ToListA Calabar Chief[To face page 145.A Calabar Chief.
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The pathos of the thing, when you have grasped the underlying idea, is so deep that the strangeness of it passes away, and you almost forget to hate the horrors of the slaughter that hang round Oil River funeral customs, or, at any rate, you understand the tenacity you meet with here of the right to carry out killing at funerals, a greater tenacity than confronted us in Gold Coast or Dahomey regions, because a different idea is involved in the affair. On the Gold Coast, for example, you can substitute wealth for the actual human victim, because with wealth the dead soul could, after all, make itself comfortablein Srahmandazi, but not so in the Rivers. Without slaves, wives, and funds, how can the dead soul you care for speak with the weight of testimony of men as to its resting place or position? Rolls of velvet or satin, and piles of manillas or doubloons alone cannot speak; besides, they may have been stolen stuff, and the soul you care for may be put down by the authorities as a mere thieving slave, a sort of mere American gold bug trying to pass himself off as a duke—or a descendant of General Washington—which would lead to that soul being disgraced and sent back in a vile form. Think how you yourself, if in comfortable circumstances, belonging to a family possessing wealth and power, would like father, mother, sister, or brother of yours who by this change of death had just left these things, to go down through death, and come back into life in a squalid slum!
We meet in this school, however, with a serious problem—namely, what does become of dead chiefs? It is a point I will not dogmatise on, but it certainly looks as if the Calabar under-world was a most aristocratic spot, peopled entirely by important chiefs and the retinues sent down with them—by no means having the fine mixed society of Srahmandazi.
The Oil River deceased chief is clearly kept as a sort of pensioner. The chief who succeeds him in his headship of the House is given to “making his father” annually. It is not necessarily his real father that he makes, but his predecessor in the headmanship—a slave succeeding to a free man would “make his father” to the dead free man, and so on. This function undoubtedly consists in sending his predecessor a big subsidy for his support, and consolation in the shape of slaves and goods. I may as well own I havelong had a dark suspicion regarding this matter—a suspicion as to where those goods went. Their proper destination, of course, should be the under-world. Thither undoubtedly on the Gold Coast they would go; but when sent in the Rivers I do not think they go so far. In fact, to make a clean breast of it, I do not believe big chiefs are properly buried in the Oil Rivers at all. I think they are, for political purposes, kept hanging about outside life, but not inside death, by their diplomatic successors. I feel emboldened to say this by what my friend, Major Leonard, Vice-Consul of the Niger Coast Protectorate, recently told me. When he was appointed Vice-Consul, and was introducing himself to his chiefs in this capacity, one chief he visited went aside to a deserted house, opened the door, and talked to somebody inside; there was not any one in material form inside, only the spirit of his deceased predecessor, and all the things left just as they were when he died; the live chief was telling the dead chief that the new Consul was come, &c.
The reason, that is the excuse, for this seemingly unprincipled conduct in not properly burying the chief, so that he may be reincarnated to a complete human form, lies in the fact that he would be a political nuisance to his successor if he came back promptly; therefore he is kept waiting.
From first-class native informants I have had fragments of accounts of making-father ceremonies. Particularly interesting have been their accounts of what the live chief says to the dead one. Much of it, of course, is, for diplomatic reasons, not known outside official circles. But the general tone of these communications is well known to be of a nature to discourage the dead chief from returning,and to reconcile him to his existing state. Things are not what they were here. The price of oil is down, women are ten times more frivolous, slaves ten times more trying, white Consul men abound, also their guns are more deadly than of old, this new Consul looks worse than the last, there is nothing but war and worry for a chief nowadays. The whole country is going to the dogs financially and domestically, in fact, and you are much better off where you are. Then come petitions for such help as the ghost chief and his ghost retinue can give.
This, I think, explains why chiefs’ funeral customs in the Rivers differ in kind, not merely in grade, from those of big trade boys or other important people, and also accounts for their repetition at intervals. Big trade boys, and the slaves and women sent down with them, return to a full human form more or less promptly; mere low grade slaves, slaves that cannot pull a canoe,i.e., provide a war canoe for the service of the House out of their own private estate, are not buried at all—they are thrown away, unless they have a mother who will bury them. They will come back again all right as slaves, but then that is all they are fit for.
Then we have left very interesting sections of the community to consider from a funeral rite point of view—namely, those in human form who are not, strictly speaking, human beings, and those who, though human, have committed adultery with spirits—women who bear twins or who die in child-birth. These sinners, I may briefly remark, are neither buried nor just thrown away; they are, as far as possible, destroyed. But with the former class the matter is slightly different. Children, for example, that arrive with ready cut teeth, will in a strict family be killed or thrown away in the bush to die as they please; but thefeeling against them is not really keen. They may, if the mother chooses to be bothered with them, be reared; but the interesting point is that any property they may acquire during life has no legal heir whatsoever. It must be dissipated, thrown away. This shows clearly that such individuals are not human, and, moreover, they are not buried nor destroyed at death; they are just thrown away. There is no particular harm in them as there is in the sin-stained twins.
