Fetichism in West Africa

by Robert Hamill Nassau

During the time until the burial the women keep bending the joints of the corpse to prevent the body becoming stiff. The day before the burial (but if in haste, on the very day of the death) the coffin is made. During the making the mourning which had been resumed is again bidden to cease, in order that the spirit may be pleased with the wooden house that is being constructed for it. For the same reason the wailing is again intermitted while the grave is being dug. Those who are digging it must not be called off or interrupted in any way. When begun, the job must be continued to completion.

After the grave is completed, when they leave it and go to arrange the coffin, they must put into the excavation some article, e. g., a stick of wood, as a notice to any other wandering spirit not to occupy that grave.

When all these preparations are complete, the corpse is laid in the coffin, and some goods of the deceased, such as pieces of cloth and other clothing, are stuffed into it for his use in the other world. If the deceased was addicted to smoking, a pipe and tobacco are laid in the coffin, or if accustomed to spirituous drink, some liquor is often placed there, either native palm-wine or foreign rum.

Recently, while the Rev. F. S. Myongo, a native clergyman, was visiting on Corisco Island, he saw a mother put into a coffin a bundle of salt for her daughter to eat in the future world.

If the deceased was a rich man, the people of his mother’s side do not allow him to be buried without their first being given a part of his property by the people of the father’s side.

If there be a suspicion that he has been killed by witchcraft, and yet not enough proof to warrant a public charge and investigation, the relatives take amomum seeds (cardamom), chew them, and put them into the mouth of the dead, as a sign that the spirit shall itself execute vengeance on the murderer, and that the survivors will take no further steps. It is a nolle prosequi of a judicial case.

All being ready, the lid of the coffin is nailed down, except in the case of a first-born only child, as has been stated.

In former days, before coffins were used, the bamboo tatta of the bed-frame, the pandanus leaf mat, palm-fibre mosquito-net, and other bedding were all rolled about the corpse as it lay, and were buried with it.

While the corpse is being arranged in the coffin, the women have resumed their wailing. The coffin is lifted by strong men and hurriedly taken to the grave, the locality of which varies in different tribes,—sometimes in the adjacent forest, sometimes in the kitchen-garden of plantains immediately in the rear of the village houses, sometimes under the clay floor of the dwelling-house. With the men who are carrying the coffin may go some women as witnesses.

Formerly also slaves carried boxes of the dead man’s goods, cloth, hardware, crockery, and so forth, to be laid by the body, which in those days was not interred, but was left on the top of the ground covered with branches and leaves.