19th century Pipes of the Ogooué Basin, Gabon

A distinctive type of 19th/early 20th century pipe from Gabon (shown here below) is constructed of wood with an iron bowl, a brass stem and bindings of brass and copper wire. Dealers readily attribute this form to the Kota, without specifying if this is "Kota" in the sense of the Kota people (Guthrie code B25 in the Kele group) or the much broader careless ragbag and much criticised terms "Kuta"/"Kota" of the art world (e.g. Andersson (1953) and Perrois (1970); Perrois (1985, pg 37) offered a weak defence). But is this correct? Examination of 19th century texts and museum collections suggests not.


A distinctive pipe from Gabon, made of wood, with brass stem and wrapping and an iron bowl, 44 cm long, offered as "Kota", but is it?

Here below (at left) is a very similar example, but with more precise provenance, from the Ndasa village of Mapinda (Andersson 1953).



Inspecting the Musée du Quai Branly collection online reveals 11 pieces in this style. Of the attributed pieces, there is 71.1886.79.24, donated by the de Brazza brothers prior to 1886, collected from the Ondumbo (i.e. Dumu, B63 in the Mbede group). Then there's a group of four from the Obamba (B62 in the Mbede group) of Okondja (pre 1935), one of which is nearly identical to the one at the top of this page. And the final attributed piece is stated to be Fang (71.1886.77.57). Hence there is a strong showing for the Mbede (Mbete) and Fang groups and none for the Kota (in the Kele group).

With reference to the Obamba attributions, an engraving of an Obamba warrior encountered by de Brazza (Tour du Monde 1888.2, p. 41) shows him holding an example of one of these pipes.

Engraving of Obamba warrior with pipe encountered by de Brazza (Tour du Monde 1888) 


Guiral (1889) illustrated an example found among the Teke, as shown below.

Illustration of pipe in Guiral (1889). (The name KINKOUNA in the accompanying text appears to have accidentally morphed into RINKONNA in the figure).


With that discovery, I looked in the book “Batéké: Peintres et Sculpteurs d'Afrique Centrale” (1998) and voila! Their no. 80 is even closer to the specimen shown above. The caption to No. 78 notes (without reference)  "utilisée aussi par les Fang." Hence, both the “Batéké" book (1998) and Musée du Quai Branly collection indicate use of this kind of pipe among the Fang. Here below is a Fernand Grébert illustration of Fang pipes from the 1912-1917 period, with another example of the type of pipe discussed here and two others of very different form beneath.



These were clearly not the only kinds of pipe used by the Fang and two examples encountered by Tessmann 1913, pg 169) in the period 1904-1909 in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon are shown below. These pipes terminate at the bowl.




Mary Kingsley (1897 pg 322) told an enjoyable anecdote about a Fang pipe, one with at least part of the stem made of wood rather than the brass of the examples illustrated above: 

"The pipes are sometimes made of iron very neatly. I should imagine they smoked hot, but of this I have no knowledge. One of my Ajumba friends got himself one of these pipes when we were in Efoua, and that pipe was, on and off, a curse to the party. Its owner soon learnt not to hold it by the bowl, but by the wooden stem, when smoking it ; the other lessons it had to teach he learnt more slowly. He tucked it, when he had done smoking, into the fold in his cloth, until he had had three serious conflagrations raging round his middle. And to the end of the chapter, after having his last pipe at night with it, he would lay it on the ground, before it was cool. He learnt to lay it out of reach of his own cloth, but his fellow Ajumbas and he himself persisted in always throwing a leg on to it shortly after, and there was another row."


Conclusion

The examples described above provide a good suite of early examples of tobacco pipe from the Mbede-Teke groups (Obamba B62, Ondumbo B63, Teke B80) and the Fang (A75). I have found just one example (Ndasa B201) with any relation to the Kota (B25) (in that both ethnies are in the Kele group of Guthrie), but it would be no surprise if these Kele peoples did also use this kind of pipe, perhaps traded from upriver.

So, from what we know so far, it appears that a truer attribution for this distinctive style of pipe would be the following: 

“Teke-Mbede peoples (Ondumbo, Obamba, Teke) of eastern Gabon (Haut-Ogooué) and also present among the Ndasa and Fang, perhaps through trade.”

To finish with, here are three more of these attractive Upper Ogooué pipes (RS.AF84-86 in the author's collection), 32 to 47 cm long.



References


Andersson, E. 1953. Contribution à l'ethnographie des Kuta. Almqvist & Wiksell, 365pp.

Batéké : peintres et sculpteurs d'Afrique centrale : Paris, Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie 30 septembre 1998 - 4 janvier 1999.

Bennett, Albert L. 1899. Ethnographical Notes on the Fang. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 29, No. 1/2, pp. 66-98.

Bowdich, Thomas Edward. 1819.  Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, with a statistical account of that kingdom, and geographical notices of other parts of the interior of Africa, London: J. Murray.

Burton, Richard Francis, 1865. A Day among the Fans. Read February 17th 1863. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, Vol. III, John Murray, 36-47.

Burton, Richard Francis, 1876. Two Trips to Gorillaland.

de Compiègne, marquise, du Pont, L.A.H.V. 1878. Gabonais - Pahouins - Gallois, Troisième Edition, Paris

Du Chaillu, Paul B. 1861. Explorations and adventures in Equatorial Africa. John Murray, London.

Grébert, F. (1922). Au Gabon : (Afrique équatoriale française). Paris: Soc. des Missions évangéliques.

Guiral, L. 1889. Le Congo français, du Gabon à Brazzaville. Paris.

Guthrie, Malcolm (1967–1971). Comparative Bantu: an introduction to the comparative linguistics and prehistory of the Bantu languages. Farnborough: Gregg Press.

Kingsley, Mary H. 1897. Travels in West Africa. Macmillan and co. Ltd, London

Musée du Quai Branly online

Perrois, L. 1970. Chronique du pays Kota [Gabon]. Cahiers ORSTOM Série Sciences Humaines, VII (2): 15-68.

Perrois, L. 1985. Ancestral art of Gabon from the collections of the Barbier-Mueller Museum. Dallas Museum of Art.

Perrois, L. 2012. Kota. 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 162 pp.

Tessmann, G. 1913. Die Pangwe. Wasmuth, Berlin. 2 volumes.

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