Fetichism in West Africa Part 9

I have a strong suspicion that where the orunda laid on a woman is a matter of meat, superst.i.tion has played into the hands of masculine selfishness, and denies to women the choice meat in order that men may have the greater share. My suspicion rests on almost positive evidence in the case of some prohibitions to the women of the Bulu and other Fang tribes of the interior.

On a boat journey in the Ogowe River, about 1878, I camped on the edge of a forest for the noon meal. My crew of four, members of the Galwa and Nkami tribes, had no meat. They needed it, for they had rowed hard and well. For myself, I had only a small chicken. I was satisfied with a portion of it, and gave the rest to the crew. It would make at least a tasty morsel for each, with their manioc bread. Three of them thanked me; the fourth did not touch his share. I felt slightly vexed, thinking my favor was not appreciated, and I asked the cause of his apparent sullenness. He said he did not dare to eat of the fowl, as it was orunda to him.

On another journey, in 1876, a young man whom I had picked up as extra hand in my boat's crew, when at the noon mealtime we stopped under the shade of a spreading tree by the river's bank, instead of respectfully leaving me alone with my lunch in the boat, and going ash.o.r.e where the others were eating, wanted to remain in the boat, his orunda being that when on a journey by water his food should be eaten only over water.

Two Ogowe chiefs, near whose villages was anch.o.r.ed the small river steamer "Pioneer," on which I was pa.s.senger, in 1875, came aboard, and in drinking a gla.s.s of liquor with the captain, one of them held up a piece of white cloth before his mouth, in order that strangers' eyes might not see him swallow. That was his orunda, probably. Perhaps also the hiding of his drinking may have had reference to the common fear of another's "evil eye."

The other, having taken a mouthful, wet his finger in his mouth, drew the wet finger across his throat, and then blew on a fetich which he wore as a ring on a finger of the other hand. I do not know the significance of his motion across his throat. The blowing was the Ibata-blessing,--an ejaculatory prayer for a blessing on his plans, probably of trade.

This word "orunda," meaning thus originally _prohibited from_ human use (like the South Sea "taboo"), grew, under missionary hands, into its related meaning of _sacred_ to spiritual use. It is the word by which the Mpongwe Scriptures translate our word "holy." I think it an unfortunate choice; for the missionary has to stop and explain that orunda, as used for G.o.d, does not mean the orunda used by mankind. In the translation of the Benga Scriptures the word "holy" was transferred bodily, and we explain that it means something better than good. To such straits are translators sometimes reduced in the use of heathen languages!

(3) The charms that are most common are material, the fetich,--so common, indeed, that by the universality of their use, and the prominence given to them everywhere, in houses and on the person, they almost monopolize the religious thought of the Bantu Negro, subordinating other acknowledged points of his theology, dominating his almost entire religious interest, and giving the departmental word "fetich" such overwhelming regard that it has furnished the name distinctive of the native African religious system, _viz._, fetichism. "Fetich" is an English word of Portuguese origin. "It is derived from feitico, 'made,' 'artificial' (compare the old English fetys, used by Chaucer); and this term, used of the charms and amulets worn in the Roman Catholic religion of the period, was applied, by the Portuguese sailors of the eighteenth century, to the deities they saw wors.h.i.+pped by the Negroes of the West Coast of Africa.

"De Brosses, a French savant of the last century, brought the word 'fetichism' into use as a term for the type of religion of the lowest races. The word has given rise to some confusion, having been applied, by Comte and other writers, to the wors.h.i.+p of the heavenly bodies and of the great features of Nature. It is best to limit it to the wors.h.i.+p of such natural objects as are reverenced, not for their own power or excellence, but because they are supposed to be occupied each by a spirit."[29]

The native word on the Liberian coast is "gree-gree"; in the Niger Delta, "ju-ju"; in the Gabun country, "monda"; among the cannibal Fang, "bian"; and in other tribes the same respective dialectic by which we translate "medicine." To a sick native's thought the adjuvant medicinal herb used by the doctor, and its a.s.sociated efficiency-giving spirit invoked by that same doctor, are inseparable. In the heathen Negro's soul the fetich takes the place, and has the regard, which an idol has with the Hindu and the Chinese.

"A fetich, strictly speaking, is little else than a charm or amulet, worn about the person, and set up at some convenient place, for the purpose of guarding against some apprehended evil or securing some coveted good." In the Anglo-African parlance of the Coast fetiches are called by various names, but all signify the same thing. Fetiches may be made of anything of vegetable, animal, or metallic nature, "and need only to pa.s.s through the consecrating hands of a native priest to receive all the supernatural powers which they are supposed to possess. It is not always certain that they possess extraordinary powers. They must be tried and give proof of their efficiency before they can be implicitly trusted."[30]

A fetich, then, is any material object consecrated by the "oganga," or magic doctor, with a variety of ceremonies and processes, by virtue of which some spirit becomes localized in that object, and subject to the will of the possessor.

