Such attempt to distinguish between soul-life and body-life has not

infrequently led to premature burial. The supposed corpse has sometimes

risen to consciousness on the way to the grave. A long-protracted sickness

of some not very valuable member of the village has wearied the

attendants; they decide that the body, though mumbling inarticulate words

and aimlessly fingering with its arms, is no longer occupied by its

personal soul; _that_ has emerged. "He is dead"; and they proceed to bury

him alive. Yet they deny that they have done so. They insist that _he_ was

not alive; only his body was "moving." Proof of premature burial has been

found by discoveries made in the practice of a custom which is observed

when a village has been afflicted with various troubles after the death of

one of its members. The villagers, after ineffectual efforts to drive away

the evil influences that are supposed to cause these troubles, decide that

the spirit of some dead relative is dissatisfied about something, and

order the grave to be opened and the bones rearranged or even thrown into

the river or sea. On opening the grave, corpses that had been buried in a

recumbent position have been found in a sitting position. It is possible

for one thus prematurely buried to change posture in a dying struggle;

for, mostly, heathen graves are shallow, and are hastily and not always

completely filled in.

(3) Another set of witnesses will say that, besides the personal soul and

the soul of the body, there is a third entity in the human unit, namely, a

dream-soul. That it is which leaves the body on occasions during sleep,

and, wandering off, delights itself by visiting strange lands and strange

scenes. On its return to the body its union with the material blunts its

perceptions, and the person, in his efforts to remember or tell what he

has seen, relates only the vagaries of a dream,--a psychological view

which, under the manipulation of a ready pen, could give play to fantasies

pretty, romantic, not unreasonable, and not impossible.

Some who are only dualists, nevertheless, believe in the wanderings of

this so-called dream-soul, but say that it is the personal soul itself

that has gone out and has returned. Both dualists and trinitarians add

that sometimes in its wanderings this soul loses its way and cannot find

its body, its material home; should it never return, the person will

sicken and die.

(4) A fourth entity is vaguely spoken of by some as a component part of

the human personality, by others as separate but closely associated from

birth to death, and called the life-spirit. Some speak of it as a

civilized person speaks of a guardian angel. Regarded in that light, it

should not be considered as one of the several _kinds_ of souls, but as

one of the various _classes_ of spirits (which will be discussed in a

subsequent chapter). To it worship is rendered by its possessor as to

other spirits,--a worship, however, different from that which is performed

for what are known and used as "familiar spirits." Others speak of the

vague life-spirit as the "heart." The organ of our anatomy which we

designate by that name, they call by a word which variously means "heart"

or "feelings," much like our old English "bowels," the same word being

employed equally to designate a physical organ and a mental state.

Considering the organic heart as the seat (or a seat) of life, the natives

believe that by witchcraft a person in health can be deprived of his

life-soul, or "heart"; that he will then sicken; that the wizard or witch

feasts in his or her magic orgy on this "heart," and that the person will

die if that heart is not returned to him.

II. NUMBER.

But whatever this human soul may be, whether existing in unity, duality,

trinity, or quadruplicity, all agree in believing that it adds itself, on

the death of the body, as another to the multitudinous company of the

spirit-world. That world is all around us, and does not differ much in its

wants and characteristics from this earthly life, except that it is free

from some of the limitations to which material bodies are subject. In that

spirit-world they require the same food as when on earth, but consume only

its essence; the visible substance remains. They are possessed of all

their human passions, both bad and good. Men expect to have their wives

with them in that future, but I have never heard the idea even named, that

there is procreation by spirits in that after-world. Not having believed

during this life in a system of reward and punishment, they have no belief

in heaven or hell. All the dead go to Njambi's Town, and live in that new

life together, good and bad, as they lived together on earth. The "hell"

spoken of by some of my informants, I believe, is not a native thought; it

was probably engrafted on the coast tribes by the Portuguese Roman

Catholic missionaries of three hundred years ago.

If therefore the spirits consist almost entirely of the souls of departed

human beings, how immense their number! Equal in number with all the dead

that have passed from this life in the ages gone by, excepting those who

have gone permanently into the bodies of new human beings. That form of

metempsychosis is believed in. Occasional instances of belief of

transmigration into the body of a lower animal do not necessarily include

the idea of a permanent residence there, or that the departed soul has

lost its personality as a human being and has become the soul of a beast.

But the idea of reappearance in the body of a newly born child was

formerly believed in, especially in regard to white people. Thirty years

ago I wrote:[23] "Down the swift current of the Benita, as of other rivers

on the coast, are swept floating islands of interlaced rushes, tangled

vines, and water-lilies that, clinging to some projecting log from the

marshy bank, had gathered the sand and mud of successive freshets, and

gave a precarious footing for the pandanus, whose wiry roots bound all in

one compact mass. Then some flood had torn that mass away, and the

pandanus still waving its long, bayonet-like leaves, convolvuli still

climbing and blooming, and birds still nesting trustfully, the floating

island glided past native eyes down the stream, out over the bar, and on

toward the horizon of broad ocean. What beyond? Native superstition said

that at the bottom of the 'great sea' was 'whiteman's land'; that thither

some of their own departed friends found their happy future, exchanging a

dusky skin for a white one; that there white man's magic skill at will

created the beads, and cloth, and endless wealth that came from that

unknown land in ships, in whose masts and rigging and sails were

recognized the transformed trees and vines and leaves of those floating

islands. When on the 12th of July, 1866, a few with bated breath came to

look on my little new-born Paull, the only white child most of the

community had seen, and the first born in that Benita region, the old

people said, 'Now our hopes are dead. Dying, we had hoped to become like

you; but verily ye are born as we.'"

Not long after I had arrived at Corisco Island in 1861 I observed among

the many people who came to see the new missionary one man who quietly and

unobtrusively but very steadily was gazing at me. After a while he

mustered courage and addressed me: "Are you not my brother,--my brother

who died at such a time, and went to White Man's Land?" I was at that time

new to the superstitions of the country; his meaning had to be explained

to me. His thought of relationship was not an impossible one, for many of

the Bantu Negroes have somewhat Caucasian-like features. I have often seen

men and women at the sight of whom I was surprised, and I would remark to

a fellow-missionary: "How much this person reminds me of So-and-so in

America!" This recognition of resemblance of features to white persons

living in America was the third step in my acquaintance with native faces.

At first, all Negro faces looked alike. Presently I learned differences;

and when I had reached the third step, I felt that my acquaintance with

African features was complete.

III. LOCALITY.

The locality of these spirits is not only vaguely in the surrounding air;

they are also localized in prominent natural objects,--caves, enormous

rocks, hollow trees, dark forests,--in this respect reminding one of

classic fauns and dryads. While all have the ability to move from place to

place, some especially belong to certain localities which are spoken of as

having, as the case might be, "good" or "bad" spirits. It is possible for

a human soul (as already mentioned in this chapter) to inhabit the body of

a beast. A man whose plantation was being devastated near Benita by an

elephant told me, in 1867, he did not dare to shoot it, because the spirit

of his lately deceased father had passed into it. Also a common

objurgation of an obstreperous child or animal is, "O na nyemba!" (Thou

hast a witch.)

Their habitats may be either natural or acquired. Natural ones are, for

the spirits of the dead, in a very special sense, the villages where they

had dwelt during the lifetime of the body; but the presence of the spirits

of the dead is not desired. It is one of the pitiable effects of African

superstition that its subjects look with fear and dread on what the

denizens of civilization look with love and tender regret. We in our

Christian civilization cling to the lifeless forms of our dead; and when

necessity compels us to bury them from our sight, we bid memory call up

every lineament of face and tone of voice, and are pleased to think that

sometimes they are near us. But it is a frequent native practice that on

the occasion of a death, even while a portion of the family are wailing

and to all appearances passionately mourning the loss of their relative,

others are firing guns, blowing trumpets, beating drums, shouting and

yelling, in order to drive away from the village the recently disembodied

spirit. On consideration, it can be seen that these two diverse

demonstrations are sincere, consistent, and, to the natives, reasonable.

With natural affection they mourn the absence of a tangible _person_ who,

as a member of their family, was helpful and even kind; while they fear

the independent existence of the invisible thing, whose union with the

physical body they fail to recognize as having been a factor in that

helpfulness and kindness. This departed spirit, joining the company of

other departed spirits, will indeed become an object of worship,--a

worship of principally a deprecatory nature; but its continued presence

and immediate contact with its former routine are not desired. In

Mashonaland the native fears death by accident or human enmity. "But a

greater dread than this is of a visitation of evil by the spirit of a

departed friend or relative whom he may have slighted while living."

A village in Nazareth Bay, the embouchure of one of the mouths of the

Ogowe River, is called "Abun-awiri" ("awiri," plural of "ombwiri," a

certain class of spirits, and "abuna," abundance).

Large, prominent trees are inhabited by spirits. Many trees in the

equatorial West African forest throw out from their trunks, at from ten to

sixteen feet from the ground, solid buttresses continuous with the body of

the tree itself, only a few inches in thickness, but in width at the base

of the tree from four to six feet. These buttresses are projected toward

several opposite points of the compass, as if to resist the force of

sudden wind-storms. They are a noticeable forest feature and are commonly

seen in the silk-cotton trees. The recesses between them are actually used

as lairs by small wild animals. They are supposedly also a favorite home

of the spirits.

Caverns and large rocks have their special spirit inhabitants. At Gabun,

and also on Corisco Island, geological breaks in the horizontal strata of

rock were filled by narrow vertical strata of limestone, between which

water action has worn away the softer rock, leaving the limestone walls

isolated, with a narrow ravine between them. These ravines were formerly

reverenced as the abodes of spirits.

When I made a tour in 1882, surveying for a second Ogowe Station, I came

some seventy miles up river from my well-established first station,

Kângwe, at Lambarene, to an enormous rock, a granite boulder, lying in the

bed of the river. The adjacent hillsides on either bank of the river were

almost impassable, being covered with boulders of all sizes, and a heavy

forest growing in among and even on them. This great rock had evidently in

the long past become detached by torrential streams that scored the

mountainside in the heavy rainy season and had plunged to its present

position. The swift river current swirled and dashed against the huge

obstruction to navigation, making the ascent of the river at that point

particularly difficult. Superstition suggested that the spirits of the

rock did not wish boats or canoes to pass their abode. Nevertheless,

necessities of trade compelled; and crews in passing made an ejaculatory

prayer, or doffed their head coverings, in respect, but with the fear that

the "ascent" in that part of the journey might be for "woe," whence they

called the rock "Itala-ja-maguga," which, contracted to "Talaguga," I gave

as a name to my new station, erected in 1882 in the vicinity of the rock.

During my eight subsequent years at the station I did, indeed, meet with

some "woe," but also much weal. And the missionary work of Talaguga,

carried on since 1892 by the hands of the Société Évangelique de Paris,

has met with signal success.

Capes, promontories, and other prominent points of land are favorite

dwelling-places of the spirits. The Ogowe River, some one hundred and

forty miles from its mouth, receives on its left bank a large affluent,

the Ngunye, coming from the south. The low point of land at the junction

of the two rivers was sacred. The riverine tribes themselves would pass it

in canoes, respectfully removing their head coverings; but passage was

forbidden to coast tribes and other foreigners. Portuguese slave-traders

might come to the point; but, stopping there, they could trade beyond only

through the hands of the local tribe (evidently superstition had been

invoked to protect a trade monopoly). A certain trader, Mr. R. B. N.

Walker, agent for the English firm of Hatton & Cookson, headquarters at

Libreville, Gabun, in extending his commercial interests some forty years

ago, made an overland journey from the Gabun River, emerging on the Ogowe,

on its right bank, _above_ that sacred point. Ranoke, chief of the Inenga

tribe, a few miles below, seized him, his porters, and his goods, and kept

them prisoners for several months. Mr. Walker succeeded in bribing a

native to carry a letter to the French Commandant at Libreville, who was

pleased to send a gunboat to the rescue. Incidentally it furnished a good

opportunity to demonstrate France's somewhat shadowy claim to the Ogowe.

