Among Congo cannibals

by John H. Weeks

The father gives the monkey, meat, or fish he has procured ready for this demand. It is cooked and the medicine man takes the food on a plate into the house, puts it down on the floor and, coming out, shuts the door. After a time he again enters the house, brings out the plate and shows that the food has partly disappeared, and that the edge of the plate is smeared with the food (there are always plenty of rats and mice in a native hut). This is accepted as evidence that the spirits have partaken of the feast, and the patient will get better as the offering has been accepted. The medicine man gives the patient a new name—if a girl, Bolumbu, and if a boy, Loleka.

The spirits of unborn babies are supposed to be supplied to the family preserves (called liboma) by the disembodied spirits of the deceased members of the family. These are responsible for keeping the preserves well filled with spirits awaiting birth. The preserves may be a pool on an island, a pond in the bush or forest, or a great bombax tree.

The “doctor” who deals with madness has simply a saucepan of water in which he mixes some medicines, and the patient immerses his face every day in it, and then he drops some juices from plants into his eyes until the person is cured of his madness. Madness is called mokalala, and the “doctor” who treats it is named by that title also—the “doctor for madness.”

When the death of a prominent man has occurred, and the “doctor for witchcraft” has inspected the entrails of the deceased and has stated that the departed one was bewitched to death, the family then calls in the witch-finder to point out the person guilty of that detestable thing called witchcraft. The usual fee is one slave, but if the witch-finder is a very famous one he will demand and receive two slaves. He insists on receiving his fee before he begins operations, as he may have to rush off with undignified haste directly he has pointed out the witch, for the accused person does not always take the charge quietly, but sometimes rushes off for spear or gun to kill his accuser, hence the demand for the fee first.

The people gather on the appointed day in a large circle, and the medicine man, dressed as a woman in skins and cloths fantastically arranged, his face, legs, and arms decorated with pigments of various colours, takes his place in the centre and dances throughout the whole of the first day to the beat of drums. Towards the end of afternoon of the second day he points out the witch, and then hurries at once to his waiting canoe. The accused must take the ordeal and abide by the result. The “doctor of the mat” very often performs this ceremony of discovering the witch.

There is another class of medicine men who scrape their eyes with the sharp edge of the sugar-cane grass, which operation clears the vision and enables them to see spirit witches afar off and frustrate their evil designs. He pretends to see the witch at night running off with the soul of a person, and this soul he rescues and restores to its owner. The next day the medicine man will go to the owner of the soul he rescued and say: “Last night I saw a witch spirit running away with your soul, and I stopped it or you would be dead by now.” And then he demands a present, which is at once given through fear; for if they refuse to satisfy this medicine man he will allow the witch spirit to escape another time with the soul, and death will be the result.

Now a man who has many and powerful enemies needs someone to help him, and there is a special branch of the profession created on purpose to render him assistance. Such a man goes to a proper medicine man, who will give him a medicine that will overawe or soothe his enemies so that they will no longer desire to work him any harm. They will become subject to his will and influence. This medicine man (he goes by the name of nganga y’ elembia = overawe, subdue, soothe) also initiates his clients into various tricks for striking awe into the onlookers that they may fear their power, and respect them accordingly.

When a man is ill, or has lost a relative by death, he may in his vexation accuse the other members of his family of witchcraft. They of course indignantly deny the charge, so the accuser challenges them to drink the water from a fetish bell. Should anyone refuse to drink from the fetish bell he is regarded as guilty of witchcraft. If, however, they agree to accept the challenge the particular kind of medicine man who operates with the fetish bell is called, and on his arrival he gives to each person a draught to drink from his fetish bell. And it is firmly believed that the one guilty of witchcraft will soon die from the effects of the bell medicine, whereas the innocent will suffer no inconvenience from it.

It will be seen from the above-mentioned medicine men that the natives have a medicine man to help them in every emergency of life, and also one to control, soothe, or destroy every kind of spirit that is likely to do them any harm personally, and bring any sort of misfortune or ill-luck upon them. However, witchcraft is at the bottom of all their fears, and it will be noticed that the majority of the different branches of medicine men deal with, or pretend to avert, that most dreaded and hated thing witchcraft.

There are three kinds of witches among the Boloki people, viz. the active, that is the person who fees a medicine man to kill his enemy or procures some medicine to do him to death. The passive, that is the person who in a temper, or because of some grievance, wishes So-and-so were dead, or in a curse shouts at his tormentor and oppressor: “May you die quickly”; but takes no active measures to procure the death of the said person. There is scarcely a person who has not wished for the death of one or more persons; and when the ordeal of the fetish bell is administered and the drinker of the “bell water” has not desired the death or illness of that particular person he feels secure; but if he has desired the death of that person he feels nervous, doubtful, refuses to drink the ordeal and is accused of witchcraft or drinks it and perhaps dies from sheer fear. The third kind of witch might be called the self-inflicted one, that is, a person in utter misery desires to die, and the witchcraft works in him and he dies; the natives think that many people die by their own witchcraft. On the Lower Congo I found no idea of suicidal witchcraft among the people.