SCHOOLS OF FETISH
Wherein the student, thinking things may be made clearer if it be
perceived that there are divers schools of Fetish, discourses on
the schools of West African religious thought.
As I have had occasion to refer to schools of Fetish, and as that is a
term of my own, I must explain why I use it, and what I mean by it, in
so far as I am able. When travelling from district to district you
cannot fail to be struck by the difference in character of the native
religion you are studying. My own range on the West Coast is from Sierra
Leone to Loanda; and here and there in places such as the Oil Rivers,
the Ogowe, and the Lower Congo, I have gone inland into the heart of
what I knew to be particularly rich districts for an ethnologist. I make
no pretence to a thorough knowledge of African Fetish in all its
schools, but I feel sure no wandering student of the subject in Western
Africa can avoid recognising the existence of at least four distinct
forms of development of the Fetish idea. They have, every one of them,
the underlying idea I have attempted to sketch as pure Fetish when
speaking of the position of the human soul; and yet they differ. And I
believe much of the confusion which is supposed to exist in African
religious ideas is a confusion only existing in the minds of cabinet
ethnologists from a want of recognition of the fact of the existence of
these schools.
[Illustration: FANTEE NATIVES OF THE GOLD COAST.
[_To face page 137._]
For example, suppose you take a few facts from Ellis and a few from
Bastian and mix, and call the mixture West African religion, you do much
the same sort of thing as if you took bits from Mr. Spurgeon's works,
and from those of some eminent Jesuit and of a sound Greek churchman,
and mixed them and labelled it European religion. The bits would be all
right in themselves, but the mixture would be a quaint affair.
As far as my present knowledge of the matter goes, I should state that
there were four main schools of West African Fetish: (1) the Tshi and
Ewe school, Ellis' school; (2) the Calabar school; (3) the Mpongwe
school; (4) Nkissism or the Fjort school. Subdivisions of these schools
can easily be made, but I only make the divisions on the different main
objects of worship, or more properly speaking, the thing each school
especially endeavours to secure for man. The Tshi and Ewe school is
mainly concerned with the preservation of life; the Calabar school with
attempting to enable the soul successfully to pass through death; the
Mpongwe school with the attainment of material prosperity; while the
school of Nkissi is mainly concerned with the worship of the mystery of
the power of Earth--Nkissi-nsi. You will find these divers things
worshipped, or, rather, I would say cultivated, in all the schools of
Fetish, but in certain schools certain ideas are predominant. Look at
Srahmantin of the Tshi people, and at Nzambi of the Fjort. Both these
ladies know where the animals go to drink, what they say to each other,
where their towns are, and what not; also they both know what the
forest says to the wind and the rain, and all the forests' own small
talk in the bargain, and, therefore, also the inner nature of all these
things; and both, like other ladies, I have heard prefer gentlemen's
society. Women they have a tendency to be hard on, but either Srahmantin
or Nzambi think nothing of taking up a man's time, making him neglect
his business or his family affairs, or both together, by keeping him in
the bush for a month or so at a time, teaching him things about
medicines, and finally sending him back into town in so addlepated a
condition that for months he hardly knows who he exactly is. When he
comes round, however, if he has any sense, he sets up in business as a
medical man; sometimes, however, he just remains merely crackey. Such a
man was my esteemed Kefalla.
But look how different under different schools is the position of
Srahmantin and Nzambi. Srahmantin is only propitiated by doctors and
hunters; by all respectable, busy, family men forced to go through
forests, she is simply dreaded, while Nzambi, the great Princess,
entirely dominates the whole school of Nkissism.
From what cause or what series of causes the predominance of these
different things has come, I do not know, unless it be from different
natural environment and different race. It is certainly not a mere
tribal affair, for there are many different tribes under each school.
For example, I do not think you need make more than a subdivision
between the Tshi, the Ga or Ogi and the Ewe peoples' Fetish, nor more
than a subdivision between those of the Eboes and the Ibbibios, or those
of the Fjort and Mussurongoes; but we want more information before it
would be quite safe to dogmatise.
It is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to give exact
geographical limits of the different schools of Fetish, and I therefore
only sketch their geographical distribution in Western Africa, from
Sierra Leone to Loanda, hoping thereby to incite further research.
