CHAPTER XVII

FETICH IN FOLK-LORE 330

I. Queen Ngwe-nkonde and her Manja 332

II. The Beautiful Daughter 337

III. The Husband that Came from an Animal 346

IV. The Fairy Wife 351

V. The Thieves and their Enchanted House 358

VI. Banga-of-the-five-faces 367

VII. The Two Brothers 372

VIII. Jeki and his Ozâzi 378

GLOSSARY 387

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fetich Magician _Frontispiece_

Facing Page

Native King in the Niger Delta 16

English Trading-House--Gabun 24

Fetich Doctor 86

Elephants' Tusks and Palm-leaf Thatch. Two Hundred Miles

up the Ogowe River 148

War Canoe.--Calabar, West Africa 174

Natives Trading in Plantains and Bamboo Building

Materials.--Gabun 182

Travelling by Canoe.--Ogowe River 198

A Civilized Family.--Gabun 236

Njembe. Female Secret Society.--Mpongwe, Gabun 254

Ekope of the Ivanga Dance.--Gabun 296

A Street in Libreville, Gabun 300

Map of the West African Coast 1

FETICHISM IN WEST AFRICA

CHAPTER I

CONSTITUTION OF NATIVE AFRICAN SOCIETY--SOCIOLOGY

That stream of the Negro race which is known ethnologically as "Bantu,"

occupies all of the southern portion of the African continent below the

fourth degree of north latitude. It is divided into a multitude of tribes,

each with its own peculiar dialect. All these dialects are cognate in

their grammar. Some of them vary only slightly in their vocabulary. In

others the vocabulary is so distinctly different that it is not understood

by tribes only one hundred miles apart, while that of others a thousand

miles away may be intelligible.

In their migrations the tribes have been like a river, with its windings,

currents swift or slow; there have been even, in places, back currents;

and elsewhere quiet, almost stagnant pools. But they all--from the Divala

at Kamerun on the West Coast across to the Kiswahile at Zanzibar on the

East, and from Buganda by the Victoria Nyanza at the north down to Zulu in

the south at the Cape--have a uniformity in language, tribal organization,

family customs, judicial rules and regulations, marriage ceremonies,

funeral rites, and religious beliefs and practice. Dissimilarities have

crept in with mixture among themselves by intermarriage, the example of

foreigners, with some forms of foreign civilization and education,

degradation by foreign vice, elevation by Christianity, and compulsion by

foreign governments.

As a description of Bantu sociology, I give the following outline which

was offered some years ago, in reply to inquiries sent to members of the

Gabun and Corisco Mission living at Batanga, by the German Government, in

its laudable effort to adapt, as far as consistent with justice and

humanity, its Kamerun territorial government to the then existing tribal

regulations and customs of the tribes living in the Batanga region. This

information was obtained by various persons from several sources, but

especially from prominent native chiefs, all of them men of intelligence.

In their general features these statements were largely true also for all

the other tribes in the Equatorial Coast region, and for most of the

interior Bantu tribes now pressing down to the Coast. They were more

distinctly descriptive of Batanga and the entire interior at the time of

their formulation. But in the ten years that have since passed, a stranger

would find that some of them are no longer exact. Foreign authority has

removed or changed or sapped the foundations of many native customs and

regulations, while it has not fully brought in the civilization of

Christianity. The result in some places, in this period of transition, has

been almost anarchy,--making a despotism, as under Belgian misrule in the

so-called Kongo "Free" State; or commercial ruin, as under French monopoly

in their Kongo-Français; and general confusion, under German hands, due to

the arbitrary acts of local officials and their brutal black soldiery.

I. THE COUNTRY.

The coast between 5° and 4° N. Lat. is called "Kamerun." This is not a

native word: it was formerly spelled by ships' captains in their trade

"Cameroons." Its origin is uncertain. It is thought that it came from the

name of the Portuguese explorer Diego Cam. The tribes in that region are

the Divala, Isubu, Balimba, and other lesser ones.

The coast from 4° to 3° N. Lat. has also a foreign name, "Batanga." I do

not know its origin.

The coast from 3° to 2° N. Lat. is called, by both natives and foreigners,

"Benita"; at 1° N., by foreigners, "Corisco," and by natives, "Benga." The

name "Corisco" was given by Spaniards to an island in the Bay of Benga

because of the brilliant coruscations of lightning so persistent in that

locality. The Benga dialect is taken as the type of all the many dialects

used from Corisco north to Benita, Bata, Batanga, and Kamerun.

From 1° N. to 3° S. is known as the "Gabun country," with the Mpongwe

dialect, typical of its many congeners, the Orungu, Nkâmi (miscalled

"Camma"), Galwa, and others.

From 3° S. to the Kongo River, at 6° S., the Loango tribe and dialect

called "Fyât" are typical; and the Kongo River represents still another

current of tribe and dialect.

In the interior, subtending the entire coast-line as above mentioned, are

the several clans of the great Fang tribe, making a fifth distinctly

different type, known by the names "Osheba," "Bulu," "Mabeya," and others.

The name "Fang" is spelled variously: by the traveller Du Chaillu, "Fañ";

by the French traveller, Count de Brazza, "Pahouin"; by their Benga

neighbors, "Pangwe"; and by the Mpongwe, "Mpañwe." These tribes all have

traditions of their having come from the far Northeast.

Before foreign slave-trade was introduced, and subsequently the ivory,

rubber, palm-oil, and mahogany trades, the occupations of the natives were

hunting, fishing, and agriculture. They subsisted on wild meats, fish,

forest fruits and nuts, and the cultivated plantains, cassava, maize,

ground-nuts, yams, eddoes, sweet potatoes, and a few other vegetables.

II. THE FAMILY.

The family is the unit in native sociology. There is the narrow circle of

relationship expressed by the word "ijawe," plural "majawe" (a derivative

of the verb "jaka" = to beget), which includes those of the immediate

family, both on the father's as well as on the mother's side (_i. e._,

blood-relatives). The wider circle expressed by the word "ikaka" (pl.

"makaka") includes those who are blood-relatives, together with those

united to them by marriage.

In giving illustrative native words I shall use the Benga dialect as

typical. All the tribes have words indicating the relationships of father,

mother, brother, sister. A nephew, while calling his own father "paia,"

calls an uncle who is older than himself "paia-utodu"; one younger than

himself he calls "paia-ndembe." His own mother he calls "ina," and

his aunts "ina-utodu" and "ina-ndembe," respectively, for one who is

older or younger than himself.

A cousin is called "mwana-paia-utodu," or "-ndembe," as the case may

be, according to age. These same designations are used for both the

father's and the mother's side. A cousin's consanguinity is considered

almost the same as that of brother or sister. They cannot marry. Indeed,

all lines of consanguinity are carried farther, in prohibition of

marriage, than in civilized countries.

1. _Family Responsibility._ Each family is held by the community

responsible for the misdeeds of its members. However unworthy a man may

be, his "people" are to stand by him, defend him, and even claim as right

his acts, however unjust. He may demand their help, however guilty he may

be. Even if his offence be so great that his own people have to

acknowledge his guilt, they cannot abjure their responsibility. Even if he

be worthy of death, and a ransom is called for, they must pay it: not only

his rich relatives, but all who are at all able must help.

There is a narrower family relationship, that of the household, or "diyâ"

(the hearth, or fireplace; derivative of the verb "diyaka" = to live).

There are a great many of these. Their habitations are built in one

street, long or short, according to the size of the man's family.

In polygamy each wife has a separate house, or at least a separate room.

_Her_ children's home is in that house. Each woman rules her own house and

children.

One of these women is called the "head-wife" ("konde"--queen). Usually

she is the first wife. But the man is at liberty to displace her and put a

younger one in her place.

The position of head-wife carries with it no special privileges except

that she superintends; but she is not herself excused from work. In the

community she is given more respect if the husband happens to be among the

"headmen" or chiefs.

Each wife is supplied by the husband, but does not personally own her own

house, kitchen utensils, and garden tools. She makes her own garden or

"plantation" ("mwanga").

There is no community in ownership of a plantation. Each one chooses a

spot for himself. Nor is there land tenure. Any man can go to any place

not already occupied, and choose a site on which to build, or to make a

garden; and he keeps it as long as he or some member of his family

occupies it.

2. _Family Headship._ It descends to a son; if there be none, to a

brother; or, if he be dead, to that brother's son; in default of these, to

a sister's son. This headship carries with it, for a man, such authority

that, should he kill his wife, he may not be killed; though her relatives,

if they be influential, may demand some restitution.

If an ordinary man kills another man, he may himself be killed. For a debt

he may give away a daughter or wife, but he may not give away a son or a

brother. A father rules all his children, male and female, until his

death.

If adult members of a family are dissatisfied with family arrangements,

they can remove and build elsewhere; but they cannot thereby entirely

separate themselves from rule by, and responsibility to and for the

family.

A troublesome man cannot be expelled from the family village. A woman can

be, but only by her husband, for such offences as stealing, adultery,

quarrelling; in which case the dowry money paid by him to her relatives

must be returned to him, or another woman given in her place.

3. _Marital Relations._ Marriages are made not only between members of the

same tribe but between different tribes. Formerly it was not considered

proper that a man of a coast tribe should marry a woman from an interior

tribe. The coast tribes regarded themselves as more enlightened than those

of the interior, and were disposed to look down upon them. But now men

marry women not only of their own tribe but of all inferior tribes.

Polygamy is common, almost universal. A man's addition to the number of

his wives is limited only by his ability to pay their dowry price.

He may cohabit with a woman without paying dowry for her; but their

relation is not regarded as a marriage ("diba"), and this woman is

disrespected as a harlot ("evove").

There are few men with only one wife. In some cases their monogamy is

their voluntary choice; in most cases (where there is not Christian

principle) it is due to poverty. A polygamist arranges his marital duties

to his several wives according to his choice; but the division having been

made, each wife jealously guards her own claim on his attentions. A

disregard of them leads to many a family quarrel.[1]

If a man die, his brothers may marry any or all of the widows; or, if

there be no brothers, a son inherits, and may marry any or all of the

widows except his own mother.

It is preferred that widows shall be retained in the family circle because

of the dowry money that was paid for them, which is considered as a

permanent investment.

Ante-ceremonial sexual trials (the ancient German "bundling") are not

recognized as according to rule; but the custom is very common. If not

followed by regular marriage ceremony, it is judged as adultery.

While a man may go to any tribe to seek a wife, he does not settle in the

woman's tribe; she comes to him, and enters into his family.

