The families of the tribes under the dominion of this infernal confederacy, when they become objects of suspicion or rivalry, are subjected to immediate pillage, and if they resist, are dragged into their secret recesses, where they are condemned, and consigned to oblivion.
Its supreme authority is more immediately confined to the Sherbro; and the natives of the Bay of Sierra Leone speak of it with reserve and dread: they consider the brotherhood as having intercourse with the bad spirit, or devil, and that they are sorcerers, and invulnerable to human power. Of course the purrah encourages these superstitious prejudices, which establish their authority and respect, as the members are numerous, and are known to each other by certain signs and expressions. The Mandingos have also their sacred woods and mysteries, where, by their delusions and exorcisms, they prepare their children for circumcision.
The Soosees, inhabiting the borders of the Rio Pongo, have a species of purrah, which gives its members great consequence among them; but their ceremonies are kept also with inviolable secrecy, and they are bound by horrid oaths and incantations. These people seem to delight in disseminating improbable tales of their institution, and their invention appears to be exhausted in superstitious legends of its mysteries.
The Timmanees have an inquisitorial institution called bunda, noticed in page 72, to which women only are subjected. The season of penitence is superintended by an elderly woman, called bunda woman; and fathers even consign their wives and daughters to her investigation when they become objects of suspicion. Here is extracted from them an unreserved confession of every crime committed by themselves, or to which they are privy in others. Upon their admission they are besmeared with white clay, which obliterates every trace of human appearance, and they are solemnly abjured to make an unequivocal confession; which if not complied with, they are threatened with death as the inevitable consequence. The general result is a discovery of fact and falsehood, in proportion as their fears of punishment are aroused, which the bunda woman makes known to the people who assemble in the village or town where the bunda is instituted. If she is satisfied with the confession, the individual is dismissed from the bunda, and, as is noticed in Chapter VII. an act of oblivion is passed relative to her former conduct; but where the crime of witchcraft is included, slavery is uniformly the consequence: those accused as partners of her guilt are obliged to undergo the ordeal by red water, redeem themselves by slaves, or go into slavery themselves.
When the bunda woman is dissatisfied with the confessions, she makes the object sit down, and after rubbing poisonous leaves, procured for the purpose, between her hands, and infusing them in water, she makes her drink in proportion to its strength. It naturally occasions pain in the bowels, which is considered as an infallible evidence of guilt. Incantations and charms are then resorted to by the bunda woman, to ascertain what the concealed crime is, and after a decent period employed in this buffoonery, the charges are brought in conformity with the imagination or malignity of this priestess of mystery and iniquity.
During the continuance of this engine of avarice, oppression, and fraud in any town, the chiefs cause their great drum and other instruments of music to be continually in action, and every appearance of festive hilarity pervades among the inhabitants, accompanied by the song and the dance.
Contumacy, or a refusal to confess, is invariably followed by death.
In short, the bewildered natives feel the effects, and dread the power of these extraordinary institutions; they know they exist, but their deliberations and mysteries are impenetrably concealed from them; and the objects of their vengeance are in total ignorance, until the annihilating stroke of death terminates their mortal career.
It is impossible to contemplate the religious institutions, and superstitious customs of the western nations of Africa, north of the equator, without closely assimilating them with those of Ethiopia and Egypt; and from hence to infer that a correspondence has existed between the eastern and western inhabitants of this great continent.