English: The Slave Scene’s six statues, created by Nji Gbetkom Salifou, a Bamoun sculptor from Cameroon’s Grasslands, capture the tragedy of African souls swept up in one of history’s most tragic epochs: the slave trade. The bronze figures, sculpted sometime between 1946-1950, depicts four Tikar slaves being driven by a colonial guard and a royal guard in a grueling march down to a coastal port to be crammed into the squalid hulls of European ships to begin the infamous months-long voyage to the Americas.

The four Tikar hostages, nude and shoeless, are the main focus of this powerful scene. The captives all wear similar wooden beads around their necks, waists, and ankles, which indicate their shared village of origin. The female slave is missing several teeth and bears marks of mistreatment and impoverishment, but she does not hesitate to express her anger to her captors. Overt resistance to captivity has earned her the chains that will deny her return home. The resistance of the two chained males—both in apparent good health and projecting their noble spirit—has forced the captors to bind them in chains until they are turned over to the captain of a slave ship and manacled below deck. The elderly slave is docile enough to travel unbound and expresses bewilderment at his predicament by rubbing his head as he stands before his captors.

The imposing figure in The Slave Scene is the colonial guard of Moorish origins who asserts authority with his firearm, shield, and colonial military attire—replete with knee-high boots and a hat. However, he does not operate alone. He relies on the support of a royal guard in the service of a local chief or king who sold the chained Bantu hostages into servitude in exchange for cloth, guns, beads, iron bars, and other European goods. The royal guard answers to Manchut Toupahka, a tribal general who is also in the pay of the colonial merchants. The royal guard wears his tribe’s full-length cloth attire and wrist, ankle, and neck accouterments, along with a bell-bedecked cache-sexe. His clothing corresponds to the Mboum tribe descended from the Bamoun Tikar. The royal guard carries a broken sandal in his hand, symbolizing how he must tread carefully between fealty to his African origins and obedience to the Europeans’ slave enterprise.