The only class in West Africa I have found that are like these spirit humans is that strange class, the minstrels. I wish I knew more about these people. Were it not that Mr. F. Swanzy possesses material evidence of their existence, in the shape of the most superb song-net, I should hesitate to mention them at all. Some of my French friends, however, tell me they have seen them in Senegal, and I venture to think that region must be their headquarters. I have seen one in Accra, one in Sierra Leone, two on board steamers, and one in Buana town, Cameroon. Briefly, these are minstrels who frequent market towns, and for a fee sing stories. Each minstrel has a song-net—a strongly made net of a fishing net sort. On to this net are tied all manner and sorts of things, pythons’ back bones, tobacco pipes, bits of china, feathers, bits of hide, birds’ heads, reptiles’ heads, bones, &c., &c., and to every one of these objects hangs a tale. You see your minstrel’s net, you select an object and say how much that song. He names an exorbitant price; you haggle; no good. He won’t be reasonable, say over the python bone, so you price the tobacco pipe—more haggle; finally you settle on some object and its price, and sit down on your heels and listen with rapt attention to the song, or, rather, chant. Youusually have another. You sort of dissipate in novels, in fact. I do not say it’s quiet reading, because unprincipled people will come headlong and listen when you have got your minstrel started, without paying their subscription. Hence a row, unless you are, like me, indifferent to other people having a little pleasure.
These song-nets, I may remark, are not of a regulation size. I have never seen on the West Coast anything like so superb a collection of stories as Mr. Swanzy has tied on that song-net of his—Woe is me! without the translating minstrel, a cycle of dead songs that must have belonged to a West African Shakespeare. The most impressive song-net that I saw was the one at Buana. Its owner I called Homer on the spot, because his works were a terrific two. Tied on to his small net were a human hand and a human jaw bone. They were his only songs. I heard them both regardless of expense. I did not understand them, because I did not know his language; but they were fascinating things, and the human hand one had a passage in it which caused the singer to crawl on his hands and knees, round and round, stealthily looking this side and that, giving the peculiar leopard questing cough, and making the leopard mark on the earth with his doubled-up fist. Ah! that was something like a song! It would have roused a rock to enthusiasm; a civilised audience would have smothered its singer with bouquets. I—well, the headman with me had to interfere and counsel moderation in heads of tobacco.
But what I meant to say about these singers was only this. They are not buried as other people are; they are put into trees when they are dead—may be because they are “all same for one” with those singers the birds. I do not know,I only hope Homer is still extant, and that some more intelligent hearer than I will meet with him.
ToListNatives of Gaboon[To face page 151.Natives of Gaboon.
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The southern boundary of the Calabar school of Fetish lies in narrower regions than the boundary between it and Ellis’s school in the north. I venture to think that this may in a measure arise from there being in the southern region the additional element of difference of race. For immediately below Calabar in the Cameroon territory the true Negro meets the Bantu. In Cameroon in the tribes of the Dualla stem we have a people speaking a Bantu language, and having a Bantu culture, yet nevertheless having a great infusion of pure Negro blood, and largely under the dominion of the true Negro thought form.
I own that of all the schools of Fetish that I know, the Calabar school is the one that fascinates me most. I like it better than Ellis’s school, wherein the fate of the soul after death is a life in a shadow land, with shadows for friends, lovers, and kinsfolk, with the shadows of joys for pleasures, the shadows of quarrels for hate—a thing that at its best is inferior to the wretchedest full-life on earth. Yet this settled shadow-land of Srahmandazi or Gboohiadse is a better thing than the homeless drifting state of the soul in the school below Calabar—namely, the school I have ventured to term the Mpongwe school. To the brief consideration of this school we will now turn.
In between the strongly-marked Calabar school and the strongly-marked school of Nkissism of Loango Kacongo, and Bas Congo there exists a school plainly differing from both. This region is interesting for many reasons, chief amongst which is that it is the sea-board region of the great African Forest belt. Tribe after tribe come down into it, flourish awhile, and die, uninfluenced by Mohammedan or Europeanculture. The Mohammedans in Africa as aforesaid have never mastered the western region of the forest belt; and the Europeans have never, in this region between Cameroon and Loango, established themselves in force. It is undoubtedly the wildest bit of West Africa.
The dominant tribes here have, for as far back as we can get evidence—some short four hundred years—been tribes of the Mpongwe stem—the so-called noble tribes. To-day they are dying—going off the face of the earth, leaving behind them nothing to bear testimony in this world to their great ability, save the most marvellously beautiful language, the Greek of Africa, as Dr. Nassau calls it, and the impress of their more elaborate thought-form on the minds of the bush tribes that come into contact with them. Their last pupils are the great Bafangh, now supplanting them in the regions of the Bight of Panavia.
From their influence I think the school of Fetish of this region is perhaps best called the Mpongwe school, though I do not altogether like the term, because I believe the Mpongwe stem to be in origin pure Negro, and the Fetish school they have elaborated and co-ordinated is Bantu in thought-form, just as the language they have raised to so high a pitch of existence is in itself a Bantu language. Yet the Mpongwe are rulers of both these things, and they will thereby leave imprinted on the minds of their supplanters in the land the mark of their intelligence.
