Central to the colonial experience for most Africans were the new forms of property introduced by European traders, missionaries and officials. Africans experienced goods such as clothing, guns, liquor, blankets and bicycles not only as new objects to be owned, but also as embodying new methods of property accumulation, whether throught the sale of humans, the marketing of agricultural produce, or labor migrancy. And yet while Europeans intrloduced these goods and often shaped the means by which they were obtained, they could not control their meaning and distribution within African societies. Instead,local dynamics and power relationships provided the context within which these products were assigned both value and ownership.