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Jul 1, 2024, 7:34:02 AM7/1/24

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DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION, Europeans became aware of the relatively extreme forms of body art practiced in Sub-Saharan Africa. One of these was scarification, a body modification procedure that offered a sculptural quality to the skin. Sometimes a colored pigment was added to the incisions forming a kind of tattoo, sometimes not.

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This article takes an encyclopedic look at tattooing practices throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and includes the island of Madagascar. It focuses on many tribes that are rarely mentioned within the artistic canons of tattooing, and whose customs of body modification have a relatively undocumented history outside of obscure sources not widely available to the general public.

It should be noted that this article is by no means complete as there are many other groups that practiced tattooing throughout the regions described here. So please keep in mind that this is a preliminary introduction to the subject and that future work by others will no doubt shed additional light on these incredible traditions of indigenous body art.

The Sahel is the ecoregion or transitionary climatic zone located between the Sahara Desert in the north and the savanna grasslands to the south. It stretches across the African continent from the country of Senegal eastward to the Red Sea.

One of the largest tribal groups that inhabitant the western Sahel region (from Senegal to Chad) are the Fulani, who are variously known as the Peul, Fula, Fulbe, or Felaata. These nomadic herders are gradually on the move throughout the year, searching for new pasture and water sources for their vast herds of cattle. Some groups have become more sedentary and have settled down in villages or towns where they practice agriculture, engage in market commerce, and have become devout Muslims.

As noted, the Fulani are famous throughout West Africa because they are nomadic cattle herders who cover great distances in the dry season in search of water for their herds. Perhaps this is why Peul men are intricately tattooed so they might impress those women they meet during their long journeys through Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger. However, Yaseku noted quietly that he believed his tattoos also protected him from evil spirits (jinn) lurking in the landscape.

Further south, many Bushmen tribes of Namibia and southern Angola cut the skin during initiation or when setting out on a hunt for large game. Using a stone knife or sharp arrow head, an old medicine man made a cut between the eyes of the patient and inserted into it a carbonized pigment with magical ingredients that included the pulverized remains of specific animals. This infusion was introduced into the wounds to give the bearer better sight, stamina, and a more powerful thrust of his spear.

Among the Sekele, old men tattooed a successful hunter in return for an offering of game in order to give him good luck in finding the next buck. A piece of the foreleg biceps of the animal was burnt, and the ash was daubed into the incision.

There are several varieties of body markings and scars among the Yoruba of Nigeria but kolo are pigmented cicatrices that look and feel like raised keloids. According to the art historian Henry Drewal who lived with the tribe in the 1970s, the permanent designs served a variety of purposes including beautification and especially proclaiming the courage of those individuals who bore them.

Skin artists of the highest caliber mastered a repertoire of many kinds of cuts, from long and bold facial incisions (ko ture), to broad slashing cuts (keke), and bu abaja or short, shallow and faint designs, among others.

The Fang are a forest-dwelling people who live in area of 112,500 square miles spread across the international boundaries of Cameroon, Gabon, the Congo, and especially Equatorial Guinea. Scholars believe that the current homeland of the Fang was reached in the 18th century as Muslim Fulbe (Fulani) and Sudanese tribes of central Cameroon pressured them to move southward from their ancestral domains.

In the 1950s, the eminent Catalan primatologist Jordi Sabater Pi (1922-2009) began documenting the tattooing practices of the Fang, which later led to a beautifully illustrated work co-authored and co-designed by his son Oriol in 1992. Several drawings from this book are reproduced here.

In the early 1950s, Fang tattooing was already in decline and Sabater recorded many ancient patterns that were only seen on the faces and bodies of the very old. His record of body art remains unparalleled because he witnessed the last generation of tattoo bearers that are no longer living today.

The Fang practiced two types of tattooing: relief tattoos (mamvam) that were a form of pigmented scarification, and flat tattoos (mevale) that were pricked with a comb-like tool into the skin. The former variety of adornment was already quite rare in Fang territory when Sabater began his investigations, but he was able to study old 19th century reliquary sculptures that were decorated on the chest and abdomen with special tattoos dedicated to ancestor worship. These forms of statuary were used as guardians to protect the baskets containing the bones and skulls of venerated ancestors and have always been amongst the most admired and sought-after genres of African art.

