The fetish folk of West Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

Among the Fang, back from the coast, who have not been influenced by contact with the white man, all the funeral customs are more rude and barbarous, and often revolting. The dead are buried without coffins, usually in a sitting posture, and in very shallow graves. Some of the tribes adjacent to the Fang on the south do not bury at all. They have regular cemeteries in which they leave the bodies above the ground and cover them with palm branches or woven mats. In most tribes offerings of food and drink are placed beside the grave. As the drink evaporates and the food wastes they say the spirit is consuming it. Fire-wood is left on the grave that the body may be kept warm. In the case of those accused of witchcraft they often seek to disable the spirit by burning the body. For the spirits of the dead still retain some connection with the body. For this same reason when slaves die, or others whom they have especial reason to fear, they sometimes beat the body with heavy clubs until they break every bone and reduce it to a shapeless mass.

Wives charged with witchcraft are usually buried alive with the dead body of the husband. In one instance, in a certain town that I knew well, a very large grave was dug in the middle of the street, and the body of the man—a chief—was placed in the middle of it. Then his seven wives, charged with having bewitched him, were brought forward, and they were about to break their legs and throw them into the grave, when the timely arrival of the missionary prevented the deed and saved the women’s lives. He interposed no physical force; but, knowing his feelings, they were not willing to commit such an atrocity in his presence.

The human shrinking from the dead with them takes the form of fear that the dead will harm them, even their own nearest relations. No matter how they may have loved one while he was alive, yet they will not desire that his spirit should linger; but rather in their mourning they often entreat the dead one to depart. It is heartrending to hear a mother in the midst of her grief entreat her child to stay far from her and not to touch her. They resort to various expedients to get rid of the spirits of the dead. Sometimes, upon the announcement of a death, while the women indulge in frantic shrieks, or the mourning wail, the men beat drums or fire off their guns to frighten the spirit away. Nevertheless, the spirit remains in the house as long as the body is there and accompanies it to the grave. Therefore the bed that the deceased lay upon is occupied continually between death and burial to the supposed discomfort of the spirit. After the burial they hurry home, sometimes running, in order to escape from the spirit, which may not be able to find its way back to the town alone. On the way home it is advisable, if possible, to plunge into water. If one should fall while thus running he will die within a year. Sickness and other troubles are often attributed to the spirits of those who have recently died. Little children whose mothers have died often die themselves soon after; it is because the dead mother cannot resist the temptation to embrace them.

Among the Mpongwe blue is worn as mourning. The men also shave their heads. The mourning chant is continued at night, usually for a month after the funeral. Near relations remain as visitors in the town during the period of mourning. The usual activities are suspended and children are neglected. The white man’s rum is now regarded as a necessary factor in relieving hearts surcharged with sorrow. As time passes gossip becomes incessant and engenders estrangements and hatreds. There are also criminal intimacies. Indeed, a period of mourning is perhaps the most demoralizing experience through which a community can pass.

With most of the mourners the mourning wail itself is purely conventional, serving only for the assumption of a sham grief rather than the relief of a real one. But no one forgets the possible charges of witchcraft; and to avert suspicion it is wise to be prompt and eager in the mourning, especially on the part of those who were known to be estranged from the deceased. A certain Mpongwe woman, entering a house of mourning where a friend had just died, asked the husband of the deceased to excuse her from mourning because she had a sore ear and it hurt her to mourn.

Grief, however, is often very deep and real among the Africans; and it can never in any land be measured by conventionalities. The grief of parents for the loss of children is, as I have said, the most poignant grief of the African heart. Again and again, when I have asked a father or mother to explain to the session of the church their long absence from its services, they have confessed in tears that they had been unable to believe in the Christian’s God since He had taken away their little child—sometimes an only child—and had left the parent heart cold and joyless.

One day, walking across the lonely grass-field of Gaboon, the stillness broken only by the rustle of the long grass around me and the distant boom of the sea beyond the horizon, I met a man of Gaboon who was returning home after a trading expedition into the forest. He was a shrewd man who had traded successfully both with white and black and who seemed to care for nothing else but trade, a man of materialistic mind and peculiarly inaccessible to any spiritual message. We sat down and talked for some time, first of course about trade; but gradually the conversation became more intimate and he talked about himself, at length revealing a great sorrow that years ago had darkened his life and left it dark, like the setting of the sun. He had lost in succession three little children—all he had. He tried to tell me about it, but he had not accustomed himself to speaking of it, and the story ended half-way in a flood of tears. I told him that little story that every minister tells more than once in the course of his ministry—the story of the kind shepherd, and the willful mother sheep that would not cross the stream to the good pasture and the safe fold on the other side; and how the shepherd took the lamb in his arms and carried it across, and how the mother sheep stood a while and looked after it with longing and then followed her lamb to the other side. It was a familiar incident to him—some such thing he had done himself—and the simple story moved him deeply. I never saw him again; for I left Africa shortly afterwards. But I have not forgotten the human tenderness that was revealed beneath the surface hardness of the man’s heathen heart; and I hope that if he be still alive he may not have forgotten the vision of the “sweet fields beyond the swelling floods,” and the message of God’s love and kindness which he heard that day, like a still, small voice sounding across the storms that had wrecked his life.

The tribes north of the Calabar River—the real Negro tribes—are more cruel in all their customs than the tribes further south. Even apart from any accusation of witchcraft, when a man dies a number of persons are frequently put to death to accompany his spirit to the other world. When a great chief dies wives and slaves are killed that the chief may enter the spirit world as a person of consequence. For it is supposed that slaves sent with him will still be his slaves and wives will still be wives. I have known an instance of a native dying on shipboard, and when the body was cast into the sea, the female relations actually tried to leap after it in order to accompany the spirit of the deceased to the other world.

Among some of the tribes of the Niger it was the custom (until the English government suppressed it) that when a chief died a number of persons, perhaps twelve or more, usually women and slaves, were buried alive with him, and without any accusation against them. An enormous grave was dug; and all these persons were lowered into it together with the dead body of the chief. Then the grave was covered over with a roof, a small opening being left, upon which a stone was placed. Each day the stone was removed and the question was asked of those below whether they had yet followed the chief—each day until at last no voice replied. Among the Fang I have not known of any such practice. The only persons put to death on such occasions are those who have been charged with witchcraft. But multitudes die daily on this charge.

My first contact with death in Africa was among the Bulu, at a little town called Mon Nlam (if I remember correctly) close to Efulen. One afternoon when I was alone at Efulen I was startled by the firing of guns in the little village at the foot of our hill. There were cries also and shrieks such as I had never before heard. Several of the many natives around me belonged to Mon Nlam; and these started for home as fast as they could run. I caught something of their alarm and ran after them to the town. Following the lead of the natives I ran through the town into the banana garden immediately beyond, where all the people were gathered. There in the midst were a number of women (I forget how many) shrieking frantically and throwing themselves madly upon the ground. They were entirely naked and their bodies were smeared with white clay, even their faces and their hair. Other women were vainly trying to restrain them, while the crowd looked on.