While many of the older major museums contain important early collections of African ethnography (important both because they were often accompanied by good primary documentation and because the collections were made before the era of extensive production for the art market), insufficient attention has been paid to the circumstances under which the collecting was done. Only rarely does the collector indicate in detail how he persuaded the original owners to part with their treasures. In lieu of direct information about the mode of collecting, one can attempt to discover the nature of the relationship that existed between the field collector and the people who were willing to trade their images or equipment. In studying the publications, notes, and correspondence left by an early collector, one is often able to learn of the circumstances by which certain items came into his possession. More rarely these documents reveal not only the particulars of the transactions but also information about the significance and symbolism of the objects themselves — rarely because this usually depends upon the collector's having a truly anthropological interest and sufficient background to enable him to ask significant questions and to understand the responses. More often the best the latter-day researcher can do with a collector's records is to establish the general nature of the relationship that existed between him and his hosts.

It was with the hope of finding additional documentation that I began to study the publications, notes, and correspondence left by and about Samuel Phillips Verner, an enthusiastic amateur ethnologist who provided African ethnographic collections to at least three American museums. In 1895 Verner had been sent by a Presbyterian mission society to what was then the Congo Free State; and in 1899 he brought a collection of some two to three hundred items from the Kasai region to the Smithsonian Institution. He provided tribal attributions for most of the items and places of acquisition for some, but not much more in the way of documentation. The Smithsonian has a copy of Verner’s book, Pioneering in Central Africa, and also copies of some of his published articles on life in the Congo Free State along with a few faded photographs and some notes left by the Curator (Walter Hough) who met with Verner at the time when the collection was accessioned, but little more. Tracing the fascinating details of this man’s life has turned out to be a treasure hunt, with new clues and occasional substantial discoveries of useful information revealed at many stations along the way. Not a great deal more primary documentation of items in the Verner collections has emerged, but we do now have a much better appreciation of the man’s motives and of the nature of his interest in Central Africa and of his relationship with the Africans who helped him.

Verner’s activities in Africa were wide ranging, encompassing those of missionary, explorer, anthropologist, and developer. His important contribution to the ethnological collections of the Smithsonian Institution derived from the early missionary phase of his life, a phase during which his anthropological sensibilities were forming while at the same time his attention was being increasingly drawn to the educational and developmental needs and the commercial possibilities of Central Africa. The collections that he assembled for the American Museum of Natural History (transmitted by Frederick Starr) and for the Putnam Museum in Davenport, Iowa, were made on a later trip, at a time when he thought of himself primarily as an anthropologist rather than as a missionary.

Born in 1873 in South Carolina, Samuel P. Verner grew up in a family with a long tradition of scholarly pursuit. His grandfather had been President of the University of North Carolina and an uncle, Samuel Phillips, served as Solicitor General of the United States under every administration from Grant to Cleveland (1872-85). Verner graduated at the top of his class from the South Carolina College (later to become the University of South Carolina) where he was described as a brilliant but overly intense student. He taught school for a year in South Carolina, but the increasing pressures of academic life led him to seek relief for a time in more manual occupations, and he went to work in the carpentry shops of the Southern Railway for a period of nine months. During this short time he received nine promotions and learned much about railway engines — knowledge that he later called upon in Africa, first to solve practical problems with steam engines and later to explore for the extension of the rail lines in the Congo. In his spare time he read books on African adventure, including every available work of Livingstone and Stanley, and was much moved by Livingstone’s appeal for missionary workers to carry ahead the task of Christian instruction in Central Africa. In 1893 Verner went to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where an uncle was Superintendent of the Stillman Institute, a small industrial training school for Blacks sponsored by the Presbyterian Church. There the young man helped with the school and engaged in various Christian and welfare services.

At that time the Presbyterian Church had already established a mission, founded in 1892 by S. N. Lapsley and W. H. Sheppard at Luebo in the Kasai District where both Black and White missionaries labored. The conditions were severe, the workers few, and the Church was making strong appeals for new missionaries. Phillips Verner, as he was known to his friends, answered the call. He already had formulated some ideas about African needs and the proper course of African development and a conviction that this could best be brought about with American involvement. He was motivated not only by religious zeal, but also, as he put it, by a desire “… to assist in the great task of educating and leading a backward people.”

