Section: Ivory Trade and Slave Eating around the Ubangi River

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After the foundation of the Congo Free State, ivory quickly became its principal export good. Between 1888 and 1890 alone, “European traders exported approximately 140 tons of ivory from the Free State, worth nearly seven million Belgian francs.”7 This ivory, procured by local elephant hunters, often went through the hands of various interim traders before reaching its final destination. Various sources from the Free State and nearby areas indicate that this supposedly “legitimate” trade often went hand in hand with slavery and cannibalism: ivory was exchanged against slaves—slaves who were sometimes eaten by those who acquired them.

Dr. Sidney Langford Hinde (1863–1930), a captain in the army of the Congo Free State who arrived in the region in late 1891,8 notes that the captains of steamers moving along the Ubangi River (the largest right-bank, or northern, tributary of the Congo) had serious difficulties securing provisions because “whenever they try to buy goats from the natives, slaves are demanded in exchange, and the natives often come on board with tusks of ivory or other money with the intention of buying a slave, complaining that meat is now scarce in their neighbourhood.”9

The British journalist Edward James Glave (1863–1895), who spent most of his adult life in the Congo basin before succumbing to a tropical illness at the age of thirty-one, had the same experience. Traveling along the Ubangi, he was “asked on several occasions to barter a man for a tusk of ivory, and . . . at one village the natives urged me to leave one of my boat’s crew in exchange for a goat. ‘Meat for meat,’ they said.”10 A Dutch trader sent to buy ivory on the same river complained that this was difficult to accomplish because “the natives asked him in return not for cloth, but for slaves from four to sixteen years old whom they intended to eat.”11

In some cases, European traders seem to have been willing to satisfy such requests. John H. Weeks (1861–1924) was a Baptist missionary who arrived in the Congo in 1881 and stayed for more than thirty years, living most of the time among the Boloki on the central Congo River (a subgroup of a people commonly known as Bangala).12 With disdain he notes that “the folk of the lower part of our district were procuring for their cannibal orgies the natives of a tributary of the Congo. They gave ivory and received human beings in exchange, who quickly found their way to the saucepan; and a white trader was the intermediary.”13

The Hungarian anthropologist Emil Torday (1875–1931) likewise states that among those who, “for the sake of gain, . . . sell slaves to be immolated on the altar of an unnatural [cannibalistic] gluttony” was “a white man”—whether he refers to the same man as Weeks is not clear. He does not say more about him except that he was “not a Belgian” and “as far as I know, . . . is still [in the 1920s] alive and no doubt rich and respected.”14

In other cases, as Torday also notes, locals acted as intermediaries in this kind of trade. Glave reports that in 1890—though the Free State had officially outlawed slavery and slave raids—there was a busy local slave trade between the Ubangi and the Lulonga (Lulungu) Rivers. The latter is a left-bank (or southern) tributary that joins the Congo River approximately 150 kilometers upriver (northeast) from the Ubangi. Roughly in the middle, between the confluences of these two rivers, another left-bank tributary, known along its lower part as the Ruki,15 joins the main river. People living between the mouths of the Ruki and the Lulonga repeatedly ventured upriver along these southern tributaries (as well as smaller ones in between them), raiding the people who lived there and taking many of them captive. The victims of these raids were called Balolo by Glave and others—a tribal appellation that later fell into disuse.16

There was a division of work between these raiders and slave traders who lived around the mouth of the Ruki and farther downriver. The latter brought the newly caught slaves closer to their final destination—which often was death and consumption, according to Glave. During the course of ten days, he saw dozens of trading canoes return from the southern tributaries in order to resell the purchased slaves around the mouth of the Ruki or to transport them farther downriver and sell them along the Ubangi. In one such canoe, which might have been fairly typical, Glave counted “five traders, and their freight of miserable humanity consisted of thirteen emaciated Balolo slaves, men, women, and little children.” Most of the captives were supposedly “sold in exchange for ivory” to buyers who had only their nutritional value in mind, subsequently slaughtering them “to supply some cannibal orgy”—only a few were purchased to be employed as warriors or become their buyers’ “wives.”17

Hinde gives a similar account, noting that the authorities of the newly established Congo Free State were confronted with “a wholesale human traffic” taking place between the southern and northern tributaries of the Congo. People living near the main river regularly organized raids, often along the Lulonga River. “When the raiders had collected a sufficient number of people to fill their canoes, they returned to the Congo, and carried them up the Oubangi [Ubangi], where they were sold to the natives to serve as food.”18

