The crime of sorcery is usually punished by the stake; and in some parts of Eastern Africa, the roadside shows at every few miles, a heap or two of ashes with a few calcined and blackened human bones, telling the shocking tragedy that has been enacted there. The prospect cannot be contemplated without horror: here and there, close to the larger circle where the father and mother have been burnt, a smaller heap shows that some wretched child has shared its parents’ terrible fate, lest growing up he should follow in their path.
In countries where a season of drought causes dearth, disease, and desolation, the rain maker or rain doctor, is necessarily a person of great consequence, and he does not fail to turn the hopes and fears of the people to his own advantage. The enemy has medicines for dispersing the clouds which the doctor is expected to attract by his more potent charms. His spells are those of fetissists in general, the mystic use of something foul, poisonous, or difficult to procure. As he is a weatherwise man, and rains in tropical lands are easily foreseen, his trickery sometimes proves successful. Not unfrequently, however, he proves himself a false prophet, and when all the resources of cunning fail he must fly for his life, from the exasperated victims of his delusion.
The holy man is also a predictor and a soothsayer. He foretells the success or failure of commercial or warlike expeditions, prevents their being undertaken, or fixes the proper time for their commencement. In one word, his influence extends over almost all the occurrences of life, and is all the greater for being based on the abject superstition of his votaries.
Prayers and sacrifices are the chief religious observances of the Pagan negroes. Like most people all over the world, they pray for health, good weather, rich harvests, or victory over their enemies. After a long continuance of dearth, the Wawas assemble in a mourning procession before the house in which a panther is adored as a god. Howling and lamenting they represent to him their distress, and beg him to send them rain, as otherwise they must all die of hunger. The Watjas pray to the new moon to give them strength for labouring, and the Aminas go even so far as to implore their god to pay their debts.
The sacrifices or gift offerings of the Negroes generally consist of various kinds of household animals, or fruits of the earth; but in the kingdoms of Ashantee and Dahomey, human sacrifices are prevalent to a frightful extent. As the kings and black nobility ascend, after death, to the upper gods, with whom they are to enjoy eternally the state and luxury which was their portion on earth, a certain number of slaves, proportionate to their dignity, is sacrificed for the purpose of serving them in their new condition. Bowdich[41] relates that the king of Ashantee, on the death of his mother, butchered no less than 3,000 victims, and on his own death this number would probably be doubled. The funeral rites of a great captain were repeated weekly for three months, and 200 persons were slaughtered each time, or 2,400 in all. These wholesale executions, the details of which are too horrible to relate, still subsist to the present day, for the negroes cling with remarkable tenacity to their ancient customs, and this is perhaps the principal obstacle to their civilization or improvement.
The belief, so common among barbarous nations, that after death the spirit of the deceased still feels the same wants as during life, and the same pleasure in their gratification, leads to similar atrocious murders in other African countries, though probably nowhere on so gigantic a scale as in Ashantee. Thus the chiefs of Unyamwesi are generally interred with cruel rites. A deep pit is sunk, with a kind of vault projecting from it; in this the corpse, clothed with skin and hide, is placed sitting, with a pot of malt liquor, whilst sometimes one, but more generally three, female slaves, one on each side and the third in front, are buried alive to preserve their lord from the horrors of solitude. The great headmen of the Wadoe are interred almost naked, but retaining their head ornaments, sitting in a shallow pit so that the forefinger can project above the ground. With each man is buried alive a male and a female slave, the former holding a bill-hook wherewith to cut fuel for his master in the cold death-world, and the latter, who is seated upon a little stool, supports his head in her lap.
Among the negroes of Bonny, on the coast of Guinea, the wants of the dead are provided for in a less inhuman manner. The wealthy oil-merchant is interred under the threshold of his door, and a small round opening left in the ground leads to the head of the corpse. On feast days large quantities of rum are poured into this opening to gratify the thirst of the deceased and give him his share of the good things of this earth, for it is supposed that in the land of spirits he still retains the same predilection for spirituous enjoyments which he frequently testified during life. The medicine men invariably attend at these interesting ceremonies, and largely participate in the libations offered to the dead.
Throughout all Negro land we find, more or less, the custom so prevalent among other barbarous nations, of painting or tattooing the body, of distending the ears, of dressing the hair in a ridiculous manner, or of wearing an extravagant quantity of worthless trinkets; but the Manganja, a negro tribe inhabiting the banks of the Shire, have adopted the same wonderful ornament, if such it may be called, which so hideously distorts the Botocude physiognomy.
The middle of the upper lip of the girls is pierced close to the septum of the nose, and a small pin inserted to prevent the puncture closing up. After it has healed, the pin is taken out and a larger one is pressed into its place, and so on successively for weeks and months and years. The process of increasing the size of the lip goes on till its capacity becomes so great that a ring of two inches in diameter can be introduced with ease. The poorer classes make the pelélé—as this absurd instrument of disfigurement is called—of hollow or of solid bamboo, but the wealthier of ivory or tin. The tin pelélé is often made in the form of a small dish; the ivory one is not unlike a napkin ring. No woman ever appears in public without the pelélé, except in times of mourning for the dead. The Manganjas no doubt see beauty in the upper lip projecting two inches beyond the tip of the nose, but to the rest of the world it is frightfully ugly. When an old wearer of a hollow bamboo-ring smiles, by the action of the muscles of the cheek, the ring and lip outside it are dragged back and thrown above the eyebrows. The nose is seen through the middle of the ring, and the exposed teeth show how carefully they have been chipped to look like those of a cat or crocodile. When told it makes them ugly, they had better throw it away, the Manganja ladies return the same answer as their European sisters, when fault is found with a monstrous chignon or an extravagant crinoline: ‘Really, it is the fashion.’
On the coast of Guinea, in the low delta of the Niger, we find the Negro inhabiting a country very different from the arid wastes in which the Bushman roams, more like a wild animal than a human creature. Here, instead of vast plains thirsting for water, numerous canals and creeks intersect the swampy soil and render the canoe as necessary to the existence of the people as the camel is to that of the Bedouins of the desert. The canoe furnishes the Bonnian with provisions from the interior of the country, it also serves to transport the palm oil which he exchanges for the commodities of Europe. This traffic, which has supplanted the old slave trade, has now lasted many years, but as yet the humanizing influence of commerce has made itself but little felt among the Bonnians whose intercourse with the white customers has only served to engraft some of the worst vices of civilized man on the brutality of the savage. Trade has indeed awakened in them the spirit of speculation, it has sharpened their intellect and rendered their manners less barbarous than those of their neighbours; but it has also taught them all the arts of deception and rendered them accomplished cheats, thieves, and liars. Of a passionate character, a trifle will provoke the most violent explosions of rage, which often lead to the use of the knife or the gun. King Peppel, one of the last sovereigns of this miserable little realm, would, without ceremony, send a bullet, the fatal messenger of his wrath, among the native crew of a canoe that was in his way or somewhat tardy in paying him the respect due to royalty.