One day Mangumbe worked himself into a frenzy, and when he was supposed to be under the influence of his brother’s spirit he said that a certain man (giving the name of the man whose wives he coveted) must get rid of his wives or they would cause his death by a serious and fatal illness. Then Mangumbe went to a friend and told him to treat with the husband for the wives. The husband, now thoroughly afraid of his wives, was quite willing to sell them at a cheaper price than Mangumbe had previously offered for them. By this cunning trick he became the owner of the women he wanted.
Photo by: Rev. C. J. Dodds
A Mungala Creek Village
At the time the picture was taken the folk were dispirited by heavy taxes and many deaths, hence the neglected appearance of the houses. Meeting the demands of the taxes in food, etc., left them little or no time to look after their own affairs. These taxes are better adjusted now to the number and condition of the people.
On one occasion Mangumbe wanted to buy my arm-chair. I told him the price as a bit of information, as I had no intention of selling the chair. He doubted my word. I told him that I had heard that he held communication with his brother’s spirit, and if he wanted to know the price of goods in England he had better ask his brother’s spirit to go there, learn all it could, and come back and inform him of the prices of the various articles. Mangumbe shook his head sadly and said: “His spirit cannot travel so far, it keeps just around this district only.”
The people firmly believed that Mangumbe held counsel with his brother’s spirit, and when he acted as a medium they were quite willing to accept all that he said. Ordinarily he was little respected by the people; he was of mean appearance and of petty, shabby ways, and had no command even over his own people, and yet when acting as a medium in a séance he was feared, obeyed, and his word received without the slightest demur.
When a spirit is speaking through a person, who is usually a member of the disembodied spirit’s family, the medium does not always talk in the language of the present day, but in the archaic language known only to the old people. When the medium is a youngish man, i.e. one not familiar with the ancient language, he then expresses his oracles in the ordinary speech, but with sufficient of the archaic forms to lend mystery to the communication.
I have seen the medium work himself into a frenzy, shout, tremble all over, his muscles quiver, his body undulates, perspiration breaks out on his forehead, and foam gathers about his mouth, and his eyes roll; and when thoroughly under the spell of the spirit he gives utterance to oracles that are implicitly believed by the people. All these séances are performed in the open and in broad daylight, the medium sometimes sitting alone in the centre of a crowd; but when much agitated and swaying considerably, he has one or two of his wives near to catch him should he fall.
Sometimes one of these spirits takes possession of a hippopotamus and visits the towns on the river-banks, and when that occurs the family to whom the spirit is supposed to belong puts a small saucepan of sugar-cane wine and a little food for its refreshment on its nightly visit; and as the food and wine are both gone in the morning (there are plenty of dogs about), the natives assured me that the spirit in the animal had partaken of them. The spirit also, at times, enters a crocodile and visits a town; but the hippopotamus is the more common form.
On one occasion a hippopotamus came off our beach for a few nights. I could only hear it, as it was too dark to see it; but on the chance of wounding it fatally I fired in the direction of the sound. I fired on two successive nights, and during the next day some natives came and told me that that particular hippopotamus was possessed by the spirit of a member of such and such a family, and that the said spirit had sent a message to the head of the family, telling him that he was to inform me that I should only waste my bullets as it was impossible to kill a spirit-possessed hippopotamus, and asking him to request me not to fire again, as he (the hippopotamus) only wanted to visit the town peaceably for his offering of sugar-cane wine and food.
I told them that I would have another shot or two; but they assured me that I should not hit it. They did not doubt my marksmanship, as they had seen me bring down many birds on the wing, and they knew that I scarcely ever went to shoot monkeys and guinea-fowls without bringing one or more back with me. They did not doubt my skill with the gun, but they doubted the power of a bullet to kill a spirit-possessed animal.