We do not know the details of how Henri Lagotala (1889-1954), at the time employed by the “Congo-Niari” mining consortium to conduct prospection in the region, came to have this sacred object in his possession. However the MEG inventory specifies that, according to the donor’s account, this ancestor statue charged with magic substances had been hidden, along with four similar ones, in “Michel Cave” after the French colonial administration had ordered that all “fetishes” be burned.
F. Morin/MEG