Sir Kenneth James Beatty

“ But beyond such reasoning powers as are required for their daily necessities their whole mental energies are absorbed in fetish, witchcraft, “medicine” such as Borfima and the like. What they need is a substitute for their bottomless wells of secret societies, for their playing at being leopards or alligators and acting the part with such realism that they not only kill their quarry but even devour it. ”

“ Although the slave trade was abolished over a century ago, slavery still exists in many parts of West Africa, and it was in a great measure due to the raids by the Sofas and intertribal wars for the purpose of obtaining slaves that a Protectorate was in 1896 declared over the territory adjacent to the Colony of Sierra Leone. Domestic slavery still exists, but it is a kind, patriarchal sort of slavery, and slaves are allowed to purchase their freedom by paying, in the case of an adult, a sum not exceeding £4, and in the case of a child a sum not exceeding £2 ”

“ Then comes the question whether the punishments inflicted by the Special Commission Court will have the effect of stamping out the Society. In considering this question the environment of the people must be taken into account. I have been in many forests, but in none which seemed to me to be so uncanny as the Sierra Leone bush. In Mende-land the bush is not high, as a rule it is little more than scrub, nor is the vegetation exceptionally rank, but there is something about the Sierra Leone bush, and about the bush villages as well, which makes one’s flesh creep. ”

“ It may be the low hills with enclosed swampy valleys, or the associations of the slave trade, or the knowledge that the country is alive with Human Leopards; but to my mind the chief factor in the uncanniness is the presence of numerous half-human chimpanzees with their maniacal shrieks and cries. The bush seemed to me pervaded with something supernatural, a spirit which was striving to bridge the animal and the human. Some of the weird spirit of their surroundings has, I think, entered into the people, and accounts for their weird customs. The people are by no means a low, savage race. ”

“ There is little doubt that members of the Human Leopard Society are marked on entering into the Society, but such marks are so like the marks left by wounds caused by accident or disease that it is not possible for any ordinary person to distinguish, with any certainty, the difference between them. ”

“ The relatives, even the mother of the victim, will not come forward willingly, and when such witnesses are forced to give evidence they will only say what they think is non-committal, and from that they will not budge. They look upon the “medicine” as being responsible, and hold the view that the members of the Society are forced into killing a victim in order to “feed” the Borfima. ”

“ You didn’t believe when I spoke of those men who said they belonged to the Leopard Society. I see the result now.”
A sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment with hard labour was passed on this man, who, even after the passing of the sentence, had a last word of protest and pathetic appeal. As he was leaving the Court, he burst out, “I am an old man, fourteen years is a longer time than I will live: Judges, if you must have my life take it at once; the soldiers are there with their guns to shoot”—the military guard round the Court-house when the Court was sitting. ”

“ Apparently one of the rules of the Society is that a victim must be provided by a member of the Society; usually, the person called upon to provide the victim is a member who has received some material advancement, such as becoming a Mahawa (a paramount chief) or a Mahawuru (sub-chief) , as it is considered necessary on such occasions to propitiate the Borfima, which is looked upon as all-powerful for good or evil. ”

“ There is very little stigma attached to imprisonment, which, after all, is the chief deterring factor in civilized countries; it does not necessarily follow that a scale of punishments suitable for offences committed by a civilized people is suitable for offences committed by an uncivilized people, and there are strong arguments in favour of allowing corporal punishment to be inflicted as well as imprisonment for offences committed by uneducated natives. ”

“ As it grew dark that evening, the members of the Society gathered together in the Poro bush. The members deputed to do the killing were dressed in their regalia of leopard skin.
As the evening wore on and the time for sleep came, the boy Yagba, under instructions from his uncle, spread his mat on the verandah of the latter’s house and lay down and eventually went to sleep. About midnight the two murderers arrived and crept on all fours up to where Yagba was lying. One of them held him while the other stabbed him in the neck with a knife. ”

“ Commercially the importance of Sierra Leone is small as compared with its easterly neighbours, the Gold Coast Colony with its hinterland Dependencies of Ashanti and the Northern Territories, and the huge new Colony of Nigeria made up of three older Colonies, but of all our West African Colonies Sierra Leone is probably the best known to the British public, and with the fine harbour and important coaling station at Freetown, its capital, Sierra Leone is a valuable link in the great chain of Imperial communication. ”

“ Oaths Another line of practice in which witch-doctors excel is the “pulling of swears”—anglice, the removal of oaths. When an oath is taken upon an ordinary native “medicine,” it is possible for the oath-taker to be absolved from the consequences of a breach of his oath by engaging a witch-doctor, who, for a fee proportionate to the potency of the “medicine” used, will “pull the swear.” ”

“ A Special Commission Court shall be a court of record, and the same intendment shall be made in respect of all orders, writs, and process made by and issuing out of such Special Commission Court, as if it were a court of record acting according to the course and by the authority of the common law. ”

“ Non-natives, however, have the right, when charged with a capital offence, to be tried by a judge and jury in the Colony instead of the Circuit Court Judge and assessors, and the plea to the jurisdiction was successfully raised by counsel when the accused was before the Circuit Court, on the ground that he was an American subject and therefore a non-native so far as the provision regulating the trial of natives of the Protectorate was concerned. ”

“ In the past the Government’s chief difficulty has been to get evidence to substantiate a prosecution, as it is generally after a long time that people come forward to make statements about these murders, and, owing to the intimidation practised by the influential chiefs upon possible witnesses, the Government have always encountered great difficulty in procuring witnesses to bring to justice the perpetrators of the crime. It will be seen by Section 2 the District Commissioner has power to arrest any person whose arrest and detention he may consider advisable in the interests of justice ”

