Fetichism in West Africa Part 23

Before he had reached the house where Mr. S. was, the two soldiers had met and arrested him, and were taking him to jail. He asked permission first to be allowed to see his "master." So they brought him to the sick-room, where he made many protestations of friendship and devotion, and plead for mercy. Mr. S. rebuked the soldiers for hesitating in their duty, and for having brought their prisoner there, and bade them take him away to the magistrate; then he fell back on his pillow exhausted, and lay with closed eyes, only semi-conscious. The soldiers went out of the room, leaving C.

clinging to the bed. He fell on his knees by Mr. S.'s head, as if still to beg for pardon. Mr. S. felt C.'s hand insinuated under the bed cover near his pillow, and suddenly opened his eyes, to find C.'s closed hand near his face. He struck away the hand. A quant.i.ty of dark powder fell on the pillow near his nose. Half suffocated, by an effort he shouted to the soldiers, who came and took C. away. Mr. Stacey's little waiter-boy, who had also come in at the shout, was horrified to see the poison-powder on the pillow. He s.n.a.t.c.hed away the pillow, threw the powder out of doors, and told the soldiers. They, without waiting for official judgment at the Post, gave C. twenty-five lashes at once. Farther blows, twenty-five at a time, were given him while waiting in jail for Mr. S. to get well enough to appear against him. Subsequently the _Chef de Poste_ appointed a day for the hearing; but Mr. S., in his devotion to the trade interests of his employers, asked that the day be postponed, as his sub-traders needed just then much supervision. So the _Chef_ dismissed the matter, seeming to think that if Mr. S. regarded his trade as of more importance than the defence of his life, it was no business of the government to hold the prisoner; and took no farther interest in it.

Having been given, in instalments, an aggregate of two hundred lashes, C.

was discharged. He wandered about that region gathering a little food, without friends, feared and hated, and not allowed by some even to enter their villages.

The reputation of the Lagos powder as a powerful agent in destroying life has been known for years among the equatorial coast tribes. Reports of it are well known among white men on the steamers. It is believed in, not as a superst.i.tion, nor as a fetich, but as a powerful poison. Clerks and other workmen from Lagos are not welcomed in the Gabun region, as are clerks from other parts of Upper Guinea, for fear of their carrying that poison with them.

DISTRUST.

As a result of the universal employment of fetiches in African tribes, there is no confidence between man and man. Every one is in distrust of his neighbor; every man's hand against his fellow.

"The natives of Africa, though so thoroughly devoted to the use of fetiches, acquire no feeling of security in consequence of using them.

Perhaps their only real influence is to make them more insecure than they would have been without them. There is no place in the world where men feel more insecurity. A man must be careful whose company he keeps, what path he walks, whose house he enters, on what stool he seats himself, where he sleeps. He knows not what moment he may place his foot or lay his hand upon some invisible engine of mischief, or by what means the seeds of death may be implanted in his const.i.tution."[89]

Because of this lack of confidence, the natural affections and the duties of the dearest relations are perverted. Wives afraid of husbands, and husbands afraid of wives; children afraid of parents, and parents afraid of children; the chief of the village uncertain of his people; and the entire community that must live and eat and a.s.sociate together, living and eating and a.s.sociating with a constant secretly entertained suspicion of each other.

JUGGLERY.

While in some of the rites performed by the native doctor-priest there is real diabolism, _i. e._, communication with Satan, and certain wonders are performed through the Prince of the Power of Darkness, I am disposed to believe that in most cases the "doctor" is self-deceived, certainly in many cases I believe him to be a deliberate deceiver. The native so-called "prophet" is probably an artful mind-reader; and the fortune-teller, like our own fortune-tellers, a skilful observer of the subject's tones, manner, and unguarded admissions in conversation which give ground for shrewd guessing.

Arnot[90] says: "These professional diviners are no doubt smart fellows, arch-rogues though they be. The secret of their art lies in their constant repet.i.tion of every possibility in connection with the disaster they are called upon to explain until they finally hit upon that which is in the minds of their clients. As the people sit around and repeat the words of the diviner, it is easy for him to detect in their tone of voice or to read in their faces the suspected source of the calamity.

