the wicked major 45mediums who did not enter the trance during the ritual, and tells him:
“Moukayla, the feast was great this year. But next year we have to have two
such feasts and that way we, the Hauka, will be very content!”
Most of the Zerma migrant laborers traveled back to Niger every year
to cultivate their fields. The Hauka spirits of Ghanaian origin were thus
brought back to Niger, where they enriched the pantheon of the earlier
Hauka and Babule spirits. Among the Hausa of Niger, the spirits contin-
ued to spread east. They reappear under yet another name, Mushe (from
the French monsieur), in the writings of Ralph Faulkingham (1975), who
conducted fieldwork from 1968 to 1975 in a village near Madaoua in Ni-
ger. Faulkingham encountered two exclusive cults of spirit worship that
existed alongside each other. Bori ceremonies were reserved to venerate
indigenous, inheritable spirits, while the ceremonies of the ‘yan Mushe,
the followers of Monsieur spirits, were dedicated to the European spirits.
According to Faulkingham’s (1975: 40) interlocutors, the cult of the Mushe
had been installed in their village “over half a century ago.” At the time of
his research, the ‘yan Mushe were headed by a retired soldier, Abdu ‘dan
Umma, who had fought with the Free French in North Africa during
World War II, paralleling the case of Ousmane Fodé, the chief priest of
the Hauka on the Gold Coast. During the rituals, Abdu ‘dan Umma em-
bodied Kabran Sakitar (Corporal Secretary), and “brandishing his whip,
he barked commands to his troops in French (Allez!, viens! Vite! Vite!;
non ce n’est pas ca). With each utterance they fi led in order, stopped, then
turned about. W hen they reacted slowly, Abdu shouted, ‘I am Kabran
Sakitar; do as I say!’” (Faulkingham 1975: 43). Among the thirteen Mushe
spirits listed by Faulkingham, we meet our old acquaintance Komanda
Mugu, the Wicked Major, as well as Lisidan (from the French adjudant),
Ba’kin Bature (Hausa for “black European”), and Halima, the “wife” of
the Babule. It is interesting to note that the Mushe spirits had taken over
some of the traditional spirits’ responsibilities: they were sought after dur-
ing bad times, such as a long dry spell in the rainy season, and they were
believed to safeguard the general welfare of the village to such an extent
that they would even “render a beating to ‘inheritable’ spirits” if these
plagued the people (Faulkingham 1975: 40).
Although at the time of Faulkingham’s research, the European coloniz-
ers had left Niger a decade earlier, their power lingered on. Transformed