Fetich Magician. (With horns, wooden mask, spear, and sword; dress of leaves of palm and plantain.) FETICHISM IN WEST AFRICA Forty Years’ Observation of Native Customs and Superstitions BY THE REV. ROBERT HAMILL NASSAU, M.D., S.T.D. FOR FORTY YEARS A MISSIONARY IN THE GABUN DISTRICT OF KONGO-FRANÇAISE AUTHOR OF “CROWNED IN PALM LAND,” “MAWEDO” WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS YOUNG PEOPLE’S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT 156 Fifth Avenue New York Copyright, 1904 By Charles Scribner’s Sons Published October, 1

On the 2d of July, 1861, I sailed from New York City on a little brig, the “Ocean Eagle,” with destination to the island of Corisco, near the equator, on the West Coast of Africa. My first introduction to the natives of Africa was a month later, when the vessel stopped at Monrovia, the capital of the Liberian Republic, to land a portion of its trade goods, and at other ports of Liberia, Sinoe, and Cape Palmas; thence to Corisco on September 12. Corisco is a microcosm, only five miles long by thr

CONSTITUTION OF NATIVE AFRICAN SOCIETY—SOCIOLOGY That stream of the Negro race which is known ethnologically as “Bantu,” occupies all of the southern portion of the African continent below the fourth degree of north latitude. It is divided into a multitude of tribes, each with its own peculiar dialect. All these dialects are cognate in their grammar. Some of them vary only slightly in their vocabulary. In others the vocabulary is so distinctly different that it is not understood by tribes only o

THE IDEA OF GOD—RELIGION Missionary Paul of Tarsus, in the polite exordium of his great address to the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill, courteously tells them that he believes them to be a very “religious” people,—indeed, too much so in their broad-church willingness to give room for an altar to the worship of any new immanence of God; and then, with equal courtesy, he tells them that, with all their civilization, with all their eminence in art and philosophy, they were ignorant of the true c

POLYTHEISM—IDOLATRY Civilization and religion do not necessarily move with equal pace. Whatever is really best in the ethics of civilization is derived from religion. If civilization falls backward, religion probably has already weakened or will also fall. The converse is not necessarily true. Religion may halt or even retrograde, while civilization steps on brilliantly, as it did in Greece with her Parthenon, and in Rome the while that religion added to the number of idols in the pantheon. Egyp

SPIRITUAL BEINGS IN AFRICAN RELIGION The belief in spiritual beings opens an immense vista of the purely superstitious side of the theology of Bantu African religion. All the air and the future is peopled with a large and indefinite company of these beings. The attitude of the Creator (Anyambĕ) toward the human race and the lower animals being that of indifference or of positive severity in having allowed evils to exist, and His indifference making Him almost inexorable, cause effort in the line

SPIRITUAL BEINGS IN AFRICA—THEIR CLASSES AND FUNCTIONS Inequalities among the spirits themselves, though they are so great, indicate no more than simple differentiations of character or work. Yet so radical are these varieties, and so distinct the names applied to them, that I am compelled to recognize a division into classes. Classes and Functions. 1. Inina, or Ilina. A human embodied soul is spoken of and fully believed in by all the tribes. It is known in the Mpongwe tribes of the Gabun count

FETICHISM—ITS PHILOSOPHY—A PHYSICAL SALVATION—CHARMS AND AMULETS Even during the while that man was still a monotheist, as seen in a previous chapter, he had eventually come to the use of idols which he did not actually worship, by the making of images simply to represent God; he had not yet become an idolater . Subsequently, in his farther lapse away from God, when he began to render worship to beings other than God, fashioned images to represent them also, and actually worshipped them, he beca

THE FETICH—A WORSHIP Worship is an eminent part of every form of religion, but it is not essential to it. True, most religions have some form of worship. 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

THE FETICH—WITCHCRAFT—A WHITE ART—SORCERY Hundreds of acts and practices in the life of Christian households in civilized lands pass muster before the bar of æsthetic propriety and society, and even of the church, as not only harmless and allowable, but as commendable, and conducive to kindness, good-will, and healthful social entertainment; but in the doing of these acts few are aware of the fact that some of them in their origin were heathenish and in their meaning idolatrous, and that long ag

THE FETICH—WITCHCRAFT—A BLACK ART—DEMONOLOGY The distinction sought to be made by the half-civilized Negro between a white art and a black art, as a justification of his practice of fetich enchantments, lies in the object to be obtained by their use. He vainly tries to find a parallel to them in Christian use of fire-arms,—proper for defence, improper for unprovoked assault. The black art he admits is wrong, its object being to kill or injure some one else; the white he thinks allowable, because

FETICHISM—A GOVERNMENT In civilization, under governments other than autocratic, law being made and executed, at least professedly, with the consent of the governed, all enactments find not only their justification, but also the possibility of their enforcement, in their support by public opinion. It is the general consensus as to the need of an enactment regarding certain conditions affecting the lives or happiness or rights of the majority, that crystallizes opinions into a form of words, and

THE FETICH—ITS RELATION TO THE FAMILY In most tribes of the Bantu the unit in the constitution of the community is the family, not the individual. However successful a man may be in trade, hunting, or any other means of gaining wealth, he cannot, even if he would, keep it all to himself. He must share with the family, whose indolent members thus are supported by the more energetic or industrious. I often urged my civilized employees not to spend so promptly, almost on pay-day itself, their wages

THE FETICH—ITS RELATIONS TO DAILY WORK AND OCCUPATIONS AND TO THE NEEDS OF LIFE In the great emergencies of life, such as plagues, famines, deaths, funerals, and where witchcraft and black art are suspected, the aid or intervention of special fetiches is invoked, as has been described in the Yâkâ and other public ceremonies. The ritual required in such cases is often expensive, as money is needed for the doctor’s fee, for purchase of ingredients and other materials for the “medicine,” and in the

THE FETICH—SUPERSTITION IN CUSTOMS The observances of fetich worship fade off into the customs and habits of life by gradations, so that in some of the superstitious beliefs, while there may be no formal handling of a fetich amulet containing a spirit, nor actual prayer or sacrifice, nevertheless spiritism is in the thought, and more or less consciously held. In our civilization there are thousands of professedly Christian people who are superstitious in such things as fear of Friday, No. 13, sp

FETICH—ITS RELATION TO THE FUTURE LIFE—CEREMONIES AT DEATHS AND FUNERALS When a heathen Negro is sick, the first thing done, just as in civilized lands, is to call the “doctor,” who is to find out what is the particular kind of spirit that, by invading the patient’s body, has caused the sickness. This diagnosis is not made by an examination and comparison of the physical and mental symptoms, but by drum, dance, frenzied song, mirror, fumes of drugs, consultation of relics, and conversation with

FETICHISM—SOME OF ITS PRACTICAL EFFECTS Depopulation. One 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 mile

TALES OF FETICH BASED ON FACT The view-point of the native African mind, in all unusual occurrences, is that of witchcraft. Without looking for an explanation in what civilization would call natural causes, his thought turns at once to the supernatural. Indeed, the supernatural is so constant a factor in his life, that to him it furnishes explanation of events as prompt and reasonable as our reference to the recognized forces of nature. Mere coincidences are often to him miracles. In the large m

FETICH IN FOLK-LORE The telling of Folk-lore Tales amounts, with the African Negro, almost to a passion. By day, both men and women have their manual occupations, or, even if idling, pass the time in sleep or gossip; but at night, particularly with moonlight, if there be on hand no dances, either of fetich-worship or of mere amusement, some story-teller is asked to recite. All know the tales, but not all can recite them dramatically. The audience never wearies of repetition. The skilful story-te