The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

When the fetish is not merely for protection, but is intended to injure a particular person, it must include such personal ingredients as the cuttings of the hair or nails of that person, or a shred of his clothing.

Fetishism and witchcraft inevitably go together. A witch is in league with an evil spirit by which she can leave the body, and return to it, for her spirit is “loose from her body.” She “eats” the spirit, or life, of her enemies, and all people are her enemies, innocent or guilty alike. She is sold to evil. The African does not regard the spirit or soul of a person as immaterial. It is a thin vaporous material which resembles the body in form and appearance. This is perhaps everywhere the conception that underlies the belief in ghosts. Primitive people generally associate this spirit with the shadow, and sometimes with the breath. The African believes that a man may lose his shadow. Soon afterwards he will die. An enemy may also injure it. Many an African has sought to kill another by driving a nail into his shadow. A man’s shadow is big in the morning because it is fresh and strong. It shrivels up with the heat of the sun. It is evident that the sun afflicts it for it always keeps on the cooler side, away from the sun.

Many tribes—whether all tribes I cannot say—believe that a person has several spirits. It is always the spirit that gets sick, and any one of a man’s spirits may get sick, or may leave him. In the latter case a skillful doctor will be able to catch the spirit and put it back in the man. Madness is always imputed to a malignant spirit inhabiting a man’s body; such a spirit may be born with the man.

Their chief fetishes, however, are for protection against witches. In many houses, immediately inside the door there hangs a fetish which at night builds a fire around the sleeping inmate, a fire invisible to all others but witches, and through which no witch can pass. Another has the power to change the bamboo cabin into a house of stone, through which witches cannot pass. It retains the appearance of bamboo in every respect, and one can see the light between the pieces, but in reality it is solid stone, with no openings at all, not even for the door. We are reminded of another miracle whereby bread is changed into something which is not bread, the change being non-apparent since it takes place not in the accidents but in the essence of the material. So, the bamboo is transubstantiated into stone.

One is sometimes mentally staggered and feels that he is losing his hold on reality by the stories of Africans recounting their own experiences and what their eyes have seen, stories told soberly and with every evidence of sincerity. A man tells how that while his wife’s body was in her bed he looked out into the street and saw her spirit form, with that of others whom he recognized, armed with knives and cutting up the form of a person and eating it. The victim whose life they have eaten sickens soon afterwards and dies a lingering death.

One day walking along the Batanga beach with a fellow missionary, we passed a large, flat rock almost submerged beneath the rising tide, which recalled to my companion the following story. Some years ago at Batanga there lived a man who had long suspected his wife of witchcraft. One night he had occasion to speak to her, but she did not answer. He tried to rouse her from sleep, but could not. He concluded that she was away on some witch errand leaving her body behind her, as witches do. He himself had some knowledge of witchcraft though he employed this knowledge only in self-defense. He anointed her body with red pepper. Witches abhor red pepper; and they cannot reënter a body thus anointed. Towards morning the woman returned to her body only to find that she was undone; groans and sighs told her distress to the ear of the husband who lay quiet as if asleep. She lingered until the day began to dawn. Now, witches are afraid of light even more than of pepper. She retired and hid herself near the house to await the next night. Meantime, the husband related the whole story to the assembled people, and they accepted it nothing doubting. They resolved to burn the body immediately. They dragged it through the street to the beach in the sight of her own family and her children, amidst execrations and insults, and burned it on the rock while the tide was low, and soon afterwards the rising waves swept the ashes into the sea.

The Africans do not say of a woman that she is a witch, but that she has a witch. She commits witchcraft by means of the witch which she possesses. And since everything has a material body of some kind, the witch can be found within the woman. Often a witch rebels against its possessor and “eats” her. This is the frequent explanation of convulsions, and a convulsion is enough to bring suspicion and a charge of witchcraft against a woman. A sure way to find out the truth of the matter and relieve the strain of suspense is to kill the woman, open the body and make a conscientious and impartial investigation. In this manner, executing the sentence first and afterwards finding a verdict of “guilty” or “not guilty,” the verdict is more likely to be just, while they also avoid a prolonged and scandalous trial, and evince a delicate regard for the woman’s reputation. Any old thing that they may find in the body not consistent with their ideas of anatomical propriety is identified as the witch.

Sometimes a hen is set on eggs and the accused person is pronounced guilty, or not guilty, according as the greater number of chickens hatched are male or female. But this kind of ordeal is more common in deciding cases of adultery. More commonly in the case of witchcraft a certain mild poison is administered to the accused in a drink. Sometimes she vomits it, or it passes without any serious effect. But if she becomes dizzy and staggers, they instantly leap upon her with knives and kill her. There seems to be no such thing in the African opinion as a natural death. All deaths that we call natural are imputed to witchcraft. As soon as the cry of witchcraft is raised, the people, panic stricken with fear, are transformed to ferocious demons. With wild eyes they rush up and down the street in a body crying out for blood. This is the opportunity of the witch-doctor, either to levy blackmail, or to rid himself of his enemies. When a woman is accused by him, no matter in what esteem she may have been held hitherto, and regardless of her family connections, the people turn upon her in cruel rage and can scarce wait for the ordeal. Such scenes, and the violent death following are very common among them; yet the white man rarely witnesses anything of the kind. They are altogether different when he is present.

One of our missionaries has told me how that, in the early days, on Corisco Island, he once saw a condemned woman, one whom he knew, taken out to sea in a boat. A short distance from the shore they cut her throat and flung her into the sea. Meanwhile, behind a rock which hid them from his view, they burned at the stake the condemned woman’s son, a young boy, lest growing up he should avenge his mother’s death. Their motive in inflicting such a horrible death upon an innocent boy was probably to disable his spirit and prevent it from returning to trouble them.