The fetish folk of West Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

The ordeal is a form of judicial trial in which supernatural aid is relied upon to take the place of evidence and to determine guilt or innocence. We must not forget that the ordeal was a medieval practice in Europe; and that our fathers were required to prove their innocence by dipping their hands into boiling water, or carrying a red-hot iron nine paces. But our fathers believed in a righteous God, and when evidence was wanting the ordeal was a direct appeal to His judgment. It is very different, and more strange, to find the African relying upon the ordeal, who does not believe in a righteous God. The God of African belief made the world; but in character He is no better than the Africans themselves; and, moreover, he is a God afar off and inactive, while the spirits who are near and active are also evil and hostile.

The principle of the African ordeal is that there is an eternal connection between guilt and retribution; and knowing of no righteous God to execute vengeance, they attribute wrath to the dumb forces of nature; these, they conceive, are in league against the wrong-doer and will execute vengeance. The belief is the more impressive because it is directly contradicted by the facts of experience. Fire burns the innocent; the lightning-stroke is no respecter of persons; the fury of the tornado is not partial to the good. And yet the belief persists. It persists because of the irrepressible instinct that wrong-doing deserves punishment, and that somewhere at the heart of the universe there is a moral power that connects guilt and retribution.

The same instinct accounts for the sleepless Nemesis and the whips and scorpions of the Furies of ancient mythology. There is a peculiar and striking instance of it in the Scriptures: Paul, having been shipwrecked on the island of Melita, gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire which the natives had kindled; but a viper, by reason of the heat, came out and fastened on his hand. Then the natives said one to another: “No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.”

But when, instead of falling dead suddenly, they saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.

One still night, as we lay at anchor in the middle of the broad river, amidst profound darkness, a deep-voiced man related to the crew a story of how a certain man, whose father and sisters had been killed by another man in a tribal war, not being able to avenge himself, at last “threw his face on his enemy.” It is not necessary to repeat the unpleasant details of how this is done; but in many tribes they believe that where a great wrong has been unavenged it really can be done, and, intentionally or otherwise, it illustrates in a gruesome manner a principle of remorse of which some suppose that the African is incapable. Ever after the man threw his face on his enemy the enemy saw that face. It haunted him in the midst of all his joys, made his sorrows the heavier, and poisoned all the pleasures of his life. Fetishes, prayers, incantations were all in vain; he still saw it, saw it alike in the darkness and the light, and saw it always. At last, when madness threatened him because of this haunting face, he killed himself to escape from it. But it is very doubtful whether he would escape it even in death; for there are those who say that a face thrown upon a man will continue to haunt him in the next life even as in this.

Again, even more clearly does the African prove that he is essentially moral by the ceremonies which he has instituted for the relief of a sense of guilt. I once witnessed a peculiar ceremony of this kind in a native town. A series of dire misfortunes, which had exhausted the usual resources of fetishism, led them at length to search their own hearts for the cause. By some means it was concluded that the infidelity of the wives of the town was the cause of their calamities. Thereupon a fetish medicine was prepared in a large bucket. An individual who played the part of priest was hidden in a green booth in the middle of the street. He was supposed by the women to be a spirit, and not a human being. He spoke in a false voice that was inhuman enough for any spirit. The women as he called them by name, one by one, approached and sat down on a seat a few yards from the booth. The “spirit” within the booth held one end of a rope of vine, while the woman seated without held the other. Then he asked her whether she was guilty of the sin that had wrought so much evil. The women believed that the spirit already knew their guilt or innocence, and they were afraid to lie. They all confessed their guilt in the hearing of the people—probably every woman in the town. Then an assistant, at the command of the priest, dipped a bunch of grass into the medicine and sprinkled it upon the guilty, thereby removing the curse.

Since that time they have all heard of the blood that was shed on Calvary; and by its sprinkling some of those some women, I trust, have been cleansed from a guilty conscience.

Blood itself is often used in these ceremonies; the fresh blood of fowls, or of sheep or goats. In such a ceremony the people are seated on the ground, one behind another, and the priest passing along pours the blood over their heads and shoulders. To most of them it is a mere ceremonial and removes the curse without reference to the heart. Such a scene often recalled the observation of George Adam Smith, that the essence of heathenism is not idolatry but ritualism. Many of them shrink from the blood, lowering their heads to keep it off their faces and evidently desiring as little of it as possible. But occasionally one may see a woman welcome it with eager, upturned face, and eyes of infinite and pathetic longing; in the spirit of that disciple who said: “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”

“Out of the depths,” said the psalmist—“Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.” And must we not believe that this inarticulate cry from the abysmal depths of the poor African woman’s darkness and degradation is heard by the attentive ear of Him who sitteth upon the throne of the heavens and is very nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart?

In nothing else does the African reveal his essentially moral nature more than in his immediate recognition and acceptance of the character of Jesus as the human ideal; although it is an ideal that traverses all his former conceptions, that subverts those ideas which are the basis of his dearest social customs, and condemns utterly that conduct which has been his very boast. Jesus is so immediately understood by the African that we are often asked whether Jesus was a black man. He is understood by every tribe and nation, because He unites in Himself the ideals of all. He also unites in Himself individual qualities of seeming incompatibility. In Him the most masculine qualities are united with those which are usually regarded as feminine, such as gentleness, patience, devotion. Christ redeems woman from oppression and bondage by rescuing from contempt those virtues in which she excels, and even giving them preëminence. He is the ideal of woman as well as man.