Sierra Leone and its adjacent districts have not been studied by an
ethnologist. We have only scattered information regarding the religion
there; and unfortunately the observations we have on it mainly bear on
the operations of the secret societies, which in these regions have
attained to much power, and are usually though erroneously grouped under
the name of Poorah. Poorah, like all secret societies, is intensely
interesting, for it is the manifestation of the law form of Fetish; but
secret societies are pure Fetish, and common to all districts. All that
we can gather from the scattered observations on the rest of the Fetish
in this region is that it is allied to the Fetish school of the
Tshi-speaking people.
Next to this unobserved district, we come to the well-observed districts
of the Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba-speaking people--Ellis's region.
It may seem unwise for me to attempt to group these three together and
call them one school, because from this one district we have two
distinct cults of Fetish in the West Indies, Voudou and Obeah (Tchanga
and Wanga). Voudou itself is divided into two sects, the white and the
red--the first, a comparatively harmless one, requiring only the
sacrifice of, at the most, a white cock or a white goat, whereas the red
cult only uses the human sacrifice--the goat without horns. Obeah, on
the other hand, kills only by poison--does not show the blood at all.
And there is another important difference between Voudou and Obeah, and
that is that Voudou requires for the celebration of its rites a
priestess and a priest. Obeah can be worked by either alone, and is not
tied to the presence of the snake. Both these cults have sprung from
slaves imported from Ellis's district, Obeah from slaves bought at
Koromantin mainly, and Voudou from those bought at Dahomey.
Nevertheless, it seems to me these good people have differentiated their
religion in the West Indies considerably; for example, in Obeah the
spider (_anansi_) has a position given it equal to that of the snake in
Voudou. Now the spider is all very well in West Africa; round him there
has grown a series of most amusing stories, always to be told through
the nose, and while you crawl about; but to put him on a plane with the
snake in Dahomey is absurd; his equivalent there is the turtle, also a
focus for many tales, only more improper tales, and not half so amusing.
The true importance and status of the snake in Dahomey is a thing hard
to fix. Personally I believe it to be merely a case of especial
development of a local ju-ju. We all know what the snake signifies, and
instances of its attaining a local eminence occur elsewhere. At Creek
Town, in Calabar, and Brass River it is more than respected. It is an
accidental result of some bit of history we have lost, like the worship
of the crocodile at Dixcove and in the Lower Congo. Whereas it is clear
that the general respect, amounting to seeming worship, of the leopard
is another affair altogether, for the leopard is the great thing in all
West African forests, and forests and surf are the great things in
Western Africa--the lines of perpetual danger to the life of man.
[Illustration: YORUBA. [_To face page 141._]
But there is a remarkable point that you cannot fail to notice in the
Fetish of these three divisions of true Negro Fetish studied by
Ellis, namely, that what is one god in Yoruba you get as several gods
exercising one particular function in Dahomey, as hundreds of gods on
the Gold Coast. Moreover, all these gods in all these districts have
regular priests and priestesses in dozens, while below Yoruba regular
priests and priestesses are rare. There the officials of the law
societies abound, and there are Fetish men, but these are different
people to the priests of Bohorwissi and Tando.
I do not know Yoruba land personally, but have had many opportunities of
inquiring regarding its Fetish from educated and uneducated natives of
that country whom I have met down Coast as traders and artisans.
Therefore, having found nothing to militate against Ellis's statements,
I accept them for Yoruba as for Dahomey and the Gold Coast; and my great
regret is that his careful researches did not extend down into the
district below Yoruba--the district I class under the Calabar
school--more particularly so because the districts he worked at are all
districts where there has been a great and long-continued infusion of
both European and Mohammedan forms of thought, owing to the
four-hundred-year-old European intercourse on the seaboard, and the even
older and greater Mohammedan influence from the Western Soudan; whereas
below these districts you come to a region of pure Negro Fetish that has
undergone but little infusion of alien thought.
Whether or no to place Benin with Yoruba or with Calabar is a problem.