After the rescue a company from the gunboat proceeded to the Point and

lunched there, thus effectually desecrating it. Mr. Walker made peace with

his late captor, and established a trading-station at the Inenga village,

Lambarene. For years afterward, natives still looked upon that Point with

respect. My own crew in 1874 sometimes doffed their hats; but before I

left the Ogowe in 1891, a younger generation had grown up that was willing

to camp and eat and sleep there with me, on my boat journeys.

Graveyards, of course, are homes of spirits, and therefore are much

dreaded. The tribes, especially of the interior, differ very much as to

burial customs. Some bury only their chiefs and other prominent men,

casting away corpses of slaves or of the poor into the rivers, or out on

the open ground, perhaps covering them with a bundle of sticks; even when

graves are dug they are shallow. Some tribes fearlessly bury their dead

under the clay floors of their houses, or a few yards distant in the

kitchen-garden generally adjoining. But, by most tribes who do bury at

all, there are chosen as cemeteries dark, tangled stretches of forest,

along river banks on ground that is apt to be inundated or whose soil is

not good for plantation purposes. I had often observed, in my earlier

African years, such stretches of forest along the river, and wondered why

the people did not use them for cultivation, being conveniently near to

some village, while they would go a much longer distance to make their

plantations. The explanation was that these were graveyards. Such

stretches would extend sometimes for a mile or two. Often my hungry meal

hour on a journey happened to coincide with our passing just such a piece

of forest, and the crew would refuse to stop, keeping themselves and

myself hungry till we could arrive at more open forest.

In Eastern Africa it is believed that "the dead in their turn become

spirits under the all-embracing name of Musimo. The Wanyamwezi hold their

Musimo in great dread and veneration, as well as the house, hut, or place

where their body has died."[24]

Beyond the regularly recognized habitats of the spirits that may be called

"natural" to them, any other location may be _acquired_ by them

temporarily, for longer or shorter periods, under the power of the

incantations of the native doctor (uganga). By his magic arts any spirit

may be localized in any object whatever, however small or insignificant;

and, while thus limited, is under the control of the doctor and

subservient to the wishes of the possessor or wearer of the material

object in which it is thus confined. This constitutes a "fetich," which

will be more fully discussed in another chapter.

IV. CHARACTERISTICS.

The characteristics of these spirits are much the same as those they

possessed before they were disembodied. They have most of the evil human

passions, _e. g._, anger and revenge, and therefore may be malevolent. But

they possess also the good feelings of generosity and gratitude; they are

therefore within reach of influence, and may be benevolent. Their possible

malevolence is to be deprecated, their anger placated, their aid enlisted.

Illustration of malevolence in their character has already been seen in

the dread connected with deaths and funerals. The similar dread of

graveyards in our civilized countries may rest on the fear inspired by

what is mysterious or by those who have passed to the unknown, simply

because it and they are unknown. But, to superstitious Africa, that

unknown is a certainty, in that it is a source of evil; the spirit of the

departed has all the capacity for evil it possessed while embodied, with

the additional capacity that its exemption from some of the limitations of

time and space increases its facilities for action. Being unseen, it can

act at immensely greater advantage for accomplishing a given purpose.

Natives dying have gone into the other world retaining an acute memory of

some wrong inflicted on them by fellow-villagers, and have openly said,

"From that other world I will come back and avenge myself on you!"

In any contest of a human being against these spirits of evil he knows

always that whatever influence he may obtain over them by the doctor's

magic aid, or whatever limitations may thus be put on them, they can

never, as in the case of a human enemy, be killed. The spirits can never

die.

Sometimes the word "dead" is used of a fetich amulet that has been

inhabited by a spirit conjured into it by a native doctor. The phrase does

not mean that its spirit is actually dead, but that it has fled from

inside of the fetich, and still lives elsewhere. Then the native doctor,

to explain to his patient or client the inefficacy of the charm, says that

the cause of the spirit's escape and flight is that the wearer has failed

to observe all the directions which had been given, and the spirit was

displeased. The dead amulet is, nevertheless, available for sale to the

curio-hunting foreigner.

CHAPTER V

SPIRITUAL BEINGS IN AFRICA--THEIR CLASSES AND FUNCTIONS

Inequalities among the spirits themselves, though they are so great,

indicate no more than simple differentiations of character or work. Yet so

radical are these varieties, and so distinct the names applied to them,

that I am compelled to recognize a division into classes.

CLASSES AND FUNCTIONS.

1. _Inina, or Ilina._ A human embodied soul is spoken of and fully

believed in by all the tribes. It is known in the Mpongwe tribes of the

Gabun country as "inina" (plural, "anina"); in the adjacent Benga tribe,

as "ilina" (plural, "malina"); in the great interior Fang tribes, as

"nsisim."

This animating soul, whether it be only one, or whether it appear in two,

three, or even four forms, is practically the same, that talks, hears, and

feels, that sometimes goes out of the body in a dream, and that exists as

a spirit after the death of the body. That it has its own especial

materiality seems to be indicated by the fact that in the Fang, Bakele,

and other tribes the same word "nsisim" means not only soul but also

shadow. The shadow of a tree or any other inanimate object and of the

human body as cast by the sun is "nsisim."

In my first explorations up the Ogowe River, in 1874, as in my village

preaching I necessarily and constantly spoke of our soul, its sins, its

capacity for suffering or happiness, and its relation to its divine Maker,

I was often at a loss how to make my thoughtless audience understand or

appreciate that the nsisim of which I was speaking was not the nsisim cast

by the sun as a darkish line on the ground near their bodies. Even to

those who understood me, it was not an impossible thought that that dark

narrow belt on the ground was in some way a part of, or a mode of

manifestation of, that other thing, the nsisim, which they admitted was

the source of the body's animation. So far defined was that thought with

some of them that they said it was a possible thing for a human being to

have his nsisim stolen or otherwise lost, and still exist in a diseased

and dying state; in which case his body would not cast a shadow. Von

Chamisso's story of Peter Schlemehl, "the man who lost his shadow," in

actuality!

So few are the special activities by which to distinguish anina from other

classes of spirits, that I might doubt whether they should properly be

considered as distinct, were it not true that the anina are all of them

embodied spirits; none of them are of other origin. As disembodied

spirits, retaining memory of their former human relationships, they have

an interest in human affairs, and especially in the affairs of the family

of which they were lately members.

2. _Ibambo_ (Mpongwe; plural, "abambo"). There are vague beings, "abambo,"

which may well be described by our word "ghosts." Where they come from is

not certainly known, or what locality they inhabit, except that they

belong to the world of spirits. Why they become visible is also unknown.

They are not called for, they are only occasionally worshipped; their

epiphany is dreaded, not reverenced.

"The term 'abambo' is in the plural form, and may therefore be regarded as

forming a class of spirits instead of a single individual. They are the

spirits of dead men; but whether they are positively good or positively

evil, to be loved or to be hated, or to be courted or avoided, are points

which no native of the country can answer satisfactorily. Abambo are the

spirits of the ancestors of the people of a tribe or race, as

distinguished from the spirits of strangers. These are the spirits with

which men are possessed, and there is no end to the ceremonies used to

deliver them from their power."[25]

The ibambo may appear anywhere and at any time and to anybody, but it has

no message. It rarely speaks. Its most common effect on human lives is to

frighten. It flits; it does not remain in one spot, to speak or to be

spoken to. Indistinctly seen, its appearances are reported as occurring

mostly in dark places, in shadows, in twilight, and on dark nights. The

most common apparitions are on lonely paths in the forest by night.

To all intents and purposes these abambo are what superstitious fears in

our civilization call "ghosts." The timid dweller in civilization can no

more tell us what that ghost is than can the ignorant African. It is as

difficult in the one case as in the other to argue against the unreal and

unknown. What the frightened eye or ear believes it saw or heard, it

persists in believing against all proof. Nor will ridicule make the belief

less strong. However, the intelligent child in civilization, under the

hand of a judicious parent or other friend, and relying on love as an

expounder, can be led to understand by daylight, that the white bark of a

tree trunk shimmering in uncertain moonlight, or a white garment flapping

in the wind, or a white animal grazing in the meadow, was the ghost whose

waving form had scared him the night before. His superstition is not so

ingrained by daily exercise but that reason and love can divest him of it.

But to the denizen of Fetich-land superstition is religion; the night

terror which he is sure he saw is too real a thing in his life to be

identified by day as only a harmless white-barked tree or quartz rock.

3. A third class of spirits is represented by the name _Ombwiri_. The

"ombwiri" (Mpongwe; plural, "awiri") is certainly somewhat local, and in

this respect might be regarded as akin to the ancient fauns and dryads,

with a suggestion of a likeness to the spirits resident in the dense oak

groves and the massive stones of the Druid Circle. But the awiri are more

than dryads. They are not confined to their local rock, tree, bold

promontory, or point of land, trespass on which by human beings they

resent. The traveller must go by silently, or with some cabalistic

invocation, with bowed or bared head, and with some offering,--anything,

even a pebble. On the beach, as I bend to pass beneath an enormous tree

fallen across the pathway, I observe the upper side of the log covered

with votive offerings,--pebbles, shells, leaves, etc.,--laid there by

travellers as they stooped to pass under. Such votive collections may be

seen on many spots along the forest paths, deposited there by the natives

as an invocation of a blessing on their journey.

"The derivation of the word 'Ombwiri' is not known. As it is used in the

plural as well as in the singular form, it no doubt represents a class or

family of spirits. He is regarded as a tutelar or guardian spirit. Almost

every man has his own ombwiri, for which he provides a small house near

his own. All the harm that he has escaped in this world, and all the good

secured, are ascribed to the kindly offices of this guardian spirit.

Ombwiri is also regarded as the author of everything in the world which is

marvellous or mysterious. Any remarkable feature in the physical aspect of

the country, any notable phenomenon in the heavens, or extraordinary

events in the affairs of men are ascribed to Ombwiri. His favorite places

of abode are the summits of high mountains, deep caverns, large rocks, and

the base of very large forest trees. And while the people attach no

malignity to his character, they carefully guard against all unnecessary

familiarity in their intercourse with him, and never pass a place where he

is supposed to dwell except in silence. He is the only one of all the

spirits recognized by the people that has no priesthood; his intercourse

with men being direct and immediate."[26]

These spirits are sometimes spoken of with the nkinda and olâgâ (Mpongwe;

plural, "ilâgâ"). They all come from the spirits of the dead. These

several names indicate a difference as to kind or class of spirit, and a

difference in the work or functions they are called upon to exercise. The

ilâgâ are spirits of strangers, and have come from a distance.

While the ombwiri is indeed feared, it is with a respectful reverence,

different from the dread of an ibambo. Ombwiri is fine and admirable in

aspect, but is very rarely seen; it is white, like a white person. Souls

of distinguished chiefs and other great men turn to awiri. The fear with

which the native regards massive rocks and large trees--the ombwiri

homes--need not be felt by white people, who are themselves considered

awiri, without its being clearly understood whether their bodies are

inhabited by the departed spirits of the Negro dead, or whether some came

from other sources.

The awiri are generally favorably disposed, especially to their former

human relatives; but it is necessary to gratify them with religious

services constituting an ancestral worship. While some of them reside in

great rocks or trees, others dwell in rivers, lakes, and seas.

Awiri, if they love a person and desire to favor him or her, have the

special power to grant a gift desired by most Africans, _viz._, the birth

of children. The awiri live mostly in the region of their own former human

tribe. It is possible, however, for them to go everywhere; but they

usually remain within their old tribal limits. If, however, a tribe should

remove or become extinct, their awiri would still remain in that region,

and would affiliate with the new people who might come to occupy the

deserted village sites.

Awiri have a period of inactivity, the cold dry season of four months (in

western Equatorial Africa), May to September. At that time they become

very small, inactive, and almost lifeless (a condition of hibernation,

somewhat like that of bears; or of inertia, as when a snake casts its

skin?).

4. There is another class of spirits called _Sinkinda_ (singular,

"nkinda"), some of whom are the spirits of people who in the ordinary

stations of life were "common," or not distinguished for greatness or

goodness. Others of these sinkinda are of uncertain origin, perhaps demons

whom Njambi had created, but to whom He had never given bodily existence.

