The Search for the Witch
People believe their chief died by witchcraft--They send for the
witch-finder--His arrival and antics--The ceremony of discovering
the witch--Satu’s brother, Mavakala, is accused--Why was Mavakala
accused?--He takes the ordeal--Proves his innocence--Other tests are
forced on him--He is done to death.
During the illness of the deceased chief there was a widespread feeling
in the town that some one was bewitching him, and that therefore the
“medicine men” were unable to cure him. At last one of their wizards
stated plainly that a witch was at work destroying their best efforts;
and although they tried charms to ward off, and threats to frighten, the
witch from pursuing his (or her) wicked purpose, yet their patient
continued to grow worse, and at last died. And now that their chief was
buried the people demanded that a proper witch-finder should be engaged
to seek out the witch.
A great witch-finder was called from a distant town, and on his arrival
I noticed that he was a small, active man with keen piercing eyes that
seemed to jump from face to face and read the very thoughts of those who
stood around.
He was dressed in the soft skins of monkeys and bush-cats; around his
neck was a necklace of rats’ teeth mixed with the teeth of crocodiles
and leopards. His body was decorated with pigments of different colours;
thick circles of white surrounded the eyes, a patch of red ran across
the forehead, broad stripes of yellow chased each other down the cheeks,
bands of red and yellow went up the arms and across the chest, and spots
of blue promiscuously filled in the vacant spaces. At the different
points of his curious dress were bells that tinkled at every movement.
The boys looked at him in deep awe, the girls and women cowered away
from him, and the men, though they feared him, greeted him with a
simulated friendliness that ill-accorded with their nervousness.
The witch-finder (or _N gang’ a N gombo_) was supposed to find his own
way to the town and home of his client; for how could they believe in a
man’s occult power to discover a witch if he had not the ability to walk
straight, without being shown, to the house of his employer.
To meet this difficulty the witch-finder had one or two apprentices,
among whose duties it was to question cautiously the messenger, and to
obtain from him all the needed information about the town, house,
circumstances attending the death of the person, and the relations of
the townspeople to one another. If the messenger would not, or could
not, give the required knowledge, then the assistant accompanied him
back to his town, and, as he went, he dropped at the cross-roads twigs
or leaves to guide his master--the witch-finder--right up to the house
of his client.
The assistant ferreted out the quarrels of the family employing his
master, and their animosities towards each other, or towards one of
their number. In every family there is to be found at least one who is
the object of the suspicion, jealousy or hatred of the family--the
unpopular member; and all the information thus gathered is secretly told
to the witch-finder and the disliked person pointed out to him.
On the appointed day a great crowd gathered. No member of the clan was
absent, except those on trading expeditions. The assembled people formed
a great circle, into the middle of which the witch-finder danced and
chanted to the beat of the drums. It was a hot day and the sun poured
down its scorching rays on the performer, making him perspire so
profusely that the various colours on his face and body ran into each
other, adding grotesqueness to his ugliness.
As he pranced and danced up and down the circle he put question after
question, and was answered by the people with _ndungu_,[18] or
_otuama_,[19] as he guessed wrongly or rightly about the dead man’s
ways.
Footnote 18:
See note 16, p. 347.
Footnote 19:
See note 17, p. 347.
Presently he elicited the fact that the deceased had had a very bad
quarrel with some one, and then he discovered that it was with a man in
the town. By crafty questions the witch-doctor narrowed the circle of
examination, the people, all excitement, really helping him though quite
unaware that they did so; and at last, in a fandango of whirling skins
and rotating arms and legs, he brought himself to a standstill in front
of one of the men, and accused him of being the person who had bewitched
the late chief to death.
It was the unpopular man, Satu’s brother, who was thus publicly declared
the witch, and the whole crowd was astonished that they had never
thought of him before as the monster who used witchcraft to do his own
brother to death.
Immediately on the declaration there was a tremendous hubbub of voices;
insults were heaped on the accused, he was jostled about, weapons were
raised threateningly, and each tried to outvie his neighbour in abusing
the denounced man as a proof of his own guiltlessness.
Amidst the _mêlée_ the accused protested his own innocence, and
demanding to take the ordeal, he ran for his gun[20] to shoot the
witch-finder who had, by his false accusation, brought all this trouble
on him. But the crafty _nganga_ had received his large fee, and was
already well on his way back to his own town. None doubted the _bona
fides_ of the _nganga_ except Mavakala, the accused man; and how could
he prove his guiltlessness except by voluntarily taking the ordeal.
