Manitou Work Platforms 150 AET 171 AET Repair Manual 547310EN 11.

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Manitou Work Platforms 150 AET 171

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Sometimes the corpse is cast out on the surface of the ground, and
perhaps a pile of stones or brushwood gathered over it. Sometimes
it lies uncovered. Sometimes they are cast into the river.
Many years ago, I was ascending the Ogowe River in my boat,
painfully toiling against the current. I had unwisely refused the wish
of my crew to stop for our mid-day meal at a desirable ulako
(camping-ground), as the hour was too early; and I determined to
go on, and stop at some other place. But I regretted presently; for,
instead of finding forest and high camping-ground, we came to a
long stretch of papyrus swamp; and, after that, to low jungle. We
pulled on for another mile, the sun growing hotter, along the
unsheltered bank, and we growing faint with hunger as the hour
verged to noon. Becoming desperate, I directed the crew to stop at
the very first spot that was solid enough for foothold, intending to
eat our dry rice without fire. Presently we came to a clump of oil-
palms. Their existence showed solid ground, and I seized the rudder
and ran the boat ashore. The crew objected, hungry though they
were, that “it was not a good place”; but they did not mention why.
I jumped ashore, however, and ordered them to follow, and gather
sticks for fire. As they were rather slow in so doing, and I overheard
murmuring that “firewood is not gotten from palm trees” (which is
true), I set them an example by starting off on a search myself.
I had not gone far before I found a pile of brushwood, and, rejoicing
at my success, I called out to the crew to come and carry it. While
they were coming, I stooped down and laid hold of an eligible stick.
But an odor startled me; and the other sticks that I had dislocated
falling apart, there was revealed a human foot and shin, which, from
the ornaments still remaining about the ankle, I suppose was a
woman’s. My attendants fled; and I re-embarked in the boat,
sufficiently unconscious of hunger to await a late meal that was not
cooked until we reached a comfortable village a short distance
beyond. My crew then explained their slowness to obey me at that
clump of palm trees, by saying that they knew it looked like a
burying-place.
A less respectful mode of burial (if, indeed, the term be not a
misnomer) is applied to the poor, to the friendless aged who have
wearied out the patience of relatives by a long sickness, and to
those whose bodies are offensive by a leprous or otherwise ulcerous
condition. Immediately that life seems extinct (and sometimes even
before) the wasted frame is tied up in the mat on which it is lying,
and, slung from a pole on the shoulders of two men, is flung out on
the surface of the ground in the forest, to become the prey of wild
beasts and the scavenger “driver” (Termes bellicosa) ants.
Of one tribe in the upper course of the Ogowe, I was told, who, in
their intense fear of ghosts, and their dread of the possible evil
influence of the spirits of their own dead relatives, sometimes adopt
a horrible plan for preventing their return. With a very material idea
of a spirit, they seek to disable it by beating the corpse until every
bone is broken. The mangled mass is hung in a bag at the foot of a
tree in the forest. Thus mutilated, the spirit is supposed to be unable
to return to the village, to entice into its fellowship of death any of
the survivors.
Some dead bodies are burned, particularly those of criminals.
Persons convicted on a charge of witchcraft are “criminals,” and are
almost invariably killed. Sometimes they are beheaded. I have often
had in my possession the curved knives with which this operation is
performed.
Sometimes torture is used: a common mode is to roast the
condemned over a slow fire, which is made under a stout bed-frame
built for the purpose. In such a case almost the entire body is
reduced to ashes. When I was clearing a piece of ground at
Belambila in the Ogowe in 1875, for the house which I afterward
occupied, my workmen came on a pile of ashes, charcoal, and
charred bones, where, they assured me, a criminal had been put to
death.
