This engraving shows a Kanem woman on the right wearing a dress with a sash and carrying a huge U-shaped container on her head. On the left, was a Sudanese woman wearing a loin cloth and carrying a pottery jar on her head. Dixon Denham (1786–1828) was an English soldier and explorer. After serving in the Napoleonic Wars, Denham volunteered in 1821 to join Walter Oudney and Hugh Clapperton on an official expedition across the Sahara from Tripoli to in the Lake Chad basin of the Central Savanna region. After enduring danger and privation, they arrived at Kuka, the capital of Bornu, in 1823. While Clapperton and Oudney set out on a journey westward, Denham traveled the shores of Lake Chad and the lower courses of the Waubé, Chari and Logone rivers. After returning to England in 1825, Denham became the superintendent of Liberated Africans in Freetown in 1827, and the year after, he became governor of Sierra Leone.
Kanemboo Market Woman; Unmarried Woman of Soudan
SI-OB-833
1822-1824
Kanemboo Market Woman; Unmarried Woman of Soudan
Dixon Denham, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824 (London, 1826), facing p. 46.
English
Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture
Africa--Central Savanna
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
5-Apr-16; 26-Aug-19
Denham004