Chokwe Maternity from Congo DRC.
There are two distinct seasons in the Chokwe region: a rainy season between October and April and a dry season for the rest of the year. This climate had a huge impact on village life; the Chokwe farmed, hunted, fished and built houses according to the changing seasons.
The Chokwe people have many different art forms and many extant examples are preserved in museums abroad.
to counter the new colonial influence acting against the old political powers. Once the Chokwe had weapons, however, they overthrew the Lunda nobles and enslaved foreign tribesmen on their own plantations after the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. Slaves from other ethnic groups in Africa became a valuable commodity sought after by the Chokwe. In the Upper Zambezi and Kasai regions in particular, they were once subjected to well-armed Portuguese or Belgian raids from the west and Arab-Swahili raids from the east (such as that of Tippu Tip also known as Hamad bin Muhammad el Murjebi; later, the Chokwe people joined in the violence and victimized others by capturing and shipping large numbers of captured slaves for financial gain, as well as purchasing and keeping female slaves in their own homes from the profits of their artisanal labour.
EnglishAs the demand and financial profits from the slave trade in colonial markets increased, many slaves were captured or otherwise transited through Chokwe-controlled territory. They allowed the movement of male slaves to continue westward towards the ports in cooperation with the Portuguese, while women were often retained. This practice continued long after slavery was banned in Europe and the United States, as demand for laborers elsewhere, such as South America and the Caribbean, continued; Swahili-Arab, Omani, and other colonial plantation markets persisted, fueling a contraband slave economy. European explorers who visited Chokwe villages in the early 20th century reported that a majority of the women there were slaves in polygamous households, and likely acted as a cause of their population boom. [9] In some areas, the Chokwe people used slaves to raid their neighbors' exportable ivory reserves, as well as to counter raids by militarized Arab-Swahili gangs seeking these ivory reserves and tribute payments.