“In cases of great difficulty the oracle at Abrah is the last resort of the Fantees. This notable oracle is always consulted at night. They find a large fire made upon the ground, and the presents they have brought they place in the hands of the priests who are in attendance. They are then directed to elevate their presents above their heads and to fix their eyes steadfastly upon the ground, for should they look up, the fetish, it is said, would inflict blindness on them for their sacrilegious gaze. After a time the oracle gives a response in a shrill, small voice intended to convey the idea that it proceeds from an unearthly source, and the inquirers, having obtained the end of their visit, then depart.
“In cases of bodily affliction the fetish orders medical preparations for the patient. If the malady of the patient does not appear to yield to such applications, the fetish is again consulted, and in some cases, as a further expedient, the priest takes a fowl and ties it to a stick, by which operation it is barbarously squeezed to death. The stick is then placed in the path leading to the house for the purpose of deterring evil spirits from approaching it. When the patient is a rich man, several sheep are sacrificed, and he is fetished until the last moment arrives amidst the howls of a number of old Fetish Women, who continue to besmear with eggs and other medicine the walls and doorposts of his house and everything that is around him until he has ceased to breathe.”
Not only does the African depart from life under the care of Fetish-Men—and, as my valued correspondent ungallantly remarks, “old fetish-women”—but he is met, as it were, by them on his arrival. My correspondent says “as soon as the child is born the Fetish-Man binds certain fetish preparations round his limbs, using at the same time a form of incantation or prayer. This is done to fortify the infant against all kinds of evil. On the eighth day after the birth, the father of the child, accompanied by a number of friends, proceeds to the house of the mother. If he be a rich man, he takes with him a gallon of ardent spirits to be used on the festive occasion. On arriving at the house, the friends form a circle round the father, who delivers a kind of address in which he acknowledges the kindness of the gods for giving him the child, and calls upon those present also to thank the fetishes on his account; then, taking the child in his arms, he squirts upon it a little spirit from his mouth, pronouncing the name by which it is to be called. A second name which the child usually takes is that of the day of the week on which it is born. The following are the names of the days in the Fanti language, varied in their orthography according to the sex of the child:—
| Male. | Female. | |
| Sunday | Quisi | Akosua. |
| Monday | Kujot | Ajua. |
| Tuesday | Quabina | Abmaba. |
| Wednesday | Quaku | Ekua. |
| Thursday | Quahu | Aba. |
| Friday | Kufi | Efua. |
| Saturday | Qamina | Ama. |
Those ceremonials called on the Coast “customs” are the things that show off the Fetish-Man at the best in more senses of the word than one. We will take the yam custom. The intentions of these yam customs are twofold—firstly they are a thanksgiving to the fetishes for allowing their people to live to see the new yams, and for the new yams, but they are also institutions to prevent the general public eating the new yam before it’s ready. The idea is, and no doubt rightly, that unripe yams are unwholesome, and the law is that no new yams must be eaten until the yam custom is made. The Fetish-Men settle when the yams are in a fit state to pass into circulation, and then make the custom. It generally occurs at the end of August, but is sometimes kept back until the beginning of September. In Fantee all the inhabitants of the towns assemble under the shade of the grove adjoining the fetish hut, and a sheep and a number of fowls are killed, part of their flesh is mixed with boiled yams and palm-oil, and a portion of this mixture is placed on the heads of the images, and the remainder is thrown about before the fetish hut as a peace-offering to the deities.
At Winnebah, on the Gold Coast, there is an interesting modification in the yam custom. The principal fetish of that place, it is believed, will not be satisfied with a sheep, but he must have a deer brought alive to his temple, and there sacrificed. Accordingly on the appointed day every year when the custom is to be celebrated, almost all the inhabitants except the aged and infirm go into the adjoining country—an open park-like country, studded with clumps of trees. The women and children look on, give good advice, and shriek when necessary, while the men beat the bush with sticks, beat tom-toms, and halloo with all their might. While thus engaged, my correspondent remarks in his staid way, “sometimes a leopard starts forth, but it is usually so frightened with the noise and confusion that it scampers off in one direction as fast as the people run from it in another. When a deer is driven out, the chase begins, the people try to run it down, flinging sticks at its legs. At last it is secured and carried exultingly to the town with shoutings and drummings. On entering the town they are met by the aged people carrying staves, and, having gone in procession round the town, they proceed to the fetish house, where the animal is sacrificed, and partly offered to the fetish, partly eaten by the priests.”
