Witch doctor

“ The messenger felt uncomfortable. For some reason, best known to himself, his master disapproved of the killing of people, and also set his face against witchcraft. No witch doctor could practise for long in his district, for was not his medicine stronger than that of any witch doctor? Did not the doctors know it, and had they not all moved to a safer place? Who, then, could have done this killing by witchcraft? Yes, [Pg 5] it was a big case, and he would take the man to his master; but he must break in upon the great man's rest with care, or there would be trouble. ”

“ On the Chief's neck and around his arms and legs were witch charms.
"Oh, Chief Edem," said Mary, "how could you do this? Surely you know that doing witchcraft is a sin against God. I do not see how you could go back to it after you had learned to know about Jesus."
"Ma, you don't know all about these things. Someone is the cause of this sickness. You don't know all the badness of the black man's heart. Look, here are the proofs that someone is working witchcraft against me. The only one who can fight that is the witch doctor. He is the only one who can make me well. ”

“ It was of course a spirit in transit to the coast.
Witch doctors are up to all manner of tricks in their wicked business. Sometimes they declare that a dead man is the witch, and will dig in the grave, and as they get near the corpse suddenly tell the people to get out of the way. The doctor is going to shoot the witch, then throwing down a little blood which he has secreted, he fires a gun and points triumphantly to the blood of the escaped witch. ”

“ The would-be healer of the sick ran a risk, and it was not always alone from failure to cure. If a witch doctor found himself unable to bring relief to a patient, it was easy to suggest that some other witch doctor—and such were usually women—was bewitching the patient. There are many instances, and they are not confined to the particular period with which we are dealing, in which one "good witch" started the run on the other's reputation. Even the regular physician may sometimes have yielded to the temptation to crush competition. ”

“ Besides, my brother's son is an evangelist, and he has told me a lot about what is taught in the schools."
"But, surely, Numjala, your experience must have taught you that witchcraft is all humbug (imfeketu) , and that before the English rule, the witch-doctor was simply the instrument of the chief for suppressing people who became too rich or too powerful."
"The witch-doctor may often be a humbug (kohlisi) , and yet it is possible that there may be such a thing as witchcraft. ”

“ Every disease is believed to be caused by the touch of some demon, who wishes to carry off the soul of the sick man into the other world, and the witch doctor is the man who has power to charm or kill the evil spirit, and rescue the soul of the sick man from his cruel clutches. When called in to attend a patient, he in company with other medicine men go through a ceremony, which, though agreeing in the main points, differs in details according to what the disease is, and the amount of fees paid. ”

“ At least, practically (but for a few exceptionally cunning and rascally interlopers who creep and intrude and climb into the fold) , the office of witch-doctor is hereditary: a father trains his son, and will train (for a large fee) any youth whose family has already produced a witch-doctor. But a candidate without family connexion is told that he must first kill by witchcraft all the members of his family, as offerings to the fetich of that branch of the profession to which he aspires. ”

“ A seriously sick person fancies he sees a relative or neighbour in a dream, and at once believes that the witch-soul of his relative has come to throttle the life out of him, so he pays a witch-doctor a goodly fee to kill the prowling spirit, or protect him from its malignant assaults. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mokorongo lit the grass. The twigs crackled, the sticks caught fire and burned brightly.
"Put those things on the fire," said the Commissioner, pointing to the smaller of the two heaps.
Chiromo paused and looked round at the witnesses in a strange manner. As his eyes sought out those of each witness ranged against him, his personality made itself felt. Men quailed, women covered their faces, and children cried lustily. The witch doctor pointed suddenly to the sky, then at the ground, and then at the witnesses. ”

“ There is another witch doctor, whose procedure differs somewhat from that of the former and does not involve the discomfort of the patient to so great a degree. A small wax figure made in human shape is put into boiling water, whereupon the witch is bound to present himself and confess his fault. ”

“ All deaths that we call natural are imputed to witchcraft. As soon as the cry of witchcraft is raised, the people, panic stricken with fear, are transformed to ferocious demons. With wild eyes they rush up and down the street in a body crying out for blood. This is the opportunity of the witch-doctor, either to levy blackmail, or to rid himself of his enemies. When a woman is accused by him, no matter in what esteem she may have been held hitherto, and regardless of her family connections, the people turn upon her in cruel rage and can scarce wait for the ordeal. ”

“ The business of the witch-doctor, or the greegree man, is to eject the devil from his patient—by fair means or foul as soon as possible. Dispersed through various preceding chapters instances of the way in which the ejection is attempted have already been given; we have witnessed how the Indian medicine-man operated on the sick baby, and on the unlucky little girl who had a stitch in her side; how the Dayak doctor cheated the devil and laid a trap for, caught, and replaced his patient’s departing spirit of life ”

“ All diseases are caused by evil spirits, or the moon; and a comet brings the measles. The help of the witch doctor has to be sought on all occasions, for his special work is to drive away the evil spirit that has taken possession of a sick one. This he does by rattling a hollow calabash containing stones. That important person will perform his mystic hocus pocus over the sick or dying, and charm away the spirits from a neighborhood. ”

“ Sometimes an enemy will [pg 50] abstract the patient's liver by magic and carry it away to a cave in a sacred grove, where he will devour it in company with other wicked sorcerers. A witch-doctor is called in to detect the culprit, and whomever he denounces is shut up in a room, where a fire is kindled and pepper thrown into it ”

