The following is probably the rise of many branches of the medicine man’s profession now, or recently, in vogue: A quick-witted, observant man noticed that a certain herb, or a certain mode of procedure, such as massage or inducing perspiration by steaming, was beneficial to a patient suffering from a certain disease. If he had given the herb in a simple way without any hanky-panky, or had done a little medical rubbing without any ceremonies, or had given a vapour bath without ostentatious and mysterious rites, the natives would not have regarded him as a bona fide medicine man, and he would have procured very little business. In order to protect his discovery and to draw patients he surrounded it with the hocus-pocus of fetish rites and ceremonies, and thus started a new class of “doctors” that had its day. It is more than probable that many medicine men and their fetishes have risen in power, have had wide fame and much popular support, have then fallen into disrepute and have been abandoned in favour of new ones; and, if the truth were known, as many if not more kinds of medicine men have been forgotten than are now remembered.

The following is an account of the rise and fall of one fetish order in very recent years: A few years ago a medicine man appeared in Portuguese Congo with a new fetish called nkisi a kiniambe = the divine fetish. The witch-doctor and his fetish with its high-sounding name visited all the towns round about San Salvador. The ceremony was a form of communion prepared with small slices of cassava, pea nuts, and palm-wine. The recipient had first to pay one string of beads for a child and five strings for an adult, and he or she confessed all their witchcraft palavers, i.e. all the evil desires they had in their hearts, for the sickness or death of anyone. After this confession the medicine man gave them a piece of cassava, a pea nut, and drop of palm-wine, and he also gave them a promise that they should never die. When, however, the recipients died the witch-doctor said it was because they had not made a full confession of their witchcraft. He and his accomplices reaped a large sum of money from the natives’ fear of death and the promise of immunity from it; but the medicine man promised too much, and consequently his fetish was soon in disrepute and quickly neglected.

While we find a dim knowledge of a Supreme Being among all the Congo tribes, we also find co-extensive with it an elaborate system of fetishism, which I would define as those means employed by the Congo natives for influencing the various spirits by which they believe themselves to be surrounded, either to act on their own behalf by giving them good luck and good health, or to act against their enemies by sending them misfortune, sickness, or death. Their system of belief has its basis in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits—invisible to the ordinary man, but not to the medicine man—which are constantly trying to compass their sickness, misfortune, and death; and the Boloki’s sole object—and the same may be written of his near and distant neighbours on the Congo—is to cajole or appease, to cheat or conquer, and even destroy the troublesome spirits, hence their witch-doctors with their fetishes, their rites, and ceremonies. If there were no spirits to be circumvented there would be no need of medicine men as middlemen, and no need of fetishes as mediums for getting into touch with the spirits.

Theologically speaking, the Congo natives are utterly void of religion, for they neither worship the Supreme Being nor their fetishes as representing a deity; but if “the belief in and a measure of obedience to a potent being or beings not ourselves is an early minimum of religion,”[[36]] then the Congo folk are very religious, for they carefully obey the taboos put on them by their witch-doctors in the name of their fetishes; they invoke the power of the spirits by exploding gunpowder around their fetishes, and by whistling to them and beating them; they try to appease them by frequent sacrifices; and they have dances about some of the fetishes, during which they call upon them, or the spirits they influence, to protect their fighting-men and destroy their enemies.

[36]. See Mr. Andrew Lang in Folk-Lore for December, 1911, p. 412.

CHAPTER XIX
THE BOLOKI WORLD OF SPIRITS

Surrounded by spirits—The soul leaves the body—Dreams—Bewitching folk—Losing one’s shadow—Disembodied spirits or ghosts—Ghosts enter animals—Deceiving the ghosts—Spirits of disease—Spirit of wealth—Spirits of crocodiles—Leopards—Spirits of unborn babes—Monsters on the islands—Forest sprites—Cloud-land folk—Spirits in spears—In canoes—In trees.

The Boloki folk believe they are surrounded by spirits which try to thwart them at every twist and turn, and to harm them every hour of the day and night. The rivers and creeks are crowded with the spirits of their ancestors, and the forests and bush are full also of spirits, ever seeking to injure the living who are overtaken by night when travelling by road or canoe. I never met among them a man daring enough to go at night through the forest that divided Monsembe from the upper villages, even though a large reward was offered. Their invariable reply was: “There are too many spirits in the bush and forest.”

In the following pages I shall attempt to give, as succinctly as possible, an account of the various spirits that trouble the Boloki world, their powers and their limitations. The information has been gathered from various natives in conversation around their fires, or from talks when travelling with them by canoe and boat; and may be accepted as reflecting the native opinion respecting those spirits by which they suppose themselves to be surrounded.