I have said the predominant idea in this Mpongwe school is the securing of material prosperity. That is to say this is the part of pure Fetish that receives more attention than other parts of pure Fetish in this school; but it attains to no such definite predominance as funeral rites do in the Calabar school, or the preservation of life in Ellis’s school.One might, however, quite fairly call the Mpongwe school the trade-charm school, great as trade charms are in all West African Fetish.
This lack of a predominance sufficient to dwarf other parts of pure Fetish makes the Mpongwe school particularly interesting and valuable to a student; it is a magnificent school to study your pure Fetish in, as none of it is here thrown by a predominant factor into the background of thought, and left in a neglected state.
It is of this school that you will find Dr. Nassau’s classification of spirits, and all the other observations of his that I have quoted of things absolutely believed in by the natives, and also all the Mpongwe, Benga, Igalwa, Ncomi, and Fetish I have attempted to describe.[20]
It has no gods with proper priests. Human beings are here just doing their best to hold their own with the spirit world, getting spirits under their control as far as possible, and dealing with the rest of them diplomatically. This state I venture to think is Fetish in a very early form, a form through which the now elaborate true Negro Fetish must have passed before reaching its present co-ordinated state. How long ago it was when the true Negro was in this stage I will not venture to conjecture. Sir Henry Maine, of whom I am a very humble follower, says, “Nothing moves that is not Greek.” This is a hard saying to accept, but the truth of it grows on you when you are studying things such as these, and you are forced to acknowledge that they at any rate have a slow rate of development—sometimes indeed it seems that there is a mere wave motion of thought among all men rising here and there when in the hands of superior tribes, like the Mpongwe for example, to a wave crest destined on their extinction to fall again. Now and again as a storm on the sea, the impulse of a revealed religion sweeps down on to this ocean of nature philosophy, elevates it or confuses it according to the initial profundity of it. If you have ever seen the difference between a deep sea storm and an esturial storm, you will know what I mean. Yet this has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the Fetish thought-form, but merely has a bearing on the quality of the minds that deal with it, as it must on all minds not under the influence of a revealed religion; and I now turn, in conclusion of this brief consideration of the schools of Fetish in West Africa, to the next school to the Mpongwe, namely, the school of Nkissism. I need not go into details concerning it here; you have them at your command in the two great works of Bastian,An Expedition under Loango Küste und Besuch in San Salvador, and in Mr. R. E. Dennett’sFolk Lore of the Fjorts, published by the liberality of the Folk Lore Society, and also his former book,Seven Years among the Fjorts.[21]
ToListFjort Natives of Kacongo and Loango
ToListFjort Natives of Kacongo and Loango.[To face page 155.Fjort Natives of Kacongo and Loango.
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The predominant feature in this school is undoubtedly the extra recognition given to the mystery of the power of the earth, Nkissi ’nsi. Here you find the earth goddess Nzambi the paramount feature in the Fetish; from her the Fetish priests have their knowledge of the proper way to manage and communicate with lower earth spirits, round her circle almost all the legends, in her lies the ultimate human hope of help and protection. Nzambi is too large a subject for us to enter into here. She is the great mother, but she is not absolute in power. She is not one of the forms of the great unheeding over-lord of gods, likeNyankupong, or Abassi-boom; the equivalent to him, is her husband Nzambi Mpungu, among the followers of Nkissism; but the predominance given in this school to the great Princess Nzambi has had two effects that must be borne in mind in studying the region from Loango to the south bank of Congo. Firstly, it apparently led to Nzambi being confused by the natives with the Holy Virgin, when they were under the tuition of the Roman Catholic missionaries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; hence Nzambi’s cult requires to be studied with the greatest care at the present day. Secondly, partly in consequence of the native predominance given to her, and partly in the predominance she has gained from the aforesaid confusion, women have a very singular position, a superior one to that which they have in other schools; this you will see by reading the stories collected by Mr. Dennett. I will speak no further now concerning these schools of Fetish, for Nkissism is the most southern of the West African schools, its domain extending over the whole of the regions once forming the kingdom of Kongo down to Angola. Below Angola, on the West Coast, you come to the fringing zone of the Kalahi desert, and to those interesting people the Bushmen, of whose religion I am unable, with any personal experience, to speak. Below them you strike South Africa. South Africa is South Africa; West Africa is West Africa. Of the former I know nothing, of the latter alas! only a tenth part of what I should wish to know, so I return to pure Fetish and to its bearing on witchcraft.
FOOTNOTES:[19]History of Loango, by the Abbé Proyart, 1776. Pinkerton, vol. xvi., p. 587.[20]Travels in West Africa.Fetish Chapters.[21]Sampson Low and Co.
[19]History of Loango, by the Abbé Proyart, 1776. Pinkerton, vol. xvi., p. 587.
[19]History of Loango, by the Abbé Proyart, 1776. Pinkerton, vol. xvi., p. 587.
[20]Travels in West Africa.Fetish Chapters.
[20]Travels in West Africa.Fetish Chapters.
[21]Sampson Low and Co.
[21]Sampson Low and Co.