Normally Presbyterian ministers required a four-year college course and a three-year seminary course before being ordained. But the Executive Committee for Foreign Missions badly needed men and decided to examine young Verner at once upon the basis of his general college education. Passing stiff tests in Latin, Greek, Mental and Moral Philosophy, Rhetoric, Natural Science, Theology, Church History, Church Government, and the Sacraments, Verner was licensed to preach and was ordained a minister the same day. In an autobiographical sketch written late in his life, Verner says that he had no intention of associating himself permanently with the missionary organization and agreed to undertake to manage the business aspects of a mission group for up to three years, only if it was understood that he would be released from obligation at the end of that period. It appears from Verner’s letters home and his early published writings, however, that he was not only a devout Christian but an enthusiastic proselytizer, even when in the company of rough seamen on board the ships that took him from America to Africa. And while in the service of the Mission Society, far from eschewing missionary activity, he attempted to found a new mission station. Later, however, he rejected the title “Reverend,” claiming that he was only a “lay missionary.” But this is getting ahead of the story.

Verner and another neophyte, Joseph Phipps, a Caribbean Black who had immigrated to Pennsylvania, sailed together from New York in 1895 for London where they acquired suitable tropical outfits and visited several old Congo hands. They left England from Liverpool on a ship bound for Matadi on the Lower Congo River, with brief stops at Madeira, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gold Coast, Cameroon, some coastal trading stations north of the Congo mouth, and small trading ports on the lower stretches of the Congo River.

Verner’s assignment included handling the business affairs of the Presbyterian Mission, dealing with the Congo Free State government, and managing the transport service from Matadi to the Mission station 1000 miles inland at Luebo. He found it necessary to remain at Matadi for six months to reorganize the handling of the mail and trade goods destined for the Mission in the interior. During this period he moved the forwarding station from Lukungu, a way-station on the trail from Matadi to Stanley Pool, to the railhead at Tumba Gare, nearly halfway to Leopoldville, and stationed Phipps there as agent. In February of 1896 Verner made a brief trip to Luanda, the capital of Angola, to investigate the possibility of establishing a sanitarium where missionaries might recover from the effects of malaria and other illnesses that plagued all who worked in Central Africa. Though nothing came of this effort, the trip did allow Verner to extend his knowledge of the coastal zone of West Central Africa.

Before leaving Matadi for the establishment at Luebo, Verner typed out a fourteen-page letter to the Mission Committee giving his thoughts, by this time well-formulated, on the various Protestant societies in the Congo, their problems, frustrations, and failings. He was especially critical of the lack of unity and cooperation among them. As to the Presbyterian Mission, he thought it suffered from sending Black ministers, for they were not given the same consideration by the Congo State authorities that White missionaries received. He believed, however, that American Blacks were especially well-suited to work in Africa because of their resistance to solar exposure and malaria, their “phlegmatic temperament,” and other psychological factors, and he judged they would be especially successful in teaching and preaching. Verner urged that the men sent out be competent in French, pleaded for a real medical doctor, and suggested alternating terms of service in Africa and the U.S. for the missionaries. In this report Verner clearly revealed a Southern bias — a belief in innate White superiority linked with the opinion that “… the Colored people reared in the South [i.e., under Southern White tutorship] were the best representatives of their race.”

In August of 1896 Verner began the journey to the Luebo Mission deep in the interior. he rode the train as far as it went; then, after a visit to the railway construction site, he hiked on to Stanley Pool with a company of porters to carry his gear, a trip requiring a week’s time. At Leopoldville, already a sizable community, he learned how to make bricks at the American Baptist Mission while waiting for the river steamer. When it arrived he saw it loaded with supplies and trade goods to be carried up the Kasai to Luebo. The trip up the river from Kinshasa required nearly a month, but even then the river steamer went only as far as the confluence of the Kasai with the Lulua where it deposited Verner with a ton of goods to be moved overland to the Mission, some days’ journey ahead. Bearers were sent from Luebo to carry the goods and to lead the neophyte to his new home. The previous business manager of the Luebo Mission, Dr. D. W. Snyder, a pharmacist by profession, had left the station shortly before with his wife who was very ill. At Luebo Verner was warmly welcomed by the Reverend Sheppard and the other missionaries, all of whom were American Blacks. Nearby was a state post, some foreign trading establishments, and several large villages of two tribes — Kete and Bena Lulua. Settled also around the Mission were some Nsapo (Zapo-Zap) people and many Luba, most of whom, says Verner, were the recently freed slaves of Portuguese traders who had formerly lived at Luebo. Nearby, along the river, were villages of Mbuya, a Kete sub-tribe of fishermen who also supported themselves by producing pottery for sale [Verner, 1903, pp. 403-5]. Verner found himself in charge of the mundane activities of the establishment and involved in its spiritual side as well. He set to work to learn about the local people and the system of interaction that had grown up between them and the Mission personnel, and he began to study the Luba language. He was discouraged by what seemed to him to be the lack of an orderly system of operating the Mission, and at first much of his time and energy had to be devoted to the transport of supplies and of goods needed for exchange with the native peoples. The Mission was wholly dependent upon the State steamer, which was generally filled to capacity with material needed at the official posts and therefore unable to transport the supplies that had piled up at Stanley Pool and were desperately needed for the daily operation of the Luebo station. In numerous letters home, Verner urged the Missions Committee to provide a steamer for the missions, advice they finally acted upon only after Verner’s return to America.