Anything that can be conveniently carried on the person may thus be consecrated,--a stone, chip, rag, string, or bead. Articles most frequently used are snail-sh.e.l.ls, nut-sh.e.l.ls, and small horns of gazelles or goats. These are used probably because of their convenient cavities; for they are to be filled by the oganga with a variety of substances depending, in their selection, on the special work to be accomplished by the fetich. Its value, however, depends not on itself, nor solely on the character of these substances, but on the skill of the oganga in dealing with spirits.

There is a relation between these selected substances and the object to be obtained by the fetich which is to be prepared of them,--for example, to give the possessor bravery or strength, some part of a leopard or an elephant; to give cunning, some part of a gazelle; to give wisdom, some part of a human brain; to give courage, some part of a heart; to give influence, some part of an eye; and so on for a mult.i.tude of qualities.

These substances are supposed to lure some spirit (being in some way pleasing to it), which thenceforward is satisfied to reside in them and to aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some one specific wish.

In preparing a fetich the oganga selects substances such as he deems appropriate to the end in view,--the ashes of certain medicinal plants, pieces of calcined bones, gums, spices, resins, and even filth, portions of organs of the bodies of animals, and especially of human beings (preferably eyes, brain, heart, and gall-bladder), particularly of ancestors, or men strong or renowned in any way, and very especially of enemies and of white men. Human eyeb.a.l.l.s (particularly of a white person) are a great prize. New-made graves have been rifled for them.

These are compounded in secret, with the accompaniment of drums, dancing, invocations, looking into mirrors or limpid water to see faces (human or spiritual, as may be desired), and are stuffed into the hollow of the sh.e.l.l or bone, or smeared over the stick or stone.

If it be desired to obtain power over some one else, the oganga must be given by the applicant, to be mixed in the sacred compound, either crumbs from the food, or clippings of finger nails or hair, or (most powerful!) even a drop of blood of the person over whom influence is sought. These represent the life or body of that person. So fearful are natives of power being thus obtained over them, that they have their hair cut only by a friend; and even then they carefully burn it or cast it into a river. If one accidentally cuts himself, he stamps out what blood has dropped on the ground, or cuts out from wood the part saturated with blood.

Sitting one day by a village boat-landing in the Benita region, about 1866, while my crew prepared for our journey, I was idly plucking at my beard, and carelessly flung away a few hairs. Presently I observed that some children gathered them up. Asking my Christian a.s.sistant what that meant, he told me: "They will have a fetich made with those hairs; when next you visit this village, they will ask you for some favor, and you will grant it, by the power they will thus have obtained over you."

The water with which a lover's body (male or female) is washed, is used in making a philter to be mingled secretly in the drink of the loved one.

While, as I have already stated, it is true that anything portable may be used either as the receptacle in which the spirit is to be located or as the substance or "medicine" to be inserted in it, I wish to insist that in the philosophy of fetich there is always a reason in the selection of all these articles,--a reason which it is often difficult for a foreigner to discover,--an apparent fitness for the end in view.

Arnot[31] refers to this: "Africans believe largely in preventive measures, and their fetich charms are chiefly of that order. In pa.s.sing through a country where leopards and lions abound, they carefully provide themselves with the claws, teeth, lips, and whiskers of those animals, and hang them around their necks, to secure themselves against being attacked.

For the same purpose the point of an elephant trunk is generally worn by elephant hunters. The bones from the legs of tortoises are much valued as anklets, in order to give the wearers endurance, reminding one of the fable of the tortoise. The lower jaw-bone of the tortoise is worn by certain tribes as a preventive against toothache. The spine bones of serpents are strung together with a girdle as a cure for back-ache."

A recent visitor to the Gabun country, in the "Journal of the African Society," makes this criticism: "When a white man or woman wears some trinket strung about them, they call it an amulet or charm. They ascribe to it some virtue, and regard it as a sacred (?) thing; but when an African native wears one, white men call it 'fetich,' and the wearer a savage or heathen." This defence of the Negro is gratifying, but the criticism of the white man is not quite just. There is this radical difference: to the African the "fetich" is his all, his entire hope for his physical salvation; he does not reckon on G.o.d at all. The civilized man or woman with a "mascot" is very foolish in his or her belief in luck, but their mascots never entirely take G.o.d's place.

