Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)
FETICHISM IN WEST AFRICA
[Illustration: FETICH MAGICIAN. (With horns, wooden mask, spear, and
sword; dress of leaves of palm and plantain.)]
FETICHISM IN WEST AFRICA
_Forty Years' Observation of Native Customs
and Superstitions_
BY THE REV. ROBERT HAMILL NASSAU, M.D., S.T.D.
FOR FORTY YEARS A MISSIONARY IN THE GABUN DISTRICT
OF KONGO-FRANÇAISE
AUTHOR OF "CROWNED IN PALM LAND," "MAWEDO"
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS
YOUNG PEOPLE'S
MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
156 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1904_
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published October, 1904
PREFACE
On the 2d of July, 1861, I sailed from New York City on a little brig, the
"Ocean Eagle," with destination to the island of Corisco, near the
equator, on the West Coast of Africa. My first introduction to the natives
of Africa was a month later, when the vessel stopped at Monrovia, the
capital of the Liberian Republic, to land a portion of its trade goods,
and at other ports of Liberia, Sinoe, and Cape Palmas; thence to Corisco
on September 12.
Corisco is a microcosm, only five miles long by three miles wide; its
surface diversified with every variety of landscape, proportioned to its
size, of hill, prairie, stream, and lake. It is located in the eye of the
elephant-head shaped Bay of Corisco, and from twelve to twenty miles
distant from the mainland. Into the bay flow two large rivers,--the Muni
(the Rio D'Angra of commerce) and the Munda (this latter representing the
elephant's proboscis).
The island, with adjacent mainland, was inhabited by the Benga tribe. It
was the headquarters of the American Presbyterian Mission. On the voyage I
had studied the Benga dialect with my fellow-passenger, the senior member
of the Mission, Rev. James L. Mackey; and was able, on my landing, to
converse so well with the natives that they at once enthusiastically
accepted me as an interested friend. This has ever since been my status
among all other tribes.
I lived four years on the island, as preacher, teacher, and itinerant to
the adjacent mainland, south to the Gabun River and its Mpongwe tribe,
east up the Muni and Munda rivers, and north to the Benito River.
In my study of the natives' language my attention was drawn closely to
their customs; and in my inquiry into their religion I at once saw how it
was bound up in these customs. I met with other white men--traders,
government officials, and even some missionaries--whose interest in
Africa, however deep, was circumscribed by their special work for,
respectively, wealth, power, and Gospel proclamation. They could see in
those customs only "folly," and in the religion only "superstition."
I read many books on other parts of Africa, in which the same customs and
religion prevailed. I did not think it reasonable to dismiss curtly as
absurd the cherished sentiments of so large a portion of the human race. I
asked myself: Is there no logical ground for the existence of these
sentiments, no philosophy behind all these beliefs? I began to search; and
thenceforward for thirty years, wherever I travelled, wherever I was guest
to native chief, wherever I lived, I was always leading the conversation,
in hut or camp, back to a study of the native thought.
I soon found that I gained nothing if I put my questions suddenly or
without mask. The natives generally were aware that white men despised
them and their beliefs, and they were slow to admit me to their thought if
I made a direct advance. But, by chatting as a friend, telling them the
strange and great things of my own country, and first eliciting their
trust in me and interest in my stories, they forgot their reticence, and
responded by telling me of their country. I listened, not critically, but
apparently as a believer; and then they vied with each other in telling me
all they knew and thought.
That has been the history of a thousand social chats,--in canoes by day,
in camp and hut by night, and at all hours in my own house, whose public
room was open at any hour of day or evening for any visitor, petitioner,
or lounger, my attention to whose wants or wishes was rewarded by some
confidence about their habits or doings.
In 1865 I was transferred to Benito, where I remained until the close of
1871. Those years were full of travels afoot or by boat, south the hundred
miles to Gabun, north toward the Batanga region, and east up the Benito
for a hundred miles as a pioneer, to the Balengi and Boheba tribes,--a
distance at that time unprecedented, considering the almost fierce
opposition of the coast people to any white man's going to the local
sources of their trade.
After more than ten uninterrupted years in Africa, I took a furlough of
more than two years in the United States, and returned to my work in 1874.
