IDNO

P.57216.RDG

Description

Posed group portrait of five African men annotated as being mail couriers and holding rifles. The men wear a combination of European and native clothing, and have white sachets with writing on worn with the strap across the chest. The writing on the sachet on the left reads “Courier ? Bresson Zanzibar”.

Physical Condition: Print yellowing and surface dirt. Foxing on mount. [JD 12/6/2007]

Place

E Africa; Tanzania; Zanzibar

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

?Catholic Missionary of Africa (White Fathers) [Compiler]; Ridgeway, William [Collector]

Date

circa 1890

Collection Name

Ridgeway Collection

Source

Format

Cabinet Card

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.57192.RDG to P.57260.RDG were found in C274/1/ which came from C274/. The latter was kept in Wooden Drawer VI.

Place: This entry was previously recorded as “Africa” but based on the text on the men’s mail sachets the photograph is probably from Tanzania. [JD 12/6/2007]

Place: The Mission of the Notre Dame of Kamoga is at Bukumbi, near the modern Tanzanian town of Mwanza. [Source: Dictionary of African Christian biography Online, JD 4/10/2006]

Context: The Catholic Missionary of Africa (White Fathers) first arrived in Equatorial Africa in Uganda in September 1878. “In order to secure postulants for baptism, the missionaries started to ransom enslaved children, as a provisional strategy. By August 1879 they had ten such orphans, and by April 1882, they had forty. They were offered hundreds of children each week, but their lack of resources prevented them from any extraordinary increase of numbers.” Due to increasing conflict in Uganda and threats to the missionaries lives, the White Fathers were ordered to leave Buganda. “On November 20, 1882, they set sail for the southern shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza. ... [and] spent nearly three years out of Uganda. The orphans were divided into two groups, one group forming the nucleus of the orphanage and mission of Kamoga (Bukumbi, near the modern Tanzanian town of Mwanza). The other group travelled south to Kipalapala, near Tabora, where an orphanage had already been founded.”
The Catholic missionaries returned to Uganda in June 1885, when “Mwanga sent a flotilla of canoes, with three hundred oarsmen to bring Mapeera and his missionary companions back to Buganda.” The missionaries were again forced to flee in September 1888, this time to Bukumbi. In 1889, the fathers again returned to Uganda, constructing the church on the summit of Rubaga Hill, the site of the former royal residence in Uganda. This Catholic Mission still exists in Uganda.
[Source: ‘Matrys of Uganda’ in Encyclopedia Britannica Online, JD 13/6/2007]

Bibliographical Reference: Father Lourdel: the Apostle of Uganda by Father J. Cussac of the White Fathers, 1969 (Bookshop Missionary Edition) [JD 13/6/2007]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [JD 2/7/2007]