicates a considerable area of dispersion, certainly out ofproportion to the limits which might be reasonably assigned to theinfluence of Egyptian civilisation.

In most of the countries where, even today, the Negroes find“aggry beads” by ransacking ancient burial places, there is atradition that these beads have been imported by long-hairedmen of light colour who, according to legend, came from the skyand whom their congeners interred after decorating their corpseswith the beads in question. At first this tradition suggested to methe possibility of caravan relations between the ancientEgyptians and populations as far removed from the Nile asthose, for example, of the Gold Coast and the Ivory Coast. Ihave reflected since, that, if it be admitted that men of the whiterace, carriers of “aggry beads”, advanced at one time as far asthose distant regions, it would be much more probable that theycame from Berbery – in the geographical sense today given tothe word – than from Egypt. It has not come to our knowledgethat the Egyptians had a great amount of commerce with theNegroes, except those of the Nile valley from among whom theyprocured slaves for themselves, while at all times, as at thepresent, the inhabitants of what Herodotus called Libya andwhat we denominate as Berbery or the Barbary Coast (Tripoly,Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco) have not hesitated to cross the

Head (Sokoto), c. 200 BCE-200 CE.Nigeria.Terracotta.Private collection.

Sokoto sculptures are sometimes limited in ornament. The delicate features andheavy brow combined with a fine beard offer a severe aspect. The thin potterywalls of this head bear witness to a highly developed technique.

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Statue, Katsina region, 1st-4th centuries CE.Terracotta, height: 295 cm.

Protruding eyes and rounded features characterise theterracottas of the Katsina region. Here, the elongated neckemphasises its majestic head.

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Jonyeleni female figure (Bamana).Mali.Wood, cotton, beads, string, iron, height: 65 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Statue, Kambari style (Dogon).Wood, height: 34 cm.

Typical of Dogon art’s Kambari style, this statue represents animportant time of a binu priest’s inauguration. Its acutestylisation is reinforced by the thick finish left behind by variouslibations of chicken blood and eggs.

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Sahara and to adventure as far as the Negroes to buy from themprincipally gold-powder in exchange for various sorts ofmerchandise. Among this merchandise, Arab geographer, Yakutmentions copper rings and blue glass beads as being very muchin honour at his time, that is to say, at the beginning of the 13th

century. More recently, the Negroes most admire and value“aggry beads” made of blue glass.

PPhhooeenniicciiaann aanndd CCaarrtthhaaggiinniiaann IInnfflluueennccee

We have, therefore, the right to suppose that these beads,perhaps of Phoenician manufacture, but in any case abundantamong the Phoenicians, were first imported by them into the settle-ments that they had founded as early as the 12th century BC onthe Mediterranean coast of Africa; that their colonists,Carthaginians and others, later introduced them into the Saharaeven as far as Sudan; that Berber merchants, and then Arabs andArabo-Berbers of Tripolitania, Tuat, Tafilalet and Dara or Draacontinued this traffic, and that, after all, the men with long hair andof light colouration, of so-called celestial origin, mentioned by theNegro traditions, may have been successively Phoenicians, Punic,Berber, and Moorish caravan merchants.

As for the trace of Egyptian influence that voyagers have claimedto find in the houses of Djenné and in the pyramidal minarets ofSudanese mosques, it is useless to demonstrate its non-existenceotherwise than in recalling that the constructions in question aresubsequent to the Islamisation of the country of the Negroes andremind one singularly of a type of architecture which is widelyspread in the Arabo-Berber country north of the Sahara. It isnecessary to mention again the fantasy of those who have tried todiscover the origin of the name Fula, Fulbe, or Fulani in that of thefellah of Egypt, without considering that fellah is an Arabic wordserving to designate the peasants of any country and of anynationality and that there is no more a fellah of Egypt than ofMorocco or Syria or any other place where there are peoplegiven to the cultivation of the land.

On the contrary, an attentive study of the facts leads me toformulate a hypothesis which, without doubt, will be verified withtime and which would tend to attribute to the Phoeniciancolonies of North Africa, notably Carthage, a very considerableinfluence on the development of Sudanese civilisations, muchmore considerable and also much more direct, at least in thatwhich concerns western and central Africa, than the influencehaving its point of departure in Egypt. This hypothesis does notrest only on simple conjectures.

In studying the words of Semitic origin which have acquiredrights of citizenship in most of the Negro languages of Sudan

and its hinterland, I have ascertained that, on the whole, theyare divisible into two large categories which are very distinctfrom each other. The one relates almost exclusively to thedogmas and rites of the Muslim religion or to legal notions,hagiography and magic, which constitute the accessorybaggage of all Islamisation; these, because of their meaningsand the ideas which they represent, could not have been intro-duced except subsequently to the Hegira, they have not beenborrowed from spoken Arabic but from written Arabic, andhave passed into the Sudanese languages with the form –altered only by the Negro pronunciation – that they have ingrammatical Arabic; they are thus words of scholarly formation.The other category comprises words serving to designatematerial objects – for example, pieces of harness, arms, uten-sils, clothing, etc. – or general ideas which are most oftenabstract, objects and ideas which the Negroes did not possessand hence borrowed at the same time as the vocables meantto represent them. These words have corresponding forms inArabic, since, as I have said, they are incontestably Semitic;but they never answer to the grammatical form and they oftendepart enormously from the popular form Between the Arabicword and the word incorporated into the Sudanese languages,one does not find the alternating phonetics which are the lawfor the passage from Arabic into the Sudanese dialects of thewords belonging to the first category: it seems, then, that theborrowing has been made from a Semitic language other thanArabic and, apparently, at a date far anterior to the introductionof Arabic into Africa. May not these words have beenborrowed from Phoenician or Punic?

Whatever has been the scope of maritime expeditions undertakenby the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians and no matter how farHanno and his companions may have gone towards the south,beyond the Pillars of Hercules, it is improbable that Carthage andother Phoenician colonies of Africa should have been able to

Gelede mask (Yoruba), Nigeria. Wood, pigment, 36 x 35 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

The Yoruba wear the gelede mask on their head. The lower part represents aface while the upper part depicts a scene.

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Mask (Bangwa).Cameroon.Wood, encrusting, height: 27 cm.Private collection, Brussels.

This mask from the secret society of Troh, in charge of maintaining order andfighting against criminals, was kept in a hut and watched by a servant.

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Mask of the Troh Society (Bangwa).Western Province, Cameroon.Wood with a blackish encrusted patina, 27 x 19.7 x 27.5 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

The guardians of the tradition of the secret society of Troh, who supervised funerals, the selection of a new chief, andhis enthronement, consists of a council of nine dignataries. Part of their attire, this helmet is passed through familiesfrom father to son, which implies that only nine masks are in existance. This mask consists of various spherical shapesfor the brow, eyes, cheeks, and so on; we see a man in a pointed headdress whose face is in a slight, open-mouthedgrimace, showing his filed teeth. The thick coating, proof of the great age of the mask, comes from years of rituallibation and fumigation. The Troh member to whom this belonged guarded it with great care.

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establish continuous relations by sea with the Negroes. But it wascertainly not the same by the way of land.

Carthage took from the Phoenicians, her founders, exceptionalaptitudes for what one might call “long distance commerce”. Hercitizens were not slow to perceive the advantages which theycould procure by trading with the Negroes who, beyond theunproductive desert, inhabited fertile regions, rich in men andgold. They organised caravans which must have very closelyresembled those which still circulate today across the Sahara andwhich travelled to Sudan in search of slaves, gold dust, ostrichfeathers, and ivory, in exchange for textiles, clothing, copper andbeads. These Carthaginian merchants undoubtedly did the sameas their Tripolitanian and Moroccan successors do in our day: theywere not content to escort their convoys of camels, they sojournedsome little time in the country of the Negroes, settling in temporarycolonies in the principal centres along the edge of the desert and,from there, just as the Moroccans do today, went out into theneighbouring provinces.

During hundreds and hundreds of years, there must have beenother affairs than the exchange of products between Carthageand Sudan: there was contact between the still very rudeNegroes and the representatives of one of the most refined civil-isations known to antiquity. This contact could not but be fruitful.As I have just suggested, these Carthaginian merchants intro-duced among the Negroes, together with the new words desig-nating or expressing them, new objects and new ideas.Undoubtedly, the horse, coming from Libya, was already knownin Sudan but, also without doubt, was hardly utilised there: theCarthaginians taught the Negroes the art of equitation and theuse of the bit, stirrups and saddle. At the same time that they soldthem textiles and a sort of chemise, and they probably broughtthem the seeds of the cotton plant and taught them to weavecotton fibres and to sew goods. They also showed them how towork the gold which the Negroes had been content until then to

extract from alluviums and, by imitation, the copper and bronzeindustries developed, while those of iron and clay becameperfected and the glass industry was born and still existed in thelast century in some localities of the Nupe on the lower Niger.Of course, all this is only supposition5, but it is probable suppo-sition nonetheless.

AAbbyyssssiinniiaann SSeemmiitteess aanndd tthhee BBeennii--IIssrraaeell

In East Africa, another civilisation of equally Semitic origin accom-plished an analogous work among the Negroes and Negroidpopulations of its neighbourhood. I speak of the Abyssinian civili-sation which, born in the south of the Arabian peninsula, passedinto Africa with Yemenite immigrants at a very remote epoch anddeveloped in contact with Egyptian civilisation, on which, in turn,it did not fail to react more than once. It introduced among the,more or less, mixed Negroes on the coast of the Red Sea, as wellas among the Negroes scattered in eastern Sudan and betweenthe mountains of Ethiopia and the Great Lakes, a transformationcomparable to that which the Phoenician colonies of theMediterranean produced from afar among the Negroes of centraland western Sudan.

Local traditions have conserved the memory of other Semites,whom they call by the name of Israelites (Beni-Israel), without ourbeing able to decide whether this name is of Muslim importationand therefore relatively recent, or if it really answers to the originof this mysterious element. It is very possible, indeed, that theSemites in question came from the land of Abraham and were abranch of that population, in part Hebraic, whose astonishingdestinies have not troubled Bossuet alone. Should we relate themto the Hebrews whom Joseph, son of Israel, brought to Egyptand who did not all return to the Holy Land with Moses, acertain number, on the contrary, making their way towards thewest? Should we see in them the remains of those Hyksosmentioned in the Egyptian annals who, after all, were perhapsnot distinct from the Hebrews of Joseph? Should they beidentified with the Jews who, as a consequence of religiousquarrels, emigrated from Tripolitania towards the end of the 1st

century CE in the direction of the Aïr Mountains and towards thebeginning of the following century in that of Tuat and who after-wards did not leave any real historical traces of their passage?Should we admit several successive migrations, the first of whichgoes back to the epoch of Moses and the dispersion of theHyksos, that is, to about the 16th century BC, and the last ofwhich are as recent as the 1st century CE?

However it be, and whatever name be given to the so-called“Beni-Israel”, it appears very certain that they were Semites whowere at once shepherds, farmers, and artisans of a very

Go gé mask (Dan). Wood, metal, and hair, height: 26 cm.Private collection.

Talismans have been placed atop this beautiful go gé mask. It is a perfectexample of the refined beauty of Dan art that was only used for ceremonieswhich were linked to the funerals of important chiefs.

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Mupo statue (Bamileke).Cameroon.Wood, height: 31.5 cm.

Magical statues, often in the shape of pregnant women withlarge stomachs as an obvious sign of fertility, were meant toconjure spells. They are commonly used in the southwest areaof the Bamileke high plateaux. In addition to female fertility, thesculptor wanted to evoke meditation and wisdom as security forthe continuation of chiefdom. Mupo were available indifference sizes; the tallest, as seen here (from the Batié area,Bamunam, eastern Bangwa), were exposed in the courtyardbefore rituals, while the smaller ones were held duringcommunal propitiatory dances.

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Statue (Pre-Bembe).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 54 cm.S. & J. Collection.

Often mixed by historical disorder, various stylistically closestatues were created by the western populations of LakeTanganyika - Hemba, Bembe, Boyo, Hhoombo, Tabwa, Bwile,etc., and dedicated to their ancestors, who played an importantsocial role. Ancestral figures of dead chiefs or dignitaries wereplaced in funerary huts or burial boxes and were meant toprotect the clan.

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advanced civilisation, who were not content, like their congenersof Carthage and Abyssinia, to merely have commerce with theNegroes and to promote the development of their civilisation byradiation. Instead, they lived in large groups within the country ofthe Negroes, or at least at the northern limits of this country,bringing with them the zebu or humped ox and the wool-bearingsheep; constructing in Sudan houses of masonry and wellscemented by a special process; introducing the arts of cattleraising and green gardening; contributing in a certain measure tothe population of the Sahel and the Massina and to the hybridis-ation of the Negro populations already settled in these regions,forming perhaps the kernel of pastoral tribes who, under the nameof Fulani, as we call them, or Fulbe, as they call themselves, laterspread out from the Sahel and the Massina on the one side asfar as the Atlantic and on the other beyond Lake Chad, finallycreating in the west of Timbuktu, at Ghana, a State whosemasters they long remained and which may be considered thecradle and the model of that which has been the most perfectedin the civilisations of the Negroes of Africa.

Without either wishing or being able to commit myself on themystery which up to the present surrounds the origin of these“Beni-Israel”, or pretended such, the role which they played inNegro Africa, or at least the one that local tradition attributes tothem, seems to me to be too considerable to be passed over insilence. Perhaps, after all, it is to them, rather than to theCarthaginians or concurrently with the latter, that we ought toattribute the importation into the Sudanese languages of the wordsof ancient Semitic origin mentioned above.

RRoommaannss aanndd BBeerrbbeerrss

As for the Romans, whatever may be said of them, it seems indeedthat their intervention did not take place on the other side of theSahara and that their influence on the Negroes of Africa was nil.Their only relations with the Negroes consisted in acquiring acertain number of them as slaves, but they themselves never wentto fetch them, being content to buy them from the merchants ofCarthage or Numidia. It is possible that the Roman expeditionwhich pushed farthest towards the south was that of JuliusMaternus who, at the order of the Emperor Domitian, departed in80 CE in search of the gold mines of Sudan, but it probably didnot go farther than the Aïr Mountains.

The Libyans or Berbers, more or less direct descendants – andprobably very mixed – of the ancient autochthonous whites ofNorth Africa, lived during many centuries in contact with themost northern of the Negroes. However, it does not seem thatthey ever had an appreciable influence on the development ofNegro society, just as the influence of Libyan Berber dialects on

the Sudanese languages seems to have been entirely negligibleexcept with respect to the Hausa. In the other Negro languagesalong the edge of the Sahara, barely half a score of vocablesof Berber origin can be discovered: sometimes the name forhorse and nearly always that for camel (though not yet provedwith certainty), the name of the straight sword, that of a kind ofcake, one of the appellations given to the poor and those of littlemeans, and finally the name for Easter and for sin, the two latter,moreover, having been borrowed by the Berbers from the Latinduring the ascendancy of Christianity in North Africa. And thatis all or almost all.

This is not as surprising as one might suppose at first sight. On theone hand, the nomad Berbers of the desert, the only ones whowere and who still are in contact with the Negroes, do not passfor ever having had a very advanced civilisation: their mode oflife was not adapted to it. And then, one of the general charac-teristics of the Berbers, as M. Henri Basset has very well shownin a recent book6 is to adopt easily the language and certainexterior aspects of the civilisation and the religion of theforeigners who momentarily dominate them and to exercise novisible influence on this people or any other foreign populationliving in contact with them. Thus the Negroes of Africa owe veryfew obligations to their Berber neighbours, whereas they areconsiderably indebted to the Semites, from the distant epochwhen a first current of Semitic influence made itself felt among theprehistoric natives of North Africa up to the time of theIslamisation of the same country by the Arabs and the expeditionsdirected from Maskat along the coast of Zanzibar, in passing bythe periods of the Phoenician colonies, the splendour of Carthageand the Israelite or pseudo-Israelite immigrations.

But it is time to close this too long account devoted to the differentMediterranean and Asiatic contributions which have introduced avery important element of civilisation among the Negroes ofSudan and of East Africa, from where it spread out little by little,progressively attenuated, as far as southern Africa. Now, in a newchapter, we will come to what is known of the history, properlyspeaking, of the Negroes of Africa. We will begin with the Stateof Ghana to which allusion has already been made.

Sculpture (Nok), c. 500 BCE-500 CE.Terracotta, 50 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Boyo statue (Pre-Bembe).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 43 cm.Aura Collection.

Once part of what is now the Bembe territory, the Boyolived west of Lake Tanganyika. Specific statues are used toask their ancestors for protection, especially in times ofmisfortune. The statues are kept in the hut of the village orlineage chief.

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Torso (Igbo).Nigeria.Wood, height: 66 cm. Private collection.

Most likely part of an ensemble of life-sized painted woodfigures, this fragment of a masked head on a torso mayhave once adorned a men’s meeting-house. The maskappears to be a calabash, the neck of which slightly projectsover the forehead. The curviliniar patterns on the maskwere guidelines for pigment.

The shrine and meeting-houses represented anidealised community and once contained numerousfigures. Many shrine meeting-houses existed among theeastern Igbo communities near the turn of the century.Since then, most of the sculptures have been dispersedand the houses dismantled, though some have beenrebuilt in cement and now have modern carvings andfigures lining the walls.

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TThhee EEmmppiirree ooff GGhhaannaa

We do not know at what epoch or exactly by whom wasfounded the kingdom which later gave birth to the Empire ofGhana. Local traditions, confirmed by the works of scholars ofTimbuktu and of Arab historians, only let us conjecture that thisState goes back at least to the 4th century CE, that its first sover-eigns belonged to the white race and that, a certain time afterthe Hegira, the power passed into the hands of a family of theblack race belonging to the Sarakolle people. Arab authors,moreover, inform us that the Empire of Ghana was flourishing inthe 9th and the 10th centuries CE, that its decline began towardsthe middle of the 11th century under the conquering anddestructive movement of the Almoravides, that its debris fellunder the yoke of the Mandinka and that its capital, last vestigeof its sunken glory, ceased to exist after about the middle of the13th century.

This capital, whose name is mentioned for the first time, it seems,in the Golden Prairies of Masudi, who died in 956, was visitedin the second half of the 10th century by the celebrated Arabgeographer lbn-Haukal, and Bekri gives a fairly detailed de-scription of it in the following century. It was called Ghana only bythe foreigners and notably the Arabs, who made it known by thisname in Europe and Asia. This was not its name but, as Bekriexpressly says and as Sudanese traditions confirm, one of the titlesborne by the sovereign, who was further designated by that ofkaya-maga or simply maga or magan (the master) or again by thatof tounka (the prince). The city itself was known to the inhabitantsunder the name of Kumbi-Kumbi (the butte or tumulus), by whicheven today its site is pointed out. It is situated between Goumbuand Walata, about a hundred kilometres to the north-northeast ofthe first of these localities, in a region of the Hodh which theMoors call Howker or Howkar (a geographical term common tomany sub-Saharan regions), the Mandinka and the Bambaracalling it Bagana or Mara, the Kassonke Bakhunu, and theSarakolle Wagadu 7. It extends in a general fashion to the northand to the northeast of Goumbu.

The explorer Bonnel de Mezieres, who visited and excavatedthis locality in 1914, found there the vestiges of a great citycorresponding very exactly to that described by Bekri, with ruinsof hewn stone constructions, sometimes sculptured. The regionwhere Ghana or Kumbi was built is now very arid. In truth, it

rains there every year, but there are no rivers and, except at afew points where pools or sheets of not very deep subterraneanwater exist, the vegetation, although fairly thick in spots, isreduced to thin pasturage, gum-trees, and other spiny bushes.The region contains no village and is traversed only by nomadicMoors and hunters of the Nemadi or Nimadi tribe. But verynumerous and extended traces of former habitations and burialplaces which turn up at every instant, show that the country wasformerly inhabited, in part at least, by sedentary peoples, andlead us to suppose that it was better watered than it is today andmore suitable for tillage. Besides, Bekri speaks of vast andprosperous fields which extended to the east of Ghana and localtraditions are unanimous in attributing the decline of the kingdomand the dispersion of its inhabitants to the drying up of theWagadu and consequent famine. It is probable that thesecircumstances had much more influence on the end of the Empireof Ghana than the successive pillages to which the city wassubjected by the Almoravides in 1076, by the king of Soso,Sumanguru Kannte, in 1203, and finally by the king of the

Negro Africa in the Middle Ages

Seated figure (Yoruba), 13th-14th century.Tada, Nigeria.Copper, 53.7 x 34.3 x 36 cm.The National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Lagos.

The naturalistic proportions and life like qualities of this figure make it a clearmasterpiece of Ife art, particularly when compared to other examples in whichthe head comprises at least a quarter of the figure’s height. The right foot mayhave once protruded below the base level, intending for it to sit atop a roundedstone throne. This piece was cast in nearly pure copper, making it too heavy tojoin the mould to the crucible, so it is likely that the mould was partially buriedunderground and the metal melted in several sealed crucibles. The figure wearsa wrap which is overlain with a beaded net.

The smooth appearence can be attributed to the Friday ritual of taking thefigure to the river and scrubing it with gravel to ensure the fertility of their wivesas well as the fish they consumed.

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Mandinka, Sundiata Kelta, towards 1240. A populous city anda flourishing State survived pillage and defeat, but could notresist lack of water and nourishment.

At that distant epoch when they lent themselves to tillage and asedentary life, the Bagana or Wagadu and most of the sub-Saharan districts which we unite today under the name of Hodhin the east and Mauritania in the west, must have been inhab-ited by the Negroes, more or less mixed with Negrillos andwhite natives of North Africa. These Negroes formed anensemble, fairly disparate perhaps in certain aspects, whichMoorish traditions generally designate by the term Bafur; fromthem have without doubt gone forth, by ramification, theSonghoy or Songai towards the east, the Serers towards thewest and, towards the centre, a great people called Gangara(Gangari in the singular) by the Moors, Wangara by Arabauthors and writers of Timbuktu, and more recently comprising,as its principal divisions, the Mandinka properly speaking orthe Malinke, the Bambara, and the Jula.

It is in this region and among these Bafur, undoubtedly alreadyramified, that the immigrants of the Semitic race treated in thelast chapter probably settled, as they pass for having colonisedparticularly the Massina and the Wagadu, and for havingfounded the kingdom and the city of Ghana. As we have seen,these immigrants probably also included farmers and shepherds.However considerable their number, it was certainly very inferiorto that of the Negroes in the midst of whom they settled and overwhom they established their domination. There must have been,from the very beginning, a number of unions between the whitesand the blacks and of these unions were born, it seems, two veryimportant populations, each of which, in turn, was to play a roleof the first order in the history of the western and central Sudanand in the development of its civilisation.

Even in Ghana, in the Wagadu, in the Massina, and at still otherplaces, the union of the Semites, for the most part sedentary, withthe Wangara, who were considerably more numerous than theformer, probably engendered the people who give themselves thename of Sarakolle, that is to say, “white men”, in memory of oneof their ancestors. They are called by several Sudanese tribesSoninke, by the Moors Assuanik; the Bambara denominate themMara-ka or Marka (people of the Mara or Wagadu) and the Arabauthors and the Songhoy of Timbuktu designate them by the termWakore. These people spoke a language closely related to thatof the Wangara; it became the customary language of Ghanaand is still today that of the Sarakolle of the Sahel and of Senegal,of the sedentary inhabitants of the black race called Azer or Ahl-Masine (people of the Massina), of certain oases such as Tichit,and finally of some tribes who have either adopted the erranthabits of their Moorish neighbours or conserved those of their

white ancestors, for example, the Guirganke shepherds and also,it is believed, of the Nemadi hunters.

To the west of Ghana, in the region of the Termes pastures, themixture of the nomadic Semites with the Serers and especiallythe long cohabitation of these Semites in the midst of the Serersmust have given birth to the Fulani or Fulbe people, who speaka language quite near to that of the Serers and who laterswarmed towards the Massina and, on the other side, towardsthe Tagant and the Futa-Toro. They later sent forth groups to thesouthwest into the Futa-Jallon, to the east and to the southeast inthe bend of the Niger, to Hausaland, Adamawa, and othercountries neighbouring Lake Chad.

However, in Ghana itself, after a succession of princes of the whiterace who, according to the Tarikh es-Sudon, must have numbered44, of whom 22 came before the Hegira and 22 after it, but ofwhom the last, according to the Tarikh el-Fettach, was contem-porary with Mohammed, the power passed to the Sarakolledynasty of the Sisse which perhaps, as its present descendantsclaim, was related to the dynasty of the white race and, in a way,constituted only a continuation of it, more or less mixed with Negroblood. However that be, it is under the reign of these Sisse, whomMasudi and other Arab authors formally claim to have beenNegroes, that the State of Ghana attained its apogee. In thetestimony of Bekri, of Yakut and of Ibn-Khaldoun, its power madeitself felt from the 9th century over the Zenaga or Sanhaja Berbers(Lemtuna, Goddala or Jeddala, Messufa, Lemta, etc.) who hadshortly before pushed their southern advance-guards as far as theHodh and into what is now Mauritania. Howdaghost, the capitalof these Berbers, undoubtedly situated to the southwest and not farfrom Tichit, was vassal to the Negro king of Ghana and paidtribute to him; an attempt at independence on the part of the chiefof the Lemtuna led, about 990, to an expedition of the king ofGhana, who captured Howdaghost and reaffirmed his authorityover the sedentary Berbers and over the “veiled Zenaga” of thedesert, as several Arab authors express themselves.

To the south, the dependencies of Ghana stretched to the otherside of the Senegal river and as far as the gold mines of theFaleme and of the Bambuk, whose product fed the treasury of theSisse and served to operate fruitful exchanges with Moroccancaravans coming from Tafilalit and from the Dara; they extendedeven as far as Manding, on the upper Niger. Towards the east,the limits of the kingdom reached nearly to the region of the lakessituated to the west of Timbuktu. To the north, its influence was feltin the very heart of the Sahara and its renown had penetrated asfar as Cairo and Baghdad.

However, at the beginning of the 11th century, Islam began topenetrate the Berbers of the Sahara and the edge of Sudan, the

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Zoomorphic head, 8th-9th century.Central Angola.Wood, 50.5 x 15.5 cm. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren.

Representing an animal with a snout, eyes, and small round ears, this is probablythe oldest wooden sculpture of central Africa, if not sub-Saharan Africa. Whilereminicent of an aardvark, the figure could also represent a zebra, warthog,hippopotamus, or a composite of an imaginary animal. The two small holes ontop of the head and at the end of the tail, likely bored with a red-hot iron, werelikely filled with hair-like fibres. Overall, it may have been used as a horizontalmask or headdress.

If this, in fact, represents an aardvark, it would not be surprising to learn thatthe figure had been buried purposefully, as the burrowing abilities are revered.

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Statuettes (Djenné), 12th-15th centuries. Terracotta, height of the horsemen: 44 cm, height of the kneeling figure: 36 cm.Private collection.

Very rare and of a high quality, these figures appear to represent horsemen, oneon a horse and the other on a buffalo. The bearded horseman on the horselikely represents a chief, while the other, holding a bow, is probably a soldier. Itis impossible to know what function these statues served.

The kneeling man is a common archetype in Djenné art. His hieratic positionand specific detailing point out the sophistication and refinement of thiscivilisation, which we can only learn about based on artistic artefacts.

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Anthropomorphic mask (Wum).North-Western Province, Cameroon.Wood, 24 x 21 x 33 cm.Charles and Kent Davis.

This mask is a beautiful example of the stylistic area in the west, between Wumand Fungom. For each festival, a large number of masks, juju, are used tocelebrate the dry season’s sorghum harvest, the great December festival, or thefunerals of noble people. More reminicent of the Wum style, the compact,geometrical shape, its wide open mouth, dilated nostrils, and bulging,emotionally devoid eyes are carved from a very hard wood.

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majority of whom until then seem to have practiced a religionwhich was a mixture of Christianity and paganism. Towards1040, a movement of Islamic propaganda took birth amongportions of the Lemtuna tribe, which principally inhabited theTagant and the district of Howdaghost, and that of the Goddalaor Jeddala, who led a nomadic life between the MauritanianAdrar and the Atlantic and formed a sort of federation with theformer. From a monastery situated on an island of the lowerSenegal or in the proximity of its outlet, the famous sect of theAlmoravides (al-morabetine, the “marabouts”, etymologically“those who close themselves up in a ribbat or monastery”), set outto preach Islam and to wage war from Sudan to Spain.

TThhee AAllmmoorraavviiddee MMoovveemmeenntt

Under the direction of the fiery preacher Abdallah ben Yassine, aBerber of North African origin, as fierce a religious reformer as anindefatigable warrior, and under the nominal command of Yahiaben Ibrahim, chief of the Goddala, then of Yahia ben Omar of theLemtuna tribe, a movement occurred which affected onlyephemeral political results among the Negroes but which had verydurable and quite important ones from a religious point of view. Itwas indeed to the Almoravides that we must attribute theconversion to Islam of the Sudanese groups who have since thenpropagated this religion over a notable part of Africa: Tekruriansor Tukulors, Sarakolle, Jula, and Songhoy.

From the middle of the 11th century, a sharp and merciless strugglebegan between the Almoravide bands, who represented Islamand who were stimulated by the desire to shake off the yoke ofthe Negroes, and the Sarakolle kings of Ghana who, althoughalways having been hospitable to the Muslims were considered tobe the champions of paganism. In 1054, Howdaghost, thoughthe capital of a Berber kingdom, was attacked, taken and pil-laged by Abdallah ben Yassine, under the pretext that the townpaid tribute to the king of Ghana.

At the same time, an active religious propaganda was carriedon by the efforts of the same Abdallah among the Negroes whothen resided on both banks of the Senegal, and also among theNigerian populations. But it often met with a resistance which,when it could not manifest itself otherwise, was expressed byan exodus of the inhabitants. It is thus that a majority of theSerers emigrated to the left bank of the river in the Tekrur (whichalmost corresponds to the province we call the Futa-Tooro),whence a considerable number went to form groups in the Sine,where we still find them today. They left the field clear for theBerbers in what has since become Mauritania, hunted at thesame time by the desire to escape the constraint and theexactions of the Almoravides and by the need of seeking more

fertile lands. It is thus again that, pushed by analogous motives,the Fulani of Termes and of the Tagant began to swarm withtheir herds towards the same region of the Futa-Toro, where, fora long time, they must have energetically defended paganismagainst Muslim enterprise.

However, certain royal families of the Negro country, attracted tothe new religion by the prestige which attached to its adepts,ranged themselves deliberately under the banner of Mohammed.Such was the case of the princes who then held the power in theTekrur, under the more or less distant tutelage of the emperors ofGhana, and who, like the latter, must have belonged to theSarakolle race. They reigned over a people who were probablyvery composite, formed of Sarakolle, Mandinka, Serers, andperhaps Wolof elements, who ended by adopting the languageof the Fulani, their neighbours, and known to us today under thename of Tukulors, this word being only a modification of theprimitive name of the kingdom and city of Tekrur8

A disciple of Abdallah ben Yassine, about whom there arecurrently numerous legends and whose memory has been handeddown to us under several different names, among which that ofAbu-Dardal, converted to Islam the princes and notables of theTekrur, who became effective allies of the Almoravides.

A Lemtuna Berber, who, according to Leo the African, was noneother than the very father of Yahia ben Omar and the famousAbubekr or Bubakar, travelled as far as Mandinka and succeededin enrolling in the new religion of the king of the country, namedBaramendana, whom he is supposed to have influenced toundertake a pilgrimage to Mecca.

However, one should not exaggerate the importance of theseconversions effected among the Negroes by the Almoravides,or claim, as is sometimes done, that they gained the entirety ofSudan for Islam. In reality, the conversions do not seem to havebeen serious and lasting except among the princes and higherofficials and their immediate circle. The mass of the peopleeither resisted Islamisation by migration, as we have seen in thecase of the Serers and the Fulani, or else they did not letthemselves be persuaded by the efforts of the Almoravidepreachers, as was the case with the Wolof and the Mandinka9

or else again, accepted the new faith only to abandon it whenthe ephemeral power of the disciples of Abdallah ben Yassinecame to an end. It is only among the Tekrurians or Tukulors,among the Songhoy, and, strange to say, among the Sarakolleand the Jula, their descendants, that Islam penetrated widelyand strongly.

The Sarakolle, in fact, who represented the pagan element in allits vigor, finished, under constraint and force, by accepting,

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after their defeat, the religion of their conquerors, afterwardsbecoming the staunchest Muslims of all the western Sudan,carrying with them the Muslim faith into the numerous regions ofthe Senegal, the Sahel and the Massina where they settled afterthe fall of Ghana and the dispersion of its inhabitants, passingthe religion on to that curious population, commercial and enter-prising, the Jula, who are considered to be an issue of theSarakolle of Dia or Diakha (Massina) and of the Djenné andwho, in their turn, propagated Islam as far as the northernboundary of the great equatorial forest. From the end of the 11th

century, less than fifty years after the first preaching of Abdallahand his missionaries, Islam attained some points situated at least400 kilometres from the coast of the Gulf of Guinea; the MuslimJula, attracted into this region by the abundance of kola-nuts,had founded Bego near the elbow formed by the Black Volta atthe height of 8°north latitude, not far from the present village ofBanda or Fougula (English Gold Coast). This city soon becamea very important metropolis and an active centre of commerceand Islamic propaganda; towards the end of the 14th or the be-ginning of the 15th century, its inhabitants dispersed and went tosettle farther to the west near modest hamlets, such as Gotogo(Bonduku) and Kpon (Kong), situated in the present Frenchcolony of the Ivory Coast, transforming them rapidly intoveritable cities, enriching themselves by commerce in kolas,cattle, fabrics, and gold-powder, and introducing habits of intel-lectual research which have continued a long time after.

But we must return to the history of the struggle between theAlmoravides and Ghana. In 1057, Abubekr ben Omar succededhis brother Yahia as chief of the former and thus begun theconquest of southern Morocco with the aid of Abdallah benYassine. The death of the latter, happening unexpectedly in 1058or 1059, made Abubekr the sole and uncontested master of theAlmoravides. The following year, leaving his cousin Yussof benTachfine to finish the conquest of Morocco and to foundMarrakech, Abubekr betook himself in the direction of the Adrarand of the Tagant, where the Berber tribes were at war with eachother. After restoring peace among them and reasserting his own

authority, he gave all his efforts to the destruction of the empire ofGhana. Ghana, however, did not succumb until the end of somefifteen years, after a desperate resistance in the course of whichthe Berber troops experienced more than one defeat. At last, in1076, the Almoravides captured the old Sudanese city and put tothe sword all the inhabitants who would not embrace Islam. Elevenyears later, in 1087, shortly after the taking of Seville by Yussofben Tachfine, which gave Spain to the Almoravides who werealready masters of Morocco, Abubekr was killed in the Adrarduring the course of a new revolt of his most direct subjects, andthe power of his sect and his dynasty, which had just asserted itselfin such a brilliant manner in the north of Africa and the south ofEurope, disappeared from the very country that had constituted itspoint of departure.

At any rate, Ghana was never able to recover its past grandeur.Several provinces of the empire had profited by the strugglebetween the Sisse and the Almoravides to free themselves from thetutelage of the supreme tounka or maga and had becomeindependent kingdoms, each of which had its own tounka ormaga, belonging to some one of the great Sarakolle familiesamong whom the sovereigns of Ghana chose the governors of thedistant districts of the empire.