A barely mentionable method of disposal of the bodies of the dead is
to eat them. That is possible only in a cannibal country. That it was
actual was known among the Gabun Fang fifty years ago, and
among my Ogowe Fang twenty-five years ago. None ate of their own
dead; adjacent towns exchanged corpses. Women were not allowed
to partake. The practice was confined to the old men. One such was
pointed out to me at Talaguga in 1882. He robbed graves for that
purpose.
Among the coast tribes of the Gabun region of West Africa cremation
is not known, nor are corpses thrown out on the ground. Under the
influence of foreign example, the dead are coffined, more or less
elaborately, according to the ability of the family; and the interment
is made in graves of proper depth. In some of these tribes a locality
of low, dark, tangled forest, not suitable as site for a village or for a
plantation, is used as a public cemetery.
Among the tribes of Batanga in the German Kamerun territory,
though the people are civilized, the old unsanitary custom of burying
in the kitchen-gardens immediately in the rear of the village, and
sometimes actually in the clay floor of the dwelling itself, is still kept
up, even by the more enlightened natives. The Christians are not in
numbers sufficiently large in any family to control all the burial
ceremonies of its dead members. The strange spectacle is therefore
presented of a mixture of Christian ritual and fetich custom. In my
own experience at funerals of some children of church-members at
Batanga, the singing of hymns of faith and hope by the Christian
relatives alternated with the howling of half-naked heathen death-
dancers in an adjoining house. And when I had read the burial
service to the point of beginning the march of the procession to the
grave, perhaps only a few rods distant, the heathen remained
behind; and while I was reading the “dust to dust” at the grave-side,
they would be building a quick fire of chips and dried leaves on the
exact spot where the coffin had last stood in the village street. The
ashes they would gather and incorporate into their family fetiches, to
insure fertility to the mother and other near female relatives of the
dead child.
Also, in the Gabun region, there is the remains of a custom,
practised especially by the Orungu tribe of Cape Lopez, of a
pretended quarrel between two parties of mourners on a question
whether or not the burial shall actually be made, even though there
is no doubt that it will be, and the coffin is ready to be carried. This
contest concluded, a second quarrel is raised on a question as to
which of two sets of relatives, the maternal or the paternal, shall
have the right to carry it. Very recently this actually occurred at the
town of Libreville, and on the premises of the American Presbyterian
Mission, the fight being shamefully waged by young men who
formerly had been professing Christians. They had been given
permission to bury a young man in our Protestant cemetery. The
missionary in charge of the station heard a great hubbub on the
path entering the mission grounds, as if a fight was in progress.
Going to investigate, he found an angry contest was being carried
on, under the old heathen idea that the spirit of the dead must see
and be pleased by a demonstration of a professed desire to keep
him with the living, and not to allow him to be put away from them.
The contest of words had almost come to blows, and the victors had
set up a disgraceful shout as they seized the coffin to bring it to the
grave.
Another custom remains in Gabun,—a pleasant one; it may once
have had fetich significance, but it has lost it now, so that Christians
may properly retain it. Just before the close of the kwedi, friends
(other than relatives) of the mourners will bring some gift, even a
small one, make a few remarks appropriate to it and to the
circumstances of the receiver, and give it to his or her mourning
friend. It is called the “ceremony of lifting up,” i. e., out of the literal
ashes, and from the supposed depths of grief. For instance, if the
gift be a piece of soap, the speech of donation will be, “Sit no longer
in the dust with begrimed face! Rise, and use the soap for your
body!” Or if it be a piece of cloth, “Be no longer naked! Rise, and
clothe yourself with your usual dress!” Or if it be food, “Fast no
longer in your grief! Rise, and strengthen your body with food!”
 A Civilized Family.—Gabun.

As to the status of the departed in the spirit-world, though all those

African tribes from old heathen days knew of the name of God, of
His existence, and of some of His attributes, they did not know of
the true way of escape from the evils of this present life, of any
system of reward and punishment in the future life, nor of any of the
conditions of that life. That they had a belief in a future world is
evidenced by survivors taking to the graves of their dead, as has
been described in the preceding pages, boxes of goods, native
materials, foreign cloth, food, and (formerly) even wives and
servants, for use in that other life to which they had gone. Whatever
may have been supposed about the locality or occupations of that
life, the dead were confidently believed to have carried with them all
their human passions and feelings, and especially their resentments.