Wherein the student having by now got rather involved in things in general, is constrained to discourse on witchcraft and its position in West African religious thought, concluding with the conviction that Fetish is quite clear though the student has not succeeded in making it so.
Now, here we come to a very interesting question: What is witchcraft in itself? Conversing freely with the Devil, says Christendom, firmly; and taking the Devil to mean the Spirit of Evil, I am bound to think Christendom is in a way scientifically quite right, though the accepted scientific definition of witchcraft at present is otherwise, and holds witchcraft to be conversing with Natural Science, which of course I cannot accept as the Devil. Thus I cannot reconcile the two definitions should they mean the same thing; and so I am here really in the position of being at one in opinion with the Roman Catholic missionaries of the fifteenth century, who, as soon as they laid eyes on my friend the witch-doctor, recognised him and his goings on as a mass of witchcraft, and went for the whole affair in an exceeding game way.
But let us take the accepted view, that first propounded by Sir Alfred Lyall; and I humbly beg it to be clearly understood I am only speaking of the bearing of thatview on Fetish in West Africa. I was of course fully aware of the accepted view of the innate antagonism between religion and witchcraft when I published in a deliberately scattered form some of my observations on Fetish, being no more desirous of giving a mental lead to white men than to black, but only wistful to find out what they thought of things as they are. The consequence of this action of mine has been, I fear, on the whole a rather more muddled feeling in the white mind regarding Fetish than ever heretofore existed; a feeling that, if what I said was true, (and in this matter of Fetish information no one has gainsaid the truth of it), West African religion was more perplexing than it seemed to be when regarded as a mere degraded brutal superstition or childish foolishness.
However, one distinguished critic has tackled my Fetish, and gallantly: the writer in theEdinburgh Review. With his remarks on our heresy regarding the deification of ancestors I have above attempted to deal, owning he is quite right—we do not believe in deified ancestors. I now pass on to his other important criticism, and again own he is quite right, and that “witchcraft and religious rites in West Africa are originally indistinguishable.”[22]This is evidently a serious affair for West Africa and me, so I must deal with it carefully, and first quote my critic’s words following immediately those just cited. “If this is correct there can be no doubt that such a confusion of the two ideas that in their later forms not only stand widely apart, but are always irreconcilably hostile, denotes the very lowest stage of aboriginal superstition wherever it prevails, for it has been held that, although the line between abjectfetishism and witchcraft may be difficult to trace in the elementary stages, yet from the beginning a true distinction can invariably be recognised. According to this theory, the witch is more nearly allied with rudimentary science than with priestcraft, for he relies not upon prayer, worship, or propitiation of divinities, but upon his own secret knowledge and experience of the effect producible by certain tricks and mysterious devices upon the unseen powers, over whom he has obtained a sort of command. Instead of serving like a priest these powers, he is enabled by his art to make them serve him, and it is for this reason that his practices very soon become denounced and detested by the priesthood.”
Now there are many interesting points to be considered in West Africa bearing on the above statement of Sir Alfred Lyall’s theory of the nature of witchcraft,—points which I fancy, if carefully considered, would force upon us the strange conclusion that, accepting this theory as a general statement of the nature of witchcraft, there was no witchcraft whatever in West Africa, nothing having “a true distinction” in the native mind from religion. You may say there is no religion and it’s all witchcraft, but this is a superficial view to take; you see the orthodox Christian view of witchcraft contains in it an element not present in the West African affair; the Christian regards the witch with hatred as one knowing good, yet choosing evil. The West African has not this choice in his mind; he has to deal with spirits who are not, any of them, up to much in the way of virtue viewed from a human standpoint. I don’t say they are all what are called up here devils; a good many of them are what you might call reasonable, respectable, easy-going sort of people; some are downright bad;in fact, I don’t think it would be going too far to say that they are all downright bad if they get their tempers up or take a dislike to a man; there is not one of them beneficent to the human race at large. Nzambi is the nearest approach to a beneficent deity I have come across, and I feel she owes much of this to the confusion she profits by, and the Holy Virgin suffers from, in the regions under Nkissism; but Nzambi herself is far from morally perfect and very difficult tempered at times. You need not rely on me in this matter; take the important statement of Dr. Nassau: “Observe, these were distinctly prayers, appeals for mercy, agonising protests; but there was no praise, no love, no thanks, no confession of sin.”[23]He was speaking regarding utterances made down there in the face of great afflictions and sorrow; and there was no praise, because there was no love, I fancy; no thanks because what good was done to the human being was a mere boughten thing he had paid for. No confession of sin, because the Fetish believer does not hold he lives in a state of sin, but that it is a thing he can commit now and again if he is fool enough. Sin to him not being what it is to us, a vile treason against a loving Father, but a very ill-advised act against powerful, nasty-tempered spirits. Herein you see lies one difference between the Christian and the Fetish view,—a fundamental one, that must be borne in mind.