Almost all sinkinda are evilly disposed. They come to the villages on

visits to warm themselves by the kitchen fires or out of curiosity to see

what is going on, and sometimes, temporarily, to enter into the bodies of

the living, especially of their own family. The entrance of a nkinda into

a human body always sickens the person. It may enter any one, even a

child. If many of them enter a man's body, he becomes crazy.

Sometimes the nkinda, when asked who he is, says: "I am a spirit of a

member of your own family, and I have come to live with you. I am tired of

living in the forest with cold and hunger. I wish to stay with you."

Often when people are sick with fever or cold, the diagnosis is made that

some nkinda has come on a visit. If it is of the same family as those whom

it is visiting, it comes and goes from time to time, to please itself; but

it is never, like an uvengwa, visible.

Sometimes these sinkinda are called "ivâvi" (sing. "ovâvi," messenger).

They come from far and bring news, _e. g._, "An epidemic of disease is

coming," or "A ship is coming with wealth." Sometimes the news thus

brought proves true. (Is this our modern spiritualism?) In such cases the

coming of the nkinda is regarded as a blessing, in that it warns the

living of evil or brings them wealth. The information is always carried by

the mouth of some living member of the family. If these sinkinda are asked

by a non-possessed member of the family, "Where do you live?" the reply

is, "Nowhere in particular. But at evenings we gather about your town, to

see you and join in your dances and songs. We see you, though you do not

see us."

5. _Mondi._ There are beings, "myondi" (Benga; singular, "mondi"), who are

agents in causing sickness or in either aiding or hindering human plans.

These spirits are much the same as those of the fourth class, except that

in power they seem to be more independent than other spirits. But they are

not always simply passive in the hands of the doctor; they are often

active on their own account, or at their own pleasure, generally to

injure. They are worshipped almost always in a deprecatory way. They often

take violent possession of human bodies; and for their expulsion it is

that ilâgâ, sinkinda, and awiri are invoked. They are invoked especially

at the new moons, but also at other times, particularly in sickness. The

native oganga decides whether or no they be myondi that are afflicting the

patient. When the diagnosis has been made, and myondi declared to be

present in the patient's body, the indication is that they are to be

exorcised.

A slight doubt must be admitted in regard to these myondi, whether they

really do constitute a distinct class, or whether any spirit of any class

may not become a myondi. The name in that case would be given them, not as

a class, but as producers of certain effects, at certain times and under

certain circumstances.

The powers and functions of the several classes of spirits do not seem to

be distinctly defined. Certainly they do not confine themselves either to

their recognized locality or to the usually understood function pertaining

to their class. These powers and functions shade into each other, or may

be assumed by members of almost any class. But it is clearly believed that

spirits, even of the same class, differ in power. Some are strong, others

are weak. They are limited as to the nature of their powers; no spirit can

do all things. A spirit's efficiency runs only on a certain line or lines.

All of them can be influenced and made subservient to human wishes by a

variety of incantations.

There are other names which, while they belong to spirits, apparently

indicate only peculiarities in spiritual manifestations, and not

representatives of a class.

1. There may enter into any animal's body (generally a leopard's) some

spirit, or, temporarily, even the soul of a living human being. The animal

then, guided by human intelligence and will, exercises its strength for

the purposes of the temporary human possessor. Many murders are said to be

committed in this way, after the manner of the mythical German wehr-wolf

or the French loup-garou.

This belief in demoniacal possession of a lower animal must not be

confounded with the equally believed transmigration of souls. The former

is widespread over at least a third of the African continent. In

Mashona-land "they believe that at times both living and dead persons can

change themselves into animals, either to execute some vengeance, or to

procure something they wish for; thus, a man will change himself into a

hyena or a lion to steal a sheep and make a good meal off it; into a

serpent to avenge himself on some enemy. At other times, if they see a

serpent, it is one of the Matotela tribe or slave tribe, which has thus

transformed himself to take some vengeance on the Barotse."[27]

2. Another manifestation is that of the uvengwa. It is claimed to be not

simply spiritual, but tangible. It is the self-resurrected spirit and body

of a dead human being. It is an object of dread, and is never worshipped

in any manner whatever. Why it appears is not known. Perhaps it shows

itself only in a restless, unquiet, or dissatisfied feeling. It is white

in color, but the body is variously changed from the likeness of the

original human body. Some say that it has only one eye, placed in the

centre of the forehead. Some say that its feet are webbed like an aquatic

bird. It does not speak; it only wanders, looking as if with curiosity.

My little cottage at Batanga is a mile and a half from the three chief

dwellings of the station. One afternoon in 1902 I went to the station,

leaving my cook and his wife in charge of the cottage. When I returned

late at night, he asserted that an uvengwa had come there. A few yards in

front of the door of the house is a mango tree with its very dense dark

foliage. The trunk is divided a few feet from the ground. The light from

the open door streamed into a part of the front yard, leaving the tree

trunk in dark shadow. The woman going out of the door had started back,

screaming to her husband that she saw an uvengwa standing in the crotch of

the tree and peering around one of the branches. The husband went to the

door. He asserted to me that he also had seen the form. In their terror,

neither of them made any investigation. Possibly a chalk-whitened thief

had taken advantage of my absence to prowl about. But the two witnesses

rejected such a suggestion; they were sure it was a visitor from some

grave.

3. Other spiritual manifestations are spoken of as the personal

guardian-spirit and the family guardian-spirit. These do not constitute a

separate class, but are the special modes of operation adopted by the

ancestral spirit or spirits in the protection of their family. Its

description belongs properly to a later chapter under the name of the

Family Yâkâ fetich.

The manner of invocation of all these five classes of spirits, in the case

of obscure diseases, is very much the same now as what Dr. Wilson

described fifty years ago. What he saw on the Gabun River tallies with

what I also saw thirty years ago at Benita, and subsequently in the Ogowe.

Even at Gabun, in the present day, though the Mpongwe have been

enlightened, the same ceremonies are kept up by other tribes, the Shekani

and Fang, who have emerged on the coast at Libreville.

"Sick persons, and especially those that are afflicted with nervous

disorders, are supposed to be possessed by one or the other of these

spirits. If the disease assumes a serious form, the patient is taken to a

priest or a priestess, of either of these classes of spirits. Certain

tests are applied, and it is soon ascertained to which class the disease

belongs, and the patient is accordingly turned over to the proper priest.

The ceremonies in the different cases are not materially different; they

are alike, at least, in the employment of an almost endless round of

absurd, unmeaning, and disgusting ceremonies which none but a heathenish

and ignorant priesthood could invent, and none but a poor, ignorant, and

superstitious people could ever tolerate.

"In either case a temporary shanty is erected in the middle of the street

for the occupancy of the patient, the priest, and such persons as are to

take part in the ceremony of exorcism. The time employed in performing the

ceremonies is seldom less than ten or fifteen days. During this period

dancing, drumming, feasting, and drinking are kept up without intermission

day and night, and all at the expense of the nearest relative of the

invalid. The patient, if a female, is decked out in the most fantastic

costume; her face, bosom, arms, and legs are streaked with red and white

chalk, her head adorned with red feathers, and much of the time she

promenades the open space in front of the shanty with a sword in her hand,

which she brandishes in a very menacing way against the bystanders. At the

same time she assumes as much of the maniac in her looks, actions,

gestures, and walk as possible. In many cases this is all mere

affectation, and no one is deceived by it. But there are other cases where

motions seem involuntary and entirely beyond the control of the person;

and when you watch the wild and unnatural stare, the convulsive movements

of the limbs and body, the unnatural posture into which the whole frame is

occasionally thrown, the gnashing of the teeth, and foaming at the mouth,

and supernatural strength that is put forth when any attempt is made at

constraint, you are strongly reminded of cases of real possession recorded

in the New Testament.

"There is no reason to suppose that any real cures are effected by these

prolonged ceremonies. In certain nervous affections the excitement is kept

up until utter exhaustion takes place; and if the patient is kept quiet

afterwards (which is generally the case), she may be restored to better

health after a while; and, no matter how long it may be before she

recovers from this severe tax upon her nerves, the priest claims the

credit of it. In other cases the patient may not have been diseased at

all, and, of course, there was nothing to be recovered from.

"If it should be a case of undissembled sickness, and the patient become

worse by this unnatural treatment, she is removed, and the ceremonies are

suspended, and it is concluded that it was not a real possession, but

something else. The priests have certain tests by which it is known when

the patient is healed, and the whole transaction is wound up when the

fees are paid. In all cases of this kind it is impossible to say whether

the devil has really been cast out or merely a better understanding

arrived at between him and the person he has been tormenting. The

individual is required to build a little house or temple for the spirit

near his own, to take occasional offerings to him, and pay all due respect

to his character, or to be subject to renewed assaults at any time.

Certain restrictions are imposed upon the person who has recovered from

these satanic influences. He must refrain from certain kinds of food,

avoid certain places of common resort, and perform certain duties; and,

for the neglect of any of these, is sure to be severely scourged by a

return of his malady. Like the Jews, in speaking of the actions of these

demoniacs, they are said to be done by the spirit, and not by the person

who is possessed. If the person performs any unnatural or revolting

act,--as the biting off of the head of a live chicken and sucking its

blood,--it is said that the spirit, not the man, has done it.

"But the views of the great mass of the people on these subjects are

exceedingly vague and indefinite. They attend these ceremonies on account

of the parade and excitement that usually accompany them, but they have no

knowledge of their origin, their true nature, or of their results. Many

submit to the ceremonies because they are persuaded to do so by their

friends, and, no doubt, in many cases in the hope of being freed from some

troublesome malady. But as to the meaning of the ceremonies themselves, or

the real influence which they exert upon their bodily diseases, they

probably have many doubts, and when called upon to give explanation of the

process which they have passed through, they show that they have none but

the most confused ideas."[28]

CHAPTER VI

FETICHISM--ITS PHILOSOPHY--A PHYSICAL SALVATION--CHARMS AND AMULETS

Even during the while that man was still a monotheist, as seen in a

previous chapter, he had eventually come to the use of idols which he did

not actually worship, by the making of images simply to _represent_ God;

he had not yet become an _idolater_.

Subsequently, in his farther lapse away from God, when he began to render

worship to beings other than God, fashioned images to represent them also,

and actually worshipped them, he became a polytheist and an idolater.

When he had wandered still farther, and God was no longer worshipped, the

knowledge of Him being reduced to a name, a multitude of spiritual beings

were substituted in place of God, and religion was only animism.

Farther on, when it seemed desirable to provide local residence for these

spirits, as had been done for God Himself in temples and costly images,

the material objects used for that residence were no longer matter of

value and choice; anything and any place was sufficient for a spirit's

habitat. Neither dignity, beauty, nor strength was any longer a factor in

the selection. For these objects did not represent the deities in any way

whatever. They were simply local residences. As such, a spirit could live

anywhere and in anything. This is bald fetichism. The thing itself, the

material itself, is not worshipped. The fetich worshipper makes a clear

distinction between the reverence with which he regards a certain material

object and the worship he renders to the spirit for the time being

inhabiting it. For this reason nothing is too mean or too small or too

ridiculous to be considered fit for a spirit's _locum tenens_; for when

for any reason the spirit is supposed to have gone out of that thing and

definitely abandoned it, the thing itself is no longer reverenced, and is

thrown away as useless.

The selection of the article in which the spirit is to reside is made by

the native "uganga" (doctor), who to the Negro stands in the office of a

priest. The ground of selection is generally that of mere convenience. The

ability to conjure a free wandering spirit into the narrow limits of a

small material object, and to compel and subordinate its power to the aid

of some designated person or persons and for a specific purpose, rests

with that uganga.

Over the wide range of many articles used in which to confine spirits,

common and favorite things are the skins and especially the tails of

bush-cats, horns of antelopes, nut-shells, snail-shells, bones of any

animal, but especially human bones; and among the bones are specially

regarded portions of skulls of human beings and teeth and claws of

leopards. But, literally, anything may be chosen,--any stick, any stone,

any rag of cloth. Apparently, there being no limit to the number of

spirits, there is literally no limit to the number and character of the

articles in which they may be localized.

