Fetichism in West Africa

by Robert Hamill Nassau

They return to the village and enter the doctor’s house. No women or children may enter the house or be present at the ceremonies. The men bring into the house a very big iron pot, and the doctor says, “This is what is to contain all the ingredients of the medicine.” Then the doctor, with two other men, takes that spear by night, leaving all the other men to occupy themselves with songs of war, while the townspeople are asleep; they go to the grave of some man who has recently died. They dig open the grave, and force off the lid of the coffin. The doctor thrusts the spear down into the coffin into the head of the corpse. He twirls the spear about in the skull, so as to get a firm grip on it with the prongs of the spear. He changes his voice, and speaking in a hoarse guttural manner says, “Thou corpse! Do not let any one hear what I say! And do not thou injure me for doing this to you!” When the spear is well thrust into the skull, he stoops into the grave, and with a machete cuts off the head. He goes away carrying the head on the spear-point. While doing all this, he wears not the slightest particle of clothing. They go back to the village to the doctor’s house; and there they catch a cock, and in the presence of the crowd the doctor twists (not cuts) off its head. The blood of the cock is caught in a large fresh leaf. He takes the fowl to the big pot, and lets some of its blood drip into it. The head of the corpse is also put into the pot, with water, and all the other ingredients, including the spear. The bullets of the doctor’s gun are also to go into the pot, which is then set over a fire.

After the water has boiled the doctor takes a furry skin of a bush-cat, and all the hundreds of men stand on one side in a line. He dips the skin into the pot, and shakes it over them. As he thus sprinkles them, he lays on them a prohibition, thus: “All ye! this month, go ye not near your wives!” All that month is spent by them practising war songs and dances.

Then the doctor takes the blood that was collected on the leaf, and mixes it with powdered red-wood. This mixture is tied up with the human head in a flying-squirrel’s skin. He hangs this bundle up in the house over the place where he sits. The body of the fowl next day is torn in pieces, not cut with a knife, and placed in a small earthen pot with njabi oil (the oil of a large pulpy forest fruit), and ngândâ (gourd) seeds. An entire fresh plantain bunch is cut, and successive squads of the men peel each man his small piece with his finger-nails. These also they shred with their nails, part into the pot, and part on a plantain leaf, as the pot is small, and all the pieces will be added as the contents of the pot are gradually reduced. The doctor himself lifts the pot from the fire, and first eats of the mess, and then gives each of the men, with his hand, a small share.

When all have finished eating, he opens the bundle that had been tied in the squirrel skin, and with the fibrous inner bark of a tree, kimbwa-mbenje (from which formerly was made the native bark-cloth), sponges the red rotten stuff on their breasts, saying, “Let no bullet come here!” Then, led by the doctor, they march in procession to the town. There he tells the people of the town to try to shoot him, explaining that he does not wish any one to be in doubt of the efficacy of the charm. As he leads the procession, he holds the bundle in his hand, shouting, “Budu! hah! hah! Budu! hah! hah!” The “hah” is uttered with a bold aspiration. This is to embolden his followers. (“Budu! hah!” does not mean anything; it is only a yell.) The people are terrified, though he is still shouting to them to fire at him. He is safe; for he leads the procession to where is stationed a confederate, who does fire at him point blank from a gun from which the bullets have been removed. It is a triumph for him! The crowd see that not only he does not fall dead, but he is not even wounded! The charm has turned aside the bullets!

The townspeople are then invited to join the procession. They stand up with the doctor and his crowd, and dance the war-dance. When the dancing is ended, he takes the bundle and anoints all the townspeople, even the women and children. And the men go to their war, sure of victory. But the doctor himself does not go; he remains safely behind, saying that it is necessary for him to watch the bundle in his house. Defeat in the war is easily explained by saying that some one in the crowd had spoiled the charm by not obeying some item in the ritual.

For Trading. One method is described to me by a Batanga native who had seen it used by a certain man of his tribe. This man obtained the head of a dead person who had been noted for his intelligence. This he kept hidden in his house, lying in a white basin. To assure himself that it should be seen by no one else, he built a small hut in the behu (kitchen-garden), detached from his dwelling, and into which none but himself and wife should enter. There he kept the head in its basin. When he had occasion to go to a white man’s trading-house to ask for goods or any other favor, he first poured water into this basin, mixed it with the decomposed brain that had oozed from the skull, and washed his cheeks in this dirty water. He also took some brain-matter, mixed it with palm-oil, and rubbed it over his hands. Then, on his going to the trading-house, when the white man shakes hands with him and looks on his face, he will be pleased and generously disposed, and will grant any request made.