4. _Arrangements for Marriage._ On entering into marriage a man depends on

only the male members of his family to assist him. If the woman is of

adult age, he is first to try to obtain her consent. But that is not

final; it may be either overridden or compelled by her father. The

fathers of the two parties are the ultimate judges; the marriage cannot

take place without their consent, after the preliminary wooing. The final

compact is by dowry money, the most of which must be paid in advance. It

is the custom which has come down from old time. It is now slightly

changing under education, enlightenment, and foreign law. The amount of

the dowry is not prescribed by any law. Custom alters the amount,

according to the social status of the two families and the pecuniary

ability of the bridegroom.

The highest price is paid for a virgin; the next, for a woman who has been

put away by some other man; the lowest price for widows. It is paid in

instalments, but is supposed to be completed in one or two years after the

marriage.

But the purchase of the woman by dowry does not extinguish all claim on

her by her family. If she is maltreated, she may be taken back by them, in

which case the man's dowry money is to be returned to him. Not only the

woman's father, but her other relatives, have a claim to a share in the

dowry paid for her. Her brothers, sisters, and cousins may ask gifts from

the would-be husband.

If a husband die, the widow becomes the property of his family; she does

not inherit, by right, any of his goods because she herself, as a widow,

is property. Sometimes she is given something, but only as a favor.

If she runs away or escapes, her father or her family must return either

her or the dowry paid for her.

On the death of a woman after her marriage, a part of the money received

for her is returned to the husband as compensation for his loss on his

investment. If she has borne no children, nothing is given or restored to

the husband.

If a woman deserts her husband, her family is required to pay back the

dowry. If the man himself sends her away, the dowry may be repaid on his

demand and after a public discussion.

There is no escape from marriage for a woman during her life except by

repayment of the money received for her.

Two men may exchange wives thus: each puts away his wife, sending her back

to her people and receiving in return the money paid for her. With this

money in hand each buys again the wife the other has put away; and all

parties are satisfied.

A father can force his daughter to marry against her will; but such

marriages are troublesome, and generally end in the man putting the woman

away.

A daughter may be betrothed by her parents at any time, even at birth. The

marriage formerly did not take place until she was a woman grown of twenty

years; now they are married at fifteen or sixteen, or earlier.

Marriage within any degree of consanguinity is forbidden. Marriage of

cousins is impossible. Disparity of age is no hindrance to marriage: an

old man may take a young virgin, and a young man may take an old woman.

There are no bars of caste nor rank, except the social eminence derived

from wealth or free birth.

Only women are barred from marrying an inferior. That inferiority is not a

personal one. No personal worth can make a man of an inferior tribe equal

to the meanest member of a superior tribe.

All coast tribes reckon themselves superior to any interior tribe; and, of

the coast tribes, a superiority is claimed for those who have the largest

foreign commerce and the greatest number of white residents.

A man may marry any woman of any inferior tribe, the idea being that he

thus elevates her; but it is almost unheard of that a woman shall marry

beneath her.

As a result of this iron rule, women of the Mpongwe and a few other small

"superior" coast tribes being barred from many men of their own tribe by

lines of consanguinity, and unable to marry beneath themselves, expect to

and do make their marriage alliances with the white traders and foreign

government officials. Their civilization has made them attractive, and

they are sought for by white men from far distant points.

Younger sons and daughters must not be married before the older ones.[2]

5. _Courtship and Wedding._ The routine varies greatly according to tribe;

and in any tribe, according to the man's self-respect and regard for

conventionalities. A proper outline is: First, the man goes to the father

empty-handed to ask his consent. The second visit he goes with gifts, and

the father calls in the other members of the family to witness the gifts.

On the third visit he goes with liquor (formerly the native palm wine, now

the foreign trade gin or rum), and pays an instalment on the dowry; on the

fourth visit with his parents, and gives presents to the woman herself. On

a fifth occasion the mother of the woman makes a feast for the mother and

friends of the groom. At this feast the host and hostess do not eat, but

they join in the drinking. Finally, the man goes with gifts and takes the

woman. Her father makes return gifts as a farewell to his daughter.

On her arrival at the man's village they are met with rejoicing, and a

dance called "nkânjâ"; but there is no further ceremony, and she is his

wife.

For three months she should not be required to do any hard work, the man

providing her with food and dress. Then she will begin the usual woman's

work, in the making of a garden and carrying of burdens.

Weddings may be made in any season of the year. Formerly the dry season,

or the latter part of the rainy, was preferred because of the

plentifulness of fish at these periods, and the weather being better for

outdoor sports and plays.

The man is expected to visit his wife's family often, and to eat with

them. Her mother feasts him, and he calls her parents to eat at his house.

6. _Dissolution of Marriage._ By death of the husband. Formerly, in many

tribes one or more of the widows were put to death, either that the dead

might not be without companionship in the spirit world, or as a punishment

for not having cared better for him in the preservation of his life.

Formerly the women mourned for six months; now the mourning (_i. e._, the

public wailing) is reduced to one month. But signs of mourning are

retained for many months in dark, old, or scanty dress, and an absence of

ornament.

The mourning of both men and women begins before the sick have actually

died. The men cease after the burial, but the women continue.

All the dead man's property goes to his male relatives. On the death of a

wife the husband is expected to make a gift to pacify her relatives.

Formerly the corpse was not allowed to be buried until this gift was made.

The demand was made by the father, saying, "Our child died in your hands;

give us!" Now they make a more quiet request, and wait a week before doing

so. Something must be given, even if the husband had already paid her

dowry in full.

Marriage can be dissolved by divorce at almost any time, and for almost

any reason, by the man,--by a woman rarely. The usual reasons for divorce

are unfaithfulness, quarrelling, disobedience, and sometimes chronic

sickness. There are many other more private reasons. In being thus put

away the woman has no property rights; she is given nothing more than what

the man may allow as a favor. If the woman has children, she has no claim

on them; they belong to the father. But if she has daughters who are

married, she can ask for part of the money which the husband received for

them. The man and the divorced woman are then each free to marry any other

parties.

7. _Illegitimate Marital Relations._ These are very common, but they are

not sanctioned as proper. The husband demands a fine for his wife's

infidelity from the co-respondent. Cohabitation with the expected husband

previous to the marriage ceremonies is common; but it is not sanctioned,

and therefore is secret.

The husband of a woman who is mother of a child begotten by another man

takes it as his own. If it be a girl, he (and not the real father) is the

person who gives her in marriage and retains the dowry.

8. _Domestic Life._ No special feast is made for the birth of either a son

or a daughter, but there is rejoicing. During the woman's pregnancy both

she and her husband have to observe a variety of prohibitions as to what

they may eat or what they may do. They cohabit up to the time of the

child's birth; but after that not for a long period, formerly three years.

Now it is reduced to one and a half years, or less. This custom is one of

the reasons assigned by men for the alleged necessity of a plurality of

wives.

During the confinement and for a short time after the birth, the wife

remains in the husband's house, and is then taken by her parents to their

house.

Deformed and defective children are kept with kindness as others; but

monstrosities are destroyed. Formerly in all tribes twins were regarded as

monstrosities and were therefore killed,--still the custom in some tribes.

In the more civilized tribes they are now valued, but special fetich

ceremonies for them are considered necessary.

In the former destruction of twins there were tribes that killed only one

of them. If they were male and female, the father would wish to save the

boy and the mother the girl; but the father ruled. A motherless new-born

infant is not deserted; it is suckled by some other woman.

A portion of the wearing apparel and other goods are placed in the coffin

with the corpse. The greater part of a man's goods are taken by his male

relatives. Formerly nothing was given to his widow; now she receives a

small part. And the paternal relatives of the dead man give something to

his maternal relatives.

The corpse is buried in various ways,--on an elevated scaffold, on the

surface of the ground, or in a shallow grave, rarely cremated. Formerly

the burial could be delayed by a claim for settlement of a debt, but this

does not now occur.

No coast tribe eats human flesh. The Fang and other interior tribes eat

any corpse, regardless of the cause of death. Families hesitate to eat

their own dead, but they sell or exchange them for the dead of other

families.

The name given a child is according to family wish. There is no law.

Parents like to have their own names transmitted; but all sorts of reasons

prevail for giving common names, or for making a new one, or for selecting

the name of a great person or of some natural object. A child born at

midday may be called "Joba" (sun), or, at the full moon, "Ngândê" (moon).

A mother who had borne nine children, all of whom had died, on bearing a

tenth, and hopeless of its surviving, named it "Botombaka" (passing away).

Circumcision is practised universally by all these tribes. An

uncircumcised native is not considered to be a man in the full sense of

the word,--fit for fighting, working, marrying, and inheriting. He is

regarded as nothing by both men and women, is slandered, abused, insulted,

ostracized, and not allowed to marry.

The operation is not performed in infancy, but is delayed till the tenth

year, or even later. The native doctor holds cayenne pepper in his mouth,

and, on completing the operation, spits the pepper upon the wound. Then

seizing a sword, he brandishes it with a shout as a signal to the

spectators that the act is completed. Then the crowd of men and women join

in singing and dancing, and compliment the lad on being now "a real man."

As natives have no records of births, they cannot exactly tell the ages of

their children, or the time when a youth is fit to marry or assume other

manly rights; but by the eighteenth or nineteenth year he is regarded with

the respect due a man. He can marry even as early as fifteen or sixteen.

There are no tests to which he is subjected as proof of his manhood.

A woman may speak in a court of trial, for defence of herself or friends.

She may also be summoned as a witness, but she has no political rights.

Aged persons are not put to death, to escape the care of them; they are

reasonably well provided for.

III. SUCCESSION TO PROPERTY AND AUTHORITY.

Only men inherit. The children of sisters do not inherit unless all the

children of the brothers are dead.

Slaves do not inherit.

"Chieftains" (those chosen to rule) and "kings" (those chosen to the

office) inherit more than their brothers, even though the ruling one be

the younger.

A woman does not inherit at any time or under any circumstances, nor hold

property in her own right, even if she has produced it by her own labor.

There is no supremacy in regard to age in the division of property. The

things to be inherited are women (the widows), goods, house, and slaves.

An equal division, as far as it is possible, is made of all these.

The dead man's debts are to be paid by the heirs out of their inheritance,

each one paying his part. There is no written will, but it is common for a

man to announce his intention as to the division while still living.

IV. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION.

The coast tribes and some of the interior have so-called "kings," who are

chosen by their tribe to that office.

There are family cliques for the accomplishment of a desired end, but

these are overruled by the tribal king.

There are headmen in each village with local authority; but they too are

subject to the king, they having authority only in their own village.

