Congo life and folklore

by John H. Weeks

The lads, girls and women who were not permitted to go to the fight brought out their most powerful fetish, and placing it in the middle of a cleared space, danced round it, and as they circled about the ugly image they sang: “You fetish, you must kill any one who is bewitching our fighting men.” Hour after hour, through all the long morning and afternoon they assiduously danced and repeated their wearisome and monotonous injunction to their fetish.

Meanwhile, Satu led his men towards his insulter’s town; but in a valley that skirted the hill upon which his enemy’s town was built he saw Dimbula and his followers drawn up in fighting array. They were arranged in a long line behind trees, stones, ants’ nests, hillocks and any other cover they could find. Satu took his men to within sixty yards of the enemy, and then spread them in a long line. Abusive expressions of defiance were hurled at each other, each side ridiculing the bravery of the other, and asking if they had enough powder for the fight.

When they became tired of shouting, they began to fire their guns at one another across the open bush. One man would load, run out and fire his gun, and return to cover; then another did the same, and sometimes there was simply a flash in the pan and no report at all. Through the whole of the day they fired at one another in this desultory manner, and not a single person on either side was hit. Their guns carried only about thirty yards with any effect, but they generally fired at a distance of about fifty yards. Again, as the butts of their guns were not pressed against their shoulders to steady them while taking aim, but held against the palms of the hands, or against nothing at all, they had free play, and the kick of the guns sent the slugs anywhere but in a straight line. In fact Tumbu, a lad, one day was standing well up the hill some distance above the combatants when a spent slug struck him on the leg, scratching the skin. You see it was not steady, calm aiming that caused a bullet to go straight; but the concoction the “medicine man” put in their charms, and if the bullets went in any direction but the right one it was not their fault, but their charms were not properly compounded, or their enemies had more powerful “medicine.”

The fighting had lasted some ten days when it was noticed by Satu’s party that their enemy’s firing was neither so frequent nor so loud, an evident proof that Dimbula’s boasted supply of gunpowder was running short.

It was now that a slave belonging to one of Satu’s head men ran forward in reckless bravado to fire at the enemy, and was himself struck by a bullet in the stomach. A fight with knives and clubbed guns took place over the fallen man.

Dimbula’s men wanted to secure the body, and Satu’s men resisted the attempt for the following reason: If the corpse fell into the hands of the enemy they would cut off the head, and soak it in water until the skull was freed of all flesh. Then the victor would either put it in a prominent place on a pole as a reproach to the conquered, or he would use it as a drinking-cup. The spirit of a man thus mutilated haunts and kills by witchcraft, not the man who slew him, but the members of his own family. Thus, on the one hand they fight to preserve the body intact so as not to have the vengeance of the spirit falling on them as a family; and on the other hand they fight to mutilate the enemy’s body so that his family may be done to death by the angry spirit. Hence the fight now raged over the body of the fallen man.

But Satu’s men were too strong, and, at really close quarters, too brave[^[62]] to give way to the insulter of their popular chief, and after a short, sharp scuffle, in which several were wounded on both sides, Dimbula’s men took to their heels and bolted towards their town, shouting loudly to the women and children to fly to the forest.

Satu, calling his men about him, gave chase up the hill and into the town, simply to find it deserted. They raided the houses, taking the little treasures that had been overlooked in the hurried flight of their owners, gathered fowls, goats and pigs, and drove them off to their town; but before leaving they pulled out the ridge-pole of Dimbula’s house, and carried it away in triumph--for to take the ridge-pole of a chief’s house against whom you are fighting is like capturing a royal standard in an English battle.

Satu and his fighters returned with their loot in great jubilation; but on arriving in their town their victorious ardour was somewhat damped by hearing that the slave had died from his wound, and several others had severe cuts and gashes gained in the mêlée over the fallen man. The owner of the slave was very much annoyed at the destruction of his property, and said: “How is it my slave was killed and no one else? Surely he was bewitched!” He accused Satu of bewitching him, and the chief would have had to take the ordeal to clear himself of the charge; but the slain man was a slave, and no free man or chief ever takes the ordeal on account of a slave. Satu, however, soothed the vexed man by promising to make Dimbula pay for the slave, or give another in his place.

Next morning Satu led his men out again; but no sooner had they begun to fire than Dimbula’s voice could be heard shouting: “Luve! luve! luve!” or “Peace! peace! peace!”