for, said he, the witches here live almost entirely on the blood
they suck from children at night. They used, in old days, to
do this furtively, and do so now where native custom is
unchecked; but in districts where the Government says
that witchcraft is utter nonsense, and killing its proficients
utter murder which will be dealt with accordingly, the witch
flourishes exceedingly, and blackmails the fathers and mothers
of families, threatening that if they are not bought off they
will have their child’s blood ; and if they are not paid, the
child dies away gradually— poison again, most likely.
I often think it must be the common-sense element in fetish
customs that enables them to survive, in the strange way they
do, in the minds of Africans who have been long under European
influence and education. In witching, for example,
every intelligent native knows there is a lot of poison in the
affair, but the explanation he gives you will not usually
display this knowledge, and it was not until I found the wide
diffusion of the idea of the advisability of administering an
emetic to the bewitched person, that I began to suspect my
black friends of sound judgment.
The good ju-juist will tell you all things act by means of
their life, which means their power, their spirit. Dr. Nassau
tells me the efficacy of drugs is held to depend on their benevolent
spirits, which, on being put into the body, drive away
the malevolent disease-causing spirits— a leucocytes-versus
pathogenic-bacteria sort of influence, I suppose. On this same
idea also depends the custom of the appeal to 'ordeal, the
working of which is supposed to be spiritual. Nevertheless,
the intelligent native, believing all the time in this factor,
squares the common-sense factor by bribing the witch-doctor
who makes the ordeal drink.
The feeling regarding the importance of funeral observances
is quite Greek in its intensity. Given a duly educated
African, I am sure that he would grasp the true inwardness of
the Antigone far and away better than any European now
living can. A pathetic story which bears on this feeling was
told me some time ago by Miss Slessor when she was
stationed at Creek Town. An old blind slave woman was found
in the bush, and brought into the mission. She was in a
deplorable state, utterly neglected and starving, her feet torn
by thorns and full of jiggers, and so on. Every care was
taken of her and she soon revived and began to crawl about,
but her whole mind was set ori one thing with a passion that
had made her alike indifferent to her past sufferings and to
her present advantages. What she wanted was a bit, only a
little bit, of white cloth. Now, I may remark, white cloth is
anathema to the Missions, for it is used for ju-ju offerings, and
a rule has to be made against its being given to the unconverted,
or the missionary becomes an accessory before the fact
to pagan practices, so white cloth the old woman was told she
could not have, she had been given plenty of garments for her
own use and that was enough. The old woman, however,
kept on pleading and saying the spirit of her dead mistress
kept coming to her asking and crying for white cloth, and
white cloth she must get for her, and so at last, finding it was
not to be got at the Mission station, she stole away one day,
unobserved, and wandered off into the bush, from which she
never again reappeared, doubtless falling a victim to the many
leopards that haunted hereabouts.
To provide a proper burial for the dead relation is the great
duty of a negro’s life, its only rival in his mind is the desire to
have a burial of h{s own. But, in a good negro, this passion
will go under before the other, and he will risk his very life
to do it. He may know, surely and well, that killing slaves and
women at a dead brother’s grave means hanging for him when
their Big Consul knows of it, but in the Delta he will do it.
On the Coast, Leeward and Windward, he will spend every
penny he possesses and, on top, if need be, go and pawn himself,
his wives, or his children into slavery to give a deceased
relation a proper funeral.
This killing at funerals I used to think would be more easily
done away with in the Delta than among the Tschwi tribes,
but a little more knowledge of the Delta’s idea about the
future life showed me I was wrong.
Among the Tschwi the slaves and women killed are to form
for the dead a retinue, and riches wherewith to start life
in Srahmandazi, where there are markets and towns and all
things as on this earth, and so the Tschwi would have little