(1) Thus the stones heaped by passers-by at the base of some great tree or rock, the leaf cast from the passing canoe toward a point of land on the river, though intrinsically valueless, and useless to the ombwiri of the spot, are accepted as acknowledgments of that ombwiri’s presence.
“All day we kept passing trees or rocks on which were placed little heaps of stones or bits of wood; in passing these, each of my men added a new stone or bit of wood, or even a tuft of grass. This is a tribute to the spirits, the general precaution to insure a safe return. These people have a vague sort of Supreme Being called Lesa, who has good and evil passions; but here (Plateau of Lake Tanganyika), as everywhere else, the Musimo, or spirits of the ancestors, are a leading feature in the beliefs. They are propitiated, as elsewhere, by placing little heaps of stones about their favorite haunts. At certain periods of the year the people make pilgrimages to the mountain of Fwambo-Liamba, on the summit of which is a sort of small altar of stones. There they deposit bits of wood, to which are attached scraps of calico, flowers, or beads; this is to propitiate Lesa.
“After harvest, for instance, they make such an offering. So when a girl becomes marriageable, she takes food with her, and goes up to the mountain for several days. When she returns, the other women lead her in procession through the villages, waving long tufts of grass and palms.”[34]
(2) Other gifts are supposed to be actually utilized by the spirit in some essential way. In some part of the long single street of most villages is built a low hut, sometimes not larger than a dog-kennel, in which, among all tribes, are hung charms; or by which is growing a consecrated plant (a lily, a cactus, a euphorbia, or a ficus). In some tribes a rudely carved human (generally female) figure stands in that hut, as an idol. Idols are rare among most of the coast tribes, but are common among all the interior tribes. That they are not now frequently seen on the Coast is, I think, not due to a lack of faith in them, but perhaps to a slight sense of civilized shame. The idol has been the material object most denounced by missionaries in their sermons against heathenism. The half-awakened native hides it, or he manufactures it for sale to curio-hunters. A really valued idol, supposed to contain a spirit, he will not sell. He does not always hide his fetich charm worn on his person; for it passes muster in his explanation of its use as a “medicine.”
That idol, charm, or plant, as the case may be, is believed for the time to be the residence of a spirit which is to be placated by offerings of some kind of food. I have seen in those sacred huts a dish of boiled plantains (often by foreigners miscalled “bananas”) or a plate of fish. This food is generally not removed till it spoils. Sometimes, where the gift is a very large one, a feast is made; people and spirit are supposed to join in the festival, and nothing is left to spoil. That it is of use to the spirit is fully believed; but just how, few have been able to tell me. Some say that the “life” or essence of the food has been eaten by the spirit; only the form of the vegetable or flesh remaining to be removed.
(3) Blood sacrifices are common. In any great emergency a fowl with its blood is laid at that low hut’s door. In time of great danger, an expected pestilence, a threatened assault by enemies, or some severe illness of a great man or woman, a goat or sheep is sacrificed.
At the entrance to a village the way is often barred by a temporary light fence, only a narrow arched gateway of saplings being left open. These saplings are wreathed with leaves or flowers. That fence, frail as it is, is intended as a bar to evil spirits, for from those arched saplings hang fetich charms. When actual war is coming, this street entrance is barricaded by logs, behind which real fight is to be made against human, not spiritual, foes. The light gateway is sometimes further guarded by a sapling pinned to the ground horizontally across the narrow threshold. An entering stranger must be careful to tread over and not on it.
In an expected great evil the gateway is sometimes sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed goat or sheep. The flesh is not wasted; it is eaten by the villagers, and especially by the magic doctor. Does not this look like a memory of a tradition of the Passover and its paschal lamb? And does it not suggest some thought of a blood atonement?
(4) I have not actually seen, or even heard of human sacrifices in the tribes I have personally visited. But on the adjacent Upper Guinea Coast, until ten years ago, there were human sacrifices to the sacred crocodiles of the rivers of the Niger Delta. In the oil rivers of that same coast there was, until recently, an annual sacrifice (as in the ancient Nile days) of a maiden to the river spirits of trade, for success in foreign commerce.
Treaties with foreign civilized nations have now prohibited this sacrifice, but the maiden has not gained much in the change. Instead of one being sacrificed to a brute crocodile to please the spirit of trade, hundreds are prostituted to please brutal, dissolute foreigners.