GABON, AFRICA

Headdress
Fang, Equatorial Guinea or S Cameroon, late 19th century
Both men and women who had gained high status wore this kind of headdress. The ability to accumulate, through exchange, enough beads, buttons, brass wire and tacks in order to make a headdress was an important indication of a person’s social standing.

Beaded Belt

Mpongue, Gabon, about 1882
The niece of an Mpongue chief called Ngarlay made this beaded belt. The European buckle suggests that the belt would have belonged to a wealthy person who traded with Europeans.

Mask
Probably Fang, Gabon, about 1898
Our records say that this mask was used in ‘pleasure dances’.

The white colour and heart-shaped face are like the masks of the fearsome ngil association maskers that served to punish wrong-doers and carry out death sentences against witches and sorcerers.

The peoples of the tropical rainforests of Gabon

didn’t settle in one place for long.

Their social life was largely regulated by initiation associations and ancestor ‘cults’ that functioned without powerful rulers.

Although missionaries largely destroyed their ancestor cults, most groups still retain rich oral, musical and masquerade traditions.
Coastal peoples like the Mpongwe tried to monopolise the trade between Europeans and inland groups.

They told Europeans exaggerated stories about the savagery and cannibalism of the Fang. Yet, missionaries’ and explorers’ first accounts of the Fang from the 1840s and 50s contradicted these stories.

The missionaries admired the physical bearing, health and apparent virtues of the Fang they met with and feared the effects that the ‘vices of civilisation’ would have on these ‘noble savages’.

The Fang moved steadily towards the coast to trade with Europeans throughout the 19th century.