Then in the above-quoted passage you will observe that the dislike to witchcraft is traced in a measure to the action of priesthoods. This hatred is undoubted. But witchcraft is as much hated in districts in West Africa where there are no organised priesthoods as in districtswhere there are—in the regions under the Calabar and Mpongwe schools, for example, where the father of the house is the true priest to the family, where what looks like a priesthood, but which is a law god-cult only—the secret society—is the dominant social thing. Now this law god-cult affair, Purroh, Oru, Egbo, Ukukiwe, etc., etc., call it what you please, it’s all the same thing, is not the organisation that makes war on witchcraft in West Africa. It deals with it now and then, if it is brought under its official notice; but it is not necessary that this should be done; summary methods are used with witches. It just appeals at once to ordeal, any one can claim it. You can claim it, and administer it yourself to yourself, if you are the accused party and in a hurry. A. says to you, “You’re a witch.” “I’m not,” you ejaculate. I take the bean; down it goes; you’re sick or dead long before the elaborate mechanism of the law society has heard of the affair. Of course, if you want to make a big palaver and run yourself and your accuser into a lot of expense you can call in the society; but you needn’t. From this and divers things like it I do not think the hatred of witchcraft in West Africa at large has anything originally to do with the priesthood. You will say, but there is the hatred of witchcraft in West Africa. You have only to shout “Ifot” at a man or woman in Calabar, or “Ndo tchi()” in Fjort-land, and the whole population, so good-tempered the moment before, is turned bloodthirsty. Witches are torn to bits, destroyed in every savage way, when the ordeal has conclusively proved their guilt—mind you, never before. Granted; but I believe this to be just a surging up of that form of terror called hate.
I am old enough to remember the dynamite scares up here, and the Jack the Ripper incidents; then it was onlynecessary for some one to call out, “Dynamiter” or “Jack the Ripper” at a fellow-citizen, and up surged our own people, all same for one with those Africans, only our people, not being so law-governed, would have shredded the accused without ordeal, had we not possessed that great factor in the formation of public virtue, the police, who intervened, carried away the accused to the ordeal—the police court—where the affair was gone into with judicial calm. Honestly, I don’t believe there is the slightest mystic revulsion against witchcraft in West Africa; public feeling is always at bursting-point on witches, their goings-on are a constant danger to every peaceful citizen’s life, family, property, and so on, and when the general public thinks it’s got hold of one of the vermin it goes off with a bang; but it does not think for one moment that the witch isper sein himself a thing apart; he is just a bad man too much, who has gone and taken up with spirits for illegitimate purposes. The mere keeping of a familiar power, which under Christendom is held so vile a thing, is not so held in West Africa. Everyone does it; there is not a man, woman, or child who has not several attached spirits for help and preservation from danger and disease. It is keeping a spirit for bad purposes only that is hateful. It is one thing to have dynamite in the hand of the government or a mining company for reasonable reasons, quite another to have it in the hands of enemies to society; and such an enemy is a witch who trains the spirits over which he has got control to destroy his fellow human beings’ lives and properties.
The calling in of ordeal to try the witch before destroying him has many interesting points. The African, be it granted, is tremendously under the dominion of law, and it is the law that such trials should take place before execution; butthere is also involved in it another curious fact, and that is that the spirit of the ordeal is held to be able to manage and suppress the bad spirits trained by the witch to destruction. Human beings alone can collar the witch and destroy him in an exemplary manner, but spiritual aid is required to collar the witch’s devil, or it would get adrift and carry on after its owner’s death. Regarding ordeal affairs I will speak when dealing with legal procedure.
Such being the West African view of witchcraft, I venture to think there are in this world divers reasons for hating witchcraft. There is the fetish one, that he is an enemy to society; there is the priesthood one, that he is a sort of quack or rival practitioner—under this head of priesthood aversion for witchcraft I think we may class the witchcraft that is merely a hovering about of the old religion which the priesthood of an imported religion are anxious to stamp out; and there is that aversion to witchcraft one might call the Protestant aversion, which arises from the feeling that it is a direct sin against God Himself. This latter feeling has been the cause of as violent a persecution of witches, witness the action of King James I. and that of the Quakers in America, as any West African has ever presented to the world. Throughout all these things the fact remains, that whether black, white, or yellow, the witch is a bad man, a murderer in the eyes of Allah as well as those of humanity.
That all witches act by means of poison alone would be too hasty a thing to say, because I think we need hardly doubt that the African is almost as liable to die from a poisonous idea put into his mind as a poisonous herb put into his food; indeed, I do not know that in West Africa we need confine ourselves to saying natives alone do this, for white men sink and die under an idea that breaks theirspirit. All the vital powers are required there to resist the depressing climate. If they are weakened seriously in any way, death is liable to ensue. The profound belief in the power of a witch causes a man who knows, say, that either a nail has been driven into an Nkiss down on the South-West coast, or the Fangaree drum beaten on him up in the Sierra Leone region, to collapse under the terror of it, and I own I can see no moral difference between the guilt of the man or woman who does these things with the intent to slay a fellow-citizen and that of one who puts bush into his chop—both mean to kill and do kill, but both methods are good West African witchcraft. The latter may seem to be an incipient form of natural science, but it seems to me—I say it humbly—that the West African incipient scientist is not the local witch, but that highly respectable gentleman or lady, the village apothecary, theNganga bilongoor theAbiabok. The means of killing in vogue in West African witchcraft without the direct employment of poison are highly interesting, but I think it would serve no good purpose for me to give even the few I know in detail. There is one interesting point in this connection. I have said that in order to make a charm efficacious against a particular person you must have preferably some of his blood in your possession, or, failing that, some hair or nail clipping; failing these, some articles belonging intimately to him—a piece of his loin-cloth, or, under the school of Nkissi, a bit of his iron. This I believe to hold good for all true fetish charms; but we have in the Bight of Benin charms which are under the influence of a certain amount of Mohammedan ideas—for example, the deadly charms of the Kufong society. This class of charm does not require absolutely a bit of something nearly connected with thevictim, but nevertheless it cannot act at a great distance, or without the element of personal connection. Take the Fangaree charm, for example, to be found among the Mendi people, and all the neighbouring peoples who are liable to go in for Kufong.
