and impressive Kongo nkisi nail fetishes (figs. 2 and 3), as well as a fine Songye figure (fig.4). His gift also included several Kuba objects—mainly weapons—that he had purchased from the Afro-American missionary Reverend William Henry Sheppard in 1905. Sheppard had been the first to penetrate into the Kuba-Bushoong kingdom, which until then had been inaccessible to foreigners.2 The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto also holds a particularly old African collection, the formation of which occurred in a very different manner than the one at McGill University. What would later become the ROM in 1912 originally was a research center for students of the University of Toronto. The core of its collection was formed by missionaries of various Protestant churches, most notably the Unitarians and the Presbyterians. Inspired by the famous missionary Dr. David Livingstone, who was seen by Canadians as an icon of Anglo-Saxon culture, they were quite active in Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. As part of their fundraising efforts to continue their work, representatives of these religious institutions3 sold a
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