There is, no doubt, a very close connection between it and Yoruba. There
is also no doubt that Benin was in touch, even as late as the
seventeenth century, with some kingdom of the higher culture away in the
interior. It may have been Abyssinia, or it may have been one of the
cultured states that the chaos produced by the Mohammedan invasion of
the Soudan destroyed. In our present state of knowledge we can only
conjecture, I venture to think, idly, until we know more. The only thing
that is certain is that Benin was influenced as is shown by its art
development. Benin practically broke up long before Ashantee or Dahomey,
for, as Proyart[19] remarks, "many small kingdoms or native states which
at the present day share Africa among them were originally provinces
dependent on other kingdoms, the particular governors of which usurped
the sovereignty." Benin's north-western provinces seem to have done
this, possibly with the assistance of the Mohammedanised people who came
down to the seaboard seeking the advantages of white trade; and Benin
became isolated in its forest swamps, cut off from the stimulating
influence of successful wars, and out of touch with the expanding
influence of commerce, and devoted its attention too much to Fetish
matters to be healthy for itself or any one who fell in with it. It is
an interesting point in this connection to observe that we do not find
in the accounts given by the earlier voyagers to Benin city anything
like the enormous sacrifice of human life described by visitors to it of
our own time. Other districts round Calabar, Bonny, Opobo, and so on,
have human sacrifice as well, but they show no signs of being under
Benin in trade matters, in which Benin used to be very strict when it
had the chance. In fact, whatever respect they had for Benin was a
sentimental one, such as the King of Kongo has, and does not take the
practical form of paying taxes.
The extent of the direct influence of Benin away into the forest belt to
the east and south I do not think at any time was great. Benin was
respected because it was regarded as possessing a big Fetish and great
riches. In recent years it was regarded by people discontented with
white men as their great hope, from its power to resist these being
greater than their own. Nevertheless, the adjacent kingdom of Owarie
(Warri), even in the sixteenth century, was an independent kingdom. So
different was its Fetish from that of Benin that Warri had not then, and
has not to this day, human sacrifice in its religious observances, only
judicial and funeral killings.
Considering how very easily Africans superficially adopt the religious
ideas of alien people with whom they have commercial intercourse, we
must presume that the people who imported the art of working in metals
into Benin also imported some of their religion. The relics of religion,
alien to Fetish, that show in Benin Fetish are undoubtedly Christian.
Whether these relics are entirely those of the Portuguese Roman Catholic
missions, or are not also relics of some earlier Christian intercourse
with Western Soudan Christianised states existing prior to the
Mohammedan invasion of Northern Africa, is again a matter on which we
require more information. But just as I believe some of the metal
articles found in Benin to be things made in Birmingham, some to be old
Portuguese, some to be native castings, copies of things imported from
that unknown inland state, and some to be the original inland state
articles themselves, so do I believe the relics of Christianity in the
Fetish to be varied in origin, all alike suffering absorption by the
native Fetish.
There is no doubt that up to the last twenty years the three great
Fetish kings in Western Africa were those of Ashantee, Dahomey, and
Benin. Each of these kings was alike believed by the whole of the people
to have great Fetish power in his own locality. In the time of which we
have no historical record--prior to the visits of the first white
voyagers in the fifteenth century--there is traditional record of the
King of Benin fighting with his cousin of Dahomey. Possibly Dahomey beat
him badly; anyhow something went seriously wrong with Benin as a
territorial kingdom, before its discovery by modern Europe.