I responded to a strong demand on the part of the supporters of Foreign
Missions in Africa, that mission operations should no longer be confined
to the coast. Unsuccessful efforts had been made to enter by the Gabun, by
the Muni, and by the Benito.
On the 10th of September, 1874, I entered the Ogowe River, at Nazareth
Bay, one of its several embouchures into the Atlantic, near Cape Lopez, a
degree south of the equator. But little was known of the Ogowe. Du
Chaillu, in his "Equatorial Africa" (1861), barely mentions it, though he
was hunting gorillas and journeying in "Ashango Land," on the sources of
the Ngunye, a large southern affluent of the Ogowe.
A French gunboat a few years before had ascended it for one hundred and
thirty miles to Lembarene, the head of the Ogowe Delta, and had attached
it to France. Two English traders and one German had built trading-houses
at that one-hundred-and-thirty-mile limit, and traversed the river with
small steam launches in their rubber trade. Besides these three, I was the
only other white resident. They were living in the Galwa tribe, cognate in
language with the Mpongwe. I settled at a one-hundred-and-fifty-mile
limit, in the Akele tribe (cognate with the Benga), building my house at a
place called Belambila.
Two years later I abandoned that spot, came down to Lembarene, and built
on Kângwe Hill. There I learned the Mpongwe dialect. I remained there
until 1880, successful with school and church, and travelling by boat and
canoe thousands of miles in the many branches of the Ogowe, through its
Delta, and in the lake country of Lakes Onange and Azyingo. In 1880 I took
a second furlough to the United States, remaining eighteen months, and
returning at the close of 1881.
My prosperous and comfortable station at Kângwe was occupied by a new man,
and I resumed my old _rôle_ of pioneer. I travelled up the Ogowe, one
hundred and fifty miles beyond Lembarene, ascending and descending the
wild waters of its cataracts, and settled at Talaguga, a noted rock near
which was subsequently established the French military post, Njoli, at the
two-hundred-mile limit of the course of the river. There I was alone with
Mrs. Nassau, my nearest white neighbors the two French officers five miles
up river at the post, and my successors at Kângwe, seventy miles down
river. The inhabitants were wild cannibal Fang, just recently emerged from
the interior forest. It was a splendid field for original investigation,
and I applied myself to the Fang dialect.
I remained at Talaguga until 1891, when I took a third furlough to the
United States, and stayed through 1892, during which time the Mission
Board transferred my entire Ogowe work, with its two stations and four
churches and successful schools, to the French Paris Evangelical Society.
In March, 1893, at the request of the Rev. Frank F. Ellinwood, D.D.,
LL.D., I wrote and read, before the American Society of Comparative
Religions, a forty-minute essay on Bantu Theology.
At the wish of that Society I loaned the manuscript to them, for their use
in the Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Exposition; but I carried
the original draft of the essay with me on my return to Africa in August,
1893, where I was located at Libreville, Gabun, the Mission's oldest and
most civilized station. There I found special advantage for my
investigations. Though those educated Mpongwes could tell me little that
was new as to purely unadulterated native thought, they, better than an
ignorant tribe, could and did give me valuable intelligent replies to my
inquiries as to the logical connection between native belief and act, and
the essential meaning of things which I had seen and heard elsewhere. My
ignorant friends at other places had given me a mass of isolated
statements. My Mpongwe friends had studied a little grammar, and were
somewhat trained to analyze. They helped me in the collocation of the
statements and in the deduction of the philosophy behind them. It was
there that I began to put my conclusions in writing.
In 1895 Miss Mary H. Kingsley journeyed in West Africa, sent on a special
mission to investigate the subject of freshwater fishes. She also
gratified her own personal interest in native African religious beliefs by
close inquiries all along the coast.
During her stay at Libreville in the Kongo-Français, May-September, 1895,
my interest, common with hers, in the study of native African thought led
me into frequent and intimate conversations with her on that subject. She
eagerly accepted what information, from my longer residence in Africa, I
was able to impart. I loaned her the essay, with permission to make any
use of it she desired in her proposed book, "Travels in West Africa." When
that graphic story of her African wanderings appeared in 1897, she made
courteous acknowledgment of the use she had made of it in her chapters on
Fetich.
