115 FIG. 3: Map of the Lumbu region. © Tribal Art magazine. FIG. 4: Family photo showing women with the kodia coiffure. Author’s photo. All rights reserved. sedentary ways of life, the Lumbu cohabited with the Punu in Tchibanga and in the south, as well as near the Republic of Congo border at Maoulengui-Binza. They lived in symbiosis with the Vili in the Sette-Cama and Mayumba areas, and northeast of there in a few villages along the Tchibanga- Mayumba road. In the Ogooué coastal region, the Lumbu, together with the Bavungu, Bavarama, and Ngowe, established close commercial and matrimonial relations with the Orungu and the Nkomi, as well as with the peoples of the inland areas, including the Eshira, Punu, Tsogo, Kugni, Ndzebi, Tsangui, and Teke. They shared the heritage of the homogeneous and enduring Kongo culture with many of them.4 This mixture of populations, which went so far as to blur notions of individualized ethnic identities, favored the importance of the clan. As Pierre-Philippe Rey wrote, this “is a more solid and constant unit of reference than the ethnic group. The ethnic groups themselves arise from mixtures, which explains the fact that a same clan may be present in several ethnic groups.”4 The Reverend Meyer, who spent time in Mayumba in 1966, studied this system of alliances among the Lumbu. He relates that in this region of Mayumba there are four clans that are common to both the Lumbu and Vili groups, originally deriving from Tchiloanga in the Kouilou River Delta area of the Republic of Congo, one of the seven provinces that form the heart of the Loango region. He describes the interconnectedness of the clans: “From the right bank of the Banio Lagoon to the left bank of the Nyanga, Baloumbou land is under the authority of the Imondo (clan), as are the delta areas of the Banio Lagoon and the Nyanga River.” This Imondo clan, common to both the Lumbu and the Vili and originally from Tchiloanga, corresponds to the notable Bumwele clan of the Punu. According to Meyer, the chief of the Bilanga clan of the Lumbu had authority in the century at the time of the Loango kingdom’s decline. An interruption in their culture began in 1887 due to the process of acculturation that the French colonial presence caused, which led to degeneration of the customs of the local peoples along the coast. Despite this, the production of certain Lumbu objects continued in the inland Mayumba areas, as demonstrated by the arrival in the West of fi gures and reliquaries collected by Europeans in these places as late as the 1960s. This article identifi es a corpus of works presented in international private and public collections from the nineteenth century through the 1960s and places them into their historical contexts. It is hoped that the comparative and differential approach taken with the statuary in this study, which combines art history and anthropology, will lead to an improved understanding of the cultural specifi city of the Lumbu style and of its evolution over time. The Lumbu in Their Historical Context The Lumbu, or Loumbou or Baloumbou (the prefi x “ba” indicates a plural) inhabit the coastal areas of Gabon and what is now the Republic of Congo, from Sette-Cama to Pointe-Noire, as well as the inland areas in the Sintoukola region and along the Gabonese border (fi g. 3). Along with the Punu, the Lumbu belong to the Eshira group. They are of Bantu origin and were once integrated into the Kingdom of Kongo and later the Loango Kingdom. They display sociological and cultural similarities with the Punu, Vili, Yombe, and Kugni groups, with whom they share common roots and represent a regional variant of Kongo tradition. They were with the Punu for an extended period of time before they dispersed: “The Lumbu is a Muyaga and a Muyaga is a Mupunu.” Later, when the colonization of Gabon led to more Lumbu Statuary
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