It is not true, as is asserted by some in regard to these African tribes

and their degraded form of religion, that they worship the actual material

objects in which the spirits are supposed to be confined. Low as is

fetichism, it nevertheless has its philosophy, a philosophy that is the

same in kind as that of the higher forms of religion. A similar sense of

need that sends the Christian to his knees before God to ask aid in time

of trouble, and salvation temporal and spiritual, sends the fetich

worshipper to offer his sacrifice and to ejaculate his prayer for help as

he lays hold of his consecrated antelope horn, or as he looks on it with

abiding trust while it is safely tied to his body. His human necessity

drives him to seek assistance.

The difference between his act and the act of the Christian lies in the

kind of salvation he seeks, the being to whom he appeals, and the reason

for his appealing. The reason for his appeal is simply fear; there is no

confession, no love, rarely thanksgiving.

The being to whom he appeals is not God. True, he does not deny that He

is; if asked, he will acknowledge His existence. But that is all. Very

rarely and only in extreme emergencies, does he make an appeal to Him; for

he thinks God so far off, so inaccessible, so indifferent to human woes

and wants, that a petition to Him would be almost in vain. He therefore

turns to some one of the mass of spirits which he believes to be ever near

and observant of human affairs, in which, as former human beings, some of

them once had part.

As to the character of the salvation sought, it is not spiritual; it is a

purely physical salvation. A sense of moral and spiritual need is lost

sight of, although not eliminated. This is an index of the distance the

Negro has travelled away from Jehovah before he finally reached the

position of placing his trust in a fetich. By just so much as he seems to

himself living in a world crowded with unseen but powerful spiritual

beings (with whom what a Christian calls "sin" has no reprehensible moral

quality), by just so much he seems to have lost sight of his own soul and

its moral necessities.

The future is so vague that in the thought of most tribes it contains

neither heaven nor hell; there is no certain reward or rest for goodness,

nor positive punishment for badness. The future life is to each native

largely a reproduction, on shadowy and intangible lines, of the works and

interests and passions of this earthly life. In his present life, with its

savagery and oppression and dominance of selfish greed and right of might,

goodness has no reward. It is badness which in his personal experience

makes the largest gains. From this point of view, while some acts are

indeed called "good" and some "bad" (conscience proving its simple

existence by the use of these words in the record of language), yet

conscience is not much troubled by its possessor's badness. There is

little sense of the sinfulness of sin. There is only fear of possible

human injury by human or subsidized spiritual enemies. This is all the

salvation that is sought.

It is sought by prayer; by sacrifice, and by certain other ceremonies

rendered to the spirit of the fetich or to other non-localized spirits;

and by the use of charms or amulets.

These charms may be vocal, ritual, or material.

(1) The vocal are the utterance of cabalistic words deprecatory of evil or

supplicatory of favor, which are supposed in a vague way to have power

over the local spirits. These words or phrases, though sometimes coined by

a person for himself or herself (and therefore like our slang having a

known meaning), are often archaisms, handed down from ancestors and

believed to possess efficiency, but whose meaning is forgotten. In this

list would be included long incantations by the magic doctors and the

Ibâtâ-blown blessing.

(2) Certain rites or ceremonies are performed for almost every child at

some time during his or her infancy or youth, or subsequently as occasion

may demand, in which a prohibition is laid upon the child in regard to the

eating of some particular article of food or the doing of some special

act. It is difficult to get at the exact object for this "orunda."

Certainly the prohibited food or act is not in itself evil; for all but

the inhibited individual may eat of the food or commit the act as they

please. Most natives blindly follow the "custom" of their ancestors, and

are unable to give me the _raison d'être_ of the rite itself. But I gather

from the testimony of those best able to give a reason that the prohibited

article or act is literally a sacrifice, ordained for the child by its

parents and the magic doctor, as a gift to the governing spirit of its

life. The thing prohibited thus becomes removed from the child's common

use and is made sacred to the spirit. It is therefore a sacrament. Any use

of it by the child will thenceforth be a sacrilege which would draw down

the spirit's wrath in the form of sickness or other evil, and which can be

atoned for only through expensive ceremonies and by gifts to the magician

interceding for the offender.

Anything may be selected for an orunda. I do not know the ground for a

selection. Why one child, perhaps a babe too young to have eaten of the

to-be-prohibited thing, should be debarred forever from eating a chicken,

or the liver or any other particular part, or any portion at all, of a

goat or an ox or any other animal, I do not know. But that orunda is

thenceforth faithfully complied with, even under pangs of hunger. It is

like a Nazarite's vow.

I have a strong suspicion that where the orunda laid on a woman is a

matter of meat, superstition has played into the hands of masculine

selfishness, and denies to women the choice meat in order that men may

have the greater share. My suspicion rests on almost positive evidence in

the case of some prohibitions to the women of the Bulu and other Fang

tribes of the interior.

On a boat journey in the Ogowe River, about 1878, I camped on the edge of

a forest for the noon meal. My crew of four, members of the Galwa and

Nkâmi tribes, had no meat. They needed it, for they had rowed hard and

well. For myself, I had only a small chicken. I was satisfied with a

portion of it, and gave the rest to the crew. It would make at least a

tasty morsel for each, with their manioc bread. Three of them thanked me;

the fourth did not touch his share. I felt slightly vexed, thinking my

favor was not appreciated, and I asked the cause of his apparent

sullenness. He said he did not dare to eat of the fowl, as it was orunda

to him.

On another journey, in 1876, a young man whom I had picked up as extra

hand in my boat's crew, when at the noon mealtime we stopped under the

shade of a spreading tree by the river's bank, instead of respectfully

leaving me alone with my lunch in the boat, and going ashore where the

others were eating, wanted to remain in the boat, his orunda being that

when on a journey by water his food should be eaten only over water.

Two Ogowe chiefs, near whose villages was anchored the small river steamer

"Pioneer," on which I was passenger, in 1875, came aboard, and in

drinking a glass of liquor with the captain, one of them held up a piece

of white cloth before his mouth, in order that strangers' eyes might not

see him swallow. That was his orunda, probably. Perhaps also the hiding of

his drinking may have had reference to the common fear of another's "evil

eye."

The other, having taken a mouthful, wet his finger in his mouth, drew the

wet finger across his throat, and then blew on a fetich which he wore as a

ring on a finger of the other hand. I do not know the significance of his

motion across his throat. The blowing was the Ibâtâ-blessing,--an

ejaculatory prayer for a blessing on his plans, probably of trade.

This word "orunda," meaning thus originally _prohibited from_ human use

(like the South Sea "taboo"), grew, under missionary hands, into its

related meaning of _sacred_ to spiritual use. It is the word by which the

Mpongwe Scriptures translate our word "holy." I think it an unfortunate

choice; for the missionary has to stop and explain that orunda, as used

for God, does not mean the orunda used by mankind. In the translation of

the Benga Scriptures the word "holy" was transferred bodily, and we

explain that it means something better than good. To such straits are

translators sometimes reduced in the use of heathen languages!

(3) The charms that are most common are material, the fetich,--so common,

indeed, that by the universality of their use, and the prominence given to

them everywhere, in houses and on the person, they almost monopolize the

religious thought of the Bantu Negro, subordinating other acknowledged

points of his theology, dominating his almost entire religious interest,

and giving the departmental word "fetich" such overwhelming regard that it

has furnished the name distinctive of the native African religious system,

_viz._, fetichism. "Fetich" is an English word of Portuguese origin. "It

is derived from feitico, 'made,' 'artificial' (compare the old English

fetys, used by Chaucer); and this term, used of the charms and amulets

worn in the Roman Catholic religion of the period, was applied, by the

Portuguese sailors of the eighteenth century, to the deities they saw

worshipped by the Negroes of the West Coast of Africa.

"De Brosses, a French savant of the last century, brought the word

'fetichism' into use as a term for the type of religion of the lowest

races. The word has given rise to some confusion, having been applied, by

Comte and other writers, to the worship of the heavenly bodies and of the

great features of Nature. It is best to limit it to the worship of such

natural objects as are reverenced, not for their own power or excellence,

but because they are supposed to be occupied each by a spirit."[29]

The native word on the Liberian coast is "gree-gree"; in the Niger Delta,

"ju-ju"; in the Gabun country, "monda"; among the cannibal Fang, "biañ";

and in other tribes the same respective dialectic by which we translate

"medicine." To a sick native's thought the adjuvant medicinal herb used by

the doctor, and its associated efficiency-giving spirit invoked by that

same doctor, are inseparable. In the heathen Negro's soul the fetich takes

the place, and has the regard, which an idol has with the Hindu and the

Chinese.

"A fetich, strictly speaking, is little else than a charm or amulet, worn

about the person, and set up at some convenient place, for the purpose of

guarding against some apprehended evil or securing some coveted good." In

the Anglo-African parlance of the Coast fetiches are called by various

names, but all signify the same thing. Fetiches may be made of anything of

vegetable, animal, or metallic nature, "and need only to pass through the

consecrating hands of a native priest to receive all the supernatural

powers which they are supposed to possess. It is not always certain that

they possess extraordinary powers. They must be tried and give proof of

their efficiency before they can be implicitly trusted."[30]

A fetich, then, is any material object consecrated by the "oganga," or

magic doctor, with a variety of ceremonies and processes, by virtue of

which some spirit becomes localized in that object, and subject to the

will of the possessor.

Anything that can be conveniently carried on the person may thus be

consecrated,--a stone, chip, rag, string, or bead. Articles most

frequently used are snail-shells, nut-shells, and small horns of gazelles

or goats. These are used probably because of their convenient cavities;

for they are to be filled by the oganga with a variety of substances

depending, in their selection, on the special work to be accomplished by

the fetich. Its value, however, depends not on itself, nor solely on the

character of these substances, but on the skill of the oganga in dealing

with spirits.

There is a relation between these selected substances and the object to be

obtained by the fetich which is to be prepared of them,--for example, to

give the possessor bravery or strength, some part of a leopard or an

elephant; to give cunning, some part of a gazelle; to give wisdom, some

part of a human brain; to give courage, some part of a heart; to give

influence, some part of an eye; and so on for a multitude of qualities.

These substances are supposed to lure some spirit (being in some way

pleasing to it), which thenceforward is satisfied to reside in them and to

aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some one specific wish.

In preparing a fetich the oganga selects substances such as he deems

appropriate to the end in view,--the ashes of certain medicinal plants,

pieces of calcined bones, gums, spices, resins, and even filth, portions

of organs of the bodies of animals, and especially of human beings

(preferably eyes, brain, heart, and gall-bladder), particularly of

ancestors, or men strong or renowned in any way, and very especially of

enemies and of white men. Human eyeballs (particularly of a white person)

are a great prize. New-made graves have been rifled for them.

These are compounded in secret, with the accompaniment of drums, dancing,

invocations, looking into mirrors or limpid water to see faces (human or

spiritual, as may be desired), and are stuffed into the hollow of the

shell or bone, or smeared over the stick or stone.

If it be desired to obtain power over some one else, the oganga must be

given by the applicant, to be mixed in the sacred compound, either crumbs

from the food, or clippings of finger nails or hair, or (most powerful!)

even a drop of blood of the person over whom influence is sought. These

represent the life or body of that person. So fearful are natives of power

being thus obtained over them, that they have their hair cut only by a

friend; and even then they carefully burn it or cast it into a river. If

one accidentally cuts himself, he stamps out what blood has dropped on the

ground, or cuts out from wood the part saturated with blood.

Sitting one day by a village boat-landing in the Benita region, about

1866, while my crew prepared for our journey, I was idly plucking at my

beard, and carelessly flung away a few hairs. Presently I observed that

some children gathered them up. Asking my Christian assistant what that

meant, he told me: "They will have a fetich made with those hairs; when

next you visit this village, they will ask you for some favor, and you

will grant it, by the power they will thus have obtained over you."

