Ci wara, the farming antelope

Headdresses in museum collections

Bamana carvers made ci wara headdresses in several regional styles, and museums hold many of them, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Female headdresses carry a young antelope and have straight horns; male ones have bent horns, and in the upright style of the Ségou region a body cut through with triangles. European collectors took them up early in the 20th century: Wikipedia records that Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Guillaume printed pictures of ci wara in Sculptures nègres (1917), and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris gave them an exhibition, ‘Ciwara, African chimeras’, in 2006.

To verify: The Met catalogue’s own wording and dates for its ci wara headdresses: we could not open the record; The 1917 book Sculptures nègres itself

The one who taught farming

In the story, Ci wara, half antelope and half human, came to earth to teach people to sow crops, so he is honoured at sowing and at harvest. The headdresses, fixed to basketry caps, are always danced in male and female pairs; the male dancers leap like antelopes and scratch the earth with their staffs. The chi wara ton society brings the young men together to work the fields at clearing, sowing and harvest, and Stephen Wooten’s study of the custom is titled ‘Antelope Headdresses and Champion Farmers’.

To verify: How Wooten links the headdresses to champion farmers, in his own words; Who dances the headdresses: some museum notes say young men who have proved themselves in the fields

Whose sign it is

The ci wara outline is now one of the best-known forms in African art. It remains a Bamana tradition, and the headdresses belong to the people who carve and dance them. We tell it as a sign of the work of the fields, and make no promise about anyone’s career. Any image we show of a real headdress will name the museum and, where known, the Bamana maker.