My informant told me that when he was a lad he assisted his father in using another method. His father was intimate with white men, trading extensively with them in ivory. To increase his credit, he set out to make a new fetich. He called the son to accompany him to the forest, and handed him a basket to carry. They searched among the trees until they found two growing near together, but bent in such a way toward each other that their trunks crossed in contact, and were rubbed smooth by abrasion; and when violently rubbing, in a storm, gave out a creaking sound. In that mysterious sound inhered the fetich power. He chose the trees, not for any value in their kind, but because of their singular juxtaposition and their weird sounds. He gathered bark from these trees, and the son carried the basketful back to their village. The father fixed the time of arrival and point of entrance so that they should not be seen as they came to their house. He then went out to the behu (kitchen-garden) and plucked four ripe plantains (mehole); and gathered leaves of a certain tree, by name “boka.” An earthen pot containing water and pieces of the twin-tree bark was set over the fire, and into the pot were finely sliced the mehole and the boka leaves. To these were added a certain kind of fish, by name “hume,” a bottle of palm-oil, gourd seeds, and ground-nuts. All these were thoroughly boiled together. When they were sufficiently boiled, he lifted off the pot from the fire, not by his hands, but by clasping its hot sides with his feet, as he sat on a low stool, and placed it on the ground. Sitting by it, he held his face over it, with a cloth thrown over his head, thus inhaling the steam. He remained in this steam bath for about an hour.

At food time he cut two pieces of leaves from plantains, spread them on the ground and sat on them, and ate the mess that was in the pot. While eating, he uttered into the pot adjurations, e. g., “Let no one, not even a Mabeya tribesman, hinder me from the white man’s good-will! When I go some day to make my request to the white man, let him grant it!” When he had finished eating, he told his son to carry the pot into an inner room and deposit it in a large box, which the father opened for that purpose. The pot was not washed; it still contained the remains of the pottage. He told his son to reveal to no one what they had done.

That very day he heard that his trade friend in the adjacent inferior Mabeya tribe had obtained an ivory tusk for him. He at once started out alone to meet his friend on the way, so as to be sure that it would not be carried to some one else; but not as on other ordinary journeys. He was to look neither to the right nor to the left (as if watchful of possibly ambushed enemies), nor to look back, even if called by name; but with eye straightforward, to walk steadily to the goal. Before starting, he had rubbed some of the pottage mess on his hand and tongue. On reaching the Mabeya village, his friend did not hesitate or haggle about the price, but promptly told him to take the tusk. Before selling it to the white trader, he scraped some ivory flakes from the outside of the tusk, put them into a decanter with two bottles of rum (before foreign liquor was known, native plantain beer was used) and pieces of the twin-tree bark. When subsequently he had occasion to go to the trading-house, he first drank a little from this decanter.

Another Bwanga-bwa-Ibâmâ, or trade medicine, is concocted as follows: A man who decides to make one for himself does not allow any one but his wife to know what he is about to do. He gathers from the forest leaves of a tree, by name “kota,” the skin of a flying-squirrel (ngunye), from some dead person the nail from the fourth or little finger (of either hand), and the tip of the tongue, some drops of his wife’s menses, a solution of red-wood powder, and the long tail-feathers of a forest bird, by name “kilinga.” He then provides himself with an antelope’s horn. Having burned the squirrel skin, he puts its ashes into the horn, mixed with the above-named articles, including the feather, whose end is allowed to stick out. Then, with the gum of the okume, or African mahogany tree, he closes the mouth of the horn, as with a cork, to prevent the liquid contents from escaping. This horn he suspends by a string from his neck or shoulder whenever he takes it with him on a journey. He uses it in his trade dealings with both whites and blacks. Before beginning a bargain or asking a white trader or another person for gifts of goods, he secretly pulls out the feather through the soft gum, and rubs a little of the liquid on the end of his nose. When this fetich is not in use, it is hidden in his bedroom or other private part of his house. But no one, not even his own family, is allowed to know where it is kept.