Quarrels and discussions, called "palavers," are very common. (A palaver

need not necessarily be a quarrel; the word is derived from a Portuguese

verb = "to speak." It comes from the old days of slavery; it was the

"council" held between native chiefs and white slave traders, in the

purchase of a cargo of slaves.)

The headmen settle disputes about marriage, property rights, murders, war,

thefts, and so forth. Their decisions may be appealed from to a chief, or

carried further to the king, whose decision is final. Any one, young and

old, male and female, may be present during a discussion. Usually only

chosen persons do the speaking.

Instead of a question being referred to a chief or king, a committee of

wise men is sometimes chosen for the occasion. Public assemblages are

gathered by messengers sent out to summon the people. The meeting is

presided over by the king.

V. SERVANTS.

The domestic servants are slaves. Prisoners of war are also made to do

service; but on the making of peace male prisoners are returned to their

tribe; the female prisoners are retained and married. Slaves were bought

from interior tribes. If a male child was born to slave parents, he was

considered free and could marry into the tribe. If the slave mother died,

the widower could marry into the tribe. If the slave father died, the

widow was married by some man of the family who owned him. There are no

slaves bought or sold now, but there is a system of "pawns,"--children or

women given as a pledge for a debt and never redeemed. Their position is

inferior, and they are servants, but not slaves.

Also, if a prominent person (_e. g._, a headman) is killed in war, the

people who killed him are to give a daughter to his family, who may marry

her to any one they please.

A pawn may be sent away by the holder to some other place, but he cannot

be sold or killed; but the holder may beat him if he be obstreperous.

During slavery days anything earned by a slave was taken to his master,

who would allow him a share; also, at other times, the master would give

the slave gifts. The slave could do paid labor for foreigners or other

strangers, and was not necessarily punished if he did not share his wages

with the master, but he would at least be rebuked for the omission. Women

ruled their female slaves. For a slave's minor offences, such as stealing,

the master was held responsible; for grave offences, such as murder, the

slave himself was killed.

Certain liberty was allowed a slave; he could attend the village or tribal

palavers and take part in the discussion. If a slave was unjustly treated

by some other person, his owner could call a council and have the matter

talked over, and the slave could be allowed to plead his case.

A slave man could hold property of his own; and if he were a worthy,

sensible person, he could inherit.

In a slave's marriage of a woman the custom of gifts, feasts, and so forth

was the same as for a free man.

If ill treated, he could run away to another tribe (not to any one of his

own tribe), and would there be harbored, but still as a slave, and would

not be given up to his former owner. A slave could become free only by his

master setting him free; he could not redeem himself.

VI. KINGSHIP.

Kingship has connected with it the great honor that a son may inherit it

if he is the right kind of man; but it is possible for him to be set aside

and another chosen. A son may lose his place by foolishness and

incompetency.

Attempts to rule independently of the king are sometimes made by cliques

composed of three or four young persons of the same age, who make laws or

customs peculiar to themselves. There is no national recognition of them,

nor are they given any special privilege.

Kings have very little power over the fines or property of others. These

are held, each man for himself; nor have they the right of taxation; but

they have power to declare war, acting in concert with their people in

declaring it and waging it. They administer justice as magistrates, decide

palavers according to the unwritten law of custom, summon offenders, and

inflict the punishment due.

Their dwellings differ but little from those of other persons of like

wealth and personal ability.

When a palaver is called, the king sits as ruler of the meeting and does

most of the talking. He provides food for those who come from a distance.

A king may be blamed if a war he has declared ends disastrously. While a

king's son expects to inherit the title and power, there is no invariable

rule of succession; he cannot take the position by force. He must be

chosen; but the choice is limited to the members of one family, in which

it is hereditary.

If the chosen person be a minor, another is selected (but of the same

family) to act as regent. The "incompetency" which could bar a man from

kingship, even though in regular succession, would be lack of stamina in

his character. The king-elect must make a feast, to which he is to call

all the people to eat, drink, and play for twenty days.

There are no higher state forms among the coast tribes, as in civilized

lands; no union among tribes; no feudal power nor vassals; no monarchy,

nothing absolute; no taxation, no monopoly. Some of the interior tribes

formerly had tributes and kingly monopoly of certain products.

VII. FETICH DOCTORS.

They still exist, but it can scarcely be said that they are a class. They

have no organization; they have honor only in their own districts, unless

they be called specially to minister in another place. They have power to

condemn to death on charge of causing sickness. In their ceremonies they

send the people to sing, dance, play, and beat drums, and they spot their

bodies with their "medicines." Any one may choose the profession for

himself; fetich doctors demand large pay for their services.

[Illustration: NATIVE KING IN THE NIGER DELTA.]

VIII. HOSPITALITY.

A stranger is entertained hospitably. He is provided with a house and food

for two weeks, or as much longer as he may wish to stay. On departing he

is given a present. His host and the village headman are bound to protect

him from any prosecution while he is their guest, even if he be really

guilty.

IX. JUDICIAL SYSTEM.

Such a _system_ does not exist. Whatever rules there are are handed down

as tradition, by word of mouth. There are persons who are familiar with

these old sayings, proverbs, examples, and customs, and these are asked to

be present in the trial of disputed matters.

1. _Courts._ In the righting of any wrong the head of the family is to

take the first step. If the offenders fail to satisfy him, he appeals to

the king, who then calls all the people, rehearses the matter to them, and

the majority of their votes is accepted by the king as the decision. The

offenders will not dare to resist.

There is no regular court-house. In almost all villages there is a public

shed, or "palaver-house," which is the town-hall, or public reception

room. But a council may be held anywhere,--in the king's house, in the

house of one of the litigants, on the beach, or under a large shady tree.

The council is held at any time of day,--not at night. There are no

regular advocates; any litigant may state his own case, or have any one

else do it for him. There are no fees, except to the king for his

summoning of the case. There is sometimes betting on the result; though no

stakes are deposited, the bets are paid. There is not much form of court

procedure. All the people of a village or district, even women and

children, according to the importance of the case, assemble. While women

are generally not allowed to argue in the case, yet their shouts of

approval or protest have influence in the decision, and encourage the

parties by outspoken sympathy.

If an accused person does not come voluntarily to court, the king's

servants are sent to bring him. In the court the accused does not need to

have some one plead for him, he speaks for himself. Accusers speak first,

then the accused; the accusers reply, the accused answers; and the king

and his aged counsellors decide. Witnesses are called from other places.

As there is no writing among untaught tribes, the depositions are by word

of mouth.

Formerly the accused was subjected to the poison ordeal; indeed, the

accuser also had to take the poison draught as a proof of his sincerity,

and that his charge was not a libel. But this custom is no longer

practised on the coast.

There is no substitution of any kind, except in rare cases. A guilty

person must bear his own punishment in some way.

Oaths are common, and are used freely and voluntarily in the course of the

discussion. A man who utters false testimony or bears false witness is

expected to be thrust out of the assembly, but it is not always done.

When an oath is required, there is no escape from it; he who refuses to

swear is considered guilty. Sometimes, under bravado, he will demand to be

given "mbwaye" (the poison test), hoping that his demand will not be

complied with. When the test is produced, he may seek to escape it by

refusing that particular kind and demanding another not readily

obtainable. But his attempt at evasion is generally regarded as a sign of

guilt.

In court, parties are not obstinate in their opinion; they ask for and

take advice from others.

2. _Punishment._ If it be capital, the accusers are the executioners.

Death is by various modes,--formerly very cruel, _e. g._, burning,

roasting, torturing, amputation by piecemeal; now it is generally by gun,

dagger, club, or drowning. For a debt that a creditor is seeking to

recover, securities may be accepted. But if the accused then runs away,

the person giving the security is tried and punished.

A creditor does not usually attach the property of the debtor, though

often, in the interior tribes, a woman is seized as hostage. If a long

time elapses in deciding the matter, the debtor may be held as prisoner

until the debt is paid. Formerly it was very common for the debtor's

family's property, or even their persons, to be seized as security; and it

still is common for a person of the debtor's tribe to be caught by the

creditor's tribe, and detained until he is redeemed by his own people.

The king of the prisoner's tribe is called to help release him. If the

king himself become a captive, his people combine to collect goods for the

payment, and meanwhile give other persons in his place to secure his

immediate release. Sometimes differences are settled in a fight, by a

hand-to-hand encounter.

3. _Blood Atonement and Fines._ Revenge, especially for bloodshed, is

everywhere practised. It is a duty belonging first to the "ijawe"

(blood-relative), next to the "ikaka" (family), next to the "etomba"

(tribe).

The murdered man's own family take the lead,--in case of a wife, her

husband and his family, and the wife's family; sometimes the whole

"ikaka"; finally, the "etomba."

A master seeks revenge for his slave or other servants. Formerly it was

indifferent who was killed in revenge, so that it be some member of the

murderer's tribe. Naturally that tribe sought to retaliate, and the feud

was carried back and forth, and would be finally settled only when an

equal number had been killed on each side,--a person for a person: a woman

for a man, or _vice versa_; a child for a man or woman, or _vice versa_. A

woman (wife of the man killed) does not take the lead in the revenge; his

family must take the lead, her family must join in. They would be despised

and cursed if they did not do so. The woman herself does not take part in

this killing for revenge.

The avenger of blood may not demit his duty until some member of the other

tribe has been killed. If a thief has been killed for his theft, blood may

be taken for his death. But when that one other life is taken, the matter

is considered settled; it is not carried on as a feud.

For a life taken by accident, a life is not required; but some penalty

must be paid, _e. g._, a woman may be given as a wife. But, practically,

in former times it was not admitted that "accidents" occurred; any

misfortune was adjudged a fault.

Formerly even the plea of self-defence was not accepted. Even idiotic or

otherwise irresponsible persons were held responsible, though sometimes

they were ransomed by payment of a woman and goods.

At present blood is not always required, but formerly no money would have

been accepted as a sufficient penalty. A man would have been despised for

accepting it. There was no way of settlement except by bloodshed,--a life

for a life,--except that, for the life of a woman, a woman and goods of a

certain amount and kind might be accepted. When a woman was thus given for

a murdered one, the living woman must not be old, but one capable of

bearing children. Among the acceptable goods were sheep, goats, and

pottery.

A wound or a broken limb is paid for in goods. These must come not solely

from him who caused the injury; his family, as fellow offenders, must

assist in paying.

The man who obtains the woman who is given for a woman killed, retains

with her also part of the goods given with her, and part he shares with

the family of the murdered one. If, in giving a woman for a murdered one,

the offending family is unable to furnish also the required goods, they

must sell another of their women in order to obtain those goods. The point

is that they must give a woman _and_ goods; _two_ women will not suffice.

