CHAPTER XIV
OBEAHISM AND COFFEE-PLANTING
It was whilst staying at this pen that I learnt a good deal on the subject of native negro superstitions.
I had been told by a coffee-planter, whose dealings with his black labourers had been somewhat acrimonious, that they had “set Obi” for him. Although the matter in dispute between him as landlord, and the negroes as tenants, amounted only to a few pounds, the latter, collectively, had paid as much as £25 to an Obeah man to Obi him. He had laughed at them, and had pointed out to them the futility of their spells and curses, so far as he and his health and prosperity were concerned.
“You can’t Obi me. There’s not a man among you good enough to Obi me,” he told them. The black woolly pates had gone off to talk the matter over amongst themselves, and they had come to the same conclusion: they couldn’t Obi a white man. So ingrained in them is this belief in the spell of their wizards, that I am told in the country parts, where their ignorance is still almost undiluted, that they look upon the “passon” as the white Obeah man.
I have not seen a negro grow pale at the mention of Obeah, but I have seen him squirm, and noted the expression of unqualified tenor spreading over his features as I enlarged upon the folly of it.
Mrs M——’s governess, who came from a parish some 20 miles down the Black River, told me that she knew by sight several of these champion swindlers, called “Obeah men,” and that Obi prevailed largely in that neighbourhood notwithstanding the laws passed for its suppression.
Before proceeding further, I will quote from two authorities upon this subject of Obeahism which the professors of it originally brought from Africa. In fact there have been few estates which have not had their particular “Obeah man” in times past.
Mr Long says in his History of Jamaica, written about 1770: “The term Obeah, Obiah, or Obia we conceive to be the adjective and Obe or Obi the noun substantive, and that by the words Obia men or women are meant those who practise Obi.”
Mr Bryan Edwards, writing at the beginning of last century and commenting upon the probable etymology of the word, says: “A serpent in the Egyptian language was called Ob or Aub. Obion is still the Egyptian name for a serpent. Moses, in the name of God, forbids the Israelites ever to inquire of the demon Ob, which is translated in our Bible charmer or wizard—divinator aut sorcelegus. The woman at Endor is called Oub, or Ob translated Pythonissa. Oubaris was the name of the Basilisk, or Royal serpent, emblem of the sun, and an ancient oracular deity of Africa. This derivation, which applies to one particular sect, the remnant probably of a very celebrated religious order in remote ages, is now become in Jamaica the general term to denote those Africans who in that island practise witchcraft or sorcery.”
The Obeah man, as I have heard him described, is generally a most forbidding-looking person, craftiness and cunning being stamped on his features. He pretends to a medicinal knowledge of herbs, and undoubtedly is well versed in the action of subtle poisons; his trade is to impose upon his simple compatriot. The negro consults him in cases of illness, as well as to call down revenge upon his enemies for injuries sustained. It is wonderful how secret they keep their “Obeahism” from the white man. They always “set Obi” at midnight. In the morning the stoutest-hearted negro gives himself up for lost when he sees the well-known, but much dreaded insignia of the Obeah man upon his door-step, or under the thatch of the roof. This generally consists of a bottle with turkeys’ or cocks’ feathers stuck into it, with an accompaniment of parrots’ beaks, drops of blood, coffin nails, and empty egg-shells. The same spirit of fatalism which makes the black tell you he cannot “dead” before his time, causes him to believe himself the victim of an unseen irresistible power. The dread of supernatural evil, which he is powerless to combat, acts upon what nervous system he possesses, so that sleep becomes an impossibility, his appetite fails him, his light-heartedness disappears as the ever-growing fear possesses his imagination more and more, and he generally dies. Whole plantations of slaves have been known to be almost depopulated by this extraordinary superstition. At one time the Obeah rites were so cruel, that the impostors, if caught, were hanged; flogging is now the punishment awarded to them. Naturally, the deaths by poison are ascribed to the powerful supernatural agency at work. If some black wiser than his fellows should suspect that other than Obeah influence was answerable for the death of his friend, his terrible dread of the awful vengeance which these wizards would work upon him would effectually restrain his tongue from betraying them. If a black man loses a pig or a sheep, he immediately has resource to the Obeah man, whom he pays as much as the latter can extort from him to “set Obi” for the thief. When the last-named rascal discovers this, he seeks out a more famous Obeah man to counteract the magic of the first. Should he find no one to undertake the job, he will probably fall into a decline from sheer fright of unknown calamity hanging over his head. Such is the story of their ignorant priestcraft. The law of Jamaica recognises “blood, feathers, parrots’ beaks, dogs’ teeth, alligators’ teeth, broken bottles, grave-dirt, rum and egg-shells” as the unlawful stock-in-trade of the Obeah man. One of these gentlemen was hung in all the feathers and perquisites of his profession in 1760. He had come with other slaves from the Gold Coast and headed a revolt in a plantation in St Mary’s Parish, but the panic-stricken negroes soon quieted down upon the death of their leader. This led to a discovery of their superstitious practices, which were immediately legislated against.
