Nsala of Wala in the Nsongo District

Uncommon card · No. 198271

Nsala of Wala in the Nsongo District (Abir Concession) is a photograph published by Edmund Dene Morel in his book King Leopold's Rule in Africa, in 1904. The image depicts a Congolese man named Nsala looking at the severed foot and hand of his five-year-old daughter, Boali. The girl, her mother, and a local boy had been killed, cooked, and eaten by a group of fifteen armed guards of the Abir Congo Company, which had a concession by the Congo Free State to collect rubber in the region. The guards had arrived early and were annoyed when they found that the rubber quota requested from the village was not yet ready. Three other persons had been wounded in their attack (one of them fatally) and ten villagers, mostly women, were taken captive by the guards. The photograph was taken by Alice Seeley Harris, the wife of a missionary, in the neighbouring village of Baringa on 14 May 1904, one day after the girl's death. Nsala had secretly picked up Boali's hand and foot as evidence of the murders...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Alice Harris/John Hobbis Harris, Public domain