Fetichism in West Africa

by Robert Hamill Nassau

“When a man dies at home, his body is placed on a rude table, and his friends meet for days round the corpse, drinking, eating, shouting, and singing, until the body begins actually to fall to pieces. Then the body is tied in a fagot of poles and carried on men’s shoulders up and down some open space, followed by doctors and drummers. The doctors demand of the dead man the cause of his death, whether by poison or witchcraft; and if by the latter, who was the witch? Most of the deaths I have known of in Negro-land were from pulmonary diseases, but all were set down to witchcraft. The jerking of the bier to and fro, causing the men bearing it to stumble hither and thither, is taken as the dead man’s answer; thus, as in the case of spirit-rapping at home, the reply is spelled out. The result of this enquiry is implicitly believed in; and, if the case demands it, the witch is drowned.”

Among the Barotse of South Africa[78] “funerals take place at night, and generally immediately after death, while the body is still warm. If the person, when alive, possessed the skin of an animal, they wrap the body in it, and also in a plain mat, and then bury it near the hut. But death inspires them with a mortal terror, and thus the hut of the dead man is nearly always abandoned. Anything that has been used for the burial, such as the wood on which the corpse was carried, is left near the grave. It is the fashion to display great external signs of grief, howls and cries of lamentation and the like. Formerly the graves of chiefs were distinguished by elephant tusks turned toward the east. All cattle belonging to the deceased are killed; and any animal of which he was particularly fond, such as the cow whose milk he drank, is killed first. They bury in the kraal itself those who died in the kraal; but whenever it is possible, the dying are taken out and laid in the fields or forest. There are two reasons for this: first, they think that away from other people is a better chance of the invalid making a recovery; and, secondly, wherever the person dies he must be buried; therefore, if possible, far from their habitations. When a man dies, visits of condolence are paid to the relatives, the visitors bringing a calf or a head of cattle as a mark of sympathy, which is killed and eaten as a kind of consolation. The night after the funeral is passed in tears and cries. A few days later, the doctor comes and makes an incision on the forehead of each of the survivors, and fills it with medicine, in order to ward off contagion and the effect of the sorcery which caused the death. They place on their tombs some souvenir of the profession or vocation of the defunct; for example,—if he had been a hunter, horns or skins; if a chairmaker, a chair; and so on. Over the grave a sacred tree is planted. The tree is a kind of laurel called ‘morata.’... A man will kill himself on the tomb of his chief; he thinks, as he passes near by, that he hears the dead man call him and bid him bring him water. These natives believe in transmigration of the soul into animals; thus, the hippopotamus is believed to shelter the spirit of a chief. Nevertheless, they do not appear very clear that the soul cannot be in two places at once; else, if a chief has become a hippopotamus in the Zambesi, why should one slay one’s self to bring water to his tomb?”

Perhaps Declè was not aware of a widespread belief in a dual soul, consisting of a “spirit,” that, as far as known, lives forever in the world of spirits, and a “shadow” that for an uncertain length of time hovers around the mortal remains. Some, as already mentioned in a previous chapter, also name a third entity, the “life,”—that which, being “eaten” by sorcerers, causes the living being to sicken, and which the sorcerer, if detected, can be compelled to return to its owner. Miss Kingsley thought also she had discovered a belief in a fourth entity, the “dream-soul.” But this, though doubtless believed in as that which sometimes leaves the sleeping body and goes on distant wanderings, is the same as the “spirit,” during whose temporary absence the body continues its breathing and other physical motions, in virtue of the presence of its second and third soul-entities.

The funeral practices of all the tribes, with very few exceptions, over all Africa, however much they may and do vary, contain all of them, as shown by the preceding quotations, a decided belief in, and fear of, the intelligent and probably inimical activity of the spirits of their dead. They include also the custom of the burial with the dead man of more or less of his property, together with the destruction of such things as cannot be conveniently placed in the grave,—clothing, crockery, utensils, wives, slaves, trees of fruitage, etc.

Even among the civilized and enlightened, while of course there would be no excessive destruction of property, nor murder of widow or slave, an extravagant amount of wearing apparel is stuffed into the coffin (which is sometimes made large for that purpose) as a sign of the importance of the dead, and of the sacrifice the love and grief of the living are willing to make.

The residence of the transmigrated spirit is probably not a permanent one. The Wa-nya-mwesi of East Africa “believe in transmigration both during life and after it. Thus, according to them, a sorcerer can transform himself into a wild animal to injure his enemies; but in such cases the change is not permanent, and the soul does not remain in its new habitation.”[79]

Leaving out of view the immense difference, caused by the absence of Christianity, in the moral life of native Africa, as compared with that of the United States, there is no one thing that more painfully strikes me, in the low civilization of the former, than their customs for the dead. It would occupy too much space to recount at length all the reasons the natives give for their sometimes apparently heartless ceremonies. The true explanation lies in their belief in witchcraft and their fear of spirits.

From the testimony of travellers, burial customs are much the same all over Africa. What I have written is my personal knowledge of what prevails on the West Coast, in the equatorial regions, and especially in the portion lying along the course of the Ogowe River,—a river that was first brought to public notice through the writings of Paul Du Chaillu, the journeys of a British trader, Mr. R. B. N. Walker, and subsequently by the thorough explorations of Count P. S. De Brazza.

There are in Africa social distinctions of rich and poor, higher and lower classes, just as there are, and always will be, all the world over, the claims of communism to the contrary notwithstanding. These distinctions follow their subjects to the grave,—just as, in our own civilization, one is laid in the sculptured cemetery and another in the Potter’s Field.

The African burial-grounds are mostly in the forest, in the low-lying lands and tangled thickets along the sea-beach, or the banks of rivers. Hills and elevated building-sites are reserved for villages and plantations. If a traveller, in journeying along the main river of the country, observes long reaches of uncleared thickets, he will probably be correct in suspecting that these are burial-grounds. His native crew will be slow to inform him of the fact or to converse on the subject, unless to object to an order to go ashore there.