"A man had a favorite dog which was attacked by a leopard, but succeeded in escaping with one of its eyes torn out. To ascertain the reason of this calamity, the owner sent to call one of these diviners. When he arrived, to test him, he was told that a disaster had befallen my acquaintance, and was asked to find out by divination what it was. The diviner with his rattles and other paraphernalia, and dances, and other movements to occupy attention, after the manner of jugglers, asked leading questions of the spirit he was professing to consult, but really he was watching the faces of his audience for their unconsciously given a.s.sent or dissent. Thus, in succession, he found that the misfortune, whatever it was, was not to a human being; then not to certain families; then to some object possessed by a certain man; then that it was not about an ox nor about a goat; then that it was about a dog; then, after certain other possibilities, was it connected with a leopard? So excited were the audience that they forgot that they had been 'giving themselves away,' and when the diviner asked the spirit, 'Was it a leopard?' they shouted with admiration at his supposed skill. After a whole day of such proceedings the diviner triumphed by announcing 'that the spirit of the father of one of the man's wives had been grieved at the man's long absence from his town and family, and had employed the leopard to tear the dog's eye as a gentle reminder that it was time he should go back to his own village.'"

In connection with the Yoruba custom of parents of twins having images carved of their dead twins, "the carving of those images is a flourishing and money-making trade. If the parents of the dead child are in comfortable circ.u.mstances, the carvers tell them that they have seen in their dreams the dead twin, and that he or she has asked them to send such and such clothes, articles of food, money, etc.

"Sometimes they say the twins appeared to them in the forest when they went to cut the Ire-wood to be carved, and bade them not to venture it. In such cases special sacrifices must be offered before taking any steps. In this way months pa.s.s before the carving is complete; during which time the carvers demand of the parents whatever they feel they are capable of supplying them with."[91]

In the Corisco region, some thirty years ago, I knew a native sorcerer who achieved quite a reputation because he could perform the thimble-rig juggler-trick of making a leaf appear and disappear between two plates.

One of my a.s.sociates in the Ogowe, the late H. M. Bachelor, M.D., had brought with him from the United States a few tricks of "parlor magic." He quite astonished my school-children by swallowing and subsequently vomiting up a penknife, and by pa.s.sing a threaded needle through the thigh of one of the boys. Dr. B. did the tricks so artistically that even I did not detect the deception about the penknife; and the boy solemnly a.s.serted that he felt the needle travelling through his leg. The exhibition was a happy one in revealing to the natives how an evil-disposed sorcerer would be able to deceive them.

A lady of the West African Mission of the American Board says: "I once witnessed the performance of a witch-doctor on one of my visits among the villages. The chief of the country was sick, and the doctor was giving him a ma.s.sage treatment. By sleight of hand he seemed to draw from the patient's side chicken's claws, feathers, bones, sticks, pebbles, etc.

Some "witch," it was supposed, had caused these things to grow in the man's body with intent to kill. It was evident to the astonished crowd which had gathered around, that their king would probably get well, now these things were removed. The doctor's bill was promptly paid,--a thousand b.a.l.l.s of rubber, ten pieces of cloth, and a large pig. An ox was slaughtered, and a beer drink indulged in to celebrate the occasion and to appease any offended spirit."

TREATMENT OF LUNATICS.

The insane being supposed to be physically and mentally possessed by an intruding spirit, their actions are necessarily not considered to be the outcome of their own volitions. This view does not always, in the native mind, relieve a lunatic of the burden of the consequences of his acts.

There is great diversity, therefore, in the treatment of the insane in different districts and in different tribes. In some regions a tribe holds to the following reasoning: This person is possessed by a spirit. That spirit is occupying his body and using his voice and limbs for some reason. If we interfere with this person's doings, then we will be interfering with the spirit and may bring evil on ourselves. Therefore it is considered proper to make offerings and some degree of worship to the incarnated spirit. But it is not true that the lunatic himself is an object of worship. The gifts and sacrifices are made solely to and for the spirit; the prayer of the pet.i.tioners being that it may refrain from inciting the possessed person to do them evil, and in the hope that it may conclude to depart and leave the patient and them alone.

In other places this same belief of possession leads to a very different logical conclusion. The thought is: This person is possessed by an evil spirit; if we allow him to remain, that evil spirit will do us only evil; let us put this man, who is thus being utilized for evil, out of the way, and perhaps in so doing we may get rid of the possessing spirit also. So the lunatic is put to death. The manner of death sometimes chosen is a cruel one, as if thereby the spirit itself might also be injured or incapacitated to do further evil. Observe that this cruelty is not directed against the demented human being, but against the indwelling spirit. The maniac in being put to death is sometimes beaten with clubs, sometimes burned, sometimes drowned, as if the evil possessing spirit might itself be fractured or charred or sunk.

The forms of lunacy I have seen are mild, rarely maniacal. The lunatics I have met in the Gabun region were both men and women. Among women I have thought a cause was uterine complications; among both men and women, excessive use of tobacco; in two cases of men the cause was hashish-smoking. These last were characterized by a deep melancholy; all the others were marked by absurd hallucinations. Undeniably, in two cases in Gabun, the paroxysms were influenced by the stage of the moon.