Verner does not tell us when his interest in collecting examples of Congolese artistry and artisanship commenced. The Reverend W. H. Sheppard, one of the founders of the Luebo Mission and still its spiritual leader, had been the first outsider to visit the Bushongo Kuba in 1892, and had become fascinated by their civilization [Sheppard, 1916]. Sheppard made a significant collection of the artistry of the Kuba and neighboring peoples that eventually went to the Hampton Institute, and his interest in these products of Central African civilization may well have stimulated Verner to follow his example.

In about March of 1897, after Verner had been at Luebo for half a year or so and long enough for him to learn the Luba language sufficiently well enough to use in his sermons, an agent of a Belgian trading firm brought him word that Ndombe, whom Verner called the “King” of the Bena Bikenge (or Bieeng) and who was chief of the Wissmann Falls District, wished the missionaries to visit him. The commercial agent recommended Ndombe’s town as a likely site for a new mission. In fact, Ndombe soon thereafter sent a delegation of some two dozen men headed by Djoka, his prime minister, to urge Verner to undertake the journey and to provide him with an armed escort. Though the Kete people of the Luebo region protested that only they should act as middlemen in dealings between the missionaries and Ndombe, Verner brushed these objections aside and prepared to go. With an entourage of about eighty people, including bearers to carry his camping equipment, a hammock to be used in crossing streams, supplies for several weeks, and some goods to trade, the party set out for Ndombe’s town. The Lulua was crossed by canoes, and smaller streams by canoe or by wading, but not without resistance from some villagers along the route who were fearful of the consequences of allowing a White man to enter their country. In crossing what Verner calls the “Biomba Plain” Verner’s party arrived at a village of the Bena Biombo under a Chief Tambu at a time when the boys’ initiation festival was in progress. It may well have been there that Verner acquired two magnificent examples of the chameleon-eyed muluala masks (figures 1 and 2) that are characteristic of the Biombo art style, though there is no mention of them in his book [cf. Himmelheber, 1960, p. 354 and figure 277]. After passing a night in Tambu’s town, the caravan proceeded toward the Biombo capital, the town of the paramount Chief Chimbundu. Before they reached that point, they were met by a welcoming party from Ndombe’s capital, still twenty miles away, led by the King’s arms-bearer and bringing baskets of food, bunches of bananas, and gourds of foaming palm wine. Chief Chimbundu’s town was guarded by fetish sticks planted alongside the path leading into it; and a kind of gateway erected on the path, consisting of two posts with a crosspiece overhead, bristled with arrows that had been shot into it, a warning to any who passed by that the place was strongly defended. (One such gateway was surmounted by a stuffed monkey [Verner, 1899, p. 26]).

Verner, in a general discussion of the region, notes that sticks with red-colored heads carved upon them were erected in the countryside at points where paths crossed and also were set up in towns at various places. “… no particular skill is shown in the carving, nor does any great reverence appear to attach to them,” he writes, “as, when I once bought one, in five minutes nearly everyone in the village was broken off and offered for sale.” [Verner 1903, pp. 311-12. See also Himmelheber, loc. cit., and figure 279]. Three small figures brought back by Verner appear to be in the Biombo style and may also have been acquired on this first trip to Biombo country. One, an elongated head with conical eyes (figure 00), was plainly cut from the top of a pole. The other two are simpler still, though one is carved with a bust, and both retain portions of their support posts.