Bryan Edwards tells a story of a sugar-planter who, returning to Jamaica after a temporary absence in 1775, found that great mortality had taken place amongst his slaves, the remaining number of them being in a lamentable condition. He tried his hardest to find out the cause of the depopulation of his estate, but without success. At length he had reason to suspect Obi. A negress, who had long been ill, one day confessed to him that the reason of her sickness was that her old stepmother of eighty had “put Obi” upon her, and that she had done the same to those who had died off so quickly. The other slaves on the property admitted that since she had come from Africa she had carried on this trade and was the terror of the place. The owner of the plantation immediately searched the hut of this hoary-headed witch, with the result that inside the thatched roof the whole of the miserable materia Obeah was found. In addition to the usual feathers and rags an earthen pot was found under the bed containing quantities of round clay balls variously compounded, some with hair, or rags, or stuck round with dogs’ or cats’ teeth, also egg-shells filled with a gummy substance which, unfortunately, was not subjected to a rigid analysis. The hut was burnt; the old woman was not hung, but sold to some Spaniards who took her to Cuba. History does not record her performances further. But once removed from the scene of her evil practices, the slaves lost their fear, and the mortality amongst them ceased. The proprietor estimated he had lost a hundred negroes in fifteen years from the practice of Obeahism.
There is no doubt that superstition, which always goes hand-in-hand with ignorance, is born and bred in the descendants of Ham. Nowhere, I learn, is this more the case than amongst the Jamaican negroes inhabiting the mountainous parts of the island. In the Blue Mountains, where wooded heights and musical murmuring streams suggest supernatural agencies, one finds weird ideas among their folk-lore. If you can persuade some native to talk about the “duppy,” you may learn that that which is most feared is a rolling calf; you will be told how the sight of it foretells great misfortune, and those who have witnessed the awful phantom describe it as a huge animal with fire issuing from its nostrils, and clanking chains as it rolls down the mountain-side, burning everything in its path. Other apparitions of a cat as large as a goat, with eyes burning like vast lamps, are said to have been seen by the mountain dwellers at nightfall in the woods. Some of these story-tellers will eat a raw rat before relating the ghost stories, to give them, as they express it, a “sweet mout.”
Indeed, it was during our conversation on the verandah one morning when one of their strange notions was forcibly brought to my notice. The three boys of the family, after their early coffee at 7.30, had gone for a ride, and a swim in the river; on their return an altercation was heard in the dining-room, and the eldest son came and showed his mother where Theodora, one of the black maids, had actually bitten him. The children had scuffled, the servant lost her temper, and actually bit the boy till the blood came, and then cursed him. Needless to say, she was very soon packed off. But Mrs M—— explained to me that to curse with blood in the mouth is quite a usual practice with them. Any amount of Obi, said she, is secretly practised in country parts and in secluded mountain parishes in spite of the most carefully-framed laws against it. Since the police officials are mostly black, one can easily understand how the culprits may be shielded. The same thing holds good with petty theft, of which everybody having property in Jamaica whom I met complained bitterly. On this pen where I stayed, fowls were frequently taken, yams also and bananas; two years before they had lost a cow and calf. The thieves were never discoverable, though the local police called at the house occasionally, to get their books signed, to show they had faithfully executed their rounds.