I met at Gabun about 1895 the same criticism from the mouth of a partly educated Sierra Leone Negro, who, though a professing Christian, evidently was wearing Christianity hypocritically. His well-educated Mpongwe wife was a member of my church. It was discovered that she had a certain fetich suspended in her bedroom. It was necessary to summon her before the church session; she explained that it was not hers, but her husband's, and disclaimed belief in it. She was rebuked for allowing it in her room. The husband, hearing of the rebuke, wrote me an angry letter justifying his fetich. He said in substance:

"You white people don't know anything about black man's 'fas.h.i.+ons.' You say you trust G.o.d for everything, but in your own country you put up an iron rod over your houses to protect yourselves from death by lightning; and you trust in it the while that you still believe in G.o.d; and you call it 'electricity' and civilization. And you say it's all right. I call this thing of mine--this charm--'medicine'; and I hung it over my wife's bed to keep away death by the arts of those who hate her; and I trust in it while still believing in G.o.d. And you think me a heathen!" It was explained to him that in the use of the lightning-rod white men reverently recognized G.o.d in His own natural forces, but that his fetich dishonored G.o.d, ignored Him, and was a distinct recognition of a supposed power that was claimed to be able to act independently of G.o.d; that I trusted to the lightning-rod under G.o.d, while he trusted to his fetich outside of G.o.d.

For every human pa.s.sion or desire of every part of our nature, for our thousand necessities or wishes, a fetich can be made, its operation being directed to the attainment of one specified wish, and limited in power only by the possible existence of some more powerful antagonizing spirit.

This, hung on the plantation fence or from the branches of plants in the garden, is either to prevent theft or to sicken the thief; hung over the doorway of the house, to bar the entrance of evil; hung from the bow of the canoe, to insure a successful voyage; worn on the arm in hunting, to a.s.sure an accurate aim; worn on any part of one's person, to give success in loving, hating, planting, fis.h.i.+ng, buying, and so forth, through the whole range of daily work and interests.

Some kinds, worn on a bracelet or necklace, are to ward off sickness. The new-born infant has a health-knot tied about its neck, wrist, or loins.

Down to the day of oldest age, every one keeps on multiplying or renewing or altering these life talismans.

If of the charge at Balaklava it was said, "This is magnificent, but it is not war," I may say of these heathen, "Such faith is magnificent, though it be folly." The hunter going out, certain of success, returns empty-handed; the warrior bearing on his breast a fetich panoply, which he is confident will turn aside a bullet, comes back wounded; every one is some day foiled in his cherished plan. Do they lose their faith? No, not in the system,--their fetichism; but in the special material object of their faith--their fetich--they do. Going to the oganga whom they had paid for concocting that now disappointing amulet, they tell him of its failure. He readily replies: "Yes, I know. You have an enemy who possesses a fetich containing a spirit more powerful than yours, which made your bullet miss its mark, which caused your opponent's spear to wound you.

Yours is no longer of use; it's dead. Come, pay me, and I will make you a charm containing a spirit still more powerful."

The old fetich hitherto jealously guarded, and which would not have been sold for any consideration, is now thrown away or sold to the foreign curio-hunter.

A native heathen Akele chief, Kasa, my friend and host in the Ogowe, in 1874, showed me a string of sh.e.l.ls, bones, horns, wild-cat tails, and so forth, each with its magic compound, which he said could turn aside bullets. In a friendly way he dared me to fire at him with my sixteen-repeater Winchester rifle. I did not believe he meant it; but, on his taking his stand a few paces distant, he did not quail under my steady aim, nor even at the click of the trigger. I, of course, desisted, apparently worsted. Two years later, Kasa was charged by an elephant he had wounded, and was pierced by its tusks. His attendants drove off the beast; the fearfully lacerated man survived long enough to accuse twelve of his women and other slaves of having bewitched his gun, and thus causing it only to wound instead of killing the elephant. On that charge four of the accused were put to death.

Both men and women may become aganga on voluntary choice, and after a course of instruction by an oganga.

"There is generally a special person in a tribe who knows these things, and is able to work them. He has more power over spirits than other men have, and is able to make them do what he likes. He can heal sickness, he can foretell the future, he can change a thing into something else, or a man into a lower animal, or a tree, or anything; he can also a.s.sume such transformations himself at will. He uses means to bring about such results; he knows about herbs, he has also recourse to rubbing, to making images of affected parts of the body, and to various other arts. Very frequently he is regarded as inspired. It is the spirit dwelling in him which brings about the wonderful results; without the spirit he could not do anything."[32]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FETICH DOCTOR. (The triangular patch of hair is the professional tonsure.)]

Though these magicians possess power, its joy has its limitations; for, becoming possessed by a familiar spirit, through whose aid they make their invocations and incantations and under whose influence they fall into cataleptic trances or are thrilled with Delphic rages, if they should happen to offend that "familiar," it may destroy them by "eating" out their life, as their phrase is. On Corisco Island, in 1863, a certain man had acquired prominence as a magic doctor; he finally died of consumption.