With [a] small knife in the form of a tiny ndong fish hook the tattoo artist took strong hold of the skin of the subject, which he then cut with the okengeng or tattoo knife; next the artist rubbed the stinging ondond fluid into wounds to slow down the healing process until a protruding relief tattoo was formed.

Ancient legend tells that it was a blacksmith, from the Essakunan clan, who taught the technique of the flat or puncture tattoo to the Mobum [Fang subtribe], and it was later learnt by the Ntum, the Okak and the Fang-Fang [all southern Fang subtribes].

The Ntum knew the flat puncture tattoos by the name of mevale; the tattoo artist (nkeelekut) covered the face or body of the [client] with kaolin or ash known by the name of nkana; immediately afterwards he traced the outline of the future tattoo by puncturing the skin with several bamboo prongs tied together in the form of a comb and soaked in black soot (nviri-otu). Once this had been done, he would then apply a first coat of the remainder of the nviri-otu to the bleeding cuts.

He continued that the operation of knife-cut tattooing was performed in the village meeting house without ceremony, and the patient sat or reclined while receiving their marks. The pigment (otu) was obtained from burning wood and collecting the soot on a pot shard that was placed over the smoking fire. The artist drew a stencil on the part of the body to be tattooed with a wet and curved piece of local grass, leaf stems of the umbrella tree (musanga), or he dipped his finger in the soot and carefully delineated the desired motif.

According to Sabater, these kinds of tattoos were applied to boys and girls aged five to ten years of age. Family members would bring their children to the village tattooist and they often requested specific designs (half-moons, circles, leopard spots or whiskers, etc.) because of their association with protective magic and/or clan unity.

Another author, the missionary Father R.P. Trilles, traveled throughout Fang country in the early 20th century. He was exceedingly interested in Fang tattooing and recorded intriguing information regarding its spiritual and medicinal ramifications:

The totemic or clan identification tattoos (nsam; nsil) symbolize the protector animal. Thus, the members of the Amvom clan place the figure of the python (mvom) on their cheeks, while members of the Iemvi clan utilize a flower (mvi) in the form of two concentric circles with a center point. These designs not only identified clan members, but also reconciled the bearer with the animal [or plant] protector of the group.

Ntum Fang elders interviewed by Sabater noted that in the distant past other tattoos were placed on small children to prevent their capture by the Pygmies (bokui) who were the original peoples of the equatorial forest. More specifically, these markings were said to have aided the Fang in identifying previously kidnapped boys and girls when they conducted their rescue operations.

I have also been skin-cut tattooed by the Makonde of northern Mozambique and they too use soot prepared from castor beans mixed with water for pigment. Castor oil is brushed on the completed tattoo to enable healing.

Between the 1920s and the 1940s, however, steel needles quickly replaced the traditional cutting tools in Magude and tattooing became far less painful for the client. This shift also resulted in tattoos that were less textured than those of past times and because they were less tactile, the sexual connotations once related to body modification were lost.

Among the Bantu-speaking Makonde of northern Mozambique, tattoos were and continue to be far more elaborate than those of other indigenous peoples living in the country. The resonance of tribal tattooing tradition here can partly be attributed to the landscape in which the Makonde inhabit, a place characterized by relatively inaccessible high plateaus that deterred European and Western contact until the turn of the 20th century. And also to Makonde oral history which to this day praises the deeds, knowledge, and superior physical attributes of the tattooed ancestors of the past.

Traditionally, Makonde tattoos were considered as regional indicators and each subtribe preferred specific motifs that were laid down in a variety of set patterns. The face and other parts of the body contained chevrons, angles, zigzag and straight lines with an occasional circle, diamond, dot, or animal figure. Today these patterns have remained largely intact, but they only appear on men and women over sixty years of age. Sadly, the Makonde tattoo artists of the Mueda plateau stopped inking their clients in the early 1960s, and today only a handful of elderly tattoo masters remain in northern Mozambique.