Fangaree is the name of a small drum that is beaten by a hammer made of bamboo. The uses of this drum are wide and various, but it also gives its name to the charm, because the charm, like the drum, is beaten with a similar stick. The charm stuff itself is made of a dead man’s bone, of different herbs smoked over a fire and powdered the same day, ants’-hill earth, and charcoal. This precious mixture is made into a parcel; that parcel is placed on a frame made of bamboo sticks. On the top of the charm a small live animal—an insect, I am informed, will do—is secured by a string passing over it, and the charm is fixed with wooden forks into the ground on either side. This affair is placed by the murderer close to a path the victim will pass along, and the murderer sits over it, waiting for him to come. When he comes, he is allowed to pass just by, and then his enemy breaks a dry bamboo stick; the noise causes the victim to turn and look in the direction of the noise—i.e.on to the charm—and then the murderer hits the live animal on it, calling his victim’s name, and the charm is on him. If the animal is struck on the head, the victim’s head is affected, and he has violent fits until “he dies from breaking his neck” in one of them; if the animal is struck to tailwards, the victim gets extremely ill, but in this latter case he can buy off the charm and be cured by a Fangaree man. A similar arrangement is in working order under some South-West coast murder societies I am acquainted with. The interesting point, however, is the necessity of establishing the personal connection between the victim and the charm by means of making him look on the charm and calling his name. Without his looking it’s no good. Hence it comes that it is held unwise to look behind when you hear a noise o’night in the bush; indeed, no cautious person, with sense in his head and strength in his legs, would dream of doing this unless caught off guard. In connection also with this turning the face being necessary to the working of the Fangaree charm, there is another charm that is worked under Kufong, according to several natives from its region—the hinterland of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast—with whom I have associated when we have both been far from our respective homes away in South-West Africa. It is a charm I have never met with as indigenous in the South-West or Oil Rivers Fetish, and I think it has a heavier trace of Mohammedan influence in it than the Fangaree charm. The way it works is this. A man wants to kill you without showing blood. Only leopard society men do that, and your enemy, we will presume, is not a leopard. So he throws his face on you by a process I need not enter into. You hardly know anything is wrong at first; by-and-by you notice that every scene that you look on, night or day, has got that face in it, not a filmy vision of a thing, but quite material in appearance, only it’s in abnormal places for a face to be, and it is a face only. It may be on the wall, or amongst the roof poles, or away in a corner of the hut floor; outdoors it is the same—the face is first always, there just where you can see it. Some of my informants hold that it keeps coming closer to you as time goes on; but others say no; it keeps at one distance all the time. This, however, is a minor point; it is its being there that gets to matter. It isin amongst the bushes at the side of the path, or in the water of the river, or at the end of your canoe, or in the oil in the pots, or in the Manchester cottons in the factory shop. Wherever you look, there it is. In a way it’s unobtrusive, it does not spread itself out, or make a noise, or change, yet, sooner or later, in every place, you cannot miss seeing it. At first you think, by changing your environment—going outdoors, coming in, going on a journey, mixing with your fellow-men, or avoiding them—you can get rid of the thing; but you find, when you look round,—a thing you are certain to do when the charm has got its grip,—for sure that face is there as usual. Now this sort of thing tells on the toughest in time, and you get sick of life when it has always got that face mixed up in it, so sick that you try the other thing—death. This is an ill-advised course, but you do not know in time that, when you kill yourself, you will find that on the other side, in the other thing, you will see nothing but that face, that unchanging silent face you are so sick of. The Kufong man who has thrown his face at you knows, and when he hears of your suicide he laughs. Naturally you cannot know, because you are not a Kufong man, or the charm could not be put on you. What you “can do in this here most awful go,” as Mr. Squeers would say, I am unfortunately not able to tell you. I made many inquiries from men who know “the face,” who had had it happen on people in their families, and so on, but in answer to my inquiries as to why the afflicted did not buy it off, what charms there were against it, and so forth, I was always told it was a big charm, that the man who put it on lost something of himself by so doing, so it was never put on except in cases of great hatred that would stick at nothing and would kill; also that it was of no real use for thevictim to kill his charmer, though that individual, knowing the pleasure so doing would afford his victim, takes good care to go on a journey, and to keep out of the way until the charm has worked out in suicide. There is a certain amount of common sense in this proceeding which is undoubtedly true African, but there is a sort of imaginative touch which makes me suspect Mohammedan infusion; anyhow, I leave you to judge for yourself whether, presupposing you accept the possibility of a man doing such a thing to you or to any one you love, you think he can be safely ignored, or whether he is not an enemy to society who had better be found out and killed—killed in a showy way. Personally I favour the latter course.