After a night spent in Chimbundu’s town, the Biombo chief volunteered to provide not only an escort but bearers to carry Verner in his hammock to Ndombe’s capital. A passage over some hills and through a fertile valley with fields of manioc eventually brought the party to their destination, where Djoka and Verner, now afoot for the grand entrance, led the caravan into Ndombe’s headquarters. Verner describes it as “the finest town I had yet seen” and “a marvel of cleanliness and order.” After leading Verner to his own house and supplying him with food and palm wine, Djoka left him for a few minutes, but soon returned with the King. Verner’s description is most vivid:

The man whose gigantic form loomed up in the gateway of Djoka’s yard made an instantaneous impression of the kind that is never forgotten. He came alone, but he would have been a marked man in a thousand. I had never seen a man, White or Black, of the toute-ensemble which he presented. It was needless to ask who this was; every movement and feature proclaimed him a king among men. This was the far-famed Ndombe himself, who came quietly up to the shed where I was sitting, and held out his right hand, saying, ‘Mukelenge, moiyo!’ (‘O King, life!’)… He was nearly six-feet and a half in stature; of a bright copper color; with broad shoulders, Herculean limbs, and massive statuesque features. The physical build of the man conveyed a distinct impression of great power. [Verner, 1903, pp. 166-68.]

Djoka made the traditional gift of blue beads to the Chief, a custom with which Verner was not yet acquainted, intended to symbolize acknowledgment of the Chief’s official position. The King invited Verner to his own apartments and the royal reception room, reached only by walking through a labyrinth of passageways between high walls. He at once asked Verner to explain his missionary work, and Verner did this at length, speaking in the Luba tongue, which Ndombe understood well. Impressed by Verner’s statement that Biblical teachings stressed truthfulness, Ndombe asked Verner to remain as his friend, to teach is people. After an exchange of gifts, Verner was provided with food and a place to set up his camp.

Situated on the Lubi River which flows into the Kasai at Wissmann Falls, about three hours’ walk away, Ndombe’s town was the focal point of six roads that led there from the surrounding regions. It consisted of a cluster of separate villages, with the King’s village at its center. The houses of the latter were arranged along streets and narrow lanes, and the houses of the King’s wives, numbering over thirty, occupied the center of the village. After visiting the various parts of the town with the King as his guide, Verner selected a site for a more permanent camp in an abandoned manioc field and purchased it from its owner. In the following days visitors from surrounding areas arrived, especially from the Bena Mfula (probably a Luluwa subdivision) who lived south of Ndombe, bringing goods to exchange with the newcomer. After the novelty of having a White man living among them wore off, Verner dealt mainly with the inhabitants of Ndombe’s town. He bargained especially with Djoka, Ndombe’s prime minister, an enterprising businessman whose operations extended over two-hundred miles of territory and included trade in rubber, ivory, bloodwood (mukulu, pterocarpus angolensis), and copper. With such a commercially-minded people, it is not surprising that Verner was able to trade for ritual and symbolic objects as well as for the necessities of life. “If they love their idols,” writes Verner, “they do not love them nearly so much as they do the idol that their more civilized cousins worship — money — in whatever form.” [Verner, 1903, p. 312.]

Verner relates a bit of the traditional history of the origin of the Bikenge as told him by Ndombe and others. It pertains to their separation from the principal branch of the Kuba, the branch led by the Lukengu or King of the Bushongo Kuba. After a former Lukengu had tried to sacrifice slaves belonging to the Bikenge aristocracy (Bakwampesh), there was a fight and the latter, with their followers, withdrew to the south of the Lulua, outside the area controlled by the Lukengu, and set up their own capital near Wissmann Falls on the upper Kasai River. The recent head of this group had been Mai Mukesi; but when officers of the Congo government visited the region some years before Verner’s arrival, Mai Mukesi had fled in fear. Ndombe, however, remained, befriended the Whites, and his claim to the chieftainship was supported by the regional administrator. Ndombe’s mother’s brother, Mai Munene, had been King of the Bikenge, and though Ndombe’s father had come from the Bashilele country and was thus probably of the Lele tribe, the right of a nephew to succeed to his mother’s brother’s position was traditional among many of the peoples of the area. Ndombe now controlled a large area inhabited by people of several ethnic groups including, besides his own Bikenge branch of the Kuba nation, people of Luba, Biombo, Lele, Pende, and Mfula or Luluwa origin, and also some villages of Pygmies. His subjects numbered about 100,000 according to Verner’s estimate [Verner, 1903, pp. 184-86; see also the manuscript The Travels of Ntoka, pp. 5, 94-5; and Verner, 1899b].