“ At such times the girl screams, but I understand that she usually allows herself to be captured.
The witch doctor’s life is safe only so long as the people believe he has power to break up spells cast upon men or cattle by evil spirits. Most of them come to their end by violence. ”

“ A man has been suddenly roused by some cause or other before that dream-soul has had time to get into quarters. That human being feels very ill, and sends for the Witch Doctor. The medical man diagnoses the case as one of absence of dream-soul, instantly claps a cloth over the mouth and nose, and gets his assistant to hold it there until the patient gets hard on suffocated; but no matter, it’s the proper course of treatment to pursue. The witch doctor himself gets ready as rapidly as possible another dream-soul, which if he is a careful medical man, he has brought with him in a basket. ”

“ I've got hold of that beast of a witch-doctor, who deserves hanging anyway for all the poor wretches he's killed, and I've told him that as soon as word slips out downriver of our being here, he'll get shot, one-time. He's a man of influence, that witch-doctor, and I shouldn't wonder but what he makes the natives keep their heads shut for quite a long time. ”

“ 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 making of magic was performed before the god with the assistance of the chief witch-doctor, an exceedingly lucrative post won upon merit, occupied by one Bakahenzie, a tall muscular man in the prime of life, whose bearing was that of the native autocrat, fierce and remorseless. ”

“ Such cases primitive Natives believe to be beyond the skill of a medical man. White doctors, they would say, know next to nothing at all about such things. They do not believe in witchcraft and how could they be expected to be able to smell it out of a patient. Only a witch-doctor — if he is more skilful — can smell out and subdue the charm directed by another witch-doctor into the body of the bewitched. ”

“ The next-door neighbours were in great alarm that the witch-doctor would, on the solicitation of the recovering patient, employ some means to punish them for their pretended witchcraft. To escape the infliction, they feed another cunning man, in Nottinghamshire, who told them of a similar charm, which would preserve them from all the malice of their enemies. ”

“ While the white man racks his brains with mere probabilities, the native goes to the witch-doctor, who promises him certainty. The witch-doctor names several persons, often personal enemies to himself, and they are forced to undergo some ordeal, such as dipping their hands in boiling oil, which will burn only the guilty. ”

“ The word likundu literally means smartness, craftiness, skill, occult power, being too clever.
The witch-doctor decides the matter, for he holds a kind of post-mortem on the corpse, and if the arteries near the liver are empty, then the man died as a result of his own witchcraft. If one artery only is empty, that counts for nothing and is disregarded, but if four or five are empty the witch-doctor says: “That,” pointing to one, “is the secret power by which he so skilfully made canoes, or worked at his smithing” (according as the man was a canoe maker or blacksmith) ”

“ To vary the ceremony the medicine man sometimes rushes out of the enclosure into a house, or behind a house, or into the adjacent bush as though in chase of something, and he returns with a bleeding head, and says that he has slain the spirit-possessed animal.
It is this medicine man who searches for the witch (moloki) in the family of the sick one. If a layman charges another with witchcraft the accused can demand that the accuser shall 283drink the ordeal with him; but if this witch-doctor charges a person with witchcraft he himself will not take the ordeal, and no one expects him to do so. ”

“ He then, with soul-earnestness and much eloquence, declaimed against the trickery and lies of 263the witch-doctors, the uselessness of their charms, and the deception of their ordeals.
On one occasion the white man, Bakula, and some other lads were spending the evening in a town. The service was over, the teacher had retired to his hut, and Bakula and his companions had stretched themselves upon their mats in another hut that had been lent to them. During the night they were disturbed by the entrance of a witch-doctor, who hid something in a saucepan. ”

“ Most witchcraft charms I know of among people who have not been in contact with Mohammedanism have always had that element of mixing something with the food or drink—even in that common, true Negro form of killing by witchcraft, putting medicine in the path, there is a poisoned spike as well as charm stuff. There can be no doubt that the witch doctor’s methods of finding out who has poisoned a person are effective, and that the knowledge in the public mind of [Pg 219] this detective power keeps down poisoning to a great extent. ”

“ Bakahenzie clutched his belly and began to howl like a hyena at the moon. The drums stopped. Howl and writhe did Bakahenzie as if a thousand fiends were tearing out his entrails.
He lay rigid. The air seemed to quiver. The lines of every man’s limbs, except the King’s, were drawn in tension. Then from the prostrate body of the witch-doctor, whose legs and arms were twisted as in agony, whose dribbling mouth was closed like a vise, came a ventriloquous falsetto:
“Aie-e! ”

“ Mokorongo was indignant at the lie. The witnesses, too, were amazed at Chiromo's effrontery. But none spoke.
"Take the things out of the basket one by one and place them on the ground in front of you." [Pg 22]
The witch doctor without hesitation began to do as he was bid. The skull, the arm, the weevils as large as mice, the chameleons, the stale offal: these Mokorongo had seen in the hut, but there were other things he had not seen. A necklet of human teeth, another of small antelope horns, yet another of rats' skulls. ”

“ All reasonable people in every clime allow a certain latitude to doctors. They are supposed to know things other people need not, and to do things, like dissections and such, that other people should not, and no one thinks any the worse of them. This is the case with the African physician, whom we roughly call the witch doctor, but whose full title is the combatant of the evils worked by witches and devils on human souls and human property. ”