The water with which a lover's body (male or female) is washed, is used in

making a philter to be mingled secretly in the drink of the loved one.

While, as I have already stated, it is true that anything portable may be

used either as the receptacle in which the spirit is to be located or as

the substance or "medicine" to be inserted in it, I wish to insist that in

the philosophy of fetich there is always a reason in the selection of all

these articles,--a reason which it is often difficult for a foreigner to

discover,--an apparent fitness for the end in view.

Arnot[31] refers to this: "Africans believe largely in preventive

measures, and their fetich charms are chiefly of that order. In passing

through a country where leopards and lions abound, they carefully provide

themselves with the claws, teeth, lips, and whiskers of those animals, and

hang them around their necks, to secure themselves against being attacked.

For the same purpose the point of an elephant trunk is generally worn by

elephant hunters. The bones from the legs of tortoises are much valued as

anklets, in order to give the wearers endurance, reminding one of the

fable of the tortoise. The lower jaw-bone of the tortoise is worn by

certain tribes as a preventive against toothache. The spine bones of

serpents are strung together with a girdle as a cure for back-ache."

A recent visitor to the Gabun country, in the "Journal of the African

Society," makes this criticism: "When a white man or woman wears some

trinket strung about them, they call it an amulet or charm. They ascribe

to it some virtue, and regard it as a sacred (?) thing; but when an

African native wears one, white men call it 'fetich,' and the wearer a

savage or heathen." This defence of the Negro is gratifying, but the

criticism of the white man is not quite just. There is this radical

difference: to the African the "fetich" is his all, his entire hope for

his physical salvation; he does not reckon on God at all. The civilized

man or woman with a "mascot" is very foolish in his or her belief in luck,

but their mascots never entirely take God's place.

I met at Gabun about 1895 the same criticism from the mouth of a partly

educated Sierra Leone Negro, who, though a professing Christian, evidently

was wearing Christianity hypocritically. His well-educated Mpongwe wife

was a member of my church. It was discovered that she had a certain fetich

suspended in her bedroom. It was necessary to summon her before the church

session; she explained that it was not hers, but her husband's, and

disclaimed belief in it. She was rebuked for allowing it in her room. The

husband, hearing of the rebuke, wrote me an angry letter justifying his

fetich. He said in substance:

"You white people don't know anything about black man's 'fashions.' You

say you trust God for everything, but in your own country you put up an

iron rod over your houses to protect yourselves from death by lightning;

and you trust in it the while that you still believe in God; and you call

it 'electricity' and civilization. And you say it's all right. I call this

thing of mine--this charm--'medicine'; and I hung it over my wife's bed to

keep away death by the arts of those who hate her; and I trust in it while

still believing in God. And you think me a heathen!" It was explained to

him that in the use of the lightning-rod white men reverently recognized

God in His own natural forces, but that his fetich dishonored God, ignored

Him, and was a distinct recognition of a supposed power that was claimed

to be able to act independently of God; that I trusted to the

lightning-rod under God, while he trusted to his fetich outside of God.

For every human passion or desire of every part of our nature, for our

thousand necessities or wishes, a fetich can be made, its operation being

directed to the attainment of one specified wish, and limited in power

only by the possible existence of some more powerful antagonizing spirit.

This, hung on the plantation fence or from the branches of plants in the

garden, is either to prevent theft or to sicken the thief; hung over the

doorway of the house, to bar the entrance of evil; hung from the bow of

the canoe, to insure a successful voyage; worn on the arm in hunting, to

assure an accurate aim; worn on any part of one's person, to give success

in loving, hating, planting, fishing, buying, and so forth, through the

whole range of daily work and interests.

Some kinds, worn on a bracelet or necklace, are to ward off sickness. The

new-born infant has a health-knot tied about its neck, wrist, or loins.

Down to the day of oldest age, every one keeps on multiplying or renewing

or altering these life talismans.

If of the charge at Balaklava it was said, "This is magnificent, but it is

not war," I may say of these heathen, "Such faith is magnificent, though

it be folly." The hunter going out, certain of success, returns

empty-handed; the warrior bearing on his breast a fetich panoply, which he

is confident will turn aside a bullet, comes back wounded; every one is

some day foiled in his cherished plan. Do they lose their faith? No, not

in the system,--their fetichism; but in the special material object of

their faith--their fetich--they do. Going to the oganga whom they had paid

for concocting that now disappointing amulet, they tell him of its

failure. He readily replies: "Yes, I know. You have an enemy who possesses

a fetich containing a spirit more powerful than yours, which made your

bullet miss its mark, which caused your opponent's spear to wound you.

Yours is no longer of use; it's dead. Come, pay me, and I will make you a

charm containing a spirit still more powerful."

The old fetich hitherto jealously guarded, and which would not have been

sold for any consideration, is now thrown away or sold to the foreign

curio-hunter.

A native heathen Akele chief, Kasa, my friend and host in the Ogowe, in

1874, showed me a string of shells, bones, horns, wild-cat tails, and so

forth, each with its magic compound, which he said could turn aside

bullets. In a friendly way he dared me to fire at him with my

sixteen-repeater Winchester rifle. I did not believe he meant it; but, on

his taking his stand a few paces distant, he did not quail under my steady

aim, nor even at the click of the trigger. I, of course, desisted,

apparently worsted. Two years later, Kasa was charged by an elephant he

had wounded, and was pierced by its tusks. His attendants drove off the

beast; the fearfully lacerated man survived long enough to accuse twelve

of his women and other slaves of having bewitched his gun, and thus

causing it only to wound instead of killing the elephant. On that charge

four of the accused were put to death.

Both men and women may become aganga on voluntary choice, and after a

course of instruction by an oganga.

"There is generally a special person in a tribe who knows these things,

and is able to work them. He has more power over spirits than other men

have, and is able to make them do what he likes. He can heal sickness, he

can foretell the future, he can change a thing into something else, or a

man into a lower animal, or a tree, or anything; he can also assume such

transformations himself at will. He uses means to bring about such

results; he knows about herbs, he has also recourse to rubbing, to making

images of affected parts of the body, and to various other arts. Very

frequently he is regarded as inspired. It is the spirit dwelling in him

which brings about the wonderful results; without the spirit he could not

do anything."[32]

[Illustration: FETICH DOCTOR. (The triangular patch of hair is the

professional tonsure.)]

Though these magicians possess power, its joy has its limitations; for,

becoming possessed by a familiar spirit, through whose aid they make their

invocations and incantations and under whose influence they fall into

cataleptic trances or are thrilled with Delphic rages, if they should

happen to offend that "familiar," it may destroy them by "eating" out

their life, as their phrase is. On Corisco Island, in 1863, a certain man

had acquired prominence as a magic doctor; he finally died of consumption.

His friends began a witchcraft investigation to find out who had "killed"

him. A post-mortem being made, cavities were found in the lungs. Ignorant

of disease, they thereupon dropped the investigation, saying that his own

"witch" had "eaten" him.

Captain Guy Burrows, a British officer, formerly in the service of the

Kongo Free-State, left it unwilling to be a participant in the fearful

atrocities allowed by the King of Belgium; and he has recently made a

scathing exposure of the doings of Belgian agents that have made the Kongo

a slave-ground of worse horrors than existed in the old days of the export

slave-trade. He thus jocularly describes what he saw of fetich at the town

of Matadi on the Kongo, where there is an English Baptist Mission:

"Outside the small area, under the direct influence of the mission, there

is but one deity,--the fetich. The heathen in his blindness, in bowing

down to wood and stone, bows, as Kipling says, to 'wood for choice.' He

carves a more or less grotesque face; and the rest is a matter of taste. I

came across one figure whose principal ornament consisted of a profusion

of ten-penny nails and a large cowrie shell.[33] But anything will do; an

old tin teapot is another favorite fetich decoration. I have generally

found that the uglier they are, the more they seem to be feared and

reverenced.

"The fetich is sometimes inclined to be a nuisance. On one occasion I

wanted to build an out-house at the far end of a plantation, where tools

and other implements might be stored. I was told by the chief, however,

that this was fetich ground, and that terrible misfortunes would follow

any attempt to build on it. I tried to get some closer idea of the fetich,

but could get no more material information than a recital of vague terrors

of the kind that frighten children at night. So I began building my

out-house, during the course of which operation some monkeys came and sat

in the trees, highly interested in the proceedings. In some indefinite way

I gathered that the fetich power was regarded as being invested in these

monkeys, or that they were the embodiment of the fetich idea, or anything

else you please. But I could not have my work interfered with by the

ghosts of a lot of chattering apes, and the fears of those big children

the natives; so I witch-doctored the monkeys after an improved recipe of

my own,--I shot the lot. Thereafter the spell was supposed to be lifted,

and no farther objections were raised; but the empty cartridge cases were

seized upon by the men as charms against any further manifestations in the

same place. I am glad to say none occurred; the spell I had used was too

potent!"

Captain Burrows was probably an efficient administrator. But, like many

foreigners, he evidently chose to ride, rough shod, over natives'

prejudices, regarding them as idle superstitions, and unable or unwilling

to investigate their philosophy. I see, however, from his story, that he

had gotten hold of a part of the truth. That ground on which he desired

to build was probably an old graveyard. The native chief very naturally

did not wish it to be disturbed. Monkeys that gather on the trees in the

vicinity of a graveyard are supposed to be possessed by the spirits of

those buried there. An ordinary individual would have been forcibly

prevented had he attempted what Captain Burrows did. He had a foreign

government at his back, and the natives submitted. Their dead and their

monkeys, sacred _pro tempore_, had succumbed to the superior power of the

white man's cartridges. Their only satisfaction was to retain the empty

shells as souvenirs.

CHAPTER VII

THE FETICH--A WORSHIP

Worship is an eminent part of every form of religion, but it is not

essential to it. True, most religions have some form of worship. But a

belief would still be a religion, even if it were so insignificant or so

degraded or so indifferent as not to care to express itself in rites or

ceremonies.

Fetichism, whose claim to a right to be reckoned as a religion some have

been disposed to dispute, expresses itself by most of the visible and

audible means used in the cults of other forms of religion.

The motives also that prompt to the performance of religious rites are not

to enter into the question whether the beliefs associated with them are

worthy to be dignified by the name "religion." Motives may vary widely,

_e. g._, love in an evangelical Christian, pride in a Pharisee, sensual

lust in a follower of Islam and in a Mormon, and fear in the fetich

worshipper. Those motives, mixed perhaps with other considerations, are

the dominant factor in the government of the religious life of each.

We have already seen in the previous chapter that the religious thought of

the believer in fetichism does not concern his soul or its future. The

evils he would escape are not moral or spiritual. The sense of a great

need that makes him look for help outside of himself is not based on a

desire to obey God's will, but on his and some spirit's co-relation to the

great needs of this mortal life.

The salvation sought being a purely physical one, the thoughts that direct

the use of means to that end are limited to physical needs, and largely

to physical agencies. But not entirely: for one of these agencies, as

already mentioned in the previous chapter, is prayer; other agencies are

sacrificial offerings, and the use of amulet charms, or talismans, known

as fetiches.

1. _Fetich Worship as performed by Sacrifice and other Offerings._

Sacrifice is an element in all real worship, if by sacrifice, in the

widest sense, may be understood the devoting of any object from a common

to a sacred use, and this irrespective of the actual value of the gift (as

is the case also with Chinese paper imitation money scattered around the

grave, in Chinese funerals). The intention of the giver ennobles it; the

spirit being supposed in some vague way to be gratified by the respectful

recognition of itself, and even to be pleased sometimes by the gift

itself.

(1) Thus the stones heaped by passers-by at the base of some great tree or

rock, the leaf cast from the passing canoe toward a point of land on the

river, though intrinsically valueless, and useless to the ombwiri of the

spot, are accepted as acknowledgments of that ombwiri's presence.

