The Mbuti of the Ituri Forest

By Emma Wild-Wood

Mbuti

The Mbuti of the Ituri forest are one of a number of tropical forest hunter-gatherer people (Ka, Bongo, Twa, Efe, Kola, Sua etc) that are often called ‘pygmies’. This name comes from their small stature and petite features. They live in extended family groups of twenty to thirty people. They are semi-nomadic, moving around the forest in search of food. Mbuti use hunting nets and are highly skilled archers. They craft fine bows and arrows to which they often add poison to bring down the prey.  Their temporary shelters are delicate constructions that can be made quickly from vines, branches and banana leaves around them. At night they might tell stories and legends and dance around the fire. Their lives are entirely intertwined with the forest. They must know and respect it in order to survive. The Mbuti have close trading relationships with the other peoples who farm in or at the edges of the forest. Mbuti exchange the meat they have shot for salt and agricultural produce.  Farming and hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the Ituri forest are part of larger social system.

By the early 20th century, when Colonial Harrison toured six Mbuti around Britain, there seems to have been significant mistrust between Mbuti and other forest peoples. The deterioration of relations was probably caused by instable social conditions from decades of international slave trade and colonial imposition. Relations that had been cooperative and harmonious had begun to break down. Records left by Africans working in the Ituri forest show that some neighbouring peoples considered the Mbuti inferior or frightening because their way of life was different to theirs. Farming people said that they had authority over the Mbuti and could demand their labour. On the other hand, Mbuti said that they were in control of relationships with neighbouring farmers. They used sudden absences and expectations of gifts of salt as bargaining tools.

In the latter part of the 20th century the Mbuti earned some national respect in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After the independence of the country from colonial rule (1960) hunter-gatherers became known as the ‘First Citizens’ of the country. There were attempts to understand and conserve their nomadic way of living, as a result of works like The Forest Peoples Colin Turnbull (1961). The hunter-gatherer way of life is tough, particularly when food sources are scarce. It has been made more difficult in the 21st century by logging, mining and even forms of conservationism that restrict their movements. The political insecurity in Eastern Congo since 1994 has also threatened their way of life. However, as the earth faces a climate crisis caused by human activity, peoples like the Mbuti are able to show other humans how it is possible to live simply with the natural world.

European and African perceptions of Mbuti.

Harrison’s actions in bringing six Mbuti to Britain in 1904 sprang from the curiosity and domination of colonial powers. Harrison, like many Europeans who travelled to colonised countries, collected art, artefacts and hunted animals. In displaying Mbuti, Harrison was also responding to the particular place that ‘pygmies’ had held for centuries in the western imagination. The ancient Greeks and Romans had described mythical ‘pygmies’. Their writings influenced later European and Arabic writings, where the name ‘pygmy’ might describe monsters, monkeys or strange humans. When European explorers in Central Africa in the 19th century saw hunter-gatherers of small stature they had already had a set of imprecise expectations, provided from legends, of what these people might be like. H.M. Stanley, the explorer who sought territory along the Congo basin for the Belgian king, encountered hunter-gatherers in the Ituri forest in 1874. His popular books of his exploits brought hunter-gatherers to wider attention. At the same early anthropologists were asking whether to classify the Mbuti as sub-human or primitive humans. Colonial thought was influenced by a set of ideas often called ‘Social Darwinism’ that considered that humans could be placed in a hierarchy of evolution, in which European populations were the most developed and, therefore, best suited to rule over others. It was these kinds of attitudes that made it easy for Colonel Harrison to bring, what he considered to be, exotic curiosities to Britain.

Harrison was challenged, however, by another set of Europeans who considered that they should protect the Mbuti. The Church Missionary Society (CMS), an agency connected with the Church of England, tried to intervene in the transportation of the Mbuti to Britain because the CMS thought that displaying human beings in this way was wrong. Missionaries often had a paternalist attitude towards hunter-gatherers. They believed Mbuti were fully human but naïve or child-like. They wanted to protect them and also to introduce them to Christianity.

There is some evidence of how other African peoples considered the Mbuti. One man from Uganda provides a sympathetic portrayal of Mbuti at a time when there is little direct record of their own views. Apolo Kivebulaya liked visiting different groups of Mbuti and listening to their legends, some of which he wrote down. Kivebulaya visited them for a specific reason. He thought that the answer to the suspicion that had arisen amongst different groups of people was to be found in Christianity. He taught that in becoming a Christian one belonged to a wider group of people and could let go of ethnic differences that had caused distrust in the Ituri forest. Kivebulaya had converted to Christianity himself when the Ganda peoples came into contact with CMS missionaries and Catholic missionaries from 1878. He became an Anglican priest and considered himself to be a missionary too. In his notebooks and talks Kivebulaya presented a positive view of Mbuti life and culture. Kivebulaya stayed in Mbuti homes. He recorded their beliefs, their origin stories and their relationships. He contrasted them favourably with aspects of his own Ganda culture.  This surprised some Ugandans who thought their agricultural life was superior to that of hunter-gatherers.

About the author

Dr Emma Wild-Wood - grew up in Yorkshire. She teaches African Christianity and African Indigenous Religious at the University of Edinburgh. Previously she lived and worked in DR Congo, in Uganda and in Cambridge. Her second book is The Mission of Apolo Kivebulaya: Religious Encounter and Social Change in the Great Lakes (1865-1935). 2020.

Further reading

Bahuchet, S (1993) ‘L’Invention des Pygmées,’ Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, 33, 129, pp.153-181.

Gauthier, M. & Pravettoni, R. (2016) ‘Clashing over conservation: saving Congo’s forest and its Pygmies,’ The Guardian 30th August 2016.

Grinker, R. R. (1994) Houses in the Rain Forest: Ethnicity and Inequality among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa. Berkeley.

Huang, R. (2020)Mbuti: Congo’s Last Forest Pygmies Persist despite Violence and Loss  

Kohler A. and Lewis, J. (2002) “Putting Hunter-Gatherer and Farmer Relations in Perspective: A Commentary from Central Africa,” in Susan Kent (ed), Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers and the "Other": Association or Assimilation in Africa. Washington.

Wild-Wood, E.  with Mupanga, G. (2022) The archive of an African Missionary, the writings by and about Revd Apolo Kivebulaya. British Academy.

Wild-Wood, E. (2020) The Mission of Apolo Kivebulaya: Religious Encounter and Social Change in the Great Lakes (1865-1935). James Currey.