IV. OBEAH: THE MAGIC OF THE BLACK MAN
Outside the Spanish Islands, Negroes are the dominant race in the West Indies. In regions where they have not been replaced by Hindus, as they have been in Trinidad and Demerara, British Guiana, they constitute 90 per cent of the population. They are, in fact, the only people who regard themselves as natives. The Asiatics and the Europeans are, for the most part, mere sojourners.
So far as the islands now have a native culture it is the culture of the Negro folk. It is, at the same time, the most characteristic manifestation of the mentality of the West Indian black man, so far as he has preserved what Lévy-Bruhl describes as the mentality of primitive man.
What is more interesting about obeah is that while as a practice and a belief it is universal among the uneducated classes of the black population in the islands, it is everywhere different, and everywhere in process of change. Practices that were originally imported from Africa tend to assimilate and fuse with related practices and traits of the European and Hindu cultures wherever the Africans have come into contact with them.
This is evident, in the first place, from the fact that the obeah man is not always a Negro; he may be, and not infrequently is, a Hindu. In the second place, the ritual of obeah may include anything from patent medicine to Guinea pepper. Among the instruments of obeah in the possession of the police of Trinidad recently were a stone image, evidently of Hindu origin, and a book of magic ritual published in Chicago, which pretended to be, and no doubt had been, translated originally from the writings of Albertus Magnus, the great medieval writer on magic. A book called Le Petit Albert is said to be extremely popular among obeah men in the French Islands.
The favorite decoctions in use among witch doctors consist of bones, ashes, “grave dirt,” human nail parings—mixed, perhaps, with asafetida or any other substance having a pungent odor. But in addition to these, obeah men in the West Indies use the candles, the little shrines, or “chapels,” as they call them, and various other portions of the ritual of the Catholic church.
In January, 1917, a woman known as Valentine Sims, a native of St. Lucia, was convicted, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, of obtaining money by the assumption of supernatural powers. The testimony in the case showed that, among other things, she attended the Roman Catholic church, and, on pretense of receiving holy communion, took the altar bread distributed to the worshipers during the communion, and used it in practicing obeah.
All this suggests that obeah, as one finds it in the West Indies, is not so much a tradition and a cultural inheritance as it is an innate predisposition, like a sense of humor, or “the will to believe,” as James describes it. Behind these practices, and supporting them, are all sorts of fears and a general sense of insecurity in regard to the physical and spiritual environment that more cultivated persons either do not feel, or they find escape from in quite different practices.
This is clearly indicated in the letters found among the papers of obeah adepts which have been confiscated from time to time by the police. From these letters one gains an insight into the nature and extent of the terrors, anxieties, and perils of the soul which trouble the dreams and imaginations of the black man, whom we ordinarily think of as roaming, cheerful, care-free, and unconcerned in a worried and troubled world.
The black man in the West Indies is greatly troubled about a great many things. He has more than the usual number of obscure pains and aches, which he worries about a great deal, and for which he, like most of us, is in search of some sovereign remedy. He is disturbed about his relations with his employer. Not that, like the workingman we know, he talks or thinks about his rights and the rights of labor. He is not class-conscious. Quite the contrary, he is constantly worried because he is not in favor with his employer. If he is scolded or scowled at, he is troubled. His first assumption, in such circumstances, is that some fellow-employee in some dark way is influencing his employer against him, and he seeks the obeah charm which will discover and circumvent his enemy and win back his employer’s good will.
If he gets into a quarrel with the family next door, if his sweetheart looks coldly upon him, if his wife deserts him, he inevitably assumes that there are personal and magical influences at work, seeking to undermine otherwise sweet and happy relations. Frequently he is right. At any rate the obeah man exploits these suspicions, and that is the reason strenuous efforts are being made in the British Islands to stamp the superstition out.
Visiting the police courts in the English islands, one is profoundly impressed by the patient efforts of most of the judges to discover and apply the rules of law to the petty personal and neighborhood difficulties that the natives are so fond of airing in the courts. One gets the impression that the most difficult thing for the primitive mind to conceive and administer for himself is justice. On the other hand, the Negro, at least, knows and appreciates justice when he meets it. That is probably one reason why he likes to take his troubles to court.