TThhee KKiinnggddoomm ooff DDiiaarraa

It is thus that the Sarakolle dynasty of the Niakhate founded atDiara, to the northeast, near the present post of Nioro, thekingdom of the Kaniaga or of the mana or mana-magan, whichwas not slow to become master of the Tekrur and to include nearlyall of what now constitutes the Sudanese Sahel, that is to say, thelarger part of the former southern dependencies of Ghana. Around1270, the Diawara dynasty replaced the Niakhate at Diatra; itmaintained itself in power until 1754, the epoch of the conquestof the Kaniaga by the Bambara-Masasi.

In the interval, the authority of the Diawara lost its vigour andwas undermined little by little by the continually growingpower of the Mandinka Empire, to which the Kaniaga hadbecome vassals towards the end of the 13th century or at thebeginning of the fourteenth, later changing their suzerain andbecoming incorporated, in the 16th century, into the SonghoyEmpire of Gao.

TThhee KKiinnggddoomm ooff SSoossoo

Farther to the east, about midway between Goumbu andBamako, is a village by the name of Soso which also had itshour of celebrity. Here, the kings of Ghana supported a

Funerary figure’s mask(?), 12th-13th centuries.Interior delta of Niger, Mali.Terracotta, 55 cm.Musée Dapper, Paris.

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Mask (Teke).Democratic Republic of Congo.Wood, 34 cm.Musée Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

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Mask (Bembe).Democratic Republic of Congo.Wood, height: 40 cm.Private collection, New York.

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governor taken from the Sarakolle family of Diarrisso who,towards the end of the 11th century, did the same as theNiakhate governor of Diara at the same epoch and made him-self independent. A century afterwards, about 1180, anotherSarakolle family, the Kannte, belonging, it is said, to the black-smith caste, overturned the dynasty of the Diarisso and installeditself in the latter’s place. Under the direction of SumanguruKannte, who passed for being a skilful general and a no lessskilful sorcerer, the kingdom of Soso took on a considerableexpansion. In 1203, Sumanguru captured Ghana and reducedthe descendants of the former suzerains of Soso to the state ofvassal. This important achievement has been reported by IbnKhaldoun, whose text, incorrectly interpreted, for a long timeled to the belief in the legend of the destruction of Ghana bythe Soso or Susu of Guinea; a legend which was only an errorbased on a simple and fortuitous homonym. The same princethen turned his arms towards the south against the Mandinka orMali, whom he annexed around the same moment that theemigrant Muslims of Ghana founded Walata, or breathed newlife into it, around 1224. But this annexation proved to be onlymomentary and sounded the death knell of the power and eventhe life of Sumanguru. Soon after, to be sure, a young andactive king, the famous Sundiata, succeeded his feeble brothersat Manding and, around 1235, fought and killed Sumangurunot far from Koulikoro and in turn annexed to his State that ofthe Soso and pushed on as far as Ghana, which he completelydestroyed in 1240.

The necessity of following out the destinies of the State of Ghanaand the results of Islamisation due to the Almoravides has led usrather far and now we must turn back six centuries to take up thehistory of the Empire of Songhoy or Gao.

TThhee BBeeggiinnnniinnggss ooff tthhee SSoonngghhooyy EEmmppiirree

In the 7th century CE, while one of the princes of the white racestill reigned over the already ancient kingdom of Ghana, anotherState was founded on the western stretch of the Niger which wasalso called upon to exercise, although very much later, thehegemony of the larger part of Sudan. The Berbers, it is believed,who were perhaps Christians, made themselves recognised aschiefs of a small population of fishermen residing in Gunguia orKukia, on the island of Bentia or opposite to this island, at some150 kilometres downstream from Gao. Their dynasty, called theDia or Za, remained in power from 690 to 1335. Nearing theyear 1000, they transferred their capital from Gunguia to Gao,which already existed at that time for several hundred years, andtheir kingdom took the name of Songhoy or Songhai, which wasalso, it seems, that of the inhabitants. At this epoch, the kingdomwas strictly limited to the borders and islands of the Niger, from

Bamba in the north as far as the northern limits of Nupe in thesouth, and to a strip of territory situated to the east of the river. Itwas about the same date that the Dia, then reigning in Kossoi, orKossai, was converted to Islam.

Little by little the influence of the Songhoy was felt as far as theregion of Timbuktu, the founding of which, as a city, goes backto the 12th century. Their influence was also felt as far as thezone of the lakes and the inundations of the Niger and even toWalata. However, a powerful rival rose up in the west, on thewestern stretch of the Niger: the empire of the Mandinka orMali. In 1325, the troops of the Mandinka emperor Gongo-Mussa or Kankan-Mussa captured Gao and the Songhoybecame vassals of the Mandinka. Ten years later, the dynasty ofthe Dia was replaced by that of the Sonni, Soun, Sarn, or Chi,who belonged, moreover, to the same family and whose first actwas to break the lines of vassalage which attached the Songhoyto the Mandinka; at any rate, Timbuktu and Walata remained inthe power of the latter State, as did the region of the lakes, theMassina, and Djenné. A century afterwards, in 1433, theTuareg chief Akil succeeded in driving the Mandinka garrisonfrom Timbuktu and in making himself master of the city; then, on30 January 1468, the Sonni Ali, called the Great, captured thefamous city from the Tuareg and around 1473 made himselfmaster of the Djenné and of the Massina, after annexing theregion of the lakes and Walata to his kingdom, thus for the firsttime giving Songhoy an extension which made of it aredoubtable competitor for Mandinka.

However, while Ali, drunk with his conquests, passed his time indebauchery and in persecuting the Muslims – though he was Muslimhimself, he left a reputation for impiety among his correligionists – theking of the Mossi of Yatenga came to ravage the Massina (1477)and advanced as far as Walata, which he pillaged (1480). Thishardy incursion across his kingdom made the Sonni Ali reflect, andhe found nothing better to enable him in the future to relieve Walatarapidly, than to connect this city with Timbuktu by a canal startingfrom Ras-el-ma which was to measure nearly 250 kilometres inlength. While he was beginning to have it excavated, he was

Bust, 14th century.Interior delta of Niger, Mali.Musée Dapper, Paris.

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Statue (Tabwa).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 54 cm.Felix Collection.

Standing on a throne, this ancestral statue was likely stored inthe chief’s hut.

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Statue (Lega).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 14.3 cm.Private collection.

This man, who appears to be walking both forwards andbackwards, falls amongst the Lega statues used during esotericinitation rites.

Statue (Bwile, Tumbwe).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, brass nails, glass, height: 36.2 cm.Felix Collection.

Ancestral female figure.

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informed that the Mossi of the Yatenga had again invaded hisStates; he immediately marched against them and succeeded inmaking them retrace their steps, but in the course of the expeditionhe was drowned crossing a torrent on 6 November 1492.

Here we will leave the history of the Songhoy, which we will takeup again in the following chapters, and we shall see whathappened from the 7th to the 15th century on the upper Niger andat the interior of the bend of this river.

TThhee MMaannddiinnkkaa EEmmppiirree

On the left bank of the upper Niger, nearly midway betwen Siguiriand Bamako, is the village of Kangaba, also called Joliba orJeliba, from the name of the great river of the borders of which itis situated.10 This village serves as the customary residence of thechief of a Mandinka or Malinke family of the Kelta group that hasexercised the power there for more than thirteen centuries, with asingle interruption of fifteen years from 1285 to 1300. It isprobably the most ancient dynasty of the world still in power. Only,after having been a simple chief of a canton, then head of akingdom, and finally of a veritable empire, the mansa of Kangabahas descended the curve, becoming again a modest king or chiefof a province, to be nothing more today than the humble chief ofa canton, as was his most distant ancestor towards the beginningof the 7th century.

However, this little village of the upper Niger was, during severalhundreds of years, the principal capital of the vastest empire that

was ever known in Africa and of one of the most considerable thathas ever existed in the whole world, the empire of the Mandinkaor Mande or, to employ the name which Arab historians andgeographers have bequeathed to us and which is only the Fulaniform of the word “Mande”, the empire of the Mali or Melli.

Manding or Mande is properly the province of which Kangaba isthe capital and in which are found the famous gold mines of Boureor Boute, the Bitu of Arab authors. Its inhabitants bore, accordingto the dialect, the name of Mandenga, Mandinga, or Mandinka,from which we have made “Mandingue” [Mandinka in English] asthat of the people, and “Manding” as the name of the country;they are called Malinke by the Fulani, a form which we haveadopted to designate the Mandinka, properly speaking, and theirdialect, reserving the appellation of “Mandinka” or “Mande” forthe whole of the population called Wangara by the Arabs.

For several centuries, the mansa or kings of Manding carried onan obscure existence at Kangaba when, about 1050, the onewho then reigned was converted to Islam by an Almoravide,made a pilgrimage to Mecca and began to enter into relationswith the neighbouring states which were favourable to thegrowth of his power and to the development of his country, atthe same time ceasing to consider himself a vassal of the Empireof Ghana. Until then, it was principally the Bambuk who fur-nished the gold-dust for the commerce which enriched Ghanaand who undertook an active and continual exchange ofproducts between Sudan and North Africa. The Almoravides,having learned the ways of the Mali and having taught it to theMoroccan caravans, gave way for the Boure to become theprincipal source of production of the precious metal, which notonly contributed to fill the treasury of the king of Mali, but alsoopened new horizons for its people.

We learn from several authors that, in 1213, a mansa ofManding, named, according to some, Mussa and, according toothers, Allakoy, made a pilgrimage to Mecca. During his reign hereturned there three times, travels which did not fail to increase hisprestige and which indicate that he disposed of a certain fortune.

But the riches of the king of Kangaba and the reputation of thegold mines of the Boure excited envy. Profiting by the weakness ofthe immediate successors of Mussa, called Allakoy, the king ofSoso, Sumanguru, undertook and accomplished, around 1224,the conquest of Manding, which he brutally annexed to his state.However, Sundiata Keita, also called Maridiata, grandson ofMussa, resolved to make his country independent, which hesucceeded in doing. After procuring the alliance of the Mandinkachiefs who resided in the west, south, and east of Kangaba, andbringing them voluntarily or by force to obey him, he recruited fromamong them the elements of a powerful army, at the head of

Head of a queen (Yoruba), 12th-15th century.Nigeria.Terracotta, height: 25 cm, diameter: 17 cm.The National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Ife.

Upon discovering these figures in 1957 at Ita Yemoo, further excavations weredone. A shrine largely composed of worn-out grindstones was discoveredduring the first season along with other terracotta sculptures. Of the four headsfound, two wore crowns, indicating that at least two queens existed. This headonce bore a crest on the front of the crown, much like the brass figure on anOoni from the same site.

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Statue (Soninke), 11th century.Mali.Wood, height: 167 cm.De Grunne Collection.

The Soninke were in the Bandiagara area before theDogons, which is where they settled in the 11th centuryupon fleeing the Muslims at the decline of the Ghanaempire. This ancient statue either represents an ancestor,clan founder, religious chief, or a well-known warrior.

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Male figure (Bamileke).Cameroon.Wood, height: 125 cm.Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz,Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.

The swollen belly, which contrasts the skinny arms andsimple feet, is the most striking feature of this seatedwooden figure. Usually, in accordance with this size andstyle, figures such as this represent the inaguration of a newruler. This particular piece appears to have originated in asouthern kingdom.

From the inauguration, the figures are used inceremonial and cult activities which vary greatly dependingon the kingdom. Female figures of this type are alsorepresented and seem to match the male forms as a pair.However, the female forms are more varied and are oftendepicted as pregnant.

In this case, the distension of the stomach is ratherunusual, even though male commemorative figures usuallyhave swollen bellies. Though, this should not be viewed asa case of a hermaphrodite, but rather a regal figure with ametaphysical dimension.

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which he marched against his ephemeral suzerain. The twoprinces met in 1235 at Kirina, not far from Koulikoro, near theNiger, where Sumanguru was defeated and killed. Without losingany time, Sundiata continued his victorious march, entered Sosoas master, pushed on as far as Ghana which he took anddestroyed (1240), chiefly with the aim of bringing upon himself therenown that attached to that ancient capital of a glorious empire,thus destroying the base of a powerful State. He was not contentto merely be a great warrior: tradition says that he gave all hisefforts to the development of agriculture, that he introduced into hiscountry the raising and weaving of cotton and that he caused themost absolute security to reign from one end of his kingdom to theother. This remarkable prince perished in his capital around 1255,the victim of an accident during a public festival.

His successor, the mansa Oule, renewed the tradition inauguratedby Baramendana and went to Mecca, at the same time carryingthe limits of the nascent empire farther west and incorporating intoit the Bambuk, the Boundu and the larger part of the valley of theGambia. From 1285 to 1300, a usurper reined, the only onewho is mentioned in the course of the long line of the Keïta. Hewas a serf named Sakura but continued the work of his mastersand predecessors, pushing the Mandinka conquest towards thenortheast in the Massina and the province of Djenné, and towardsthe northwest as far as the lower Senegal, disputing the Tekrur withthe kings of Diara and making vassals of them, engaging in directcommercial relations with Tripolitania and Morocco and alsoaccomplishing the pilgrimage to Mecca, only to be assassinatedon his return, near Jibuti, by the Danakil who grudged him hisgold. His companions dried his body to conserve it and broughtit back by the Wadai as far as Kuka, in Bornu; the king of the lattercountry sent out messengers to Manding to inform the court andpeople of the news and an embassy was dispatched fromKangaba to Kuka to bring back the remains of Sakura; he was

Karan Wemba mask (Mossi).Burkina Faso.Wood, pigments, height: 106 cm.Chambeaud Collection.

Pabre is the mythic princess who assisted in the foundation of the Yatengakingdom. She is represented symbolically with this mask.

Pair of statues (Mossi).Wood, height of the tallest: 41.5 cm.Private collection.

Generally, statues in African art hold static positons, making the dynamic postureof these statues rare. Mossi figures are most often associated with fertility.

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given the honour of royal burial of the Keïta. His people owed himthis testimony of their admiration and gratitude.

The Keïta once again occupied the throne. One of them, Gongo-Mussa or Kankan-Mussa, who reigned from 1307 to 1332,brought the power of the Mandinka Empire to its apogee. Towardsthe end of his life, in 1324, he went to Mecca with a greatcortege, passing by the Tuat and Cairo and arousing interest andcuriosity everywhere along the route. In the Holy Land he met anArab of a Granada family, named Ibrahim-es-Saheli, whom hepersuaded to accompany him to Sudan. The return took place thefollowing year, by Ghadames, where El-Mamar, a descendant ofthe founder of the dynasty of the Almohades, had gone to meetthe Negro sovereign; at the latter’s invitation, EI-Mamer joined theimperial cortege and went with it as far as Manding.

Before Gonga-Mussa had time to arrive at the Niger, he learnedthat, in his absence, his lieutenant Sagamandia had just capturedGao (1325). Thus he decided to enter the city to receive thehomage of the Dia Assibai, who gave him his two sons ashostages, one of whom was to return to Gao ten years later tofound the dynasty of the Sonni and shake off the tutelage of theManding. As EI-Mamer showed that he was shocked at themediocrity of the building – a simple straw-roofed hut – whichserved as a mosque for the Muslims of Gao, the mansa invitedEs-Saheli, who combined the profession of architect with that ofpoet, to build a house of prayer more worthy of the Most High.So Es-Saheli constructed at Gao a brick mosque with acrenelated flat roof and a pyramidal minaret which, according totradition, must have been the first Sudanese edifice of this type soextensively found today.

Gongo-Mussa then went to Timbuktu, which he annexed to hisempire at the same time as Walata. At Timbuktu, Es-Saheli alsobuilt a mosque with a flat roof and a minaret; he also constructeda great square building, with a flat roof and a cupola, to serve asan audience room for the sovereign of Manding for when heshould wish to sojourn in Timbuktu. This building was called themadugu (ground of the master) and its site is still pointed out today.It was the occasion of an important transformation in Sudanesearchitecture: until then, according to EI-Mamer, who later narratedhis journey to his friend Ibn Kaldoun, the only constructions thatwere known were cylindrical huts with conical roofs of straw, stillscattered about in our day in nearly all of Negro Africa. In Ghanaitself, according to Bekri, this was the only type of habitation thathad ever existed aside from the stone houses of the royal quarters;in Timbuktu, Djenné, and Kangaba, it was the same. The maduguand the mosques built by Es-Saheli were found to be remarkable.There was an effort to imitate them in all Sudanese centres and thistype of construction, to which an Egyptian origin has beenerroneously attributed, soon became generalised and penetrated

even to the barbarous populations of the Valley of the Volta, whereit assumed the somewhat special aspect of a sort of fortified castle.

It is told that Gongo-Mussa, very much satisfied with the work ofhis architect, gave him in payment 12,000 mithkals of gold,according to Ibn Kaldoun, or 40,000 mithkals according to IbnBatuta, that is to say, 54 kilos of the precious metal according tothe former or 180 kilos according to the latter. Es-Saheli followedhis generous master as far as Kangaba, constructing for himanother madugu en route at Niani, which was at this epoch thesecond capital of the Empire and the site of which is shown, stilldesignated under the name of “Niani-Madugu”, betweenNiamina and Koulikoro. After this the Arab architect returned toTimbuktu where he died in 1346.

Gongo-Mussa himself died in 1332. At this date the MandinkaEmpire occupied nearly the same area as the whole of the terri-tories of French West Africa and the foreign colonies enclosed bythem, with the exception of the southern countries covered by thedense forest and the regions situated at the centre of the Bend ofthe Niger. The master of this immense Negro state was in friendlyand constant relations with the greatest Muslim potentates ofNorth Africa, notably with the Merinide sultan of Morocco.Shortly before his death, Gongo-Mussa had sent an embassy toFez, to congratulate Abul Hassane on the victory that he had justwon over Tlemcen, and the sultan of Fez had, in return, dis-patched one to Manding, where it arrived in 1336 under the

Figure with mudfish head (Benin).Nigeria.Brass, height 38 cm.Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.

Standing on massive, ill-formed feet with a frontal piercing, the skirt of thisfigure extends at the left with two hanging tabs, which is common of Beninfashion. A necklace and bandolier is formed by large beads and the figure isholding the remnants of a snake with both hands. The whiskers on the head ofthe mudfish are reminicent of the European hair so often represented in Beninfigures. Like Europeans, mudfish were viewed as messenegers of the godOlokun who sent both wealth and children from across the sea. When the waterdries up, the mudfish retreats into the mud and vibrantly reappears upon thefirst rain. This behaviour makes them suitable figures to be intermediariesbetween the world of the living and the dead.

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Boho-na-bwete reliquary figure (Kota Mahongwe).Gabon.Wood, brass, height: 53 cm.Aura Collection.

In the 1920s, the most beautiful specimens of boho-na-bwete(trans: face of the Bwete ancestor) were discovered in the littlevillage of the Mékambo area in the eastern frontier near theCongo-Brazzaville. The Kota Mahongwe reliquaries come in twotypes, “tall” figures like this one which have large ribs thatrepresent founding families, and “small” figures which havedistinctive facial morphologies that represent the less importantcitizens. These reliquaries were placed atop baskets whichcontained valued ancestral skulls, which belonged to the familialpropitiatory cult; they were held on by fibre cords.

Reliquary statue (Kota), obamba style.Wood and copper sheets, height: 56 cm.Brought back from Africa between 1905 and 1910 by M.A.Larsonneur, private collection.

Made of coloured copper sheets, this Kota statue renders apowerful and agressive impression. The metal used by theAfrican artists to create this sculpture comes from copper platesimported by the Europeans. Another concave face has beencarved on the other side of this statue.

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Reliquary statue (Mahongwe).Wood and copper, height: 43.2 cm.Private collection.

This statue represents the Mahongwe artists’ ability to createstylised and abstract human representations. Found atop areliquary box, the shiny appearance of this statue, meant tofrighten potential enemies, is also covered with copper wires.

Mbulu ngulu reliquary figure (Kota).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, brass, copper, height: 54 cm.Private collection.

South of Gabon, the Kota Ndassa, from western Congo-Brazzaville, designed their reliquaries similarly to but with notabledifferences from those of the Obamba. While the face is still ovaland stylised two dimensionally, it is more elongated and has atetrahedral nose with large cabochon eyes. Rather than ascending,the top of the hat forms a sort of heart with the ascension of thespread shells. “Duck tail” pendants decorate the base and the faceplates are marked with repoussé streaks, which is actually moreimitative of versions from the north. These mbulu ngulu serve thesame ritual use as all other ancestral figures of the Kota.

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reign of the mansa Suleiman (1336-1359); the latter, wishing notto be outdone in politeness, sent sumptuous presents to hisMoroccan colleague.

It was under the reign of this Suleiman that the celebrated Arabtraveller and geographer Ibn Batuta visited Manding, in 1352-1353,from Walata to the capital of the Empire, returning by Timbuktu,Gao, the Aïr Mountains, and Tuat. He left us a detailed andapparently scrupulous account of his travels in which he ispleased to testify to the fine administration of the State, itsprosperity, the courtesy and the discipline of its officials andprovincial governors, the excellent condition of public finance,the luxury, and the rigorous and complicated ceremony of theroyal receptions, the respect accorded to the decisions of justiceand to the authority of the sovereign. In reading his account, onehas the impression that the Mandinka Empire was a real State,whose organisation and civilisation could be compared to thoseof the Islamic kingdoms or indeed to the Christian kingdoms ofthe same epoch.

The great historian Ibn Kaldoun, being at Biskra in 1353, learnedfrom well informed persons that the power of the mansa of the Maliextended over the entire Sahara, that the king of Wargla showeddeference to him and all the Tuareg paid him tribute. However,Gao had recovered its independence between the death ofGongo-Mussa and the arrival of Suleiman and, about a centurylater, the Mandinka Empire began to decline under the blows of theSonghoy, at the same time preserving enough of its power andprestige so that its sovereign and the king of the Portuguese, thenat the height of his glory, treated one another as equals.

TThhee MMoossssii EEmmppiirreess

Around the same epoch at which the mansa Baramendanaembraced the Islamic faith, that is to say, nearing the middle ofthe 11th century, other Negro States were being created, asidefrom all foreign or Islamic influence, in the central part of the Bendof the Niger where the density of population seems to havealways been considerable and where it exceeds, in our day, thatof all the other regions of Sudan: I mean the Mossi States. Therewere in fact two of them and there are still two of them today.One, whose sovereign resided at Wagadugu, was foundedtowards 1050 by an adventurer named Ubri; the other, withseveral successive capitals, including Wahiguya, was not defini-tively organised until approximately 1170 by one named Ya, inmemory of whom it was called Yatenga (land of Ya). The fact thatthe monarchs of the two kingdoms bore the same title morho-naba,that is to say, “chief of the country of the Mossi” and that theprincipal and dominant population of the one and the other iscomposed of Mossi has caused them to be mistaken for thesame; however, these two States have always been distinct andindependent of each other.

Each one took a certain time to be formed and to attain its fulldevelopment, but it seems established that, towards the beginningof the 14th century, they had nearly the same extent of territory andthe same organisation as today. Each consists of severalkingdoms, one of which exercises the hegemony over the others,while each kingdom is divided into a certain number of provincesat the head of each of which is placed a governor, who residessometimes in his own province and sometimes at the court of theking or naba.

So it is that the Mossi Empire of Wagadugu comprises four vassalkingdoms, besides the kingdom depending directly on theemperor or morho-naba. The latter kingdom is composed of fiveprovinces whose governors at the same time make up the imperialcouncil, one in the capacity of comptroller, the second as chief ofthe eunuchs, the third as chief of the infantry, the fourth as chief ofthe cavalry, and the fifth as guardian of the royal sepultures. Thiscouncil is completed by eleven ministers or grand dignitaries: thegrand-master of the army, the commandant of the imperial guard,the grand-priest of the local religion, the master of ceremonies, thechief of the servants, his assistant, the chief of the musicians, thechief of the butchers, the chief of the royal stables, the collector oftaxes and finally the trustee for the Muslims. Each of these offices,as that of governor, is hereditary in a given family. Each governorof a province has, like the morhonaba and like the vassal naba,his court of dignitaries and ministers.

This organisation, which still functions in our day in Wagaduguand in Yatenga, strangely resembles that which, according to

Head (Yoruba), 12th-15th century.Ife, Nigeria.Zinc-brass, 31 x 9.5 cm.The National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Ife.

Cast from a wax original over a clay core, the top of the head was cut to makeit fit an existing crown. The holes in the neck were most likely added so it couldbe attached to a column or, more likely, a wooden body. It is difficult to ascertainthe use of this type of head, though it may have been used to carry the crownand emblems of a deceased ruler to show that despite his death, the officecontinued. Heads like this may have also been used in the annual rites ofpurification and renewal of the ruler and his people.

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what we have been told by Arab authors and the writers fromTimbuktu, existed in Ghana, Diara, Gao, and in Manding, as wellas what could formerly be observed in Coomassie, Abomey, incertain States of sub-equatorial Africa, and also what can bestudied in some of the little kingdoms of the Senegal, principallythe Wolof, and elsewhere. This seems to constitute the type, per-haps more perfected at Mossi than elsewhere, of all the Statesworthy of that name, great or small, that have been developed allacross Negro Africa since the most remote antiquity. Withoutdoubt it is not inopportune to remark in this matter: if the Empiresof Ghana and Gao pass for having been founded by whites,without, however, the fact being absolutely certain, if they werelater headed by Sarakolle dynasties (the Sisse at Ghana, the Toureat Gao) who claimed to have whites among their ancestors, if theMandinka Empire, founded and directed by Negroes probably ofpure race, could nevertheless have benefited by some foreigninfluence through the canal of Islam, if the kingdoms of Ashantiand Dahomey, as those of the Senegal and of the Congo, mighthave received some inspiration from the Europeans, it seems verycertain that the Mossi empires have always been sheltered from allnon-Negro interference as well as non-Negro influence and conse-quently the political institutions which characterise them and whichare found almost all over Negro Africa are of indigenous origin.At most, it might be suggested that the first in date of these States,that of Ghana, had afterwards been more or less imitated by itsneighbours, then by the neighbours of these, without the latterbeing conscious of the imitation.

Contrary to the Empires of Ghana, of the Songhoy and ofManding, the Mossi States were not distinguished by extensiveterritorial conquests. However, that of Yatenga asserted its poweron more than one occasion: in 1333, the year following the deathof Gongo Mussa, the mohro-naba of the Yatenga attackedTimbuktu and sacked the city; in 1477, one of his successorsmade incursions into the Massina and the Bagana and pillagedWalata in 1480. Later, the Mossi victoriously resisted the askia ofGao, then the pashas of Timbuktu, and troubled the sovereigns ofManding and the Bambara kings of Segu. But their distant expedi-tions were only ephemeral attacks not followed by annexation.The history of these States unrolls almost entirely within their ownfrontiers but, to counterbalance this, they were never seriouslyattacked, and even the French occupation respected them,contenting itself with imposing a sort of protectorate on themorha-naba of the Wagadugu and of the Yatenga.

The Mossi empires are curious for still another thing; they have at alltimes constituted an impregnable rampart against the extension ofIslam, which has never had any hold on them. Although countingamong their subjects a certain number of Muslims, all of whom wereforeigners, and having created for these Muslims a special ministerat the court of the morha-naba, they have remained profoundly

attached to the old local religion and rightly pass as representing, inall its integrity, a civilisation which is uniquely and really Negro.

This is, briefly sketched, almost all that we know of the history ofNegro Africa during the Middle Ages. Assuredly, there have existed,during this long period, other Negro States than those which wehave mentioned; but either they were States of the second orderwhose history there is little interest in recounting in a general work,or else we know nothing of them but their name and, more often,we are ignorant even of this much. Thus it is, that what it is possibleto say of the African Negroes before the 15th century is reducedapproximately to what concerns the Negroes of the western Sudan.

For the rest, aside from some notions about Bornu, we barely knowanything except what we have been told by Arab authors aboutthe prosperity of the colonies founded by their compatriots and theHindu traffickers on the coast of Zanzibar, a prosperity whichseems to have attained a high degree in the Middle Ages, butwhich had its principal source in the slave trade and from whichthe civilisation of the African peoples in no way profited.

Nden fubara funerary screen (Kalabari).Nigeria.Wood, cane, raffia, natural pigment, 127 x 94 x 40.5 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

The Kalabari, from the 15th century on, were important middlemen of theAtlantic trade. Ivory, slaves, palm oil, and pepper; brassware imports,gunpowder, alcohol, and other Western goods all passed through the rivalhouses which controlled the trade. Positions of prominence were taken bymembers of the slave trading houses and Amachree I assumed kingship in thelate 18th century and was the first to be given this title in this way.

Shrines of this sort appear to have been based on two-dimensional imagesof European design. The families of the pilots of the European vessels madethese screens because they were able to observe European attitudes towardsroyal and religious images. The screens were maintained in the meeting-housewhich was the headquarters of the trading group and it was believed that thespirits of the dead returned every eight days to receive offerings and appraisethe affairs of the house. Here, the feather headdress of Alagba is represented aseach screen depicts a particular ancestor in a masquerade outfit. Flankingfigures wear headpieces of the Otoba (hippopotamus) masquerade, coral beads,and imported satin or floral textiles.

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Fragment of carved soapstone bowl, 13th-15th century.Zimbabwe.Steatite, 7.1 x 43.7 x 17.7 cm.South African Museum, Cape Town.

In Zimbabwe, particularly the Lower Valley, Great Enclosure, and Hill Ruin areas,soapstone bowls have been found in varying sizes. The primary function ofthese bowls likely had to do with ancestral rituals. Usually the vertical sides ofthe bowls are carved with geometric designs like hatching, cord, andherringbone patterns. The larger examples, bearing marks on the inside, likelycaused by cutting meat, range from 30 to 60 cm in diameter with vertical sidesof 7 to 10 cm. We are led to believe these bowls were used in ritual offeringsto the ancestors. This fragment shows the most complex frieze on any bowlfrom Great Zimbabwe with its procession of zebra followed by a bird andhuman-like figure leading a dog which faces a baboon; it could have totemicsignificance but the meaning remains a mystery.

Less common and more difficult to interpret are the bowls with naturalisticdesigns which are unlikely to have served as divining bowls due to their size andthe location of the designs. Southern Africa’s divining bowls are most oftenmarked along the rim where the designs can be seen easily, rather than on thevertical walls.

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Carved soapstone bird, 13th-15th century.Zimbabwe.Steatite, height: 100 cm.Groote Schuur Collection, Cape Town.

Great Zimbabwe was the capital of the Shona kingdomduring the 13th-15th centuries. Eight soapstone birds werefound in areas which were originally intended for privateand sacred functions. Despite the difference of each bird,they all share eagle and human elements, implying thattheir meaning includes the roles of both birds and humans.The uniqueness of each bird implies their representation ofspecific leaders; the posture of each bird may also implygender significance.

According to Shona belief, birds are messengers. Eagleslike the bataleur are thought to bring word from ancestorsand the ancestral spirits are meant to provide health andsuccess. The spirits, soaring to the heavens like an eagle,were thought to intercede with God over rain and othernational problems. The carvings serve as a stone metaphorfor the intercessionary role of royal ancestors as the abilityto directly communicate with God was the essence ofsacred leadership in Zimbabwe culture.

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MMoorree AAbbuunnddaanntt DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn

It was in the 14th century that European navigators began to landat a few places along the coast of tropical Africa, but it was hardlyuntil the following century and especially in the 16th that relationswere established between the Negroes and the whites and thatsomewhat rounded details reached Europe touching the newlydiscovered countries and their inhabitants.

However, compared to the preceding period, we have other andmore abundant sources of information on the condition of NegroAfrica subsequent to the Middle Ages. There are, to begin with,the recitals of the first navigators, such as Cadamosto; then thereare those of the Arab traveller, Leo the African, whose work, lessdocumented than the books of the previous Muslim geographersbut better known because of its Italian and French editions, consti-tuted, at least in what concerns Berbery, Egypt, Ethiopia, andSudan, the basis of numerous descriptions of Africa published inthe 16th and 17th centuries, from Marmol to Dapper. Then there arethe accounts or diaries of the numerous travellers, Portuguese,French, English, Dutch, Italian, etc., who wandered all over Africa,pushing farther and farther towards the interior and finallyinforming us about the equatorial and southern countries that theArab authors did not know. It should be added that oral traditionsand local chronicles are the richer in detail as the events theyrecount become more recent.

Profiting by all this documentation, accumulated during fivecenturies, I will try to sketch a summary picture of the history of theprincipal Negro peoples of Africa after the 15th century. Theimmensity of the domain where this history unrolled will prevent mefrom employing in a rigid fashion the chronological method andwill force me to turn back again each time that I must pass fromone region to another. Going from west to east and from north tosouth, I will begin with West Africa, continuing by central andeastern Sudan and terminating with sub-equatorial Africa.

TThhee MMaannddiinnkkaa aanndd SSoonngghhooyy EEmmppiirreess

In western Sudan, two great empires divided the supremacy atthe beginning of the 15th century: one, that of Manding, was

terminating the period of its apogee, while the other, that of theSonghoy, was on the eve of attaining it. The first still exercised,sometimes its direct authority, sometimes only its influence, overall the countries comprised between the Sahara to the north andthe great forest to the south, the Atlantic on the west and the 5°west longitude on the east. The second extended its power, withthe same alternatives, from this meridian in the west to the 2°east longitude in the east and from the Sahara in the north asfar south as a line going approximately from Hombori toKarimama on the lower Niger. Beyond this line, and as far asthe proximity of the coastal zone, was the domain of the twoMossi empires of Yatenga and Wagadugu and, farther to theeast, the kingdoms of the Gurma (or Gurmanche) and of theBergo or Borgu (or Berba. or Bariba), which were founded atnearly the same epoch as that of the Mossi States andpossessed a similar organisation, but with a more modest,though not negligible, destiny.

Without doubt, the first Sonni prince of the Songhoy, Ali-Kolen (orAli-Kolon or Ali-Golom) had, in 1335, shaken off, in part, thetutelage of Manding. However, the army of the Mandinkaemperor Mussa II, who in 1374 had succeeded Mari-Diata II,dead of the sleeping sickness, went to wage war as far as theeast of Gao and was even audacious enough to attack Omarben Idris, sultan of Bornu, all of which indicates that theMandinka Empire still enjoyed a certain strength. Ibn Khaldoun,who finished writing his History of the Berbers around 1395, saidthat in his time the Tekrur was vassal to the Mali prince Magan-

West Africa from the 15th Century toToday

Crest (Ejagham).Nigeria or Cameroon.Wood, antelope skin, basketry, iron, bones, pigment, 72 x 54 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Mamadu and that the “veiled Zenaga of the desert” paid tributeto him and furnished him with military contingents. Some fiftyyears later, the Wolofs declared to the Portuguese, DiegoGomez, that all the country that they knew belonged to themansa of Manding. Cadamosto, in 1455, confirms the fact thatin the middle of the 15th century the power of the latter extendedas far as the lower Gambia.

However, in 1435, the Tuareg chief Akil captured Arawan,Timbuktu, and Walata. A little later the emperor of Gao, Ali theGreat, after having taken Timbuktu from the Tuareg in 1468,entered Djenné as conqueror towards 1473 and took away fromthe authority of the mansa a good part of the Massina, where theFulani coming from Termes, obeying a chief of the Diallo family,had settled about the beginning of the 15th century, with the autho-risation of the Mandinka governor of Bagana.

Soon after, by the intermediary of the Portuguese officers Rio deCantor (Gambia) and Elmina (Gold Coast), there took place anexchange of presents, messages, and embassies between theemperor of Manding, who was then called Mamoud orMamudu, according to Joao de Barros, and the king of Portu-gal, John II, who mounted the throne in 1481, remaining thereuntil 1495.