In May of 1897 Verner went back to Luebo to open negotiations for the founding of a mission at Ndombe’s. he quickly received the local administrator’s verbal approval to reside at Ndombe’s, and made formal application to the government for a grant of land there for a mission station, a matter that he was told would normally take about a year to process.

Upon his return to Ndombe’s, Verner was greeted by Belinge, the King’s cousin, who persuaded Verner to visit his town some twenty miles distant. Belinge’s people were also of the Kuba nation; but there were among them also people of the Pende group who lived to the west, including a Pende smith who, as was considered befitting a man of knowledge of the mysteries of metallurgy, says Verner, always remained silent while others conversed. The missionary, attracted to the man, made him a present of some large brass wire, and in return, the smith made a fine small dagger for Verner “… with a shining keen blade and a carved wooden handle, covered at the hilt with beaten copper” (apparently not in the Smithsonian). Verner also acquired the four-chambered bellows used by the smith in producing drafts for his smithy (which is in the Smithsonian). [Verner, 1903, p. 203.]

On July 4 of 1897 Verner commenced a trip down the Kasai from the foot of Wissmann Falls to its confluence with the Lulua, accompanied by twenty men, women, and boys of the region, in two dugout canoes. On the right bank lived the friendly Kuba, Kete, and Biombo people; on the left the Lele, some of whom were considered treacherous enemies and especially resistant to the Free State government. Verner’s canoe took the lead and reached its destination safely, but the second canoe never arrived. All aboard, except for one man who escaped to tell the story, had been attacked and killed or carried off by the Luidi, a faction of the Lele who had been at war with the Whites for many years, and who mistook Verner and his party for government agents. Later Verner learned that he had unwittingly gotten into the place where the Lele ferried slaves across the Kasai, and they apparently feared that the discovery would put an end to their trade [Verner, August 1899, p. 377].

When he returned to Ndombe’s capital, the King repeatedly assured Verner that his people were not responsible for the attack and urged the missionary to remain with them as a teacher. Verner had a simple house built, the work being done under the direction of the King’s son, and there he resided for the following year. Made in the African manner, it was constructed basically of palm leaf stems and walled with palm leaves, all tied together with raffia palm fiber; the steep roof was heavily thatched with grass. Ensconced in his new residence, Verner spent his days instructing Ndombe’s people in Christian legends and beliefs and his evenings entertaining them with magic-lantern shows of religious pictures and with a mechanical music box.

King Ndombe played the role of chief judge among his people, and Verner describes his activities in settling a dispute that had broken out between the Kete and Kuba inhabitants of the place. After pacifying the opposing parties, Ndombe set the date for a trial, which took place about two weeks later. Ndombe was seated upon a carved seat, which Verner calls the “throne” as it had been inherited from the earlier chiefs of the kingdom. The King, formally dressed, wore a beautifully embroidered cap, ornamented with beads and eagle feathers. His legs were decorated with many fine bracelets and anklets, and the embroidered cloth around his waist was bedecked with beads and cowries. The throne was placed upon a leopard skin, befitting a ruler, and the King’s long spear and symbol of his authority was stuck, blade up, in the ground beside him. The men attending the hearing were required to leave their weapons behind, but many brought their sewing, for, as elsewhere among the peoples of this region, the men did the needlework. After hearing the cases presented by lawyers for the opposing sides, King Ndombe imposed penalties on both of the men who had started the affair, one being obliged to serve the Chief as a servant until redeemed by his relatives, and the other being obliged to pay a fine of 5000 cowries to the King [Verner, 1903, pp. 237-43; and August 18 Papers, 1897].

Among the inhabitants of Ndombe’s realm were bands of BaTwa (Pygmies), some of whom made their home on the outskirts of Ndombe’s capital town. They lived by hunting and fishing and sold the surplus meat they obtained to the other people in exchange for cultivated foodstuffs or other goods. Verner traded for their meat with salt which they craved. He declares that they practiced none of the advanced crafts that the other Bantu-speaking people of the area were expert at and lived a very simple life, keeping mainly to themselves and not intermarrying with the larger people of the region.

