FEATURE 100 FIG. 12 (left): Okukwè, an Omyene people. Archives of the Musée National des Arts et Traditions, Libreville, Gabon. FIG. 13 (below): Mask. Galwa, Gabon. 1880–1920. Wood, vegetable fi ber, pigment. H: 50 cm. Ex Alberto Magnelli, Paris. Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre de Création Industrielle, inv. AM 1984-350. © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Philippe Migeat. FIG. 14 (near right): Mask. Galwa, Gabon. Wood, vegetable fi ber, kaolin, red ocher, charcoal. H: 36 cm. Collected around 1963 by Philippe Guimiot. Musée Barbier Mueller, Geneva, inv. 1019-63. © Archives ABM. Photo: Studio Ferrazzini-Bouchet. FIG. 15 (far right): Mask. Galwa, Gabon. Wood, vegetable fi ber, kaolin, charcoal. H: 56 cm. (including fi ber). Berg en Dal, inv. 563-2. territory. Clan power was matriarchal and this remained the case until the nineteenth century. Consanguine marriages were prohibited, and women sometimes had to leave their village when they married. Galwa clans circulated by marriage not only among the Myene peoples but among the Vili of Loango as well. Unlike among the Mpongwe, the Galwa clan is determined by that of the mother and the maternal uncles, who have authority. The Avanji clan, of Vili origin, was deemed the most powerful by virtue of its ironworking abilities and was considered the most important in the Galwa clan hierarchy. Several clans lived under a hierarchical system in a same village, whose chief (oga) always wore kaolin decoration on his eyes. The oga was the guardian of the ancestor basket (alumbi), which contained skulls, and of the mpemba staff. This reliquary was kept in a sacred house, entrance to which was forbidden to anyone outside the family clan. A torch was lit every evening and watched over by the designated guardian, who also wore mpemba decoration on his forehead and his right arm. Before leaving the village on a trip, the oga was careful to anoint himself with mpemba on the forehead, the right arm, and the chest. In former times, only deceased chiefs had their lips whitened with kaolin. NKOMBE, THE SUN-KING In the middle of the nineteenth century, a powerful politician named Nkombe established himself in the village of Adolinanongo (a name that means “where one sees the tribes passing through.” He was bright and charismatic, but, according to Marche, “had until then been nothing more than a common slave trader, and among the most cruel … and was by far the most intelligent of the Negros in these areas.”17 He was a powerful sorcerer and a much-feared oganga (priest) because he had been initiated by the most skilled masters of Cape Lopez. He had rare insight and a vision of power that broke with the past. He created a council of wise men charged with the task of correcting the old customs in order to establish a new social order, which involved reforms and a new system of political organization. Between 1866 and 1870, taking advantage of his notoriety, he was able to interest the English fi rm of Hatton & Cookson enough to cause them to set up outposts. In 1873, at the time
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