John H. Weeks

“ There were no foods for invalids, no dainties to tempt a patient’s appetite--the sick had either to eat what the robust and healthy ate or go without. Many patients have died of hunger rather than of the diseases from which they suffered.
The practice of the witch-doctor was sheer quackery, and rested more on the exorcism of evil spirits by magical charms, incantations and concoctions, than on a knowledge of physiology, disease and medicine. The wonder was that any one survived the various treatments, and, in fact, only the fittest and strongest did recover from serious illnesses. ”

“ The skilled and the unskilled, the poor and the rich, the slave and the free, are all mixed in indistinguishable confusion. It is the best dancer, be he poor and a slave, who is the cynosure of all eyes and the object of all their praises. And as the dance proceeds the dancers sing in unison some recitative song, while the onlookers keep time to song and dance by clapping their hands and swaying their bodies to and fro. ”

“ A great number of charms and fetishes were to be found in the town, and it seemed as though they had a charm for every imaginable circumstance of life. One man possessed a charm to protect his goods, and another had a charm to help him steal successfully; one owned a charm to bring him good luck in trading, and another wore a charm to aid him in cheating on the markets the folk with whom he traded. One man whom I saw had a charm to render him invisible that he might, unseen, hear conversations, and enter forbidden places to his own advantage ”

“ I do not mean to say that no man ever draws his knife on another in a town quarrel; but that when two families in the same town deliberately fight each other they use only sticks as their weapons. They have talked until they are tired; it is not a case for the ordeal; and the ordinary methods of judging a case have failed, so they resort to sticks, and the party driven off the “field” by sheer weight of blows is the loser. The losing side then pays up and the affair is ended. The other families in the town scarcely ever take sides, but look on and enjoy the performance. ”

“ They would stand about our table while we were at meals, and pass critical remarks on our manner of eating, slyly imitating the action of our jaws as we masticated our food, or mimic our gestures as we conversed with one another. We seemed to live, move, and pass our existence in the full glare of public gaze like fish in a glass tank. ”

“ By the time the old man had finished his invectives the two chief actors in this scene were standing by themselves in a circle of anxious, terror-stricken faces. They were types of the old order and the new--the old order, slaves to witch-doctors, charms and superstitions that demanded the continuance of things as they are; the new order, men and lads upon whose minds new ideas were dawning and struggling for the mastery against their crude, superstitious fears,--men who were yearning for they knew not what, and were restless through strange strivings in their hearts. ”

“ Slaves are, as a rule, treated well, for they can easily run away, and their owner will then lose the money invested in them. It is to the owner’s interest to look properly after them—to house them, to provide them with wives or husbands, and maintain their rights as members of the community. I have known some few slaves run away; but I have known more than a few to be treated like members of the family. The better the slaves are treated, the more secure are their masters of their services and value. ”

“ During this season it is very weird to see, night after night, great bush fires blazing in different directions. The sky is aglow with them, and you smell and breathe a smoky atmosphere for days. Bits of charred grass are carried by the winds in all directions, and the country looks dressed in black as though it were mourning with a great 202sorrow, and the sun, as though in sympathy with the earth, hides for days behind the clouds of ascended smoke.
During the hunts men are often wounded, and sometimes killed, by being mistaken for animals as they push through the rustling grass. ”

“ If a man accuses another of giving him a disease, or of causing the death of his wife by witchcraft, how can the accused disprove such a charge? Not by talking, no matter how much he may swear that he is innocent. If he calls the head-men together, he knows the verdict will be given in favour of the one who pays the most; if he runs away he will soon be captured by some other town and probably sold to furnish a cannibal feast; if he runs to a friendly town he will lose caste, he will be treated with contempt as a coward, and his life rendered miserable. ”

“ As the Buffalo was rushing away a Lion shouted out: “Where have you come from?” The Buffalo stopped and told him all his troubles. “Oh,” said the Lion, “give me an axe, I’ll marry her.” But the same thing happened to him, and to the Hyena, and to the Leopard also. They all cut at the tree, got tired, rested too long, and each ran away, saying: “I came to marry, but the girl is not worth the trouble.”
As the Leopard was bounding away, a Mouse asked him: “What is the matter?” and the Leopard growled out: “I went to marry a woman, but whoever marries her must fell the mahogany tree.” ”

“ The beliefs of a tribe considerably affect their point of view, and this is seen in nothing more emphatically than in their beliefs about child-bearing. On the Lower Congo a non-child-bearing woman is the butt of the town’s ridicule, she is sneered at, pointed at by all the other women, and is the object of their scorn. She feels degraded in the eyes of all, and however much she may blame her husband, or may try to prove that she is bewitched, yet her shame is bitterly felt and resented. She has failed ignominiously in her one paramount duty to her family. ”

“ There is a delightful absence of proportion in these stories, for in them mice and birds marry young women; a mouse carries the head of a leopard in his bag and brags that he has eaten nine leopards, and although he punishes the elephant and the buffalo he has to cry for help against the hyena; the gazelle eats whole pigs and goats; and a chameleon snarls and the elephant, leopard and other animals run away in terror. Nothing is strange or incongruous in a land where witch-doctors abounded, and were credited with performing wonders by their supposed magical powers. ”