The ceremonies in settlement of a blood-feud are as follows: The woman is

paid in presence of both parties; then the goods are given, counted, and

received. Then both parties retire. In the course of a week the parties

receiving the woman and the goods call the other party, and produce a goat

and kill it in their presence. It is divided equally, and given half to

each party; and the feud is settled, as by a covenant of peace, over the

divided goat (Gen. xv. 10). The woman thus given in settlement will be

married to some one.

The customs in her marriage are the same as for any other woman.

Subsequently those who paid her as a fine may come and ask a portion of

goods for her as a wife. Not that they have any claim on her as their

daughter; but the man who has married her will give the goods they ask

for, under the common belief that, unless he does so, the children born by

her will die early, or at least will not come to years of maturity.

All misdeeds and offences, even capital ones, may be condoned by a fine in

goods, excepting only the murder of a man. This murderer must forfeit his

life. These fines are paid with foreign goods, each offence having its own

regulation price as a punishment.

In general, the punishment for an injury is the same, whether the injured

one be rich or poor. A man's "majawe" are held responsible if he refuses

to make restitution. If they also refuse, the offended party await a

suitable opportunity, and then seize some one and hold him as a hostage

until he is redeemed, for the price of the original offence, every mite of

it being then exacted.

There is no right of asylum to any offender within the limit of his own

tribe. In case of a man visiting, for any reason whatever, in the limits

of another tribe one of whose members is a fugitive from justice into the

limits of the visitor's tribe, this visitor may be seized, and his

countrymen asked to extradite the criminal staying in their midst.

Corporal punishment is administered publicly, the townspeople being called

to witness it, so as to operate on their fears and cause them to dread the

doing of deeds which may bring on them such a penalty.

4. _Punishable Acts._ A person is punishable only for an injury committed

intentionally, not by accident.

For damages by cattle, the animal may be killed if the damage be

considerable. The injured party may keep and eat the carcass, and the

owner cannot recover for it. In this respect animals are treated as human

beings, their lives being forfeit; and the owner's majawe are held

responsible along with him.

Punishments are rated according to the degree of the crime, in the order

theft, adultery, rape, murder. Insults are not punishable by law; the

insulted insults in return. If a fight results, and wounds are made during

the fight, no fine is required.

Kidnapping, incest, and abortion are not known.

Under the slight duty owed to kings, treason can scarcely be said to

exist. Its equivalent, the betrayal of tribal interests, is publicly

rebuked, and a curse laid on the offender. If he be a servant, he is

beaten and sent away.

The disturber of the peace of a wedding is expected to express regret, but

no calamity will follow because of the disturbance. The offence is not

common.

X. TERRITORIAL RELATIONS.

The tribes have fixed settlements wherever foreign governments have not

taken possession. Each man may choose for a garden a place that has not

been already occupied. The land is common property for the tribe. But each

ijawe may choose a separate place for itself.

No man of a tribe has any claim on the soil other than is common to any

other man of that tribe. He has, however, a claim greater than any

stranger.

1. _Tenure._ Land is held as common property; it is not bought or sold to

a fellow-tribeman. It may be bought from the confines of another tribe,

and it is sold to foreigners. A hunter is free to go anywhere, even into

the territory of an adjacent tribe. If he kills game there, he does not

have to divide. Bee trees and honey are free to any one. The sea is free

for fishing only to the coast tribes.

Every woman has a separate garden; even the wives of polygamists do not

have gardens in common.

Soil is free. A family, however, may settle in a limited district, and

claim it as theirs as long as they live there; or, leaving it temporarily,

if they return after a reasonable time, they may still claim it. They

temporarily mark their places by trees or stones, as boundary lines. But

there is nothing permanent. They prove their right to it by residing on it

or making a garden from time to time. But their claim may be lost if the

entire family leave it and go elsewhere. Such a place being vacated, and

some one else wishing to occupy it, permission may be granted on formal

application to the king. But if an occupant has deserted a place, and no

one else has applied for it, he can resume it as his even after the lapse

of years.

Dwellers on any ground have right to all the trees of fruitage on it, _e.

g._, palm-nuts, and other natural wild edible nuts. Wells are never dug.

People depend on springs and streams. Springs are free, even though they

be on land claimed by others.

A man assists his wife in the clearing of the forest for a garden plot;

but she and her servants attend to the planting, weeding, and other

working of the garden itself.

2. _Rights in Movables._ The tenant dweller on any particular lot of

ground owns everything on it, except the ground itself. If a foreigner buy

a piece of ground, he may or may not buy the houses, and so forth,

according to agreement. The movables on any ground are houses, trees, and

any vegetables planted.

XI. EXCHANGE RELATIONS.

There is no coin or metal currency, except among the coast tribes, where

foreign governments have introduced it. Foreign trade-goods are everywhere

the medium of purchase and exchange. But there is a sort of currency, in

the shape of iron spear-heads and other forms resembling miniature

hatchets, a certain number of which are given by interior tribes in the

purchase of a wife. They are used only for this purpose, and are exchanged

by the parties themselves for the foreign goods required in the dowry.

They are manufactured by any village blacksmith from imported iron. They

are not received or recognized by white traders.

Formerly cowry shells were used, even by foreign traders, as a currency;

and they are still so used in the Sudan. But in all coast tribes purchase

and sale are effected by foreign-made calico prints, pottery, cutlery,

guns, powder, rum, and a great variety of other goods.

The natural products of the country--ivory, rubber, palm-oil,

dyewoods--and many other native unmanufactured articles are exchanged for

these goods. The natural products belong to the men. If a woman should

find ivory, she cannot sell it; it belongs to her husband to barter it.

Contracts are confirmed in various ways in different tribes. A common mode

is to eat and drink together, as a sign that the bargain is closed; and it

will not be broken. A contract cannot be broken after the price is agreed

upon, even if only a part of the price is paid; the remainder is to be

paid in instalments.

If one overreaches another in a trade, he must take back the imperfect

article or add to it. This is true, according to native law, among

themselves. Any amount of overreaching and deception is practised toward

foreigners in a trade, or to members of another tribe; and many foreigners

are just as guilty in their dealings with the natives.

Loans of trade-goods are constantly made, but the taking of interest

therefor is not known. If a borrowed article, such as a canoe, is broken

or lost, a new canoe must be given in its place. If the canoe is only

injured and had been in want of repair, the borrower, on returning it,

must repair it and also pay some goods. One going as surety for goods is

held responsible.

Pawning of goods is commonly practised everywhere.

People are generous in making gifts to friends, or donations to the needy;

but if a man who has been helped in time of distress subsequently

increases in wealth, the one who helped him may demand a return of the

original gift.

[Illustration: ENGLISH TRADING-HOUSE.--GABUN.]

XII. RELIGION.

Religion is intimately mixed with every one of these aforementioned

sociological aspects of family, rights of property, authority, tribal

organization, judicial trials, punishments, intertribal relations, and

commerce.

Mr. R. E. Dennett, residing in Loango, has made a careful and philosophic

investigation into the religious ideas of the Ba-Vili or Fyât nation and

adjacent tribes bordering on the Kongo. The result of his research shows

that the native tribal government and religious and social life are

inseparably united. He claims to have discovered a complex system of

"numbers" and "powers" showing the Loango people to be more highly

organized politically than are the equatorial tribes, and revealing a very

curious co-relation of those "numbers," governing the physical, rational,

and moral natures, with conscience and with God.

Some traces of the "numbers with meanings" are found in Yoruba, where, as

described by Mr. Dennett, the division of the months of the year, the

names of lower animals typical of the senses, and the powers of earth that

speak to us represent religious ideas and relations. They err, therefore,

who, as superficial observers, would brush away all these native views as

mere superstition. They are more than mere superstition; though indeed

very superstitious, they point to God.

The particular exponent of religious worship, the fetich, governs the

arrangements of all such relations. It will be discussed as to its origin

and the details of its use in the subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER II

THE IDEA OF GOD--RELIGION

Missionary Paul of Tarsus, in the polite exordium of his great address to

the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill, courteously tells them that he

believes them to be a very "religious" people,--indeed, too much so in

their broad-church willingness to give room for an altar to the worship of

any new immanence of God; and then, with equal courtesy, he tells them

that, with all their civilization, with all their eminence in art and

philosophy, they were ignorant of the true character of a greater than any

deity in their pantheon.

Modern missionaries, also, in studying the beliefs and forms of worship of

the heathen nations among whom they dwell, while they may be shocked at

the immoralities, cruelties, or absurdities of the special cult they are

investigating, have to acknowledge that its followers, in their practice

of it, exhibit a devotion, a persistence, and a faithfulness worthy of

Christian martyrs. They are _very_ "religious." Verily, if the obtaining

of heaven and final salvation rested only on sincerity of belief and

consistency of practice, the multitudinous followers of the so-called

false religions would have an assurance greater than that of many

professors of what is known as Christianity, and much of the occupation of

the Christian missionary would be gone.

I say _much_; but not all, by any means. For the feeling with which I was

impressed on my very first contact with the miseries of the sociology of

heathenism, entirely aside from its theology and any question of salvation

in a future life, has steadily deepened into the conviction that, even if

I were not a Christian, I still ought to, and would, do and bear and

suffer whatever God has called or allowed me to suffer or bear or do since

1861 in my proclamation of His gospel, simply for the sake of the

elevation of heathen during their present earthly life from the wrongs

sanctioned by or growing out of their religion. Distinctly is it true that

"Godliness is profitable unto all things," not only for the life "which is

to come," but also for "the life that now is." Those in Christian lands

who have no sympathy for, or who refuse to take any interest in, what are

known as "Foreign Missions," err egregiously in their failure to recognize

the indisputable fact that they themselves are debtors for their

possession of protected life, true liberty, and unoppressed pursuit of

personal happiness, not to civilization as such, but to the form of

religious belief called Christianity, which made that civilization

possible. And by just so much as divine law has ordained us each our

brother's keeper, we are bound to share the blessings of the gospel with

those whom God has made of one blood with us in the brotherhood of

humanity.

A pursuit of this line of thought would lead me into an argument for the

duty of foreign missions. That is not the direct object of these pages.

True, I pray that, as a result of any reader's following me in this study

of African superstition, his desire will be deepened to give to Africa the

pure truth in place of its falsity. But the special object of my pen, in

following a certain thread of truth, is to show how degradingly false is

that falsity, in its lapse from God, even though I accord it the name of

religion.

