Miss F. M. Dennis writes from Ebu Owerri, a place about seventy miles
southeast of Onitsha, North Africa:
It is a custom in this Ibo country when a child is born for the
parents to go into the bush, cut a stick from a tree and plant
it. When the child is old enough to walk and know anything it
worships this young tree. All the Ibo people have them. But
until the child comes to man’s estate and has a household, this
is the only idol he has.
(1092)
The negroes of the Gold and Slave Coasts, like every other
people low in the stage of civilization, believe that inanimate,
as well as animate, objects have souls or ghosts, a belief which
is proved by the practise of burying arms, implements, utensils,
etc., for the use of the dead in Dead-land, and there continues
the former pursuit of the man, using the souls or ghosts of
the weapons buried with him; but the negroes have gone beyond
this, and just as they believe man to possess a third element,
or indwelling spirit, so do they believe that every natural
object, everything not made by human hands, has, in addition to
its soul or ghost, a third element of spiritual individuality.
They hold that just as, when the man dies, the kra of the man
enters a new-born child, and the soul, or ghost-man, goes to
Dead-land; so, when the tree dies, the kra, so to speak, of
the tree enters a seedling, and the ghost-tree goes to join
the ranks of the shadowy forest in Dead-land. And it is these
animating or spiritual tenants of natural objects and natural
features that the negro fears and consequently worships.--A.
B. ELLIS, _The Popular Science Monthly_.
(1093)
=Fetters Worn for Others=--See HARDSHIP VICARIOUSLY BORNE.
=Fickleness in Work=--See ATTAINMENT SUPERFICIAL.