There is but one other point in witchcraft in West Africa that I need now detain you with, and that is why a person killed by witchcraft suffers more than one who dies of old age, for herein lies another reason for this hatred of witchcraft. Every human soul in West Africa throughout all the Fetish schools is held to have a certain proper time of incarnation in a human body, whether it be one incarnation or endless series of incarnations; anything that cuts that incarnation period short inconveniences the soul, to say the least of it. Under Ellis’s school, and I believe throughout all the others, the soul that lives its life in a body fully through is held happy; it is supposed to have learnt its full lesson from life, and to know the way down to the shadow-land home and all sorts of things. Hence also comes the respect for the aged, common throughout all West Africa. They are the knowing ones. Such an one was the late Chief Long John of Bonny. Now if this process of development is checked by witchcraft and the soul is prematurely driven from the body, it does not know all that it should, and itscondition is therefore miserable. It is, as it were, sent blind, or deaf, or lame into the spirit-land. This is a thing not only dreaded by individuals for themselves, but hated for those they love; hence the doer of it is a hated thing. You must remember that when you get keen hatred you must allow for keen affection, it is not human to have one without the other. That the Africans are affectionate I am fully convinced. This affection does not lie precisely on the same lines as those of Europeans, I allow. It is not with them so deeply linked with sex; but the love between mother and child, man and man, brother and sister, woman and woman, is deep, true, and pure, and it must be taken into account in observing their institutions and ideas, particularly as to this witchcraft where it shows violently and externally in hatred only to the superficial observer. I well remember gossiping with a black friend in a plantation in the Calabar district on witchcraft, and he took up a stick and struck a plant of green maize, breaking the stem of it, saying, “There, like that is the soul of a man who is witched, it will not ripen now.”
We will now turn to the consideration of that class whose business in life is mainly to guard the community from witchcraft and from miscellaneous evil spirits acting on their own initiative, the Fetish Men of West Africa, namely, those men and women who devote their lives to the cult of West African religion. Such people you find in every West African district; but their position differs under different schools, and it is in connection with them that we must recognise the differences in the various schools, remembering that the form of Fetish makes the form of Fetish Man, not the Fetish Man the form of Fetish. He may, as it were, embroider it, complicate it, mystify it,as is the nature of all specialists in all professions, but primarily he is under it, at any rate in West Africa, where you find the Fetish man in every district, but in every district in a different form. For example, look at him under the Ellis school. Where there are well-defined gods, there your Fetish Man is quite the priest, devoting himself to the cult of one god publicly, probably doing a little general practice into the bargain with other minor spirits. To the laity he of course advertises the god he serves as the most reliably important one in the neighbourhood; but it has come under my notice, and you will find under Ellis’s, that if the priest of a god gets personally unwell and finds his own deity ineffective, he will apply for aid to a professional brother who serves another god. Below Ellis’s school, in the Calabar school, your Fetish Man is somewhat different; the gods are not so definite or esteemed, and the Fetish Man is becoming a member of a set of men who deal with gods in a lump, and have the general management of minor spirits. Below this school, in the Mpongwe, the Fetish Man is even less specialised as regards one god; he is here a manager of spirits at large, with the assistance of a strong spirit with whom he has opened up communication. Below this school, in that of Nkissi, the Fetish Man becomes more truly priest-like—he is the Nganga of an Nkiss; but nevertheless his position is a different one to that of the priest in Ellis’s school; here he is in a better position than in the Mpongwe school, but in an inferior one to that in Ellis’s, where he is not the lone servitor or manager for a god, but a member of a powerful confraternity. You must bear in mind, of course, that the Fetish Man is always, from a lay standpoint, a highly important person; but professionally, I cannot but think, a priest say of Tando inAshantee or of Shango in Dahomey, is of a higher grade than a Nganga to an Nkiss, certainly far higher than a Fetish Man under the Mpongwe school, where every house father and every village chief does a lot of his own Fetish without professional assistance. Of course chiefs and house fathers do a certain amount in all districts—in fact, in West Africa every man and woman does a certain amount of Fetish for himself; but where, as in Ellis’s school, you get a regular set of priests and plenty of them, the religion falls into their hands to a greater extent. I feel that the study of the position of Fetish-Men is deserving of great attention. I implore the student who may take it up to keep the Fetish Man for practical purposes distinct from the gentleman who represents the law god-cult—the secret tribal society. If you persist in mixing them, you will have in practical politics as fine a mess as if you mixed up your own Bench of Bishops with the Woolsack. I beg to contribute to the store of knowledge on this point sundry remarks sent me on most excellent native authority from the Gold Coast:—
“The inhabitants of Cape Coast must congratulate themselves that they enjoy the protection of seventy-seven fetishes. Every town (and this town) has one fetish house or temple, often built in a square or oblong form of mud or swish, and thatched over, or constructed of sticks or poles placed in a circular form and thatched. In these temples several images are generally placed. Every Fetish-Man or priest, moreover, has his private fetishes in his own house, one of a bird, stones encased by string, large lumps of cinder from an iron furnace, calabashes, and bundles of sticks tied together with string. All these are stained with red ochre and rubbed over with eggs. They are placed on a square platform and shrouded from the vulgar gaze.
