The Fang people were victims of thelarge transatlantic and trans-Saharanslave trade between the 16th and 19thCentury. They were stereotyped as cannibals by slave traders and missionaries, in part because human skulls and bones were found in open orin wooden boxes near their villages, a claim used to justify violence against them and their enslavement. Later ethnologists discovered that the Fang people were not cannibalistic, the human bones in open and wooden boxes were of their ancestors, and were Fang people's method of routine remembrance and religious reverence for their dead  loved ones. Today the Fang numberaround 800,000 in number.The Fang people used masks in theirsecret societies. Members of this malesociety wore the Ngil masks during theinitiation of new members and thepersecution of wrongdoers.