To return to our subject, I read in an American magazine that one of the well-known Obeah poisons is made as follows. The negro takes the juice of the cassava plant, which he squeezes on to a copper pan, and places it in the sun. The most horrible insects are the result, which are dried and ground to a powder. The Obeah man or woman drops into the victim’s coffee or soup a tiny particle of this powder, which produces death without leaving a trace of the drug. Some of their poisons induce insanity.
I heard of a black servant-girl who tried to murder her mistress by putting ground glass in her soup. It was fortunately discovered in time, but not before the young woman had absconded, leaving no trace behind her.
Some planters adopt Obi to ensure themselves against thieving. They take a large black bottle, fill it with some phosphorescent liquid, and place within it the feather of a buzzard, the quill sticking uppermost. This they fasten to a tree on the outskirts of their coffee-patch or banana-field, where it can be well observed by all who pass near. The dusky population, firmly believing it to be the work of the Obeah man, refrain their thieving propensities accordingly. I was told, too, how their fatalism causes them to cruelly neglect their sick.
Not long since an aged labourer on a neighbouring plantation was attacked with disease. The proprietor ordered special food to be cooked for him, and a servant was told off to look after him. The latter never went near the old black, so the result was that the master, who was a good-hearted man, took personal charge of him, whilst his wife brought food to him, even cooking it herself. The old negro, however, died, and then the friends, who had not been near him for days, crowded to the little hut, and not only had the corpse laid out in a fine new suit of white duck, but held a wake for three nights, when they disposed of enough rum and tea, in celebrating his decease, to have kept the old fellow going months during his lifetime.
A very usual complaint amongst the black women in Jamaica is the information that they have a pain. “Missus, I’se got a pain!” has been said to me in my walks in the country, the tone of voice being sepulchrally solemn.
They have a patent treatment for fever, called the “bush bath.” This consists of equal proportions of the leaves of the following plants: akee, sour sop, jointwood, pimento, cowfoot, elder, lime-leaf and liquorice. The patient is plunged into the bath when it is very hot, and is covered with a sheet. When the steam has penetrated the skin, the patient is removed from the bath, and covered with warm blankets, leaving the skin undried. A refreshing sleep is invariably the consequence, and a very perceptible fall in temperature.
There is a native disease called “yaws,” which the natives treat in their own fashion. The patient’s feet are held in boiling water; this, however, is not so successful a treatment as the former, for I was told it generally results in sending the chill inward, and often pneumonia is the result.
I had mentioned to my kind host and hostess that a visit to their coffee-works would be of great interest to me, so one day I was shown over the building by the overseer. I have since been on other plantations, and I find the proprietors of these estates all agree in saying that unless a man has capital, it is no good coming out to Jamaica for a living, and then he should live at least one or two years on a coffee estate before he purchases land and sets up for himself. The authorities at Hope Gardens, the Government botanical gardens at Kingston, told me it was precisely the same thing with bananas. Many men have lost money through not knowing the soils suitable for planting coffee. In starting a plantation, or patch—which latter means a clearing on a hill, or, in the case of bananas, a bit of fertile valley near a stream—the young trees are usually planted 8 feet apart; some even prefer to give them more distance. At the end of the third year a small crop is generally gathered, sufficient to pay expense of cultivation. The fourth year should yield a good crop; the trees, according to the soil, will bear from thirty to forty years. The coffee berries when ripe are bright purple-red, looking much like cherries. The coffee kernels, like cherry-stones, are encased in the flesh of the fruit.