Carved atal monolith (Bakor or Ekoi), 16th century.Cross River, Nigeria.Basaltic stone, height: 174 cm.Private collection, Brussels.

The attempt at separating the head from the torso with a deep, broad groovemakes this depiction of a human form nearly sculptural. The round eyes underthe heavy eyebrows, open mouth with protruding tongue, and bearded austereface indicate the role of the individual being portrayed. Known as Ebiabu, thisfigure stands for the society of the same name which was responsible forcarrying out death sentences.

Found almost exclusively in the abandoned village sites of the Bakorlinguistic area, is how these monoliths were named. Overall, they were arrangedin perfect, near segmented circles; however, when found in present-day villages,the monoliths were arranged in clusters of several stones or placed individuallyin the middle of the village near a large tree. In their original settings, the areaenclosed by the monoliths was used as a marketplace and communityplayground during the day and for secret ritual activities at night. Most weremoved from the old village sites and brought along to the new settlements ofthe communites. They have been dated to the time when the inland peoplewere brought prosperity by trade with Europeans in Calabar at the mouth of theCross River, in the 16th century. While these large stones represent deadancestors, they refer more specifically the lengendary figures of memorableevents, such as famous hunters or warriors.

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TThhee AAsskkiiaa MMoohhaammmmeedd

At the same epoch, in 1493, the Sonni dynasty was overturned atGao by a Sarakolle general, Mamadu or Mohammed Toure, ofthe Silla group, who became invested with the sovereignty underthe title of Askia. He was the first prince of a new dynasty whichwas to last a century.

The Askia Mohammed reigned from 1493 to 1529. He was aremarkable monarch in all respects, knowing how to bringprosperity to his States, developing there a civilisation whicharoused the admiration of Leo the African, who visited theSonghoy under his reign, towards 1507. Indeed, he was verywell seconded by his ministers and provincial governors, notablyby his brother Amar or Omar, whom he made his kanfari, that is,his principal lieutenant; but it is precisely in this choice of excellentcollaborators that great kings are recognised. Giving up thesystem of mass levies which were practiced by the Sonni Ali theGreat and which prevented the peasants from working the fields,he recruited a professional army among the slaves and prisonersof war, thus leaving the farmers on their lands all year round, theartisans at their trades and the merchants to their business.Showing a great respect for religious personages and scholars, hemade of Gao, of Walata and especially of Timbuktu and ofDjenné intellectual centres which radiated a brilliant luster, wherethe renowned writers of the Maghreb did not disdain to come tocomplete their studies and sometimes to settle permanently, as didthe celebrated Ahmed-Baba. Jurisconsults of value, like the El-Akitand the Bagayogo, the former of the white race, the latter of theblack, were educated at the schools of Timbuktu and a whole liter-ature developed there in the 16th and 17th centuries, whoseproducts are being revealed to us little by little with the discoveryof very interesting works, edited in Arabic at that epoch by theSarakolle or Songhoy Negroes, such as the Tarikh el-fettach andthe Tarikh es-Sudan.

The askia Mohammed was in continuous relations with theMoroccan reformer Merhili, who corresponded with him on the

Carved atal monolith (Bakor or Ekoi), 16th century.Cross River, Nigeria.Basaltic stone, height: 84 cm.Private collection, London.

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Queen figure (Bamileke), detail.Wood, beads, glass, height: 115 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Throne (Bamileke).Wood, plant fibres, and beads, height: 160 cm.Private collection.

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subjects of religion and politics and came to visit him at Gao in1502. This prince made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1497 andprofited by his journey to converse at length with Soyuti andother celebrated Muslim doctors; he consecrated a sum of100,000 gold dinars to pious alms and to the purchase of landwhere he had a hostel built for Sudanese pilgrims; finally hereached the height of his glory in receiving from the grand cherifof Mecca, then Moulai EI-Abbas, the investiture of Khalife “forthe Tekrur country,” that is, Sudan. The sherif even went so far asto send one of his nephews, Moulai Es-Sekli, a native ofBagdad,to Gao as ambassador from the kingdom of the Hedjazto the askia.

However, the empire of Gao reached a considerable territorialextension, mostly at the expense of the Mandinka Empire. As earlyas 1494 Amar, brother of Mohammed, had annexed the wholeof the Massina to the Songhoy, including the Fulani kingdom of theDiallo. In 1499, after having returned from Mecca and havingunsuccessfully attempted the conquest of Yatenga, the askia him-self captured the Bagana; in 1501, he conquered a part of thekingdom of Diara and, in 1508, he pushed on as far as Galam,that is to say, to the country of the Bakal on the Senegal.

KKoollii--TTeennggeellllaa

About the same epoch the Fulani chief Tengella, called by the titleof ardo by his compatriots and that of silatigui or siratigui by theMandinka, wandered from Termes to Kingui (province of Diara andof Nioro). Supported, probably, by the emperor of Manding, hepreached a revolt against the askia and made war on the king ofDiara because the latter accepted the suzerainty of the Songhoy.

Ntomo mask (Bambara).Mali.Wood, cowries, metal, height: 74.3 cm.Aura Collection.

This mask is a representation of the mother of mankind, Faro the watergoddess. It is from the Ntomo initiative society for non-circumcised young boys.

Mask (Yaure). Wood, height: 43 cm.O. Lecorneur, Paris.

This mask appears to be an artistic production of the Yaure because of thetwo lateral parts of the hairstyle which sit back and the crenate edge. Alsoexisting on some Bambara masks, the meaning of the comb-like stuctureremains unknown.

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The army of the askia, commanded by his brother Amar, marchedagainst Tengella and pursued him as far as Diara, where it defiedand killed him in 1512. The bands of the Fulani chief were rehabil-itated under the command of his son Koli, who, it is said,descended on his mother’s side from the Mandinka emperors; theytook refuge in the Badiar, to the northwest of the Futa-Jallon.

It is from here that Koli, at the head of his Fulani and numerousMandinka partisans, must have departed a little later to wrest theFuta-Toro from the last Sarakolle governors dependent on Diara,there founding a kingdom which he enlarged at the expense of theKaniaga and of the eastern part of the Jolof, and installing a Fulanior pagan dynasty, called the Denianke, who maintained thepower from 1559 to 1776. The princes of this dynasty, like theirancestor Tengella, bore the title of silatigui or siratigui, becomingsiratique in the accounts of French travellers and sitigui in thelanguage of the country. The mansa who then reigned inManding, Mamudu II, had implored the aid of King John III ofPortugal against the encroachments of Koli-Tengella on what he stillconsidered a part of his States; but John III contented himself withsending, in 1534, a simple ambassador, Peros Fernandez, toMamudu II instead of an army.

TThhee LLaasstt AAsskkiiaass

Having despoiled Manding of most of its northern dependencies,the askia Mohammed wanted to pursue his conquests towards theeast and penetrated the country of the Hausa, but there he wasless fortunate. First, with the aid of the kanta or king of the Kebbi,he took Katsena (1513) and imposed his suzerainty on the king ofAgades (1515), but he was then defeated by his ally the kanta,who, having become his enemy (1517), seized the larger portionof the Hausa provinces. About a century afterwards, the latterwere to recover their independence and the Aïr Mountains and theprovince of Agades was to become again what it formerly hadbeen: vassal to the Tuareg.

Mask (Lele).Wood, height: 35 cm.Private collection.

The encrusted finish of the almond-shaped eyes give this typical example of Leleartists give this oblate mask an enigmatic and distinguished expression.

Bochio statue (Fon).Benin.Wood, textile, aluminium, various materials, patina, height: 78 cm.Hugues Dubois Collection.

The Fon are protected by the entity of the Bochio, “spirit in the hood”.

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The askia Mohammed, however, had become blind and, on15 August 1529, he was dethroned by his own son Mussa.With this latter began a series of intestine struggles, civil wars,pillage and debauches, odious massacres, and useless militaryexpeditions which desolated the Songhoy and little by littleruined the magnificent edifice built up by the first askia. One ofthe sons of the latter, Daoud, who reigned from 1549 to 1583,tried to react against the habits of sanguinary tyranny andextravagant expenditures that had been introduced at the courtof Gao since the time of his brother Mussa; he reawakenedinterest in agriculture, encouraged science and study, and wasable to gain the friendship of the Sultan of Morocco, Ahmed Ed-Dehebi, who wore mourning garments at his death. He furtherbecame celebrated by acts of charity and generosity. But thedays of the Songhoy were counted.

Languishing Manding was no longer to be feared. This State hadfallen so low that Daoud could, in 1545-1546, before mountingthe throne of Gao, push the Songhoy army as far as the Mandinkacapital – we do not know whether it was Niani or Kangaba –which he entered after having put the mansa to flight, remainingthere a week and making the soldiers of the imperial residencefulfill his orders.

TThhee PPaasshhaass ooff TTiimmbbuukkttuu

But it was from Morocco that the fatal blow came to the Empireof Gao. For a long time, the Sultans of the Maghreb enviedthe Songhoy emperors for their possessions of salt at Tegaza,in the neighbourhood of those which are today exploited atTaodeni, to the southwest of the Tuat. At his accession (1578),the Sultan Ahmed Ed-Dehebi11 obtained from the askia Daoud,for 10,000 gold dinars, the privilege of exploiting these saltbeds for his own account during one year. The profit that heobtained was such that he resolved to make himself solemaster of them and, after the death of Daoud, he sent to Gao,

to the court of the latter’s successor, an embassy whose missionit was to gather information about the military forces of theSonghoy; at the same time he sent out an army of 20,000 menin the region of Tegaza which, however, was completelydecimated by hunger and thirst. In 1585, he had 200 infantryoccupy the salt lands but, not being able to nourish themselvesthere, they soon returned to Morocco. However, he held to hisproject and became even more ambitious; he no longercoveted only the salt of the Sahara, but also the gold ofSudan, this gold whose so-called conquest gained for him thesurname by which he is known.

In 1590, he sent out a column of infantry armed with muskets,the majority of whom were not Moroccans, as was for a longtime believed, but Spanish renegades commanded by one ofthem named Juder, who was promoted for the occasion to therank of pasha. The Spaniards received from the Arabs orArabised inhabitants of Timbuktu the surname of Rumat or Arma(throwers of projectiles), and the latter word is still borne todayin this city and this region by the members of a sort of noblecaste who, although now true Negroes, claim to be descendedfrom the warriors of Juder.

These warriors had left Marrakech on 29 October 1590, in thenumber of 3,000. When they arrived at the banks of the Nigeron 1 March 1591, they were no more than a thousand but theyhad firearms, a thing until then unknown in Sudan. Thanks to theirmuskets, they could easily triumph over the imposing army of theaskia Issahak or Ishak II near Tondibi between Burem and Gao on12 March 1591. The latter numbered 30,000 infantry and12,500 cavalry according to the Tarikh es-Sudan, but only 9,700infantry and 18,000 cavalry according to the Tarikh el-Fettach,and they had only swords, javelins, lances and shields of leatheror braided straw to oppose the balls of the Spanish renegades.The askia had indeed taken the precaution to have cows putbetween the enemy and his own troops, in order to cover them,but the unfortunate beasts, maddened by the fire of the musketry,took flight, precipitated themselves with lowered heads on theSonghoy warriors and only contributed to hasten their rout, whichwas complete.

The askia, abandoned by his ministers and relatives, took refugeat Gurma, where he was assassinated by the inhabitants. Juderentered Gao without meeting any new resistance but, only moder-ately charmed by the aspect of this Negro village and finding, ashe wrote to the Sultan Ahmed, that the house of the chief of theass-drivers of Marrakech was worth more than that of the palaceof the askia, he went on to establish himself at Timbuktu, which heentered on 25 April 1591. The empire of the Songhoy hadbecome such that a thousand Spaniards armed with guns sufficedto lay it low.

Head from Benin, 16th century.Brass, height: 22 cm.

The 16th century heads from Benin are characterised by the collar which coversthe neck but leaves the chin open. Arriving on the occidental market towardsthe end of the 19th century, the sophistication and delicacy of the castingcontinue to intrigue scholars and amateurs alike.

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Statuette (Agni).Wood, beads, and gold, height: 35 cm. Private collection, Paris.

This statuette may have been used to transmit messages tospirits who were believed to rule the world. The beads andgold pearls are generally associated with the Baloué, butthe features and hairstyle suggest the handiwork of anAgni artist.

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Statue (Koulango).Ivory Coast.Wood, height: 49 cm. Private collection.

The Koulango, orginially from the Volga, live in thenortheast of Ivory Coast. Their artistic production isconfined and not well-known, adopted from a stylereminicent of the Akan group.

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Epa helmet mask (Yoruba).Wood, painting, 120 x 39.5 cm. Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Sango shrine figure with musicians (Yoruba), early 20th century.Wood, height: 73.5 cm.Ian Auld Collection.

The Yoruba deity of thunder and lightning, controller of rain-fall,Sango, receives these carvings from his devotees. Shrines werenot only dedicated to pacify him, but also to harness his dynamicpower for communal benefit. The female figure standing hererepresents a priestess meant to appease the fecund principle ofnature; she shakes rattle-gourds along with other musicians inpraise of Sango. The high-crest coiffure, worn by both male andfemale priests, identifies her as a medium waiting for Sango’sdescent. The blue dye of the coiffure and pelvis of the figure, aswell as the headdresses of the musicians are intended to beautifythe carving, it serves as a modern substitute for indigo blue,which is a colour the Yoruba highly value due to its associationwith coolness.

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Then began what was very improperly called the “Moroccandomination of Sudan”: first, there was no domination except overa small part of the former Songhoy, in the riparian region of theNiger from Djenné to Gao, all the upstream region, called Dendi,having preserved its autonomy with an independent askia at itshead; moreover this domination lasted only 70 years, at the endof which the authority of the pashas had become entirely nulloutside of the city of Timbuktu; finally it could not be called“Moroccan”, because only the pashas of the first 22 years(1591-1612) were, in part at least, designated by the Sultan ofMorocco; the orders of the latter were never executed, even bythe first pashas, and the taxes levied on the inhabitants werenever sent to Marrakech; the other pashas, who succeeded oneanother to the number of 21 during 48 years (1612-1660), werebrought to power either by themselves or by their soldiers and,like them, were so little Moroccan that the majority of them didnot understand Arabic, the language they made use of amongthemselves being Spanish, later becoming Songhoy, as we aretold by the Tarikh el-Fettach.

The mansa Mamudu III, in 1599, wanted to profit by the anarchywhich had reigned since the defeat of the askia Issahak II andattempted, with the aid of Hamadu-Amina, chief of the Fulani ofthe Massina, to capture the Djenné. The pasha Ammar sent hissoldiers against them. The Mandinka and the Fulani bravelyresisted the fire of the Arma, but the intervention of the inhabitantsof Djenné, who sided against Mamudu, obliged him and his alliesto beat a retreat. At all events, this demonstration of the Mandinkaemperor sufficed to cause the pashas to respect him in the future.

In reality, the conquerors led to Sudan by Juder and his firstsuccessors, formed a troop of men who, after having putthemselves at the orders of the Sultan of Morocco, in denyingtheir faith and their country with the hope of profitable adventures,gave free course to their instincts, once left to themselves inSudan. They were especially notable for their anarchy and theirlack of discipline, their pillage, cupidity, debauchery, their per-secutions of Muslims and scholars, and their talent for disorgani-sation. The intervention of this scum of Europe was one of thesaddest blows given to the Sudanese civilisation. According tothe best Muslims of Timbuktu, the regime of the pashas, if it hadlasted longer, would have brought total ruin to what had beenpainfully erected by the mansa of Manding and some of theaskias of Gao.

After 1660, this regime no longer raged except at Timbuktu,which had to submit to the caprices of these mixed Spaniards andNegroes for another 120 years. The Tedz-kiret en-nisianenumerated 128 of these pretended pashas for the period of 90years from 1660-1750: these figures eloquently characterise theregime. From about 1660, all the petty tyrants who had the

audacity to have public prayers said in their name at the mosques,conserved a semblance of authority only on condition of payingtribute to the Bambara king of Segu, who made the law to thesouth, or of pouring forth heavy contributions to the TuaregOulmidden who ruled in the north and who did not abstain frompillaging Timbuktu each time that hunger pressed them. After1780, the very title of pasha disappeared and there was nothingmore in Timbuktu than a sort of mayor, chosen among the Arma,sometimes by the Bambara, sometimes by the Tuareg, sometimesby the Fulani of the Massina, according as one or the other wasmaster for the day. For the city it was a period of continual in-security and profound misery which was not to come to an enduntil a little more than a century later, in 1894, with the occupationof the old Sudanese city by Major Joffre, who was Marshal ofFrance in 1922.

TThhee BBaammbbaarraa KKiinnggddoommss

I have just spoken of the Bambara as exercising the authority tothe south of Timbuktu, dating from about 1660. This people, abranch of the Wangara group, spread out on both sides of theNiger from Bamako to the region of Djenné and the Massina,had been at first subject to Manding, becoming, at least in part,vassal to the Songhoy from the epoch of the Sonni Ali the Greatand especially that of the askia Mohammed. Having gained theirindependence towards the middle of the 17th century, they thenformed two States. One had its capital at Segu and extendedalong the Niger between this river and the Bani; the other calledKaarta, had its domain to the west of the first, at the north of theupper Senegal. At first, both were governed by princes of thesame family, that of the Kulubali, the western portion bearing thename of Kulubali-Masasi.

Towards 1660, the king Biton Kulubali settled at Segu. The mansaof Manding, who was then Mama-Magan, wanted to destroy inhis nest this neighbour whom he guessed to be dangerous and

Head (Ashanti), King Kofi-Karikari’s treasure, 1867-1874.Ghana. Gold, investment casting, 18 cm.Wallace Collection, London.

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Figure (Oni), late 16th century.Nigeria.Zinc-brass, 37 cm.Museum of Ife Antiquities, Ife.

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Memorial head (Akan), 17th-19th centuries.Ghana.Terracotta, 33 x c. 19 x c. 18 cm.Private collection.

Female artists created memorial terracottas in honourof deceased chiefs and other important elders, bothmale and female. Surviving members of the deceasedwere also represented. Rather than being placed on thegrave, the sculptures were more commonly put in asacred grove near the cemetary where libations andfood and prayer offerings were offered ritually.

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Mboko cup bearer (Luba).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 35 cm.Private collection.

The soothsayer Bilumbu is evoked here, possessing his spirit and consulting hiscalabash. White sacred clay Mpemba and lunar light, a sign of purity andperceptiveness, are in the coup; mediums use this on their faces. Full of magic,the statues are capable of identifying and punshing thieves and sorcerers, someare even said to have been capable of speech and movement.

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Cup bearer (Yoruba).Nigeria.Wood, pigment, pearls, height: 37 cm.Chambaud Collection.

Olowé of Isé made this cup which illustrates maternity and can serve threefunctions: holding presents for important people, offerings to the Yoruba gods,Orishas, or palm nuts for the Fa divination.

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about 1667 he attacked the fortress built by Biton. The siege stillcontinued in 1670 and Mama-Magan, despairing of its comingto an end, retired, following the right bank of the Niger; Bitonpursued him as far up as Niani, cornered him at the river andforced him to conclude a treaty by the terms of which theMandinka sovereign engaged himself not to advance in the futuredownstream from Niamina, Biton, on his side, promising not to goupstream from this point. This event marked the end of theMandinka Empire, which from now on, reduced to the Malinkeprovinces of the upper Niger and the upper Gambia, ceased tocount among the powerful States of Negro Africa.

Biton raised a professional army on the pattern of those of the askias,by means of ton-dion or government slaves, and organised a Stateflotilla, utilising the fishermen, called Somono, and their small craft.He set his authority solidly on all the countries between Niamina andDjenné, captured the Bagana, and imposed his suzerainty on theMassina and Timbuktu. In 1710, he died of tetanus resulting froman accident, and with him, his dynasty came to an end.

In fact, his army massacred his children and relatives and tookover power; but it became divided, part sustaining the chief of theinfantry and the other part the master of the cavalry, until a servantof the former royal family, named Ngolo or Molo Diara,succeeded in having himself proclaimed king and founded a newdynasty (1750). One of his successors, Monson (1792-1808),made himself especially celebrated by the war that he waged onhis congeners, the Bambara of the Kaarta, and by a punitiveexpedition that he conducted in 1803 to Timbuktu, following therefusal of this city to pay its annual tribute to Segu.

It was under his successor Da that the Massina freed itself fromBambara suzerainty to constitute an independent kingdom underthe command of the Fulani marabout Seku-Hamadu, of the Bari orSangare family (1810). The latter captured Djenné, constructed acapital at Hamdallahi on the right bank of the Bani, and wiselyorganised the administration and the finances of his kingdom. Heconverted to Islam the Fulani who until then had obeyed an ardoof the Diallo family and succeeded in substituting at Timbuktu hisown influence for that of the king of the Bambara at Segu. In fact,he captured Timbuktu in 1826 or 1827, but his compatriots werehated and the Fulani garrison which had been installed therecould not remain. He was to have only two successors: his sonHamadu-Seku and his grandson Hamadu-Hamadu, who wasvanquished and put to death in 1862 by the Tukulor conquerorEI-Hadj Omar.

As for the Bambara kingdom of Segu, it disappeared at the sameepoch and in the same fashion as the Fulani kingdom of theMassina: EI-Hadj Omar, in fact, conquered Segu on 10 March1861, and the following year he seized Ali himself, the last kingof the Diara dynasty, who, having taken refuge with Hamadu-Hamadu, had, in the face of the common danger, become theally of his former enemy. The Bambara kingdom of Kaarta hadan even shorter duration. Its beginnings went back, like those ofthe kingdom of Segu, to 1660 or 1670. Less than a century after-wards, in 1754, King Sie captured Diara. His successorsbecame masters of the greater part of the other provinces situatedto the north of the upper Senegal and took Bambuk and Kita fromthe Mandinka.

TThhee TTuukkuulloorr CCoonnqquueesstt

It was towards the same epoch, in 1776, that a revolution took placein the Futa-Toro which was to give a powerful impetus to theIslamisation of the Senegalese peoples. The Tukulor Negroes, themajority of whom had been Muslims for six centuries, triumphed overthe pagan Fulani; the iman or almani Abdulkader achieved adecisive victory over Soule-Bubu, the last prince of the Deniankedynasty founded by Koli, and established in the Futa-Toro a theocraticState, in the form of an elective monarchy, which was to last until1881, the date of its annexation to the French colony of the Senegal.

However, the Bambara-Masasi had continued to progress andtowards 1810 they succeeded in momentarily establishing theirsuzerainty over the Khasso (region of Kayes), where the Diallo, halfFulani and half Mandinka, had founded a little State. In 1846,Kandia, king of the Bambara of the Kaarta, had established hiscapital at Nioro, but in 1854, this capital was taken by El-HadjOmar, Kandia was put to death by the Tukulor conqueror and thekingdom of the Masasi ceased to exist.

Head of a Queen Mother (Benin), 16th century.Nigeria.Brass, height: 35 cm. The Board of Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside,National Museums Liverpool, Liverpool.

Around the beginning of the 16th century, in honour of his mother, Idia, the ObaEsigie introduced the term Queen Mother to the Benin. The original memorialheads made of brass in this form are attributed to this period and the peakedheaddress of coral beads assures us that it represents the Queen Mother.

Cockerels were represented on altars with the brass head representationsin the Queen Mother’s palace because it was believed that she held a specialbond with them. Over time, it appears that the brass heads became a linkbetween the ordinary and spirit worlds, but there is no known tradition ofpersonal portraiture.

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Statue (Jukun).Nigeria.Wood, height: 8 cm.S. & J. Calmeyn Collection.

These statues, representing ancestors, chiefs, their wives, andservants, are displayed during the funerals of chiefs to fight againstdisasters (epidemics, drought, war) or for harvest celebrations.

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Statue (Lobi).Ivory Coast.Wood, height: 81.5 cm.Private collection.

The Thil, an ancestor or protective spirit, passes from generationto generation and only reveals itself to someone under specialcircumstances (dreams or unusual events). The seer is then ableto tell others where the statue should be built.

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This EI-Hadj Omar, who thus captured three powerful States inthe space of eight years, was a Tukulor of the Torodo caste, theone which had directed a movement of revolt against theDenianke. Born at Aloar, in the province of Podor around 1797;he undertook, in 1820, a journey to Mecca where he wasreceived into the brotherhood of the Tijania and invested withthe title of “Khalife” for Sudan; on his return he sojourned withthe Kanemi, master of Bornu, with Mohammed-Bello, the Tukuloremperor of the Sokoto, and with Seku-Hamadu, the Fulani kingof the Massina. Returning to West Africa only in 1838, he firstsettled in the Futa-Jallon, then in 1848 in Dinguiray, where hewas actively occupied in constituting an army. It did not take himlong to force the Mandinka to submit to his authority, capturingthe Bambuk, and then under the pretext of converting theBambara, who had always remained pagans as they are stilltoday, he marched against the Masasi and entered Nioro asconqueror (1854).

After having made propositions of alliance, which were repulsed,to Hamadu-Hamadu, then king of the Masasi, and to Turukoro-Mari, the Bambara king of Segu, he turned against the Khassoand came, in April, 1857, with some 20,000 men to besiegeMedine, the capital of this State. The siege was sustained duringthree months with a rare valiance by Diuka-Sambala, king· of theKhasso, and the French mulatto Paul Holle, commandant of the fortthat the French possessed in that locality. Governor Faidherbearrived on 18 July with reinforcements and put to flight El-HadjOrnar. The latter, in passing by the Boundu and the Futa-Toro,attacked in vain the French post of Matam in 1859, where hefound himself face to face with Paul Holle. He then returned toNioro, marched against the Beledugu and, after a whole series ofcombats between the Bambara and the Fulani, captured Segu, on10 March 1861. Without resting, he turned his arms againstHamadu-Hamadu, made himself master of Hamdallahi and hadthe king of the Massina’s head cut off (1862).

Always thirsty for new conquests, he went to pillage Timbuktu,came back to the Massina where his cruelty to the Fulani exciteda revolt, was blocked in Hamdallahi, succeeded in getting awayunder cover of a fire which he lit himself, and finished by miserablyperishing in a grotto where he had been cornered by the Fulani inSeptember, 1864.

An empire founded under such conditions, and not even having asa base the homeland of its founder, could not last. EI-Hadj had left,in each one of the kingdoms conquered by him, one of his sonsor relatives as governor; all were jealous of one another or did notagree except in the jealousy of one of them, Ahmadu, who wasinstalled in Segu and who claimed the supreme authority. Thepeoples oppressed by EI-Hadj, his sons and his bands, seized alloccasions to revolt against the detested yoke; pagans and

Plaque (Benin), 16th century.Nigeria.Brass, 44 x 32 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

The support pillars of the palaces at the end of the 17th century were made ofwood and covered with brass palques. Brass, similarly to coral and ivory, was amaterial with royal connotations and its use was strictly controlled. Many of theplaques appear to have been broken when being pulled from the pillars, as nailswere hammered through. Recurrent scenes of ritual were more common thanunique events, though it is difficult to precisely identify many of them now.

A single figure is seen here with an elaborate coiffure; the briad whichappears to be flying is unusual in terms of the usual, static art of Benin leadingus to believe it may have been an accident. The sword, unusual bag and bell aresupported by a tasselled belt which crosses the chest and hangs from the waist.To the knee, both legs appear to be painted or tattooed in a fashion onlyotherwise seen on nude pages. Despite the clothing on this figure, his genitalsare exposed and suggest that he, too, may be a page. The pages remained nudeuntil the Benin Oba made them men and gifted them with land, wives, and richclothing. Images with hats, beards, and their hands at their lips resembleEuropean heads, posed similarly to other images on the plaque.

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Muslims united against the cruel despotism of Ahmadu and hisbrothers. Thus the French troops, sent to put order into this chaos,were welcomed as liberators. Lieutenant-Colonel Archinardentered Segu, 6 April 1890; becoming Colonel, he occupiedNioro on 1 January 1891, and, promoted to general, hecaptured the city of Bandiagara on 29 April 1893, which theTukulors had made their capital in the Massina.

TThhee WWaannddeerriinnggss ooff SSaammoorrii

French peace succeeded Tukulor adventure. Only one seriousobstacle menaced it, from the direction of the south, in the personof the Mandinka conqueror Samori Toure, a native of Wassulu,who, gaining the east in the measure that the French disturbed hisposition in the west, devastated Kong, the Gimini, and the regionof Bonduku (Ivory Coast) in 1894-1895, attacking the Britishtroops of the Gold Coast in 1897, then retreating towards thenortheast of Liberia where, after a struggle of nearly eighteenyears, he was at last made prisoner on 29 September 1898 bya Captain Gouraud, and Captain Gaden, who went on tobecome general and governor of the colonies respectively.

TThhee PPeeoopplleess ooff tthhee WWeesstt CCooaasstt

Until now, I have spoken only of the peoples constituting the greatStates: the Sarakolle, the Mandinka, the Songhoy, the Mossi, theBambara, the Gurmanche, the Berba, the Fulani, and the Tukulors.There were, however, many others in West Africa which, thoughnot having had such brilliant fortunes, in no way deserve to bepassed over in silence. If we follow the coastal zone after themouth of the Senegal, we first meet the Wolofs, divided into threekingdoms, of small extent, in truth, the Walo with its prince bearingthe title of brae, the Wolof with its bur, and the Cayor with itsdamel, who were at all times remarkable for their organisation, thesecond of which, especially, played an important role on severaloccasions. Farther to the south are the Baol, formed of Wolof andSerer groups obeying a king who bears the title of tegne. Beyondwas the great Serer kingdom of Sine, where agriculture hadalways been flourishing.

Then we arrive at a scattering of tribes, for the most part verybackwards and often half savage, the probable remains ofpopulations formerly more numerous and more compact, amongwhom the Mandinka and the Fulani had filtered in during centu-ries, sometimes driving them to the shores of the ocean andsometimes even to the islands situated in the estuaries of therivers, as in the case of the Diola of the lower Gambia and of theCasamance, the Balant, Banyoun, Bissago, Papel, Biafada, etc.,of Portuguese Guinea, the Nalu, Landuman, and Baga of lower

Plaque (Benin), 16th century.Nigeria.Brass, 50 x 40 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

The heavily stylised palm tree in this plaque may be a Borassus palm in fruit.A Beninese suggested that many plaques such as these illustrate proverbs, butwas unable to clearly identify what the two fallen, symmetrically arranged leaveson either side of this tree represented.

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Statue (Tellem).Mali.Wood, encrusted materials, (left) height: 40 cm; (right) height: 44 cm.Private collection.

Before the Dogon, during the 11th and 12th centuries, the Tellem arrived to theBandiagara cliff. Perhaps in request of forgiveness of their faults, the statueswere styled with a raised arm and kept in burial places, unreachable caves fromthe cliff. Raising their arms to the sky, it is said that the Tellem had the abilityto fly there.

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Ashanti head of the fanti style, 16th-17th centuries.Terracotta, height 28 cm.Private collection.

Either placed over a grave or used as a receptical of ancestral libations, thisAshanti head has an extremely sophisticated hairstyle and facial scarificationscommon of the prominent locals.

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French Guinea, the Timne and Bulom of Sierra Leone, sometimesisolating them in more or less extensive islets in the interior of theland, like those formed by the Tiapi, the Bassari, and theKoniagui to the north of the Futa-Jallon, the Kisi, makers of stonestatuettes, to the northwest of Liberia, and the Golo in the west ofthis latter country. Of the history of these diverse tribes we knowvery little aside from the fact that their more powerful neighbourshave drawn from them thousands upon thousands of slaves who,sold to the slave-traders, crossed the Atlantic to clear and cultivatethe grounds of the former Spanish, Portuguese, French, andEnglish colonies of America.

From French Guinea onwards, peoples related to the Mandinkacontributed with them to push the above tribes towards the sea inthe process of attaining it themselves: such were the Susu or Soso,who formerly inhabited the Futa-Jallon, and who were driven backon the Atlantic side; such again were the Mande of Sierra-Leone,half Islamised today like the Susu and gifted like them with anenterprising spirit; such also were the Vei or Vai of the region ofGallina and of Cape-Mount (Sierra-Leone and Liberia), who writetheir language with a syllabic alphabet made out of whole clothby a few of them towards the end of the 18th century or thebeginning of the 19th.

I have mentioned the name of the Futa-Jallon and I cannot passon without saying at least a word about this country of mountainsand valleys, where a mingling of Susu, who claim to beautochthonous, of Fulani coming from the Massina and theTermes, of Sarakolle from Diakha (Massina), of Tukulors from theFuta-Toro, and Mandinka from the upper Senegal succeeded informing a sort of nation, called the Fula, relatively homoge-neous, principally pastoral but also agricultural, speaking theFulani language and, in the immense majority of cases, prac-ticing the Islamic religion, who built up a theocratic Stateanalogous to that of the Torodo of the Futa-Toro and amongwhom the taste for study and belles-lettres has been in favour upto our day.

I have also mentioned Liberia. Its origin and composition areknown. Negro slaves liberated by philanthropic societieswere brought there from North America after 1822 and therethey multiplied. In 1847 they constituted themselves anindependent republic whose constitution was copied from thatof the United States and recognised by all the powers ofEurope and America. The Liberians, properly speaking, that isthe Negroes and mulattoes of American provenance, living inEuropean style, having English for their mother tongue, numberhardly more than 15,000 and exercise only a very limitedcontrol over some 700,000 natives who have been accordedto them as subjects by treaties concluded with France andGreat Britain.

To the southeast of the Futa-Jallon, on the border of the denseforest, we meet with a series of peoples who are in general veryprimitive, sometimes even cannibalistic, who have specialised inthe cultivation of kola-trees, selling the fruit to their neighbours ofthe north, the Malinke and the Jula. These are, in going from thecountry of the Kisi to Bonduku, the Toma, the Guerze or Pessy, theManon, the Dan or Mbe, the Tura, the Lo or Guro, the Muin orMona, the Ngan, and the Gbin.

To the south of this series of tribes, confined in the dense forest, area people perhaps still more primitive, except for the portion livingat the border of the sea. They are in large part given to canni-balism and are still divided into a multitude of tribes which extendfrom the Saint-Paul River to beyond the Sassandra. Those whoinhabit the coast, known under the generic name of Krumen, giventhem by the English, have been used during almost five centuriesby the navigators and merchants of all nations to furnish workmenfor ships and rowing crews for trading stations.

To the east of the Krumen, the equatorial forest and its borders areinhabited principally, from Bandama to the Volta, by a group ofpopulations remarkably developed intellectually, although of amaterial civilisation which is sometimes very rudimentary and oftendebased because of the immoderate use of strong liquor. Theysurprise all who approach them with a meticulous bodily clean-liness and a worldly and complicated etiquette. Certain groupshave attained a relatively advanced political level, while otherslive in the most absolute anarchy. The portions Christianised byProtestant missionaries from the British Gold Coast furnish an aston-ishing number of doctors of theology, barristers, lawyers andwriters. This group contains notably: the Baoulé, the Agni, theZema or Apollonians, clever merchants; the Abron, who in the 15th

century founded a well organised State in the region of Bonduku,which still exists; the Ashanti, or better the Assanti, who hadcreated a powerful and very well constituted kingdom, withCoomassie as its capital, which lasted from 1700 to 1895; andfinally the Fanti, among whom the English have found a fruitful

Uhunmwum elao memorial head of a Queen Mother, 18th-19th centuries.Benin Kingdom, Nigeria.Rautenstrauch-Joest Musum, Cologne.

