Cameroon Crossbow of Sub Saharan Africa

This specific crossbow is from West/Central Africa and was likely used for hunting or tourists of the 20th century. Possibly a Nayin or Fang tribe crossbow of Gabon/Cameroon, by the Pygmies.

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According to Henry Balfour, crossbows were present in West Africa as early as 1861, from the descriptions of Paul du Chaillu used against the Ba-fang in that year and brought home specimens. He describe the prevalence of crossbows among the Fan and Mpongwe tribes of the Gaboon and Ogowe Rivers, and he studied crossbows that were brought back to the Pitt Rivers collection. These specimens consist of a short and very rigid bow, 25.5 inches across the arc and having a nearly rectangular section. Stout at the center and tapering towards the ends, the bow is not straight when unstrung, as most crossbows of the period were. Instead, it has a set curve when set free from strain and is set symmetrically through a rectangular hole near the fore end of a slender wooden stock 50.75 inches long. The prod is then fixed with wedges.

(The Origin of West African Crossbows, Henry Balfour, 1910).
Sir Richard F. Burton wrote regarding the nayin, the native name of the crossbow among the Mpongwe of the lower Gaboon, as “peculiar to this people and probably a native invention, not borrowed, as might be supposed, from Europe”. Such views are from the 20th century regarding African weapons.


Mandingo, Yoruba, Beninese, and Cameroon crossbows are closely related to those by the Ba-Fan and Mpongwe. According to Balfour, the use of the crossbow was mainly confined to the limits of the regions extending from the Mandingo country to the Sanga and Gaboon districts, but outside this area could be found “certain appliances in which the general principle of crossbow mechanism is adopted.”

J. A. Grant included descriptions of toy crossbows seen in 1861 among the children at Ukuni in the Unyamweze country south of the Victoria Nyanza, also in Torday’s discovery of another toy crossbow in the southern Ba-Mbala of the Kwilu district in the Kongo State. Furthermore, Balfour notes, Sir H. H. Jonston mentions the use of toy crossbows among the Ba-Yaka and Ba-Kongo people.

Moreover, there are crossbow traps throughout the Bornuese and French Sahara territory, along with German East Africa. Balfour notes that it is doubtful that such weapons have “any direct morphological connection with the true West African crossbow weapons.”

Tafi Maradi - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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