Fetichism in West Africa

by Robert Hamill Nassau

It is also still true that in the tribes where Njĕmbĕ exists women have much more freedom from control by men than in tribes where it does not exist. But even if it has been thus a defence to women against man’s severity, it undeniably has been an injury to them by its indecent ceremonies and phallic songs. Such things may make men fear them, but also make it impossible for men to respect them.

Those songs I myself have heard when the Njĕmbĕ camp was in a jungle near to a village. The male generative organ was personified, and, in the song addressed to it, the name of a certain man, who was known by the singers to be at that very time in the adjacent village, was tauntingly referred to. Even immoral men were overwhelmed with shame at the shamelessness of the women. And yet those same women, when their Njĕmbĕ adjourned, resumed in their individual capacities their usual apparent modesty which, as a collective body, they had cast aside. Little has been printed of Njĕmbĕ’s secret proceedings more than Dr. Wilson wrote fifty years ago.

Paul Du Chaillu makes a short statement that he was allowed to witness a part; and he describes a hut containing a few almost nude old women sitting around some skulls and other fetiches. Doubtless he saw what he asserts. But, unusual as were his opportunities, and large as was his personal influence with his “Camma” (Nkâmi) native chiefs, it is positive that what was shown him was only a little of Njĕmbĕ, if indeed it was Njĕmbĕ at all.

Other white men, with, indeed, perhaps less tact than he, but of greater money power and larger trade opportunities, failed to see anything.

Some twenty-five years ago two Germans (now dead) trading in the Gabun determined secretly to spy out Njĕmbĕ.

The merchant, the head of the trading-house, was a well-educated gentleman, and his clerk was an active, intelligent young man. Both knew native customs well, and both spoke the Mpongwe language fluently. Each had a native wife, and being generous and liberal-handed, had many native friends; but they had been unable to bribe any Njĕmbĕ women, even their own wives, to reveal anything.

One dark night when the society was in session in a small jungle not far from their trading-house, they went secretly and cautiously through the bushes. They had not approached near enough to the circle of women around the camp-fire to actually recognize any of them (it would have been difficult to recognize their painted faces even by daylight); and they really did not see anything of what was being done. Somehow their approach was discovered, either by information treacherously carried from some one in their retinue of household servants, or by being seen by one of the pickets of the camp, or by the breaking of a branch as they crept through the trees, or, possibly, by their white odor carried on the wind,—odor which to Africans is almost as distinct as is Negro odor to the white race.

Njĕmbĕ raised a frenzied cry, and started to seize them. The two men fled desperately through the thick bushes. The clerk was recognized, and his name was called out, and the other was assumed to be his employer. They escaped to the safety of their house. Njĕmbĕ did not dare assault it, French policemen being within call; but next day word was sent by the society denouncing them both, laying a curse on them, and plainly saying that they should die. If the threat had been that the means of death would be magic, these gentlemen would have laughed; but the women did not hesitate to say that they would poison them in their food. This would be entirely possible, even without collusion among the several men and boys that ranged from steward to cook and waiters as their household servants; though, if need were, some of these servants would sooner be treasonable to the white master than dare to refuse Njĕmbĕ. The case was serious. The older man, as a dispenser of wealth to the entire community, was, even in Njĕmbĕ’s eye, too valuable to be killed; his wife, herself a Njĕmbĕ woman, interceded for him, and the curse was removed from him on the payment of a large fine. But the curse was doubled over the poor clerk. Njĕmbĕ would listen to no appeal, nor accept any bribe for him, as they had actually seen him at their camp.

It is a fact that shortly after this this clerk did fall into a decline, with strange symptoms which no doctor understood nor any medicines seemed to touch. He became weaker and weaker, and his life was despaired of. Njĕmbĕ openly boasted that it was killing him.

I do not know why an appeal was not made to the local French authorities. Perhaps because the merchant did not wish to give more publicity to his escapade; perhaps because it would be difficult to prosecute a society, no individual Njĕmbĕ woman appearing to be responsible.