_SOME AFRICAN SUPERSTITIONS._
Africa is the land of superstition,--dark, cruel, ghastly superstition. It
accompanies its victim from the cradle to the grave; throws its fell
shadow over every scene and incident of life. We cannot attempt, nor do we
desire, to paint it in all its horrors. For our purpose it will be
sufficient to glance at some of the ceremonies, hideous or grotesque,
which are practised by the Equatorial Savage.
In his childhood he has to be initiated into certain mysteries. What those
are Mr. Winwood Reade learned from a negro steward, who informed him that
he was taken into a fetich, or idol house, severely flogged, and plastered
with goat-dung: this ceremony, like the rites of masonry, being conducted
to the sound of music. Afterwards from behind a kind of screen or shrine
issued uncouth and terrible sounds such as he had never before heard.
These, he was told, emanated from the spirit called Ukuk. He afterwards
brought to Mr. Winwood Reade the instrument with which the fetich-man
produces the noise. It may be described as a whistle made of hollowed
mangrove wood, about two inches long, and covered at one end with a scrap
of bat’s wing. For a period of five days after initiation the novice wears
an apron of dry palm leaves.
He is next instructed in the science of fetich; and afterwards he learns
what kinds of food are forbidden to his tribe, for one tribe may not eat
crocodile, another hippopotamus, nor a third buffalo. He learns to
reverence and dread the spirit _Ukuk_, which dwells, it is said, in the
bowels of the earth, and visits the upper world only when he has some
business to perform. On the occasion of his visits, he abides in the
fetich-house, which is built in a peculiar form, roofed with dry plantain
leaves, and always kept in darkness. Thence strange dread sounds, like the
growling of a tiger, are heard to proceed, so that the women and children
shudder as they listen. When the mangrove-tube is thus at work, the
initiated hasten to the house, and a “lodge” or “council” is held.
“The natives of Equatorial Africa worship also the spirits of their
ancestors; a worship for which their minds are prepared by the veneration
which they pay to old age. Young men never enter the presence of an aged
person without curtseying (a genuine curtsey like that of a charity-school
girl), and passing in a stooping attitude, as if they were going under a
low door. When seated in his presence, it is always at a humble distance.
If they hand him a lighted pipe, or a mug of water, they fall on one knee.
If an old man, they address him as _rora_--father; if an old woman as
_ngwe_--mother. It is customary for only the old people to communicate bad
news to one another; and it is not to be wondered at that we find the
negroes such perfect courtiers, since it is the etiquette of the country
that the aged should only be addressed in terms of flattery and adulation.
“When they die their relics are honoured. In the Congo country their
bodies are dried into mummies. Here, their bones are sometimes stored up
and visited at set periods. Or, when a person noted for his wisdom has
died, his head, when partially decomposed, is often cut off and suspended,
so as to drip upon a mass of chalk placed underneath. This matter is
supposed to be the wisdom which formerly animated the brain, and which,
rubbed upon the foreheads of others, will communicate its virtue.”
It can easily be understood how this reverence paid to the relics of one’s
ancestors would develope into the worship of their spirits. The Equatorial
Savage believes that the manes of his forefathers influence his life and
fortunes entirely to his advantage, and by a dying friend or relative will
often send messages to them. Mr. Reade adds that a son has been known to
kill his aged mother from a conviction that her spirit would be of more
service to him than her substance; a reason for matricide which would
hardly be accepted as conclusive in civilised countries! The savage lives,
however, in constant communion and sympathy with the spirit-world. The
visions which come to him in his dreams, and the sounds which he fancies
himself to hear, are those of the Unseen. And as he is always brooding
upon his dreams and relating them to his friends, he necessarily dreams
the more, until it becomes difficult for him to draw a line between the
dream and the reality.
When any calamity befalls the tribe, or at the approach of any imminent
danger, they gather together on the brink of some lofty bluff, or on the
forest’s haunted threshold, and stretching their arms towards the sky,
while the women wail and the children weep, they call upon the spirits of
the departed to come and help them.