For my present purpose it is sufficiently accurate to define theology as

that department of knowledge which takes cognizance of God,--His being,

His character, and His relation to His Cosmos. Whenever any intelligent

unit in that Cosmos looks up to Him as something greater than itself,

under what Schleiermacher describes as "a sense of infinite dependence,"

and utters its need, it has expressed its religion. It may be weak,

superstitious, and mixed with untruth; nevertheless, it is religion.

When a study of God and the thoughts concerning Him crystallize into a

formula of words expressing a certain belief, it is definitely a creed.

When, under a human necessity, a creed clothes itself in certain rites,

ceremonies, and formulas of practice, it is a worship. That worship may be

fearful in its cruelty or ridiculous in its frivolity; nevertheless, it is

a worship. Worship is essential to the vitality of religion; without it

religion is simply a theory.

Theology differentiates itself from other departments of knowledge, as to

its source and its effects. For instance, in the study of geography, as to

its effects, it is comparatively a matter of indifference whether we

believe that the earth is flat or globular, like Booker T. Washington's

teacher who in his district school was prepared to teach either,

"according to the preference of a majority of his patrons"; or, in

astronomy, whether we believe that the sun is the stationary centre of our

planetary system, or whether, with the late Rev. John Jasper, we assert

that the sun "do move" around our earth.

But in theology it matters enormously for this present life, whether we

believe the supreme object of our worship to be Moloch, and infinitely for

our future life, whether Jesus be to us the Son of God.

As to the source of theological knowledge, all our other knowledge is

evolved, systematized, and developed by patient experiment and

investigation. The results of any particular branch of human knowledge are

cumulative, and are enlarged and perfected from generation to generation.

But the source of our knowledge of God is not in us, any more than our

spiritual life had its source in ourselves. It came _ab extra_. God

breathed into the earthly form of Adam the breath of life, and he became a

living creature, essentially and radically different from the beasts over

which he was given dominion. Knowledge of God was thus an original,

donated, component part of us. It grew under revelations made during the

angelic communications before the Fall. Revelation was continued by the

Logos along thousands of years, until that Logos himself became flesh and

dwelt among us in visible form in His written word, and by His Comforter,

who still reveals to us.

I do not feel it necessary here to discuss, or even to express an opinion

as to the evolution of the physical species. I know, simply because God

says so,--and am satisfied with this knowledge,--that "in the beginning

God created." As to _when_ that "beginning" was, there may be respectable

difference of opinion; for it is only a human opinion that asserts _when_.

Assertion may have apparently very reliable data; but these data often are

like the bits of glass, factors in the geometric figures of a

kaleidoscope, whose next turn in scientific discovery dislocates and

relocates in an apparently reliable proof of the existence of another

figure.

As to _what_ it was that God created in that beginning, there may be also

respectable difference of opinion. Whether, like Minerva, full armed from

the head of Jove, Adam sprang into his perfect physical, mental, and moral

manhood on the sixth of consecutive days of twenty-four solar hours each;

or whether, created a weakling, he slowly grew up to perfect development;

or whether life began only in protoplasm, and gradually differentiated

itself into the forms of beasts, and finally into that of man,--back of

all was a great First Cause that "created" in the "beginning." It is all a

subject fearfully wonderful.

"My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret, and

curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my

substance, yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my members were

written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none

of them."

But all such assertion, discussion, and attempt at proof I allow only to

what is physical and finite, and is therefore a legitimate subject of

assertion on merely physical data; for I do not desire to discuss, beyond

simple mention, the Spencerian doctrine of evolution, that materialism

which would make thought and soul only successions in a series (even if

the highest and best) of evoluted developments. To account for the

religious nature in man by evolution I regard as a thing that cannot be

done. It is a tenable position held by evolutionists such as Dana,

Winchell, and the late Professor Le Conte of California, that "at the

creation of man the divine fiat asserted itself, and 'breathed into man

the breath of life, and man became a living soul.' Immortality cannot be

evolved out of mortality. If Spencerian evolution is true, either

everything is immortal or nothing is immortal; man and vermin in this

hypothesis go together."

Man's soul came to him direct from God, a part of His own infinite life,

in His "image," and like Him in His holiness. Man's thoughts of God were

holy. The expression of them in words and acts was his practical religion,

the visible, audible link that "bound" (ligated) him to God. In this there

could be no evolution, unless that, in the many forms and ceremonies used

in the expression of religious thought (which ceremonies constitute

worship), there could be, and were, variation, change, development, or

retrogression.

Therefore I cannot accept the conclusions of those who in their study of

ethnology claim to find that the religious beliefs of the world, and even

the very idea of a Supreme Being, have been evolved by man himself _ab

intra_. They claim that this evolution has been by primitive man, from low

forms of beliefs in spiritual beings, through polytheism and idolatry, up

to the conception of monotheism and its belief in the one living God. This

process they claim to be able to follow on lines racial and national,

under the civilizations of Chaldee, Greek, Roman, Teutonic, and other

stocks.

"Until some human being can be found with a conception of spiritual

existences without his having received instruction on that point from

those who went before him, the claim ... that primitive man ever obtained

his spiritual knowledge or his spiritual conceptions from within himself

alone, or without an external revelation to him, is an unscientific

assumption in the investigation of the origin of religions in the

world."[3]

The rather I find, in my own ethnological observations during these more

than forty years in direct contact with aboriginal peoples, that the

initial starting-point of man's knowledge of God was by revelation from

Jehovah himself. This knowledge was to be conserved by man's conscience,

God's implanted witness,--a witness that can be coerced into silence, that

may be nursed into forgetfulness, that may be perverted by abuse, that may

be covered up by superimposed falsities, that may be discolored by the

blackness of foul degradation, but which can never be utterly destroyed;

which on occasions, like the Titans, arouses itself with volcanic force;

which at God's final bar is to be His sufficient proof for the verities

and responsibilities of at least natural religion ("natural" religion, a

recognition of certain attributes of God as revealed in the works of

nature). This knowledge of God, a treasure hid in earthen vessels, rightly

used and cherished, was to grow and develop under subsequent divine

revelation, so that man might become more and more like his divine

original; or, if abused, neglected, or perverted, it would carry him even

farther away from God.

"Not alone those who insist on the belief that there was a gradual

development of the race from a barbarous beginning, but also those who

believe that man started on a higher plane, and in his degradation

retained vestiges of God's original revelation to him, are finding profit

in the study of primitive myths, and of aboriginal rites and ceremonies

all the world over."[4]

I do not impeach the sincerity of those students of primitive thought who

teach that man in his religious beliefs has reached his present monotheism

by progressive growths from polytheism, or that he has attained his

present conception of the very existence of a Supreme Being by a gradual

emergence from a state of ignorance in which even the idea of such a being

did not exist; but I do discount the competency of many of the witnesses

on whose testimony they base their conclusions.

Whatever may be proved in a complete investigation by science into the

arcana of nature,--of archæology and other channels of research,--a

reverent comparison of these results of finite intelligence will find them

not inconsistent with the statements of God's infinite Word. Indeed, that

Word was not written to make any definite statement on astronomy or

geology, or any other human science. The only science of the Bible is that

of man's relation to his divine Father; its only history a history of

redemption, as promised to Eve and her seed, the Jewish nation, and as

fulfilled in the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Apparent conflicts of the

Bible with science are not always real; too often a claim is set up, based

on a single observation, perhaps hastily made, and not verified by a

comparison of the variable factors in that observation.

I suppose that it is true that in the theology of even the worst forms of

religion there is more or less truth, and almost equally true that in the

theology of the best forms there may be somewhat of superstition. This is

so because, as I believe, all religions had but one source, and that a

pure one. From it have grown perversions varying in their proportion of

truth and error.

In this study of the African theologic ideas I shall endeavor to separate

these two--the false and the true--into two divisions: First, Beliefs in

God more or less true, which have had their birth in tradition of some

divine revelation, which find at least faint echoes in human conscience,

and which among exalted nations would be formulated into confessions,

creeds, and articles of faith. Second, Animism or beliefs in vague

spiritual beings, which, being almost pure superstitions, cannot, from

their very nature, be accurately formulated, they being the outgrowth of

every individual's imagination, and varying with all the variances of

time, place, and human thought.

Eliminating from any theology its superstitious element, we shall find

the highest and truest religion. But if you eliminate from the theology of

the Bantu African its superstition, you will have very little left; for,

among the religions of the world, it comes nearest to being purely a

superstition. So nearly is this true that travellers and other superficial

observers and theorists have asserted that the religious beliefs of some

degraded tribes were _simply_ superstitions, destitute of reference to any

superior being.

I can readily see how the reports of some travellers--even of those who

had no prejudice against the Negro, the precepts of the Bible, or

missionary work--could be made in apparent sincerity, when they state that

native Africans have confessed of themselves that they had no idea of

God's existence; also, their belief that some pygmy and other tribes were

too destitute of intelligence to possess that idea,--that it either must

be given them _ab extra_ by the possessors of a superior civilization, or

must be developed by themselves as they rise in civilization.

The difficulty about the testimony of these witnesses in this matter is

that, being passers-by in time, they were unable--by reason of lack of

ability to converse fluently, or absence of a reliable interpreter, or of

being out of touch with native mode of thought or speech--to make their

questionings intelligible.

On the heathen side, also, the obsequious natives, unaccustomed to

analytic thought, will answer vaguely on the spur of the moment, and often

as far as possible in the line of what they suppose will best please the

questioner. All native statements must be discounted, must be sifted.

I am aware that some missionaries are quoted as having said or written

that the people among whom they were laboring "had no idea of God." Even

Robert Moffat is reported to have held this opinion. If so, it must have

been in the earlier days of his ministry, under his first shock at the

depth of native degradation, before he had become fluent in the native

language, and before he had found out all the secrets of that difficult

problem, an African's native thought. Such an unqualified phrase could be

uttered by a missionary in an hour of depression, in the presence of some

great demonstration of heathen wickedness, and in an effort to describe

how very far the heathen was from God. That the heathen had no _correct_

idea of God is often true.

Arnot, who among modern African missionaries has lived most closely and

intimately with the rudest tribes in their veriest hovels, writes:[5] "Man

is a very fragile being, and he is fully conscious that he requires

supernatural or divine aid. Apart from the distinct revelation given by

God in the first chapter of Romans, there is much to prove that the

heathen African is a man to whom the living God has aforetime revealed

himself. But he had sought after things of his own imagination and things

of darkness to satisfy those convictions and fears which lurk in his

breast, and which have not been planted there by the Evil One, but by God.