On at least two occasions, in the years 1897-98, Verner traveled into BaKete country on a visit to a newly opened mission station at Ibanj (Ibange) north of the Lulua River. The inhabitants of the villages in this region were subjects of the Kuba King, the Lukengu of Bushongo. At Ibanj there was a regional market where traders from about a dozen towns gathered every sixth day to barter their wares. Besides foodstuffs, the merchants offered clay pots, ornaments, pieces of raffia cloth and specimens of embroidery and art work. Mukulu (the red wood that Verner erroneously calls “camwood”), copper crosses, and native rubber were also to be found, some being acquired by itinerant traders for export; also salt from Luanda and imported goods from Europe were offered for sale, especially cloth, beads, and knives. Slaves were still sold there, says Verner, in demand not only for labor but as food for cannibalistic peoples living north of the Sankuru. Though he gives no detail, it was doubtless on trips such as this that Verner acquired objects from the Kete and Kuba of the region to the east of Luebo. He is a little more revealing in his discussion of blacksmithing, noting that every village had from one to three smiths, and that each of these had several apprentices. “I frequently had my work done by them,” says Verner, “and their skill amazed me. They had the art of tempering copper as well as of making steel soft. Some of the objects of their craft, which I placed in the National Museum at Washington, are revelations to the uninitiated in their remarkable complexity and variety.” [Verner, 1903, p. 294; figure 00.]

The weaving of fine raffia cloth, Verner observes, is considered a “high art,” and,

… the principal men and women take great delight in it… The sewing and fine embroidery work… is done entirely by the men, except that the Kings’ wives are sometimes privileged to do some fancy work. A woman is rarely seen with a needle and a man never with a hoe… the men may be seen about the streets with their sewing in their hands and they carry their work of this sort into court with them… The needles, of copper and iron, are made by their own blacksmiths and I used them quite often in my own work. The coarser ones resemble a bodkin, except that the points are sharper. [Verner, 1903, pp. 295-97.]

Verner also admired the skill displayed in wood and ivory carving. “They can produce a geometrical figure whose perfection is amazing. Their tools are of the simplest, yet they carve figures of men and animals, pipes, bowls, cups, platters, tables and fantastic images.” The rubbing oracle, usually in the form of a bush pig, called “lubuki,” meaning “that which causes to know or reveals,” says Verner, is used most often to detect thieves or to reveal secrets [Verner, 1903, pp. 293 and 312; see figure 00].

Verner spent part of his time exploring the country roundabout Ndombe, and on December 15 of 1897 he fell into a disguised pit prepared for trapping animals. A poisoned stake placed pointing upwards in the bottom of the put cut a two-inch gouge in his right thigh. His Black companion, Kassongo (a local freed slave whom Verner later brought to the U.S. to be educated), ran to the nearest village for help and some time later men arrived to carry Verner to Bindundu, a BaKete village. Two hours in the hot sun and infection with a powerful poison had nearly finished him. A Zapo-Zap woman skilled in practical remedies instructed Kassongo to suck out as much of the poisoned blood as possible. A hot cassava poultice was then applied, and Verner made use of some of the medical supplies he had brought with him. He lay in Bindundu for two weeks, often delirious, until men could carry him to Ndombe where his missionary companions, Phipps and Hawkins, tended him. Finally the wound began to heal, but it gave him trouble from time to time, and later Verner spent almost a year in a Baltimore hospital because of complications growing out of this accident.

When a troop of about fifty Congolese soldiers, mostly of the Luba tribe, making the annual round to collect the tribute in ivory and rubber demanded by the Congo government, arrived at Ndombe’s headquarters, Verner’s ingenuity was taxed to prevent hostilities from breaking out. The people of Ndombe’s region had only recently come under the control of the government and were not at all pleased with the demands for tribute and the requirement that they provide food for the soldiers. On the one hand Verner tried to persuade Ndombe’s and his people that taxation was necessary for the advancement of the country, and on the other hand he tried to impress upon the soldiers and their leader (a sergeant of the Tetela tribe) that they should conduct themselves in a peaceful manner. After defusing some touchy situations on the first day, Verner the next day invited the soldiers to attend a magic-lantern show — probably mostly of Bible story scenes — which he explicated in the Luba language, and followed that by singing some American songs translated into Luba. He must also have preached to them on the evils of superstition, for the next day he writes, “I was agreeably surprised at the decision they announced to resume their march at once. They brought me their idols, charms, amulets, and fetishes to exchange for some beautiful cards [probably lithographed religious scenes] friends had sent me from America, and each one wrapped his picture up with the utmost care and bade me a cordial farewell.” Then, he continues, “I saw bands of armed natives [Ndombe’s men] issue from the surrounding woods after the soldiers had departed, and I estimated that there must have been over 5000 in all.” [Verner, 1903, p. 376]