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Statue (Afo), maternity.Wood, height: 29 cm.Private collection.

The facial scarifications on this statue are typical of the Afo tribemembers. The inherent beauty of the idea of fertility can be seenin this figure’s large breasts, the child hanging from her back,and her gesture of holding a pot on her head.

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Dyonyeni statue (Bambara).Wood and metal, height: 72 cm.

Fertility is clearly referenced in the over-sized breasts of thisincredible Bambara statue. The Dyo and Kwore societies used itduring closing ceremonies.

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source of excellent functionaries and subaltern employees, as alsoamong their eastern neighbours the Gan of Accra.

In continuing towards the east, we again find peoples astonish-ingly gifted from the intellectual, artistic and political point ofview. These are the Ewe of the lower Togo, the Mina and the Fonor Jeji of lower Dahomey12, then in an ethnic group who aredifferent although rather near neighbours, the Yoruba or Nago,the Benin or Edo and the Nupe of southern Nigeria. Everyone inFrance knows about the kingdom of Dahomey, which, foundedbefore the 16th century with Abomey as its capital, was annexedby the French in 1894 at the end of a famous campaign; thekings of Dahomey were great warriors and slave-traders andbecame celebrated for their human sacrifices, but on the otherhand it must be said that they had known how to organise theirState and their army and administer their kingdom in a fashionwhich did them honour; it must also be added that the talents ofthe Dahomeans as farmers and artisans, joined to theirundeniable intellectual capacities, place them among the firstranks of the Negro peoples of Africa. Unlike all the peoplesbeyond the mouth of the Senegal whom I have just enumerated,with the exception of the Wolofs, the Susu, the Vai and the inhab-itants of the Futa-Jallon, and also unlike the West African peopleswho remain to be cited, the Yoruba are largely Islamised. Theyare divided into several States provided with legislative assem-blies and sometimes with journals – official and private – editedin English. The capital of one of these States is Abeokuta, anextremely populous and very industrious city.

As for Benin, it has formed, without doubt, since the 15th centuryand perhaps since a more remote epoch, a powerful and

redoubtable State, where the industrial arts and notably the art ofbronze working and that of ivory have flourished in a remarkablefashion; certain bronzes of Benin of the 15th and 16th centuries,that may be seen today in the museums of Holland, Germany andEngland and in private collections, are worthy rivals of analogousproducts of several renowned civilisations.

TThhee PPeeoopplleess ooff tthhee BBeenndd ooff tthhee NNiiggeerr

The necessity of following the coasts of the ocean hasconstrained us to leave provisionally at one side a number ofother interesting peoples scattered in the interior of the bend ofthe Niger: the Tombo or Habe, who live to the north of theYatenga, in habitations dug out of the rocky cliffs of Bandiagaraand Hombori; the Sarno, their neighbours to the southwest; theFulse, Nioniosse, Kipirsi, Nuruma, Sissala, and others commonlyincluded in the generic name of Gurunsi; the Dagari, Birifo orBirifor, Gbanian or Gonja, Dagomba, Nankana, and othergroups ethnically very closely related to the Mossi; the Bobo, theLobi, Dian, and other more or less barbarian peoples; theKulango of the upper eastern Ivory Coast, the Sumba of upperTogo and of upper Dahomey, etc.

It may be said of all these peoples that, in their totality, they haveremained very primitive; aside from a few exceptions, they havenot known how to arrive at a somewhat elevated political leveland most of the time they have not progressed beyond a familyunity. Although neighbours to well organised and powerful States,like the Mossi empires and the kingdoms of the Gurma and theBergo, inhabited by populations of the same ethnic group, ingeneral they have not profited by this proximity; some of themwere included as subjects or vassals within these States, othersremained outside of them, seeming to have only one aim: tosafeguard by force of savagery their wild but sterile independ-ence. By a singular contradiction, nearly all are marvellous farmersand the attachment to the land seems to be the only solid andfecund institution in their chaotic society.

It would be proper to treat separately the important populationof the Senufo or Siena, distributed from the region of San andKutiala on the right bank of the Bani as far as that of Bondukuand the elbow of the Black Volta, where it attains the northernlimit of the great forest. In part thinned out by the Jula who hadsettled among them and who, as at Sikasso and Kong, haveoften exercised a durable hegemony over the country, manySenufo groups have succeeded in constituting little States ofrestricted area but offering cohesion and vitality. The ironindustry and that of pottery, as well as agriculture and the art ofmusic have attained among certain Senufo a developmentwhich merits attention.

Mask (Idoma or Igbo).Nigeria. Wood, 24 x 15 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

For the Idoma from Nigeria, the masked ancestors are real spirits who returnedamong the mortals - and not masked human actors. The resurrection of thedead is an element of their religion and their spiritual cult.

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Mask (Tetela).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, feathers, fur, height: 75 cm.Private collection.

Art historians are still unsure whether or not the subtledifferences of this mask link it to the Tetela, a group close to thesecret society of the Songye, the Kifwebe. The similarities to theKifwebe are quite obvious.

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Mask (Gouro Bete).Ivory Coast.Wood, height: 26 cm.Private collection.

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TThhee HHaauussaa CCoouunnttrriieess

If we have fewer documents on the ancient history of central andeastern Sudan than on that of the western portion, it is principallybecause, at first, the Muslims and then the Europeans did not enterinto relations with the centre and east of Negro Africa until longafter having penetrated to the heart of the regions situated fartherto the west. The Islamisation and exploration of the country ex-tending to the east of the Niger are relatively very recent.

The numerous and very interesting people called the Hausa orAfno, whose habitat is located between the Songhoy and Bornu,were at all times divided into several little States which seem tohave been tributary to each other by turns, without any one of themhaving had a veritable preeminence over the others. There wereand still are: Gober or the Kingdom of Tessawa, celebrated sincethe 16th century for its cotton fabrics and its leather footgear; thekingdom of Kano, whose capital was already populous at the timeof Leo the African and well known for its imposing wall as well asfor its commerce and industry; that of Katsena, renowned for itsagricultural riches and its military power; that of Zegzeg or Zaria,of whose commercial prosperity has always been boasted, and ofwhich it is claimed that formerly, thanks to the energy of a womanwho was then its sovereign, it had extended its power over all theHausa countries; and still others, notably the kingdoms of Zinder,of the Zanfara, the Kantagora, the Bauchi, etc.

It seems that these diverse States were united in the 15th centuryunder the authority of the kantas or kings of the Kebbi, a countrysituated to the southwest of Sokoto and to the west of Gando,whose inhabitants are thought to be the descendants of a crossingof the Songhoy and the Hausa. Towards the year 1500 reined akanta who passed for being master of Katsena, Kano, Zaria, theGober and the Zanfara and for having extended his power overthe Aïr Mountains. The Sultan of Bornu, Ali, who had just estab-lished himself at Gassaro to the west of Chad, wanted to put anend to the rapid expansion of the Kebbi and attacked the kanta inhis residence at Surami, but after an indecisive siege he wasobliged to retire. The king of the Kebbi pursued him, overtook himin the east of Katsena and put his army to flight. As the latter wasretracing his steps, he was attacked by revolting Katsena people,struck by an arrow, and died of his wounds.

In 1513, his successor made an alliance with the askia Mohammed,who aided him in recapturing Katsena and, in 1515, Agades.Fearing to see his States pass under the suzerainty of Gao, the kantabroke the treaty of alliance. In 1517, he inflicted a complete defeaton the army that the askia had sent against him and re-established thereal authority of the Kebbi over the Katsena and the whole of theHausa countries. But around 1600, the kings of Gober and Zanfaraunited with the king of the Aïr Mountains against the kanta then living,vanquished him, destroyed his three principal towns (Gungu, Suramiand Liki) and freed the Hausa from the yoke of the Kebbi.

The Islamisation of the Hausa, or more exactly of a certainportion of them, goes back only to the beginning of the 19th

The Negroes of Central andEastern Sudan

Nyangwa water-pipe (Makonde).Mozambique.Terracotta, wood, coconut shell, beads, height: 27 cm.Private collection.

As a highly desirable commodity among the Makonde, appearing to beassociated with personal attributions such as generosity, tobacco’s importancehas made it a widely exchanged item for goods and services. The profoundeconomy of design seen on this water-pipe make it characteristic of the mostexquisite Makonde art. Through the inventiveness of form of the sculpted pairof legs, it is clear that that creator invented a subtle design of the human bodyseated atop the pipe, where the bowl represents the head and the coconutshell represents the buttocks. The stem holder includes a carrying handle andthe sculpted legs are adorned with miniature beadwork anklets. The delicateincised lines are indicative of Makonde pottery, this combined with theterracotta stem-holder make it very unique, a suggestion which implies that itwas made by an expert.

In general, water-pipes belonged to important members of society, such asclan leaders and ritual experts. Closely linked with their owners, water-pipessuch as this represent one of the most treasured and intimate personal object ofa member of the Makonde. This particular pipe may have been made for thepotter’s personal use or in exchange for other goods. Either way, the intricacy ofthis pipe made it not only useful for smoking, but also as an object of display,meant to be admired.

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Replica throwing knife, late 19th century.Mahdist state, Sudan.Iron with crocodile skin grip, 30.6 x 3.2 cm.University of Manchester, Manchester Museum.

Various artefacts such as regalia, weaponry, and armour were producedin workshops in towns such as Omdurman. While often representing theMahdist ideology, stylistic influences from other diverse sources wereoccasionally visable. These replica, non-functional throwing knives are aperfect example. Cut from sheet metal, they are covered with acid-etched thuluth, an Arabic script faithfully copied from the Koran. Theymay have been gifted to central African chiefs who assisted the slaveraiders in the late 19th century, though it seems more likely that theywere Islamicised status symbols for leaders of the Mahdist armies whomainly consisted of central African slaves.

Certain non-Islamic central African people, such as the Ngbaka, wholived hundreds of miles southwest of here and whose population wasgreatly diminished by the slave trade of the time, lent their prestigiousform of missile weapons.

Replica throwing knife, late 19th century.Mahdist state, Sudan.Iron with crocodile skin grip, 45.6 x 3.4 cm.University of Manchester, Manchester Museum.

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Aloalo tomb sculpture (Mahafaly). Madagascar.Wood, height: 226.6 cm.University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.

The most familiar, yet least understood forms produced insouthwestern Madagascar are likely the carvings placed on tombsby the Mahafaly. The basis of their livelihood, the humped zebucattle, also serves as an important theme in their figurative art,especially on aloalo, which serve a clear honourary function. Vast,solid box-like tombs cut out of natural stone are the mostprominent feature of their landscape and are most often saved forchiefly and royal lineages. They are in the isolated in the countrysideand are often topped with a series of tall sculpted poles.

Despite the continued evolution in form and content, thesculpture displayed on these stone platforms retains identifiableelements. Usually, the entire piece is carved from a single piece ofwood. Sometimes the bottom is plain and other times there is astanding figure, while the top tends to be an open-work structureof geometric shapes, usually crescents and circles ofteninterpreted as varying stages of the moon. The upper-most figureis the most varied from the rest of the aloalo, birds and humpedcattle are the most frequent subjects - cattle are sacrificed duringthe funerary rites and the horns are planted in the stone tombnext to the aloalo. The purpose of this figure is to be anintercessor between the world of the living and the dead and theterm is generally interpreted as being a derivitive of the word alowhich means messenger or intermediary. In this case, alo mayalso refer to the central element and interlocking geometry ofcircles and crescents which provide the central adornment of thesculpture and serve as its most distinctive feature.

Aloalo tomb sculpture (Mahafaly). Madagascar.Wood, height: 193 cm.Private collection.

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century. Until then, Muslims were hardly to be met with exceptat Kano, and here they were not numerous. It is to the mysticzeal and the warlike fanaticism of a Tukulor marabout, a nativeof the Futa-Toro, that this important region of Africa owes itsinvasion by Mohammedanism.

In 1801, the sheik Ousman the Torodo, son of one namedMohammed called Fode or Fodio13, that is to say “the savant”,having learned that difficulties had arisen between the Fulanishepherds of the Gober and their Hausa patrons, profited by thiscircumstance to preach a holy war against the inhabitants and theirneighbours. Siding with the Fulani, who had the common bond oflanguage with him and his people, he raised an army among theunemployed warriors of the Futa-Toro, the Massina, the Liptako andthe Songhoy, and started out on the conquest of the Hausa. Hesucceeded in his enterprise and founded an empire, with Sokoto asits capital and its suburb of Wurno as the princely residence, anempire which was not long in including all the Hausa kingdoms, apart of the Adamawa, the Nupe, the Kebbi and, in the bend of theNiger, the Liptako. He even invaded Bornu, but was driven awayin 1810 by the Kanemi, who will be spoken of further on. The sheikOusman died about 1815 following a paroxism of mystic mania.His brother Abdullahi took command of the western provinces of theempire, with Gando as the capital; the Adamawa formed analmost independent State; as for the larger part of the provincesconquered by Ousman, they passed under the domination of hisson Mohammed Bello (1815-1837).

The beginning of this prince’s reign was devoted to a struggle withoutrespite against the Zanfara, the Gober, the kingdom of Katsena andthe Kebbi, who refused obedience to the son as they did to thebrother of Ousman, and whose inhabitants had abjured Islam almostimmediately after they had been forced to accept it. In fact, all theHausa revolted against Tukulor domination and the Tuareg of the AïrMountains and of Damerghu made a pact with the rebels. Soon theKanemi gave his aid and furnished them contingents sent by theWadai and the Bagirmi; then he himself departed on a war againstMohammed Bello. The latter dispatched two armies against hisenemy, one commanded by Yakuba, king of the Bauchi, the other byYa-Mussa, king of Zaria. The latter took flight with his contingents at

the first contact with the master of Bornu, but Yakuba, after two hardcombats, put the Kanemi to rout and saved the Sokoto Empire.

Mohammed Bello, who was a mediocre enough warrior and hadno fondness for fighting in person, was a distinguished man ofletters. He composed a number of poems and prose works inArabic, some religious, others historical, protected the learned,received with respect the English explorer Clapperton (1828) andwas notable for a rigorous control of the acts of his magistrateswho feared his investigations and his censure. His brother andsuccessor, Atiku (1837-1843), distinguished himself especially asa great enemy of the dance and of music and proscribed allamusements. Gober and the Kingdom of Katsena revolted anewunder his reign against the excesses of the Tukulor princes whowere installed as residents in the vassal provinces.

Ali, son of Mohammed Bello, reigned from 1843 to 1855, in themidst of continual revolts of his pretended subjects who, notably in theGober and the Kebbi, persistently refused to adhere to Islam. The fiveTukulor sovereigns who came after him – Ahmadu (1855-1866),Aliun-Karani (1866-1867), Ahmadu II (1867-1872), Bubakar(1872-1877), and Meyassu (1877-1904) – were incapable ofgoverning an empire so vast and so badly organised, which fell topieces like a house of cards in 1904, by the single fact of theoccupation of Sokoto by the British troops of Sir Frederick Lugard.

TThhee EEmmppiirree ooff BBoorrnnuu

To the east of the Hausa, on both sides of Lake Chad, lives apopulation whose domain to the west bears the name of Bornuand to the east that of Kanem. This population is related by itsorigin and language to another, dispersed across immense terri-tories, for the most part desert, that of the Teda or Goran; thesetwo groups meet at the Kawar (oasis of Bilma), at the Tibesti or Tuor region of Bardai (whence the name of Tibbu or Tubu and ofBardoa given to the Teda of this region), at the Borku or Daza, inthe Ennedi (where they take the name of Anna and are calledBedeyat by the Arabs), in the Kabga or Kapka, north of theWadai (Gaoga of Leo the African), finally in the Zaghawa, situ-ated to the north of Darfur between the Ennedi and the Nile. TheseTeda were divided into a great number of tribes, some nomads,others sedentary, some Muslim, others pagan, some frankly Ne-groes, others more or less mixed with white blood. The family ofthe first sovereign of the Kanem – Bornu of whom traditionpreserves the memory, probably belonged to this people. He wasa prince who is given the name of Saefe or Sefu, from which theMuslims have not hesitated to make Seïfullahi “the sabre of God”,although fully recognising that he was no Muslim; neither did theyhesitate to assimilate him to Seïf ben Dzu-Yezen, the last Himyariteking of Yemen.

Mask (Chokwe).Wood and plant fibres, height: 22cm.

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Bonnet (Acholi?).Uganda.Human hair, beads, width: 33 cm.Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig.

Identified as of “Schuli” (Acholi) origin, this is an example of what the men ofthe cattle-keeping communities in Uganda, southern Sudan, and north-westernKenya historically adopted for their series of elaborate coiffures used during theinitiation into the senior age grades associated with warriorhood. Most often,the hair is piled, built-up with mud, painted, and then set with feathers. Thecreation of a large basin-shaped hairstyle decorated with discs of colouredbeads is an alternative to this hairstyle.

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Pole (Kwere/Zaramo).Tanzania.Wood and metal, height: 128 cm.Private collection.

Likely used in ceremonies of spirit possession, unusual poles suchas these were planted in the ground of a ritual site and served asa backrest for the afflicted person. Carved with a hook, the staffshold the gourd which holds efficacious ritual substances and aredecorated with strips of red and white material. The figure of awoman and child or a stylised, female trunk figure is usuallyfound at the time. This particular staff is unique in its two largerfigures with a third, smaller, less stylised bird-like figure atop atree-like branch form.

Both male and female iconography are formed here, whereit is both phallic yet also exhibits breasts and represents alimbless female figure. The unity of life priciples is expressed inthis dual nature of these figures. It plays an important role infemale initiation rites; given a trunk-like figure during herseclusion period, the girl initiate is to ritually feed and care for itto promote her own growth, health, and fertility.

Omusinga holder (Banyambo), 18th-19th century.Karagwe, Tanzania.Wrought iron, height: 72 cm.Marc and Denyse Ginzberg.

Hibiscus fuscus plant sticks are held in Omusinga holders. Theconsiderable labour of highly skilled blacksmiths whoproduced at least 50 of these holders implies the importanceof this royal insignia. Used to beat milk, the fibrous quality ofomusinga also made it as useful as a toothbrush. Here, sevensockets are supported by a seven-ply plaited iron shaft. Thedistal end is pointed.

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In reality, this Saefe was most certainly a Negro of Teda origin,who established his residence at Njimi, between Mao andYagubri in the Kanem, and set his domination over the Teda of theBorku, the Tibesti and the Kawar, over the Kanembu or the inhab-itants of the Kanem and over the Kanuri or Baribari of Bornu andMunio. We do not know at what epoch he lived. It is towards the11th century, under one of his successors named Oume, that Islamis thought to have made its first appearance in the country.

At the end of the 12th century the Teda and pagan dynasty foundedby Saefe was overthrown by a Kanembu and Islamic dynastywhose first representative was Tsilim or Salmama, that is to say,“the Muslim”, who reigned, it is believed, from 1194 to 1220,taking the title of mai. His successor Dunama I (1220-1259) wasobliged to combat Teda revolts. Then two centuries passed inalmost continual anarchy. Under the mai Ibrahim (1288-1304)began the revolt of the vassal tribe of Bulala, which continued totrouble the empire for more than three hundred years. The maiIdris I (1352-1376) had just mounted the throne when the Arabtraveller Ibn-Batuta, coming from Timbuktu to the Tuat, sojourned in1353 at Takedda, between Gao and Agades (Teguidda of ourpresent maps), at that time celebrated for its copper mines in fulloperation; the Takedda people told Ibn-Batuta that King Idris nevershowed himself in public and never spoke to anyone except hiddenbehind a curtain, according to a custom that may still be observedin our day in many States of Negro Africa.

The mai Omar (1394-1398) decided to abandon the Kanem tothe Bulala and went to settle in Bornu, where one of his successors,Ali (1472-1504), had established the capital of the empire of

Waaga grave figure (Konso).Ethiopia.Wood, height: 213 cm.Private collection.

Intensive agriculture is practised by the Konso who live in a walled hilltop village.Bravery is a highly revered quality, as hunting is a prestigious activity; men who havekilled a dangerous wild animal or enemy are consisdered heroes. This phallic stoneis placed atop the grave of a hero; if he was wealthy and of senior Gada status, agroup of carved figures accompany this stone around his grave. When new, thefigures are painted with red ochre, have bone eyes and teeth, and painted blackeyebrows and beards. The sculpture, meant to represent the hero, portrays him tobe aggressively masculine with an erect penis. His phallic forehead ornament,hairstyle, and bracelets denote his senior Gada rank as well as his hero-status.

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Gassaro or Kasr-Eggomo, 75 kilometres to the west of Chad. Itwas this Ali who attacked the kanta of the Kebbi and wasdefeated by him. His son Idris II (1504-1526) reconquered theKanem from the Bulala; he was a contemporary of Leo the African,who speaks of him in his accounts, giving him by mistake thename of Libran (Ibrahim), one of the predecessors of Idris.

It is with Idris III (1571-1603) that the empire of the Bornu attainedits apogee. Its suzerainty then extended over Kano, Zinder, andthe Aïr Mountains, over the Kanem as far as the Fitri, over all thecountries inhabited by the Teda and, to the south of Chad, overthe Mandara or Wandala (Marua), over the Kotoko (Kusseri) andover the Mosgu (middle Logone). But after the death of this prince,the Bulala again became masters of the Kanem, only to be chasedoff later by the Tunjur emigrants from the Wadai and to withdrawtowards the east. It was the Tunjur who reigned from now on atKanem, with Mao as their capital, but they paid tribute to the maiof Bornu, who kept an official at Mao.

These Tunjur, who ordinarily spoke an Arabic dialect, passed forbeing of an ante-Islamic Arab origin. What is certain, however, is thatthey have professed Islam for scarcely a century and that many ofthem have never been and are not yet Muslims. It may be that theywere of Abyssinian origin and that their ancient paganism had beena more or less corrupt Christianity. It seems, moreover, that this appel-lation of Tunjur was applied at the east of Chad to all the non-Islamicpeople to whom tradition attributes a Negro origin.

In 1808, Bornu was attacked by the Tukulor conqueror Ousman-dan-Fodio, who defeated the troops of the mai Ahmed near Gassaro. Avery influential chief, Mohammed-el-Amine, called “the Kanemi”,because of the country of his origin (the Kanem), placing himself atthe head of the Negroes of Bornu and of Shoa Arabs14 pushed backthe Tukulor army into the Hausa country and brought back to hiscapital the mai Ahmed, who had taken flight at the approach of theenemy (1810). This Ahmed and his successors played the role ofpuppet kings and the authority from now on was entirely in the handsof the Kanemi and the members of his family. The sheik Omar, son ofthe Kanemi, took the reins of government at the death of his fatherand finished in 1846 by proclaiming himself Sultan of Bornu. Heinstalled his residence at Kukawa or Kuka, which became the capitalof the third dynasty, founded by his father and himself.

Waaga grave figure (Konso).Ethiopia.Wood, height: 186 cm.Private collection.

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Iraqw skirt, early 20th century.Tanzania.Dressed animal skin, glass beads, sinew thread, metal bells, 170 x 70 cm.Commonwealth Institute, London.

This extraordinary example of the traditional dress in eastern Africa, particularlythe range of colours of the beads, consists of four hide panels on whichthousands of glass beads have been applied with a lazy-stitch to form variousbands and geometric motifs, along with three bells. Iraqw beaded skirts arearguably the most elaborately adorned clothing items of this area. The centralpanel was worn in the back and the right edge wrapped over the left in thefront, the two ends being tied together. Despite the weight of the skirt, it is easyto imagine the swaying of the fringe and tinkling of the bells that occurs fromthe walking or dancing of the young woman wearing it.

Traditionally, the skirts were made and worn during the girls’ initiation ritual,Marmo, which the government banned in 1930, though may still be practisedtoday in some form or another. The overall meanings and motifs are unknownto outsiders, though it may be assumed that the white beads used are meant tosybolise the new purity of the initiate.

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Hachem, successor of Omar, was attacked in 1893 by theadventurer Rabah; in spite of the help sent him by the Wadai, hewas defeated and killed. Rabah destroyed Kuka and transferredthe capital of Dikoa, to the south of Chad. Shortly afterwards hewas vanquished and killed at Kusseri by the French detachmentsof Major Lamy on 22 April 1900, and Abubekr Guerbei, nephewof Hachem, was recognised by the English as Sultan of Bornu,which became a British protectorate.

TThhee BBaaggiirrmmii

To the south of the Kanem extends the kingdom of the Bagirmi, whosefoundation is attributed to a hunter, sometimes called Bernim-Besseand sometimes Dokkengue, who is supposed to have built Massenya,the capital, around 1513. He was a pagan, as were his successorsup to Malo (1548-1561), who took the title of mbang and createdthe great offices of the kingdom. It is Abdallah (1561-1602), son ofMalo, who is thought to have brought Islam to the Bagirmi. His ninthsuccessor, Borkumanda-Tadele (1734-1739), was a great warrior:after having directed an expedition towards the Borku and the Kawar,he twice vanquished the king of the Wadai, Mohammed Ez-Zaouni.But Alawine (1739-1741) was in turn vanquished by the emperor ofBornu, to whom the Bagirmi became vassals. Mohammed Alamine(1741-1784) seized the Fitri from the Kuka and shook off the tutelageof Bornu. Abderrahman-Gaurang I (1784-1806) recommenced thestruggle against the Wadai; he was defeated and killed by Saboun,king of the latter country, who imposed the suzerainty of the Wadaion the Bagirmi and placed a son of Abderrahman Gaurang there as

Grave figure (Bongo), late 19th or early 20th century.Sudan.Wood, metal, height: 200 cm each.Musée Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

In southwestern Sudan, the Bongo are an agricultural, central Sudanic-speakingpeople who suffered immensely from the plunder of slavery and the expansionof the Zande kingdom during the 19th century.

Tall, slim figures such as this are credited to the Bongo and often classified withthe memorial figures of east African people, such as the Konso and Gato ofEthiopia. The general pole-like form of a human figure stands on a post withflexed knees and arms held close to the body. Aside from the facial features, thereis little sculptural detail. Some Bongo relatives built these wooden effigies on thegraves of deceased hunter-warriors in their honour and reflected title and rank.Often, a notched post accompanied which exhibited the number of thedeceased’s successful kills. A feast was held at his grave a year or so after his deathwhich was meant to ensure he held a good position in the village of the dead.

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nominal sovereign. Another of his sons, Tchigama, deposed hisbrother, was arrested by order of Saboun, was brought as prisoner toWara, capital of the Wadai, then released, and finally came backto Massenya, where he reigned under the name of OusmanBorkumanda from 1807 to 1846, paying regularly enough thetribute exacted by the Wadai. He conducted several expeditionsagainst Bornu but was defeated by the Kanemi in 1824 in Lederi,near Chad, thanks to two cannons which the English major, Denham,had given to the chief of Bornu. Abdelkader (1846-1858), in spiteof a victory over Mohammed-Cherif, king of the Wadai, remainedtributary to this State. Abu-Sekkine (1858-1884) wished equally tothrow off the tutelage of the Wadai. In 1871, vanquished and drivenfrom Massenya by Ali, king of the Wadai, he retook his capital afterthe death of this prince, in 1875. The cruelty of his son Borkumanda(1884-1885) roused his subjects to drive him from the country andhe was replaced by Abderrahman-Gaurang II who, attacked byRabah in 1893 and menaced anew by this conqueror in 1896,accepted French protectorship in 1897.

TThhee KKiinnggddoomm ooff WWaaddaaii

If the history of the Bigirmi sums up in a perpetual oscillation betweenthe yoke of Bornu and that of Wadai, the history of this latter State ismade up of hardly more than the cruelties and debaucheries of themajority of its kings. The country known under the names of Wadai,Bergu and Dar-Selah is peopled by some tribes of more or less pureArab origin and a great number of Negro tribes, the principal one ofwhich is that of the Maba, the others being the Tama, Massalit, Mimi,Kuka, Bulala, Rougna, etc. The Teda can also be found there.

The Wadai was at first governed by pagans to whom is attributed aSemitic origin, the Tunjur, who had their capital in Kadama, to thesouthwest of Abecher. It is only around 1615 that Islam was adoptedby a portion of the population, under the influence of one namedJameh or Saleh, whom some say was a native of the country whileothers relate him to the Arab tribe of the Jaaline, whose original homeis at Berber on the Nile, downstream from Khartoum. As for the Tunjurthey had remained pagans. A son or descendant of this Jameh,named Abdelkerim, raised an army of Arabs and of recentlyIslamised Negroes, defied and killed the Tunjur prince, proclaimedhimself Sultan of the Wadai and established himself to the north ofAbecher, at Wara, where he reigned from 1635 to 1655,converting a part of the inhabitants, by force, to Islam. Like the Tunjurprinces whose place he had taken, he paid tribute to Darfur.

His son Kharut (1655-1678) pursued the Islamisation of the Wadai.Kharif (1678-1681) and Yakub Arous (1681-1707) tried at severaltimes to shake off the tutelage of Darfur; the later finally succeededin defeating and capturing Omar-Lele, king of Darfur. After an unfor-tunate struggle against the Bagirmi conducted by Mohammed

Ez-Zaouni, the war between Wadai and Darfur recommenced withJoda (1745-1795), under whose reign the first of these Statesextended its influence over a part of the Kanem.

Saboun (1803-1813), after having seized the throne from his ownfather Saleh-Derret or Dered, distinguished himself by victoriousexpeditions against the Bagirmi and against his revolting vassalsof the Tama. He was a cruel and sanguinary prince, who wasassassinated by an unknown hand. His son Yussef, calledKharifine, was perhaps even more barbarous. Around 1829, aftera feminine regence which was marked by the worst atrocities,Abdelaziz, grandson of Saboun, seized power; he had to struggleagainst continuous rebellions which he drowned in blood.

At his death (around 1835), an army of Darfur invaded the Wadai,following depredations made in the western provinces of the first ofthese kingdoms by the Wadaians, whom famine had pushed to pil-lage. The troops sent by Mohammed-Fadel, king of Darfur, enteredWara and placed on the throne of Wadai one named Mohammed-Cherif who engaged himself to accept the suzerainty of Darfur. ThisMohammed-Cherif (1835-1858) appears to have been the onlysovereign of the Wadai who showed restraint in the matter of capitalpunishment. He enjoyed a real prestige and considerable power.He did not fear to attack the powerful sheik Omar, Sultan of Bornu,whom he defeated at Kusseri and from whom he obtained a warcontribution of 8,000 thalers. It is he who transferred the capital fromWara to Abecher. Becoming blind, obliged to defend himselfagainst the revolting Tama and one of his own sons, he ended bydying half insane in 1858.

One named Ali succeeded him and was especially active in encour-aging commerce with the Mediterranean and bringing back orderto the country. He received a visit from Nachtigal in 1873-1874, atthe moment of his struggle against Abu-Sekkine, mbang of theBirgirmi. It was he who had the royal palace of Abecher constructedby two Tripolitanians and who annexed the Rougna and the Kuti.

King Yussef (1874-1898) allowed the Bagirmi to regain theirindependence. It was under his reign that Rabah, coming from Bahr-el-Ghazel, invaded the Kuti (1879), then the Rougna, raided thesouthern dependencies of the Wadai, and installed one namedSenussi (1890) as sultan of the Kuti and the Rougna. The latter, onceRabah was at Bornu (1894) accepted the suzerainty of the Wadai,then, a little later, that of France. Ibrahim (1898-1901) perished asthe result of wounds inflicted by rebels. Abu-Ghazali (1901-1902)had to struggle against one of his officers, Acil, who drove the kingfrom Abecher and then took refuge himself in the Fitri, where heplaced himself under the protection of the French troops. Dudmurrareplaced Abu-Ghazali. In 1909, the French took Abecher andplaced Acil on the throne of the Wadai; Dudmurra took refuge in thenorth of the country, continued the struggle for two years and at last

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Ndimu face mask (Makonde), early 20th century.Southern Tanzania.Wood, white pigment, plant fibres, height: 47 cm.Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig.

The generic name for wooden-masked men whoimpersonated spirits is ndimu. Varying according to theparticular human or animial-like spirits which they intendedto personify. Such events are performed during the coming-out celebrations for both male and female initiates by themale members of the masquerading associations.

This mask, according to the long, spatula-shaped earsmost likely represented the spirit of a hare; the ears appearto have been carved and attached seperately.

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Kigango funerary post (Giryama).Kenya.Wood, height: 130.5 cm / 190 cm / 206.5 cm / 145 cm.Private collection.

Despite a considerable amount of confusion found in literature, the vigango(kigango) of the Giryama are not necessarily gravemakers. Occasionally thesefigures are placed on grave sites, but not usually. Their role is to provide a newbody or home for the spirit of the deceased, rather than indicate the physicallocation of the remains; further they are generally only erected if the spirit of thedeceased indicates discontent with its lack of a body by appearing in the dreamsof a living relative. Only erected when the spirit is about to be forgotten, thesewooden bodies only have a limited period of use.

The four examples here have carefully carved heads, as opposed to manyother vigango heads which are two-dimensional, barely resemeble humanfeatures, if at all, sometimes being carved with geometric patterns. Two of themhave incised triangles, which may be indicative of human ribs, as well ascommon circular decorations. The other two are mainly incised with lesscommon rectangular forms, one being more unusual than the other in that thenotches serve as part of the pattern rather than a termination.

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made his submission to France in 1911. As for Acil, France wasconstrained to depose him in 1912; he has not had a successor.

DDaarrffuurr aanndd KKuurrdduuffaann

Like Wadai, Darfur15 its neighbour to the east, was formerly under theauthority of the idolatrous Tunjur. In the 16th century, the power wasusurped by a Muslim, Soloun-Sliman, who was, it is said, of Araborigin on his brother’s side and who established his capital at Bir-Nabak. Omar-Lele, his fourth successor, moved it to Kabkabie; it isthis Omar-Lele who was vanquished and made prisoner by the kingof the Wadai, Yakub-Arous, around 1700. After him reignedAbubekr, Abderrahmin I, then Teherab, who conquered andIslamised Kurdufan, then Abderrahman II, who transferred the royalresidence to Tendelty, called by the Arabs EI-Facher, and who was inrelations with Bonaparte during his campaign in Egypt (1798-1799).Under the reign of Mohammed-Fadel (1800-1840), Kurdufanescaped from Darfur only to be conquered and occupied by theEgyptians. Then Hossein reigned. Under his successor Haroun,Darfur, in its turn, was annexed to Egyptian Sudan by Zobeir-Pasha(1874); Haroun having revolted, was vanquished and killed in Kulkulby Slatin-Pasha, who was named governor of Darfur (1879).

Kurdufan or Kordofan separates Darfur from Sennar, from which itis itself separated by the Nile. The inhabitants of Kurdufan areNegroes speaking several distinct languages, of which certainones are similar in system to the Bantu dialects. Those of the northare called Koldaji or Kulfan, those of the south Nuba or Dyur. Theword Nuba, from which we have made “Nubia” and “Nubians”,is properly the name of the mountainous country which constitutesthe southern province of Kurdufan as well as of the natives of thisprovince, one part of whom has been converted to Islam for afairly long time; by extension, Nuba has become the surnamegiven by the Arabs to all the Muslim Negroes of eastern Sudan,while the pagan Negroes of the same region are called, whatevertheir ethnic origin, Fertit in Darfur, Jenakhera in Wadai and Kirdiin Kanem. On the other hand, in Europe the name “Nubia” hasbeen given to the region situated along the Nile between WadyHalfa and Khartoum (region of Dongola), because a certainnumber of Nuba have settled there. But the real “Nubia” is locatedin the south of Kurdufan and it is not useless to recall the fact here.

