CHAPTER XVIII
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
Ideas of a Supreme Being—His various names—Views of the spirit life—Fetishism—Medicine men and spirits—Black and white magic—Origin of the term fetish—Native crusade against fetishes—Bundle of charms—Its contents—Sacrifices to fetishes—Rise and fall of witch-doctors—An attempt to define fetishism—Natives very religious.
We have found a vague knowledge of a Supreme Being, and a belief in Him, very general among those tribes on the Congo with which we have come into contact. In each case the natives’ ideas of the Supreme Being were gathered and noted long before our teaching had influenced their views or increased their knowledge concerning Him. Before we could preach our views we had to learn their language, and while learning their language we necessarily received—in the definitions of the words we were learning from them—their ideas of that great Being who created the world. We found their knowledge of Him was scarcely more than nominal, and no worship was ever paid to Him.
On the Lower Congo He is called Nzambi, or by His fuller title Nzambi a mpungu; no satisfactory root word has yet been found for Nzambi, but for mpungu there are sayings and proverbs that clearly indicate its meaning as, most of all, supreme, highest, and Nzambi a mpungu as the Being most High, or Supreme.
On the Upper Congo among the Bobangi folk the word used for the Supreme Being is Nyambe; among the Lulanga people, Nzakomba; among the Boloki, Njambe; among the Bopoto people it is Libanza, which word is also well known among the Boloki people, and was probably introduced by slaves from Bopoto. At Yakusu, near Stanley Falls, the word used is Mungu, which is a shortened form of the Swahili word muungu, and this may contain the root of the Lower Congo word mpungu. It is interesting to note that the most common name for the Supreme Being on the Congo is also known, in one form or another, over an extensive area of Africa reaching from 6° north of the Equator away to extreme South Africa; as, for example, among the Ashanti it is Onyame, at Gaboon it is Anyambie, and two thousand miles away among the Barotse folk it is Niambe.
These are the names that stand for a Being who is endowed with strength, wealth, and wisdom by the natives; and He is also regarded and spoken of by them as the principal Creator of the world, and the Maker of all things. Some think Him so perfect in all His works that semi-sane people, crooked sticks, and deformed persons and animals are placed to the credit of a subordinate divinity—a demiurge called Kombu.
But the Supreme Being is believed by the natives to have withdrawn Himself to a great distance after performing His creative works; that He has now little or no concern in mundane affairs; and apparently no power over spirits and no control over the lives of men, either to protect them from malignant spirits or to help them by averting danger. They also consider the Supreme Being (Nzambi) as being so good and kind that there is no need to appease Him by rites, ceremonies, or sacrifices. Hence they never pray to this Supreme One, they never worship Him, or think of Him as being interested in the doings of the world and its peoples.
During the whole thirty years of my life in various parts of the Congo I have heard the name of the Deity used in the following four ways only: Among the Lower Congo people, when they desire to emphasize a statement or vouch for the truthfulness of their words, they use the name in an oath. When in extreme trouble they cry out: “I wish Nzambi had never made me!” or when in great distress: “Nzambi, pity me!” Also on the Lower Congo there is the phrase lufwa lua Nzambi = death by God, i.e. a natural death as distinctive from death by witchcraft; but this view of death is not so frequently heard on the Lower Congo as among the Boloki people, where awi na Njambe = he died by God, i.e. there is no witchcraft about the death of the deceased, nor anything pointing to witchcraft about the accident that caused the death, is often heard. These are the only phrases which suppose that the Supreme Being has anything to do with the world. They are generally employed in the case of poor folk when they die, as no one wants the trouble and expense of engaging a witch-doctor to seek out the witch.
About four years ago I asked a most intelligent native, whose age was about 45, if he could recall any prayer that was offered to the Supreme Being (Nzambi) by his family or any natives before the coming of the missionaries. He sat quietly for a few minutes and then answered: “No, but a woman in great distress would say, ‘Nzambi, pity me,’ not because she thought she would receive pity, for we all believed Nzambi was too far away to hear us or think of us, but because it was a saying amongst us for such times of distress.”