The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

Now the stranger was a powerful witch, and immediately he turned into a leopard; but to his great surprise his opponent also turned into a leopard. Then a terrible fight took place between the two leopards. They leaped and sprang upon each other and howled so frightfully that the women of the town fell down with fear; but the men all gathered around the fighting leopards. Then suddenly the stranger turned himself into a python and springing upon the leopard threw a deadly coil around its neck; but the other leopard also turned into a python, and the pythons fought together, coiling about each other, hissing, and biting. Then the stranger turned into a gorilla that he might seize the python and choke it in his terrible hands, but the other python also turned into a gorilla, and the gorillas fought and tried to squeeze each other to death. At last the stranger, getting exhausted, turned into an eagle that he might fly away, but the other also turned into an eagle, and pursuing him dealt him a fatal blow. The dying eagle changed again into a man and begged the other man for mercy, which was refused. He would not make medicine for him, and so the stranger died.

On one of these camp-fire occasions a coast man who had been employed at Efulen tells how he recovered certain goods that a Bulu workman had stolen from him. He called together all the workmen, both Bulu and coast men, and after telling them that his goods had been stolen he proposed to discover the thief by ordeal. He told them of an ordeal that was well known in his town, and that never failed. Then he produced a dish of medicine he had made, which he said he would squirt into the eye of each man. In the eye of an innocent person it would be harmless as water, but it would burn the eye of the guilty one. From the first he had suspected a certain Bulu man, but he wanted formal evidence and the best evidence would be the man’s confession, which he determined to obtain. He stood the men in a row, with the suspected Bulu man near the last. Then he began squirting a copious dose of medicine into an eye of each man in turn. It did not hurt in the least, for the very good reason that it was nothing but water—which nobody knew but himself. Then when he came to the suspected man, he slipped a handful of red pepper into the water, and squirted it into the man’s eye. A sudden scream, a full confession, and the goods restored were some of the more important effects of this wonderful ordeal. And many African ordeals are useful for discovering a criminal when you happen to know who he is.

One man tells “a true story” of an evil spirit who hates people and who spreads disease and death. He once appeared in the forest near a town, in the form of a little child, evidently lost and hungry, and crying bitterly. Some kind-hearted woman finding him took pity on him and carried him to the town in her arms. But she was soon smitten with smallpox, which spread from her to others and the whole town was destroyed.

However the evening may begin with fable and fiction, it usually ends with narratives of fact and experience. But their facts are as fabulous as their fables and there is no distinct line between. One may listen to a story that is a tissue of impossibilities, and may suppose that the native is repeating a myth or a legend to which the imagination of at least several generations has contributed fantastic details, only to find that the purport of the story is a narrative of fact which the native solemnly believes. For they know little of nature’s laws and nothing of their uniformity.

Therefore “miracles” are always happening. The miracles of the New Testament, as a display of supernatural power, do not at first impress the native mind; not because he cannot believe them, but because he believes them too easily, and believes that miracles more wonderful take place in his own town every day. But the moral quality—the benevolence and mercy—of the New Testament miracles impresses him deeply, and this to him is their wonder. For, among his people, men and women who possess supernatural power wield it to an evil purpose, or at best, in their own interest.

A man tells of a murderer in his town who was suspected of having killed a number of persons who had died a mysterious death, after having first lost their shadows. The suspected man was closely watched, and, sure enough, one day they caught him in the very act of driving a nail into another man’s shadow. Everybody knows that a man’s shadow is his spirit, or at least one of his spirits, and if it be mortally wounded, or in any way induced to leave him, he will die. No man will long survive the loss of his shadow. But while witches and other murderers commit their evil deeds under cover of night, the shadow-slayer chooses the day and often the noonday. Many a man has lost his shadow at noonday—not so difficult to understand if it be remembered that we are speaking of the tropics, where, at certain seasons, the sun at noonday is directly overhead.

The people were so enraged at this murderer who was caught driving the nail into a man’s shadow—was caught only after the deed was done, making death certain—and who must have been the cause of all the recent unaccountable deaths in the town, that they carried him into the forest and bound him to the ground in the track of the driver ants, which immediately covered his whole body and devoured him, leaving nothing but the bones. But in the night-time his screams were still heard, even after his death, and the people were sore afraid. His spirit haunted the town, until at length the people deserted it and built in another place. And even yet the belated traveller passing that way hears the screams of the dead man.

But the greatest fear in all Africa is the witch. The witch’s soul is “loose from her body,” and at night she leaves her body and goes about the town, an unseen enemy, doing mischief and wickedness. A young man by the camp fire tells of a witch in his town who for some time had been “eating” the children of the town. It is not the body, but the spirit, that she eats, after which the child sickens, and gradually becoming worse, at length dies.

The discovery of witchcraft was made in a peculiar way. A certain man who was sick and lying awake at night with pain, thought one night that he heard a sound in the street. He crawled close to the wall and peering through a crack he beheld in the street the phantom form of a woman carrying the form of a child. She laid the child down in the street. Then she drew the form of a knife with the evident intention of cutting the child to pieces and eating it. But the knife was powerless to cut because of the bodily eyes of the man who was a spectator. Again and again the woman tried to dissect the child and still the knife refused to cut. At length it occurred to her that she was probably being watched. Then, taking the child up quickly, she returned it to the house whence she had stolen it, restored it to its body, and fled, without being recognized by the man who had seen her. In the morning he reported to the town all he had seen. The wildest excitement ensued. The mothers of the town were in terror, not knowing who the witch was that was eating their children. But one of the women was taken suddenly ill and they became suspicious, though they said nothing. She grew rapidly worse until she was seized with a convulsion and foam appeared at her mouth, a certain sign of witchcraft and that her own witch inside had rebelled and was eating her. Then they all reviled and cursed her, gave her no food, threw cold water on her, mocked her agony, and exulted in her pain until she died.

A deep, resonant, hungry roar of a leopard arrests the attention of the company around the camp-fire. It is at a pretty safe distance, however, and the white man having given orders to keep the fire burning retires to his hammock a little apart, but takes his rifle with him.