The Land of the Pigmies

Record summary

Paul du Chaillu’s travel publications about equatorial Africa include reports of local stories, beliefs, forest beings, ritual specialists, social customs, and encounters with Fang and neighboring peoples. They are relevant to the history of legend because du Chaillu’s books helped popularize European images of African forests and supposedly unknown peoples. They also illustrate disputes over explorer credibility and the line between observation and sensational narrative. The relevant stories should be identified in the original editions and compared with later ethnographic and oral-history work rather than accepted as transparent records.