Refusing to acknowledge God,[6] they have become haters of God.[7] The

preaching of the gospel to them, however, is not a mere beating of the

air; there is a peg in the wall upon which something can be hung and

remain. Often a few young men have received the message with laughter and

ridicule, but I have afterwards heard them discuss my words amongst

themselves very gravely. I heard one man say to a neighbor, 'Monare's

words pierce the heart.' Another remarked that the story of Christ's death

was very beautiful, but that he knew it was not meant for him; he was a

'makala' (slave), and such a sacrifice was only for white men and

princes."

Lionel Declè,[8] who certainly is not prejudiced toward missionaries or

the Negro, writes of the Barotse tribe in South Africa and their worship

of ancestors: "They believe in a Supreme Being, Niambe, who is supposed to

come and take away the spiritual part of the dead." This name "Niambe,"

for the Deity, is almost exactly the same as "Anyambe," in Benga, two

thousand miles distant.

Illustrative of traveller Declè's haste or inexactitude in the use of

language, he apparently contradicts himself on page 153, in speaking of a

tribe, the Matabele, adjacent to the Barotse: "The idea of a Supreme Being

is utterly foreign, and cannot be appreciated by the native mind. They

have a vague idea of a number of evil spirits always ready to do harm, and

chief among these are the spirits of their ancestors; but they do not pray

to them to ask for their help if they wish to enter on any undertaking.

They merely offer sacrifices to appease them when some evil has befallen

the family."

Perhaps he and other cursory travellers, in making such hasty assertions,

mean that the native has no idea of the true character of God; in that

they would be correct.

The accounts which some travellers have given of tribes without religion I

either set down to misunderstanding, or consider them to be insufficient

to invalidate the assertion that religion is a universal feature of savage

life.

However degraded, every people have a religion. But they are children,

babes in the woods, lost in the forest of ignorance, dense and more

morally malarious than Stanley's forest of Urega. In their

helplessness, under a feeling of their "infinite dependence," they cry out

in the night of their orphanage, "Help us, O Paia Njambe!" Their

forefathers wandered so far from him that only a name is left by which to

describe the All-Father, whose true character has been utterly

forgotten,--so forgotten that they rarely worship him, but have given such

honor and reverence as they do render literally to the supposed spiritual

residents in stocks and stones. "Lo! this only have I found, that God hath

made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."

Offering in the following pages a formulation of African superstitious

beliefs and practice, I premise that I have gathered them from a very

large number of native witnesses, very few of whom presented to me all

the same ideas. Any one else, inquiring of other natives in other places,

would not find, as held by every one of them, all that I have recorded;

but parts of all these separate ideas will be found held by separate

individuals everywhere.

After more than forty years' residence among these tribes, fluently using

their language, conversant with their customs, dwelling intimately in

their huts, associating with them in the varied relations of teacher,

pastor, friend, master, fellow-traveller, and guest, and, in my special

office as missionary, searching after their religious thought (and

therefore being allowed a deeper entrance into the arcana of their soul

than would be accorded to a passing explorer), I am able unhesitatingly to

say that among all the multitude of degraded ones with whom I have met, I

have seen or heard of none whose religious thought was only a

superstition.

Standing in the village street, surrounded by a company whom their chief

has courteously summoned at my request, when I say to him, "I have come to

speak to your people," I do not need to begin by telling them that there

is a God. Looking on that motley assemblage of villagers,--the bold, gaunt

cannibal with his armament of gun, spear, and dagger; the artisan with

rude adze in hand, or hands soiled at the antique bellows of the village

smithy; women who have hasted from their kitchen fire with hands white

with the manioc dough or still grasping the partly scaled fish; and

children checked in their play with tiny bow and arrow or startled from

their dusty street pursuit of dog or goat,--I have yet to be asked, "Who

is God?"

Under the slightly varying form of Anyambe, Anyambie, Njambi, Nzambi,

Anzam, Nyam, or, in other parts, Ukuku, Suku, and so forth, they know of a

Being superior to themselves, of whom they themselves inform me that he is

the _Maker_ and _Father_. The divine and human relations of these two

names at once give me ground on which to stand in beginning my address.

If suddenly they should be asked the flat question, "Do you know

Anyambe?" they would probably tell any white visitor, trader, traveller,

or even missionary, under a feeling of their general ignorance and the

white man's superior knowledge, "No! What do _we_ know? You are white

people and are spirits; you come from Njambi's town, and know all about

him!" (This will help to explain, what is probably true, that some natives

have sometimes made the thoughtless admission that they "know nothing

about a God.") I reply, "No, I am not a spirit; and, while I do indeed

know about Anyambe, _I_ did not call him by that name. It's your own word.

Where did you get it?" "Our forefathers told us that name. Njambi is the

One-who-made-us. He is our Father." Pursuing the conversation, they will

interestedly and voluntarily say, "He made these trees, that mountain,

this river, these goats and chickens, and us people."

That typical conversation I have had hundreds of times, under an immense

variety of circumstances, with the most varied audiences, and before

extremes of ignorance, savagery, and uncivilization, utterly barring out

the admission of a probability that the tribe, audience, or individual in

question had obtained a previous knowledge of the name by hearsay from

adjacent more enlightened tribes. For the _name_ of that Great Being was

everywhere and in every tribe before any of them had become enlightened;

varied in form in each tribe by the dialectic difference belonging to

their own, and not imported from others,--for, where tribes are hundreds

of miles apart or their dialects greatly differ, the variation in the name

is great, _e. g._, "Suku," of the Bihe country, south of the Kongo River

and in the interior back of Angola, and "Nzam" of the cannibal Fang, north

of the equator.

But while it is therefore undeniable that a knowledge of this Great Being

exists among the natives, and that the belief is held that he is a

superior and even a supreme being, that supremacy is not so great as what

we ascribe to Jehovah. Nevertheless, I believe that the knowledge of their

Anzam or Anyambe has come down--clouded though it be and fearfully

obscured and marred, but still a revelation--from Jehovah Himself. Most of

the same virtues which we in our enlightened Christianity commend, and

many of the vices which we denounce, they respectively commend and

denounce. No one of them praises to me theft or falsehood or murder. They

speak of certain virtues as "good," and of other things which are "bad,"

though, just as do the depraved of Christian lands, they follow the vices

they condemn. True, certain evils they do defend, _e. g._ (as did some of

our New England ancestors) witchcraft executions, justifying them as

judicial acts; and polygamy, considering it (as our civilized Mormons) a

desirable social institution (but, unlike the Mormons, not claiming for it

the sanction of religion); and slavery, regarded (as only a generation ago

in the United States) as necessary for a certain kind of property. But

theft, falsehood, and some other sins, when committed by others, their own

consciences condemn,--closely covered up and blunted as those consciences

may be,--thus witnessing with and for God.

While all this is true, their knowledge of God is almost simply a theory.

It is an accepted belief, but it does not often influence their life. "God

is not in all their thought." In practice they give Him no worship. God is

simply "counted out."

Resuming my street-preaching conversation: Immediately after the admission

by the audience of their knowledge of Anzam as the Creator and Father, I

say, "Why then do you not obey this Father's commands, who tells you to do

so and so? Why do you disobey his prohibitions, who forbids you to do so

and so? Why do you not worship him?" Promptly they reply: "Yes, he made

us; but, having made us, he abandoned us, does not care for us; he is far

from us. Why should we care for him? He does not help nor harm us. It is

the spirits who can harm us whom we fear and worship, and for whom we

care."

Another witness on this subject is the Rev. Dr. J. L. Wilson.[9] Speaking

of Africa and its Negro inhabitants, he says: "The belief in one great

Supreme Being is universal. Nor is this idea held imperfectly or obscurely

developed in their minds. The impression is so deeply engraved upon their

moral and mental nature that any system of atheism strikes them as too

absurd and preposterous to require a denial. Everything which transpires

in the natural world beyond the power of man or of spirits, who are

supposed to occupy a place somewhat higher than man, is at once and

spontaneously ascribed to the agency of God. All the tribes in the country

with which the writer has become acquainted (and they are not few) have a

name for God; and many of them have two or more, significant of His

character as a Maker, Preserver, and Benefactor. (In the Grebo country

Nyiswa is the common name for God; but He is sometimes called Geyi,

indicative of His character as Maker. In Ashanti He has two names: _viz._,

Yankumpon, which signifies 'My Great Friend,' and Yemi, 'My Maker.') The

people, however, have no correct idea of the character or attributes of

the Deity. Destitute of (a written) revelation, and without any other

means of forming a correct conception of His moral nature, they naturally

reason up from their own natures, and, in consequence, think of Him as a

being like themselves.

"Nor have they any correct notion of the control which God exercises over

the affairs of the world. The prevailing notion seems to be that God,

after having made the world and filled it with inhabitants, retired to

some remote corner of the universe, and has allowed the affairs of the

world to come under the control of evil spirits; and hence the only

religious worship that is ever performed is directed to these spirits, the

object of which is to court their favor, or ward off the evil effects of

their displeasure.

"On some rare occasions, as at the ratification of an important treaty, or

when a man is condemned to drink the 'red-water ordeal,' the name of God

is solemnly invoked; and, what is worthy of note, is invoked _three times_

with marked precision. Whether this involves the idea of a Trinity we

shall not pretend to decide; but the fact itself is worthy of record. Many

of the tribes speak of the 'Son of God.' The Grebos call him 'Greh,' and

the Amina people, according to Pritchard, call him 'Sankombum.'"

The following testimony I gather from conversations with the late Rev.

Ibia j'Ikenge, a native minister and member of the Presbytery of

Corisco, who himself was born in heathenism. He stated:

That his forefathers believed in many inferior agencies who are under the

control of a Superior Being; that they were therefore primitive

monotheists. Under great emergencies they looked beyond the lower beings,

and asked help of that Superior; before doing so, they prayed to him,

imploring him as Father to help;

That the people of this country believed God made the world and everything

in it; but he did not know whether they had had any ideas about creation

from dust of the ground or in God's likeness;

That they believed in the existence, in the first times, of a great man,

who had simply to speak, and all things were made by the word of his

power. As to man's creation, a legend states it thus: Two eggs fell from

on high. On striking the ground and breaking, one became a man and the

other a woman. (Apparently there is no memory of any legend indicating the

name, character, or work of the Holy Spirit.)

