Among Congo cannibals

by John H. Weeks

When it is desirable to have rain the native takes down from the shelf some sticks which have “medicine” bound round them and plunges them into water mixed with arrowroot leaves, and then the rain will soon begin to fall. It is rarely that they have to resort to the rain-doctor to bring rain, as the rains fall with great regularity all the year round; they employ him more frequently to predict when the rain will stop, or to stop it with his charms. On the Upper Congo throwing salt on the fire will cause a superabundance of rain to fall, but on the Lower Congo salt is a charm for stopping the rain.

When a family is troubled with much sickness or frequent deaths the medicine man of the mat (nganga ya bwaka) is engaged, who, on his arrival, puts some stakes in the ground and ties a mat round them, thus making an enclosure in which he sits while performing his ceremonies. A string is stretched from the roof of his client’s house to one of the stakes of this mat enclosure, and the end of the string drops inside; dried plantain leaves, twigs, etc., dangle from the string, and outside the mat sit some young men and lads with drums and horns, and the various folk interested in the rites stand or sit around.

When all is ready the medicine man enters his enclosure and pulling the string, he shakes the leaves and the lads beat their drums and blow their horns, and the men and women sitting around chant a chorus in admirable time. Directly the leaves stop shaking the drummers and singers understand it as a sign for them to remain quiet. The medicine man then begins to speak to the various spirits, and answers himself in assumed voices, thus pretending to hold conversations with them. As often as he feels tired with his efforts he shakes the leaves, and the drums are beaten, and the folk chant until he has recovered his breath, whereupon he starts the pseudo-conversations again. These conversations he maintains through the whole day (sometimes for two or three days), but generally towards the afternoon of the second day he comes out of the enclosure holding a bleeding head in his hand, and assures the family that he has killed the animal in which the troublesome spirit was residing, and now the family will no more be afflicted with sickness and death. To vary the ceremony the medicine man sometimes rushes out of the enclosure into a house, or behind a house, or into the adjacent bush as though in chase of something, and he returns with a bleeding head, and says that he has slain the spirit-possessed animal.

It is this medicine man who searches for the witch (moloki) in the family of the sick one. If a layman charges another with witchcraft the accused can demand that the accuser shall drink the ordeal with him; but if this witch-doctor charges a person with witchcraft he himself will not take the ordeal, and no one expects him to do so. The accused must take the ordeal alone, and should he (or she) fall repeatedly he is condemned, and is left either to die as the result of the large doses of ordeal or is hung on a tree. The corpse is left unburied—it is the body of a witch, the most hated being in all Congoland.

This medicine man of the mat in killing a spirit troubling a family works hard and earns his money. After spending several hours a day in the mat discussing with the spirits and trying to discover which is menacing the family, he at last decides on one, and when the right moment arrives the medicine man makes a terrific noise inside the mat, as though he were fighting for his life. Shouts, screams, derisive laughter, whacks, thuds, and smacks proceed from the interior of the mat, and at last the witch-doctor rushes out panting and sweating profusely, holding in his hand a bleeding head, and declaring that he has killed the animal possessed by the particular spirit that was troubling the family. With the bleeding head he rushes to the river and throws it far out into the running water. The family is supposed now to recover its health, the medicine man pulls down his mats, receives his fee, and departs.

What is the bleeding head? On one occasion some of our school lads chased one of these medicine men who came from his mat with a bleeding head. He ran for the river, but they headed him off, and in desperation he ran to a pool of water and threw the head into it. The boys entered the water, and bringing it out they found it was a lizard’s head. On another occasion it was a rat’s head. Thus the family had paid a big fee to have a rat or lizard killed, and the bleeding neck shown to them. Up to that time the folk had always believed that it was some mysterious animal which the medicine man dug up from the ground inside his mat, killed by his occult power and threw into the river so that it could never more harm his clients.

This medicine man who operates in a mat is the most feared and respected of all the witch-doctors. It is believed that he can see the disembodied spirits, i.e. ghosts, also the souls of people, and the different spirits of disease, and hold communication with them. He bottles in calabashes or imprisons in saucepans the local spirits that will otherwise hinder the hunters trapping the wild animals; he makes the dogs keen hunters with his charms and medicines; he gives the reasons for the floods, and indicates the best way to cause them to subside; and he also has very close dealings with the spirit of wealth.

There is another class of medicine men that scorns to perform its ceremonies inside a mat, but practises its craft in the open before all the people. These are called (nganga ya libanda) medicine men of the open, outside. A family suffering from much sickness has called in one medicine man after another without experiencing relief, and they may have had even the “mat witch-doctor” and felt no better after having paid him his large fee, so now they try again with this one who works in the open.

He arrives dressed in monkey skins, bush-cat skins, etc., and well decorated with charms. Men beat drums, sing chants and choruses; the medicine man dances about, working himself into a frenzy. He peers here, there, everywhere, looking for the spirit that is troubling the family. He sees it in a plantain tree, hurls his spear at it, but no, he misses it; he sees it on the roof of a house and away darts the spear, only to miss it again. He prods his spear into the different parts of the outside of the house, but he misses the elusive spirit every time; he is, however, working it towards the doorway. At last the spirit takes refuge in the house, the medicine man springs forward with alacrity, enters the house, darts his spear in all directions, yelling loudly and screaming terrifically; then a frightful cry is heard, and in a few moments the medicine man comes out with the blade of his spear well smeared with blood. He has killed the spirit, or rather the animal possessed by the spirit.

I have often watched this performance, and they always killed these animals possessed by spirits in the house. I often wondered why, and from whence came the blood on the spear. The son of one of these medicine men told us that when his father wanted blood to smear over his spear-head, he dug his finger-nail into his gum and procured from thence the blood for the purposes of this trick. On showing the spear thus stained with blood he asserted that he had destroyed the spirit that was troubling the family, he received his fee, and went. The semi-darkness of the native hut rendered a trick of this kind quite possible.