Fear of those possible resentments dominated the living in all their
attempts at spiritual communication with the dead.
As to the locality of the latter, it was not believed that all of them
always remained in that unknown other world. They could wander
invisibly and intangibly. More than that, they could return bodily and
resume this earthly life in other forms; for belief in metempsychosis
is a common one among all these tribes. The dead, some of them,
return to be born again, either into their own family or into any
other family, or even into a beast.
Who thus return, or why they return, is entirely uncertain. Certainly
not all are thus born again. Those who in this present life had been
great or good or prominent or rich remain in the spirit-world, and
constitute the special class of spirits called “awiri” (singular,
“ombwiri”).
But these awiri are at liberty to revisit the earth if they choose,
taking a local habitation in some prominent natural object, or coming
on call to aid in ceremonies for curing the sick. Other spirits, as
explained in a previous chapter, are sinkinda, the souls of the
common dead; and ilâgâ, unknown spirits of other nations, or beings
who have become “angels,” all of these living in “Njambi’s Town.”
As to Father Njambi Himself, the creator and overseer of all, both
living and dead, every kind of spirit—ombwiri, nkinda, olâgâ, and all
sorts of abambo—is under His control, but He does not often
exercise it.
 CHAPTER XV

FETICHISM—SOME OF ITS PRACTICAL EFFECTS

Depopulation.

O NE of the effects of witchcraft beliefs in Africa is the

depopulation of that continent. Over enormous areas of the
country the death rate has exceeded the birth rate. Much of Africa is
desert—the Sahara of the north, and the Kalahari of the south—with
estimated populations of only one to the square mile. Another large
area is a wilderness covered by the great sub-equatorial forest,—a
belt about three hundred miles wide and one thousand miles long,
with an estimated population of only eighteen to the square mile
(among whom are the Pygmy tribes); and these not scattered
uniformly, but gathered chiefly on the banks of the watercourses,
the only highways (except narrow footpaths) through that dismal
forest.
The entire population of Africa, including all nationalities,—Copts of
Egypt, Moors and Berbers of the north, Arabs of the east,
Abyssinians, Pygmies, and Cannibals of the centre, Negroes, both
Bantu and Negroid, of the west, south, centre, and east,—probably
do not number two hundred million. Of these, the Negroes probably
do not amount to one hundred million. German authorities variously
estimate the population of their Kamerun country at from two to five
million, and they have been vigorously reducing it by their savage
punitive expeditions in the interior. The French authorities of the
Kongo-Français estimate theirs at from five to ten million.
The population of the great Kongo River was much overestimated
after the opening of that river by Stanley. Its people were massed on
the river banks, and gave an impression of density which subsequent
interior travel has not verified. To walk slowly in an hour over a mile
of road that constitutes the one street of a town; to count the huts,
and allot such or such a number to each, would give a sufficiently
accurate census of one thousand or perhaps two thousand to that
town. But that place is the centre of travel or traffic of that region. A
half-day’s journey on any radius from that town through the
surrounding forest would confront the traveller with scarcely any
other evidences of human habitation. Towns of the thousands are
not the usual sight; rather the villages of one hundred, and the
hamlets of twenty, excepting in the Sudan, in the Yoruba and other
countries of the Niger, and in the large capitals of Dahomey and
other Guinea kingdoms. There walled cities of from fifty to one
hundred thousand inhabitants are known.
These congested districts help to lift the average that would be
made low by the paucity in the wilderness and desert portions.