The only medication of which the natives know is exorcism by fetich with drum and dance, baths and purgatives. When a person is discovered to be crazy, he is taken to the doctor, who gathers medicinal barks and leaves, makes a very hot decoction, and puts it under a seat on which is placed the patient. Both seat and patient are covered by a cloth, and he is subjected to a severe sweating process. During this time the doctor calls out to the supposed possessing spirit, "Who are you? who are you?" Perhaps the sick man will say (his voice supposed to be under control of nkinda), "I am So-and-so." The doctor replies, "Eh! you So-and-so! leave him, or I will catch you and put you in prison." The prison is a section of sugar-cane stalk with its leaves twined together; and the doctor is believed to be able to confine the nkinda there. And it remains there indefinitely; but it may be released by the will of the doctor, who will choose to free it some day unless he is paid not to do so. Sometimes the crazy person has so many sinkinda that he becomes a maniac, losing all sense of shame or even of hunger. In such a case he is tied till he becomes quiet and the doctor announces that the sinkinda have all gone out. The patient is then washed, and the doctor with song and drum calls on good sinkinda to come and enter, and directs them to take care of the man's body.

THE AMERICAN NEGRO VOODOO.

When the Negro was brought to America as a slave, he brought with him a variety of African things, some good, some bad.

When hurried upon the slave-ships in the Kongo or at Lagos, the slave tied into a little package, hung among his other fetich treasures, seeds of his favorite foods. At least one of these seeds survived, in the West Indies and thence to the United States, with a native name "gumbo." It is the okra (Abelmoschus esculentus), that exists all over Africa, and has spread over the United States.

Ground-nuts--"pea-nuts" (Arachis hypogea), which botanists claim to be a native of South America--have been grown from time immemorial all over Africa, and, in the Loango country bordering on the Kongo River, by the Ashira and some other tribes are used as their staple article of food, rather than the plantain (Musa sapientum), or "manioc," ca.s.sava (Jatropha manihot). It is an important export from those regions and from the Gambia to-day. If the nut itself was not carried from Africa to America, its native name was; that name is "mbenda," and it was corrupted to "pindar"

in parts of the Southern States.

The evil thing that the slave brought with him was his religion. You do not need to go to Africa to find the fetich. During the hundred years that slavery in our America held the Negro crushed, degraded, and apart, his master could deprive him of his manhood, his wife, his child, the fruits of his toil, of his life; but there was one thing of which he could not deprive him,--his faith in fetich charms. Not only did this religion of the fetich endure under slavery; it grew. None but Christian masters offered the Negro any other religion; and, by law, even they were debarred from giving him any education. So fetichism flourished. The master's children were infected by the contagion of superst.i.tion; they imbibed some of it at their Negro foster-mother's breast. It was a secret religion that lurked thinly covered in slavery days, and that lurks to-day beneath the Negro's Christian profession as a white art, and among non-professors as a black art; a memory of the revenges of his African ancestors; a secret fraternity among slaves of far-distant plantations, with words and signs,--the lifting of a finger, the twitch of an eyelid,--that telegraphed from house to house with amazing rapidity (as to-day in Africa) current news in old slave days and during the late Civil War; suspected, but never understood by the white master; which, as a superst.i.tion, has spread itself among our ignorant white ma.s.ses as the "Hoodoo." Vudu, or Odoism, is simply African fetichism transplanted to American soil.

"It is almost impossible for persons who have been brought up under this system ever to divest themselves fully of its influence. It has been retained among the blacks of this country, and especially at the South, though in a less open form, even to the present day, and probably will never be fully abandoned until they have made much higher attainments in Christian education and civilization. In some of the plantations of the South, as well as in the West Indies, where there has been less Christian culture, egg-sh.e.l.ls are hung up in the corners of their chimneys to cause the chickens to flourish; an extracted tooth is thrown over the house or worn around the neck to prevent other teeth from aching; and real fetiches, though not known by this name [perhaps "mascots"?], are used about their persons to shield them from sickness or from the effects of witchcraft."[92]

While on a furlough in the United States in 1891, I visited a town in Southern Virginia, and by invitation of the Negro pastor of the African church addressed them on foreign missions. Somewhat at a loss what att.i.tude to take toward a Negro audience in speaking to them of Africa, I candidly asked the pastor what I should say. He bade me speak exactly as if I was addressing an educated white a.s.sembly. I did so. In describing native African virtues and vices, I mentioned their fetichism, and remarked that it was the same that obtained in the United States; and lest my hearers might think I was personally attacking them, I added, "down South in Georgia and Louisiana." The bench of elders sitting just in front of me broke out, "And jist around hyar, too."