They have a remarkable ceremony which illustrates the force and vividness
of their belief in spirits:
When the dead are weary of staying in the bush, they come for one of their
people whom they most affect. And the spirit will say to the man: “I am
tired of dwelling in the bush; please to build for me in the town a little
house as close as possible to your own.” And he tells him to dance and
sing too; and accordingly the man assembles the women at night to join in
dance and song.
Then, next day, the people repair to the grave of the _Obambo_, or ghost,
and make a rude idol; after which the bamboo bier on which the body is
conveyed to the grave, and some of the dust of the ground, are carried
into a little hut erected near the house of the visited, and a white cloth
is draped over the door.
It is a curious fact, which seems to show that they have a legend
something like the old Greek myth of Charon and the Styx, that in one of
the songs chanted during this ceremony occurs the following line: “You are
well dressed, but you have no canoe to carry you across to the other
side.”
According to Mr. Reade, these savages have their Naiads and Dryads; their
spirits of the mountains and the forests, the lakes and the streams, and
the high places. They have also their Typhon and their Osiris, their Good
and Evil Genius; thus recognising, in common with almost every other
race, the enduring antagonism between the Principles and Powers of Good
and Evil. The Evil Spirit, _Mbwiri_, they worship with a special homage;
his might is to be dreaded, and his anger, if possible, averted. He is the
lord of earth; and before him, as before a tyrant whose hand can grasp
their lives and fortunes, they bend in humble adoration. But as the Good
Spirit will do them no injury, they conceive it unnecessary to address to
it any regular or formal prayer. “The word by which they express this
Supreme Being answers exactly to our word of God. Like the Jehovah of the
Hebrews, like that word in masonry which is only known to masters, and
never pronounced but in a whisper and in full lodge, this word they seldom
dare to speak; and they display uneasiness if it is uttered before them.
Twice only,” says Mr. Reade, “I remember having heard it. Once when we
were in a dangerous storm, the men threw their clenched hands upwards and
cried it twice. And again, when I was at Ngambi, taking down words from an
Ashira slave, I asked him what was the word for God in the language of his
country. He raised his eyes, and pointing to heaven, said in a soft voice,
_Njambi_.”
Epileptic diseases, in almost all uncivilised countries, are assumed to be
the result of demoniac possession. In Africa the sufferer is supposed to
be possessed by Mbwiri, and he can be relieved only by the intervention of
the medicine-man or fetich. In the middle of the street a hut is built for
his accommodation, and there he resides until cured, or maddened, along
with the priest and his disciples. There for ten days or a fortnight a
continuous revel is held; much eating and drinking at the expense of the
patient’s relatives, and unending dances to the sound of flute and drum.
For obvious reasons the fetich gives out that Mbwiri regards good living
with aversion. The patient dances, usually shamming madness, until the
epileptic attack comes on, with all its dreadful concomitants--the
frenzied stare, the convulsed limbs, the gnashing teeth, and the
foam-flecked lips. The man’s actions at this period are not ascribed to
himself, but to the demon which has control of him. When a cure has been
effected, real or pretended, the patient builds a little fetich-house,
avoids certain kinds of food, and performs certain duties. Sometimes the
process terminates in the patient’s insanity; he has been known to run
away to the bush, hide from all human beings, and live on the roots and
berries of the forest.
“These fetich-men are priest doctors, like those of the ancient Germans.