Probably the population of the entire continent was much greater
two hundred years ago. Depopulation was hastened by the export
slave-trade. Livingstone estimated that, on the East Coast, for every
slave actually exported, nineteen others died on the way. The
foreign slave-trade has long ceased, except from the Upper Nile
down through Egypt and Arabia, and from the Sudan across the
Sahara to Morocco. But far worse than Arab slave-trade are the
diabolical atrocities, committed during the last fifteen years and
actually at the present time, in the Kongo, under white officers of
the miscalled “Free State,” and with the knowledge and allowance of
the King of Belgium.
But, aside from all these and other civil and political causes, the
fetich religion of Africa has been a large part of its destruction. It
has been a Moloch, whose hunger for victims was never satisfied: as
illustrated in the annual sacrifice of hundreds and thousands by the
priests of the kings of Dahomey and Ashanti; and the burial victims
at the funerals of great kings, as in Uganda and all over the
continent. If the destruction of such human victims is not so great
to-day as it was twenty years ago, due to enlightenment by Christian
missions and forceful prohibition by civilized governments, the spirit
of and disposition to destruction is not eradicated; it is only
suppressed. It is so deep seated and ingrained as a part of religion,
that it is among the very last of the shadows of heathenism to
disappear after individuals or tribes are apparently civilized and
enlightened. Under transforming influences the native has been
lifted from dishonesty to honesty, from untruth to truth, from
immorality to virtue, from heathenism to Christianity; and yet there
still clings to him, though he no longer worships the fetich, a belief
in and fear of it. The presence of foreign governments can and does
prevent witchcraft murder for the dead; but if these governments
were withdrawn from English Sierra Leone, French Kongo-Français,
and other partitions of Africa, the witchcraft ordeal and murder
would be at once resumed. And no wonder. Inbred beliefs, deepened
by millenniums of years of practice, are not eliminated by even a
century of foreign teaching. Costume of body and fashion of dress
are easily and voluntarily changed; not so the essence of one’s
being.
Under the assurance that a consecrated charm can be made for the
accomplishment of any purpose whatever, it results that almost
every native African heathen, in hours of fear or anger or revenge,
has made, or has had made, for himself amulets, or has performed
rites intended to compass an injury to, and perhaps the death of,
some other person. Should that other die, even as long a time as a
year afterward, it will be believed that that fetich amulet or act
caused the death.
It follows, therefore (although even heathen natives do, in rare
cases, say of a death, “Yes, Anzam took this one,” i. e., that he died
a natural death), that almost universally at any death which we
would know as a natural one, surviving relatives and friends make
the charge of witchcraft, and seek the witch or wizard, by
investigation involving, in the trial, torture, or ordeal by poison, fire,
or other tests. For every natural death at least one, and often ten or
more, have been executed under witchcraft accusation.
I have pleaded for the lives of accused when I believed them
innocent, and whenever I was informed that an investigation was in
progress, I said to the crowd assembled in the street, “When you kill
these three people to-day, do I see three babies born to take their
place in the number of the inhabitants of your village?”
The Balengi on the Benita River, among whom I travelled in 1865-
70, were then a large tribe. It is now very small, exterminated
largely by witchcraft murders for the dead. The aged, defenceless,
and slaves are generally selected as victims. But no one is secure.
Relatives of a chief who during his life may have seemed envious of
his power, are often suspected and put to death.
For the determination of a doubtful cause of decease post-mortems
are made, but not on any rational basis or with any knowledge of
anatomy. In the autopsy of an ordinary person the object is to find
among the bowels or other internal organs some sign which the
doctor-priest may declare to be the path of the supposed sorcery-
injected destroying spirit. In case of a magician, the object is to see
whether his own “familiar” had “eaten” him. Cavities in the lungs are
considered proof positive that one’s own power has destroyed him.