“The fetishes are regarded as spiritual intelligent beings who make the remarkable objects of nature their residence or enter occasionally into the images and other artificial representations which have been duly consecrated by certain ceremonies. It is the belief of this people that the fetishes not unfrequently render themselves visible to mortals. Thus the great fetish of the rock on which Cape Coast Castle stands is said to come forth at night in human form, but of superhuman size, and to proceed through the town dressed in white to chase away evil spirits.
“In all the countries along the Coast (Gold) the regular fetish day is Tuesday. The fishermen would expect that, were they to go out on that day, it would spoil their fishing.
“The priest’s office may in some cases be hereditary, but it is not uniformly so, for the children of Fetish-Men sometimes refuse to devote themselves to the pursuits of their parents and engage in other occupations. Any one may enter the office after suitable training, and parents who desire that their children may be instructed in its mysteries place them with a Fetish-Man, who receives a premium for each. The order of Fetish-Men is further augmented by persons who declare that the fetish has suddenly seized on them. A series of convulsive and unnatural bodily distortions establish their claim. Application is made to the fetish for counsel and aid in every domestic and public emergency. When persons find occasion to consult a private Fetish-Man, they take a present of gold-dust and rum and proceed to his house. He receives the presents, and either puts a little of the rum on the head of every image or pours a small quantity on the ground before the platform as an offeringto the whole pantheon; then, taking a brass pan with water in it, he sits down with the pan between him and the fetishes, and his inquirers also seat themselves to await the result. Having made these preparatory arrangements, looking earnestly into the water, he begins to snap his fingers, and addressing the fetish, extols his power, telling him that the people have arrived to consult him, and requesting him to come and give the desired answer. After a time the fetish-man is wrought up into a state of fury. He shakes violently and foams at the mouth; this is to intimate that the fetish was come home and that he himself is no longer the speaker, but the fetish, who uses his mouth and speaks by him. He now growls like a tiger and asks the people if they have brought rum, requiring them at the same time to present it to him. He drinks, and then inquires for what purpose they have sent for him. If a relative is ill, they reply that such a member of their family is sick and they have tried all the means they could devise to restore him, but without success, and they, knowing he is a great fetish, have come to ask his aid, and beg him to teach them what they should do. He then speaks kindly to them, expresses a hope that he shall be able to help them, and says, “I go to see.” It is imagined that the fetish then quits the priest, and, after a silence of a few minutes, he is supposed to return, and gives his response to the inquirers.
“In cases of great difficulty the oracle at Abrah is the last resort of the Fantees. This notable oracle is always consulted at night. They find a large fire made upon the ground, and the presents they have brought they place in the hands of the priests who are in attendance. They are then directed to elevate their presents above their headsand to fix their eyes steadfastly upon the ground, for should they look up, the fetish, it is said, would inflict blindness on them for their sacrilegious gaze. After a time the oracle gives a response in a shrill, small voice intended to convey the idea that it proceeds from an unearthly source, and the inquirers, having obtained the end of their visit, then depart.
“In cases of bodily affliction the fetish orders medical preparations for the patient. If the malady of the patient does not appear to yield to such applications, the fetish is again consulted, and in some cases, as a further expedient, the priest takes a fowl and ties it to a stick, by which operation it is barbarously squeezed to death. The stick is then placed in the path leading to the house for the purpose of deterring evil spirits from approaching it. When the patient is a rich man, several sheep are sacrificed, and he is fetished until the last moment arrives amidst the howls of a number of old Fetish Women, who continue to besmear with eggs and other medicine the walls and doorposts of his house and everything that is around him until he has ceased to breathe.”
Not only does the African depart from life under the care of Fetish-Men—and, as my valued correspondent ungallantly remarks, “old fetish-women”—but he is met, as it were, by them on his arrival. My correspondent says “as soon as the child is born the Fetish-Man binds certain fetish preparations round his limbs, using at the same time a form of incantation or prayer. This is done to fortify the infant against all kinds of evil. On the eighth day after the birth, the father of the child, accompanied by a number of friends, proceeds to the house of the mother. If he be a rich man, he takes with him a gallon of ardent spirits to be used onthe festive occasion. On arriving at the house, the friends form a circle round the father, who delivers a kind of address in which he acknowledges the kindness of the gods for giving him the child, and calls upon those present also to thank the fetishes on his account; then, taking the child in his arms, he squirts upon it a little spirit from his mouth, pronouncing the name by which it is to be called. A second name which the child usually takes is that of the day of the week on which it is born. The following are the names of the days in the Fanti language, varied in their orthography according to the sex of the child:—