At certain times during this first visit to Central Africa, Verner made exploratory trips on behalf of the Congo Railway Company. Details of these journeys have not been found, neither in his published writings nor in the papers that are archived under his name at the South Caroliniana Library. However, in a brief autobiographical sketch prepared many years later, Verner wrote:

Having had education and some experience in engineering and in railway service, I was asked by the officials of the Congo Railway, since I was to be in that region anyhow for quite a while, to join with them in a preliminary survey of a part of the railroad, which I did, at the same time consolidating and arranging the business of the transport for the industrial mission on a firm basis. Without going into all the details of this first expedition, I say briefly that I explored practically the whole of the Kasai Valley, a large region in Portuguese Angola, a considerable territory on the southern bank of the main stream of the Congo, acquired one native tongue very fluently, four others sufficiently for practical purposes, exercised my French to the point of business practicability, and made a complete and thorough study of the scientific and commercial possibilities of the country, as well as those conditions bearing upon my immediate work. [Autobiography, p. 3.]

Verner’s vision of opening a new mission at Ndombe was not to be fulfilled, both because of opposition from the Executive Committee of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and of delay on the part of the Congo government to grant a concession of land. While still at Ndombe and recovering from the wound he suffered when he fell into the game pit, Verner received a letter from the Foreign Mission Committee of his Church chiding him for the “spirit of insubordination” expressed in his letters and for attempting to open a new mission station without either conference with, or permission from, the Committee. This had been offset, in Verner’s mind at least, by his receipt of a “substantial contribution” from a minister friend and his Church of the Strangers in New York, “for the prosecution of the cause.” In a June 1898 letter from the Secretary of the mission Committee, Verner was ordered to return home at once, because of the reports of his impaired health.

At about the same time, Verner received a communication from the Chef de Poste at Luluabourg asking him to vacate the place he occupied at Ndombe. The reason, Verner surmises, was the outbreak of hostilities between the government and some Lulua people not far away and also the plans being made by the administration to mount a campaign against the Lukengu of Bushongo.

While Verner made arrangements to depart from Ndombe, the King paid him numerous visits to talk with him about his teachings and to get his explanations of current events. “With him came great crowds of his people, and as the news spread, of the inhabitants of other towns and villages, all imploring me to stay with them. They brought many presents of food and fine specimens of their art and handicraft, as farewell tokens of their esteem, which formed quite a large and varied collection.” [Verner, 1903, p. 396.]

Verner had shown Ndombe pictures of President McKinley and had told him of the war with Spain that America was engaged in at the time, news of which reached the missionaries in American magazines. In a touching gesture of good will, Ndombe dictated a message to President McKinley, asking him to send out “men who have good hearts to help the Black people, to teach them, to keep the peace with them, and to be their friends.” Along with the message Ndombe sent a large new robe and his big ivory trumpet as gifts for the President. (These items were not included in the collection that came to the Smithsonian and they do not appear to be present in any of the public collections of memorabilia of President McKinley.)

Though his predecessors at Luebo had concentrated their linguistic efforts on learning the Kuba language, Verner had early decided that Tshiluba, the language spoken by the Luba and Bena Lulua peoples, was the most important in the area — it was spoken by the greatest number of the local people and a majority of the converts at the mission. All the slaves in the area were Luba, and the Luba linguistic area was the largest in the entire Congo region. While waiting for a river steamer to come up to Luebo, Verner recorded that he completed work on a dictionary of 1000 Luba words and made a start at analyzing the grammar. (These linguistic works have not been located.) He taught some Luba-speaking people to read and stimulated their interest in acquiring an education. During this period he continued to collect examples of local handicrafts. “A Zapo-Zap carpenter made me a beautiful chair, using nothing but his knife. Another Zapo-Zap, learning that some of my boys wished to go to America, brought some beautiful battle-axes to help defray the expenses.” [Verner, 1903, p. 403; figure 00.]

