re er to quite other affairs. These offerings, in the little huts
t t r ’ are Place<^ where your bush-soul was last seen.
Unfortunately, you are compelled to call in a doctor, which is
an expense, but you cannot see your own bush-soul, unless
you are an Ebumtup, a sort of second-sighter.
Ebumtupism is rare, and if you do happen to possess this
gift, it is discovered by the presiding elders during your
initiation to the secret society of your tribe. When it is
discovered the presiding elders strongly advise that you
s ou d enter the medical profession and become a witch
doctor, as this profession is a paying one, although the
training for it is dreadfully expensive to your parents, for it
has to be carried on by the established witch-doctor. Your
parents, if you are discovered to be an Ebumtup, usually make
sacrifices after the way of parents, black or white, and you
proceed with your studies.
But to return to the bush-soul of an ordinary person. If
the offering in the hut works well on the bush-soul the
patient recovers, but if it does not he dies. Diseases arising
from derangements in the temper of the bush-soul however,
even when treated by the most eminent practitioners, are very
apt to be intractable, because it never realises that by injuring
you it endangers its own existence. For when its human
owner dies, the bush-soul can no longer find a good place, and
goes mad, rushing to and fro— if it sees a fire it rushes into i t ;
if it sees a lot of people it rushes among them, until it is killed,'
and when it is killed it is “ finish ” for it, as M. Pichault would
say, for it is not an immortal soul.
The bush-souls of a family are usually the same for a man
and for his sons, for a mother and for her daughters. Sometimes,
however, I am told all the children take the mother’s,
sometimes all take the father’s. They may be almost any kind
of animal, sometimes they are leopards, sometimes fish, or
tortoises, and so on.
There is another peculiarity about the bush-soul, and that
is that it is on its account that old people are'held in such
esteem among the Calabar tribes. For, however bad these
old people’s personal record may have been, the fact of their
longevity demonstrates the possession of powerful and astute
bush-souls. On the other hand, a man may be a quiet,
respectable citizen, devoted to peace and a whole skin, and
yet he may have a sadly flighty disreputable bush-soul which
will get itself killed or damaged and cause him death or
continual ill-health.
There is another way by which a man dies apart from the
action of bush-souls or witchcraft; he may have had a bad
illness from some cause in his previous life and, when reincarnated,
part of this disease may get reincarnated with him
and then he will ultimately die of it. There is no medicine
of any avail against these reincarnated diseases.
The idea of reincarnation is very strong in the Niger Delta
tribes. It exists, as far as I have been able to find out,
throughout all Africa, but usually only in scattered cases, as it
were; but in the Delta, most— I think I may say all-Shuman
souls of the “ surviving soul ” class are regarded as returning
to the earth again, and undergoing a reincarnation shortly after
the due burial of the soul.
These two exceptions from the rule of all deaths and
sickness being caused by witchcraft are, however, of minor
importance, for infinitely the larger proportion of death and
sickness is held to arise from witchcraft itself, more particularly
among the Bantu.
Witchcraft acts in two ways, namely, witching something
out of a man, or witching something into him. The former
method is used by both Negro and Bantu, but is decidedly
more common among the Negroes, where the witches are
continually setting traps to catch the soul that wanders from
the body when a man is sleeping; and when they have
caught this soul, they tie it up over the canoe fire and its
owner sickens as the soul shrivels.
This is merely a regular line of business, and not an affair
of individual hate or revenge. The witch does not care
whose dream-soul gets into the trap, and will restore it on
payment. Also witch-doctors, men of unblemished professional
reputation, will keep asylums for lost souls, g p souls
who have been out wandering and found on their return to
their body that their place has been filled up by a Sisa,
a low class soul I will speak of later. These doctors keep