I now turn to the Fetish of the Oil Rivers which I have called the
Calabar school. The predominance of the belief there in reincarnation
seems to me sufficient to separate it from the Gold Coast and Dahomey
Fetish. Funeral customs, important in all Negro Fetish, become in the
Calabar school exceedingly so. A certain amount of care anywhere is
necessary to successfully establish the human soul after death, for the
human soul strongly objects to leaving material pleasures and
associations and going to, at best, an uninteresting under-world; but
when you have not only got to send the soul down, but to bring it back
into the human form again, and not any human form at that, but one of
its own social status and family, the thing becomes more complicated
still; and to do it so engrosses human attention, and so absorbs human
wealth, that you do not find under the Calabar school a multitude of
priest-served gods as you do in Dahomey and on the Gold Coast. Mind you,
so far as I could make out while in the Calabar districts myself, the
equivalents of those same gods, were quite believed in; but they were
neglected in a way that would have caused them in Dahomey, where they
have been taught to fancy themselves to wreck the place. Not only is
care taken to send a soul down, but means are taken to see whether or no
it has duly returned; for keeping a valuable soul, like that of a great
Fetish proficient who could manage outside spirits, or that of a good
trader, is a matter of vital importance to the prosperity of the Houses,
so when such a soul has left the House in consequence of some sad
accident or another, or some vile witchcraft, the babies that arrive to
the House are closely watched. Assortments of articles belonging to
deceased members of the house are presented to it, and then, according
to the one it picks out, it is decided who that baby really is--See,
Uncle so-and-so knows his own pipe, &c.--and I have often heard a mother
reproaching a child for some fault say, "Oh, we made a big mistake when
we thought you were so-and-so." I must say I think the absence of the
idea of the deification of ancestors in West Africa shows up
particularly strongly in the Calabar school, for herein you see so
clearly that the dead do not pass into a higher, happier state--that the
soul separate from the body is only a part of that thing we call a human
being, and in West Africa the whole is greater than a part, even in this
matter.
[Illustration: A CALABAR CHIEF. [_To face page 145._]
The pathos of the thing, when you have grasped the underlying idea, is
so deep that the strangeness of it passes away, and you almost forget to
hate the horrors of the slaughter that hang round Oil River funeral
customs, or, at any rate, you understand the tenacity you meet with here
of the right to carry out killing at funerals, a greater tenacity than
confronted us in Gold Coast or Dahomey regions, because a different idea
is involved in the affair. On the Gold Coast, for example, you can
substitute wealth for the actual human victim, because with wealth the
dead soul could, after all, make itself comfortable in Srahmandazi, but
not so in the Rivers. Without slaves, wives, and funds, how can the dead
soul you care for speak with the weight of testimony of men as to its
resting place or position? Rolls of velvet or satin, and piles of
manillas or doubloons alone cannot speak; besides, they may have been
stolen stuff, and the soul you care for may be put down by the
authorities as a mere thieving slave, a sort of mere American gold bug
trying to pass himself off as a duke--or a descendant of General
Washington--which would lead to that soul being disgraced and sent back
in a vile form. Think how you yourself, if in comfortable circumstances,
belonging to a family possessing wealth and power, would like father,
mother, sister, or brother of yours who by this change of death had just
left these things, to go down through death, and come back into life in
a squalid slum!
We meet in this school, however, with a serious problem--namely, what
does become of dead chiefs? It is a point I will not dogmatise on, but
it certainly looks as if the Calabar under-world was a most aristocratic
spot, peopled entirely by important chiefs and the retinues sent down
with them--by no means having the fine mixed society of Srahmandazi.
The Oil River deceased chief is clearly kept as a sort of pensioner. The
chief who succeeds him in his headship of the House is given to "making
his father" annually. It is not necessarily his real father that he
makes, but his predecessor in the headmanship--a slave succeeding to a
free man would "make his father" to the dead free man, and so on. This
function undoubtedly consists in sending his predecessor a big subsidy
for his support, and consolation in the shape of slaves and goods. I may
as well own I have long had a dark suspicion regarding this matter--a
suspicion as to where those goods went. Their proper destination, of
course, should be the under-world. Thither undoubtedly on the Gold Coast
they would go; but when sent in the Rivers I do not think they go so
far. In fact, to make a clean breast of it, I do not believe big chiefs
are properly buried in the Oil Rivers at all. I think they are, for
political purposes, kept hanging about outside life, but not inside
death, by their diplomatic successors. I feel emboldened to say this by
what my friend, Major Leonard, Vice-Consul of the Niger Coast
Protectorate, recently told me. When he was appointed Vice-Consul, and
was introducing himself to his chiefs in this capacity, one chief he
visited went aside to a deserted house, opened the door, and talked to
somebody inside; there was not any one in material form inside, only the
spirit of his deceased predecessor, and all the things left just as they
were when he died; the live chief was telling the dead chief that the
new Consul was come, &c.