"All day we kept passing trees or rocks on which were placed little heaps

of stones or bits of wood; in passing these, each of my men added a new

stone or bit of wood, or even a tuft of grass. This is a tribute to the

spirits, the general precaution to insure a safe return. These people have

a vague sort of Supreme Being called Lesa, who has good and evil passions;

but here (Plateau of Lake Tanganyika), as everywhere else, the Musimo, or

spirits of the ancestors, are a leading feature in the beliefs. They are

propitiated, as elsewhere, by placing little heaps of stones about their

favorite haunts. At certain periods of the year the people make

pilgrimages to the mountain of Fwambo-Liamba, on the summit of which is a

sort of small altar of stones. There they deposit bits of wood, to which

are attached scraps of calico, flowers, or beads; this is to propitiate

Lesa.

"After harvest, for instance, they make such an offering. So when a girl

becomes marriageable, she takes food with her, and goes up to the

mountain for several days. When she returns, the other women lead her in

procession through the villages, waving long tufts of grass and

palms."[34]

(2) Other gifts are supposed to be actually utilized by the spirit in some

essential way. In some part of the long single street of most villages is

built a low hut, sometimes not larger than a dog-kennel, in which, among

all tribes, are hung charms; or by which is growing a consecrated plant (a

lily, a cactus, a euphorbia, or a ficus). In some tribes a rudely carved

human (generally female) figure stands in that hut, as an idol. Idols are

rare among most of the coast tribes, but are common among all the interior

tribes. That they are not now frequently seen on the Coast is, I think,

not due to a lack of faith in them, but perhaps to a slight sense of

civilized shame. The idol has been the material object most denounced by

missionaries in their sermons against heathenism. The half-awakened native

hides it, or he manufactures it for sale to curio-hunters. A really valued

idol, supposed to contain a spirit, he will not sell. He does not always

hide his fetich charm worn on his person; for it passes muster in his

explanation of its use as a "medicine."

That idol, charm, or plant, as the case may be, is believed for the time

to be the residence of a spirit which is to be placated by offerings of

some kind of food. I have seen in those sacred huts a dish of boiled

plantains (often by foreigners miscalled "bananas") or a plate of fish.

This food is generally not removed till it spoils. Sometimes, where the

gift is a very large one, a feast is made; people and spirit are supposed

to join in the festival, and nothing is left to spoil. That it is of use

to the spirit is fully believed; but just how, few have been able to tell

me. Some say that the "life" or essence of the food has been eaten by the

spirit; only the form of the vegetable or flesh remaining to be removed.

(3) Blood sacrifices are common. In any great emergency a fowl with its

blood is laid at that low hut's door. In time of great danger, an expected

pestilence, a threatened assault by enemies, or some severe illness of a

great man or woman, a goat or sheep is sacrificed.

At the entrance to a village the way is often barred by a temporary light

fence, only a narrow arched gateway of saplings being left open. These

saplings are wreathed with leaves or flowers. That fence, frail as it is,

is intended as a bar to evil spirits, for from those arched saplings hang

fetich charms. When actual war is coming, this street entrance is

barricaded by logs, behind which real fight is to be made against human,

not spiritual, foes. The light gateway is sometimes further guarded by a

sapling pinned to the ground horizontally across the narrow threshold. An

entering stranger must be careful to tread over and not on it.

In an expected great evil the gateway is sometimes sprinkled with the

blood of a sacrificed goat or sheep. The flesh is not wasted; it is eaten

by the villagers, and especially by the magic doctor. Does not this look

like a memory of a tradition of the Passover and its paschal lamb? And

does it not suggest some thought of a blood atonement?

(4) I have not actually seen, or even heard of human sacrifices in the

tribes I have personally visited. But on the adjacent Upper Guinea Coast,

until ten years ago, there were human sacrifices to the sacred crocodiles

of the rivers of the Niger Delta. In the oil rivers of that same coast

there was, until recently, an annual sacrifice (as in the ancient Nile

days) of a maiden to the river spirits of trade, for success in foreign

commerce.

Treaties with foreign civilized nations have now prohibited this

sacrifice, but the maiden has not gained much in the change. Instead of

one being sacrificed to a brute crocodile to please the spirit of trade,

hundreds are prostituted to please brutal, dissolute foreigners.

The thousands of captives butchered at the "annual custom" of Dahomey were

claimed by its successive kings, in their answer to the protests of the

ambassadors from civilized nations, to be required as offerings to the

safety of the nation, the omission of which would be punished by the loss

of the king's own life. Fearful as that annual barbarity was, I do not

think that those kings should properly be called "bloodthirsty." It was

their religion. All the more dreadful the religion that called for such

deeds!

Here, again, the question presents itself whether Africa has gained much

in the substitution of wicked white representatives of civilization for

the heathen black representatives of fetichism. The Kongo River was

rescued from the cruelties and loss of life in the foreign slave-trade,

only to be subjected to greater cruelties, in its miscalled "Free State,"

under the control of Belgium, at the hands of men like Major Lothaire.

The following remarks of Menzies[35] on the use of sacrifice by primitive

man are descriptive of the interior tribes of Africa to-day: "Sacrifice is

an invariable feature of early religion. Wherever gods are worshipped,

gifts and offerings are made to them of one kind or another. It is in this

way that, in antiquity at least, the relation with the deity was renewed,

if it had been slackened or broken, or strengthened and made sure.

Sacrifice and worship are, in the ancient world, identical terms. The

nature of the offering and the mode of presenting it are infinitely

various, but there is always sacrifice in one form or another. Different

deities of course receive different gifts; the tree has its roots watered,

or trophies of battle or of the chase are hung upon its branches; horses

are thrown into the sea. But of primitive sacrifice generally we may

affirm that it consists of such food and drink as men themselves partake

of. Whether it be the fruit of the field or the firstlings of the flock

that is offered at the sacred stone, whether the offering is burnt before

the god or set down and left near him, or whether he is summoned to come

down from the sky or to travel from the far country to which he may have

gone, it is of the materials of the meal that the sacrifice consists. In

some cases it appears to be thought that the god consumes the offering, as

when Fire is worshipped with offerings which he burns up, or when a

fissure in the earth closes upon a victim; but in most cases it is only

the spirit or finer essence that the god enjoys; the rest he leaves to

men. And thus sacrifice is generally accompanied by a meal. The offering

is presented to the god whole, but the worshippers help to eat it. The god

gets the savor of it which rises in the air towards him, while the more

material part is devoured below."

The testimony of travellers in other parts of Africa, distant thousands of

miles from the West Coast, show that the practice of offerings is almost

identical all over the southern third of the continent, the lines of

latitude of Bantu tribes being conterminous with their language and their

religion.

Arnot[36] says that in South Africa, "when going to pray, the Barotse make

offerings to the spirits of their forefathers under a tree, bush, or grove

planted for the purpose; and they take a larger or a smaller offering,

according to the measure of their request. If the offering be beer, they

pour it upon the ground; if cloth, it is tied to a horn stuck in the

ground; if an ox be slaughtered, the blood is poured over the horn, which,

in fact, is their altar." (Ps. cxviii. 27.)

In that same region, among the Barotse, "Nothing of importance can be

sanctified without a human sacrifice, in most cases a child. First the

fingers and toes are cut off, and the blood is sprinkled on the boat,

drum, house, or whatsoever may be the object in view. The victim is then

killed, ripped up, and thrown into the river."

Declè also[37] describes the religious habits of the Barotse tribes of

Southern Central Africa: "They chiefly worship the souls of their

ancestors. When any misfortune happens, the witch doctor divines with

knuckle-bones whether the ancestor is displeased, and they go to the grave

and offer up sacrifice of grain or honey.... They also bring to the tombs

cooked meats, which they leave there a few minutes and then eat. When they

go to pray by a grave, they also leave some small white beads. Whilst an

Englishman was journeying to Lialui, he passed near a little wood where

there lay a very venerated chief. The boatmen stopped, and having

sacrificed some cooked millet, their headman designated a man to offer up

a prayer, which ran thus: 'You see us; we are worn out travellers, and our

belly is empty; inspire the white man, for whom we row, to give us food to

fill our stomachs.'"

Among the Wanyamwezi, "Every chief has near his hut a Musimo hut, in which

the dead are supposed to dwell, and where sacrifices and offerings must be

made. Meat and flour are deposited in the Musimo huts, and are not, as

with many other peoples, consumed afterwards. The common people also have

their Musimo huts, but they are smaller than that of the chief, and the

offerings they make are, of course, not so important as his."

The Wanyamwezi being great travellers, they have numberless ways of

propitiating the Musimo. "The night before starting they put big patches

of moistened flour on their faces and breasts. On the way, if by chance

they are threatened with war or any other difficulty, some of them go on

ahead in the early morning for about a hundred yards along the path over

which they are about to travel. Then they place a hand on the ground, and

throw flour over it in such a manner as to leave the impression of a hand

on the soil. At the same time they 'wish' hard that the journey may go off

well. On the march, from time to time each of them will deposit in the

same spot a twig of wood or a stone in such a way that a great heap gets

collected. If they halt in the midst of high grass each will plait a

handful of grass, which they tie together so as to make a kind of

bower.[38] In the forest, if they are pressed for time, each will make a

cut with a blow of a hatchet in a tree; but if they have time, they will

cut down trees, lop off the branches, and place these poles against a big

tree; in certain places I have seen stacks of hundreds of them around a

single tree. Sometimes they will strip pieces of bark from the trees, and

stick them on the branches, and at others they will place a pole supported

by two trees right over the path. On it they will hang up a broken gourd,

or an old box made of bark. On some occasions they will even erect a

little hut made of straw to the Musimo on the road itself; but this is

usually done when they are going on a hunting expedition, and not on a

journey. Near the villages, where two roads meet, are usually found whole

piles of old pots, gourds, and pieces of iron.[39] When a hunter starts

for the chase, he prays to the Musimo to give him good luck. If he kills

any big game, he places before the hut of his Musimo the head of the beast

he has killed, and inside a little of the flesh."[40]

2. Just as worship is an eminent part of religion, prayer is usually a

chief part of religious worship. But in fetichism, though it undeniably

has a part, it is not prominent, and not often formal or public. It plays

a less obvious and less frequent part than either sacrifices or the use of

charms.

"Prayer is the ordinary concomitant of sacrifice; the worshipper explains

the reason of the gift, and urges the deity to accept it and to grant the

help that is needed. The prayers of the earliest stage are offered on

emergencies, and often appear to be intended to attract the attention of

the god who may be engaged in another direction. The requests they contain

are of the most primary sort. Food is asked for, success in hunting or

fishing, strength of arm, rain, a good harvest, children, and so forth.

They have a ring of urgency; they state the claims the worshipper has on

the god, and mention his former offerings as well as the present one; they

praise the power and the past acts of the deity, and adjure him by his

whole relationship to his people (and also to his enemies) to grant their

requests."[41]

Fetich prayer may be and is offered without restriction by any one, young

or old, male or female; but to my knowledge it is seldom used by the

young. A very intelligent woman, a member of my Batanga church, tells me

that when she was a child she possessed a fetich supposed to be very

valuable, which she had inherited from her father. She says that when she

would be going into the forest or where she expected difficulty or danger

or trouble or was anxious for success, she would hold the fetich in her

hand, and with eye and thought directed toward it and the spirit it was

supposed to contain, would utter a short petition for aid and protection.

But practically formal prayer is rarely made. Ejaculatory prayer, however,

is made constantly, in the uttering of cabalistic words, phrases, or

sentences adopted by or assigned to almost every one by parent or doctor.

They are uttered by all ages and both sexes at any time, as a defence from

evil, on all sorts of occasions,--_e. g._, when one sneezes, stumbles, or

is otherwise startled, etc.

The prayers which I have heard were of adults. On a journey, about 1876,

stopping for a night in a village on the Ogowe River, I saw the venerable

chief stand out in the open street. He addressed the spirits of the air,

begging them, "Come not to my town!" He recounted his good deeds--praising

himself as just, honest, and kind to his neighbors--as reason why no evil

should befall him, and closed with an impassioned appeal to the spirits to

stay away.

At another time, about 1879, in another Ogowe village, where a man's son

had been wounded, and a bleeding artery which had been successfully closed

had just broken open again, and the hemorrhage, if not promptly checked,

would probably be fatal, the father ran out of the hut, wildly

gesticulating towards the sky, saying, "Go away! go away! O ye spirits!

why do you come to kill my son?" And he continued for some time in a

strain of alternate pleading and protestation.