That there is a legend of a great chief of a village who always warned

people not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree. Finally, he himself ate

of it and died;

That there was no legend, but, among a few persons, a vague tradition of a

once happy period, and of a coming time of good; but he knew of nothing

corresponding to the story of Cain and Abel;

That there is a fable that a woman brought to the people of her village

the fruit of a forbidden tree. In order to hide it she swallowed it; and

she became possessed of an evil spirit, which was the beginning of

witchcraft; That there was some tradition of a Deluge (he was not aware

of any about the Dispersion at the Tower of Babel);

That all men believed they were sinners, but that they knew of no remedy

for sin;

That sacrifices are made constantly, their object being to appease the

spirits and avert their anger;

That many of the tribes are, and probably all, before they emerged on the

seacoast, were cannibal (of the origin of cannibalism he did not know, but

he was certain it had no religious idea associated with it[10]);

That there was a legend that a "Son" of God, by name Ilongo ja Anyambe,

was to come and deliver mankind from trouble and give them happiness; but

as he had not as yet come, the heathen were no longer expecting him;

That there was a division of time, six months, making an "upuma," or

_year_, and a rest day, which came two days after the new moon, and was

called Buhwa bwa Mandanda,--it was a day for dancing and feasting;

That the dead were usually buried; but persons held in superstitious

reverence, as twins, Udinge, etc., were not buried, but left at the foot

of a ceiba, or silk-cotton tree, or other sacred tree;

That burial-places are regarded with a mixed feeling of reverence and awe;

That the immortality of the soul is believed in, but that there is no

tradition of the resurrection of the body;

That they believe God gave law to mankind, and that, for those who keep

this law, there is reserved in the future a "good place," and for the bad

a "bad place," but no definite ideas about what that "good" or that "bad"

will be, or as to the locality of those places;

That they believe in a distinction of spirits,--that some are _demons_, as

in the old days of demoniacal possession, this distinction following the

Jewish idea of diaboloi and daimonai.

CHAPTER III

POLYTHEISM--IDOLATRY

Civilization and religion do not necessarily move with equal pace.

Whatever is really best in the ethics of civilization is derived from

religion. If civilization falls backward, religion probably has already

weakened or will also fall. The converse is not necessarily true. Religion

may halt or even retrograde, while civilization steps on brilliantly, as

it did in Greece with her Parthenon, and in Rome the while that religion

added to the number of idols in the pantheon. Egypt, too, had her men

learned in astronomy, who built splendid palaces and hundred-pillared

Thebes the while they were worshipping Osiris. The dwellers before the

Deluge had carried their civilization to a knowledge of arts now lost,

while their wickedness and utter wanderings from God's worship caused the

earth to cry out for a cleansing Flood.

Whatever therefore may be true in the history of civilization--whether man

was gifted, _ab initio_, with a large measure of useful knowledge which he

had simply easily to put into practice; or whether, as a savage, primitive

man had slowly and painfully to find out under pressure the use of fire,

clothing, weapons of defence and offence, tools, and other necessary

articles and arts--is not important here to be discussed. From whatever

point of vantage, high or low, Adam's sons started, we know that they had

at least tools for agriculture[11] and for the building of houses;[12] and

that a few generations later, their knowledge of arts had grown from

those which aided in the acquisition of the bare necessaries of life into

the aesthetics of music and metallic ornamentation.[13]

But religion did not wait that length of time for its growth. To the

original pair in Eden, Jehovah had given a knowledge of Himself. They felt

His character, they were told His will; and when they had disobeyed that

will, they were given a promise of salvation, and were instructed in

certain given rites of worship, _e. g._, offerings and sacrifice. They

knew[14] the significance of atoning blood, and the difference between a

simple thank-offering and a sin-offering. All this knowledge of religion

was not a possession which man had attained by slow degrees. He started

with it in full possession, while yet he was clothed only in the skins of

beasts,[15] and before he knew how to make musical instruments or to

fashion brass and iron. His religion was in advance of his civilization.

Subsequently his civilization pushed ahead.

What were the gradual steps before the Deluge, in the divergence of man's

worship of God, is not difficult to imagine if we look at the history of

the Chaldees, of the Hittites, and of the Jews themselves. Subsequent to

the Deluge, from the grateful sacrifice of the seventh animal by Noah, to

Abraham's typical offering of Isaac, it is not a very far cry to the

butchery of Jephthah's daughter or the immolations to Moloch. A

well-intended Ed[16] may readily become a schismatic Mecca. An altar of

Dan is soon furnished with its golden calf.

With this as a starting-point, _viz._, that the knowledge of himself was

directly imparted to man by Jehovah, and that certain forms of worship

were originally directed and sanctioned by Him, I wish in subsequent pages

to follow that line of light through the labyrinths of man's wandering

from monotheism into polytheism, idolatry, and even into crass fetichism.

Abstract faith is difficult. It is so much easier to believe what we see,

to have faith assisted by sight. Even such faith is not without its

blessing, but "blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have

believed."[17] Memory is assisted by visible signs; whence the art of

writing,--in its usefulness so far beyond the Indian's wampum belts.

Merely oral law is apt to be forgotten, or its requisitions and

prohibitions become hazy.

As the years passed by, and nations, after the dispersion from the tower

on the plain of Shinar, diverged more and more, not only in speech and

writing but also in customs, their religious thought began to vary from

the simple standard of Adam and Noah. Between those small beginnings of

variation and the gulf-like depth of the fetich, there are three

successive steps.

First, retaining the name of and belief in and worship of Jehovah, mankind

added something else. They associated with Jehovah certain natural

objects. This, it is readily conceivable, they could do without feeling

that they were dishonoring Him. They could not see Him; in their

expression of their wants in prayer they were speaking into vague space

and heard no audible response. The strain on simple unassisted faith was

heavy. The senses asked for something on which they could lean. Very

reasonable, therefore, it was for the pious thought, in speaking to the

Great Invisible, to associate closely with His name the great natural

objects in which His character was revealed or illustrated the,--sun,

shining in strength and beneficently giving life to plants and the comfort

of its warmth to all creation; the moon, benefiting in a similar though

less prominent way; the sky, from which spake the thunder; the mountain,

towering in its solemn majesty; the sea, spread out in its inscrutable

immensity. All these illustrating some of Jehovah's attributes,--His

power, goodness, infinity,--without impropriety associated themselves in

man's thought of God, were named along with His name, and were looked upon

with some of the same reverence which was accorded to Him. In all this

there was no conscious departure from the worship of the one living and

true God. The position to which these great natural objects were gradually

elevated relatively to God, in the thought of the worshipper, was not as

yet blasphemous, or in any intentional way derogatory to Him. But the evil

in this elevation of nature into prominence with God was that there was no

limit to the number of objects or the degree of their elevation. From the

dignified use of sun, moon, sky, and sea, by unconscious degradations

animals became the objects of worship--the bull, the serpent, and the cat

(each illustrative of some attribute), and thence finally objects that

were frivolous, ridiculous, or disgusting, which nevertheless were each

the exponent of some principle. Even the indecencies of Phallic worship

had found their dignified beginning in an attempt to honor the great

principle of life in nature's procreative processes.

But there came a time, in the multiplying of the objects illustrative of

God's attributes, when they, by their very numbers, minimized divine

dignity. Their constant, visible, tangible presence to the senses began

not simply passively to represent God, but actively to personify Him, and

Jehovah was subdivided. He was still the great God; but these others were

given not only a name, but a personality which shadowed Him and dishonored

Him, by admitting them to fellowship with Him, and regarding Him as no

longer alone the great I Am. Though supreme, His supremacy was not

exclusive; it was comparative. He was over others, who also were gods,

with whom He shared His power, and to whom was to be given somewhat of His

worship. He was not indeed denied, but He was dishonored. He became only

one of the many gods along with Baal and Ashtaroth. But the worship of Him

was not abandoned. He was worshipped along with these others, as One among

many. And finally polytheism had become the belief of the world, except of

the many scattered small communities which, with their priests of the Most

High God, like Melchisedek and Job, held the true light from extinction.

"Jehovah" became a name for the Deity of a nation; each nation, while

reverencing its own god, not denying power to that of another nation.

Man's little thought was trying to localize the Deity in its own small

tribal limits.

Philistia worshipped its Dagon, but it feared and made trespass offerings

to Jehovah of the Ark of Israel's Covenant.[18]

Nebuchadnezzar, startled by a vision of a Son of God in the flame of his

fiery furnace, in an hour of repentance could decree that the God of

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should not be spoken against.[19] This was

the second step in religion's retrograde movement. The personified natural

objects were actually worshipped. No longer considered simply as

_representatives_ of God, they were actually given a part of God's place,

and were worshipped as God. The prayer was not, "Jehovah, hear us, for the

sake of Baal, through whom we plead!" nor "O Baal, present our petition to

Jehovah!" but, flatly and directly, "O Baal, hear us!"

Having reached in their religious thought this position of a belief in

many gods, it was a natural and logical result that worship was to be

rendered to them all. The sacrifices that had been offered to Jehovah

alone were divided for service to other gods. But it was the same

religious sentiment, in both monotheist and polytheist, that prompted the

rendering of prayer, sacrifice, and other service. The same sense of an

"infinite dependence" that had led arms of weak faith to lay hold for help

on that which was nearest and most obvious, operated with the heathen who

had wandered from God, in his petition to his many gods, just as it had

operated originally with the worshipper of the true God. The sentiment was

right, the principle was good; only, its application was wrong,--sometimes

fearfully wrong. Man's religious nature is a force. There are other forces

in nature that belong to other domains than religion. They are good forces

if well applied; they become engines of destruction if misapplied or

applied in excess.

In all history no misapplied force has wrought more fearful evil than the

religious. It made holy even the atrocities of the Inquisition; it

ordained a Te Deum for the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day.

Similarly mankind found not only justification but propriety in the human

sacrifices to Moloch, and in the holocausts of the Aztec civilization. If

in giving a gift of thanks, tribute, admiration, or fear to a human

friend, ruler, or employer, we choose that which is good and best in our

own eyes, so as to win the favor of the being to whom it is given, much

more would we strive to please the god in whose power lies our life,

health, and prosperity. It was a logical result, therefore, in choosing

for sacrifice on great emergencies, to select the best-beloved child.