The reason, that is the excuse, for this seemingly unprincipled conduct
in not properly burying the chief, so that he may be reincarnated to a
complete human form, lies in the fact that he would be a political
nuisance to his successor if he came back promptly; therefore he is kept
waiting.
From first-class native informants I have had fragments of accounts of
making-father ceremonies. Particularly interesting have been their
accounts of what the live chief says to the dead one. Much of it, of
course, is, for diplomatic reasons, not known outside official circles.
But the general tone of these communications is well known to be of a
nature to discourage the dead chief from returning, and to reconcile
him to his existing state. Things are not what they were here. The price
of oil is down, women are ten times more frivolous, slaves ten times
more trying, white Consul men abound, also their guns are more deadly
than of old, this new Consul looks worse than the last, there is nothing
but war and worry for a chief nowadays. The whole country is going to
the dogs financially and domestically, in fact, and you are much better
off where you are. Then come petitions for such help as the ghost chief
and his ghost retinue can give.
This, I think, explains why chiefs' funeral customs in the Rivers differ
in kind, not merely in grade, from those of big trade boys or other
important people, and also accounts for their repetition at intervals.
Big trade boys, and the slaves and women sent down with them, return to
a full human form more or less promptly; mere low grade slaves, slaves
that cannot pull a canoe, _i.e._, provide a war canoe for the service of
the House out of their own private estate, are not buried at all--they
are thrown away, unless they have a mother who will bury them. They will
come back again all right as slaves, but then that is all they are fit
for.
Then we have left very interesting sections of the community to consider
from a funeral rite point of view--namely, those in human form who are
not, strictly speaking, human beings, and those who, though human, have
committed adultery with spirits--women who bear twins or who die in
child-birth. These sinners, I may briefly remark, are neither buried nor
just thrown away; they are, as far as possible, destroyed. But with the
former class the matter is slightly different. Children, for example,
that arrive with ready cut teeth, will in a strict family be killed or
thrown away in the bush to die as they please; but the feeling against
them is not really keen. They may, if the mother chooses to be bothered
with them, be reared; but the interesting point is that any property
they may acquire during life has no legal heir whatsoever. It must be
dissipated, thrown away. This shows clearly that such individuals are
not human, and, moreover, they are not buried nor destroyed at death;
they are just thrown away. There is no particular harm in them as there
is in the sin-stained twins.
The only class in West Africa I have found that are like these spirit
humans is that strange class, the minstrels. I wish I knew more about
these people. Were it not that Mr. F. Swanzy possesses material evidence
of their existence, in the shape of the most superb song-net, I should
hesitate to mention them at all. Some of my French friends, however,
tell me they have seen them in Senegal, and I venture to think that
region must be their headquarters. I have seen one in Accra, one in
Sierra Leone, two on board steamers, and one in Buana town, Cameroon.
Briefly, these are minstrels who frequent market towns, and for a fee
sing stories. Each minstrel has a song-net--a strongly made net of a
fishing net sort. On to this net are tied all manner and sorts of
things, pythons' back bones, tobacco pipes, bits of china, feathers,
bits of hide, birds' heads, reptiles' heads, bones, &c., &c., and to
every one of these objects hangs a tale. You see your minstrel's net,
you select an object and say how much that song. He names an exorbitant
price; you haggle; no good. He won't be reasonable, say over the python
bone, so you price the tobacco pipe--more haggle; finally you settle on
some object and its price, and sit down on your heels and listen with
rapt attention to the song, or, rather, chant. You usually have
another. You sort of dissipate in novels, in fact. I do not say it's
quiet reading, because unprincipled people will come headlong and listen
when you have got your minstrel started, without paying their
subscription. Hence a row, unless you are, like me, indifferent to other
people having a little pleasure.
