Tarzan in the Heart of Darkness
The heroic young African woman whom Tarzan meets, N’Kimba, has traveled across the midsection of Africa from the east—the hunting grounds of the legendary Maasai lion hunters in what is now Kenya and Tanzania. She comes in search of her parents, seized by slave hunters and taken back to work in the rubber plantations of the Congo Free State.
Her own home, to which she and Tarzan later journey, is on the east side of Africa, bordering the Indian Ocean. It is the homeland of the Maasai, but also the vast territory of Arab-Islamic slave traders, who for centuries took slaves from all populations not of their religion, but especially the Bantus. On the Indian Ocean coast, the island of Zanzibar was a slave market through which millions of African men, woman, and children were sold into slavery worldwide.
Her own home, to which she and Tarzan later journey, is on the east side of Africa, bordering the Indian Ocean. It is the homeland of the Maasai, but also the vast territory of Arab-Islamic slave traders, who for centuries took slaves from all populations not of their religion, but especially the Bantus. On the Indian Ocean coast, the island of Zanzibar was a slave market through which millions of African men, woman, and children were sold into slavery worldwide.
