We find, then, among the Boloki three words for soul, spirit, and ghost. The first, elimo, is the embodied soul that is able to leave the body during sleep, it visits people and places in dreams, travels about, and performs actions, as throttling an enemy. This, I believe, is the only word they have for soul. There is then the elilingi, a shadow, shade, reflection that a dead man, or dead thing, does not possess, and a living man can lose and have restored by a witch-doctor, and this word is also used in a restricted sense as being synonymous with elimo. And, lastly, there is mongoli, a disembodied soul, a spirit, a ghost of the bush, forest, and water that sends evil and good upon the living—more often evil than good—which it is necessary to appease with offerings of food, of trade goods, and of human beings.
The natives are subject to various serious sicknesses which they think are caused by spirits, and each sickness has its own spirit (or bwete, plural, mēte), hence the native names[[38]] for debility, anæmia, rheumatism, sciatica, ague fevers, and sleeping-sickness are not only the names of diseases, but really denote the names of those spirits responsible for sending them. They cannot tell me from whence these spirits emanate, but the only means of luring them out of the body of the patient is to set up for some of them specially prepared posts, for others a saucepan of small sticks, and again for others a saucepan of medicine water.
[38]. See Appendix, Note 5, p. 345, for the native names of the diseases.
For debility, rheumatism, sciatica, and ague they erect a post (called etoli) about 4 feet long, peeled of its bark, shaped to a point at one end, and daubed with yellow pigment; this is marked with red and blue spots, and stuck upright in the ground with about 2 feet 6 inches showing. For the spirit of sleeping-sickness they prepare a saucepan in which they put small sticks, and the whole is decorated with yellow, red, and blue spots and stripes. For the spirit of another form of sleeping-sickness a saucepan of bush-water is prepared, and the pot ornamented with various colours. The saucepan of sticks is called muntoka, and that of the bush-water is called eboko. The latter is broken, as described in another chapter, by a badly treated slave, or an ill-used wife, to obtain redress for his or her wrongs.
These decorated fetish posts and saucepans often have little shelters built over them which are coloured with various paints, and every time the owner takes a meal he throws some of his food on the roof of his house for the spirits to eat. From time to time he pours sugar-cane wine over the posts, or into the saucepans. There is no ancestral worship in this, but an appeasing of the spirits of the diseases. Not to make these offerings is to invite a return of the spirit or spirits to the body of the owner, i.e. to have a relapse. I have known a man to have four of these posts and saucepans. This indicated that he had had several complaints, or had had his one and only complaint wrongly diagnosed. Persons who have never suffered from these serious illnesses, and they are numerous, never trouble to prepare either a saucepan or a post.
When there is much sickness in a family, not confined to one or two members only, but a kind of family epidemic, it is said to be caused by a spirit (named mweta) left, or sent, by a deceased relative as a punishment for failing to observe some fetish taboo, or for not having shown due respect for the deceased when he was buried by having a proper ceremony, or for not keeping his memory alive by occasional mimic fights on land or water, or by the gifts of brass rods and slaves. Sometimes the family is conscious that they have properly observed all these things, and then they know that their deceased relative has sent the spirit of family sickness maliciously, or through jealousy of their apparent prosperity.
These spirits, when they are troubling a family, can be driven into animals by the witch-doctor and killed by him; and as a proof of his prowess he will exhibit a bleeding head, and assure the family that they need no longer worry as he has killed the animal which was possessed by the spirit, and it is therefore punished, killed, and will not bother them again. Sometimes the witch-doctor will drive the spirit into a saucepan, or calabash, and either kill it or imprison it.
The Boloki man, like folk of other climes and colour, is not averse to wealth, so he has his spirit for giving wealth (called ejo). Now a man who desires to become rich pays a large fee to a certain kind of witch-doctor, who then uses his influence with the spirit on behalf of his client, who must in all future gains set apart a portion for it; but should he fail to do so, the spirit has power to punish him. The goods are given to the witch-doctor to pass on to the spirit.
This spirit can assume any shape it pleases, and entice a person down to the river, where it returns suddenly to its proper form and jumps into the river with the enticed person. This person is then either killed by the spirit, or held at ransom for a slave or his equivalent. How the ransom is paid no one could tell me, although I put the question to various natives at different times. The person thus enticed is he who has not paid his proper dues to the spirit.
When a person has received the medicine or charm of this spirit, and has become wealthy by its luck-giving power, he takes the nail-parings and hair-cuttings[[39]] of a woman and makes medicine with them; the woman then quickly dies, and her spirit goes to the wealth-giving spirit as an offering for its help. He is said to pass her on as a gift to the spirit of wealth. If a man is saved, when a canoe is swamped and his companions are all drowned, he is regarded as having given them to the spirit (ejo) to save his own life. Should a man be successful in fishing or trading without any apparent reason, and shortly after his success his wife falls ill and dies, he is said to have given his wife to this spirit as an acknowledgment of his increased wealth. The ordeal is often administered to prove or disprove these accusations; but marvellous stories are told about the wealth-giving power of this spirit, and as only rich men can afford to pay the fee to the witch-doctor in the first instance, the fact of their wealth fosters the superstition.