These yam customs are at their fullest in the Benin Bights, but you get a custom made for the new yam in all the districts lower down. These customs have long been credited with being stained by human sacrifices. Not altogether unjustly. You can always read human sacrifice for goats and fowls when you are considering a district inhabited by true Negroes, and the occasion is an important one, because in West Africa a human sacrifice is the most persuasive one to the fetishes. It is just with them as with a chief—if you want to get some favour from him you must give him a present. A fowl or a goat or a basket of vegetables, or anything like that is quite enough for most favours, but if you want a big thing, and want it badly, you had better give him a slave, because the slave is alike more intrinsically valuable and also more useful. So far as I know, all human beings sacrificed pass into the service of the fetish they are sacrificed to. They are not merely killed that he may enjoy their blood, but that he may have their assistance. Fetishes have much to do, and an extra pair of hands is to them always acceptable. As for the importance of these harvest customs to the general system of Fetish, I think in West Africa it is small. The goings on, the licentiousness and general jollification that accompany them, upsetting law and order for days, give them a fallacious look of importance; but I think far more really near the heart of the Fetish thought-form is the lonely man who steals at night into the forest to gain from Sasabonsom a charm, and the woman who, on her way back from market, throws down before the fetish houses she passes a scrap of her purchases; compared to the cult of the law-god, well, yam customs are dirty water price, palaver, and insignificant politically.
I have dealt here with Fetish as far as the position of the human being is concerned, because this phase may make it more comprehensible to my fellow white men who regard the human being as the main thing in the created universe, but I must beg you to remember that this idea of the importance of the human race is not held by the African. The individual is supremely important to himself, and he values his friends and relations and so on, but abstract affection for humanity at large or belief in the sanctity of the lives of people with whom he is unrelated and unacquainted, the African barely possesses. He is only capable of feeling this abstract affection when under the influence of one of the great revealed religions which place the human being higher in the scale of Creation. This comes from no cruelty of mind per se, but is the result of the hardness of the fight he has to fight against the world; and possessing this view of the equal, if not greater importance of many of the things he sees round him, the African conceives these things also have their fetish—a fetish on the same ground idea, but varying from human fetish. The politics of Mungo mah Lobeh, the mountain, with the rest of nature, he believes to exist. The Alemba rapid has its affairs clearly, but the private matters of these very great people are things the human being had better keep out of; and it is advisable for him to turn his attention to making terms with them and go into their presence with his petition when their own affairs are prosperous, when their tempers are not as it were up over some private ultra-human affair of their own. I well remember the opinions expressed by my companions regarding the folly—mine, of course—of obtruding ourselves on Mungo when that noble mountain was vexed too much, and the opinion expressed by an Efik friend in a tornado that came down on us. Well, there you have this difference. I instinctively say “us.” She did not think we were objects of interest to the tornado or the forest it was scourging. She took it they had a sort of family row on, and we might get hit with the bits, therefore it was highly unfortunate that we were present at the meeting. Again, it is the same with the surf. The boat-boys see it’s in a nasty temper, they keep out of it, it may be better to-morrow, then it will tolerate them, for it has no real palaver with them individually. Of course you can go and upset the temper of big nature spirits, but when you are not there they have their own affairs.
Hence it comes that we have in Fetish a religion in which its believers do not hold that devotion to religion constitutes Virtue. The ordinary citizen is held to be most virtuous who is least mixed up in religious affairs. He can attain Virtue, the love and honour of his fellow-men, by being a good husband and father, an honest man in trade, a just man in the palaver-house, and he must, for the protection of his interests, that is to say, not only his individual well-being, but the well-being of those dependent on him, go in to a certain extent for religious practices. He must associate with spirits because spirits are in all things and everywhere and over everything; and the good citizen deals with the other spirits as he deals with that class of spirits we call human beings; he does not cheat the big ones of their dues; he spills a portion of his rum to them; he gives them their white calicoes; he treats his slave spirits honourably, and he uses his slave spirits for no bad purpose, and if any great grief falls on him he calls on the great over-lord of gods, mentioning these things. But men are not all private citizens; there are men whose destiny puts them in high places—men who are not only house fathers but who are tribe fathers. They, to protect and further the interests of those under them, must venture greatly and further, and deal with more powerful spirits, as it were, their social equals in spiritdom. These good chiefs in their higher grade dealings preserve the same clean-handed conduct. And besides these there are those men, the Fetish men, who devote their lives to combating evil actions through witches and miscellaneous spirits who prey on mankind. These men have to make themselves important to important spirits. It is risky work for them, for spirits are a risky set to deal with. Up here in London, when I have to deal with a spirit as manifest in the form of an opinion, or any big mind-form incarnate in one man, or in thousands, I often think of an African friend of mine who had troubles, and I think sympathetically, for his brother explained the affair to me. He was an educated man. “You see,” he said, “my brother’s got a strong Ju Ju, but it’s a damned rocky Ju Ju to get on with.”