In another case I saw a woman who rushed into the street objurgating the

spirits, and in the next breath humbly supplicating them, who, she said,

were vexing her child that was lying in convulsions.

Observe that while these were distinctly prayers, appeals for mercy,

pathetic, agonizing protestations, there was no praise, no love, no

thanks, no confession of sin,--only a long, pitiful deprecation of evil.

There are also prayers of blessing. Parents in farewells to their

children, or a chief to his parting guest, or any grateful recipient of a

valued gift, will take the head or hand of the child, guest, or donor, and

saying, "Ibâtâ!" (blessing), or adding a cabalistic ejaculation, will

sometimes "blow" a blessing. From this custom has arisen the statement in

some books of travel that it was an African mode of honoring a guest to

spit on his hand. It is true that the sudden and violent expulsion of the

breath in "blowing" the "Ibâtâ" from the tip of the tongue is apt to be

followed by an ejection of more or less saliva, but the kernel of the

custom lies in the prayer of blessing accompanying the act.

In auguries made by the mfumu, or witch-doctor, among the Wanyamwezi, "the

mfumu holds a kind of religious service; he begins by addressing the

spirits of their forefathers, imploring them not to visit their anger upon

their descendants. This prayer he offers up kneeling, bowing and bending

to the ground from time to time. Then he rises, and commences a hymn of

praise to the ancestors, and all join in the chorus. Then, seizing his

little gourds, he executes a _pas seul_, after which he bursts out into

song again, but this time singing as one inspired."[42]

3. The third mode of worship has been already mentioned in a previous

chapter, _viz._, the use of charms or fetiches. This is the mode most

frequently used; and to the descriptions of their forms of preparation and

manner, universality, and the various effects of their use, the following

chapters are devoted.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FETICH--WITCHCRAFT--A WHITE ART--SORCERY

Hundreds of acts and practices in the life of Christian households in

civilized lands pass muster before the bar of æsthetic propriety and

society, and even of the church, as not only harmless and allowable, but

as commendable, and conducive to kindness, good-will, and healthful social

entertainment; but in the doing of these acts few are aware of the fact

that some of them in their origin were heathenish and in their meaning

idolatrous, and that long ago they would have brought on the doer church

censure.

Norse legends and Celtic and Gaelic folk-lore abound in superstitions that

were held by our forefathers in honor of false gods and demons. Their

Christian descendants, to the present generations in Great Britain and the

United States, delight our children with the beautifully printed fairy

tale, forgetting, or not even knowing, that once, long ago, that tale was

a tale of sin. The superstitious peasant of Germany, Ireland, and other

European countries, while as at least a nominal son of the church he

worships God, fears the machinations of trolls and the "good little

people," and wards off their dreaded influence by vocal and material

charms,--a practice for which the African Negro just emerging from

heathenism is debarred church-membership. The practice is common to the

three,--the untaught heathen, the ignorant peasant, and the enlightened

Christian,--but its significance differs for each. To the Christian it is

only a national or household tradition, without religious or moral

significance, and his belief in the power of the charm is seldom seriously

held. To the peasant the practice is also a tradition; it is not his

religion, but he thinks that somehow under the divine Providence, in whom

he believes and whom he worships in the church, it will be conducive to

his physical well-being. But to the heathen it is a part of his religion,

and leads to the exclusion of the true God, whom he does not know, or at

least does not worship.

In our Christian homes, around the Christmas tree, with all its holy,

happy thoughts, we decorate with the holly bush and we hang the mistletoe

bough, never thinking that the December festival itself was originally a

heathen feast, and that our superstitious forefathers spread the holly as

a guard against evil fairies, and hung the mistletoe as part of the

ceremonies of a Druid's human sacrifice.

The superstitious African Negro does precisely the same thing to-day,

because he believes in witchcraft; the holly bush not growing in his

tropical air, he has substituted the cayenne pepper bush. The witch or

wizard whom he fears can no more pass over that pepper leaf with its red

pods than the Irish fairy can dare the holly leaf with its red berries.

Superstitious acts are thus rooted in us all, heathen and Christian, the

world over; only with this great difference,--that to the Christian they

bear no religious or even moral significance; to the heathen their entire

_raison d'être_ is that they are his religion, or rather part of his

worship in the practice of his religion.

In emerging from his heathenism and abandoning his fetichism for the

acceptance of Christianity, no part of the process is more difficult to

the African Negro than the entire laying aside of superstitious practices,

even after his assertion that they do not express his religious belief.

From being a thief, he can grow up an honest man; from being a liar, he

can become truthful; from being indolent, he can become diligent; from

being a polygamist, he can become a monogamist; from a status of ignorance

and brutality, he can develop into educated courtesy. And yet in his

secret thought, while he would not wear a fetich, he believes in its

power, and dreads its influence if possibly it should be directed against

himself. Some church-members thus believing and fearing do wear fetiches,

claiming that their use is simply defensive. In their moral thought they

make a distinction, which to them is clear and satisfactory in the present

stage of the enlightenment of their conscience, between the defensive and

the offensive use of the fetich,--the latter is a black art; the former is

a white art. Only the heathen and non-Christian element of the community

practise the black art. They ignore not God's existence, but deny that He

plays any part in the economy of human life. They believe in evil spirits,

and that they themselves can have association with them, by which they may

obtain power for all purposes; they use enchantments to obtain that power;

and having it, or professing to have it, they exercise it for the

gratification of revenge or avarice, or in other ways to injure other

persons. They become, in heart, murderers; and if occasion serve, by

poison or other means, are willing to become actual murderers. The

community regards them as criminals, and executes them as such when it is

proved that they used black art to accomplish the death of some one who

has recently died.

The Christian, of course, will practise none of the black arts, but

believing in their existence and power as permitted to the Evil One under

the divine government, he is willing to allow himself to use, as a

counter-influence, a fetich of the white art in self-defence.

The discussion of the morality of this white art is often a difficult

question in the church sessions in the discipline of some offending

church-member. Few of the natives have emerged so far into the light as to

stand squarely and fully with the missionary in his civilized attitude

toward this question of the allowability of a fetich charm under any

circumstances. Even the missionary, if he is wise and would not be unjust,

will look with the leniency of charity on an offence of this kind in the

case of a convert only lately come out of heathenism, which he would not

or should not exercise toward a fortune-teller or hoodoo practitioner

under the broad light of civilization.

In electing men as ruling elders in the church session, or accepting

candidates for the gospel ministry, while a certain degree of

intellectuality is desired, and a certain amount of education required, we

look first and always for the quality of their moral fibre, whether or not

it be untrammelled by the fetich cult.

A rare and noble example of utter freedom from any such superstitious bias

was the late Rev. Ibia ja Ikenge. From his youth, believing in,

using, and practising fetich white art, when he became a Christian his

conversion was so clear and decided that he was soon made a ruling elder,

was accepted as a candidate, grew up to licensure as a probationer,

subsequently reached ordination to the ministry, and finally became pastor

of the Corisco church of his own Benga tribe. Honored during his

ministerial life by all classes, foreigners and natives, he died regretted

by all, even by the heathen whose sins he had unsparingly denounced. But

there are few so morally clear as he.

A few years ago, while I was in charge of the Gabun church, in the Mpongwe

tribe, at the oldest station and outwardly the most civilized part of the

mission, I was surprised by a charge of witchcraft practice laid against a

very ladylike woman who was one of my intimate native friends. I had known

her from her childhood; had admired her intelligence, vivacity, and

purity; had unfortunately helped her into a disastrous marriage from

which, as her pastor, I afterwards rescued her with legal grounds for

divorce; and subsequently she had married a Sierra Leone man who professed

to be a Christian. It was discovered that she had hanging over the doorway

in her bedroom a fetich regularly made and bought from a fetich doctor. On

trial of the case, she denied that it was hers, stated that it was her

husband's, admitted that she knew of its existence and use, that she

allowed it to be placed in the usual spot for warding off evil spirits,

and was not clear in denial of belief that it might be of some use to her

in that way.

My three ruling elders looked on the case more lightly than even I was

charitably disposed to do, and my own duty as a judge was obscured by my

friendship for the accused. It was a great pain for me to have even to

rebuke a lady I had so loved and trusted. She kept her anger wonderfully

under control while in the session meeting; but she resented the rebuke,

broke our friendship, and subsequently sought to injure me by slander. If

there was any doubt about her complicity with the fetich, there was no

doubt about the fact of her effort to injure me. I did not prosecute her

(as I would have done had she slandered any one else), lest I be suspected

of making my position of session moderator an engine for personal revenge.

She subsequently made a noble reparation. She still affirms that she does

not believe in fetich, and remains in "good standing" in the church, while

occasionally hanging a charm on her garden fence for its "moral effect" on

trespassers.

Lately a fellow missionary told me that in a conversation with certain

natives, professed Christians, they admitted their fear lest their

nail-clippings should be used against them by an enemy, and candidly

acknowledged that when they pared their nails they threw the pieces on the

thatch of the low roof of their house.

The missionary was surprised, and, perhaps with a little suspicion or

perhaps as a test, turning to a man present who had remained silent during

the discussion, said, "And you?--what do you do with your parings?" He

honestly replied, "I throw them on the roof!" And this man is an elder,

and had been advanced to be a local preacher. There is no expectation of

his ordination, for though he can preach a good sermon, he is lacking in

all other abilities desirable in a minister. He is probably fifty years of

age, and for forty years has been in mission employ of some kind, and

living in the mission household much of that time. But this mission

association has not been to him the benefit it would have been to almost

any one else; for, being of slave origin, he seemed to prefer to keep

aloof from the free-born, grew up without companionship, and is extremely

secretive. Though a Christian and a good man, he had not opened his inner

life to all the ennobling influences of the light.

A difficulty, admitted by the missionary in judging of the morality of the

use of a fetich charm, is the explanation offered by the natives, even by

some professedly Christian, that the charm is of the nature of a

"medicine," and, generally, actually has medicines in it. It is known to

the native that civilized and Christian therapeutics recognize a great

variety of medicinal articles, solid and liquid, and that they are

employed in a variety of ways,--as lotions, ointments, and powders; and

that some are drunk, some are rubbed into the skin, and some are worn on

the body,--_e. g._, a sachet of sulphur in skin diseases, or of pungent

essential oils to fend off insects,--and that certain herbs whose scent is

attractive to fish are rubbed on the fisherman's hook. The missionary

knows, too, that certain native medicinal plants are used, and with

efficiency, in precisely these ways and with precisely these reasons as,

at least in part, the ground for their use.

Truth gains nothing by an indiscriminate denunciation of all native

"medicine"; for the native knows by the personal experience of himself and

his observation of others that a given "medicine" has helped or cured

himself and others. His belief in this case is not a mere theory; it is

actual fact. The missionary loses in the native's respect, and in the

native's trust in his judgment or the value of his word, if he asserts

unqualifiedly that "native medicine" is "foolishness," especially if, as

was the case before the desirability of medical missionaries was as

generally recognized by the church as it now is, the missionary was able

to give him no substitute for the magic doctor. The native Christian's

sense of justice was aggrieved at being disciplined for the use of a

medicine in sickness, which experience told him had been of benefit and in

place of which the missionary offered him no other.

The native's error in his judgment of the case and the missionary's

justification of his position lay in the idolatrous ceremonies that are

associated with the administration of the medicine. In the native's

ignorant mind, and in the distress of his disease, he was unable to see a

distinction between the therapeutic action of a drug and the mode of its

administration. In fact, to him that mode may be as important a factor

contributive to the desired result as the drug itself. In the heathen

belief of the native doctor it is admittedly true that the administration,

not the drug, is the important factor, both mode of administration and the

drug itself deriving all their efficiency from a spirit claimed by the

magician to be under his control, which is in some vague way pleased to be

associated with the particular drug and those special ceremonies. The

native doctor does not understand therapeutics as such. Some one of his

ancestors happened to observe that a certain leaf, bark, or root exhibited

internally proved efficient in cases where the symptoms indicated a

certain disease which he had failed to cure by his dances, drums,

auguries, and other enchantments. Not knowing the _modus operandi_ of the

drug itself, he had jumped to the conclusion that he had finally happily

found the adjuvant herb necessary to please the spirit for whom he had

been making enchantments, without which herb the spirit had hitherto

withheld its assistance. And ever afterward the secret of this particular

drug was guarded by his family, the knowledge of its tree being handed

down as an heirloom, the secret kept as jealously and carefully as the

recipe for the proprietary medicine of any quack in civilized lands. In

his medical ethics there was no _quæ prosunt omnibus_.