“ INTRODUCTORY That there were cannibals in the Hinterland of Sierra Leone in former days appears from the observations [1] of William Finch, who visited Sierra Leone in August, 1607. This accurate observer states, “To the South of the Bay, some fortie or fiftie leagues distant within the Countrey, inhabiteth a very fierce people which are man-eaters, which sometimes infest them.” This clearly points to the Mende country, where the Human Leopard Society was lately flourishing. Finch does not, however, refer to anything but pure cannibalism. ”

“ If any person in whose case an expulsion order has been made is at any time found within the Colony or Protectorate in contravention of the order, he shall, on conviction, be liable to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for a term not exceeding ten years.
(3) Any person aiding or attempting to aid any person, in whose case an expulsion order has been made, to return to the Colony or Protectorate, and any person harbouring such person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and shall, on conviction, be liable to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for a term not exceeding two years. ”

“ Palavers of great weight, such as disputes between rival towns, or offences of such magnitude as to call for capital punishments, are always settled by the Purrah—the headmen of towns not having at the present day (whatever power they may have possessed formerly) the lives or their subjects or dependents in keeping. The Purrah may be therefore said to possess the general government of the country, and from the nature of their power, and the purposes to which it is applied, they will probably be found a most serious obstacle to its civilization. ”

“ Cannibalism is probably only a bye-product in these murders. Originally it may have been to bind the murderers together and so preserve inviolable secrecy that each member of the Society partook of a portion of the flesh; or it may have been to continue the leopard-acting, i.e. by devouring the prey; or it may have been with a combination of these ideas that cannibalism originated. Gradually, however, the notion arose that human flesh had specific virtues; as the Borfima’s energy was replenished with human fat so would the cannibal be reinvigorated with other parts of the human body ”

“ Sierra Leone as it exists to-day is, owing to segregation and up-to-date sanitation, comparatively healthy for Europeans. The progress of the Colony has been phenomenal during the last fifteen years, and the credit is chiefly due to two energetic and far-seeing Governors in the persons of Sir Frederick Cardew and Sir Leslie Probyn, who foresaw the great benefit that would accrue by opening up the Protectorate, and this has been done by building lines of railway into the rich palm-kernel belts and encouraging the natives to gather the natural products of the country for export. ”

“ It is certainly no compliment to call a lady in this country a witch; she is liable to be maltreated and even beaten to death, and it is not uncommon for the police to be asked to protect a Freetown lady who is suspected of being a witch. ”

“ Alldridge, [5] who has had a long and intimate acquaintance with the Mende tribes, is of opinion that the Human Leopard Society is of no great age, probably not more than half a century. All, however, that can be said with certainty is that until comparatively lately the operations of this society, if it existed, were so limited or so secret that the Society was unknown to Europeans, or indeed to Africans who were in touch with Europeans. ”

“ The majority of the people of the Protectorate are Pagans, but Mohammedanism is rapidly spreading among them; and as no good Mohammedan ever touches spirits, the advance of this faith may go a long way to put a stop to the consumption of trade gin, which is the curse of the Coast. The Government is doing everything possible to discourage its use as currency, and the principle of local option has been encouraged with good effect. One large District and 112portions of two other Districts have been declared prohibited areas into which no spirits can be lawfully imported. ”

“ Owners of the Borfima found that their riches did not increase as rapidly as they anticipated, they lost cases in the Courts, expectations were not realized with respect to adverse witnesses upon whose hearts and livers and kidneys imprecations had been showered—all this showed that the Borfima had become weak and needed resuscitation with fresh human fat and blood—and to obtain this human fat and blood was the primary object of the Human Leopard Society. ”

“ There is no sentence in the notes of evidence which I can quote in support of this theory, but after an extended experience of the point of view of the West African mind, and with some acquaintance with the subject on the spot, I venture the opinion that the Human Leopards eat the flesh of their victims, not to satisfy any craving for human flesh nor in connection with any religious rite, but in the belief that their victims’ flesh will increase their virility. ”

“ Witch-doctors To give an idea of the mental outlook of the majority of the natives before the Court, and so that some of the difficulties under which the prosecution laboured may be appreciated, allusion should be made to witch-doctors and oaths.
WIVES OF A NATIVE CHIEF.
A witch-doctor holds a high position in a native community, and is often able to accumulate great wealth. The practice of this profession is usually confined to certain families, the secrets of the profession being handed down from father to son. ”

“ The men of this country are large and well-made, strong and courageous, and civilized manners for heathens; as they keep most faithfully to their wives, of whom they are not a little jealous. I could not learn their religion, for though they have some idols, they seem to know that there is a God in heaven, as, when we asked them about their wooden puppets, they used to lift up their hands to heaven. ”

“ Yet every man must trust to his own experience; for instruments may deceive, even in the hands of the most skilful. The 7th August some negroes of a superior appearance came aboard in my boat, for whom, as for all others, we had to leave one of our men in hostage for every two of them. These made signs that I should send some men up the country, and they would stay as hostages; I accordingly sent Edward Bradbury and my servant William Cotterell with a present to the Captain or chief, consisting of one coarse shirt, three feet of bar iron, a few glass beads, and two knives. ”

“ After the chief has been formally elected and acclaimed, his body is sacred. Among the Mendes, women are frequently elected to the chieftainship; a chieftainess does not marry, but may have a consort, whom she changes at will. She is also permitted, contrary to a strict rule regarding other women, to join the Poro Society. The Bundu Society, a women’s society which corresponds with the Poro for men, plays a very important part in native life among the Mendes and Temnes. ”

“ The witch-doctor is frequently employed by chiefs or other much-married men to discover whether their numerous wives have been guilty of acts of infidelity; they are also frequently employed to discover the perpetrators of any crime and the place of concealment of stolen property, and it is extraordinary what successes they achieve, particularly in discovering stolen property. ”