Governed at first by the pagan Tunjur like Wadai and Darfur,Kurdufan was then conquered by the Muslim Nuba whose chiefwas called Mussabba. We have just seen that it was annexed toDarfur under the reign of Teherab, who succeeded in propagatingIslam among the Koldaji, establishing a magdum or governor atBara, and that it was taken away from the latter country underMohammed-Fadel by the Egyptian defterdar Mohammed-Bey,who made El-Obeid the capital of his government.

RRaabbaahh’’ss AAddvveennttuurree

It is hardly possible in a historical picture of eastern Sudan to passover in silence the adventure of Rabah and the Mahdist movementat the end of the last century.

Zobier-Pasha, who belonged to the Arab tribe of the Jaaline, wasnamed governor of the Bahr-el-Ghazal around 1875. Called to Cairoto confer with the Egyptian authorities, he confided his charge to hisson Suleiman. The latter, betrayed to Gordon Pasha by the Dongolapeople, enemies of the Jaaline, believing in the hostility of the governor-general of Sudan, took sides against the Egyptian government andfavoured the revolt of Haroun, the dethroned Sultan of Darfur.Gessi-Pasha was sent against him, inflicting a bloody defeat.

His principal lieutenant at the time was Rabah, son of a Negrowoman, the wetnurse of Zobier-Pasha, and in consequence he wasfoster-brother of the latter. At the overthrow of Suleiman, Rabah fledwith the remnants of his master’s army and began his conquests tothe northwest of Bahr-el-Ghazal (1878) pushing towards the west,he penetrated Banda in 1879, attacked the Kuti in 1883, installingSenussi there as Sultan in 1890. In 1892, he attacked the Bagirmiand in 1893 seized Bougoman, which at that time replacedMassenya as the capital. The same year he attacked Hashem,sultan of Burnu, vanquished and put him to death (December,1893). Then he marched on the Gober, where Abubekr, nephewand successor of Hashem, had taken refuge; stopped by the armyof the emperor of Sokoto, he turned against the little States to thesouth of Chad, took Gulfei from Busso, Kusseri from Mandara,Logone from Kotoko, again invaded Bagirmi in 1898, set fire toMassenya, pursued the mbang near to Kuno, there, with 8,000men, clashed with some thirty militiamen commanded by the admin-istrator Bretonnet (18 July 1899) and did not finish with this handful

Mask (Kwere), early 20th century.Tanzania.Wood, height: 50.5 cm.Fred Jahn Gallery.

During the pre-colonial times, among the Kwere, various intiation associationsor “secret” societies exisited. Special initiation ceremonies, which included songand dance, indicated progression through the ranks. Masked dancers alsoperformed during special funeral rites for associate members. Very little isknown about the Kwere masquerade and few masks have ever been collected.However, it appears they have been used among other types of masks, including“war masks” and in initiation ceremonial dances.

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of brave men until after eight hours of combat. 22 April 1900, hewas beaten at Kusseri by Major Lamy and killed at the end of thebattle, which also cost the life of his conqueror. His extraordinaryadventure lasted twenty-two years and ruined one part of Sudan.

MMaahhddiissmm

Like Rabah, the mahdi and his khalife were Sudanese. Mohammed-Ahmed, a native of Dongola, belonged to a Nuba family. Heproclaimed himself mahdi in 1881, after having defeated Rachid-Bey, governor of Fashoda, in the mountains of southern Kurdufan,where his family had come from and where he had established hisresidence. In 1882, he won a new victory over an importantEgyptian column, and then seized all of Kurdufan, whose capital,EI-Obeid, fell to his power in February, 1883. He drove intoambush the army of Hicks-Pasha, 10,000 men strong, which wasentirely massacred in Chekan (Kurdufan), 4 November 1883.Slatin-Pasha, governor of Darfur, and Lupton-Bey, governor of Bahr-el-Ghazal, capitulated in 1884. Alone, Emin Pasha in Equatoria(Upper Nile) and Mustafa-Bey in Dongola continued to hold out;Berber and the Sennar were in the hands of the “Dervishes”, as thepartisans of the mahdi were called. On 15 January 1885, the latterseized Omdurman, a suburb of Khartoum, and on 26 January heentered the citadel of Khartoum as conqueror and put GordonPasha to death. From then on he was the actual master of four-fifthsof what, five years before, had been Egyptian Sudan. Shortly after-wards he died of typhoid fever in Omdurman.

As for Abdullah, he belonged to a Baggara tribe (cow-herders) ofDarfur, who were a cross between Arabs and Negroes. He was boundby friendship to the mahdi, whose principal advisor he became andwho, at the moment of dying, designated him as his khalife, that is

Male figure on stool (Utongwe).Western Tanzania.Wood, height: 78.5 cm.Bareiss Family collection.

There is next to no art from the Tongwe, a small group which live in the easternarea of Lake Tanganyika, except for this object. The carving on this figure bearsstylistic similarities to the Jiji of the north. The male figure here beautifullyexpresses the qualities of dignity and leadership. The elaborate coiffure andfacial features of this figure exhibit strong Tabwa influence, along with theconvention of the human figure standing on a stool, which signifies rank andstatus. This figure, based on its attributes, likely represents a chief.

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to say, his representative and successor (1885). Abdullah immediatelyset aside the relatives and compatriots of the mahdi, Nuba of Dongolaand Kurdufan, and surrounded himself with Darfur people, severalthousands of whom he brought to Omdurman. He organised apowerful army, which he sent against Abyssinia; the city of Gondar wastaken and pillaged by the bands of the khalife and the negus John waskilled (1888). In 1892, the troops of Abdullah established themselvesin Equatoria, which Emin-Pasha had abandoned in 1889. Shortly after-wards, however, the ephemeral power of the “Dervishes” began todecline: in 1896, the Anglo-Egyptian troops reoccupied Dongola and,in 1897, Berber; on 10 July 1898, Captain Marchand, later General,seized Fashoda; the Sirdar Kitchener took Omdurman the followingSeptember 2, and in 1899, Abdullah, in refuge in Kurdufan, wasdefeated and killed by Colonel Wingate.

PPooppuullaattiioonnss iinn tthhee NNeeiigghhbboouurrhhoooodd ooff AAbbyyssssiinniiaa aannddTThhoossee ooff tthhee EEaasstteerrnn PPooiinntt ooff AAffrriiccaa

We have just seen in what fashion, rather disastrous in general, Islamicinfluence was exercised over the countries between Chad and the Nile.On the other side of the great African river, it was another influence thatpredominated the greater part of the time, that of Christian Abyssinia.

This influence was, without contradiction, considerable on the Negroand Negroid populations comprised within the limits of theAbyssinian empire or neighbouring these limits. If one thinks of thepart that this empire has played in the destinies of ancient Egypt; if itis remembered that at the birth of Mohammed (570) it exercised thesuzerainty on the other side of the Red Sea, over Yemen, and that itsent an army of almost 40,000 men against Mecca; if one considersthe extraordinary renown that the power of the famous “Prete-John”16

enjoyed in Europe during the Middle Ages; if one reflects that this

Female figure (Lomwe/Nguru), 1901.Malawi or Mozambique.Wood, height: 41 cm.Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.

Different groups among the Lomwe tattooed their bodies with distinctivemarkings, the motif and positioning of which indicated status. High rankingpeople tended to have many more tattoos than others. This figure has anelaborate pattern of engraved lines which undoubtedly is meant to representtattoos as well as a high status. If one examines the base, it is easy to concludethat it represents a stool. The marks may be indicative of the ancestress of aparticular chiefly matrilineage, which was likely used in the context with anancestral cult and originally kept among the shrine to the chief.

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Christian State was able to preserve its religion across the centuries,in the proximity to the great centres of Islam, and to defend it againstMuslim enterprises from the epoch of the conquest of Egypt by the firstkhalifes to the violent onrush of the “Dervishes” of Omdurman, one isobliged to suppose that a like force could not have spread amongthe peoples with whom it came in contact.

At all times the Abyssinian empire has included, intermingled witheach other, populations of diverse and extremely mixed origins.Those who hold the power are considered to be Semitic andspeak, at any rate, Semitic languages, especially the Tigrai, theGuraghe, and the Amhara or Amharics, to whom the imperialfamily belongs, who claim to be descended from Solomon and theQueen of Sheba. Others, related in general to the Cushite branchof the race called Hamitic, speak languages which have certainpoints of contact with those of the Negroes; such are the Agau,the Bogos or Bilen, the Saho, the Kwara, the Kaffa, and a numberof tribes included in the generic term of Sidama. Certain ones, likethe Falasha, are considered to be of Israelitish origin, althoughusing a language analogous to those of the preceding tribes.

As for the people neighbouring Abyssinia properly speaking, to thenorth (Bishari or Beja), to the east (Danakil or Afar), to the southeast(Somali) and to the south (Galla or Oromo), they present the most

Female figure.Malawi.Wood, glass, 27 x 7 x 5 cm.Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna.

Female figure with scarification.Malawi.Wood, height: 48 cm.Bareiss Family collection.

The Malawi people have become best known, artistically, for their decorativeutilitarian objects, such as baskets, combs, bowls, snuffboxes, spoons, axes,pipes, and mortars. A few personal items were incorporated into figurativeelements once in a while, but free-standing sculptures such as this were rare andidiosyncratic. Considering the lack of specific ethnographic information relatingto context, it had to be assumed that all figurative sculpture from this regionwas completed by self-inspired in response to the demand of expatriates insearch of African souvenirs.

Thankfully, many new figures have been discovered which have early colletiondates allowing the issue to be re-examined. For example, the pieces we haveexhibited here are too complex to be considered of spontaneous invention, andfurther research implies some of these carvings served an educational purpose assecret, age-initiation schools were widespread. Tangible objects, most of whichwere fragile and ephemeral but would have been too expensive and difficult torecarve, were used as instructional tools meant to instill valuable culturalinformation. Due to their fragility, these would have likely needed to be preservedin caves or underground to preserve them for future “classes” or generations ofinitiates. Culminating in the initiation of the First Birth, Yao girls were expected toundergo a more thorough and protracted series of classes. Because of this, mostfigures depict various stages of womanhood. Any similarity in style or form may bean indication of the same initiation master rather that the hand of the same artist.

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varied types, among which the Negro often predominates, and theyspeak languages which seem to be related in part to the AfricanNegro dialects. In fact, all these populations are more or lessNegroid in aspect and there is manifested among all, in variousdegrees, the influence of the Negro race; this appears especiallypreponderant among the tribes most distant from the Amharicplateau; it becomes almost complete among the Masai, who followthe Galla and the Somali in the southern direction. Numerous Asiaticinvasions have also contributed to multiply the mixtures.

The Danakil and Somali are, at the present time, for the most partMuslim; they are mostly nomadic, divided into a multitude of littletribes. The Galla, at the same time farmers and shepherds, are inmajority pagans, but many of them are Christians; one findsamong them communal collectivities17 administered by a council ofnotables. They were already constituted at the time of the Pha-raohs; very powerful in the 10th century CE, and according toMasudi, they undertook great migrations in the 15th and 16th

centuries; after having been for a long time redoubtable adver-saries of the negus of Abyssinia, they were engulfed in the empireof the latter in the 18th century.

To the south of the Muslim States of central Sudan and of the popula-tions, more or less influenced by Abyssinia, of eastern Sudan, livenumerous peoples who are in general very backwards, somecannibals, among whom Islam has not penetrated and who, up to arecent epoch, have served as a reservoir of slaves for theMohammedan princes of the north. Such are the Gbari, the Munchi,Batta, Fali, Mbum, etc., in the southern Hausa country and theAdamawa; such are equally the Baya of the upper Sangha, theManjia of the Wahm, the Banda of the upper Ubangui, the Azandehor Niam-Niam who follow them to the east, all belonging to the sameethnic and linguistic group; such also are the Sara, the Kenga, theGaberi, etc., at the south of the Bagirmi, the Bulala and the Kuka ofthe Fitri, the Bongo and the Krej of the upper Bahr-el-Ghazal and stillother populations forming with these and with the Bagirmians anothergroup; such also are the Rougna to the south of the Wadai, the Dinkato the south of Darfur, Nuer and Shillook to the south of Kurdufan; suchfinally, along the upper Nile, are the Bari, the Madi and the Mom-buttu who live to the west and north of Lake Albert, and more to theeast and to the southeast, the Wandorobo and their cousins the Kuafi,the Rumba, the Taturu and the Masai.

All these peoples together constitute the most southern representativesof the groups called “Sudanese” and border on the most northernportion of the Bantu group. The line of demarcation, which is veryirregular, starts from the Atlantic in the region of Calabar, to thenorthwest of Duala, and at first follows approximately the 5° of northlatitude as far as the Sangha, then the 3° to about Lake Rudolf, bendingthen in the direction of the south so that it attains the Indian Oceantowards the 5° of south latitude, between Mombasa and Zanzibar.

Female figure (probably Yao), 1909.Malawi.Wood, 76 x 18 x 11 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

Male figure.Malawi.Wood, 103 x 30 x 20 cm. Felix Collection.

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TThhee BBaannttuu

To the south of the line described at the end of the precedingchapter, a line which runs in general a little to the north of theEquator but bending to the south at the point of reaching the IndianOcean, extends the domain of the Negroes of the Bantu group.Except for the Negrillos, disseminated in the equatorial zone orgrouped into more important masses in the southwest of thecontinent and the populations of European origin which havecolonised the extreme south of the continent, these Negroesoccupy the country to themselves.

The Bantu have been at all times, and are still today, dividedinto numberless groups having nothing in common except ethnicand linguistic ties. They have never constituted amongthemselves vast states comparable to those of the Sudanesezone, not that the Bantu are less gifted than the other Negroesfrom the social and political point of view or that the passionfor lucre and the thirst for power, which engenders greatconquerors and founders of empires, was less developedamong them than among the Sudanese, but simply becausetheir country, covered in great part by thick forests and cut upby innumerable water courses whose annual overflow trans-forms them into serious obstacles for communication, is lessfavourable than the Sudanese steppes for great military excur-sions and for commercial and political relations of region withregion and of people with people.

However, since the time that this part of Africa has beenrevealed to Europe by the first navigators, the existence of acertain number of kingdoms has been noted in this regionwhich, although never having had the extent or the influenceat long distance of the empire of Ghana or that of Manding,were not without possession of some power supported by arudimentary organisation.

TThhee CCoonnggoo

Such was the case of the States which in the 16th century, andundoubtedly for a long time previously, were scattered alongthe shores of the Atlantic from the Fernando-Po to the Cape ofGood Hope. Among the most renowned, the first was thekingdom of Loango or of the Brama, lying between Cape

Lopez and the mouth of the Congo or Zaire River. Thenfollowed the one that the Europeans called “the empire” of theCongo, the foundation of which goes back to the 14th century.In the following century, its sovereign, the mani-congo,exercised his authority as far as Setti-Camma in the north andBenguella to the south and, to the east, as far as the Kasai andthe upper Zambezi; but its boundaries shrank, towards thebeginning of the 16th century, to Cabinda in the north, Loandain the south and to Kuango in the east. The capital of the Statewas in the interior of the country, at Banza, today MbanzaKoongo in Angola.

TThhee AAnnssiikkaa

To the east of the Loango and at the northeast of the Congo,astride the river, is the kingdom of the Ansika or Anikana, whoseinhabitants were, for the most part, the Bateke and the Bayaka.The latter are today scattered principally to the west of theBateke; formerly they probably occupied the region to the northand the east of Stanley Pool and likely gained their presenthabitat as the result of migrations of a warlike character; theywere cannibalistic in the 16th century and very much feared bythe populations along the coast.18 The king of the Ansika borethe title of makoko and resided not far from the place whereBrazzaville now stands.

South Africa

Statue (Luba).Wood, height: 46 cm.Private collection.

This statue, an exqusite example of Luba sculptures, expresses the amazingsensibility exhibited by Luba sculptors when carving their female figures. At leasttwo centuries of libations have resulted in its black finish.

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Kasangu mask (Salampasu).Wood, height: 34 cm.Felix Collection.

Masks of this kind deeply entrenched into the hierarchy of society, symbolisinghunters, warriors, and chiefs. Used for initiation, young boys wear them afterseveral trials. This particular mask is among the warrior masks, meant to inspirefear and respect.

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Mask (Kwese).Wood, height: 25 cm.Private collection.

Worn during initiations, ceremonies, and male-circumcision rites, this heart-shaped face is typical of Kwese masks. Pigmentation is added to reinforce theshape of the mask, which also exists in traditional Pendé art.

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Statue (Holo).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, pigments, various materials, height: 45 cm.Private collection.

This figure symbolises Queen Nzinga of the 17th century indelivery position, linking it to fertility.

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Squatting statue (Suku).Wood, horn, and plant fibres, height: 35 cm.Private collection.

The complex structure of this statue illustrates the qualityand skill of Suku artists. The contradiction of the finelycarved details with the raw surfaces give it a greatdynamism. The curves of the hair, face, and arms bearlikeness to each other. The figure’s accessories are meant toincrease its magical power.

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TThhee MMaattaammaann

To the south of “the empire” of the Congo, along the ocean,extends a State whose chief was called mataman and whosecapital was near the present city of Mossamedes. Its territory,which stretched north as far as Benguella and south almost tothe bay of Swakopmund, was peopled by Bachimba, Herero,Damara, and to the south, by Hottentots.

TThhee BBeecchhuuaannaa

All the countries which constitute today the Republic of South Africa(Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, Transvaal) formed avast and also very homogeneous State, whose dominantpopulation, the Bechuana, exercised a sort of suzerainty over theBasuto, the Zulu and other Bantu peoples closely related to theBechuana, as well as over the Hottentots and Bushmen ofLuderitzland and the Kalahari desert.19

TThhee MMoonnoommoottaappaa

On the eastern coast, between the bay of Lourengo-Marques andthat of Sofala, reigned the famous monomotapa, a title signifying,according to Avelot, “Lord of the Hippopotomi”, whose State,founded before the 10th century, comprised as suzerain popula-tions the Matebele and the Makalaka and as vassal populationsthe Matonga and the Mashona. The Wazimba, a cannibalistic

and warlike people who lived to the west of Sofala, madefrequent incursions into this kingdom.

KKiillwwaa aanndd tthhee ZZaannzziibbaarr SSuullttaannaatteess

All the rest of the eastern coast, up to Cape Guardafui, was moreor less dependent upon the sultanates founded by Arabs ofMaskat and Persians from Shiraz and Bushire, with thecommercial concourse of Hindus from Bombay and Malabar. Themost powerful of these sultanates, which the others exalted atleast nominally, had its seat of government at Kilwa betweenCape Delgado and the island of Mafia. Founded around 980 byAli, son of Hassan, prince of Shiraz, it had as vassals the sultansof Sofala, Angoshe, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Pemba, Mombazor Mombasa, Melinde or Malindi, Kismayu, and Magadoxo(Benadir). In the course of time, the sultans of Sofala and ofZanzibar freed themselves from the tutelage of the Sultan of Kilwaand the sultan of Zanzibar became suzerain of the settlementssituated to the north of his island.

These diverse Arab and Persian sultans were not, properlyspeaking, governors of States; their authority was exercised onlyover Muslim colonies of Asiatic origin established around their re-spective residences and over the natives living in the proximity ofthese residences. Their principal occupation was to recruit slaveswhom the Negro chiefs, with whom they were in relations,procured by means of raids and sold to them and which they, inturn, sent off to the ports of the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf,or else resold to the Portuguese slave traders. Slave-trading consti-tuted almost the only commerce and the only excuse for the Muslimsettlements of East Africa and was the source of their prosperity. Itis not necessary to say that these affairs were purely material, thatthey were profitable only to the sultans, their followers and clients,and that such a situation, far from benefiting the mass of the nativepopulation, contributed to maintain it in a state of poverty andmoral misery from which it has not, even now, completelysucceeded in emancipating itself.

All the Negro tribes scattered along the eastern coast were knownto the Portuguese under the name of Makua and to the Arabsunder that of Zendj, these two words being nearly synonymouswith slaves in the mouths of those who employ them. Of thesecond word was formed the compound Zendjbar “country ofslaves” from which we have made Zanguebar and Zanzibar.20

TThhee KKiinnggddoommss ooff tthhee IInntteerriioorr

In the interior of the country, native States had been constitutedwhich were at least as powerful as those along the coast.

Ntadi funerary monument (Kongo), late 19th century.Democratic Republic of the Congo.Soapstone, height: 42 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

Most likely different from their indigenous term, ntadi (pl. mintadi) depict amother and child. Around 1825, sculptors began to produce painted figures ofstriking quality to be purchased by the wealthy after Boma became the centreof wealth. Since the mintadi served no religious purpose, they could be inventedin a variety of forms, even related to European origin. Ntadi, meaningwatchman, meant many of them were displayed on graves as witnesses for thedead. While some mintadi portrayed aspects of chiefship, maternity wasanother common theme to indicate the deceased was female. Around 1920,production appears to have stopped, though various sites and styles were foundup until that time.

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Fetish with nails (Kongo).Wood, seashell, metal, and magical materials, height: 49.5 cm.

To awaken a spirit and gain its protection, the Kongo putnails in its statue and abused it verbally. This paradoxicalpractice is reflected here in the contrast between thedelicate face and hard nails of the statue.

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Giwoyo mask (Pende).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, polychromia, height: 60 cm.Private collection.

This mask represents a dead body on its mortuary bed withthe sheet pulled up to its chin. It is worn horizontally on thedancer’s head and he summons the apparition of the deadspirit by dancing at night in the bush.

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Panel (Hungaan), 19th century.Kwenge Valley, Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, pigment, 99.2 x 45.3 cm.Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg.

This wooden panel is an example of a recurring femininemotif in which a female figure with splayed legs exposesher genitals. In most regions of East-Central Africa, femalemodesty is a common part of daily life; there is no tolerancefor the nudity of a grown woman. Thus, this picture mustrepresent an unusual situation, outside of daily life.According to the feminist Laura Mulvey, this woman is usedas a representation of a character that is not considered a“woman” at all and is rather an origination of the maleimagination. During rituals, men communicate with suchimages. These are not only the result of work or malesculptor commissioned works for wealthy dignitaries, butthe imagery is also meant to teach the young men of theKwango River region.

The wooden board contains evidence of sexualcuriosity; the woman is viewed as a sexual object that ischarged with the role of bearing children. In the context ofmale rituals, this symbol also points out the importance ofsolidarity in the male community. Visually, this relief consistsof two “W” forms, which support the diamond-shapedhead, while the other seems to float in the air, thus pointingout the exposed breasts. This plaque was found on an olddoor and seems to be a kitekki - a talisman attached to thedoor of a patient to ensure protection and healing.

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Relief panel (Pindi), c. 1904.Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, pigment, height: 99 cm.Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg.

From the Pindi village of Kissala, this panel was described as a “door with moon, kitekki (charm figure)and two kialu (lizards)”. Other doors found in the nearby Mbala and Hungaan areas have celestial symbolswhich are similar and also exhibit reptile forms. A variety of drinking-vessels have the kitekki on them.

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To the east of “the empire” of the Congo extended to thekingdom of Lounda, astride the high valleys of the Kasai andthe Zambezi, known under the name of the kingdom of themuata-yamvo. Between this State and that of the monomotapa,on the middle Zambezi, was the kingdom of the Barotse, to thenorth of which was that of the Katanga, in the mountainousregion where the Congo River takes its source. Still farther to thenorth, to the west of Lake Tanganyika, one meets the kingdomof the Urua or Baluba and that of the Manyema and, to the eastof the Lake, the celebrated “empire” of the muene-muezi or theWanyamwezi, with its vassals the Ourundi and the Ruanda.Finally, to the north of Lake Victoria flourished the Uganda withits vassal the Unyoro.

All these States, Negro kingdoms and Arab and Persiansultanates, had been preserved to at least up to the time of theoccupation of the country by European powers. Within theirboundaries or nearby and often at their expense, migrationsof tribes took place, none of which seems to have had theimportance that some have wished to attribute to certain ofthem. Some peoples, almost unknown to the ancientnavigators, have later been revealed to our attention, as, forinstance, the Fang or Pahuins who are met with in theCameroon and the Gabon. But in a general fashion, thepolitical and social state of Negro South Africa appears tohave undergone very little change from the 15th to the 19th century.At any rate, none of the States mentioned above has exercised aserious influence on the development of civilisation and, evenmomentarily, has not thrown an appreciable lustre within itsown borders.

Eyema Byeri statue (Fang).Gabon.Wood, dark brown satiny patina, height: 38 cm.Private collection.

Originating from the Volga, the Koulango, now living in the northeast of IvoryCoast, have adopted an art more similar to the Akan group. Unfortunately theirproduction is rather confined and not well-known.

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EEuurrooppeeaann aanndd CChhrriissttiiaann IInnfflluueennccee

On the other hand, the influence of European usages imported bythe Portuguese, Dutch, English, German, Belgian, and Frenchcolonists and that of the Christian religion preached by Catholicand Protestant missionaries have had more weight on thesepopulations, incompletely formed and remaining foreign to Islamicenterprise, than they had to the north of the Bantu country. Thanksto the great number of Europeans living permanently in southernAfrica and to the increasing penetration of the Boers and other“Afrikaaners” into the interior of the country, the primitive civili-sation of the Zulu, the Basuto, the Bechuana, the Matabele, andthe Hottentots has sometimes been profoundly modified, whilst atthe same time veritable populations of hybrids have been formedin the Portuguese and Dutch colonies. Certain native kingdomshave been strongly shaken by religious quarrels in consequence ofrivalries between Catholic and Protestant neophytes; thus, underthe reign of Mtessa, who was a Catholic, Uganda was bloodywith a religious war which continued under Muanga, successor ofMtessa, and which did not come to an end until 1892 with theconversion of Muanga to Protestantism. Here we have, assuredly,something new among the Negroes of Africa, and it can be saidthat, in a certain measure, the Europeanisation of an importantpart of southern Africa and the development that has there beengiven to Christianisation have brought results, certainly notidentical, but indeed comparable to those produced by theIslamisation of a part of western and central Sudan.

Androgynous figure (Teke). Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, earth, cowries, height: 84.5 cm.Private collection.

Mainly found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Teke are farmers andhunters that cohabit based on the bilateral matrilineal principle. Their belief systemis based around one god, Nziam, who has tutelary spirits, natural forces, ashenchmen and created an invisible world. These spirits receive prayers andsupplications through either religious or magical means. Presented as a collectionof various items, the intermediaries are often given a material presence, which iseither invested with magical powers or assumed to contain a natural spirit or thatof a deceased. These objects are preserved in a container which is attached to asculpture which represents the dead ancestor.

Here, the statue is almost definitely an ancestor, though the reason that it isandrogynous would be an interesting answer to know. The bent legs and erecthead exhibit a traditional pose; the eyes, made of glass beads, are close to thenose, the brow bulges, and the wide mouth is slightly open to show the teeth.There is a hole in the centre of the teeth which suggests there was a removablepiece which gave a physical presence to the ancestor’s words. A high rankingoffice is implied based on the pattern on the forehead and tattooed cheeks.

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DDiivveerrssiittyy ooff MMaatteerriiaall CCiivviilliissaattiioonnss

All those who have travelled in Negro Africa and have studied theinhabitants in their native environment have remarked how much morethey differ from one another in the material manifestations of theiractivity than in their social customs, their religious beliefs and their intel-lectual and moral character. The reason for this seems evident: the raceis everywhere the same, or very nearly the same, while the physicalenvironment varies from region to region. Everyone knows that the influ-ence of the physical environment makes itself felt especially in thedomain of material facts and that, if these in turn influence the socialand moral life of the people, they do not modify it except in the longrun and often in a manner that is hardly perceptible.

IInnfflluueennccee ooff PPhhyyssiiccaall EEnnvviirroonnmmeenntt

So it is where tall grasses abound, straw roofs dominate, while theyare replaced by flat roofs of clay in the more arid regions or inthose where farming absorbs almost the entire ground, or by leavesof palms or other trees in the great forest where tall grasses do notgrow. But this does not prevent the roofs, whether they be of straw,clay, or leaves, from sheltering the same mentality, imbued with thesame beliefs. Here, the domicile of the family is constituted by agroup of cylindrical huts forming a circle, there by one unique andvast building with many rooms; but there, as here, it is always thesame family, based on the same principles.

That is why the Negro peoples of Africa, who present on thewhole such a remarkable unity from the moral and social point ofview, offer on the other hand such great diversity in respect tohabitations, clothing and material life in general.

I should hasten to say that the difference in the physical environmentand the economic situation does not always suffice to explain thisdiversity. Thus, the Jula in the region of Kong, to take one examplefrom among a hundred, dress themselves in ample and often elegantclothing, while the majority of the Senufo, in the midst of whom theydwell, go almost naked. Here motives of a historical order intervene:the Jula of Kong have come from a country of the north where theirancestors learned to dress from peoples of the Mediterranean or Asi-atic races with whom they were in contact with for a long time, whilethe Senufo have inhabited during thousands of years, the samecountry where we see them today; the Jula have imported the habits

contracted in the Massina which the Senufo had not had the oppor-tunity to contract. But from day to day, the contact of the Julamaterially influences the Senufo and these, in their turn, begin toadopt, in greater and greater number, the wearing of the widepantaloon, the great blouse called “bubu” and a hood, without thischange of costume in any way modifying the depths of theirmentality, for the costume does not make the monk. One can say asmuch for the Negroes of the coast, who love to deck themselves outin European suits and even in frock coats and who, underneath thissometimes grotesque vesture, remain the same as their congeners ofthe interior who are clothed only in a breech-cloth or a string.

HHaabbiittaattiioonnss

I have just spoken of habitations. They assume the most varied aspectsamong the African Negroes, ranging from the hemispherical huts ofthe Fulani nomads, entirely constructed of straw, in form closelyrelated to the tent, that is abandoned as soon as the camping placeis changed, to be reconstructed elsewhere again in a few hours, tothe immense fortress in which the Dagari and other populations of theBlack Volta succeed in lodging as many as 150 or more persons, tosay nothing of the herds and provisions of grain and water.

The type most extensively found is perhaps the cylindrical hut of claywalls topped with a straw roof of dried grasses. It is met with in theregion of the savannas from one end of Negro Africa to the other.Often the type is modified: thus, in the French colony of the IvoryCoast, while the Malinke have conserved the common form, theDan have built the summit of the cone with a view to arranging anattic room in the interior and have extended its base so close to theearth that it is impossible to enter the hut without bending oneselfalmost to the ground; the Senufo in the region of Koroko or Korhogo

Material Civilisations

Offering or divination table (Chokwe), detail.Wood, 131 cm.Private collection.

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The Master of Buli’s stool (Hemba).Wood, height: 58 cm.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Master of Buli received this titled based on the area where manyof his works were found. As seen here, his work is identifiable bythe same face and vivid expression he often uses.

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Seat attributed to the Master of the old Buli, 19th century.Democratic Republic of Congo.Wood, 55 cm. Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin.

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Mutsago headrest (Shona), late 19th-20th century.Wood, 14 x 21 x 8.5 cm.Jonathan Lowen Collection.

The Shona speaking people made headrests in an array of styles and motifs,varying especially for canonical types which have been identified by scholars.Here, the only proof of Shonan design is the upper platform; the base andsupports are more similar to those commonly found by Tsonga speakers inMozambique and Transvaal. Further, it bears resemblence to European furniture,particularly in the side columnar supports and the end supports which have theirown circular base, though they have clearly been carved with the rectangularbase of the whole. Conventional Shona practice is obvious based on thetreatment of the relief on the ends in chevron patterns. The cross-shapes in thecentres of the longer sides also conform to the designs used in Karangan andKalangan headrests.

It is impossible to detect any symbolic content due to the lack of decorativemotifs outside of the upper platform, especially the abstraction of the base. Wecome to question change and adaptation of tradition as a result of outsideinfluence, as it is clearly formed from ideas taken from various sources.

Xiqamelo headrest (Shangaan), early 20th century.Eastern Transvaal, South Africa.Wood, 15 x 20 x 9 cm.Jaques Collection, Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Based on the quality and viruoso carving, the reputation of this remarkableheadrest from southern Africa is like no other known headrest from the area.Each corner has four tube-like forms rising from the base to twist around eachother and around a central suspended knob which supports a cross-bar.Between the confined space of the cross-bar and the base there is a sense ofcontained, compressed energy - even more obvious when one realises theheadrest is carved from one piece of wood. The flat, rectangular plane of thebase protrudes slightly and the lugs have been reduced to a more simple volumeon the underside of the cross-bar. Here, the vigour and complexity of the centralsection are contrasted by the understated extensions. The headrest appearsunused and no one knows if it was made for local consumption or for sale; thenames of the makers and owners are not recorded and there is no informationabout the time in which it was created.

Stool (Songye/Sungu), early 20th century.Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, 24 x 29 x 17 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

The slender character of the central and outer supports of this stool areextraordinary, particularly when considering it was extensively carved from a solidpiece of wood. Resembling a headrest more than a stool in terms of size and theweight it was likely meant to expect, the overall shape and wear on the uppersurface imply it was meant to be sat on. In no way does it appear to have been ofchiefly use, and there is no documentation associated with it which indicates itsdemarcation in any way. Presumably, it was meant for the use of women or children.

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have fastened two walls to each other, each one forming a semi-cylinder, and have covered the whole with a roof that assumes theaspect of an egg divided in the direction of its length; certainKulango have arranged a basement of stones below the clay of thewalls; the Baoulé have applied the clay on a wooden wattle whichconstitutes the framework of the wall and have replaced the circu-lar form by an ellipse that they have divided into several compart-ments; the Agni have deliberately adopted the rectangular formwith a two-sided roof and ridge tiles; some of the coast populationshave given four sides to their roofs and constructed their walls withthe ribs of the palm leaf, without having any recourse to clay.Besides these, innumerable intermediate types could be mentioned.

The other model of habitation which is dominant, especiallyamong certain Sudanese populations (Sarakolle, Bambara, Bobo,Gurunsi, Dagari, Hausa, etc.), is composed of a quadrangularclay wall with a flat roof constituting a terrace, made of round logsresting on the extremities of the walls and covered with mud.Sometimes, as in Djenné, these houses have a second story andwindows; elsewhere, as among the Degha of Assafoumo, on theIvory Coast, and among the Palaka of the same colony, they areextraordinarily low, but are so elongated that each one occupiesthe entire side of a street; elsewhere again, as in the vicinity of theBlack Volta, they have that sort of fortress-like aspect of which Ihave already spoken, being divided into numerous rooms each

Vhothi/ngwena door (Venda), 19th century.Northern Province, South Africa.Wood, 154 x 50 x 5 cm.The National Cultural History Museum, Pretoria.

Elaborately carved relief designs on doors were initially reserved for only the mostimportant chiefs of the political and religious hierarchy, though all high-rankingnobles and chiefs of the Venda had solid, carved wooden doors. Placed at thehighest point of the capital of a cheif’s dwelling, built on stone terraces againstthe southern side of a mountain, they remained unseen by most throughout thechief’s lifetime. The same professional carvers who created them wereresponsible for the production of sacred drums, xylophones, and divining bowls.

The most elaborately decorated doors are called ngwena (crocodile). The teeth,called harre, allow a leather strap to open and close the door, and up the nostrils,interlaced patterns on the surface of the skin mark the animal and the concentriccircles of his eyes. Because of this, all doors of this type are generic images ofcrocodiles. It is said when the door is closed, the crocodile bites, and unbites whenit is open. All of these doors share the same decorative motifs and iconography.