The fimbriated extremities of the fallopian tubes of a uterus are also
declared to be “witch.” Their ciliary motions on dissection are
regarded as a sign that the woman was a witch. In proof, the native
doctor said to me, “See! those are the spirit-teeth. Don’t you see
how they move and extend in desire to catch and eat?” It was in
vain that I declared to him that if that was true then every woman
all over the world was a witch, and that he was bound to go ahead
and kill them all; for that God had made no woman without those
things. (Was this “doctor’s” idea the same reason for which the old
anatomists called those fimbriæ “morsus Diaboli”?)
In Garenganze, among the Barotse,[80] “the trial for witchcraft is
short and decisive. If one man suspects another of having bewitched
him,—in fact, if he has a grudge against him,—he brings him before
the council, and the ordeal of the boiling pot is resorted to. My
proposal is that if they consider it a fair trial of ‘whiteness’ or
‘blackness’ of heart, as they call it, then let both the accuser and the
accused put their hands into the boiling water. The king is strongly in
favor of this proposal, and would try any means to stop this fearful
system of murder which is thinning out many of his best men; but
the nation is so strongly in favor of the practice that he can do
nothing. An old friend of mine, Wizini, who took quite a fatherly care
and interest in me, for some peculiar reason of his own, was
charged with witchcraft. He pleaded earnestly to be spared the
terrible trial, and was reprieved because of his years, but banished
from his people and country for life, for no other reason than that a
neighbor had an ill feeling against him. Had he been first to the king
with his complaint, he might have gotten his neighbor burned or
banished instead of himself.... Their punishments are very cruel.
Burning alive is, among the Barotse, a common occurrence; also
tying the victim hand and foot and laying him near a nest of large
black (‘driver’) ants, which in a few days pick his bones clean.”
But it is well to repeat my own qualification of most statements
about “African” customs, which Arnot makes in connection with the
above, that, “when manners and customs are referred to, the
particular district must be borne in mind. Africa is an immense
continent, and there is as much variety in the customs of the
different tribes as in their languages. Certain tribes take delight in
cruelty and bloodshed; others have a religious fear of shedding
human blood, and treat aged people with every kindness, to secure
their good-will after death. By other tribes the aged would be cast
out as mere food for wild animals.”
The testimony of Declè[81] as to the tribes of South-Central Africa is:
“You would suppose that the African expected everybody to live
forever, since his one explanation of death is an immediate recourse
to witchcraft. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that every natural
death entails a violent one as its consequence. Along with witchcraft
and the inevitable accusation of sorcery when one dies, goes the
custom of ‘muavi,’ the ordeal by poison.... It is plain what complete
domination this practice has got over the native mind. The reason is
that he thoroughly believes in its efficiency. My own porters have
constantly offered to submit to the ordeal on the most trivial
charges. Of course, this thorough belief in ‘muavi’ hands the native
over completely defenceless to the witch doctor. The doctor can get
rid of anybody he likes to. Besides this, he is a kind of public
prosecutor; that is to say, that when he accuses any man or woman
of sorcery, he is not obliged, like any ordinary accuser, to take the
poison himself.”
The “ordeal” or test of the innocence of a person accused of
practising witchcraft or of having caused the death of any one
(except in places where Christianity has attained power), is almost
the same now as that described by Rev. Dr. J. L. Wilson, and
subsequently by Du Chaillu, as existing fifty years ago on the entire
West Coast of Africa. On the Upper Guinea coasts it is called the “red
water.” “It is a decoction made from the inner bark of a large forest
tree of the mimosa family.” At Calabar a bean was used, an extract
of which since has been employed in our pharmacopœia, in surgical
operations of the eye.
In the Gabun country the bark and leaves of a small tree called
“akazya” are used. Farther south, in the Nkâmi (miswritten,
“Camma”) country, it is called “mbundu.”
The decoction itself is supposed to have almost sentience,—an
ability to follow, in the various organs of the body, like a policeman,
and detect and destroy the witch-spirit supposed to be lurking
about.