They have a profound knowledge of herbs, and also of human nature, for
they always monopolize the real power in the state. But it is very
doubtful whether they possess any secrets save that of extracting virtue
and poison from plants. During the first trip which I made into the bush I
sent for one of these doctors. At that time I was staying among the
Shekani, who are celebrated for their fetich. He came attended by
half-a-dozen disciples. He was a tall man, dressed in white, with a girdle
of leopard’s skin, from which hung an iron bell, of the same shape as our
sheep bells. He had two chalk marks over his eyes. I took some of my own
hair, frizzled it with a burning glass, and gave it to him. He popped it
with alacrity into his little grass bag; for white man’s hair is fetich of
the first order. Then I poured out some raspberry vinegar into a glass,
drank a little of it first, country fashion, and offered it to him,
telling him that it was blood from the brains of great doctors. Upon this
he received it with great reverence, and dipping his fingers into it as if
it was snap-dragon, sprinkled with it his forehead, both feet between the
two first toes, and the ground behind his back. He then handed his glass
to a disciple, who emptied it, and smacked his lips afterwards in a very
secular manner. I then desired to see a little of his fetich. He drew on
the ground with red chalk some hieroglyphics, among which I distinguished
the circle, the cross, and the crescent. He said that if I would give him
a fine ‘dush,’ he would tell me all about it. But as he would not take
anything in reason, and as I knew that he would tell me nothing of very
great importance in public, negotiations were suspended.”
The fetich-man seldom finds a native disposed to question his claim to
supernatural powers. He is not only a doctor and a priest,--two capacities
in which his influence is necessarily very powerful; he is also a
witch-finder, and this is an office which invests him with a truly
formidable authority. When a man of worth dies, his death is invariably
ascribed to witchcraft, and the aid of the fetich-man is invoked to
discover the witch.
“When a man is sick a long time,” said Mongilombas, “they call _Ngembi_,
and if she cannot make him well, the fetich-man. He comes at night, in a
white dress, with cock’s feathers on his head, and having his bell and
little glass. He calls two or three relations together into a room. He
does not speak, but always looks in his glass. Then he tells them that the
sickness is not of Mbwiri, nor of Obambo, nor of God, but that it comes
from a witch. They say to him, ‘What shall we do?’ He goes out and says,
‘I have told you: I have no more to say.’ They give him a dollar’s worth
of cloth; and every night they gather together in the street, and they
cry, ‘I know that man who witch my brother. It is good for you to make him
well.’ Then the witch makes him well. But if the man do _not_ recover,
they call the bush doctor from the Shekani country. He sings in the
language of the bush. At night he goes into the street; all the people
flock about him. With a tiger-cat skin in his hand, he walks to and fro,
until, singing all the while, he lays the tiger skin at the feet of the
witch. At the conclusion of his song the people seize the witch, and put
him, or her, in chains, saying, ‘If you don’t restore our brother to
health, we will kill you.’”
One evening, as Mr. Reade was sitting in a mission house at Corisco, with
the windows open, he heard a wild and piteous cry rising from a village at
a short distance. A sudden silence fell upon his friends. The school was
in the next room, and two girls who belonged to that village lifted up
their voices and wept. It was the death-knell, and the knell of more lives
than one. A chieftain for some time had been lying in a hopeless
condition, and a woman had been denounced for having bewitched him. She
had a son of about seven years of age, and fearing lest when he reached
manhood, he should become her avenger, the accusers included him also in
their denunciation. Both had been made prisoners, and on the death of the
chief would be killed.
The following day was Sunday, and Mr. Reade accompanied Mr. Mackay, the
missionary, to the village. The man was not dead; but he had suddenly
become speechless, and his attendants had concluded that the spirit had
departed. Entering the house, Mr. Reade found him lying on the bamboo
bedstead in a state of stupor. The house was thronged with women, who had
stripped off their garments and shaved the heads in token of mourning, and
were “raining tears” in their purchased and admirably acted grief.
Sometimes one of them would sit by his side, and flinging her arms around
him, would shriek--almost in the very words of the Irish death-wail,--“Why
did ye die, darling? why did ye die?” For they regarded him as really
dead, when he could neither look at them nor speak to them.
In contrast to their loud sorrow was the silent mourning of the men who,
hushed and fasting, sat in the chief house of the town. In their midst
crouched the seven years old boy, the marks of a severe wound visible on
his arm, and his wrists securely bound together. The dogged expression of
the child’s face was something wonderful. It wore that look of stolid
endurance which seems natural to the negro. One of the men with horrible
pleasantry held an axe below his eyes; but the boy contemplated it without
emotion--he displayed all the cold indifference of the ancient Stoicism.