“ There she sat, wounded, bleeding, and faint with hunger and loss of blood, through the long day, with the crocodile lying in wait at the foot of the tree. Occasionally she cried out, but there was no one near enough to hear her shouts. She at last heard the paddles of the canoe and the calls of the men, and, responding to them, she guided them to the tree where she was sitting. As the men neared the tree they heard the splashing of the water as the brute made off in the darkness. ”

“ He will heal my scalded arm, and teach me God’s palaver.”
“Wait until the morning,” pleaded Tumbu. “Don’t travel in the dark, or the evil spirits will throttle and squeeze the life out of you.”
“Who talks about evil spirits?” asked Bakula. "Only the ‘medicine men,’ and perhaps what they tell us about them is as great a lie as their charms, fetishes and ordeals. I will test that to-night as I have tested their other teaching to-day." And a look of undaunted determination came into the brave fellow’s face, which, being seen by Tumbu in the flickering firelight, stopped his further arguments. ”

“ He will regard you as a god, and yet try to fight you; he will superstitiously believe that you have wonderful occult powers that can stop the rain, cause pestilence and plagues, and yet he will not attempt to conciliate you, but will savagely shout at you to clear out of his town and take your witchcraft elsewhere. When fighting with a gun he is timid, nervous, and apparently very cowardly, because he does not understand the mysteries of gunpowder; but give him a shield and a spear and his bravery is evidenced by his boldness in a fight, and his utter indifference to wounds and death. ”

“ It was just at the beginning of the dry season, consequently all the cooking and eating was done in the open streets; and those who could not find a house in which to sleep considered it no hardship to spread their mats and sleep in front of the houses.
Soon after sunset the ordinary folk gathered round the fires watching the women cooking, while the chiefs and head men sat in groups gravely talking local politics or loudly boasting of their prowess in bygone hunts and fights. No cloths were laid for the feast, and no tables were set and decorated. Everything was in primitive style. ”

“ They would fondle their women, yet treat them contemptuously as inferiors; they would fight to assert their rights of ownership in them, yet regard them as so greatly beneath them as to send them to eat their food by themselves out of sight; and they would slave to collect sufficient goods to pay the marriage money for their free wives, or to procure the price of their slave wives, yet the former they would thrash unmercifully, and the latter, for a whim or in a fit of temper, they would murder and fling the corpse into the river, or invite their neighbours to feast with them on the body. ”

“ I heard, too, that Mavakala was a skilled blacksmith, and had made good knives out of odd pieces of hoop iron taken from old cases, and bought, by him, from traders on the river; and had even made hoes and axes out of old bale iron. Many other clever things he had done, all of which were now by these superstitious people accepted as proofs of his witchcraft. He had awakened their jealousy by his energy and smartness in business; his skill and ingenuity in smithing had aroused their suspicions, and his prosperity had provoked their hatred. ”

“ I myself have often been surprised and amused when a motion, a glance, or some little peculiarity among these folk has called vividly to mind some person I knew at home. There was one man I never met without having a certain uncle of mine recalled to mind, and another person—a girl—always by an indescribable something reminded me of a girl I knew in England. ”

“ Guns are fired, drums are beaten, the people dance and sing songs in honour of the slayer of Mfumu, and much palm-wine is drunk. The leopard is then flayed and eaten. Some ate the flesh believing they would become lithe, cunning and strong like the leopard, but others refused to eat it from a superstitious fear of spots--like the leopard’s--breaking out on their own skins.
The gifts presented by the various chiefs paid the expenses of the festivities, and Satu sat on this skin when he was invested with the high rank of a noble. ”

“ He lacks reverence, but is easily filled with awe and overcome by wonder. The stars in their courses make for him no song around the eternal throne; but the smoke ascending from his great bush-fires forming a halo round the sun will make him quake with fear because it is an omen of evil. ”

“ When a man kills his opponent in a fight he cuts off his head and removes his lips, which latter he thoroughly dries in the sun, and then sticks them over with brass chair nails and wears them as an ornament with as much pride as a decoration is worn by the civilized soldier—it is the man’s medal for bravery. The skull of the slain man is put at the base of a palm, or other tree just outside the victor’s house, and when the victor dies the spirit of the conquered and slain man is called upon to do service to the spirit of the conqueror in longa, or the spirit-world. ”

“ By one charm the native bewitches the enemy; by another he excels the enemy in craftiness and cunning; by another he overawes and fascinates them so that they forget their hatred; and by another he becomes invisible to them. Each man patronizes his own particular charm, some having more faith in one than in another. There is also a charm, specially procured from a spirit and costing a goodly fee, that always enables its owner to capture one or more prisoners in a fight, and then helps him to disappear with his captives if too closely pursued by the enemy. ”

“ After their unsuccessful attempts to make us exhibit our force, other questions were agitated: “Why are the white men so calm and quiet? Have they some wonderful magic or powerful ‘medicine’ that will kill us all directly we begin to fight them? What have they behind them that they are not afraid when we tell them the people are coming to attack them? Have they little guns (revolvers) concealed about their clothes?” ”