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one of which is reached by means of a ladder through a holearranged in the roof.

I should also cite the grottos of the Tombo dug in the rocky cliffs, andtheir houses of stones, the structures on piles of the Buduma of LakeChad, the matting shelters of the Somali, and a. multitude of othertypes of habitation. Generally, the houses are arranged to formgroups, each one of which serves as a home for one family, in thenarrow sense of the word. For this purpose a dozen huts are placedin a circle around a central court and joined to each other bybarriers or hedges of thorns; the ellipsoidal or rectangular houses arebuilt in threes, forming three sides of a square court, the fourth sideof which is completed by a barrier; each of the fortresses, or immea-surably elongated buildings, suffices to shelter a numerous family.Little clay edifices, some ovoid, others cylindrical, topped with strawbonnets and resting on stones which separate them from the ground,are generally built near these habitations and serve as granaries.

Besides the ordinary houses, one often meets with structures which playa role that among us has fallen to public buildings of all categories.Some are meeting halls, others are the official residences of chiefs,and others again fill the office of mosques among the Muslims. Thesebuildings, sometimes called “palaces” by certain travellers, are oftenno more than immense straw hives, like the mosque of Dinguiray(French Guinea), or well-constructed sheds, like the public house ofMan or the former audience hall of the deceased chief Buake, amongthe Baoulé (Ivory Coast). Sometimes they have a more monumentalaspect and do not lack a certain style, like the residence of the chiefof Koroko, the former royal residence of Abomey and especially thenumerous mosques with pyramidal or conical minarets and projectingsmall-beams that may be seen almost everywhere in Sudan.

FFuurrnniittuurree aanndd UUtteennssiillss

The furniture, always crude, comprises of hardly anything but thebeds, most of which are simple mats, stools of various forms, urns,

Door (Holo).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, 160 x 45 cm.Private collection.

Christian motifs in relief are represented on this double-panelled door. A figure,whose hands are in prayer position, kneels next to a crucifix on theaccompanying panel. Holo charm imagery provide a counterpart for thisreligious motif through its enframed depictions of the nzambi charm and hands-to-mouth posture in santative statues.

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Ceremonial sword (Ashanti), 19th century.Ghana.Metal, 150 x 26 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

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Bowstand: Kunda Master (Luba-Hemba), 19th century.Democratic Republic of Congo.Wood, 64.4 cm.

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Spoon (Dan).Ivory Coast.Wood, pigments, fibres, height: 42 cm.Chambaud Collection.

The most welcoming housewife of the Wunkirllé village isgiven this spoon as an insignia of social status. Used duringcelebrations for rice distribution, in addition to being afertility symbol, this spoon was thought to have the powerto make the owner rich and famous.

Knife (Lulua).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, metal, height: 30 cm.Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren, Belgium.

This unique bust fitting for the end of a local blade, is likelyanother version of the well-known bwanga bwa cibola(figures linked to fertility cults).

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High-backed chief’s stool (Nyamwezi), late 19th century.Tanzania.Wood, height: 107 cm.Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz,Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.

Known for both its history, once property of the Sultan ofBuruki in eastern Unyamwezi, and its aesthetic qualities,this is arguably the most famous piece of Nyamwezi art.Generally revealing male or female attributes, stools withhigh backs were sometimes used in pairs and reserved forchiefs. This particular example shows a human figurecarved on the dorsal side of the high back, where the headand hands projected from the edge as if to protect orembrace the occupant. The beaded eyes, lean facialstructure, and prominent, pursed lips are very characteristicof the Nyamwezi, though the base of the stool is whatmainly identifies it - the three convexly curved legs whichalternate with protruding legs.

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and calabashes playing the role of coffers, cupboards, and recepta-cles for all sorts of purposes. Three lumps of hardened clay or threestones disposed in a triangle mark the place of the hearth and serveas a support for the kettle. Vases of clay and of wood often orna-mented and of a graceful aspect, a large wooden mortar with itspestle, or a mill composed of two stones, some spatulas for stirringthe porridge, some wooden spoons, baskets in numerous forms, con-stitute the utensils of the household. An iron hoe with a very shortwooden handle, takes the place of a plough, a shovel, and a spade.An adze and a crude axe are the tools of the carpenter; an iron barserving as a hammer, a stone plate in place of an anvil, somepinchers and an ingenious bellows form the material of the smith. Flint-locks, most generally of stone, elsewhere bows and poisoned or non-poisoned arrows, lances, javelins or throwing knives of complicatedand elegant forms, short sabres and straight-swords, large and smallclubs are the arms of the hunters and warriors, certain of whom alsoutilise shields of leather or of basket work; the fishermen use variouskinds of nets (seines, cast-nets, hoop-nets, etc.), weirs, and oftenharpoons, and do not disdain even the line, held in the hand withoutthe intermediary of a pole and not carrying a float.

CCllootthhiinngg aanndd DDeeccoorraattiioonn

It is the clothing which, perhaps, presents the greatest variety from onepeople to another. Sometimes one sees, especially among the

Muslims, Negroes clad in “bubus” and overcoats of cotton, of silk orof velvet, ornamented with very prettily worked embroideries;sometimes the costume is reduced to a short blouse without sleevesand to a sort of swinging trunks; sometimes the blouse and the trunksare missing, being replaced by a large loin-cloth of cotton orsometimes of bark, which is carried like a Roman toga, or by a simplestrip of cloth passed between the buttocks; sometimes one perceivesno other trace of clothing than a simple case into which the extremityof the sexual organ disappears, as among the Bassari of upperGambia, the Lobi and the Birifor of the middle Black Volta, certainBechuana of the Transvaal, or even a simple string, serving to holdthis organ, as among many of the Bobo and the Dagari, or again anapron of leather which covers only the hind part of the body, asamong the Sara of Chari. The same is true of the women: by the sideof Wolofs disappearing under five or six multi-coloured loincloths andas many ample, long-sleeved tunics, one may meet Senufo ladieshaving no other clothing than a package of leaves or straw, not tomention the most frequent case, which is that of a loin-cloth fastenedaround the waist and leaving the torso naked. However sumptuousor wretched their costumes may be, Negro women always have agreat love of ornamentation. Here also, what a diversity of manifesta-tions! Gold and silver jewellery, generally of very great weight, butof a handiwork which is often very fine and sometimes of very artisticpattern, is spread in profusion on the body, the head, the hands, andthe feet of certain elegants of Senegal, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, andSudan; beads of all kinds, rings and ornaments of ivory or copperare seen almost everywhere; often, also, style demands that there beimbedded in the lips, little plugs of quartz, wisps of straw, or disks ofivory or metal, some of which are so large that the lip that carriesthem is transformed into a racket-like shape.

There is another sort of ornamentation, extremely common among thetwo sexes, which consists in decorating the skin of the cheeks, theforehead, the neck, or the chest, or all parts of the body at once, withscarifications in lines or in points, taking all sorts of forms, simple orcomplicated. Among some tribes, it seems that certain, at least, ofthese mutilations, are ethnic marks; among many others, they have noother aim than to augment the beauty of the subject who bears them.

SSkkiilllleedd OOccccuuppaattiioonnss

With the exception of the artisans, the Negroes generally carry ontheir occupations outside of their villages and, save during the dryseason, pass almost all their days in the fields or hunting wild game.

Others are given almost exclusively to cattle-herding and cattle-raising; they are, in general, populations which, by their distantorigins, are related, at least in part, to the white race: the Fulani ofWest Africa, the Masai in East Africa, the Vahimba or Bahima incentral Africa, not to mention the Hottentots of southern Africa,

Door (Swahili), c. 1900.Tanzania.Wood, height: 200 cm.Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.

Variously described as Swahili, Arab, or Zanzibari, the carved doors of the eastAfrican coast represent varients within a widespread and ancient tradition in thewestern Indian Ocean, which declined after the Portuguese invasion but wasrenewed in the 19th century. Consisting of various interlocking members, thecarved door is most often the only strinking feature of an otherwise plain, white-washed building. All doors are double and open inward from the centre, the sizeand quality indicated the social status of the owner. Carved in a variety of motifs,the fish and wavy lines point out the important source of livelihood for the Swahili,the chain is thought to represent security, the lotus and rosette suggest Indianinfluence, and the incense and date palm trees, indigenous of Somalia and Arabia,are thought to show wealth. The leaves on the door were decorated with rows ofiron studs and fitted with a clasp and cain to lock the door from the outside. Mostoften, these decorations centred around a Koranic insciption in the middle of thedoor, which likely contained the name and dates of the artist and owner.

Carved doors are only one manifestation of Indian Oceanic regional culture.The eastern African coast and the northern rim of the Indian Ocean have alwaysshared an interpenetration of culture, such as the already carved doors importedto Oman from east Africa that likely influenced local culture.

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Idiophone (Baoulé).Ivory Coast.Wood, metal, pearls, mirror, primate hand, height: 22 cm.Private collection.

Made with a hammer and a bell, this type of Lanoulé idiophone was likelynamed after a deity linked to the twins cult. Traditional chiefs in the past usedthem as part of their regalia during funerals or ritual ceremonies. According tothe different functions it retains, this remarkable example of an enigmaticanimal figure (a chameleon or lizard) also had magical power. Based on theindigenous mending, it is clear that the owner was very important.

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Statue (Luba).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, pearls, fabric, height: 26 cm.Private collection.

Women serve an essential role in Luba culture. Women hold thepower: they perpetuate the cult, control alliances, and preservethe royal secrets close to their breasts in their hands. Present inmyths surrounding the Viyé, the female spirit guards religion,supports the group, and holds the political power (the royalwives manage alliances), so their figures are used in rituals.

Dignitary cane (Luba).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, copper, height: 162 cm.Private collection.

The canes of kings, chiefs, dignataries, or soothsayers tell thestory and geneology of families, lineages, and chiefdomsworking as memory-aides. The figure represents the king whilethe pole evokes the uninhabited bush and the geometrical partsrepresent both political and administrative centres.

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whose origin is more mysterious. Industry is more extensive and moredeveloped than is generally believed to be the case, even amongvery backwards tribes. It is almost always the privilege of castes livingoutside the bounds of society, despised because of their pretendedservile origin, at the same time petted because they are indispensableon account of the trades which they are the only ones to exercise,and feared because they are believed to be in possession ofnumerous magic secrets. One group devotes itself to the extractionand working of iron, another – or the feminine part of this group – tothe manufacture of pottery, another to working in wood or wicker,another to the making of copper or copper ornaments, still another togold or silver jewellery by means of the process of cire perdue or ofthe blowpipe. To these diverse categories of artisans must be addedthat of weavers, dyers, tailors, embroiderers, these latter not consti-tuting in general a special caste. On the contrary, musicians, profes-sional singers, and poets form castes to which Europeans give thegeneric appellation of the caste of the “griots”.

Many of the Negroes devote themselves to commerce, especiallyambulatory commerce, notably among the Sarakolle or Marka, theJula and the Hausa. Some populations, as the Jula and the Hausa ofSudan, the Apollonians of the Gold Coast and the Ivory Coast,traverse considerable stretches of country, going to the north to fetchsalt bars of Saharan origin and, in the zone neighbouring the greatforest, kola-nuts, transporting on donkeys or bullocks, more often onthe heads of men, the most varied products of local industry orEuropean importation, gaining painfully, by this heavy toil, fortuneswhich are generally very meagre but which are nevertheless enviedby the peasants. The latter profess a certain admiration for thesepeddlers who have become educated in many things by their travelsand more or less polished by the frequentation of a variety of environ-ments. But the mass of the population is given almost exclusively toagriculture: the land is at the same time the primordial divinity and theprincipal means of subsistence of the Negroes of Africa.

Headrest (Luba).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, 17 x 13 x 9 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

Serving multiple purposes, headrests such as this are a cool and comfortablepillow in tropical climates as well as a protector for elaborate hairstyles by raisingthe head above the surface of the bed. Also viewed as a seat for dreams in theLuba culture, who consider dreams to be prophetic in fortelling importantevents, providing warnings, and communicating messages from the otherworld. It is not surprising, then, that headrests should support femalepriestesses, who serve as real-life intermediaries and interlocutors for spirits.

The cruciform coiffure and cascade hairstyles displayed on this headrest,both decorative and spiritual, were the most popular styles of the upper class ofthe 19th century. Women, through the embellishment and civilisation of theirbodies and heads, are rendered ideal receptacles for the containment of a spirit.

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Stool (Hemba), late 19th century.Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, 52 x 27.5 x 22 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

Stools such as this example, particularly among the Luba andthose who emulated the Luba sacred rule, were owned andused by chiefs and kings. Still used as seats of power andmemory of the past and present, the subtle iconography ofstools can be read as sculptural narratives. They may beconsidered a place which joins the chief and his people to theancestors and other spirits seeking guide for daily affairs;they are called kitenta or “spirit capital”. Only intending forsitting in the most rare of circumstances, like when a chief orking attempts to show his position as a sacred intermediarybetween the world of the living and the dead.

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TThhee FFaammiillyy aanndd tthhee TTwwoo SSyysstteemmss ooff RReellaattiioonnsshhiipp

It is commonly said that the family is the basis of society among theNegroes. This is indeed exact, but we may ask how it could beotherwise. All societies are based on the family; one may only saythat the fact is the more evident the less developed the social state:peasants never dissociate themselves from the family, whileadvanced peoples tend to consider their members only asindividuals. Among the Negroes of Africa, the group to which weourselves give the name of family, that is to say the group formed bythe father, the mother and the children, has only a secondary impor-tance. Often it does not even exist, in the sense that among manyNegro peoples the husband of a woman is only the husband andnot the father, meaning that he has no rights over the children bornof his flesh: the children in this case, belonging solely to the familyof their mother, and it is her eldest brother who exercises the paternalrights over them and who is responsible for their life and theiractions. I know very well that the African peoples among whom thissystem is found are at present in the minority. But the fact that theyexist and that they exist almost everywhere stimulates us to a closerstudy of the system. And then it is perceived that this custom,admitting relationship only on the mother’s side, must have formerlybeen universally observed among the Negroes and that there stillexist, at various stages, multiple and undeniable traces of it.

The Arab authors who have spoken to us about Ghana andManding in the Middle Ages observe that in these States, inheri-tance is transmitted, not from father to son, but from brother to brotheron the mother’s side or from uncle to the sister’s son. According tonative traditions, it is the Bambara who, the first in Sudan, broke withthis usage and it is from this that they take their name ban-ba-ra orban-ma-na signifying “separation from the mother”, while thoseamong the Wangara who remained faithful to the old customsreceived the name of Manding or Mande – ma-nding or ma-ndesignifying “child of the mother”. In our days, masculine relationshiphas persisted among the Bambara and has dominated among theSarakolle and a part of the Mandinka or Malinke; but many of theselatter admit only feminine relationship as conferring the right of inher-itance and it is the same among most of the Fulani and Serers andamong a considerable number of the Negro peoples of Sudan, ofthe Coast of Guinea, and of sub-equatorial Africa.

This does not prevent the role of chief of the family from beingfilled by a man, even though occasionally it falls to a woman;

but, among the populations which admit only female relationship,the chief of the family is the brother of the mother on her mother’sside. Among other peoples it is the real father. With one as withthe other, the group forming the family, properly speaking,comprises all the living descendants of the same ancestor –female among the former, male among the latter – or at least allthe descendants who inhabit the same locality or who live inrelations with one another.

Thus comprised, the family is very different from what the wordusually represents in our minds. Families counting hundreds are notrare and the practice of polygamy has often resulted in making thisnumber even greater, so that it presents, in this respect, an impor-tance that could not be attained by a simple “household”. It alsoresults that – marriage between relatives not being permitted andtwo spouses not being able, in consequence, to have the sameancestry – the wife is not a part of her husband’s family; and it isactually so, at least in law.

The social unity constituted by each family is supplemented by apolitical unity; in matters of civil justice, as in every other matter,the family comes before the individual: Negro society is fundamen-tally collectivist.

TThhee PPaattrriiaarrcchh

Each family has a chief, the patriarch, who is, in a generalmanner, the first born of the oldest generation. He is often desig-

Social Customs

Crowns covered with a pearled decoration (Yoruba).Plant fibres and beads, height: 38.6 cm.

Maintained by kings and courtiers, Yoruba pearled crowns such as these wereoften gifted to important visitors. These are among the most colourful examplesof African art.

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Emumu animal sculpture of the Bobongo (Lyembe).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, pigments, horn, glass, length: 217 cm.Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.

Used in Bobongo choregraphy including ritual, song, dance, music, acrobatics,recitings, and diverse artefacts, as well during the funeral of an importantperson. Though captivating spectators with wonder, the tall sculptures weredestroyed after use.

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Bovine figure (Karagwe).Tanzania.Iron, height: 41 cm.Felix Collection.

According to legend, this figure was created by the king himself, who, in thewake of a dream, thought to mould his entire kingdom of metal. Britishresearchers, Speke in 1861 and Stanley in 1875, further developed theseobjects.

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Statue (Lengola).Wood, height: 194 cm.Private collection.

Pigment covered, Lengola and Bembe statues are meant toembody spirits during male circumcision ceremonies, as well asguarantee social stability.

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Staff (Zulu), 19th century.KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.Wood, 109.2 x 11.4 x 6.3 cm.Kevin and Anna Conru.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, figurative and non-figurative staffsand clubs were produced throughout southeast Africa. Whilemost were intended for chief use, they were made for a varietyof markets. Here, abstract or semi-abstract details are included,along with horn-like projections. The style and iconographyevidenced here suggests that it was varied based on the regionof its origin.

It is obvious that cattle served as an important symbol ofwealth and fertility, and especially they helped people maintaincommunication with royal ancestors. In contrast, they serve assimple evidence of the artists’ skill to juxtapose shapes,occasionally highlighted by additional metal-work.

Staff (Kwere), early 20th century.Tanzania.Wood, height: 142 cm.Felix Collection.

Elaborate ceremonial occasions add to the rich culture of theKwere. Lineage elders, leaders of spiritual possession, diviners,healers, or anti-witchcraft specialists preside over such rituals.Likely used mainly in the context of male and female ritual rites,figurative staff served to legitimate their special role and abilities.Gourds filled with ritual substances were hung from the carvedhooks, and staff of this kind were planted in ceremonial groundand was meant to consecrate it.

Staff (Nyamwezi).Tanzania.Wood, height: 97.5 cm.Private collection.

Staffs in Africa serve various purposes, ranging from the obvioususe of walking-stick to more superior roles of spiritual, political, orprestigious matters. On occasion, they also communicated specificmessages through their iconography, serving as documents meantto be understood as narratives. The complexity of the staffcorrelates directly with the specialisation of its use.

This particular Nyamwezi staff most likely served as aprestigious emblem of a local staff. The artist deserves a lot ofcredit for the integrity of its form as both a support for the body,as well as a statement of rank. The facial features, which arefinely paired, strong, and enhanced by small pierced patternswhich indicate hair and a beard, add to the artistic harmony ofthe staff’s structure and delicacy. The arms along the side andnotched shoulders rendered in relief are characteristic of itsunderstated refinement.

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nated by the name of “father” or of “grandfather”, but often,also, simply by that of “old”: that is, “the elder”. He exercisesover all the members of the family the same authority that isexercised among us by the father over his children, but hispower does not extend outside these members themselves; theresult is that, in a family based on masculine descent, the wivesof the members of the family escape the authority of the patriarchand, inversely, in a family based on female descent, thehusbands of the women members of the family do not belong tothese families, but to the families of their mothers. From thisprinciple there develop complicated situations of fact: the wifeowes obedience to her husband, but not to the patriarch towhom her husband is related.

MMaarrrriiaaggee

In reality, nowhere among the Negroes is the wife consideredto be incorporated into the family of her husband; aftermarriage she continues to be a part of her own family, but sheis withdrawn from it for the time being for the profit of herhusband and, in consequence, for the profit of his family. Thisis why the custom universally admitted in Negro Africademands, in order that the union should be valid and regular,that the family of the future husband pay to the family of thefuture wife an indemnity, in compensation for the wrongcaused to the latter family by the abduction of one of itsmembers. It is not, as has been wrongly claimed, the buyingof the wife by the husband, for the wife does not legally ceaseto belong to her own family and nowise becomes the propertyof the husband whom she marries; there is only the payment ofan indemnity or, more exactly, of a surety, which variesenormously according to the district and according to theposition of the future couple, ranging from several thousandfrancs to an object that is worth only a few centimes; in thelatter case, there is only the accomplishment of a simpleformality, demanded by respect for old traditions.

In certain regions exists a custom which was general in formertimes and which consisted in paying to the family of the future wifea veritable compensation in kind in the form of another woman:the sister of the future husband was given in marriage to thebrother of the future wife.

DDiivvoorrccee

When there is a rupture of the marriage as a consequence ofdivorce, the repudiated wife returns to her family, who givesback to the family of the ex-husband the security that hadbeen received from it. At least, such is the principle; it can

undergo attenuations from the facts of particular circum-stances. As for the children born of the broken union, theybelong to the family of the mother among the populationswhich admit only feminine relationship; among the others theyare generally allotted to the father, but on condition that hisfamily renounce the reimbursement of the security paid.Sometimes, when there are several children there is a friendlydivision among the two families.

OOrrpphhaannss

In case of the death of a parent, the non-emancipated children[those still under the paternal power], that is to say, thecelibates – because emancipation can result only frommarriage – form part of the heritage of that one of their parentsto whom they are related by the only ties of relationship thatlocal custom recognises. There where the relationship in thefeminine branch is the only one admitted, the children do notchange their status at the death of the father, who isconsidered as being nothing to them [legally]; at the death oftheir mother they are allotted to her heir, that is to say, ingeneral, to the eldest of her brothers on her mother’s side who,during the lifetime of his sister, has already exercised paternalrights over them. On the contrary, where relationship on thefather’s side is the only one recognised, the children,belonging legally to their father do not change their status atthe death of their mother; at the decease of their father they areallotted to his heir, who may be his eldest brother or his eldestson: in the latter case, it is the eldest son who becomes thelegal father of his brothers, under the tutelage of some olderrelative, if the son is still a child.

Ndimu body mask (Makonde), late 19th century.Southern Tanzania/Mozambique.Wood, 61.2 x 30.7 x 15 cm.Private collection, London.

The female body mask was part of the costume of a special ndimu masker calledamwalindembo that was intended to represent a young pregnant woman. Itwas usually carved with a swollen abdomen decorated with the typicalMakonde raised tattoos applied with beeswax (though, here they are carved inrelief), and was always worn by a male masquerader together with a matchingfemale face mask.

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Dance costume (Bamileke).Cameroon.Fabric, fibres, dye, cowries, goatskin, height: 100 cm.Dr and Mrs Henri Tranier Collection.

This dance costume with an “elephant” hood and leg bangles,most often worn by notable men in Macabosi celebrations,otherwise known as the Bamendjou population’s generalmeeting, but also during to a new king’s sacrament, the end ofthe harvest celebrations, or the funeral of an important man. Inthe Bamileke area, the close guards of the chief in the Kwi’foinitiation society wear the “elephant” mask, referred to astou-poum or mbadjoua.

Dance costume (Bamileke).Cameroon.Fabric, fibres, dye, cowries, goatskin, height: 140 cm.Dr and Mrs Henri Tranier Collection.

Female dance costumes for the Bamendjou are comprised of ahood, “elephant” mask with a plate, which symbolises thepower of the king, and vegetable bells. A large, flat, circular hatis most especially worn by the fo, or chief, when he intends tobe seen with the notable people of the Kwo’si society.

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Ncaka kot woman’s overskirt (Bushoong), early 20th century. Democratic Republic of the Congo.Raffia, 162 x 63 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

Among the most distinguishing features of the Kuba of thesouth-central Democratic Republic of the Congo are theelaborate surface decorations of woven raffia textiles. Worn overlonger, cermonial skirts, the women’s overskirts are worn forspecial occasions, such as funerals, at which time the raffia skirtsand overskirts are worn by not only the corpse, but also herfamily and friends in a celebration of the deceased life. As inother neighbouring groups, weaving is gender-specific amongthe Kuba and men are responsible for the various stages of fibrepreparation and weaving completion. Additionally, they areresponsible for assembling the overskirt of a doubled section ofplain woven raffia cloth. As a foundation, next, the womenembroider the raffia for the central panel and borders.

In this example, applique and embroidered motifs are spacedwidely across the central panel. The embroidery is completed onthe white cloth with black-dyed raffia thread. Each motif isnamed in correspondance with the shape it represents, circle,dog tail, leaves, etc. The Bushoong women in the Kuba capitalvillage are ascribed with this type of embroidery, which iscompleted by pregnant royal women who are confined to theirdomestic compounds. Also, during a mourning period, a lot oftime is spent sewing and embroidering to replenish theceremonial supplies which were used as gravegoods.

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PPoollyyggaammyy

Polygamy is everywhere authorised, but it is not a constantpractice. In fact, the number of wives is proportionate to thewealth of the husband. The security paid for the first wife is, ashas been said, generally paid by the father or the chief of thefamily of the fiancé, who, not being married, is not free from hisfather’s power; but, for the other wives, it is the husband himselfwho has to meet the expense: thus the poor are almost all monog-amous by necessity.

IInnddiivviidduuaall aanndd CCoolllleeccttiivvee PPrrooppeerrttyy

In fact, the ground is a god that no one would think of appropri-ating to himself, still less of buying and selling. But, by offerings orsacrifices carried out in accordance with consecrated rites, theNegro family first arriving on the piece of unoccupied groundobtained from the local divinity the right and the privilege to usethis land, a right and a privilege which is transmitted in the samefamily from generation to generation. No individual, no collectivityhas, then, actual property rights to the soil, and no one cantransfer rights to the land of which he is not the proprietor. But thereexist in the hands of definite ethnic collectivities, each one consti-tuted by the descendants of the family first arriving on a piece ofland and accomplishing the necessary rites, rights of usage andexploitation that the titulary community can cede in whole or inpart, gratuitously or for payment, to other collectivities or privatepersons, but always on condition of obtaining the authorisation ofthe divinity by the accomplishment of new rites.

Each collectivity owning the rights to the use and exploitation ofa given piece of land has a chief, who is generally the patriarchof the oldest family and who bears the title of “master of theground”. He is at the same time the grand priest of the localreligion and the administrator of the soil; he is not necessarily thepolitical chief of the country. The fact that he or his collectivityshould fall under the yoke of an individual or collective conquerortakes from him none of his religious or landed prerogatives, andthat is why, in many villages, cantons or kingdoms, one finds atthe side of the political chief who holds the reins of State in hishands, a “master of the ground” who may be only a poor wretch,but who enjoys an intangible prestige and without whom thepolitical chief can do nothing when it is a question of a sacrificeto be offered to the divinities of the locality or a distribution offarm lands. Conquest gives no rights to the soil conquered: this isa principle that has never ceased to be respected by the mostfamous Negro conquerors.

Everything that is not land can be possessed in full property rights,with the right of transfer, whether by collectivities or individuals.

The source of real property is work: the product of the workbecomes the actual property of the author of the work, who maydispose of the product as he likes, giving it away or selling it,lending it with or without interest. If it concerns an individual, theproduct of his work will constitute, at his death, his estate; the factof having purchased a thing, of having received it as a gift or asan inheritance confers the same rights as the fact of having createdit by one’s own work. If the author of the work is a collectivity, theproduct of this work constitutes a collective property over whichnone of the members of the collectivity, including the chief himself,has a special right and which cannot be disposed of except withthe agreement of the entire collectivity or its authorised representa-tives: such is the case of family property, of which the patriarch,chief of the family, is only the trustee and the administrator.

The farmer is not the proprietor of the ground which he cultivates,but he is of the cereals which he has planted and harvested, in thesame way as he is of the salary that he gains in working foranother, of the cattle and the slaves which he has bought or thewealth that he has acquired by inheritance.

Only individual wealth is transmitted by inheritance. In principlethe heir is always a single person – except among some Islamisedpeoples – but it is admitted that he should, in some manner and inthe measure that appears proper to him, allow his near ones tobenefit, in the form of gifts, by a part of the succession whichcomes to him.

Beaded belt (Kuba).Democratic Republic of the Congo. Beads, shells, leather.The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

A beautiful example of the beadwork tradition associated with the inventiveKuba. Similar to a charm bracelet, a belt of this sort has a collection oftraditional items, including those realised in beadwork, and rare, highly valuedshells. Even, uneducated viewers can easily note particular elements, such as theknot, horned animal head, bells, and leaves. Also connected with wealth andprestige, cowries are expected to be displayed here as they do in exclusive royalbelts made of fur. Body scarification, wooden sculpture, and other designsfound in textiles are all found here. Such a belt demands the highest quality ofdesign and bead application.

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Mask (Punu).Gabon.Wood, pigments, height: 31 cm.Private collection.

The “white” masks of the Okuyi dance, an intercommunityritual belonging to the beliefs linked to the Mwiriinitiations, exist in the large south half of Gabon in thePunu tribes, but also in several other populations related tothem. Dancers doing acrobatics, up on high stilts, wear thismask in the shape of a female figure. Sometimes, themasks fight during battles between rival villages. Theforehead pattern in red “scales”, symbolically refering tothe primitive clans of the Bayaka-Punu populations, areexceptionally developed here.

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Mask (Bidjogo).Wood, pigments, and plant fibres.Private collection.

Worn during ceremonies linked to the transition betweentwo age groups, this extraordinary crest, in a stylised-sharkpattern, indicates the deep impact of the ocean on thebeliefs of the Baga people.

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SSllaavveerryy

Slavery has undoubtedly existed at all times among the Negroes,although it has been especially developed at the instigation offoreigners: formerly by the inhabitants of North Africa and nearerAsia, and at a more recent epoch by European and Americanslave traders. Today it has been abolished by the colonisingnations, who have ended by destroying that which theyworshipped; it is still more effectively abolished by the fact of thedisappearance of slave-hunting conquerors and by the cessationof inter-tribal wars: because, outside of a few miserable groupsamong whom parents sometimes sold their own children in orderto procure food for themselves, there have never been otherslaves in Negro Africa than the persons captured in war. Thesebecame the property of their captors, who could keep them forthemselves or sell them.

In law, slaves were indeed but cattle. In fact, with the exceptionof those who were destined for the slave traders and whoconstituted a veritable merchandise, they were treated by theirmaster as almost on the same footing as the members of hisfamily, often becoming his trusted associates and sometimesbeing freed by him on his own initiative. As for the childrenborn of slaves, they could not be sold and they made up anintegral and inalienable part of the family property, and it wasthe same with their descendants in perpetuity. These descen-dants of slaves have become similar to agrarian serfs who,often much more numerous than their lords, constitute, today,what one might call the lower classes, while the persons in aposition to prove that their ancestors have always been free arefor the most part a minority and form the nobility.

Statuette (Baoulé).Ivory Coast.Wood, iron, 57 x 13 cm.Centre Pompidou - Musée national d’art moderne, Paris.

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Mask (Lulua).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 28 cm.Private collection.

Used during male circumcision ceremonies and rites of passage, this type ofmask brings back the spirits of dead people. This specimen shows well how theChokwe could reuse masks in initiation rituals, Mukanda, shared by severalpopulations from the south-west of Central Africa.

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Do yeleni statue (Bamana).Mali.Wood, height: 52.5 cm.Aura Collection.

In the Bamana or Bambara societies, young men havingaccomplished initiation ritually go through near-by villages toshow off their desire to marry. They disclose statues of theideal wife.

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Basikasingo statue (Pre-Bembe).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 70 cm.Felix Collection.

Ancestral figure. These statues allowed the emphasis ofgenealogy, property rights of noble families, as well as their socialand political prestige, while being honoured as part of a cult.

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IIssllaamm,, CChhrriissttiiaanniittyy,, aanndd AAnniimmiissmm

In general, a very exaggerated role is accorded to Islam regarding theextent and importance of its domain in Negro Africa. It has hardlypenetrated in a profound and effectual fashion except among theNegro and Negroid populations who live on the border of theSahara; its adepts become more and more rare in proportion as oneadvances towards the south and, even in the region which we com-monly call Sudan, it is far from being the numerically dominant religion.It may be said that the only African peoples who are in the majorityMuslims, aside from the populations of the white race in Egypt,Berbery and the Sahara, are the Wolofs who are, moreover, with theexception of the Lebu of Dakar, of recent Islamisation the Tukulors, theFulani of the Futa-Jallon, the Sarakolle, the Jula, the Songhoy, the Kanuriof Bornu, the Kanembu, the Teda of the Kawar, Tibesti, and Borku,some of the tribes of the Wadai of Darfur and of Kurdufan, the Bishari,the Danakil, the Somali and certain collectivities on the islands and thecoasts of Zanzibar forming a very small total population. The otherFulani, the Mandinka, Susu, Yoruba, Hausa, Bagirmians are partlyMuslims and partly pagans. Portions of the Galla people and otherNegroid populations of Abyssinia or its vicinity are Christians, othersare pagans, and some few others are Muslims.

All the rest, that is to say, the immense majority of the Negropopulation of Africa, is pagan, with the exception of some hundredsof thousands of Christians dispersed here and there in the proximityof Catholic and Protestant missions, notably on the coast of Senegal,at Sierra-Leone, in Liberia, on the Gold Coast, in Dahomey, inLagos, uin Duala, and Yaunde in the Cameroons, in Libreville, inAngola, in the territories of the [former] Union of South Africa, inMozambique and in the Uganda. It seems that there is not a singleNegro people who have been converted en bloc to Christianity.

It must be added that, on the whole, the Muslim Negroes and theChristian Negroes remain faithful in good numbers to their ancestralbeliefs and to many rites of their ancient paganism. Of what doesthis paganism or so-called paganism consist? Since it is the religionof almost all the Negroes, it merits more interest than seems to havebeen brought to it up to the present. It is generally characterised as“fetishism,” but fetishism, that is, the belief in the power of fetishesor talismans is not a religion; it is only one of the most apparentaspects of universal superstition. Fetishism is met with in all religions,even the most advanced and most disengaged from materialthings, and the Christian Negroes like the Muslim Negroes are as

fetishistic as the pagan Negroes: only they have a greater numberof “fetishes”, for they have kept those of paganism and have addedto them those that they found in a number of practices, to be surenot very canonical, of Christianity and Islam.

IInnddiivviidduuaall SSppiirriittss ooff PPeeooppllee aanndd TThhiinnggss

The religion of the Negroes of Africa is in reality animism, that is, thebelief in the all-powerfulness of spirits, to whom the faithful render aconsistent cult of prayers, offerings and sacrifices, with a view toattracting their favours, deterring their anger or calling for helpagainst enemies. What are these spirits? It is not the spirit of goodand the spirit of evil; there are not good spirits and bad spirits. Theanimism of the Negroes has nothing of dualism and that which hasled several missionaries to present it under this aspect can be only asubjective reminiscence of the opposition made by certain Christiansbetween God and the Devil. Neither do they make the distinction,dear to the religions with dualist tendencies, between gods anddevils, between good and bad spirits: no divinity is considered asessentially good or bad in itself and there do not exist souls of whomone seeks only to attract the favour and others of whom one seeksonly to avoid the wrath; the faithful demand of the same divinity aidfor themselves and harm for their enemies.

VViittaall BBrreeaatthh

African Negroes believe that every animated being encloses withinitself, in addition to its body, two immaterial principles. One, a sort

Religious Beliefs and Practices

Sorcerer costume.Cameroon.Various materials, height: 85 cm.Private collection.