His friends began a witchcraft investigation to find out who had "killed"

him. A post-mortem being made, cavities were found in the lungs. Ignorant of disease, they thereupon dropped the investigation, saying that his own "witch" had "eaten" him.

Captain Guy Burrows, a British officer, formerly in the service of the Kongo Free-State, left it unwilling to be a partic.i.p.ant in the fearful atrocities allowed by the King of Belgium; and he has recently made a scathing exposure of the doings of Belgian agents that have made the Kongo a slave-ground of worse horrors than existed in the old days of the export slave-trade. He thus jocularly describes what he saw of fetich at the town of Matadi on the Kongo, where there is an English Baptist Mission: "Outside the small area, under the direct influence of the mission, there is but one deity,--the fetich. The heathen in his blindness, in bowing down to wood and stone, bows, as Kipling says, to 'wood for choice.' He carves a more or less grotesque face; and the rest is a matter of taste. I came across one figure whose princ.i.p.al ornament consisted of a profusion of ten-penny nails and a large cowrie sh.e.l.l.[33] But anything will do; an old tin teapot is another favorite fetich decoration. I have generally found that the uglier they are, the more they seem to be feared and reverenced.

"The fetich is sometimes inclined to be a nuisance. On one occasion I wanted to build an out-house at the far end of a plantation, where tools and other implements might be stored. I was told by the chief, however, that this was fetich ground, and that terrible misfortunes would follow any attempt to build on it. I tried to get some closer idea of the fetich, but could get no more material information than a recital of vague terrors of the kind that frighten children at night. So I began building my out-house, during the course of which operation some monkeys came and sat in the trees, highly interested in the proceedings. In some indefinite way I gathered that the fetich power was regarded as being invested in these monkeys, or that they were the embodiment of the fetich idea, or anything else you please. But I could not have my work interfered with by the ghosts of a lot of chattering apes, and the fears of those big children the natives; so I witch-doctored the monkeys after an improved recipe of my own,--I shot the lot. Thereafter the spell was supposed to be lifted, and no farther objections were raised; but the empty cartridge cases were seized upon by the men as charms against any further manifestations in the same place. I am glad to say none occurred; the spell I had used was too potent!"

Captain Burrows was probably an efficient administrator. But, like many foreigners, he evidently chose to ride, rough shod, over natives'

prejudices, regarding them as idle superst.i.tions, and unable or unwilling to investigate their philosophy. I see, however, from his story, that he had gotten hold of a part of the truth. That ground on which he desired to build was probably an old graveyard. The native chief very naturally did not wish it to be disturbed. Monkeys that gather on the trees in the vicinity of a graveyard are supposed to be possessed by the spirits of those buried there. An ordinary individual would have been forcibly prevented had he attempted what Captain Burrows did. He had a foreign government at his back, and the natives submitted. Their dead and their monkeys, sacred _pro tempore_, had succ.u.mbed to the superior power of the white man's cartridges. Their only satisfaction was to retain the empty sh.e.l.ls as souvenirs.

CHAPTER VII

THE FETICH--A WORs.h.i.+P

Wors.h.i.+p is an eminent part of every form of religion, but it is not essential to it. True, most religions have some form of wors.h.i.+p. But a belief would still be a religion, even if it were so insignificant or so degraded or so indifferent as not to care to express itself in rites or ceremonies.

Fetichism, whose claim to a right to be reckoned as a religion some have been disposed to dispute, expresses itself by most of the visible and audible means used in the cults of other forms of religion.

The motives also that prompt to the performance of religious rites are not to enter into the question whether the beliefs a.s.sociated with them are worthy to be dignified by the name "religion." Motives may vary widely, _e. g._, love in an evangelical Christian, pride in a Pharisee, sensual l.u.s.t in a follower of Islam and in a Mormon, and fear in the fetich wors.h.i.+pper. Those motives, mixed perhaps with other considerations, are the dominant factor in the government of the religious life of each.

We have already seen in the previous chapter that the religious thought of the believer in fetichism does not concern his soul or its future. The evils he would escape are not moral or spiritual. The sense of a great need that makes him look for help outside of himself is not based on a desire to obey G.o.d's will, but on his and some spirit's co-relation to the great needs of this mortal life.

The salvation sought being a purely physical one, the thoughts that direct the use of means to that end are limited to physical needs, and largely to physical agencies. But not entirely: for one of these agencies, as already mentioned in the previous chapter, is prayer; other agencies are sacrificial offerings, and the use of amulet charms, or talismans, known as fetiches.