ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the riverine people were mobilized into the work force of the Belgians. The first central African workers came to be called Bangala, even though they were from different places on the Congo River. The Bangala pattern was supposed to have been palm fronds on the temples. Bangala further decorated their faces with a vertical line down the temple and on the lips made cicatrices resembling crests and scales. Massive labor recruitment from among the Bobangi further down the Congo may have been unlikely at the very earliest period of recruitment, because those Bobangi were committed to their life of trade. Agricultural work was started immediately after a station was built, as one can well imagine. Farm work is what one would expect of people whose life depended in part on the cultivation of agricultural products and whose material culture was created out of vegetation. The arrival of the whites must have been impressive.
