Martiniquan psychiatrist and philosopher, Frantz Fanon in his 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks mentions the grinning Senegalese tirailleur as an example of how in a burgeoning consumer culture, the Negro appears not only as an object, but as "an object in the midst of other objects".
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At the outset of World War I, the popularity of the colonial troops at the time led to the replacement of the West Indian by the now more familiar jolly Senegalese infantry man enjoying Banania.
Mangin's column was composed of six companies of Senegalese tirailleurs, two companies of Algerian tirrailleurs, two companies of colonial infantry, a goum of Moroccan auxiliaries, two cavalry squadrons and a mountain artillery battery.
They were the fusil Mle 1902 ("rifle, model of 1902") and the fusil Mle 1907, which were issued respectively to Indochinese and Senegalese Tirailleur troops.
Promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, he was made chief administrator of Timbuktu; he held this position when he met there in 1898 Captain Paul Voulet, commander of the Voulet-Chanoine Mission marching to Lake Chad, whom he provided him with 70 Senegalese Tirailleurs and 20 spahi cavalry (both colonial troops recruited in West Africa).