These song-nets, I may remark, are not of a regulation size. I have
never seen on the West Coast anything like so superb a collection of
stories as Mr. Swanzy has tied on that song-net of his--Woe is me!
without the translating minstrel, a cycle of dead songs that must have
belonged to a West African Shakespeare. The most impressive song-net
that I saw was the one at Buana. Its owner I called Homer on the spot,
because his works were a terrific two. Tied on to his small net were a
human hand and a human jaw bone. They were his only songs. I heard them
both regardless of expense. I did not understand them, because I did not
know his language; but they were fascinating things, and the human hand
one had a passage in it which caused the singer to crawl on his hands
and knees, round and round, stealthily looking this side and that,
giving the peculiar leopard questing cough, and making the leopard mark
on the earth with his doubled-up fist. Ah! that was something like a
song! It would have roused a rock to enthusiasm; a civilised audience
would have smothered its singer with bouquets. I--well, the headman with
me had to interfere and counsel moderation in heads of tobacco.
But what I meant to say about these singers was only this. They are not
buried as other people are; they are put into trees when they are
dead--may be because they are "all same for one" with those singers the
birds. I do not know, I only hope Homer is still extant, and that
some more intelligent hearer than I will meet with him.
[Illustration: NATIVES OF GABOON. [_To face page 151._]
The southern boundary of the Calabar school of Fetish lies in narrower
regions than the boundary between it and Ellis's school in the north. I
venture to think that this may in a measure arise from there being in
the southern region the additional element of difference of race. For
immediately below Calabar in the Cameroon territory the true Negro meets
the Bantu. In Cameroon in the tribes of the Dualla stem we have a people
speaking a Bantu language, and having a Bantu culture, yet nevertheless
having a great infusion of pure Negro blood, and largely under the
dominion of the true Negro thought form.
I own that of all the schools of Fetish that I know, the Calabar school
is the one that fascinates me most. I like it better than Ellis's
school, wherein the fate of the soul after death is a life in a shadow
land, with shadows for friends, lovers, and kinsfolk, with the shadows
of joys for pleasures, the shadows of quarrels for hate--a thing that at
its best is inferior to the wretchedest full-life on earth. Yet this
settled shadow-land of Srahmandazi or Gboohiadse is a better thing than
the homeless drifting state of the soul in the school below
Calabar--namely, the school I have ventured to term the Mpongwe school.
To the brief consideration of this school we will now turn.
In between the strongly-marked Calabar school and the strongly-marked
school of Nkissism of Loango Kacongo, and Bas Congo there exists a
school plainly differing from both. This region is interesting for many
reasons, chief amongst which is that it is the sea-board region of the
great African Forest belt. Tribe after tribe come down into it, flourish
awhile, and die, uninfluenced by Mohammedan or European culture. The
Mohammedans in Africa as aforesaid have never mastered the western
region of the forest belt; and the Europeans have never, in this region
between Cameroon and Loango, established themselves in force. It is
undoubtedly the wildest bit of West Africa.
The dominant tribes here have, for as far back as we can get
evidence--some short four hundred years--been tribes of the Mpongwe
stem--the so-called noble tribes. To-day they are dying--going off the
face of the earth, leaving behind them nothing to bear testimony in this
world to their great ability, save the most marvellously beautiful
language, the Greek of Africa, as Dr. Nassau calls it, and the impress
of their more elaborate thought-form on the minds of the bush tribes
that come into contact with them. Their last pupils are the great
Bafangh, now supplanting them in the regions of the Bight of Panavia.
From their influence I think the school of Fetish of this region is
perhaps best called the Mpongwe school, though I do not altogether like
the term, because I believe the Mpongwe stem to be in origin pure Negro,
and the Fetish school they have elaborated and co-ordinated is Bantu in
thought-form, just as the language they have raised to so high a pitch
of existence is in itself a Bantu language. Yet the Mpongwe are rulers
of both these things, and they will thereby leave imprinted on the minds
of their supplanters in the land the mark of their intelligence.
I have said the predominant idea in this Mpongwe school is the securing
of material prosperity. That is to say this is the part of pure Fetish
that receives more attention than other parts of pure Fetish in this
school; but it attains to no such definite predominance as funeral rites
do in the Calabar school, or the preservation of life in Ellis's
school. One might, however, quite fairly call the Mpongwe school the
trade-charm school, great as trade charms are in all West African
Fetish.
This lack of a predominance sufficient to dwarf other parts of pure
Fetish makes the Mpongwe school particularly interesting and valuable to
a student; it is a magnificent school to study your pure Fetish in, as
none of it is here thrown by a predominant factor into the background of
thought, and left in a neglected state.