Another account comes from the Baptist missionary William Bentley, who notes that the “human cattle” caught in raids near the Lulonga were sold on the Ubangi in exchange for ivory. “The purchasers,” he adds, “would then feed up their starvelings, until they were fat enough for the market, then butcher them, and sell the meat in small joints.”19 Glave likewise notes that the purchasers, after paying with ivory, fattened their victims on “ripe bananas, fish, and oil” before killing them for consumption. He estimates that “hundreds” of the unfortunate Balolo fell victim to this process every month.20

The deliberate fattening of slaves has also been reported from the surroundings of the Ruki River. While traveling along a side arm of this river, the German officer Curt von François (1852–1931) saw a well-nourished, but bound man who, as his interpreter explained, was about to be slaughtered. After talking with the locals, the interpreter added that the man, whose “features pointed to the sufferings of prolonged slavery,” had been “prepared for this act by rational fattening.” François’s attempt to purchase him failed, because the locals asked to be given three other slaves in return.21 While he does not mention fattening, the Baptist missionary George Grenfell (1849–1906) made a very similar experience during his travels along this river: “Grenfell came upon a group who were just about to kill a man and eat him. He tried without success to redeem him for a cash payment.”22

Exchanges of “edible” slaves against ivory (or other goods) were not limited to the lower parts of the Ubangi River, they also occurred farther upriver, far away from the Congo River. In the late 1880s, a Catholic mission station was established at Bangui (today the capital of the Central African Republic), six hundred kilometers upriver from the mouth of the Ubangi. The French missionary and bishop Prosper Augouard (1852–1921), who spent part of his time at the mission, characterizes the “Bondjo” people living around the mission as accomplished elephant hunters who “willingly exchange their ivory, but only against slaves who are immediately put to death and devoured.”23 In a letter written in April 1893, he tells of the recent arrival of a canoe carrying enslaved children. “Eleven poor little slaves . . . were bought and immediately eaten by the terrible Bondjos.” The missionaries generally tried to purchase enslaved children in order to save them, but when they heard of the incident, it was already too late.24

At that time, Bondjo (or Bonjo) was a generic name used by Europeans for various ethnic groups who lived around the Ubangi, especially on its upper part where it forms the boundary between the Central African Republic (formerly part of the French Congo) and Congo-Kinshasa (formerly the Congo Free State). Over time, various parts of this linguistically and culturally quite diverse group became known under more precise terms such as M’Baka and Gbaya, while the generic name disappeared.25

While it is conceivable that some of the victims of the “Bondjos” were shipped from as far away as the Lulonga or other left-bank tributaries of the Congo, most of them—or maybe all—probably came from more proximate regions. Many seem to have been caught and sold by ethnic groups who lived close to the “Bondjos” but were themselves less cannibalistic—indeed, since “Bondjo” was a generic term, it seems likely that not all the people to which it was applied were equally cannibalistic.

The French traveler Casimir Maistre, who visited the region in 1892/93, encountered a people called “Boubangis,” who, he remarks (not disapprovingly), were “very commercial.” They largely abstained from human flesh, though killed enemies were consumed and, from time to time, slaves were slaughtered and eaten at special occasions. But mostly they traded in living slaves, whether purchased elsewhere or captured in fights, whom they sold in return for ivory—most often to “the Bondjos of the Middle Ubangi, hardened cannibals who consider the slaves only as meat for slaughter.”26 The name “Boubangis” might refer to the Ngbandi, a people who live on the upper Ubangi River, east of those once known as “Bondjos.”

The deadly trade between the two peoples is also mentioned by the French explorer Jean Dybowski (1856–1928), who explains that a small tusk of ivory weighting twenty-five to forty kilograms was exchanged for one slave who was “executed and consumed in due course,” while two or more slaves were handed over for larger tusks.27 The Catholic mission historian G. Renouard agrees with these accounts: “The Boubangis are the suppliers of their neighbors on the Ubangi, the Bondjo cannibals, and they know very well for what purpose their goods are bought.”28 Similar exchange ratios of slaves against ivory have been documented for other regions where cannibalism was absent or rare—in Equatoria (today part of South Sudan), a first-class elephant tusk was considered as valuable as a healthy young enslaved girl.29