Accused persons sometimes even demand that they be given the
ordeal. This an innocent person could fearlessly do, feeling sure of
his innocence, and thinking, as any honest person in a civilized
country charged with theft would feel, that it was perfectly safe to
have his house searched, sure that no stolen article was secreted
there. So here the ignorant native is willing to take this poison, not
looking on it as what we call “poison.”
People who know that they have at times used witchcraft arts will
naturally be unwilling to undergo the test; but if the charge is made
after a death, an accused is compelled to drink. “If it nauseates and
causes him to vomit freely, he suffers no injury, and is at once
pronounced innocent. If, on the other hand, it causes vertigo, and
he loses his self-control, it is regarded as evidence of guilt; and then
all sorts of indignities and cruelties are practised on him.... On the
other hand, if he escapes without injury his character is thoroughly
purified, ... and he arraigns before the principal men of the town his
accusers, who in their turn must submit to the same ordeal, or pay a
large fine to the man whom they attempted to injure.... There is
seldom any fairness in the administration of the ordeal. No particular
quantity of the ‘red water’ is prescribed.” The doctor, by collusion
and family favoritism, may make the decoction very weak; or,
influenced by public feeling inimical to the accused, he may compel
him to swallow a fatal amount; or he may save his life by a
subsequent emetic.[82]

Cannibalism.
African cannibalism has been regarded as only a barbarism; but for
many years I have strongly suspected that it had some connection
with the Negro’s religion. It may be a corollary of witchcraft.
Declè intimates the same:[83] “I do not mean such cannibalism as
that of certain Kongo tribes, or of the Solomon Islanders, who kill
people to eat them, as we eat game. With such tribes I did not come
in contact. But there is another form of cannibalism less generally
known to Europeans, and perhaps even more grisly, which consists
in digging up dead bodies to feast on their flesh. This practice exists
largely among the natives in the region of Lake Nyasa.[84] I know of
a case in which the natives of a village in this region seized the
opportunity of a white man’s presence to break into the hut of one
of these reputed cannibals, and found there a human leg hanging
from the rafters. This incident shows that cannibalism is practised;
but also that it is not universal with the tribes among whom it is
found, and is condemned by the public opinion of those who do not
practise it. But public opinion in Africa is not a highly developed
power.... The real public opinion is witchcraft. And, indeed, in the
case of cannibalism, the real public opinion tends to shield the
perpetrators, because they are reputed to be sorcerers of high
quality.”
Rev. Dr. H. C. Trumbull, in his “Blood Covenant” (1893), while
gathering testimony from all nations to illustrate his view of the
universality of blood as representing life, and the heart as the seat
of life, as a part of the religious rite of a covenant, comes
incidentally on this same idea of cannibalism as having a religious
significance, or at least, as I have expressed above, as a corollary of
witchcraft. This will explain why the African cannibal, in conquering
his enemy, also eats him; why the heart is especially desired in such
feasts; and why the body of any one of distinguished characteristics
is prized for the cannibal feast. His strength or skill or bravery or
power is to be absorbed along with his flesh.
Trumbull[85] quotes from Réville, the representative comparative
religionist of France: “Here you will recognize the idea so widely
spread in the two Americas, and indeed almost everywhere amongst
uncivilized people (nor is it limited to the uncivilized), that the heart
is the epitome, so to speak, of the individual,—his soul in some
sense,—so that to appropriate his heart is to appropriate his whole
being.”
A constant charge against sorcerers in West African tribes is that
they have made a person sick by stealing and eating the sick one’s
“heart,” and that the invalid cannot recover till the “heart” is
returned.
Also, see Trumbull:[86] “The widespread popular superstition of the
Vampire and of the ghoul seems to be an outgrowth of this universal
belief that transfused blood is revivifying. The bloodless shades,
leaving their graves at night, seek renewed life by drawing out the
blood of those who sleep, taking the life of the living to supply
temporary life to the dead.... An added force is given to all these
illustrations of the universal belief that transferred blood has a
vivifying power, by the conclusions of modern medical science
concerning the possible benefits of blood-transfusion. The primitive
belief seems to have had a sound basis in scientific fact.”
