I think many of the medicine men thoroughly believe in themselves; and even those who assert that they see spirits or have performed such wonders as living under the water for seven days, or making their spear shake and talk relate the incident so often that they come to believe that they really did it. Many of the people before we went there had no faith in the medicine men; but they were afraid to oppose or ridicule them for fear of being charged with witchcraft, so they pretended to accept all that was said and done by them. Our presence inspired many with the courage to test the witch-doctors, and finding them frauds they turned from them with contempt.
CHAPTER XXI
TABOOS AND CURSES
Variety of taboos—The totem taboo—The permanent taboo—The inherited taboo—The temporary taboo—Circumcision taboo—Canoe-maker’s taboo—Mourner’s taboo—Cursing a wife—Taboo of sympathy—Father’s curse on a child—Kicking a person’s foot—Various curses—Different oaths—Giving tokens.
Taboos are the prohibitions and restrictions put on things and actions by the witch-doctor during and after an illness, by the family totems, and temporarily by the individual himself. They are the “thou shalt nots” of fetishism. To disobey them is to risk dire consequences to health of body, to success in expeditions, and to one’s luck. Among the Boloki the outraged spiritual powers are supposed to avenge themselves on the breakers of the taboo. The taboos send their ramifications into every part of native life, thought, and action. There is not a single article of food that is not taboo to someone, there is not a place that has not been tabooed at some time or other, and there is not a possible action that has not been, or is not, affected by taboo. When a witch-doctor tells his patient that he is not to eat goat’s meat, then goat’s meat to that man is tabooed, forbidden, unlawful for that man to eat; and should he break the taboo by eating goat’s meat, then he believes that a serious relapse will follow and probably death.
The taboos are many and various, but most of them fall under the following heads: The totem taboo (called mokumbu) is not so evident to the casual observer among the Bololi people, and I might say among Congo people generally, as it is in other parts of the world. One family that I know may not eat a certain snake, and another may not eat fowls. If the men of these families kill and eat their totems they will become thin and weak; the women will not only become thin but sterile; and the pregnant woman who breaks her totem taboo will be delivered of a weak child, who will remain thin and undersized all his life.
To another family a tree with small edible fruit (named mwenge) is a totem. The tree must not be cut down, nor its fruit eaten, and if by any mistake a woman of this family burns it while pregnant she carefully saves the ashes, i.e. instead of throwing them away she puts them in a special place apart from the usual heap of refuse, otherwise her child will be born emaciated and weakly. Strange to say, the boys and girls of the family before puberty may eat the fruit of this tree without any evil consequences.
Another family has a plant with red leaves (called nkungu) as a totem. When a woman of this family becomes enceinte for the first time a nkungu is planted near the hearth outside the house, and it is never destroyed, or the child will be born thin and weak and remain very small and sickly. The healthy life of the children and family is bound up with the healthiness and life of the totem tree as respected and preserved by the family. The killing of a fowl by a member of the snake family, and vice versa, does not affect the family whose totem it is.
When a free woman marries she takes her totem with her and observes not only her own, but also her husband’s totem. And any child born to them takes the totem of both parents until there is a family council of the paternal and maternal branches, when it is generally arranged that the child shall in future observe its father’s totem.
These notes contain all the information I could gather relating to their totems; and I received the impression that the totem taboo is gradually dying out. This is also the impression I have about the totems on the Lower Congo, where one finds only a vestige of what was once probably a potent factor in their family life.