The berries are, first of all, run through a “pulper”; this machine tears off the pulp from the kernel. The next part of the process is to run them into tanks filled with water, where they are occasionally shaken, to wash off any remaining pulp left on them. Then they are removed from the tanks and spread out in the sun on great platforms made of cement, and left exposed till quite dry. These platforms are called “patios” or “barbecues”; the former is the Spanish for courtyard, the latter word was used by the aborigines to designate the smooth places on which they dried their fish and fruit. At one side of each barbecue a shed is always constructed into which the coffee is swept in case of rain. The coffee, when thoroughly dried, is removed from the patio. As far as this point the two kernels which form the stone, so to speak, of the berry, and which lie with their flat surfaces face to face, are surrounded by a horny covering, sometimes called the parchment skin, or silver skin. To remove this the coffee is run through a mill properly constructed for the purpose. It is then ready to be shipped, but in the coffee mill I visited, the coffee was sorted according to size. This “grading the kernels” was done by a very simple machine similar to one used by wholesale dealers in England. Coffee used to fetch 80s. and 90s. for 100 lbs.—now the planter rarely gets more than 25s. for the same quantity. Estates in the Blue Mountains, which at one time yielded a return to their owner of £5000 a year, at present scarcely bring in as many hundreds. The labour question has, of course, something to do with the difference in returns. In times of slavery an estate such as I have mentioned was worked by perhaps two hundred slaves. At the present day the black will not go so far in the mountains if he can get labour nearer home, and to expect him to work more than three days a week is to expect that the heavens will rain gold for the asking. The hillside coffee-pickers are said to be the least intelligent of the negroes; they live far from towns, where their brethren absorb a smattering of education without effort. These coffee-pickers, who speak an almost unintelligible jargon of their own, in which Spanish words, African, and even Indian expressions are often intermingled, are paid by the bushel and earn more than in the sugar-fields; the majority get as much as 2s. a day. On arriving from the plantations the hands pour their gathering into the measures of the overseers, whence it goes straight to the pulping machines.
It is very clean work, and the women who set the fashion to their fellows repair to coffee-picking and sorting in their best clothes. A favourite drink with them is called matrimony, and is made of equal parts of the pulp and juice of the orange and the star-apple mixed with sugar and a dash of rum. Another confection to which the black palate is partial is a paste made of brown sugar and grated cocoa-nut. In a list supplied by the Merchants’ Exchange, I read that 69,128 cwt. of coffee was exported from Jamaica between April 1902 and January 1903, against 49,811 cwt. between April 1901 and January 1902, which shows the industry is prospering. The Colonial Secretary, Mr Ollivier, attributes the low prices prevailing to the enormous crops produced in the Brazils of late. Referring to the lack of water for the proper washing of coffee, which is the case in some parts of the island, where the natives are even too lazy to build tanks for their domestic supply, he urges combination for central plant, and says: “Despite the low prices, if in those districts where the coffee is not pulped and washed the settlers who grow the bulk of our ordinary coffee were to combine, as they have done in some instances, to obtain pulping machines and hulling mills and to cure their coffee properly, there can be no doubt that the export value of our coffee would be increased by about 25 per cent. During the fluctuations of the last two years the prices of these better cured coffees have kept comparatively steady, although at lower prices than formerly.” In a local newspaper of the 2nd of March the leading article is devoted to the increased prosperity and more promising outlook for the coming year. It is quite refreshing to think there may be a good time in store for this pearl of the Caribbean Sea, after the dismal prophecies and pessimistic whinings of the inert and apathetic who abound in Jamaica.
A cablegram, according to this organ of the press, had just been received from the Daily Mail, giving the information that a group of English, Italian, and Brazilian capitalists are forming a trust to monopolise the coffee trade of Brazil. It says that the syndicate is being supported by the Brazilian government, and goes on to state that “it is expected that prices will be raised 30 per cent.” This is a piece of welcome news and of most noteworthy importance to all the growers of coffee from one end of Jamaica to the other, since the price of that article, with the exception of the coffee grown amongst the Blue Mountains, is fixed by the price that is paid for Brazilian coffee. And if such a remarkable rise in that article should take place, “as is foreshadowed in the cable despatch,” it will result in a period of prosperity for the planters of Jamaica such as possibly they have dreamt of, but never expected to experience.