FEATURE 116 the Lumbu “golden age.”9 No longer able to manufacture salt, they found a new means of exchange with Europeans in their art objects. A Sculptural Tradition Figures with one or two cavities either in the abdomen or the legs, which were used as receptacles for magic charges (bilongo) and sealed with a mirror, were among Lumbu cult objects. This characteristic element relates these works to the nkisi10 produced by the Kongo peoples. These fi gurereceptacles all have the vital substance that bilongo embodies, which the nganga healer-diviner uses “to ensure fertility, favorable harvests, success in fi shing or hunting, to heal certain illnesses, and to act as an antidote to the malfeasance of sorcerers (ndoki).”11 One well-known fi gure of this type was in the Dutch Meulendijk Collection and published in 1969 by René S. Wassing.12 Marie-Louise Bastin published another fi gure of the same type in 1984.13 Both of these kneeling fi gures, with their heads bent slightly backward and bearing a cruciform coiffure, strike the same pose —the right hand is held up in a gesture that is associated in the Kongo with social order, as identifi ed by Robert Farris Thompson.14 Another small fi gure from a private French collection (fi g. 5) has the arm broken off at the elbow but would have had the same sacred gesture. This fi gure is also similar to the other two in that she is kneeling, her eyes are looking up, and she has a comparable coiffure. The kondi (nkondi) is a type of fi gure which is unusual among the Lumbu. Like nkisi, it is characterized by fl at pieces of iron thrust into the statue when promises or pacts of alliance were concluded in the fi gure’s presence. A beautiful kondi (fi g. 6), formerly in the Josef Mueller Collection, emanates great power, which is accentuated by the charge in its abdomen. It is now in the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. In light of the above examples, we can state that Lumbu statuary clearly is made up of borrowings from other artistic traditions from the Kongo region. This is apparent in the subjects represented, most notably in the importance given to the rendering of the female fi gure (sometimes as a maternity grouping) as an evocation of matriarchal power, as well as in the sculpture’s gestural aspects, such as the example of the raised arm just discussed or the placement of the hands on the hips. The prominence of certain morphological elements, such as the coiffure or the eyes, can also be evidence of these infl uences. That said, Lumbu statuary has many unique style traits, all quite nuanced: the fi ne and regular facial lines, the rounded eyebrows, the coffee beanshaped or glass-shard eyes, an open and forward-projecting mouth, a body with curved lines, feet that can be spread in Vili group, while the chef of the Vili clan of Loango had the status of royalty: “In the tribal language, the Vili is the king, and the Loumbou and the Punu are his wife. But in a matriarchal system, the woman has authority.”6 The history of the Lumbu is largely obscure before the arrival of missionaries and colonials in the nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, Louis de Grandpré, a French navy offi cer and author of Voyage à la côte occidentale d’Afrique fait dans les années 1786 et 1787 (Voyage to the West Coast of Africa Undertaken in 1786 and 1787), describes the port of Mayumba, where the Lumbu were numerous, as a good and safe anchorage. According to him, the inhabitants of this area were more intelligent than those of other kingdoms. He asserts that they were relatively gentle and could be trusted without risk. They were the only ones who worked copper and they also dealt in ivory. Mayumba was one of three ports on the coast where as many as a hundred captives could be held. These came from very far away but “wherever they were from, always spoke the same language, differing only in accent and pronunciation.”7 These slaves were to be sent to the West Indies, most notably to Santo Domingo. In the nineteenth century, political and economic reports on Gabon prepared by the French colonial administrators about the period from 1884 to 1907 describe the inhabitants of the coast as brokers and middlemen working as intermediaries between hinterland populations and the Europeans and their ships. They also dealt in the inland peoples’ idols and sold these crude, bizarre wooden fi gures as curios. They produced salt, which they exchanged inland for game products; ivory; harvested products, including certain types of wood such as ebony, some types of bark, and wild rubber; gold dust; and especially slaves. The Lumbu played a major role in the slave trade and profi ted greatly in this because of their position on the coast. The port of Mayumba’s specialization in products more local to its own region began to develop around 1860. In 1888, King Ignondrou (apparently a Lumbu) held sway over Mayombe, Mayumba, and some of Sette-Cama. As the doyen of chiefs, he presided over the palavers between the heads of Vili and Lumbu clans. The ethnic divisions between the Vili, Punu, and Kunyi became apparent in their efforts to take advantage of their proximity to the coast, each seeking to impose their trade conditions upon the producers of raw materials inland. Some Vili merchants from Loango were divested of their bundles of fabrics when they came to Sette- Cama along the coast.8 In the 1930s the government of French Equatorial Africa imposed a tax on the traditional production of salt, causing it to shut down completely in 1935 and putting an end to
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