If one depends upon the aborigines for a clue as to the origin of the
_nomoli_ the enquiry would, like Kipling's "eathen," "end where it
began." The whole thing is veiled in mystery; there is not even a
legend about it. All that the native would tell you, and it is what he
honestly believes to be the truth, is that the image was created by
Gehwor (God) and came down directly from heaven. The fact that no
sculpturing of the kind is now-a-days prosecuted in the country,
although the Sherbros are clever at wood-carving, makes him ridicule
the idea that the _nomoli_ is man's handiwork. The enquiring student
must for the present, therefore, go upon very scanty basis to
formulate his theory. In order to help in the solution of this problem
I shall state one or two facts about the natives of these regions. The
Sherbros and Mendis, both of whom inhabit the vast territory known as
Sherbroland, are, of all primitive Africans, the least given to fetish
worship. This fact has always proved a stumbling-block to the spread
of Mohammedanism in that part of the world. Arab as well as Negro
Moslem missionaries have always found the Sherbro and Mendi man rather
hard nuts to crack. Many an emissary of the prophet has invaded
Sherbroland, exposing for sale all the tempting superstitious
paraphernalia of the faith, but the native has almost invariably
beaten him with his cold logic.
"How long does it take to come here from Mecca?" once asked a native
of an Arab Sheik, who went out hawking some charms in the course of a
religious tour. "Oh, more than a month," answered the unsuspecting
Moslem. "A month!" exclaimed the intended convert. "Yes." "And you
have come all that distance to help us with these things?" "Yes."
"Then you must have paid quite a lot of money for your passage?"
"Quite a lot." "And I dare say, you must have only a little money left
now?" pursued the native. "Oh, yes, that's why I am selling these
potent charms so cheaply, because I wish to raise money to go back
home," confessed the true believer. "But how is that?" queried the
native; "if, as you say, these charms can make a poor man become rich,
how is it that you did not stay in Mecca and use them yourself to
become rich instead of coming all the way here to sell them to get
money?"
As this attitude towards charms, which is typical of the Sherbro
natives, shows that they are not a fetish worshipping people, it can
hardly be supposed that the _nomolis_ are relics of that superstition.
If this were the case, it could easily be suggested by those who wish
to discredit the race that the images might have been made by members
of some foreign race and exported to the "heathen," who are supposed
to delight in "bowing down to wood and stone," a sort of execution to
order. This should be quite possible, because it was recently
discovered that a certain London firm did a thriving business in idols
with China; and it has even been suggested that the _nomolis_ were
imported into Sherbroland from Phoenicia.
But such a contingency being ruled out of court, in view of the
Sherbro native's antipathy to idol worship, we must look for an
explanation of the origin of the _nomoli_ to one other feature in the
customs of Sherbroland. The Sherbros have a custom almost similar to
that of the Timnis, a kindred people. The latter are given to ancestor
worship. At the burial of a Timni, a few stones are placed upon the
grave, and after three days, when the spirit of the deceased is
supposed to have entered into the stones, they are removed to a little
shrine in the porch of the family house. The spirit then becomes a
guardian angel, and offerings are made at the shrine from day to day.
The Sherbros also make use of stones for the reception of the spirits
of their departed ones, but not with a view to ancestor worship. If a
Sherbro happened to die away from home, which is considered a great
calamity, the remains are either exhumed and brought back to the old
familiar scenes, or, if the distance be too great, three stones are
taken to the last resting place and, after three days in the case of a
male, or four days in the case of a female, the spirit is supposed to
have entered the stones, and the latter are brought to the old town
and _buried_.
Is it not possible, then, that the _nomolis_ are real pictures of some
ancient Sherbro men and women, and that these people, dying away from
"home, sweet home," their images, after having supposedly received
their spirits, were interred in the old homeland? I believe the Rev.
Dr. Hayford in his "Ethiopia Unbound" suggests that Ethiopia or
Negrodom was once the mistress of the world; that much-talked-of Egypt
was but a province of hers, and the pharaohs not real kings, but
merely governors sent from the mother country. If this be true, might
it not be that some of these _nomolis_ are sculptures of eminent men
and women, natives of the region now known as Sherbroland, who went to
far-away Egypt as Empire builders, lost their lives in the land of the
sphynx; and, since distance prevented the return of their bodies,
their busts, after receiving their imperishable parts, were brought
back home and buried with due solemnity "under the stately walls of
Troy?"