Despite the veneer of civilization, I fear that this amiable and graceful people—excepting only the few Christians—are as superstitious as ever. Nature is still inhabited by myriad spirits to whose activity natural phenomena are due. They still speak of the great spirit who causes the flow and ebb of the tide by dropping an enormous stone into the sea and again removing it. Trial by ordeal is common even among the most intelligent. And not a death occurs among them that is not attributed to witchcraft.
A man dying in the hospital at Gaboon turns his solemn, beautiful eyes towards one who sits beside him, and tells in confidence what has brought about his death. It is strange how approaching death, as if to testify to man’s divine origin in the hour of his most appalling defeat, dignifies the features and countenance of the lowest with a mysterious dignity that transcends all differences of colour, transforms even natural ugliness, and brings all men to one level. The greatest is no more than human; the lowest is no less. This dying man tells how that some weeks past, having gone on a journey to a certain town forty miles north, and during the night having wondered what his friends at home might be doing, he thought he would visit Gaboon, leaving his body while his spirit alone travelled through the air. But on the way he met a company of spirits making a similar journey, one of whom was an enemy; who, recognizing him, gave him a fatal thrust in the side. He quickly returned to his body; but in the morning he felt the weakness resulting from the fatal stroke, and from that day had grown weaker and weaker until death was upon him.
I was present at the trial of a slave, in a leading Mpongwe town, who was accused of causing the death of one of the relations of the chief, a man who had been ill for a long time with tuberculosis. I had been calling on the sick man regularly. One day, going again to the town, I saw a crowd of people gathered in the street who were very much excited. The man had just died, and as usual the panic-stricken people were determined to blame somebody. The chief who was trying the case was a well-educated man who had been closely associated with white people all his life and was prominent in trade. Arbitrary suspicion had about settled upon this slave—for slaves are always the first to be suspected—when a boy came forward and said that on the preceding night he had discovered the slave standing behind the sick man’s house and that he had watched him while he opened a bundle of leaves which he had in his hand and in which was a piece of human flesh like a fish in size and form. No more evidence was necessary. No one asked the boy how he knew that it was not a fish which he had seen; nor how he knew that it was human.
They would have killed the man instantly but for their fear of the French government; for the town was close beside the capital. When I tried to reason with them, they answered me with the all-sufficient exclamation: “Ask the boy! Ask him yourself!” Those who took the leading part in this trial were dressed like Europeans.
Sickness and death, they believe, may be caused by fetish medicine, which need not be administered to the victim, but is usually laid beside the path where he is about to pass. Others may pass and it will do them no harm. The parings of finger-nails, the hair of the victim and such things are powerful ingredients in these “medicines.” An Mpongwe, after having his hair cut, gathers up every hair most carefully and burns it lest an enemy should secure it and use it to his injury. When sickness continues for a length of time they usually conclude that some offended relation has caused an evil spirit to abide in the town.
An Mpongwe man, Ayenwe, had a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism. I was going to see him regularly and doing what little I could for him. But his mother’s people, who lived in a town four miles away, concluded that it was a spell of witchcraft, inflicted by his father’s people. So they came one stormy night at midnight and stealing him out of his house, put him in a canoe and carried him on the rough sea to their town. The patient can always be prevailed upon by his relations, if there are enough of them to wear out his resistance. However strongly he may object at first he will finally throw up his hands and say: “Kill me if you will then. The responsibility is yours; I have nothing more to do with it.” A man’s very soul is not his own in Africa.
An Mpongwe woman, Paia, was suffering greatly from salivation, through the injudicious use of calomel. She was a Christian woman and a member in the Mpongwe Church, although her relations were all heathen. She was in agony and a fellow missionary and myself had already reached the point where we could do nothing more for her. The numerous heathen relations were all present. They sat on the floor smoking and expectorating in gloomy silence, with the windows closed, and filled the house so that I could hardly pass in and out. I tried my best to get them to take Paia to the French hospital, but they were horrified at the bare suggestion. The tales in free circulation concerning the hospital—poisons administered by the doctor, mutilation, and death by slow torture—would fill a volume. Several days passed: Paia was worse. They concluded that the house was bewitched—and perhaps the whole town—and resolved to carry her away to another town, across the river. In such cases it is advisable to put a body of water between the victim and the bewitched town. Paia told me that she was more than willing to go to the hospital if they would let her; but she said they would never consent. Next morning about daylight I suddenly appeared before her door with four strong men and a hammock swung on a pole. Before her relations knew what had happened one of the men had carried her out to the hammock, and we started to the hospital. The French doctor, one of the very best on the coast, at my request gave her special attention, and in a few days she was well.
WOMEN’S SECRET SOCIETY OF GABOON.
The lowest reach of Mpongwe degradation is represented by the woman’s secret society, to which a majority of the Mpongwe women belong—practically all, except the Christians, who regard it with abhorrence. I know of nothing in any interior tribe more degrading and immoral. In former times of cruelty and oppression the society probably served for the protection of women against their husbands; but in these times it is the husbands who need protection, and the society, having outlived its usefulness, has degenerated. The women of the society frequently meet together at night, usually in an arbour of palms, and sing unspeakably lewd songs—phallic songs—which are heard all over the village. There is always a crowd of young men gathered around the arbour; and the badinage which passes between them and the women is shocking. And yet these same persons, on all other occasions in their daily intercourse, observe a degree of decorum which would astonish those who think that there is scarcely any such thing as decorum in Africa.