Ex: Ruben Rubens Collection, sold in London in 1992. The Poto/Ngombe live along the Congo River and have been slavers for centuries. Their tactics were typical for the slave trade involving raiding households at dusk with hacking attacks against largely defenseless families. This sword is a fine example closely related to the example shown Fischer #252. It is excellent quality and well decorated indicative of a successful slaver and dates to the 19th century. The pommel has the original wrap on what is generally believed to a fetish bundle. The evolution of information on the internet has steadily built the explanation of one of the great puzzles of the slaver’s legacy: If the weapons were made for vicious hacking attacks and victims were fighting for their lives, how then to capture saleable prey? It is evident that the importance of cannibalism in the slave trade has been seriously underestimated. Human flesh was preferred to animal by the Songye. A report by The Atlantic in 2012 details the savaging of a woman in the Congo in 2003 whose arm was cut off, cooked and eaten by militants. It further details the cannibalism of “parts” of a mother and her children a year earlier. If the market for slaves was both human laborers and meat for the table, our understanding of the tactics of acquisition must be rethought. A fine example which played a role in a phase of history about which there is still much to discover
