The Senegambian Horned Initiation Mask: History and Provenance

Abstract

This essay concerns the ejumba, a horned initiation mask made of woven fiber, found in the Casamance region of southwestern Senegal and in adjacent Guine-Bissau. Historical sources, including European travel reports and the oral traditions of local Senegambian populations, facilitate a reconstruction of the history of these masks as far back as the seventeenth century. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, ejumba masks entered European museum collections, and they make it possible to study stylistic development, which is characterized by continuity, with minor variations in the materials used to embellish the masks. Though the ejumba has been variously ascribed to the different peoples of the Senegambia — Diola, Balante, and Manding — it can now be firmly attributed to the Diola. This assessment is confirmed by close study of written records, by fieldwork in the Casamance, and by reference to the extensive photographic record of rituals among the inhabitants of Guine-Bissau.

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Notes on contributors

Peter Mark

Peter Mark's two books, A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History of the Basse Casamance since 1500 (1985) and Africans in European Eyes: The Portrayal of Black Africans in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Europe (1974) reflect his primary areas of research, African and Afro-European studies. [Art Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06457]