On page 395 of her "Travels in West Africa," referring to my missionary
works, and to some contributions I had made to science, she wrote: "Still
I deeply regret he has not done more for science and geography.... I beg
to state I am not grumbling at him ... but entirely from the justifiable
irritation a student of fetich feels at knowing that there is but one copy
of this collection of materials, and that this copy is in the form of a
human being, and will disappear with him before it is half learned by us,
who cannot do the things he has done."
This suggestion of Miss Kingsley's gave me no new thought; it only
sharpened a desire I had hopelessly cherished for some years. In my many
missionary occupations--translation of the Scriptures, and other duties--I
had never found the strength, when the special missionary daily work was
done, to sit down and put into writing the mass of material I had
collected as to the meaning and uses of fetiches. Nor did I think it right
for me to take time that was paid for by the church in which to compile a
book that would be my own personal pleasure and property.
Impressed with this idea, on my fourth furlough to America in 1899, I
confided my wish to a few personal friends, telling them of my plan, not
indeed ever to give up my life-work in and for Africa, but to resign from
connection with the Board; and, returning to Africa under independent
employ and freed from mission control, but still working under my
Presbytery, have time to gratify my pen.
One of these friends was William Libbey, D. Sc., Professor of Physical
Geography and Director of the E. M. Museum of Geology and Archæology in
Princeton University. Without my knowledge he subsequently mentioned the
subject to his university friend, Rev. A. Woodruff Halsey, D.D., one of
the Secretaries of the Board of Foreign Missions. Dr. Halsey thought my
wish could be gratified without my resigning from the Board's service.
In November, 1899, the following action of the Board was forwarded to me:
"November 20th, 1899. In view of the wide and varied information possessed
by the Rev. Robert H. Nassau, D.D., of the West Africa Mission, regarding
the customs and traditions of the tribes on the West Coast, and the
importance of putting that knowledge into some permanent form, the Board
requested Dr. Nassau to prepare a volume or volumes on the subject; and it
directed the West Africa Mission to assign him, on his return from his
furlough, to such forms of missionary work as will give him the necessary
leisure and opportunity."
On my return to Africa in 1900, I was located at Batanga, one hundred and
seventy miles north of Gabun, and was assigned to the pastorate of the
Batanga Church, the largest of the twelve churches of the Corisco
Presbytery, with itineration to and charge of the sessions of the Kribi
and Ubenji churches.
During intervals of time in the discharge of these pastoral duties my
recreation was the writing and sifting of the multitude of notes I had
collected on native superstition during the previous quarter of a century.
The people of Batanga, though largely emancipated from the fetich
practices of superstition, still believed in its witchcraft aspect. I
began there to arrange the manuscript of this work. There, more than
elsewhere, the natives seemed willing to tell me tales of their folk-lore,
involving fetich beliefs. From them, and also from Mpongwe informants,
were gathered largely the contents of Chapters XVI and XVII.
And now, on this my fifth furlough, the essay on Bantu Theology has grown
to the proportions of this present volume.
The conclusions contained in all these chapters are based on my own
observations and investigations.
Obligation is acknowledged to a number of writers on Africa and others,
quotations from whose books are credited in the body of this work. I quote
them, not as informants of something I did not already know, but as
witnesses to the fact of the universality of the same superstitious ideas
all over Africa.
By the courtesy of the American Geographical Society, Chapters IV, V, X,
and XI have appeared in its Bulletin during the years 1901-1903.
I am especially obligated to Professor Libbey for his sympathetic
encouragement during the writing of my manuscript, and for his judicious
suggestions as to the final form I have given it.
ROBERT HAMILL NASSAU
PHILADELPHIA, _March 24, 1904_
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
CONSTITUTION OF NATIVE AFRICAN SOCIETY--SOCIOLOGY 1
I. The Country 2
II. The Family 3
Family Responsibility.--Family Headship.--Marital
Relations.--Arrangements for Marriage.--Courtship and
Wedding.--Dissolution of Marriage.--Illegitimate Marital
Relations.--Domestic Life.
III. Succession to Property and Authority 13
IV. Political Organization 13
V. Servants 14
VI. Kingship 15
VII. Fetich Doctors 16
VIII. Hospitality 17
IX. Judicial System 17
Courts.--Punishment.--Blood-Atonement and Fines.--
Punishable Acts.
X. Territorial Relations 22
Tenure.--Rights in Movables.
XI. Exchange Relations 23
XII. Religion 25