The fetish folk of West Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

Carlyle has said: “What notion each forms of the universe is the all-regulating fact with regard to him.” Looking out upon nature and knowing of no divine intelligence ever present and presiding, the African does not discover the reign of law nor the uniformity of nature. Those phenomena of which the cause is not as obvious as the effect he relates to a supernatural cause. And since will is the cause that he knows by experience, he instinctively attributes natural phenomena to a personal will; not to one will, however, but to many; for natural phenomena are various and the moods of nature are inconsistent. He hears the crash of thunder, and if he says, “Somebody threw something,” he is not very far from the ancient conception of Jupiter hurling thunderbolts. And, since that which is normal and regular does not attract attention like that which is unusual and fearful, therefore to the unreflecting mind the beneficence of nature is far less obvious than its terrors; since the laws of growth, seedtime and harvest, rain and sunshine,—all the kindly ministry of nature, is quiet and unobtrusive, while her cruelty thrusts itself upon the mind, the African concludes that the innumerable spirits which rule nature or constantly interfere with it are mostly evil and hostile.

From this view it is not a long stride to the belief that the spirits reside in the objects of nature, each in its appropriate object; and this is fetishism. We are all fetishists by instinct; though we may hear it with the astonishment of Molière’s hero when he found that he had been talking prose all his life. Every time one slams a door in anger or kicks at a bucket—as if such things had sentience and could be hurt—he exhibits a fetish instinct.

If we bear in mind, then, that the very axioms of the African’s belief obliterate the line between nature and the supernatural, and, further, that habitual lying makes the character of truth vague and uncertain, and also that he has an imagination almost as vivid as reality, we may be somewhat enabled to understand the degraded mental condition indicated by such incidents as the following, which I repeat because they are representative:

A certain woman, knowing that the penalty would be death, confessed—and with undoubted sincerity—that by witchcraft she had caused another woman’s death, and was herself killed by the people.

A certain man, evidently without the slightest intention of untruthfulness, tells how that journeying one day in the forest he had met two strange men who by fetish power had thrown him to the ground, had opened his body, and removing his intestines, had stuffed him with dry grass instead, which would have injured him for life, but that a doctor of his own tribe found him, reopened him, removed the hay and put real intestines in its place. I know a woman in Gaboon who claims and evidently believes that she is constantly attended by several leopards, invisible to all others but herself. There is a man in Gaboon of whom the whole community believes that he frequently changes himself into a leopard in order to steal sheep and to devour a whole sheep at a meal. This he does also when he would avenge himself upon his enemies. This particular man denies that he has any such power. But sometimes men confess or claim that they themselves possess it; and in some cases they seem to believe it. A broken-hearted chief once told Du Chaillu how that his son, who had been his joy and hope, had been accused of killing two men of the town by turning into a leopard. The old man at first passionately defended his son. But to his horror, the son, stepping forward, confessed the charge, and that he had turned himself into a leopard and killed the two men—he did not know why. With the chief’s consent the son was burnt to death over a slow fire. And the sight of that horrible death was ever in the old man’s eyes.

One day the Rev. Dr. Nassau (who relates this incident in his book, Fetishism in West Africa) arrived in a native village where he found an extraordinary commotion, the people panic-stricken with fear. Upon making an inquiry as to the cause, he was told that on the preceding day the wife of the chief had borne a son, the only son of the chief, who in his joy had this day made a great feast, which they were about to celebrate, when suddenly another woman of the village, carrying at her side a baby girl three months old, passed through the crowd straight to the house in which was the new-born boy, and exchanging the children, came out bearing the baby boy. Upon the loud protest of the people and a demand for an explanation she told them the following story:

This baby boy, she said, although borne by the chief’s wife, really belonged to her; while the baby girl which she had borne three months ago belonged to the chief’s wife. She and the other woman, she said, were both witches. Until recently they had been intimate friends and had been accustomed to go off together in the night to witch-feasts and witch-dances in neighbouring villages. Their unborn babes they were accustomed to leave upon the grass while they joined in the dance. Her babe, she said, was a boy, and the other was a girl. But one morning the other woman, leaving the dance before her, took the male child and left the other, thinking that she would not know the difference. After that they had never gone out together; a coolness had sprung up between them, and she had waited her time and kept her secret. In due time she had borne the baby girl, which really belonged to the chief’s wife; and now the chief’s wife had borne the baby boy, which belonged to her.

The chief’s wife stood dumb, as if in self-condemnation. No one doubted the story; and the woman bore the child away.

The trial for witchcraft is by ordeal. In most cases poison is administered. If the accused dies or is seized with vertigo this is sufficient evidence of guilt; if no such result follows, it is a sign of innocence.

The African believes in a God, who made all things; but his idea of God is grossly anthropomorphic. God is a very big African chief with a great many wives. Some of their fables in which God figures are not repeatable. He regards men and women with contempt, and as a rule ignores them. I do not know that they ever worship Him. Their worship is directed to the innumerable spirits about them who infest the air, among whom are their ancestors. The spirits are generally disposed to do them harm; but they may be placated, and their own dead may even be rendered favourable by certain ceremonies. But an incomparably greater number of spirits are always hostile, and the impulse of African worship is fear.