FEATURE around the edge (fi g. 1) and the other similar but with white beads around the edge.5 Samuel Baker, founder and then fi rst governor of the then Egyptian province of Equatoria, embarked on an expedition from Cairo to the headwaters of the Nile in 1861. He went up the White Nile as far as South Sudan and in 1864 became the fi rst European to visit Lake Albert in what is now Western Uganda. Baker undertook this dangerous journey in the company of his wife, Florence, who accompanied him on all his travels. The area around Gondokoro in South Sudan was a hotbed for a well-developed but at the time already illegal slave trade, the brutal methods of which he describes. Though under Egyptian sovereignty, this practice had plunged the region into chaos. In central Sudan, Baker encountered a Dinka-speaking Kytch chief who wore a “skull-cap of white beads, with a crest of white ostrich feathers”6 (fi g. 4). Later, in Gondokoro in southern Sudan, he met John Speke and Augustus Grant, who were returning from Lake Victoria and who gave him instructions on how to reach an as yet undiscovered lake further south, which they had been unable to visit because of localized warfare that had broken out there.7 The Arab merchants resented what they saw as Baker’s intrusion into an area that was well known only to them, and they attempted to obstruct his expedition. Baker followed the Arab caravans at a suitable distance and passed them at night. Despite his misgivings about doing so, Baker was forced to join up, at least temporarily, with an Arab caravan of ivory and slave merchants shortly before arriving in the Latooka region. This association was to make his interactions with the tribes he visited considerably more problematic. Baker ultimately made contact with the Latooka (alt. Latuka, Lotuko, Lotuxo) in the highlands east of the Nile. The tall, muscular warriors were wearing impressive decorated “helmets,” which he describes at length: Every tribe has a distinct and unchanging fashion for dressing the hair; and so elaborate is the coiffure that hairdressing 114 is reduced to a science ... to perfect the coiffure of a man requires a period from eight to ten years! ... The Latookas wear most exquisite helmets, all of which are formed of their own hair; and are, of course, fi xtures .... The thick, crisp wool is woven with fi ne twine, formed from the bark of a tree, until it presents a thick network of felt. As their hair grows through this matted substance, it is subjected to the same process, until, in the course of years, a compact substance is formed like a strong felt, about an inch and a half thick, that has been trained into the shape of a helmet. A strong rim, about two inches deep, is formed by sewing it together with thread; and the front part of the helmet is protected by a piece of polished copper; while a piece of the same metal, shaped like the half of a bishop’s miter and about a foot in length, forms the crest. The framework of the helmet being at length completed, it must be perfected by an arrangement of beads, should the owner of the head be suffi ciently rich to indulge in the coveted distinction. The beads most in fashion are the red and the blue porcelain, about the size of small peas. These are sewn on the surface of the felt, and so beautifully arranged in sections of blue and red that the entire helmet appears to be formed of beads; and the handsome crest of polished copper, surmounted by ostrich-plumes, gives a most dignifi ed and martial appearance to this elaborate headdress. No helmet is supposed to be complete without a row of cowrie-shells stitched around the rim so as to form a solid edge8 These are visually reminiscent of European paraphernalia insofar as they show some similarity to the helmets decorated with sheet brass worn by the dragoons and grenadiers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Despite this apparent affi nity, it diffi cult to imagine how there could have been any contact that might have given rise to such resemblances. Islamic convert Emin Pascha (formerly Dr. Eduard Schnitzer; pascha is a Turkish honorifi c), who was then governor of Equatoria and in the Egyptian service at the time, made a tour of inspection of the province in 1880 and 1881, shortly before the beginning of the Mahdist Revolt. At the time, the province still had borders south of what today is South Sudan and included parts of Uganda. In the course of this tour, he visited Mtesa, the king of Uganda, as well as King Kabrega of the Unyoro, east of Lake Albert. After encountering the Latooka, he wrote the following about them in his journal: The men are most often completely naked, but adorned with iron, and more rarely the highly prized copper, FIG. 4 (above): “Chief of Kytch and Daughter.“ From Samuel Baker, The Albert N’yanza, 1866, p. 46.
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