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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



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Ivory pictograph of elephant hunting. — The hunter makes music while his wives bring him wine 

 and food (at the left). He sets up his shield and awaits the dictum of the oracle. Hearing that success 

 will accompany his efforts, he proceeds to the hunt, holding in his left hand a yellow flower that is to 

 render him invisible. He kills the eleijhant by severing its trunk 



trained eye, and when in donljt he holds 

 the ivory to the sunlight. 



The king's trumpets are carved in 

 heavy relief, with bands and parallel 

 lines as the main embellishment. There 

 may be other motives, such as canoes or 

 human faces, but a conventionalized fe- 

 male figure or head is the most typi- 

 cal. This has evidently been adopted 

 in honor of Queen iSTenzima, the fa- 

 mous diplomat, who took part in all de- 

 liberations, and is perhaps responsible 

 for the fact that the Mangbetu have 

 adopted woman suffrage to a certain 

 extent — a fact the more remarkable be- 

 cause women were kept in complete 

 bondage by all the neighboring tribes. 



The finest example of a war horn 



The Mangbetu natives make rings of carved ivory after the fashion 

 of those they have seen worn by white men. These rings show the 

 fancy of the natives for conventionalized heads and faces 



we have ever seen was prepared by the 

 most skillful of Okondo's men, Ka- 

 ribu. As usual only the upper half is 

 of ivory; the lower part consists of a 

 carefully fitted wooden tube covered 

 with portions of the hides of elephant 

 and okapi. Mangbetu superstition has 

 endowed these animals with extraordi- 

 nary powers, that by the magic of the 

 medicine men are concentrated in these 

 fragments of skin and can be trans- 

 ferred to the owner of these charms. 

 The elephant, the king of all beasts, is 

 supreme in power, whereas the mysteri- 

 ous okapi is supposed to retaliate by 

 wiping out his human aggressor, his 

 family, and all who live in the same 

 village. It is said that sounds of such 

 war trumpets are liable 

 to bring misfortune to 

 renegades and enemies 

 alike. 



The subjects of Ze- 

 bandra, another Mang- 

 betu chief, boasted that 

 their battle horn con- 

 tained the medicine of 

 doom for others. There 

 were the finger bones, 

 teeth, hair, and other 

 dried portions of slain 

 enemies bundled to- 

 gether in unusual har- 

 mony and fastened in- 

 side the hollow. The 

 spirits of these victims 

 were supposed to hear 

 the notes of defiance, 

 and the sounds, pass- 