It is of this school that you will find Dr. Nassau's classification of
spirits, and all the other observations of his that I have quoted of
things absolutely believed in by the natives, and also all the Mpongwe,
Benga, Igalwa, Ncomi, and Fetish I have attempted to describe.[20]
It has no gods with proper priests. Human beings are here just doing
their best to hold their own with the spirit world, getting spirits
under their control as far as possible, and dealing with the rest of
them diplomatically. This state I venture to think is Fetish in a very
early form, a form through which the now elaborate true Negro Fetish
must have passed before reaching its present co-ordinated state. How
long ago it was when the true Negro was in this stage I will not venture
to conjecture. Sir Henry Maine, of whom I am a very humble follower,
says, "Nothing moves that is not Greek." This is a hard saying to
accept, but the truth of it grows on you when you are studying things
such as these, and you are forced to acknowledge that they at any rate
have a slow rate of development--sometimes indeed it seems that there is
a mere wave motion of thought among all men rising here and there when
in the hands of superior tribes, like the Mpongwe for example, to a
wave crest destined on their extinction to fall again. Now and again as
a storm on the sea, the impulse of a revealed religion sweeps down on to
this ocean of nature philosophy, elevates it or confuses it according to
the initial profundity of it. If you have ever seen the difference
between a deep sea storm and an esturial storm, you will know what I
mean. Yet this has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the Fetish
thought-form, but merely has a bearing on the quality of the minds that
deal with it, as it must on all minds not under the influence of a
revealed religion; and I now turn, in conclusion of this brief
consideration of the schools of Fetish in West Africa, to the next
school to the Mpongwe, namely, the school of Nkissism. I need not go
into details concerning it here; you have them at your command in the
two great works of Bastian, _An Expedition under Loango Kueste und Besuch
in San Salvador_, and in Mr. R. E. Dennett's _Folk Lore of the Fjorts_,
published by the liberality of the Folk Lore Society, and also his
former book, _Seven Years among the Fjorts_.[21]
[Illustration: FJORT NATIVES OF KACONGO AND LOANGO.
[_To face page 155._]
The predominant feature in this school is undoubtedly the extra
recognition given to the mystery of the power of the earth, Nkissi 'nsi.
Here you find the earth goddess Nzambi the paramount feature in the
Fetish; from her the Fetish priests have their knowledge of the proper
way to manage and communicate with lower earth spirits, round her circle
almost all the legends, in her lies the ultimate human hope of help and
protection. Nzambi is too large a subject for us to enter into here. She
is the great mother, but she is not absolute in power. She is not one of
the forms of the great unheeding over-lord of gods, like Nyankupong,
or Abassi-boom; the equivalent to him, is her husband Nzambi Mpungu,
among the followers of Nkissism; but the predominance given in this
school to the great Princess Nzambi has had two effects that must be
borne in mind in studying the region from Loango to the south bank of
Congo. Firstly, it apparently led to Nzambi being confused by the
natives with the Holy Virgin, when they were under the tuition of the
Roman Catholic missionaries during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries; hence Nzambi's cult requires to be studied with the greatest
care at the present day. Secondly, partly in consequence of the native
predominance given to her, and partly in the predominance she has gained
from the aforesaid confusion, women have a very singular position, a
superior one to that which they have in other schools; this you will see
by reading the stories collected by Mr. Dennett. I will speak no further
now concerning these schools of Fetish, for Nkissism is the most
southern of the West African schools, its domain extending over the
whole of the regions once forming the kingdom of Kongo down to Angola.
Below Angola, on the West Coast, you come to the fringing zone of the
Kalahi desert, and to those interesting people the Bushmen, of whose
religion I am unable, with any personal experience, to speak. Below them
you strike South Africa. South Africa is South Africa; West Africa is
West Africa. Of the former I know nothing, of the latter alas! only a
tenth part of what I should wish to know, so I return to pure Fetish and
to its bearing on witchcraft.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] _History of Loango_, by the Abbe Proyart, 1776. Pinkerton, vol.
xvi., p. 587.
[20] _Travels in West Africa._ Fetish Chapters.
[21] Sampson Low and Co.