Histories of our American Indians are full of incidents showing how
the heart of a captive who in dying had exhibited bravery in the
endurance of torture, was promptly cut in pieces and eaten, to
absorb his courage.
“The Ashanti fetichmen of West Africa, apparently acting on a
kindred thought, make a mixture of the hearts of enemies mingled
with blood and consecrated herbs, for the vivifying of the
conquerors.”
“In South Africa, among the Amampondo, one of the Kaffir tribes, it
is customary for the chief, on his accession to authority, to be
washed in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who is
put to death on the occasion, and has his skull used as a receptacle
for blood.”[87]

Secret Societies.
Another outcome of witchcraft belief is the formation of secret
societies, both male and female, of crushing power and far-reaching
influence, which, in one aspect of their influence, the governmental,
were the only authority, before the intrusion of foreign powers,
which could settle a fierce personal dispute or enforce intertribal
peace. But their possibilities for good were overbalanced by their
actualities of evil.
Among these societies I have, in a previous chapter, mentioned as
governmental agencies the Egbo of the Niger Delta, Ukuku of the
Corisco region, and Yasi of the Ogowe. There is also in the Gabun
region of the equator, among the Shekani, Mwetyi; among the
Bakele, Bweti; among the Mpongwe-speaking tribes, Indâ and
Njĕmbĕ; and Ukuku and Malinda in the Batanga regions.
A detailed account of the ceremonies of an initiation into Malinda is
contained in Chapter XVI.
In a previous chapter I have mentioned my own coming in contact
with Ukuku and Yasi.
All these societies had for their primary object the good one of
government, for this purpose holding the fetich in terror; but the
means used were so arbitrary, the influences employed so
oppressive, and the representations so false, that they almost all
were evil. Most of them are now discontinued as a tribal power by
the presence of foreign governments, the foreign power having
actually come in conflict with some of them, as in the case of
England recently with the Aro of Nigeria; or, where they still exist,
they have degenerated to mere amusement, as Ukukwe, in Gabun;
or are kept up as a traditional fashion, as Njĕmbĕ.
But they all exist, as described by Rev. Dr. Wilson a generation ago,
and are at this very present among the tribes of the interior, where
foreign government is as yet only nominal.
Mwetyi “is a great spirit, who is supposed to dwell in the bowels of
the earth, but comes to the surface of the ground at stated seasons,
or when summoned on any special business. A large flat house of
peculiar form is erected in the middle of the village for the
temporary sojourn of this spirit. The house is always kept perfectly
dark, and no one is permitted to enter it, except those who have
been initiated into all the mysteries of the order, which includes,
however, almost the whole of the adult male population of the
village.... When Mwetyi is about to retire from a village, the women,
children, uninitiated lads, and any strangers who may be there at
the time, are required to leave the village.”
“Indâ is an association whose membership is confined to the adult
male population. It is headed by a spirit of that name, who dwells in
the woods, and appears only when summoned by some unusual
event,—at the death of a person connected with the order, at the
birth of twins, or at the inauguration of some one into office.... If a
distinguished person dies, Indâ affects great rage, and comes the
following night with a large posse of men to seize the property of
the villagers without discrimination. He is sure to lay hands on as
many sheep and goats as are necessary to make a grand feast, and
no man has any right to complain.... The institution of Indâ, like that
of Mwetyi, is intended to keep the women, children, and slaves in
subjection.”