What had Mavakala done to draw such an accusation upon himself? On his
brother’s death he had cried as long and as loudly as any of them; he
had neglected his person, worn old clothes, dressed his hair in mourning
fashion, gone unwashed, and had carefully observed all the usual
ceremonies of “crying” for a near relative, and yet they charged him
with bewitching his brother to death. Yes, all his neighbours recalled
these facts, but they interpreted them now in the light of this serious
charge. Of course, he had observed all these rites simply to deceive
them. He must have thought them fools to be duped by his proofs and
protestations. No, he must take the ordeal, and that quickly, and the
ordeal-giver must be sent for immediately. The whole of Mavakala’s
family was alienated from him, for was he not accused of the most
heinous crime of which a human being can be guilty--witchcraft?
Footnote 20:
See note 18, p. 347.
What had Mavakala done to render himself so fatally unpopular? That
evening the declaration of the witch-finder was discussed round all the
fires, and as Bakula went from group to group I picked up many items of
the indictment.
Mavakala was an energetic, successful trader, and from each trading
journey he came back the richer for his enterprise. They were jealous of
his wealth; but among themselves they whispered that his increased
riches were really due to witchcraft and not to his ability; and were
not their suspicions justified, for was he not now accused of selling
his brother’s corpse to the white traders?
I heard, too, that Mavakala was a skilled blacksmith, and had made good
knives out of odd pieces of hoop iron taken from old cases, and bought,
by him, from traders on the river; and had even made hoes and axes out
of old bale iron. Many other clever things he had done, all of which
were now by these superstitious people accepted as proofs of his
witchcraft. He had awakened their jealousy by his energy and smartness
in business; his skill and ingenuity in smithing had aroused their
suspicions, and his prosperity had provoked their hatred. In any other
country his ability would have been admired and honoured, but on the
Congo it was a sign of witchcraft, and always ended in death by the
ordeal.
It was then I understood the reason for the backwardness of these
people. They destroy their leaders and their best men, and the only hope
of the people is deliverance from the curse of the witch-doctors.
The next day the ordeal-giver (or _ngol’a nkasa_) arrived, bringing with
him the ordeal bark which he had procured from the nkasa tree in the
following manner. This tree is supposed to have a spirit; hence, when
they are about to cut some of its bark for ordeal purposes, they address
it in these words: “I come to take a piece of your bark, and if the man
for whom it is intended is a witch, let my machet bend when I strike
you; but if he is not a witch, let my machet enter into you, and let the
wind stop blowing.” The machet had bent under the blow, and the omen
being against Mavakala the ordeal-giver made his preparations with smug
satisfaction.
Mavakala, accompanied by many of the men and lads of the town, was led
to the bare top of a neighbouring hill, where a rough shanty of palm
fronds was built. The accused was pushed into this, and told to stretch
out his arms, and not to touch anything. The ordeal-giver pushed a stone
towards the poor wretch, with twenty-seven pieces of nkasa bark on it;
and then he ground each piece of bark and slowly fed Mavakala with the
powders.
During the process the accused man vomited three times, and should
therefore have been set free and carried back to the town with shouts of
honour; but was not the omen against him? and besides, was he not
obnoxious to his jealous and superstitious neighbours?
Consequently, when the ordeal-giver proposed that further tests should
be applied, there were none to lift up their voices in protest against
the injustice of continuing the cruelty.
Mavakala was dazed with the narcotic effects of the drug that had been
forced on him, and his wits were dulled and muddled. He was taken with
rough hands from the temporary hut and made to stand by himself, a
swaying, lonely, pathetic figure--a type of all those who have been
persecuted or have laid down their lives for the sole crime of being in
the vanguard of their generation.
While Mavakala stood swaying there, six twigs in rapid succession were
thrown at his feet, and he as quickly had to name the trees to which
they belonged. This he did successfully, and then he was told to name
the birds and butterflies that were sailing by. Again he unerringly gave
each its proper name; but now, just when he wanted his eyes to be at
their keenest, he could feel them becoming blurred with the dregs of the
drug he had been forced to take. His tormentors called on him to name
the ants crawling at his feet. He faltered, stammered confusedly, and in
stooping, that his poor, hazy eyes might have a better chance to
recognize them, he fell, with a moaning cry, to the ground.
In an instant the heartless, superstitious crowd was on him; sticks and
machets, knives and guns, soon did their work on the poor mangled body.
None was too poor or mean to kick his carcass and spit in his face, and
his bruised, gory corpse was left unburied upon the bare hill-top--a
feast for the beasts of the forests and the birds of the air.
By and by the stars peeped out, half ashamed to look on a world where
such tragedies were enacted, and as they looked they saw that _thing_
there upon the bare hill-top. It was covered with wounds, and every
wound had a tongue that cried to its God, and to their God: “How long,
how long, shall darkness cover the land, and gross darkness the people?”