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Minkisi paper African Minkisi Introduced Into American Culture: What Are Minkisi, and What Form Did They Take in the Americas? I. Introduction African Minkisi have
Submitted by cinottkj on May 26, 2005
Category: American History
Words: 6468 | Pages: 26
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African Minkisi Introduced Into American Culture: What Are Minkisi, and What Form Did They Take in the Americas?
I. Introduction
African Minkisi have been used for hundreds of years in West Central Africa, This area where they are traditionally from was once known as the kingdom of Kongo, when Europeans started settling and trading with the BaKongo people. Kongo was a well-known state throughout much of the world by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The BaKongo, however, had probably long used minkisi before ethnographers and anthropologists ever recorded them. Minkisi are complex items that are used to heal and to harm people, and there is no equivalent term for nkisi in any European language. A seventeenth century Dutch geographer first wrote of the nkisi, and said that, "These Ethiopians [that is, the BaKongo] call moquisie [minkisi] everything in which resides, in their opinion, a secret and incomprehensible virtue to do them good or ill, and to reveal event of past and future" (Williams, 13). The term illness, in this context, is quite different than what we refer to illness. Illness, to the BaKongo, meant anything from sickness, to loss of property, and the inability to succeed in things like school and work. . "The perpetual struggle with the unseen forces that cause illness and misfortunes was (and is) called "war" in Kongo" (MacGaffey, 98). A war is ended when one side of the struggle proves that they have better magic. The objects themselves are extremely complex, and most of them require hours of, "painstaking labor to construct" (MacGaffey, 33). "All minkisi, whether in the form of wooden figures, snail shells, raffia bags, or clay pots, are containers for "medicines" that empowers them" (MacGaffey, 43). "The usual containers included the shells of large snails, antelope horns, cloth bags, gourds, and clay pots. Although minkisi in museums are usually wooden figurines and statues, containers of this kind...
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