Verner brought two young men of the Tetela tribe, who had been slaves of the Luba, home to America with him to send them to school. One, Kassongo who had saved his life when he fell into the elephant trap, died in a stampede in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1902 following an address by Booker T. Washington; and the other, Kondola, after several years in the U.S., eventually returned to the Kasai. Verner also carried with him, from the interior of the Congo, a collection of ethnological, mineralogical, and zoological specimens. In addition, he had two monkeys, a wild cat, and some chameleons, all brought out alive and destined for the New York Zoological Gardens in Central Park.

Verner had not given up his dream of a concession of land at Ndombe and when he arrived in Belgium, he was assured that upon his return to the Congo the way would be fully open for him to occupy a site at Ndombe. From Verner’s discussion of the developmental possibilities of the Congo in the last few chapters of his book, Pioneering in Central Africa, it is clear that he hoped to be able to establish a rubber, ivory, and palm-oil collecting station at Ndombe, and to use it as a base to explore for and develop the mineral and timber wealth of the region. In short, he dreamed of returning to participate in the development of the Congo with American financial backing.

On his return trip to Europe from Africa, Verner busied himself with writing articles about his experiences and some of these were published in newspapers in England. An article on the Pygmies, published in the Spectator, secured for him an audience among scientific men and societies. In England he also arranged to have a small religious book published in the Luba language, the first such ever to be printed. But with this act, his activities as a missionary essentially came to an end and Verner resigned his position as a missionary shortly after arriving home in 1899.

A day or two after arriving in New York (where Verner had some difficulty in looking after his African companions — they were callously turned out of the rooming house where he thought he had procured their lodging and had gotten lost for some hours in the streets of New York City on a cold February night), he proceeded with his collection and his wards to Washington and to the Smithsonian Institution. He had written to the Institution not long after reaching Luebo some three years earlier, offering to collect flora and fauna from the Kasai region and asking for lists of whatever was needed to complete the Institution’s holdings from that part of the world. Curators in the departments of Anthropology and Zoology had responded and now when Verner arrived with his collections, he was not wholly unexpected. Accepting the hospitality of his uncle, the Honorable Samuel Phillips, he was able to remain in Washington in order to provide information on the materials he had brought. In September of 1899, again in Washington, Verner offered to “place one specimen of each article” in the Smithsonian, apparently intending to retain the remainder of what he indicates was a very sizable collection (occupying about 1000 cubic feet of space) either for his own purposes or for disposal elsewhere. Agreement was reached with the Institution that he would receive $200 for the selected lot of specimens on condition that he prepare a catalog to accompany it. However, such a catalog has not been found in the Smithsonian’s files. Rather, there are some scanty notes on certain items filed among the papers of the Curator, Walter Hough, apparently based upon information dictated by Verner. In November of 1899 Verner wrote to the Secretary of the Institution that he had “named and described the articles” and that he was preparing monographs on certain industries which they illustrate, and submitted one as an example. These were to deal with rubber collecting, textile manufacture, copper mining and manufacture, and pottery. On this basis, Verner was sent the payment promised. Unfortunately, the descriptive articles are not to be found in the Smithsonian’s files.

Verner at one time wrote to Smithsonian Secretary, S. P. Langley, that “I have also in this country two boys of the BaTetela tribe of the Bantu race whom I should like the Institution to make models of. They could be used to illustrate photographically some of the arts and industries of their people.” Apparently this offer was not taken up, as no records of models or photographs of the BaTetela men have been found in the Smithsonian’s anthropological records. However, the association that Verner made with certain Smithsonian scientists was an enduring one, for he corresponded with them over the next twenty years. Verner states in a short autobiography that one result of his relations with the Smithsonian Institution was the fostering of interest in African matters, principally scientific, on the part of many influential American scientists.

After spending some months in a Baltimore hospital because the injury suffered to his leg in the fall into an animal trap had not properly healed, Verner returned to the Stillman Institute in Alabama where he was employed as Superintendent of the Industrial Division. He writes that the money he received for the collection sold to the Smithsonian made it possible for him to marry. During this period he published some articles about Africa in popular magazines and newspapers and lectured on Africa to church groups. In 1903 he wrote to the Smithsonian requesting a loan of some of the ethnographic objects that he had sold to it in order to illustrate lectures he was giving to raise funds for a return trip to Africa, explaining that the collections he had retained had been lost in a fire. Correspondence in the Smithsonian’s files show that the request was granted.