The dividing line of morality between the fetich doctor and the Christian

physician is a narrow but deep chasm. The latter knows that, with all his

skill in physiology and the infallibility of his drug's indication,

results lie in the hand of God, with whom are the issues of life and

death, who has sovereignly and beneficently endowed certain plants or

minerals with properties befitting certain pathological conditions. The

former ignores God, and firmly believes that his own enchantments have

subsidized the power of a spirit, so that the spirit itself is to enter

into the body of the patient, and, searching through his vitals, drive

out the antagonizing spirit, which is the supposed actual cause of the

disease. The etiology of disease is to the native obscure. His attempts at

explanation are somewhat inconsistent; the sickness is spoken of as a

disease, and yet the patient is said to be sick because of the presence of

an evil spirit, which being driven out by the magician's benevolent spirit

the patient will recover.

The drug exhibited with the ceremonies by which the friendly spirit is

induced to enter the body is entirely secondary and adjuvant, and is not

supposed to be any more efficient in producing a cure than was the Old

Testament incense of the Temple ritual in obtaining an answer to prayer.

But the drug is often a really valuable medicine, and does cure the

patient. Yet the native Christian must be forbidden to submit to its use,

because of the invariably associated heathen ceremonies. The magician

alone knows from what plant the drug came, and he positively refuses to

administer it unless its associated ceremonies are carefully observed. For

the Christian to consent to do that, is to "kiss the calves"[43] of

idolatrous Israel, or to partake of the "meats offered to idols."[44]

The manner of practising the white art by the magic doctor may be purely

ritual without his making or the patient's wearing any material amulet,

but the performance is none the less fetich in its character.

According to the usual procedure an article is prepared with incantations

referring to spiritual influences to be worn by the applicant either as a

cure for an actually existing disease or any other expected danger, or,

irrespective of disease, for the attainment of a desired object or for

success in some cherished plan. Its application may be as limitless as the

entire range of human desire.

The first step in the process is the selection of an object in which to

enclose the various articles deemed necessary to attract and please the

spiritual being whose aid is to be invoked. In this selection it is not

probable that superstitious or other moral consideration enters. It is

simply a matter of taste as to shape or availability or convenience. The

article usually chosen is a horn of a gazelle or young antelope, or of a

goat. The ground for the choice is availability; those animals are common.

The horns are preserved and are therefore always at hand. They are small,

light, and easily carried. They are durable, not liable to rust and decay,

as would be an article of vegetable origin, and they have a convenient

cavity.

The next step in the process is the selection of the substances which are

to be packed into the hollow of the horn. These are of both animal and

vegetable origin, but mostly vegetable. They may be very absurd to our

civilized view, they may be disgusting and even filthy; but they are all

ranked as "medicine," have actually some fitness to the end in view, as

described in the previous chapter, and are to be as carefully regarded as

are the ingredients of a physician's prescription by a druggist. Their

absurdity must not militate against the view of them as "medicine," even

to a civilized mind. We are not to forget that, all superstitious and

fetich ideas aside, our own pharmacopoeia one hundred years ago

contained animal products of supposed therapeutic value that were clumsy,

annoying, and even disgusting. Indeed, it is only in very modern medicine

that the profession have thought it worth while to regard the matter of

agreeable look and pleasant taste. Homoeopathy, even if we do not all

believe in it, must be given credit for at least eliminating nauseous

taste from the attributes of a good medicine, even of an emetic.

From the wide range of substances, mineral, animal, and vegetable, the

magic doctor takes generally some plant. Indeed, so associated is the

doctor's thought of a tree and some spirit belonging to it, that an

educated and very intelligent native chief at Gabun who still clings to

many heathen practices, of whom recently I asked an explanation of fetich

from the native point of view, said sententiously, "A principle of fetich

comes from trees." This carried to me very little meaning. I asked him to

explain at length. He did so. He said that in the long ago, while still

his ancestors knew of God and had not entirely forgotten to give him some

kind of worship, their medicine men were botanists, and, like Solomon,

"spake of trees." The herbs and barks they used were employed solely for

their own intrinsically curative qualities. But as people became more

degraded and "like people, like priest," the medicine men added a ritual

of song, dances, incantations, and auguries by which to dignify their

profession with mystery. As they grew in power, they added claims of

spiritual influence, by which to impress their patients with fear and to

exact obedience even from kings, until finally the idea of a spirit as the

efficient agent in the cure was substituted for that of the drug itself,

and fetich belief dominated all.

The reason for the choice of one tree rather than another in a given case

of sickness is almost impossible to find out. Perhaps there is a vague

tradition of the fact that it was used long ago by those who first

happened to discover that it had real medicinal quality, and the present

generation continues to use it, though having forgotten what that quality

was, or even that it had any intrinsic quality of its own, their etiology

of disease assigning as the cause of all sickness the antagonistic

presence of an evil spirit.

The laity, heathen and Christian, positively do not know from what

particular tree the leaf or piece of bark was obtained, and they would not

be able to recognize it even if they were allowed to see it. They see only

the dry powder or ashes. Even if the heathen laity were able to tell me,

they will not do so. Even if they were bribed, I would have no certainty

that they were showing me the plant that was actually used; for they would

know that I would have no means of comparing specimens or of proving their

deception. The native will tell foreigners many things for friendship or

for regard, and he enjoys conversation with us; but superstition slams his

heart's door shut when he is asked to reveal secrets of the spirits. His

prompt thought is: "White man's knowledge has given him power. There is

little left of land, authority, women, or wealth in my country that he has

not seized. Shall I add to his power by telling him the secrets of my

spirits?" Of course the magic doctor will not tell. That would be giving

himself entirely away.

Even Christian men and women who have inherited from a parent knowledge of

some plant, and who use it rationally for its purely medicinal quality

without any reference whatever to spiritual influences, can barely be

induced to tell me of it. The fee they obtain is part of their means of

living. They make honest "medicine" in the circle of their acquaintances

for certain sicknesses for which their drug happens to be fitted. Of a

cure for any other sickness they know nothing, and must themselves go to

some one else who happens to possess the knowledge.

Even by me my native friends--though with their personal respect or

affection for me they would be willing to do much--do not like to be

asked. They know that I, in asking for information, expect to utilize it

in letters or lectures or books. Their secret would not be safe even with

me, and it may die with them. One of the noblest of my native female

friends at Gabun, a Christian, well educated, with only a minimum of

superstition remaining, and no belief at all in fetich, inherited from her

mother much botanical and medicinal knowledge. I observe her decocting a

medicine for a sick friend, and I ask her, "What medicine is that?" She

turns away her usually frank eyes and simply says, "Sijavi" (leaves).

"Yes, I see they are leaves. But I asked you what they are. Where do you

get them?" With eyes still turned away, she only says, "Go-iga" (in the

forest). "Exactly; of course it's a plant. But is it a tree or a vine or a

shrub, or what?" And she looks at me steadily, and quietly says, "Mi amie"

(I don't know). I have long ago learned that "mi amie," though only

sometimes true, is not always a lie. It is equivalent to our conventional

"Not at home," or a polite version of, "Ask me no questions and I'll tell

you no lies." From my friend it is a kind notification that the

conversation had better be changed. It having reached this acute stage,

the pursuance of it would be worse than useless. I talk about something

else, and immediately she resumes her wonted cordiality.

Probably the particular herb selected by the fetich-man does possess some

therapeutic value (for cures are effected) of which he does not himself

know. He knows that that plant was said by his ancestors to be the proper

one to use in case of a certain sickness, but knowledge of the _raison

d'user_ has been lost.

The use of drugs in decoctions is less likely to be merely superstitious.

The fresh leaves and barks are recognized. There is not likely to be a

secret about them. Whatever of fetich is introduced in the case will be in

the mode of administration.

The next step, the admixture of the ingredients, is secret. They are

ground or triturated, or reduced to ashes, and only the ash or charcoal of

their wood is used. Among the common ingredients are colored earths,

chalk, or potter's blue clays. Beyond the usual constituents constantly

employed, there are other single ones, which vary according to the end to

be obtained by the user of the fetich,--for one end, as elsewhere already

mentioned, some small portion of an enemy's body; for another, an

ancestor's powdered brain; for another, the liver or gall-bladder of an

animal; for another, a finger of a dead first-born child; for another, a

certain fish; and so on for a thousand possibilities. These ingredients

are compounded in secret, and with public drumming, dancing, songs to the

spirit, looking into limpid water or a mirror, and sometimes with the

addition of jugglers' tricks, _e. g._, the eating of fire.

The ingredients having been thus properly prepared, and the spirit,

according to the magician's declaration, having associated itself lovingly

with these mixed articles, they and it are put into the cavity of the

selected horn or other hollow thing (a gourd, a nut-shell, and so forth).

They are packed in firmly. A black resin is plastered over the opening.

Perhaps also a twine is netted tightly on the top of it. A red

paint--triturated red-wood mixed with palm or other oil--is daubed on it.

While the resin is still soft, the red tail-feathers of the gray African

parrot are stuck into it. This description is typical. It would be equally

true if the chosen material object had no cavity, _e. g._, if it were a

pebble or a piece of bark; in which case the sacred ingredients plastered

on it would be held _in situ_ by the twine netting. A hole is bored in the

apex of the horn, and it is hung by a string from the neck, arm, waist, or

ankle of the purchaser, or from his door, roof, or garden fence; or from

the prow of his canoe; or from any one of a hundred other points,

according to the convenience of the owner or the object to be obtained by

its use.

Those objects may be, all of them, not only desirable, but commendable,

even from a Christian point of view. In the exercise of the white art

there is no ill-will to or malice against any other known person. The

owner of the fetich amulet is only using, from his point of view, one of

the known means of success in life,--somewhat as a business man in

civilized lands uses his signs and tricks of trade to attract and

influence customers.

It is true that our native convert, in abjuring fetich and refraining from

the white art, is at a disadvantage, humanly speaking, alongside of his

heathen fellow, just as the honest grocer who does not adulterate his

foods is somewhat at a disadvantage with the man who does.

The heathen, armed with his fetich, feels strong. He believes in it; has

faith that it will help him. He can see it and feel it. He goes on his

errand inspired with confidence of success. Confidence is a large part of

life's battle. If he should happen to fail, he excuses the failure by

remembering that he had not obeyed all the minute "orunda" directions that

the magician told him to follow. It is entirely in his power carefully to

obey all directions next time; and then he cannot possibly fail! The

Christian convert is weak in his faith. He would like to have something

tangible. He is not sure that he will succeed on his errand. He goes at it

somewhat half-hearted, and probably fails. His not very encouraging

explanation is that God is trying his faith. That explanation is perhaps

not the true one, but it is sufficient as his explanation. But it does not

nerve him for the next effort; only the strong rise to overcoming faith.

The weak ask the missionary whether they may not be allowed to carry a

fetich only for "show." That "show" is for effect on a heathen competitor;

for the moral effect on that competitor's mind,--that he should not think

that the convert, in becoming a Christian, was at a disadvantage as to

chances of success in the race with him. But that would be allowing even

the "appearance of evil."

It was actually true, in the early days of mission effort, that converts

were oppressed by heathen under the idea that, as the gospel proclaimed by

the missionary was a message of peace, all the "peace" was to be on the

Christian's side, and that he dared not strike a blow even in

self-defence. But we did not understand the angels' song of good-will as

explained by the followers of George Fox, and by precept and example we

allowed the use of force in the defence of right.