Moloch would be pleased and propitiated by such a valuable gift. The more

that the human love was renounced in the agony of the parents' view of

their child's dying struggle, the more favorable would be the response to

the worshipper. Under this misapplied religious force an Iphigenia is

logical, and the Hindu infant cast to Gunga's wave a fitting offering in

the agonized mother's eyes. But how fearfully mistaken! The religion that

recognizes and directs such abuse is a "false religion," as compared with

Christianity; not in the sense that it has nothing good in it, but in the

falsity of the objects of its worship and in the cruelty of the rites

employed in that worship. In the genera of the sciences there is only one

species of religion, but that one species has many varieties. In this

sense Calvin is correct if, in speaking of the "immense welter of errors"

in which the whole world outside of Christianity is immersed, "he regards

his own religion as the true one and all the others were false." The

function of a comparative study of religions is to point out the

connecting line of truth running through the mass of error. Back of all

the cruelty and error and falsity in polytheism lie the proper sense of

need, the natural feeling of helplessness in the great emergencies of

life, and the commendable desire to honor the Being known under different

names as Jehovah, Moloch, Jupiter, Allah, Budh, Brahm, Odin, or Anyambe;

to which Being His children all over the world looked up as the

All-Father. But the _descensus Averni_ from the One living and true God

soon multiplied gods, dividing among many the attributes that had been

centred in the One, and finally carried man's religious thought so far

from God that only His name was retained, while the trust which had

belonged to Him alone was scattered over a multitude of objects that were

not even dignified with the name "gods." Worship of ancestors was

established. Great human benefactors, heroic human beings, were deified

and canonized. The whole air of the world became peopled with spiritual

influences; literally "stocks and stones" became animated with demons of

varying power and disposition; and fetichism erected itself as a kind of

religion.

I see nothing to justify the theory of Menzies[20] that primitive man or

the untutored African of to-day, in worshipping a tree, a snake, or an

idol, originally worshipped those very objects themselves, and that the

suggestion that they represented, or were even the dwelling-place of, some

spiritual Being is an after-thought up to which he has grown in the lapse

of the ages. The rather I see every reason to believe that the thought of

the Being or Beings as an object of worship has come down by tradition and

from direct original revelation of Jehovah Himself. The assumption of a

visible, tangible object to represent or personify that Being is the

after-thought that human ingenuity has added. The civilized Romanist

claims that he does not worship the actual sign of the cross, but the

Christ who was crucified on it; similarly, the Dahomian, in his worship of

a snake.

Rev. J. L. Wilson, D.D.,[21] says of the condition of Dahomy fifty years

ago, that in Africa "there is no place where there is more intense

heathenism; and to mention no other feature in their superstitious

practices, the worship of snakes at this place [Whydah] fully illustrates

this remark. A house in the middle of the town is provided for the

exclusive use of these reptiles, and they may be seen here at any time in

very great numbers. They are fed, and more care is taken of them than of

the human inhabitants of the place. If they are seen straying away, they

must be brought back; and at the sight of them the people prostrate

themselves on the ground and do them all possible reverence. To kill or

injure one of them is to incur the penalty of death. On certain occasions

they are taken out by the priests or doctors, and paraded about the

streets, the bearers allowing them to coil themselves around their arms,

necks, and bodies. They are also employed to detect persons who have been

guilty of witchcraft. If, in the hands of the priest, they bite the

suspected person, it is sure evidence of his guilt; and no doubt the

serpent is trained to do the will of his keeper in all such cases. Images,

usually called 'gregrees,' of the most uncouth shape and form, may be seen

in all parts of the town, and are worshipped by all classes of persons.

Perhaps there is no place in Africa where idolatry is more openly

practised, or where the people have sunk into deeper pagan darkness."

Also, of the people on the southwest coast at Loango: "The people of

Loango are more addicted to idol worship than any other people on the

whole coast. They have a great many carved images which they set up in

their fetich houses and in their private dwellings, and which they

worship; but whether these images represent their forefathers, as is the

case among the Mpongwe (at Gabun), is not certainly known."[22]

Having thus followed the religious thought of mankind in its divagation

from monotheistic worship of the true God, down through polytheism and

idolatrous sacrifices, to the worship of ancestors, we have reached a

third stage, where the worship of God is not only divided between Him and

other objects, but, a step beyond, God Himself is quietly disregarded, and

the worship due Him is transferred to a multitude of spiritual agencies

under His power, but uncontrolled by it.

The details of this stage in the religious worship known as fetichism will

be considered in the following chapters.

CHAPTER IV

SPIRITUAL BEINGS IN AFRICAN RELIGION

The belief in spiritual beings opens an immense vista of the purely

superstitious side of the theology of Bantu African religion.

All the air and the future is peopled with a large and indefinite company

of these beings. The attitude of the Creator (Anyambe) toward the human

race and the lower animals being that of indifference or of positive

severity in having allowed evils to exist, and His indifference making Him

almost inexorable, cause effort in the line of worship to be therefore

directed only to those spirits who, though they are all probably

malevolent, may be influenced and made benevolent.

I. ORIGIN.

The native thought in regard to the origin of spirits is vague;

necessarily so. An unwritten belief that is not based upon revelation from

a superior source nor on an induction from actual experience and

observation, but that is added to and varied by every individual's fancy,

can be expressed in definite words only after inquiry among many as to

their ideas on the subject. These, I find, coincide on a few lines; just

as the consensus of opinion on any subject in any community will find

itself running in certain channels, influenced by the utterances of the

stronger or wiser leaders.

1. It appears, therefore, that some of the spirits seem to have been

conterminous with the life of Paia-Njambi in the eternities. An eternity

past, impossible as it is for any one to comprehend, is yet a thing

thinkable even with the Bantu African, for he has words to express

it,--"peke-na-jome," ever-and-beyond, "tamba-na-ngâmâ,"

unknown-and-secret.

Away back in that unknown time existed Paia-Njambi. Whence or how, is not

asked by the natives; nor have I had any attempt even of a reply to my own

inquiries. He simply existed. They are not sufficiently absurd to say that

He created Himself. To do that He would need to antedate Himself. I have

met none who thought sufficiently on the subject to worry their minds, as

we in our civilization often do, in effort to go back and back to the

unthinkable point in time past when God was not. Indeed so little is the

native mind in the habit of any such research that I can readily perceive

how their "We don't know" could easily be misunderstood by a foreign

traveller, scientist, or even missionary, as a confession that "they did

not know God,"--a statement which is true, but not the equivalent of, or

synonymous with, that traveller's assertion that the native _had no idea

of a God_. The native thought, wiser than ours, simply and unreasoningly

says, "He is, He was." Conterminous with Him in origin there may have been

some other spirits. This has been said to me by a very few persons with

some hesitation. But if those spirits were indeed equal in existence with

Njambi, they were in no respect equal to Him in character or power, and

had no hand in the creation of other beings. In the Mpongwe tribe at Gabun

one writer, Rev. J. L. Wilson, D.D., fifty years ago, thought the belief

existed that "next to God in the government of the world are two spirits,

one of whom, Onyambe, is hateful and wicked. The people seldom speak of

Onyambe, and always evince displeasure when the name is mentioned in their

presence. His influence over the affairs of men, in their estimation, does

not amount to much; and the probability is that they have no very definite

notions about the real character of this spirit." His character would be

indicated by his name, O-nya-mbe (He-who-is-bad). This name has sometimes

been used by missionaries to translate our word "devil." Perhaps the idea

of the word itself came from long-ago contact of this coast tribe with

foreigners.

2. A second and more recognized source of supply to the company of spirits

is original creation by Njambi. While this origin is named by some, I have

not found it believed in to any very great extent. Even those whom I did

find believing it had very vague ideas as to the mode or object of their

creation. Of the Creation of mankind, and even of the Fall, almost all of

the tribes have legends, more or less distinct, and with a modicum of

truth, doubtless derived from traditions coinciding with the Mosaic

history; but of a previous creation of purely spiritual beings I have

found no legend nor well-defined story. If such specially created spirits

exist at all, their relation to Njambi is of a very shadowy kind; they

are, indeed, inferior to Him, and are in theory under His government in

the same sense that human beings are. But Njambi, in His far-off

indifference in actual practice, does not interfere with or control them

or their actions. They are part of the motley inhabitants of "Njambi's

Town," the place of the Great Unknown, as also are all the other living

beasts and beings of creation. They also have their separate habitat, and

pursue their own devices, generally malevolent, with the children of men.

3. But the general consensus of opinion is that the world of spirits is

peopled by the souls of dead human beings. This presupposes a belief in a

future life, the existence of which in the native mind some travellers

have doubted. I have never met that doubt from the native himself. While I

do not impute to the travellers referred to any desire, in their efforts

at describing the low grade of intelligence or religious belief of certain

tribes, to misrepresent, I fully believe they were mistaken, their mistake

arising from misunderstanding. It is not probable that they met, in the

course of their few years, what I have not met with in a lifetime. It is

probable that natives had expressed to them a doubt, or even ignorance, of

a general resurrection, and may have said to them, as a few have said to

me, "No, we do not live again; we are like goats and dogs and

chickens,--when we die that is the end of us." Such a statement is indeed

a denial of the resurrection of the body, but it is not a denial of a

continued existence of the soul in another life. The very people who made

the above declaration to me preserved their family fetich, made sacrifices

to the spirits of their ancestors, and appealed to them for aid in their

family undertakings. The few who have expressed a belief in transmigration

did not consider that the residence of a human spirit in the body of a

beast was a permanent state; it was a temporary condition, assumed by the

spirit voluntarily for its own pleasure or convenience, and terminable at

its own will, precisely as human spirits during their mortal life are,

everywhere and by all, believed capable of temporarily deserting their own

human body and controlling the actions of a beast. This belief in

transmigration, though not general, has been found among individuals in

almost all tribes.

It being thus generally accepted that all departed human souls become

spirits of that future that is all around us, there is still a difference

in the testimony of intelligent witnesses as to who and what, or even how

many, of these souls are in one human being. (1) Ordinarily, the native

will say in effect, "I am one, and my soul is also myself. When I die, it

goes out somewhere else." (2) Others will say, "I have two things,--one is

the thing that becomes a spirit when I die, the other is the spirit of the

body and dies with it." (This "other" may be only a personification of

what we specify as the animal life.) But it has frequently occurred that

even intelligent natives, standing by me at the side of a dying person,

have said to me, "He is dead." The patient was indeed unconscious, lying

stiff, not seeing, speaking, eating, or apparently feeling; yet there was

a slight heart-beat. I would point out to the relatives these evidences of

life. But they said: "No, he is dead. His spirit is gone, he does not see

nor hear nor feel; that slight movement is only the spirit of the body

shaking itself. It is not a person, it is not our relative; _he_ is dead."

And they began to prepare the body for burial. A man actually came to me

on Corisco Island, in 1863, asking me for medicine with which to kill or

quiet the body-spirit of his mother, whose motions were troubling him by

preventing the funeral arrangements. I was shocked at what I thought his

attempt at matricide, but subsequently found that he really did believe

that his mother was dead and her real soul gone.