“Njĕmbĕ is a pretty fair counterpart of Indâ, but there is no special
spirit nor any particular person representing it.” Its power resides in
the society as a body, and rests on the threat of the employment of
fetich medicines to injure recalcitrant persons. Only women are
admitted to it. A very considerable fee is demanded for admission to
membership. Formerly it was considered an honor to be allowed to
be initiated; now, to perpetuate itself, it compels young women to
enter it, especially if they have made derogatory remarks about
Njĕmbĕ. The initiation then becomes a kind of punishment. Strange
to say, young women thus compelled to enter accept the society,
and become zealous to drag others in. The initiation occupies about
two weeks, and is accompanied with harsh treatment. Njĕmbĕ has
no special meeting-house. They assemble in a cleared place in the
centre of a jungle, where their doings are unseen by outsiders by
night or day. Nothing is known of their rites, except that they dance
in a nude state, and the songs of their dances are openly heard, and
are often of the vilest character.
“They pretend to detect thieves, to find out the secrets of their
enemies,” to direct women in pregnancy, and in other ways claim to
be useful.
“The object of the institution originally, no doubt, was to protect the
females from harsh treatment on the part of their husbands.”
As a rule, the Mpongwe women say that every woman should be in
the Njĕmbĕ Society; so, at a certain age of a girl, they decide that
she shall “go in.” But she is not always put through all the
ceremonies at once. She may be subjected to only a part of the
initiation, the remainder to be performed at another time.
The special occasion for an initiation may be perhaps because the
spirit of some recently dead member wants a new one to take her
place; or if any young woman has escaped being initiated during her
youth or if she is charged with having spoken derisively of Njĕmbĕ,
she may be seized by force and compelled to go through the rite.
The entire process so beats down the will of the novices and
terrorizes them, that even those who have been forced into it
against their will, when they emerge at the close of the rite, most
inviolably preserve its secrets, and express themselves as pleased.
Just before the novices or “pupils” are to enter, they have to prepare
a great deal of food,—as much as they can possibly obtain of
cassava, fish, and plantains. Two days are spent, before the
ceremonies begin, in cooking this food. They make big bundles of
ngândâ (gourd seed) pudding, others of ground-nuts and odika (oily
kernel of the wild mango), pots of odika and fish boiled, boiled hard
plantains, and ripe plantains beaten into rolls called “fufu.” This food
is to be eaten by them and the older members of the society the
first night.
Those older ones, as a part of the hazing which they always
practise, deceive the new ones by advising them in advance: “Eat no
supper this evening. Save up your appetite. All this food you have
prepared is your own, and you will be satiated at the feast to-night.”
This is said in order to play a hard joke on them. But sometimes a
more tender-hearted relative will pity them, and will privately warn
them to eat something, knowing that they will be up all night, and
that the older members intend to seize and eat what these “pupils”
had prepared for themselves, allowing the latter to be faint with
hunger.
That evening the society goes into the adjacent jungle, the spot
selected including a small stream of water. There they clear a small
space for their ceremonies. They dance all night, part of the time in
this camp, and part of the time in the street of the town, but always
going back to the camp at some early morning hour.
On the second day they come to town, dance there a little while,
and then go back to the forest. They beat constantly and
monotonously, without time, a short straight stick on a somewhat
crescent-shaped piece of board (orĕga) that is slightly concave on
one side. It makes a clear but not a musical note; is heard quite far,
and is the distinctive sign of the Njĕmbĕ Society. No other persons
own or will strike the orĕga music.
In the part of the ceremonies that are public in the village street, a
man is invited to assist by beating on a drum, a matter in which
women here are not expert. This drum does not exclude the orĕga,
several of which may be beaten at the same time; at least one must
be kept sounding during the whole two weeks by one or another of
the candidates, or if these become exhausted, by some other
member of the society.
One of the first public preparations is the bending of a limber pole
(ilala) as an arch, or two branches, their tops woven together, over
the path entering the village. They are wreathed with lycopodium
ferns, and at their bases are stuck a young, short, recently half-
unfolded palm-leaf, painted with Njĕmbĕ dots of white, red, and
black. At the distance of a few hundred feet may be another ilala;
indeed, there may be several of them on the way to the camp.
While dancing during the first few days, the society occupies itself
with preparations, unknown to the public, for their “work” in the