Mangaaka Power Figure (Nkisi N’Kondi)

By the 1880s the coast around the Chiloango River was under heavy pressure. European firms were pushing inland for ivory, rubber and palm oil, agreements were being struck and broken with local rulers, and in 1885 the map of the region was redrawn in Europe among the new Congo Free State, Portugal and France. Figures of this scale were commissioned in exactly those decades, and they were made to do a job. A sculptor carved the wood. An nganga, the ritual specialist who held the knowledge, consecrated it and packed the cavity in its belly with the materials that gave it force. From then on, every oath sworn in front of it, every agreement between communities, every dispute judged, was driven into the body as a blade or a nail. The iron is the record. About 20 large mangaaka are known, all taken to Europe between 1880 and 1910, and the carving is close enough across them to point back to a single workshop.