When his name was first mentioned, his eyes flashed; but this indication
of passion was only momentary. He showed the same indifference when a plea
was put in for his life, as when, just before, he had been threatened and
taunted with death.
Mr. Reade did not see the unfortunate mother, but was afterwards told that
she had been flogged into confessing that she and she only had bewitched
the man. Her son had acknowledged the crime as soon as he was charged with
it. It is well known that such confessions amount to nothing. During the
witch epidemic in Mediæval Europe, scores of unhappy creatures confessed
to the practice of witchcraft, though by so doing they doomed themselves
to death. The imagination in some way or other is powerfully excited, and
completely overcomes the judgment; or it may be from a fear of torture or
a thirst for notoriety that such confessions are made.
Mr. Mackey, the missionary, said that he had come to speak to Okota, the
nearest kinsman of the dying chief, upon whom, in all such cases, the
responsibility rests. Okota came out from the throng, placed his stool
near the feet of the missionary, and listened to him attentively.
“Death,” said the missionary, “must come to all. It is foolish to think
that because a man dies he has been bewitched.”
“Yes,” replied Okota, “death must come to all, but not always from GOD.
Sometimes it comes from the hand of man.”
“But how do you know that in this instance it comes from the hand of man?”
“The woman has been given _quai_ (the drink of ordeal) to drink, and the
_quai_ says that she bewitched him.”
“But the _quai_ is not always right. When Cabinda went to the Muni, he was
a long time lost. All people said that he was dead. A man you declared was
the witch, you gave him _quai_; _quai_ said that the man had killed
Cabinda, but Cabinda came back alive, and _quai_ was wrong.”
A roar of laughter acknowledged the force of this pertinent reply.
“It is not only _quai_,” said Okota, “the woman confesses that she has
used the arts of witchcraft. Will any man come to you and say, ‘I have
stolen your fowl,’ if he has not stolen it? This woman is killing my
brother, when my brother is dead I will kill her.”
After so decisive a declaration, further argument was useless, and Mr.
Mackey was compelled to retire, unsuccessful.
The ordeal drink of Equatorial Africa is not identical with the
“red-water” of Northern Guinea. It is prepared from the root of a small
shrub called _Nkazya_, or _Quai_. Half a pint of the decoction is given to
the accused, and small sticks being laid down on the ground at a distance
of two feet apart, he is compelled to step over them five times. If the
potion act upon him as a diuretic, he is pronounced innocent; but in some
persons it produces vertigo. The sticks before his dizzy eyes rise like
great logs, and in his awkward efforts to stride across them, he reels,
falls to the ground, and is immediately assumed to be guilty.
Ultimately the chief died, and the woman and boy both suffered death. The
woman was taken out to sea in a boat, killed with an axe, and thrown
overboard. The boy was burnt alive, bags of gunpowder being tied to his
legs to shorten his sufferings.
Apart from these superstitions, Mr. Reade asserts that the negroes possess
the remnants of a noble and sublime religion, though they have forgotten
its precepts, and debased its ceremonies. They still retain their belief
in GOD, the One, the Supreme, the Creator. He has made mankind and the
world; He thunders in the air, He destroys the wicked with His bolts. He
rewards the good with long life; He gives them the rain, the fruits of the
earth, and all things that are good. He is far above all the other gods.
In some parts of Guinea the daily prayer is, “O GOD, I know Thee not, but
Thou knowest me, Thy aid is necessary to me.” At meals they say, “O GOD,
Thou hast given me this, Thou hast made it grow.” And when they work, “O
GOD, Thou hast caused that I should have strength to do this.” And another
of their prayers runs, “O GOD, help us, we do not know whether we shall
live to-morrow; we are in Thy hand.”[40]