I had read Cable's "Creole Tales." One of his characters is sick with a strange vague affection whose symptoms medicine had failed to reach. He is superst.i.tious, and one morning he wakes in horror at finding a dead frog secreted under his pillow. That fetich was no novelist's conjecture; it was true to life. About 1894 or 1895, while I was alone in charge of Gabun Station, for three successive mornings when I opened the front door, I found a dried frog leaning against the threshold. I did not care enough about it to inquire its significance or to ascertain who put it there.

Since then I have found that it is not used as a fetich by people of the Gabun region, but probably by Upper Coast people. I remember that at that time I had three Ba.s.sa workmen from Liberia whom I suspected of stealing and who then suddenly deserted my service. I think they placed the frog there, either to injure me or to prevent my following up their theft.

FOLK-LORE.

An attractive survival of African life in America are "Uncle Remus's"

mystic tales of "Br'er Rabbit." They are the folk-lore that the slave brought with him from his African home, where in village hut and forest camp often have been told to my own ears similar weird personifications before Harris had actually written them. There being no rabbits in West Africa, "Br'er Rabbit" is an American subst.i.tution for "Brother" Nja (Leopard), or Brother Iheli (Gazelle), in Paia Njambi's (the Creator's) council of speaking animals.

CHAPTER XVI

TALES OF FETICH BASED ON FACT

The view-point of the native African mind, in all unusual occurrences, is that of witchcraft. Without looking for an explanation in what civilization would call _natural_ causes, his thought turns at once to the supernatural. Indeed, the supernatural is so constant a factor in his life, that to him it furnishes explanation of events as prompt and reasonable as our reference to the recognized forces of nature. Mere coincidences are often to him miracles.

In the large ma.s.s of materials which I gathered from all native sources of information for the formulation of the philosophy of fetichism, as presented in the former part of this work, I found many remarkable tales some of whose incidents were probable, and which to me were explicable on natural grounds, but which my native friends believed were the effect of witchcraft power. I did not dispute them. To do so would either have closed their lips or made them omit the witchcraft element from any subsequent stories they might narrate to me. I thus secured these tales as a purely native product.

I did not use a note-book, fearing that its presence would hamper the freedom of the story-teller, but listened carefully and wrote down the interview immediately at its close. Not all knew that I was writing for publication. That knowledge would have interfered with the simplicity of their utterances. Of my several informants, some were ignorant, some heathen, some Christian, only a few well educated. Of the most intelligent of my informants, two allowed me to take notes as they were speaking, and I really wrote from dictation; they considerately spoke slowly, so that I should miss nothing, while I wrote rapidly and at the same time had to translate their language into English. Of those two, one was able to give part of the interview in English. The thoughts in these stories are entirely native. So are most of the words. I tried to retain the narrators' own structure of sentences, sacrificing a little of English for the sake of native idioms. The prevalence of short words is due to my effort at exact translation of their own words. Occasionally I have used longer words of Latin origin because I had forgotten their word, and in an effort to repeat their idea. The shortness of the sentences is due to the natives' graphic and animated style of speaking. Long sentences are foreign to their mode of speech.

The following two stories are ill.u.s.trative of the native belief, mentioned in Chapter IV, that we possess not only our physical body, but also an essential or "astral" form, in shape and feature like the body. This form, or "life," with its "heart," can be stolen by magic power while one is asleep, and the individual sleeps on unconscious of his loss. If the life-form is returned to him before he awakes, he will be unaware that anything unusual has happened. If he awakes before that portion of him has been returned, though he may live for a while, he will sicken and eventually die. If the magicians who stole the "life" have eaten the "heart," he sickens at once, and will soon die.

I. A WITCH SWEETHEART.

A certain man loved a woman whom he expected to marry. He visited her regularly. Whenever he intended to visit her, he always notified her thus: "I will be coming such a day" or "such an hour." Then she would say, "Yes." But it happened on a particular day when he told her, "I'll be coming to-night," she said, "No, not to-night, wait till next night." He replied, "No, for I will come to-night." But she refused, "No, I do not want you to come to-night." Then he asked, "What is your objection?

Hitherto you have let me come when I pleased. What is the matter to-night?" So she said, "I do not want you to come, because I will be absent to-night." "Where are you going?" he asked. To this she gave as answer only, "Don't come! I don't want you to come!" So the man said, "All right! I will not come. If you don't want me, then I'm not coming." So he left her, very much surprised at what she had said, and began to think something was going wrong; he thought he would like to know for himself what it was.

This woman was one of those who belonged to the Witch Society, and engaged in its plays. But the man had not suspected this, and did not know that she was one of those who played.