Accumulation on both sides of a fabric surface, of skulls, bones, wood, charms,leathers, skins, scales, metals, barks, birds legs, and other diverse elements,representing the analogic African thinking, which relates forces from differentorigins and natures, whose combination creates a driving force.

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Statue (Yaka, Suku).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, polychromia, height: 60 cm.Private collection.

The Suku and Yaka populations live in the southwest of theDemocratic Republic of the Congo. These two neighbouringpopulations have common origins and similarities in theirinstitutions. This charm, evil as well as beneficial, exists in thesetwo ethnic groups. But certain stylistic details allow us to creditit to the Suku.

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Statue (Mumuye).Nigeria.Wood, height: 100 cm.Private collection.

A spirit or tutelary ancestor meant to protect the wellness offamilies or individuals.

Statue (Mumuye).Nigeria.Wood, height: 92 cm.Private collection.

Kept in sacred huts, these statues are linked to the two cults ofwater, Vadosong, and fire, Vabong. Protecting clans, they alsohave divinatory and medicinal powers, and solve problems.Incarnation of a tutelary spirit, they are in constant contact withthe ancestors.

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of breath or vital fluid, has no other role than to animate the materialpart and to communicate life and movement to it; it is a principlewithout an individuality or personality of its own, which is eternal inthe sense that it is anterior to the body that it animates for the timebeing and will survive it to go and animate another, and so on untilthe end of time. Like matter, it is infinitely divisible and can disso-ciate itself into various elements each of which suffices, alone orcombined with another element coming from elsewhere, to animatea given body. When a man dies, it is that the vital breath hasabandoned its carnal envelope in order immediately to create anew life either in a human or animal foetus in gestation or in agerminating plant. Of course, this sort of fluid, without personality,without intelligence, without will, that may be compared to anelectric current, is not the object of any cult. It is, if you will, a spirit,but only in the etymological sense of the word (spiritus: “breath”).

The second principle is very different: born with the body whichharbours it and at the same time, it constitutes the veritable personalityof the being to whom it communicates its thought, its will and the forceto act; the vital breath permits the members of a man or an animal tomove, it permits the sap of a tree to circulate in its veins, but thismovement and this circulation cannot be accomplished if they are notordered by the spirit. If it happens that one day the control of the vitalbreath escapes from the spirit and that, as a consequence, this breathleaves its envelope and death follows, it is because another spiritwhich is stronger has neutralised the first: that is why all death isattributed by the Negroes not to material causes, which for them areonly secondary and immediate causes, but to the psychic influenceof an evil-minded spirit, the only real and first cause of death.

After the decease of a being, only his spirit lives, and it lives such asit was during the lifetime of this being with the same personality, thesame character, the same affections, and the same hatreds. Only itno longer has the vital breath to command nor the carnal envelopelimiting its fancy and so it becomes even more powerful, being nolonger hampered in its action by the necessity of directing the life ofthe body and for guiding itself, in a way, by the vital breath. Also, itis then deified, and it is here that we must find the origin of the cult ofthe dead, or of the manes of ancestors. If every animate being – man,

animal or plant – possesses the two principles of which we have justspoken, inanimate beings – the defunct, dead animals or plants, solidminerals, liquids or gases – are naturally deprived of the vital breath,which has no importance whatever from the religious point of view.However, each one is endowed with an individual spirit, intelligentand active, all the more efficient and redoubtable, as I have just said,because it does not have to occupy itself with the inert body which isonly its material representation and to which it is not bound by theobligation to control the play of the absent vital breath. This body,moreover, can disintegrate, as is the case with corpses, and the spiritis not held to make of it its constant dwelling place.

Whether it is the spirit of a deceased person or of a mountain, ablock of stone, a gulf, a river, the heavens, the rain, the wind, theland, and especially a particular piece of land, the parcel ofground one inhabits and from which one gains a living, for theNegroes it is always the same kind of spirit, it is always a principlethat is invisible but which sees everything, which takes account ofall, is sensitive, can be offended unintentionally, equally irascibleand capable of causing hard expiation for even involuntaryoffences that have been done to it, but feeble and vain as man whocreated it in his own image, letting itself be moved and cajoled byprayers and offerings or influenced by propitiatory sacrifices.

Such is the foundation of the animist religion current among theNegroes from the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope. It includesin the same cult innumerable spirits of ancestors of man and notless innumerable spirits of the phenomena of nature, all promotedto the ranks of divinities.

PPrriieessttss

All divinities have their priests who are the patriarchs for the cultof the ancestors, the “masters of the ground” for the cult of theland and the waters, and a particular clergy, initiated in a sort ofschool into the more or less secret rites of certain more specialisedcults. There are also temples, which are sometimes huts, wherethe remains or bones of the dead are preserved, or else objectsconsecrated to the cult of special divinities, very often trees orpieces of wood, frequently rocks of bizarre form or grottos of amysterious aspect. They have their altars, which may be a sort ofbench of dried clay, a wooden post or a clay cone supporting avase of offerings, the stump of a tree, a turned-over urn, a stoneplate, a copper basin placed on a kind of pyramid, etc. Theyhave their materials of worship, statuettes representing thedeceased, diverse objects having belonged to them, basketsfilled with bones, libation vases, knives for sacrifices, little bells orrattles intended to invoke the spirit or to convoke the worshippers,sacred tambourines, and above all wooden masks which take theform of monstrous animal heads and which are worn by the

Mask face (Dan).Ivory Coast.Wood, horn, chain, height: 25 cm.Private collection.

“Charged” artefact, used for magical purposes.

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Nkisi nkondi statuette (Kongo).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, mirror, iron, ropes, feathers, cotton, height: 61 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

The nkisi covers a complex system of surnatural forces, often negative ones,held in material things more or less figurative, manipulated by the nganga(healers); each having its specialities and operating codes. Nails, earth, knots,relics who cover them, are used to move this energy. The nganga keeps theenergy with knots and stings the nkisi with blades to wake him up.

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Nkisi nkondi statue (Kongo).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, metal, height: 82 cm.Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren, Belgium.

Impressive statue covered with nails and blades. The Nkisi nkondi(term evoking hunting) are used by a community when chasingcriminals. The metallic parts standing in the body of the charmmaterialise the client’s problems and demands, and sealengagements (military treaties, pacts, contracts, oath) joininggesture to speech. The nails, manufactured by blacksmiths,initiated the cult of the dead (Simbo) on anvils of stone removedfrom the river, were sometimes licked before being planted toreinforce the word given through saliva.

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officiating priests during certain ceremonies when they are felt toincarnate the divinity itself.

The altar, as well as the objects consecrated to the cult, is sprinkledwith this blood and then the feathers or hairs of the victim arespread over it, sticking to the blood. In the modest current sacrifices,the victim is replaced by an egg, the contents, of which plays thepart of the blood and the shell that of the feathers and hairs.

BBeelliieeff iinn aa SSuupprreemmee GGoodd

The question is not completely solved as to whether the Negroes ofAfrica, aside from all Christian and Islamic influence, believe in aSupreme Being, in a unique God. It definitely seems that this beliefis almost universal among them, but it is of a cosmological orderrather than a religious one, as mentioned above.21 They admit thatthe world and the beings it encloses, including the spirits, have beencreated by a ‘Superior Being’ whose existence they recognise, butin whom they have no interest because they would not know how toenter into relations with him and because he himself has no interestin the lot of his creatures, having nothing of the character of theProvidence-God of the western religions. So the ‘Supreme Being’ isnever the object of any sort of cult among the African animists, atleast if he is not identified with the Sky, a generating divinity whofecundates the soil by means of rain, or else identified with the Earth,a fecundated and productive divinity. I have heard several times thepagan Negroes designate the Muslims by an expression literallysignifying “those who invoke God”. The fact that men can addressthemselves to God appears to them surprising and contributes not alittle to the prestige which the Mohammedans enjoy among them.

MMaaggiicc aanndd MMaaggiicciiaannss

As I have said above, superstition reigns among the Negroes, asamong all men, but more supremely, of course, among ignorantpeoples, who are impressed to the highest degree by mystery, thanamong populations which a more practical type of mentality, a moregeneralised education and a more abstract religion have disembar-rassed in part from this plague of humanity. Belief, as naive as in-eradicable, in the power of amulets and talismans is legendaryamong the Negroes. There is not one of them, whatever be hisreligion, who does not wear on his body several “gris-gris”, of whichone is to preserve him from such and such an illness, a second fromthe evil eye, a third from the spirit irritated by his ancestor who wasleft without burial, while another should procure for him the love ofthe woman he desires, or the generosity of the master whom heserves or even, if he is an official, a rapid advancement. But herewe have manifestations of an essentially human credulity and wecan see almost the same things among ourselves.

The manufacturers of amulets, the magicians and sorcerers, haveeasy prey in such an environment. Numerous fortune-tellers predictthe future and reveal hidden things, by means of processes, manyof which strangely resemble those which our own clairvoyantsemploy. The magical spell, in diverse forms, is practised on agreat scale. Some people are considered to have received at birththe power to kill or make sick at a distance, thanks to the evil spellswhich they cast, sometimes unconsciously, over their enemies orover unknown persons. These casters-of-spells are naturally verymuch feared; special divinities, whose cult is made up of strangerites, mysterious and complicated, have been invented and secretsocieties have been created with a view to discovering thesesorcerers, to annihilate or at least to counterbalance their powerand, if need be, put them to death.

The family religion, as we have seen, has been instituted andfunctions only for the profit of the group. It does not bother aboutindividual interests, and the patriarch, sole possible intermediarybetween the deity and the mass of the faithful, only interveneswhen the common fate of the latter is concerned. It wouldespecially not be proper to have recourse to it when one desiresto obtain the disappearance of a member of the family. As for thespecial cults of which we have just spoken, they each have awell-defined object and one could not, for example, addresshimself to the god of thunder or to a god destined to combat thecasters-of-spells when one has to solicit the cure for cancer or topreserve oneself from poisoned arrows. Here then magic inter-venes, and it has taken an intense development among theNegroes, being substituted for religion each time that the latter isin default, that is to say, usually when it is not the interest of thecollectivity that is concerned.

Such is, with its serene logic as to principle, its often bloody appli-cations, and also with its degrading deformations, the religion towhich the Negroes of Africa are profoundly attached.

D’mba shoulder mask (Baga).Guinea.Wood, height: 116 cm.Private collection.

Worn statues are called “shoulders masks” because they are widely held by thedancer over his head and supported by his shoulders using a wooden frame. Themost achieved sculpture among the shoulders masks in Africa is done by theBaga for the harvests, happy events, and ancestral worship. It represents awoman who has breastfed and symbolises fertility.

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Mask (Bwa).Burkina Faso.Polychromic wood, height: 510 cm.Private collection.

This very long mask represents a protective snake, one of the threemythical animals of the Bwa population. Its appearances for severalcelebrations dedicated to the god Do, next to the Nwantantaymasks, are part of the unreal atmosphere of the spectacle.

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Gbekre mouse oracle (Baoulé).Ivory Coast.Terracotta, wood, bones, metal, height: 21.5 cm.Musée d’ethnographie, Neuchâtel.

This divinatory instrument is made with a pot with a double-bottom and a lid with a woodbase, decorated witha female statuette, wearing a necklace and a white-iron plaque for the Papua divination, with ten little sticks inbone. A mouse climbed the stairs to the upper stage and moved the sticks, whose final positioning wasinterpreted by the soothsayer.

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Sumbo or Simbo Koro mask and costume (Bwa or Gurunsi).Burkina Faso.Mask: Wood, polychromia, fibres, height: 48 cm.Costume: Fibres, height: 100 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

The Bwa population worships Do, the creator’s son, and thefounding ancestors of the clans, during sowing and funerals. Onthese occasions, masks are made again in link with the initiationceremonies (they are sculpted by a blacksmith and painted byinitiates). They thus ensured social cohesion. In Gurunsi andBobo‘s societies, these masks represent the Great Hornbill orNwo. The plank embodies a bird’s wings and tail. The little blacktriangles on the tips stand for the coba antelope. The blacksquares refer to goatskins worn by the elders, the white ones tothe initiates.

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Cihongo mask (Chokwe).Angola.Fabric, fibres, height: 72 cm.Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren, Belgium.

Symbolising power and wealth. Chiefs wore it during theirsacrament or during propitiatory ceremonies with sacrifices.Also part of the Mukanda, the young boys initiation, formale circumcision.

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NNeeggrroo TTaalleennttss

It is indisputable that the artistic sense is highly developed in theblack race. This is a truth that Count Gobineau himself did nothesitate to recognise. Nevertheless, this gift does not show tothe same degree of perfection in all the arts and, almost every-where that it is to be seen, it is especially found in the sense ofthe decorative effect or of the impression produced rather thanin the sense of plastic beauty, of gracefulness, or of theperfection of the whole composition. The African Negroes havegiven us almost nothing in the field of painting or monumentalstatues. None of the colourings that are to be observed oncertain of their walls recall, either by the subject or theexecution, anything that could evoke an idea of what we call apicture. The few life-size statues in clay or wood that aresometimes met with in the sacred woods or in the funeralchapels are generally very crude and one would doubt, to lookat them, that they were fashioned by the same artists who havemade so many delightful trinkets from the same materials.

It is quite the contrary with regard to small sculptures in stone,wood, ivory, or modelling in wax, clay, or metals. In these arts,often called minor ones, the Negroes have shown themselvesand still show themselves to be ingenious workers, powerfullyhelped by a high inspiration, a sharp sense of detail and a veryprofound conception of the form to be given to their ideas. It isto be remarked that their productions in this domain aregenerally so much the more original and of surer taste the morewe have to do with populations that have been little influencedby exterior forces, whether of Oriental or European origin. In thiscategory, Negro art appears the more perfect in the measurethat it is more purely Negro. Of course, it cannot be contestedthat the funeral statuettes, the sacred masks, the carved seats, thevases, the knick-knacks of bronze or copper, the gold and silverjewellery made in the northern region of Sudan, and in theEuropeanised centres are very inferior to the productions of thesame order of the tribes of Guinea, Dahomey, the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo, and of the Great Lakes.

HHuummaann FFiigguurreess aanndd GGooddss

In order to appreciate properly the artistic value of the variousobjects above mentioned, it is indispensable to distinguish from

the others those having human figures, that is to say, thestatuettes and masks, as well as ivory tusks, metal plates,wooden coffers or coffins representing scenes with humanbeings. When we are in the presence of those men or womenon bended knees, whose limbs are singularly short with respectto the length of the trunk, and with enormous heads, or thosemasks with terrifying or hideous expressions, we can hardlyprevent the impression that these representations are grotesqueand have no artistic character.

It is evident that this impression would be justified if these objectswere the work of Europeans of modern times, for there would betoo violent an antithesis between the normal conceptions of theartist and the style of the object produced by his hands. Art is notreally art unless it corresponds, in its expression as in its inspiration,to the civilisation of which it is, so to say, the sublimated product.But we should recall that the artisan who has sculpted thesestatuettes had in view the representation not of living beings but ofthe deified dead; that the one who imagined these masks thoughtto express by them the symbol of a redoubtable divinity to thosewho are not initiated into its mysteries: both are believers, compa-rable to the anonymous artists to whom our old Gothic cathedralsowe those extraordinary gargoyles, those grimacing heads ofdemons, those statues of saints or the dead conventionalised inhieratical and formal attitudes. Neither one nor the other haveworked to reproduce, with the utmost flattery, the traits of a humanmodel: they have sculpted gods – or devils – and not men, andthey have sculpted these gods as they have been represented totheir minds by the traditions of their times.

In this respect, the point has sometimes been made – M.M.Clouzot and Level have alluded to it – that the general aspect

Artistic and Intellectual Expression

Instrument (Zande), 19th century.Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, 61 cm.Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.

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Botondo Wa Lilwa statue (Mbole).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, pigments, kaolin, height: 79 cm.Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren, Belgium.

Owned by the Lilwa brotherhood who initiates young boys tocommunity life. Those who break the rules could be hanged. Thecriminal soul could be preserved in his smoke-dried body or inthe statue named after him. Undoubtedly reinforced by magicalpowers; the statue took part in initiations and judgments andwas marched through the village in case of misfortune.

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Panel (Holo).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, 34.1 cm.Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.

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of the Negro statuettes, if it corresponds badly enough to theanatomy of a normal Negro, singularly recalls that of theNegrillos, specimens of whom are still to be found, more or lesssparsely scattered about in several regions of central andsouthern Africa, and who probably may have one timeinhabited the whole of what today constitutes Negro Africabefore its settlement by the Negroes properly speaking. Therelative length of the trunk and the excessive dimensions of thehead, in particular, are characteristic of this race once verynumerous and far-spread but today on the road to extinction. Inmany regions of Africa where Negrillos are now no longerfound, the memory of them has persisted among the Negroes,who claim that before their own arrival the occupants of thecountry were little men with large heads and reddish skin, asmentioned in our first chapter. The Negroes often consideredthese little men as the first holders of the ground which theythemselves exploit today, making of them sort of distantancestors, deified like their own forbearers.

It would not be surprising that the first Negro artists, needing tofigure their deified ancestors, adopted as the representativesymbol the approximate type of these Negrillos, living samples ofwhom they had known or that a still recent tradition might faithfullyenough retrace for them. This type, as adopted, has been trans-mitted down to our time, the religious character of its originespecially helping to keep it from being transformed during thecourse of centuries.

AAnniimmaall RReepprreesseennttaattiioonnss

As soon as we leave the domain of human representation – ormore exactly what appears to us as human representation, but isnot so in the eyes of the Negroes – this sort of “incomprehension”,which assails us in spite of ourselves, disappears and we are in abetter position to appreciate exactly the artistic value of theproductions which are not so far removed from our own concep-tions. In truth, the representations of animals, so numerous inNegro art, are no more imitations of nature than the human figuresand just as often offer anomalies of proportion or an intentionallybizarre or repulsive aspect. But we are accustomed to chimeras,dragons, and unicorns, we do not find it extraordinary thatanimals are given a conventional attitude or incongruous attribute,so we are better prepared to perceive exactly the impression thatthe artist has brought to life in his work. For all the more reason,we have full liberty to admire, without reserve, compositions inwhich we are tempted to see only the fruit of an imagination giftedin the sense of line and harmony.

llnndduussttrriiaall AArrttss

At the side of religious art or art for art’s sake, there is anotherdomain in which the Negroes are past-masters: it is that of theindustrial arts, represented by work in clay, wood, iron, copper,gold, leather, and textiles. Ornamented and glazed pottery of allforms and dimensions, finely carved spoons, gongs, staffs ofcommand, low or high stools each one of which is a masterpieceof patience and elegant execution; harmoniously slenderpaddles, straight or curved knives having handles of woodincrusted with metal, lances with multiple blades of gracefulcontours, axes for war or parade, small objects in moulded orhammered copper; golden jewellery of filigree or made in amould, rings and bracelets with delicately wrought openwork,cushions, saddles, boots, and sheaths in supple leather diverselycoloured; curious boxes of oryx skin, trays and mats of colouredreeds, fabrics of cotton, wool, or raffia that are veritable tapes-tries with motifs as sober as they are varied and of a very suretaste in colouring; silk or cotton embroideries of a singular rich-ness and happy design. All this is beginning to be familiar to us,thanks to the collections brought together in museums or for exhibi-tions. More than one of our manufacturers has been inspired bythem to produce new types in Europe that are highly appreciatedby the public. Even in Africa missionaries are developing theseartistic industries among the natives who find, in the exportationof these products of their ingenuity, unlooked-for sources ofrevenue. Perhaps it is even to be feared that the stimulus of aneasier profit may push the Negro artisans to subordinate theirown inspiration to the taste of the European buyer and to sacrificetheir art to the temptation of mass production.

Likuti drum (Makonde), late 19th or early 20th century.Tanzania/Mozambique.Wood, leather, hair, copper nails, 63 x 30 x 30 cm.W. and U. Horstmann Collection.

Likely serving a social function, this goblet-shaped drum with anthropomorphiclegs and female imagery is of unusual design for the Makonde. Recallingwooden cult figures of lineage ancestresses, the vertical tattoo marks resemblechevrons, marked between mirrored relief crescents on the body are reminicentof other motifs found on body masks and ancestral figurines.

The Makonde used special drums, such as this, to warn villagers andneighbouring settlements of impending harm. Most often used during colonialtimes when a member of the village was attacked by or had wounded a lion orleopard, at the sound of the drum being beaten in a way that resembled theroar of the slain animal, local men would bring along their weapons andassemble for an animal hunt.

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Dance shield (Kikuyu), early 20th century.Kenya.Wood, 60 x 42 x 8 cm each.Lucien van de Velde, Antwerp.

Initiation is an important push into artistic activity among theKikuyu. Initiation for boys occurs before they enter theassociated social status of warrior. Various shields constructed ofwood or bark were used for such an occasion. Of those shownhere, they were usually carved by a special craftsman from thewhole of a piece of light wood and used for a dance displayreferred to as muumburo. The armhole in the inner face of theshield allows for manipulation through the flexing of the arm,rather than needing to be handheld.

The designs on the outer and inner surfaces were non-figurative and generally had no special meaning. Prior to aninitiation, most of which were likely annual, the pattern had tobe agreed upon. Therefore, depending on the territorial unit andinitiation period, patterns varied. They could also be found onthe back of wooden shields in a form quite reminicent of an eyeand eyelid.

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With regard to some specific objects, especially those of leatheror fabrics of cotton and embroideries, the superiority of thesouthern peoples over the Sudanese is no longer apparent.Manifestly it is because we are dealing with industries importedfrom North Africa, together with their techniques and their motifsof decoration. Sudanese artisans are not more highly gifted inthis domain than in the others with respect to their congeners ofthe south, but they have received knowledge of which the latterare still ignorant.

AArrcchhiitteeccttuurree

The same observation can be made with regard to architecture.It is very certain that this art, which is almost unknown to thepopulations of the Gulf of Guinea or equatorial Africa, exceptin its ornamental branch, has reached a remarkable develop-ment in the Sudanese zone. Nevertheless, it does not show itsfull richness except among Islamised populations and, as wehave seen above, the architectural style of Sudan, although ithas taken on a distinctly local character in the course of time,is of Arabo-Berber origin. It does not on this account furnish aless striking proof of the artistic faculties of the Negroes, sincethey have been able to produce such brilliant results afterseeing only a few models in a field for which their traditionshad in no ways prepared them.

MMuussiicc

In this brief review of the arts having a place of honour among theNegroes we must not forget music. In France, when we speak ofNegro music we immediately evoke the diabolical harmonies andcacophony of a jazz-band. Now nothing less resembles the musicof the Negroes, at least the Negro music of Africa, than the musicof the jazz-band. I do not know from what source the latter isderived, but it is certainly not from Africa. In truth, it may, as far asthe sound of certain of its instruments are concerned and theremarkable precision with which it furnishes the rhythm for the stepsof the dancers, recall, to a certain degree, those orchestras ofdrums, rattles, iron rods struck against each other, and horns oroliphants, to which Europeans give the significant name of tom-toms and which, in sunlight or moonlight, accompanied by theclapping of hands and cries, stimulate the movements of the menand women dancers. But the tom-tom is not music; it is only theinstrument of the dance. Upon reflection, I think that the jazz-bandis nothing else than that, and it is undoubtedly for this reason thatit is related to the tom-tom of the Negroes.

Those who play the drum or blow a horn are no moreconsidered within the category of musicians in Africa than they

are in Europe, and it is a great mistake to think that we mayjudge Negro music according to the noises, assuredly in veryfine rhythm but hardly melodious, of the tom-tom. The real instru-ments of African Negro music are the xylophone, sometimeswith, sometimes without resonance boxes made of calabashes,a whole series of violins, guitars, zithers, and harps, and varioussorts of flutes and flageolets. The most universally used is thexylophone, giving two or three octaves of sounds which are notat all disagreeable. Many xylophone players are real virtuosos.Sometimes they are associated in groups, one of them impro-vising the recitative and the others taking up the refrain or theleitmotif, each doing their own part. The harpists, too, obtainvery harmonious effects.

This music is ordinarily accompanied by singing, the wordsand the air being composed at the same time by the musician.Often the women sing, without the accompaniment of anyinstrument, songs that they remember or that they themselveshave made up. The men, unless they belong to the caste ofmusicians, rarely sing; at least seldom for the simple pleasureof recreation, reserving their voices for religious ceremonies orwar parties or training themselves to paddle or use a steering-pole during navigation.

Whether the singers be men or women, professional or amateur,the voices and the ears are always remarkable for their true pitch;it is extremely rare that a false note is heard and, if it does occur,it is immediately covered by the hooting of the other singers orsimply of the auditors. Whether the choruses are executed inunison or in parts, the harmony is generally impeccable. As for themelodies themselves, many are mediocre, but the majority have acharm to which European ears are as sensitive as African, a charmimprinted with sweetness and melancholy much more often thanwith gayety, sometimes with force and with pride in the war-songsand the odes praising a famous hero.

The only reproach that could be made of these melodies is thatthey are too short: each one is generally composed of a very briefmusical phrase which is repeated over and over, twenty or thirtytimes. This phrase is often delightful, but we are quickly satiatedwith the most exquisite things. The Negroes, on the contrary,

Headgear crest (Senufo), detail.Ivory Coast. Wood, height: 86 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Hominoid harp (Nbaka).Wood and skin, 81.5 cm.

This extraordinary harp proves the great imagination of Africanartists. Hominoid harps also exist among the Mangbetu peoplebut the face’s treatment here is typical of the Nbaka’s production.

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Arched harp (Zande).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, skin, entrails, 65.8 x 44.9 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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seem to experience a real pleasure in endlessly repeating orhearing the same air, as in intoxicating themselves with the sameliquor, while we like to vary our wines.

NNaattiivvee LLiitteerraattuurree iinn AArraabbiicc

It would not be rigorously exact to say that the Negroes possessonly an oral literature and that this literature is necessarily of the so-called popular type. Without doubt it is the popular oral literaturethat has the dominating place in Negro Africa, but we also find alearned oral literature and a written literature.

The latter manifests itself particularly under the cover of Arabic,known by very few Negroes as a spoken language, but servingas the written language for the majority of the educated MuslimNegroes. Proportionally, their number is much greater than isusually imagined. For the most part, it is true, they do not useArabic except in correspondence among themselves, and theirepistolary style, though generally florid, does not merit consid-eration as a literary form, although certain series of letters ex-changed between such personages as the askia Mamadu Toureand the Algerian reformer El Meghili, or the Tukulor conquerorEl-Hadj Omar and the Fulani king Hamadu-Hamadu, deserve tobe pointed out as models of dialectic and scholastic subtlety.But a great many Muslim Negroes of tropical Africa havecomposed and still compose, in a correct and sometimeselegant Arabic, works of theology, hagiology, law, history,sometimes in prose, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prosemixed with verse.

I have spoken above of the intellectual flowering that distinguishedTimbuktu in the 16th century, but this epoch and this city did nothave the monopoly of such literature. Even in our days, the“Marabouts”, as the educated Muslims are commonly called inAfrica, edit chronicles of local history that are often highly inter-esting, treatises on exegesis and learned works that constitute averitable literature, some examples of which would not detractfrom Arabic literature as a whole. Among other observationswhich must be made in this regard, there is one that is singularly

striking. For all Negro writers, Arabic is a foreign language; theycan only learn it by practice as they possess no grammars exceptthose written in Arabic, nor any dictionaries giving the Arabictranslation of the words of their mother tongues. So, in order toassimilate the Arabic language to the point of sufficient familiarityfor the interpretation of their own concepts, they require a consid-erable intellectual effort, far superior to that necessary for a Euro-pean to arrive at the same result, since the latter has grammars anddictionaries edited in his own tongue. This is all to the honour ofthe intellectual faculties of the Negro race. There also exist, inmuch more recent times, embryos of written literature in one or theother of the languages of the European nations who possesscolonies in Negro Africa.

WWrriitttteenn LLiitteerraattuurree iinn NNaattiivvee TToonngguuee

Finally, there is another category of written literature, more inter-esting perhaps from the point of view of the information it canfurnish regarding the congenital aptitudes of the Negroes,because it is native in its expression. In certain regions of Africa,the signs of the Arabic alphabet, adapted sometimes by means ofadded diacritical marks and new conventions to the representationof vowel or consonant sounds that do not exist in Arabic, areemployed for writing an African Negro language. At other times,it is not an alphabet borrowed from a foreign language, but agraphic system of local invention, which serves to represent thesounds. In truth, this procedure is not widespread. Up to thepresent it has not been met with except among the Vai at thefrontier of Liberia and Sierra-Leone, who use, for probably morethan a century already, a syllabic form of writing of their owninvention; among the Bamom or Bamoun of the Cameroons whoused a system thought out around the year 1900 by Njoya, kingof Foumban, a system at first ideographic, but rapidly becomingphonetic and at present tending to pass from the syllabic to analphabetic stage; finally among the Nubians of the districts ofKorosko and Mahas who, according to the English author H.A.MacMichael, use a special alphabet, more or less directly derivedfrom an oriental writing. It would be desirable to possess a certainnumber of specimens of productions written by means of this purelynative process. As a matter of fact, we know very few of themaside from some letters and edicts of the king Njoya, which arewithout literary interest. Nevertheless, it is certain that there exist,in the Vai language and writing, sort of novels or tales that arepassed from hand to hand in the villages.22

““GGrriioottss”” oorr LLiivviinngg EEnnccyyccllooppaaeeddiiaass

Far more widespread and representative of the native civili-sation is the unwritten, learned literature. Perhaps the epithet of

Zoomorphic sconce jewellery (Baoulé).Ivory Coast.Gold, investment casting, 6.7 x 9.8 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Kissar lyre, late 19th century.Nubia, Sudan. Wood, leather, entrails, glass, cowries, 101 x 95 x 20 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

The skin of this soundtable, which has a wooden hemispherical body, still has its animal hair. Suspended on the upperbar, glass beads, cowries, amulets, and rosaries elaborately decorate the wooden arms and double crossbar.Specifically among the hung charms are several bound Koranic amulets, the trigger mechanism from a gun, twobrass bells, a round keyhole shield plate, and decorative mounts from a dagger. When the instrument is moved, thehundreds of pierced coins and cowrie shells on beaded strings ring and rattle from the upper and lower crossbars.A majority of the coins are from Sudan, dated 1899 with Arabic inscriptions.

Used in Sudanese zar ceremonies, it is believed that this instrument can rid the body or mind of a person posessedby an evil spirit which is causing illness or pain. It is thought that the sound of the instrument can call the evil spiritfrom the affected person during these curative rituals. Occasionally the participants of this extensive ceremony ofsinging and praying, which is accompanied by drums, find themselves in a trance. It is probable that the various glassbeaded and cowrie shell necklaces hung from the cross bar were added to the instrument as an item of personaladornment after the healing ritual.

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Simbo dance accessory(Makonde). Mozambique.Wood, 63 x 8 x 14 cm.The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

Used as dance accessories in initiation celebrations, Makondemen of all ages would make such decorative sticks called simbofor themselves or they would commission a carver. Meant to bestcapture the attention of other partcipants, the simbo weredesigned to face outwards and balance comfortably on the armof the dancer. Here, the long, narrow nose and thick, flowingbeard of the finely carved head seem to represent a European.“MIMIMA MAKAKA” is conspicuously engraved on the staff andmay indicate the name of the owner.

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Drum (Fante), c. 1940.Ghana.Wood, height: 87 cm.Private collection, Paris.

Seated on the back of a lion, while the feet of the drum rest atop a muchsmaller element, we have this anthropomorphic female. Used at a number ofpuberty celebrations, marriages, and funerals, this drum once belonged to apopular Akan band. As the lead drum, it served as the visual and musical focusof the group.

Referred to as the Queen Mother of the ensemble, these elaborately carvedprincipal drums are invariably female. Akan royal notions ascribe heavily to theidea of seated art, which is visible here. In the relief carving around the torso,both the importance of the drum and band that once owned it is emphasised.The conventionalised oral literature of the Akan are illustrated as distinctivemotifs, most of which make reference to the daily life of the Fante.

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Bameka drum (Bamileke), 19th century.Cameroon.Wood, 146.8 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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“professional” would be a more suitable designation than“learned”. It is, in fact, the appanage of the people belongingto one of the castes or corporations of intellectual workers thatwe generally include under the term of “griots”. There are allcategories of griots: some are musicians, singers, poets, story-tellers, mimes, dancers, mountebanks; others have the task oflearning by memory the genealogies of noble families, theimportant facts relating to great personages, the annals ofStates or of tribes, political, juridical, or social customs,religious beliefs, and their transmission to the next generation.This is the oral literature in its learned form.

Each one of these men is a veritable living dictionary whomthe prince, the magistrate, or the priest consults when he isembarrassed on a point of history, of law or of liturgy. It istheir knowledge that contributes to the summary education ofyouth during its initiation into adult life. This curious andeminently rich form of oral literature has been fruitfully utilisedby several European authors who have had some of theseprofessionals dictate to them some of the abundant recitalsthat are so full of precise and detailed information. It is in thismanner that M.A. LeHerisse has worked to retrace the ancienthistory of Dahomey, M. Ch. Monteil to describe the Bambarakingdoms of Segu and Kaarta, the late Dr Cremer for recon-stituting the common law of the Bobo. It is thanks to thesetraditionalist griots that we possess some light on the distantannals of numerous native States, such as the empire ofGhana, known to the Negroes by the name of the empire ofWagadu or Kumbi, the empire of Mali or Manding, thekingdoms of Diara, of Soso, of the Tekrur, etc. Certain ofthose chronicles written in Arabic by Sudanese authors aresimply compilations and translations of the accounts given bythese griots.

In truth, such a proceeding presents serious drawbacks. In spiteof a naturally excellent memory fortified by practice, gaps andconfusions naturally arise in the minds of those obliged to storeup in this way so many names and facts. It happens that anannalist griot attributes to one prince actions that were in realityaccomplished by another, or gives as the direct successor of acertain king, a personage who was not born until a centuryafter the death of his so-called immediate predecessor. These

Bansonyi snake (Nalu).Guinea.Wood, 210 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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oversights and errors are all the more abundantly met with themore distant are the epochs or the events, since many genera-tions are necessary for the transmission of the story.Nevertheless, as there are generally several griots concurrentlycharged with the same task, it is possible, by consulting them inturn, to check up statements and arrive, if not at certitude, atleast at a satisfactory approximation.

It is also natural, especially for very old events, that legend,which strikes the imagination more profoundly, should be betterremembered than history and that in the end it should predom-inate in the recitals of the traditionalists. Most of the time,however, it is not extremely difficult to separate out the truthwhich is dissimulated under the symbols of a fantasticappearance. Thus, when the traditions reported by the griotsspeak of showers of gold that the sacred serpent of Kumbicaused to fall over Wagadu, we immediately think of the pros-perity that the exploitation of the gold mines of the UpperSenegal and the Faleme brought to the empire of Ghana beforethe introduction of Islam, a prosperity described by Arab writersof the Middle Ages. The cessation of these showers of gold andeven of ordinary rain, together with the misery and famine thatresulted there from the dispersion of the inhabitants and thebreaking up of the kingdom, attributed by the legend to thekilling of the sacred serpent, are easily interpreted by the ruinthat the Almoravide conquest brought to the country in fallingupon paganism and by the progressive drying up of the sub-Saharan regions.

