Kongo Religion
KONGO RELIGION. The Kikongo-speaking peoples of the Niger-Congo linguistic group represent a rich and diverse cultural heritage associated with the ancient kingdom of Kongo. By the late twentieth century, they were three to four million strong and lived in rural and urban areas of the western part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Angola (and Cabinda), from 4° to 7° south latitude to 11° to 14° east longitude, as well as in several New World settings. Since the fourteenth century they have gained their livelihood primarily from the cultivation of various food crops (oil palm, yams, plantains, manioc, and so forth), and from hunting, fishing, and livestock tending. Smithing (of weapons, tools, jewelry, and ritual articles), weaving, tanning, sculpting, and carpentry, as well as trading in the famous Kongo markets, have been important commercial skills.
Increasingly from the late fifteenth century on, Kongo peoples were profoundly affected by contacts with European merchants, missionaries, and travelers, especially in connection with the great coastal trade, which included (from the eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries) massive slave traffic. Hardly had the slave trade ended in the 1860s when the Kongo region became the launching ground for colonial exploration and the establishment of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo.
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