A woman who was passing into the bush in order to cut wood, saw a man feeding a wild-cat—the animal which is thought to be specially devoted to the evil spirit. Terrified at the sight, she tried to escape unseen; but the man perceived her, pushed the animal aside, and bribed her to be silent about what she had seen. However, she went home, and straightway told the chief’s head wife, who told her husband, and from that moment the man’s doom was fixed. Evidence against a supposed wizard is always plentiful, and on this occasion it was furnished liberally. One person had overheard a domestic quarrel, in which the man had beaten his eldest wife, and she threatened to accuse him of witchcraft; but he replied that she was as bad as himself, and that if he was executed, she would suffer the same fate. Another person had heard him say to the same wife, that they had not been found out, and that the accusers only wanted their corn. Both man and wife were summoned before the council, examined after the usual method, and, as a necessary consequence, executed on the spot.
CHAPTER XIX.
SUPERSTITION—Concluded.
RAIN-MAKING — EFFECTS OF A DROUGHT — THE HIGHEST OFFICE OF A KAFFIR PROPHET, ITS REWARDS AND ITS PERILS — HOW THE PROPHET “MAKES RAIN” — INGENIOUS EVASIONS — MR. MOFFATT’s ACCOUNT OF A RAIN-MAKER, AND HIS PROCEEDINGS — SUPPOSED POWERS OF EUROPEANS — KAFFIR PROPHETS IN 1857 — PROGRESS OF THE WAR, AND GRADUAL REPULSE OF THE KAFFIRS — KRELI, THE KAFFIR CHIEF, AND HIS ADVISERS — STRANGE PROPHECY AND ITS RESULTS — THE PROPHETS’ BELIEF IN THEIR OWN POWERS — MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE PROPHETS — THE CELEBRATED PROPHET MAKANNA AND HIS CAREER — HIS RISE, CULMINATION, AND FALL — MAKANNA’S GATHERING SONG — TALISMANIC NECKLACE — THE CHARM-STICK OF THE KAFFIRS — WHY THE PROPHETS ARE ADVOCATES OF WAR — A PROPHET WHO TOOK ADVICE.
The highest and most important duty which falls to the lot of the prophets is that of rain-making. In Southern Africa, rain is the very life of the country; and, should it be delayed beyond the usual time, the dread of famine runs through the land. The Kaffirs certainly possess storehouses, but not of sufficient size to hold enough grain for the subsistence of a tribe throughout the year—nor, indeed, could the Kaffirs be able to grow enough food for such a purpose.
During a drought, the pasture fails, and the cattle die; thus cutting off the supply of milk, which is almost the staff of life to a Kaffir—certainly so to his children. The very idea of such a calamity makes every mother in Kaffirland tremble with affright, and there is nothing which they would not do to avert it, even to the sacrifice of their own lives. Soon the water-pools dry up, then the wells, and lastly the springs begin to fail; and consequently disease and death soon make dire havoc among the tribes. In this country, we can form no conception of such a state of things, and are rather apt to suffer from excess of rain than its absence; but the miseries which even a few weeks’ drought in the height of summer can inflict upon this well-watered land may enable us to appreciate some of the horrors which accompany a drought in Southern Africa.
Among the prophets, or witch doctors, there are some who claim the power of forcing rain to fall by their incantations. Rain-making is the very highest office which a Kaffir prophet can perform, and there are comparatively few who will venture to attempt it, because, in case of failure, the wrath of the disappointed people is sometimes known to exhibit itself in perforating the unsuccessful prophet with an assagai, knocking out his brains with a knob-kerrie, or the more simple process of tearing him to pieces. Those, however, who do succeed, are at once raised to the very summit of their profession. They exercise almost unlimited sway over their own tribe, and over any other in which there is not a rain-maker of equal celebrity. The king is the only man who pretends to exercise any authority over these all-powerful beings; and even the king, irresponsible despot though he be, is obliged to be submissive to the rain-maker while he is working his incantations.
It is, perhaps, not at all strange that the Kaffirs should place implicit faith in the power of the rain-makers; but it is a strange fact that the operators themselves believe in their own powers. Of course there are many instances where a rain-maker knowingly practises imposture; but in those cases he is mostly driven to such a course by the menaces of those who are employing him; and, as a general fact, the wizard believes in the efficacy of his own charms quite as firmly as any of his followers.
A prophet who has distinguished himself as a rain-maker is soon known far and wide, and does not restrict his practice to his own district. Potentates from all parts of the country send for him when the drought continues, and their own prophets fail to produce rain. In this, as in other countries, the prophet has more honor in another land than in his own, and the confidence placed in him is boundless. This confidence is grounded on the fact that a rain-maker from a distant land will often produce rain when others at home have failed. The reason is simple enough, though the Kaffirs do not see it. By the time that the whole series of native prophets have gone through their incantations, the time of drought is comparatively near to a close; and, if the prophet can only manage to stave off the actual production of rain for a few days, he has a reasonable chance of success, as every hour is a positive gain to him.
It is needless to mention that the Kaffirs are well acquainted with the signs of the weather, as is always the case with those who live much in the open air. The prophets, evidently, are more weather-wise than the generality of their race, and, however much a rain-maker may believe in himself, he never willingly undertakes a commission when the signs of the sky portend a continuance of drought. Should he be absolutely forced into undertaking the business, his only hope of escape from the dilemma is to procrastinate as much as possible, while at the same time he keeps the people amused. The most common mode of procrastination is by requesting certain articles, which he knows are almost unattainable, and saying that until he has them his incantations will have no effect. Mr. Moffatt narrates a very amusing instance of the shifts to which a prophet is sometimes put, when the rain will not fall, and when he is forced to invoke it.
“The rain-maker found the clouds in our country rather harder to manage than those he had left. He complained that secret rogues were disobeying his proclamations. When urged to make repeated trials, he would reply, ‘You only give me sheep and goats to kill, therefore I can only make goat-rain; give me for slaughter oxen, and I shall let you see ox-rain.’ One day, as he was taking a sound sleep, a shower fell, on which one of the principal men entered his house to congratulate him, but to his utter amazement found him totally insensible to what was transpiring. ‘Hélaka rare!’ (Hallo, by my father!) ‘I thought you were making rain,’ said the intruder, when, arising from his slumbers, and seeing his wife sitting on the floor shaking a milk-sack in order to obtain a little butter to anoint her hair, he replied, pointing to the operation of churning, ‘Do you not see my wife churning rain as fast as she can?’ This reply gave entire satisfaction, and it presently spread through the length and breadth of the town, that the rain-maker had churned the shower out of a milk-sack.