In any case, it is great good fortune for science that, in thecountries generally devoid of the aid of writing, there exists suchan institution, thanks to which the important facts of history, theorigins of tribes, the details of customs, and beliefs have beenpreserved in the memory of man. And it is curious to note thatpeoples reputed to be ignorant and barbarous have found ameans to take the place of libraries by supporting amongstthemselves successive generations of living books, each one ofwhich adds to the heritage it has received from the precedent.These so-called savages have, at their call, historicalcompendiums and codes just as we have. Only it is in the cerebralconvolutions of their traditionalist griots, and not on paper, thattheir annals and their laws are imprinted.

Bansonyi snake (Nalu).Guinea.Wood, 250 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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Mask (Kwele).Gabon.Wood, pigment, thick patina, height: 36 cm.Aura Collection.

This mask is the representation of a forest spirit, half-animal,half-human, named Ekuk, used for the particular rites of Beete.The Kwele masks, of different shapes, were all more or lesslinked to this initiatory society which was gathering bothnotables and warriors. Rituals were meant to mobilise themagical forces of the community to resolve crisis situations andpromote the collective life of the village, and especially hunting.

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Kifwebe mask (Songye).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, polychromia, height: 45 cm.Aura Collection.

Female mask. The white colour symbolises pureness, peace, andbeauty. Associated with the moon, manioc flour, milk, andsperm, she ensures the continuity of procreation when used bybeneficent spirits. The nose, painted black, evokes the detectionof what is hidden. The white mask dances slowly and in acontroled way.

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Drum stand (Mbembe).Cameroon.Wood, height: 66.5 cm.Private collection.

A leopard’s figuration, which used to support a slit drum. It was in the standingposition and its pendant must have existed on the other side of the drum.

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Fetish statue (Songye).Wood, skin, beads, horn, seashells, and metal,height: 109 cm.J. Van der Straete, Belgium.

The Songye charm statues receive their powerfrom the magical substances inserted in theirabdomen and head. Moreover, accessories suchas hair, seashells, leopard or snake skins increasethis power. They confer the characteristics of theanimal they come from to the statue.

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PPooppuullaarr OOrraall LLiitteerraattuurree

As for the popular oral literature, properly speaking, it is extremelyrich and constantly being renewed. It also has its professionals, thegriots who are singers, poets, narrators, mimes, and mountebanksas above mentioned. It has equally its amateurs, for manyNegroes of both sexes, without belonging to a special caste,retell, with modifications, the fables that they have heard from thegriots, or even make up new ones. This popular literature includesseveral types: supernatural tales, moral tales, comic stories,proverbs, riddles, epic poems, satires, love songs, funeralhomilies, drama or farce, and still others that I have forgotten orthat I would be unable to classify. In many of these compositions,moreover, several types are interwoven; no one better than theNegro storyteller knows how to pass from the humorous to thesevere with naturalness and ease.

OOrriiggiinn ooff PPooppuullaarr TThheemmeess

Among the supernatural tales that are current from the southernlimits of the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope, there are certainlya considerable number that are not of Negro or even of Africaninvention, that have been imported by the Arabs or drawn from theoriginal by some Sudanese scholar in a collection of the Thousandand One Nights or some other oriental work. Sometimes they havebeen modified: the tiger becomes a leopard, the beautiful princesswith lily complexion is transformed into a Negro woman, thepalace of multicoloured faience, a modest hut; but they can berecognised just the same.

There are other stories that recall at the same time the folkloreof the Orient and that of the Occident. This is the case withmany of the moral or satirical tales, of numerous fables withanimal personages. I will not lose time in trying to find out ifthese themes come from an old Hindu or Iranian source, fromwhere they have spread over the entire world, or if they aresimply the multiple and simultaneous product of the humanimagination, which is not inexhaustible and must inevitablyrepeat itself, unconsciously, under all latitudes. Furthermore,whatever be the first origin of the themes, imitation, inspiration,or invention, it can have only a secondary importance for thosewho are content to study the mentality of a people across thetransparent veil of its literature.

GGeenniiuuss ffoorr SSttoorryy--TTeelllliinngg

Only if we wish to get at the meat of these accounts and narra-tives must they not be read in an interpretation that is more orless corrupted by the mentality of the European translator. They

must be heard as they are told by the Negroes themselves in oneof their numerous and expressive languages, and especially bya professional, with the addition of a tone and mimicry that onlyfigures in the text implicitly. A fable that seems insipid enough tothe reader may be a masterpiece of the imagination, of maliceor of good sense. Another tale which seems at the reading banalor incomprehensible, brings forth laughter and tears alternativelyin those who hear it recounted and arouses the liveliest interestin the audience at the same time that they admirably seize theconnections and the moral.

Undoubtedly, there is a mutual comprehension when the narratorand the audience belong to the same race and speak and under-stand the same tongue, while the European will always find a veil,more or less thick or more or less tenuous, between his faculties ofmental receptivity and the story that is told by the Negro.However, there is a considerable difference between the effectproduced on this European by the reading of even a very goodtranslation and the hearing of the original, even if recited in alanguage that he understands only imperfectly. Pantomime has nocountry, and the play of the physiognomy of the Negro storytellersis such that their thought may be seized even if no words wereused to express it.

I will not speak here of the literary style, properly speaking, ofthese popular productions. It varies enormously according to thetalent of the speakers, attaining its perfection only among a fewprofessionals who are justly renowned. A stranger, in any case,would have much trouble in appreciating it. What is less difficultfor us to perceive in these tales, fables, proverbs, poems, orsketches of comedies, are the sentiments that they reveal and theideas which are presented. The Negro’s affection for the super-natural displays itself complacently, at the same time as theirpropensity to find natural what, for us only, is supernatural. Theirimagination in this respect, though less fecund in colourfuldescriptions than that of the Orientals, is inexhaustible. The lackof probability does not seem to interest them. At most, when a

Mask (Warka).Wood covered with copper and bulks, height: 45 cm.Private collection.

Generally, the Warka masks are covered with copper sheets. This one, with itselongated features, might have been worn for dances linked to the numeroussocieties which rule people’s lives in Mali.

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Mannish statue (Dogon).Mali.Wood, height: 49 cm.Private collection.

This statue, a beautiful sample of the n’duleri style, isiconographically and stylisticly close to two well-known others,one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the otherin the musée des Beaux-Arts of Montréal. It might represent aman with important ritual functions, maybe the binu priest,sitting on a stool whose front legs have disappeared.

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Eyema Byeri statue (Fang).Gabon.Wood, black patina, copper, height: 57 cm.ABG Collection.

As we know, Fang art has produced heads and ancestral figuresmeant to watch the familial relics. From a stylistic point of view,matches exist between these artefacts, in particular in the Mekè-Betsi from Gabon (area of the Cristal mountains and the Comovalley): we notice similarities between the plaited head of theAlbert Barnes foundation, Paul Guillaume collection, and thisone. In addition, we notice here the particular gesture of theoffering-bowl handler, from the famous byeri of the previousPierre Guerre collection.

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conclusion may be too strange a result of the premises, a paren-thesis furnishes the necessary explanations briefly and theauditors are satisfied.

MMoorraall TTaalleess

I have spoken of moral tales. I mean by this, stories that teacha moral. They may seem to us immoral, but that is anotheraffair. It is certain, for example, that the number of fablesexalting cunning, as the means put at the disposition of theweak for triumphing over the powerful, is considerable. Theheroes of these fables vary according to the countries: inSudan, it is generally the hare; on the Guinea coast it is oftena little antelope; on the lower Niger, usually a turtle; elsewherea spider. The others present in emulation of each other, thestupid hyena and the simple-minded elephant. But it must beremarked that the crafty personage of the tales, though hissuccess arouses laughter, is never given a sympatheticcharacter in Negro fables except when he employs his trickeryfor a good cause or uses it against the wicked, the deceitful,the cowardly, or the miser, or at least when his slyness is notaccompanied by malice. The hare is the prototype of trickerythat is fine, benevolent, the righter of wrongs; the adventures inwhich he figures always turn out to his advantage. The spider,on the contrary, who lets his intelligence and his cunning servefor the gratification of his lower instincts, his mean vengeance,his cupidity and pride, finishes by being duped in his turn, tothe great joy of the public who applaud his undoing. Amongthe faults that are the most often and the most rudely turned toridicule or chastised in the popular literature of the Negroes arefoolishness, self-sufficiency, avarice, forgetting one’s duties tothe family or the duties of hospitality, and bad breeding. Thecontrary virtues, especially generosity, are constantly exaltedand recompensed.

Proverbs and common sayings abound among the Negroes andtheir discourse is frequently embellished with them in everydayconversation as well as in the most serious conferences.Thousands of them have been collected in all regions of tropicalAfrica. The most wholesome good sense emanates from theseshort and expressive maxims, in which an often very profoundthought is condensed into a striking comparison or a cuttinganswer. Andre Demaison, in his Diato, has introduced many ofthese Negro proverbs, whose savour contributes not a little to theoriginality of his novel.

The contempt for those who want to elevate themselves abovetheir position or who do not conform to established customs isfrequently expressed in these maxims, as in the following: “A pieceof wood may remain ten years in the water, it will never become

Bell (Tsogo-Sango).Gabon.Wood, iron, height: 45 cm.Private collection.

Ritual bell with a large pavillion; the wood handle is sculpted with a doublehuman face, representation of Kombé, the sun, male mythical entity, source oflife, and last judge of mankind. Emblem of the Evovi cast, judges from the secretsociety of Bwiti and Mwiri.

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a crocodile” or “The young goat will browse on the leaf of theplant that nourished its mother”. Sometimes the most elevatedsentiments are met with in a simple form which increases theirforce, for example in the Tukulor saying: “What the laborer seeswhen he straightens himself is the village. It is not the desire to eatthat is the cause of this, it is the entire past that draws him to this side.”What more lovely definition could be given of the sentiment of afatherland? Do we expect to find it in the popular literature of aNegro people?

RReeffuuttiinngg tthhee ssoo--ccaalllleedd IInntteelllleeccttuuaall IInnffeerriioorriittyy ooff tthhee NNeeggrrooeess

Do the African Negroes form a race intellectually inferior to theother human races?23 This has often been affirmed but without evergiving convincing proof of it and generally a false point ofdeparture is taken.

It has been said that the Negroes are at present inferior inrespect of intellectual development to other types of humanity. Itseems to me that in saying this “ignorance” has beenconfounded with “lack of intelligence”. The greatest genius ofthe world, if he had never been to school and had lived only inthe midst of savages, would have been without any doubt, underthe complete impossibility of manifesting his high natural intelli-gence, which would not mean that he did not possess it. But, itis added, the African Negroes have received education andhave been placed in a highly developed intellectual environmentand just the same they have done nothing to show this intelli-gence. To this it may be answered, first, that certain of themhave given very satisfactory results, and then that if the numberof these has been limited, it is that there has been too great adifference between the environment whence came the subjects

that were to be educated and the environment into which theyfound themselves brusquely transplanted: to resist the shock andnot destroy the brain, it would have been necessary to have theintelligence of the elite – and undoubtedly this was the case withthe former – or else avoid the dangerous jolt by refusing to allowoneself to be broken in – and such was the case with themajority. I will add that particular examples should not constitutea general rule.

To judge properly of the intellectual capacities of a populationen bloc, this population must be followed in the normalevolution of its mass and not by taking a few individuals, moreor less happily chosen, and transporting them into a world sofar removed from their own that they can only play the part ofthe uprooted and, like all uprooted plants, waste away andperish, except under very exceptional circumstances. Now, theNegroes of Africa have had this grievous mischance of notbeing able to evolve as the other great human races have,without its being in the least their fault. While, during manycenturies the descendants of the Gauls, our ancestors, were in

Zoomorphic drum (Loi).Wood, length: 251 cm.

This drum’s elegancy hides its powerful sound. It was used to warn the tribe ofclose danger and to send messages to neighbouring villages.

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241


Tukah mask (Bamileke), first half of the 19th century.Cameroon.Wood, 86 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

Olifant (Sapi), 15th-16th centuries. Ivory, 79 cm.Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

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constant contact with populations more evolved or otherwiseevolved than themselves, but with a civilisation contemporary totheirs, and were able, by taking from some and getting inspi-ration from others, to become modern Frenchmen, the unfortu-nate Negroes were almost entirely isolated from the rest ofhumanity. If the whites of North Africa have succeeded inreaching them in spite of the Saharan barrier, it has hardly beenmore than to bring into captivity thousands and thousandsamong them or to impose upon them by the sword a dogmathat they did not even take the trouble to explain. If later, otherwhites have penetrated further among them, in spite of thatother obstacle constituted by the maritime bar, it was first to tearaway, anew, millions of slaves, then to inundate them withalcohol, and finally, without preparation, to thrust a civilisationof the 19th century in the midst of other civilisations which hadremained contemporaneous with Charlemagne and even Attila.Under conditions such as these, the Negroes have been ableto borrow the culture of cotton from the Semites and the use ofpowder from the Europeans, but what could they gain from theintellectual point of view?

Statue (Metoko).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, height: 107.5 cm.Private collection.

Court dwarf, hands put around the navel to insist on the lineage continuity andthe connection with ancestors, symbolised by the umbilical cord. According toLuba proverb, “humanity begins with the navel”.

243


Hominoid drum (Bangwa).Wood, height: 66 cm.Private collection.

The drum’s type is extremely rare. Nevertheless, it istypical of Grassland’s art from Cameroon, with itsblack finish, its ferocious expression, and lack ofspecific details. It as used by the Alaling society.

244


Nkishi statue (Songye).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, horn, metal, skins, feathers, height: 112 cm.Private collection.

The minkishi (plural of nkishi) are objects of power acting againstevil forces. After death, the spirit is reincarnated in a baby orwanders in the wild, becoming dangerous to humans. He issummoned in the statue to control him and ask for his help. Thedifferent forces involved on the statue through the elements thatcover it help increase its power. Here: corn, irons, nails, animalskins, feathers.

245


Nkishi statue (Songye).Democratic Republic of the Congo.Wood, oily patina, fibres, height: 52 cm.S. & J. Calmeyn Collection.

The tall Songye statues had functions of collective protection.They were given the name of someone important - chief,warrior, hunter, or blacksmith - whose power they evoked. Eachhad a particular function (procreation, protection againstdisease, fight against witchcraft, help for hunting, or war). Inaddition to their magical powers, they had the traces of sacrificeson their bodies as well as vegetable oils which were often usedto coat them.

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Appendix

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248


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250


OOlldd PPrriimmaarryy aanndd SSeeccoonnddaarryy SSoouurrcceess

ALVAREZ, Almada d’, Traité succinct sur les rivières de Guinée etdu Cap Vert (1594), (Diego Kopke edition), Porto, 1841.

BARBOT, J., Histoire de la Guinée, Paris, 1660.

BARTH, Heinrich, Travels and Discoveries in Northern and CentralAfrica (1849-1855), London, 1858, 5 vols.

BEKRI, Description de l’Afrique septentrionale (Slane translation),Paris, 1859, and new edition, Paris, 1913.

BINGER, L.G., Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays deKong et le Mossi, Paris, 1889, 2 vols.

BINGER, G., Esclavage, Islamisme et Christianisme, Paris, 1891.

BRUCE, James, Voyage aux sources du Nil, en Nubie et enAbyssinie pendant les années 1768 à 1772 (Castera translation),Paris, 1790-1792.

CADAMOSTO, Relation des voyages à la Côte occidentaled’Afrique (1455-1457), (Temporal translation, Scheffer edition),Paris, 1895.

MARMOL CARVAJAL, L., Descripción general de África, segundaparte: Tierra de los Negros, Malaga, 1599.

DAPPER, O., Description de l’Afrique, Amsterdam, 1686.

DE BARROS, J., Asia, Lisboa, 1552-1553, 2 vols.

DE ROCHEFORT, Jeannequin, Voyage de Lybie au royaume deSenegal, Paris, 1643.

EDRISSI, Description de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne (Arabic text withtranslation by Dozy and de Goeje), Leyden, 1866.

ES-SA’DI, A., Tarikh es-Soudân (Houdas translation), Paris, 1900.

HERODOTUS, Histoire (translation of Larcher revised byPessonneau), Paris, 1883.

IBN BATOUTA, Voyage dans le Soudan (Slane translation), Paris, 1843.

IBN HAOUKAL, Description de l’Afrique (Slane translation), in Journal Asiatique, Paris, 1842.

IBN KALDOUN, Histoire des Berbères (Slane translation), Algiers,1852-1856, 4 vols.

IBN KALDOUN, Prolégomènes historiques (Slane translation),Paris, 1868, 3 vols.

KÂTI (or KÔTI), M., Tarikh el-Fettâch (Houdas and Delafossetranslation), 1913, Tedzkiret en-nisiân (Houdas translation), Paris, 1901.

LEO THE AFRICAN, Description de l’ Afrique, tierce partie du monde(Temporal translation, Schefer edition), Paris, 1896-1898, 3 vols.

LIVINGSTONE, David, Explorations dans l’intérieur de l’AfriqueAustrale (1840-1856), Loreau translation, 2nd edition, Paris, 1873.

PARK, M., Travels in the Interior of Africa (1795-1797),London, 1799.

PLINY THE ELDER, Natural History (Latin text and translation of E. Littre),Paris, 1860, 2 vols.

PTOLEMY, Geographia (Greek text and Latin translation, Mulleredition), Paris, 1883-1901.

SA’DI, Tarikh es-Soudan (Houdas translation), Paris, 1900.

SLATIN-PACHA, R.O., Fire and Sword in the Sudan (translated byF. R. Wingate, 5th edition), London, 1897.

STRABO, Géographie (translation of Am. Tardieu), Paris, 1867-1894,(especially volume 8).

THEVET, A., Cosmographie universelle, Paris, 1575, 2 vols.

YAKOUT, Geographisches Wörterbuch (Arabic edition of F. Wüstenfeld),Leipzig, 1866-1870, 6 vols.

CCoonntteemmppoorraarryy TTeexxttss ooff tthhee PPuubblliiccaattiioonn

ADAM, Légendes historiques du pays de Nioro, in Revue Coloniale,Paris, 1903.

ARCIN, A., Histoire de la Guinée Française, Paris, 1911.

ARNAUD, R., L’Islam et la politique musulmane française(appendix: La singulière légende des Soninkés), Paris, 1912.

AUTRAN, O., Phéniciens, Essai de contribution à l’histoire antiquede la Mediterranée, Cairo, 1920.

AVELOT, R., Les grands mouvements de peuples en Afrique: Jagaet Zimba, in Bulletin de géographie historique et descriptive nos.1 and 2, Paris, 1912.

Selective Bibliography

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BRUEL, G., L’Afrique Équatoriale Française, Paris, 1918.

CARBOU, H., La Région du Tchad et du Ouadai, Paris, 1912, 2 vols.

CHEVALIER, A. L’Afrique centrale française, Paris, 1907.

CLOUZOT, H. and LEVEL, A., L’art nègre et l’art océanien, Paris, 1920.

CLOZEL and VILLAMUR, Coutumes indigènes de la Côte d’Ivoire,Paris, 1902.

CULTRU, P., Histoire du Sénégal du XVe siècle a 1870, Paris, 1910.

CUREAU, (Dr) Ad., Les sociétés primitives de l’Afrique équatoriale,Paris, 1912.

DE MEZIERES, A.B., Recherches de l’emplacement de Ghana(fouilles à Koumbi et à Settah) et sur le site de Tekrour, inMémoires présentés par divers savants à l’Académie desInscriptions et Belles-Lettres, vol. XIII, part I, Paris, 1920.

DESPLAGNES, L., Le plateau central nigérien, Paris, 1907.

GENTIL, E., La chute de l’empire de Rabah, Paris, 1902.

GSELL, Stéphane, Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord, vol. IV:La civilisation carthaginoise, Paris, 1920.

HENRY, J. L’Âme d’un peuple africain: les Bambara, Münster (Wien),(Bibliotheque Anthropos), 1910.

HOUDAS, O., L’Islamisme, Paris, 1904.

JORE, L., La République de Liberia, Paris, 1912.

JOSEPH, G., La Côte d’Ivoire, Paris, 1917.

JOUENNE (Dr), Les Monuments mégalithiques du Sénégal, inAnnuaire et mémoires du Comité d’études historiques et scientifiquesde l’Afrique Occidentale française, Gorée, 1916 and 1917,and in Bulletin du Comité d’études, etc. Paris, 1918.

JOUENNE (Dr), Les Roches gravées du Sénégal, ibid., 1920.

LABOURET, H., La Terre dans ses rapports avec les croyancesreligieuses chez les populations du cercle de Gaoua, in Annuaireet mémoires du Comité d’études historiques et scientifiques del’Afrique Occidentale française, Gorée, 1916.

LABOURET, H., Le Mystère des ruines du Lobi, in Revued’ethnographie et des traditions populaires, Paris, 1920.

LANREZAC, Au Soudan: la légende historique, in Revue indigène,Paris, 1907.

LE CHATELIER, A., L’Islam en Afrique Occidentale, Paris, 1899.

LE HERISSE, A., L’Ancien Royaume du Dahomey, Paris, 1911.

LE ROY, M., La Religion des primitifs, Paris, 19111913.

LECHAPTOIS, M., Aux Rives du Tanganika, Maison-Carrée (Algiers).

LE TESTU, G., Notes sur les coutumes Bapounou, Caen, s.d. (1920).

MACCALL THEAL, J., History of South Africa, London, 1902. 5 vols.

MARC, L., Le Pays mossi, Paris, 1908.

MARTY, P., Les Mourides d’Amadou Bamba. Paris, 1913.

MEYNIER, O., L’Afrique Noire, Paris, 1911.

MONTEIL, C., Les Khassonkés, Paris, 1915.

MONTEIL, C., Monographie de Djénné, Tulle, 1903.

NACHTIGAL, G., Sahara und Sudan, Berlin, 1879-1882, 3 vols.

POUTRIN (Dr), Contribution à l’étude des Négrilles (typebrachycéphale), in L’Anthropologie, Vol. XXI, Paris, 1910.

POUTRIN (Dr), Les Négrilles du Centre Africain (type sous-dolic-océphale), ibid., vols. XXII and XXIII, Paris, 1911-1912.

SCHULTZE, Dr A., The Sultanate of Bornu (translated by P. A.Benton), London, 1913.

TAUXIER, L., Le Noir du Soudan (pays mossi et gourounsi), Paris, 1912.

TAUXIER, L., Le Noir du Yatenga (Mossis, Nioniossés, Samos,Yarsés, Silmi-Mossis, Peuls), Paris, 1917.

THOMAS, N.W., Anthropological Report on Sierra-Leone, part I,Law and Custom of the Timne and Other Tribes, London, 1916.

THOMAS, N.W., Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speakingPeoples of Nigeria, parts I and IV, London, 1913 and 1914, 2 vols.

VIGNON, L., Un Programme de politique coloniale, Paris, 1919.

WERNER, A., The Natives of British Central Africa, London, 1906.

WILMOT, A., Monomotapa (Rhodesia), its monuments and its history,London, 1896.

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1 Translator’s italics.2 It ought, perhaps, to be pointed out that many authorities would object

to classifying Bushmen and Hottentots with the African Negrillos.3 A “click” is a sound produced by the play of the organs of speech

accompanied by an inspiration of air instead of an expiration.4 The translation cited is that of Larcher, revised by Emile Pessonneaux

(Paris, 1883, pp. 508, 509).5 Translator’s italics.6 Translator’s italics.7 Essai sur la litterature des Berberes, Alger, 1920.8 The word mara means a region without permanent water courses but

provided with ponds; the Mandinka word bagarna, which becamebakhu-nu in certain dialects, and the Sarakolle word waga-du bothsignify Us, country of herds, region of cattle raising.

9 In accordance with the facts given by Arab authors of the middleages, as well as by local traditions, it has been agreed to place thesite of the city of Tekrur not far from Podor in the province of theSenegalese Futa (or ‘area’) called Toro. In the course of time the nameTekrur was applied by Muslim writers to the whole of the Negrocountry at the southern border of the Sahara, in great part Islamised;thus it became almost synonymous with “Sudan” and it is with thismeaning that it has long figured on our maps.

10 Bekri, after having recounted in detail the conversion of theMandinka King Baramendana, adds that the mass of his subjectsremained pagan.

11 The word joli-ba in the Malinke dialect and jeli-ba in the Bambaradialect signifies “river of blood.” This name has been given to theNiger because of the bloody sacrifices which took place and stilltake place on its banks or on the waters themselves, at various pointsin its course, on the occasion of certain seasonal festivals. It is inerror that “river of the griot” or “river of the griots” has beenproposed and accepted as the etymology of this name, for it wouldhave been pronounced jeli-ba – and not jeli-ba – in all the dialectsand could never have given place to the reading joli-ba. Blood ispronounced joli or juli in Malinke, jeli in Bambara, juri, jori or jeri inJula, and the name of the river is actually Joli-ba or Juli-ba in the firstof these dialects, Jeli-ba in the second, Juri-ba or Jeri-ba in the third.

12 Ed-dehebi signifies in Arabic “the gilded one” or the “master ofthe gold”.

13 Certain authors give 1625 as the date of the foundation ofDahomey. Others such as M.A. Le Herisee, would not place thisevent further back than the reign of the prince Wagbaja, between1650 and 1680, under whom should have appeared, according tothem, for the first time the name of Dahomey or better Danhome.Now, the map of Joannes Jans Bonius, published in Amsterdam in 1627,

entitled Guinea, shows the country and the city of Dauma to thenorth of the Arder (Ardra) and to the east of the Volta, that is to say,there where the Dahomey that we know is situated; moreover, Leothe African, who lived between 1491 and 1540 and whotravelled in Sudan around 1507, also mentioned the kingdom ofDauma, which, to be sure, he situated much to the East ofDohomey, but which might very probably be the same as theDauma of Joannes Jansoonius.

14 Whence his Hausa name Ousman-dan-Fodio, that is, “Ousman, sonof Fodio”.

15 There are a certain number of Arabs scattered to the east of Chad.Some of them, sedentary, coming from Arabia by way of Abyssinia,are called Shoa. Others, nomads, coming from Tripolitania, areknown by the name of Oulad-Sliman.

16 I employ the word Darfur to conform to accepted tradition; inreality, the name of the country and its inhabitants is Fur or Forand the expression dar-Fur, employed by the Arabs, signifies“habitat of the Fur”.

17 And not Priest-John [in French Prêtre-Jean] as has been incorrectlywritten. This appellation came from the Latin translation of the title ofbelut “precious,” that was borne by a negus by the name of John.On a map of Abyssinia dating from 1627, mention is made ofAbissinorum sive Pretiose Ioannis Imperium and the text imprinted onthe reverse side says: “The princes are called by the MoorsAsiclabassi, in Ethiopia Ioannes Belut, that is, high, or precious;commonly Prete-Iean.”

18 A translation of the rather vague term collectivité.19 The first travellers who heard the Bayaka speak called them Iaca or

Jaga, which was the true name of this people when separated fromthe prefix of plurality ba. Certain authors have wished to relate theseJaga to the Masai and others to the Galla, having them accomplishacross all Africa wanderings which seem to be purely imaginary.

20 Exception to this view is taken in some English historical studies.21 The Arabs preferred the name of Zend for the Negro populations

with which they were in relation and from which they drew theirslaves and that of Kafir (pagan) for those who lived outside of theirzone of action. As for the denomination of Makua, it applies,properly speaking, to a tribe of Mozambique.

22 p. 218.23 During a sojourn in Liberia from 1897 to 1899, I personally

gathered several manuscripts in the Vai language and characters.Unfortunately all were destroyed soon after in the course of a fireand since then I have not had occasion to procure others.

24 For fuller discussion see M. Delafosse, Les Nègres.

Notes

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AAAAcchhoollii

Bonnet 130AAffoo

Maternity statue 118AAggnnii

Statuette 98AAkkaann

Memorial head 105AAnnggoollaa

Zoomorphic head 57AAsshhaannttii

Ceremonial sword 168Fanti style head 115Head, King Kofi-Karikari’s treasure 102

BBBBaaggaa

D’mba shoulder mask 204BBaakkoorr

Carved atal monolith 88, 89BBaammaannaa

Do yeleni statue 194Jonyeleni female figure 40

BBaammbbaarraaDyonyeni statue 119Ntomo mask 92

BBaammiilleekkeeBameka drum 227Dance costume 186Kwayep maternity figure 18Male figure 73Mupo statue 48Queen figure (detail) 90Statue 20Throne 91Tukah mask 240

BBaannggwwaaHominoid drum 243Mask 44Mask of the Troh Society 45

BBaannyyaammbbooOmusinga holder 131

BBaaoouullééAsie Usu statue 27Gbekre mouse oracle 207Idiophone 174Statuette 192Zoomorphic sconce jewellery 223

BBeemmbbeeMask 65

BBeenniinnFigure with mudfish head 76Head 97

Head of a Queen Mother 109Uhunmwum elao memorial

head of a Queen Mother 116Plaque 112, 113

BBiiddjjooggooMask 191

BBoonnggooGrave figure 135

BBuusshhoooonnggNcaka kot woman’s overskirt 187

BBwwaaMask 206Sumbo or Simbo koro mask and costume 208

BBwwiillee,, TTuummbbwweeStatue 69

CC//DDCCaammeerroooonn

Sorcerer costume 196CChhookkwwee

Cihongo mask 209Mask 129Offering or divination table (detail) 160

DDaakkaakkaarriiFunerary statue (detail) 31

DDaannGo gé mask 47Mask face 201Spoon 170

DDjjeennnnééStatuettes 58, 59

DDooggoonnMannish statue 236Statue, Kambari style 41

EE//FFEEjjaagghhaamm

Crest 86EEkkooii

Carved atal monolith 88, 89Crest 21

FFaannggEyema Byeri statue 32, 158, 237

FFaanntteeDrum 226

FFoonnBochio statue 95

GG//HHGGiirryyaammaa

Kigango funerary posts 138-139GGoouurroo BBeettee

Mask 123

Index by Ethnicity

254


GGuurruunnssiiSumbo or Simbo koro mask and costume 208

HHeemmbbaaAncestor statue 35Bowstand: Kunda Master 169The Master of Buli’s stool 162Seat attributed to the Master of the old Buli 163Stool 177

HHoollooDoor 167Panel 213Statue 150

HHuunnggaaaannPanel 156

II//JJIIddoommaa

Mask 121IIggbboo

Mask 121Torso 53

JJuukkuunnStatue 110

KKKKaakkaa

Statue 8KKaallaabbaarrii

Nden fubara funerary screen 82KKaarraaggwwee

Bovine figure 181KKiikkuuyyuu

Dance shield 216-217KKoonnggoo

Fetish with nails 154Mask 36Nkisi nkondi statue 203Nkisi nkondi statuette 202Ntadi nail fetish, funerary monument 153

KKoonnssooWaaga grave figure 132, 133

KKoottaaBoho-na-bwete reliquary figure 78Mbulu ngulu reliquary figure 79Reliquary statue, obamba style 78

KKoouullaannggooStatue 99

KKuubbaaBeaded belt 188

KKwweelleeMask 230

KKwweerreeMask 140Pole 131 Staff 183

KKwweesseeMask 149

LLLLeeggaa

Statue 69Statuette 13

LLeelleeMask 94

LLeennggoollaaStatue 182

LLoobbiiStatue 111

LLooiiZoomorphic drum 239

LLoommwweeFemale figure 143

LLuubbaaBowstand: Kunda Master 169Dignitary cane 175Headrest 176Mboko cup bearer 106Statue 146, 175

LLuulluuaaKnife 170Mask 193Statue 26

LLyyeemmbbeeEmumu animal sculpture of the Bobongo 180

MMMMaahhaaffaallyy

Aloalo tomb sculpture 127MMaahhoonnggwwee

Boho-na-bwete reliquary figure 78Reliquary statue 79

MMaakkoonnddeeLikuti drum 215Ndimu body mask 184Ndimu face mask 137Nyangwa water-pipe 124Simbo dance accessory 225

MMaallaawwiiFemale figure 144Female figure with scarification 144Male figure 145

MMaalliiBust 66Funerary figure’s mask 63

MMbbeemmbbeeDrum stand 232

MMbboolleeStatue 34Botondo wa lilwa statue 212

MMeettookkooStatue 242

MMoossssiiKaran-wemba mask 74Pair of statues 75

MMuummuuyyeeStatue 199

NNNNaalluu

Bansonyi snake 228, 229NNbbaakkaa

Hominoid harp 220NNggeeeennddéé

Nyibita mask 23NNgguurruu

Female figure 143NNiiggeerriiaa

Head from Benin 97Uhunmwum elao memorial

head of a Queen Mother 116Statue 39

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NNookkClassical style statue 28Sculpture 50

NNyyaammwweezziiHigh-backed chief’s stool 171Staff 183

OO//PPOOnnii

Figure 104OOrroonn

Ekpu statue 24PPeennddee

Giwoyo mask 155PPiinnddii

Relief panel 157PPrree--BBeemmbbee

Basikasingo statue 195Boyo statue 52Statue 49

PPuunnuuMask 190

SSSSaallaammppaassuu

Kasangu mask 148SSaann

Rock engraving 14, 15SSaannggoo

Bell 238SSaappii

Olifant 241SSeennuuffoo

Headgear crest 218SShhaannggaaaann

Xiqamelo headrest 164SShhoonnaa

Mutsago headrest 164SSookkoottoo

Head 38Statue 29

SSoonnggyyeeFetish statue 233Kifwebe mask 231Nkishi statue 244, 245Stool 165

SSoonniinnkkeeStatue 72

SSoouutthh AAffrriiccaaFigurine 12Lydenburg Head 16, 17

SSuuddaannKissar lyre 224Replica throwing knife 126

SSuukkuuSquatting statue 151Statue 198

SSuunngguuStool 165

SSwwaahhiilliiDoor 173

TTTTaabbwwaa

Statue 68TTaannzzaanniiaa

Iraqw skirt 134TTeekkee

Androgynous figure 159Mask 64

TTeelllleemmStatue 114

TTeetteellaaMask 122

TTssooggooBell 238

TTuubbwwééStatue 22

UU//VVUUrrhhoobboo

Edjo statue 10UUttoonnggwwee

Male figure on stool 142VVeennddaa

Vhothi/ngwena door 166VVeezzoo

Statue 11, 25

WW//YYWWaarrkkaa

Mask 234WWuumm

Anthropomorphic mask 60YYaakkaa

Statue 198YYaaoo

Female figure 145YYaauurree

Mask 93YYoommbbee

Mask 36YYoorruubbaa

Crowns covered with a pearled decoration 178Cup bearer 107Epa helmet mask 100Gelede mask 42Head 81Head of a queen 71Sango shrine figure with musicians 101Seated figure 54

ZZZZaannddee

Arched harp 221Instrument 210

ZZaarraammooPole 131

ZZiimmbbaabbwweeCarved soapstone bird 85Fragment of a carved soapstone bowl 84

ZZuulluuStaff 183

African Art invites you to explore the dynamic origins of the vast artistic expressions arising from the exotic and

mystifying African continent.

Since its rediscovery through the colonial expositions at the end of the 19th century, African art has been an unlimited

source of inspiration for artists who, over time, have perpetually recreated these artworks.

The power of Sub-Saharan African art lies within its visual diversity, demonstrating the creativity of the artists who

continue to conceptualise new stylistic forms. From Mauritania to South Africa and from the Ivory Coast to Somalia,

statues, masks, jewellery, pottery, and tapestries compose a variety of daily and ritual objects brought forth from these

richly varied societies.

African Art - Maurice Delafosse

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Transcript of African Art - Maurice Delafosse