negotiations were suspended.”
The fetich-man seldom finds a native disposed to question his claim to
supernatural powers. He is not only a doctor and a priest,—two capacities in
which his influence is necessarily very powerful; he is also a witch-finder, and
this is an office which invests him with a truly formidable authority. When a
man of worth dies, his death is invariably ascribed to witchcraft, and the aid of
the fetich-man is invoked to discover the witch.
“When a man is sick a long time,” said Mongilombas, “they call Ngembi, and if
she cannot make him well, the fetich-man. He comes at night, in a white dress,
with cock’s feathers on his head, and having his bell and little glass. He calls two
or three relations together into a room. He does not speak, but always looks in
his glass. Then he tells them that the sickness is not of Mbwiri, nor of Obambo,
nor of God, but that it comes from a witch. They say to him, ‘What shall we do?’
He goes out and says, ‘I have told you: I have no more to say.’ They give him a
dollar’s worth of cloth; and every night they gather together in the street, and
they cry, ‘I know that man who witch my brother. It is good for you to make him
well.’ Then the witch makes him well. But if the man do not recover, they call
the bush doctor from the Shekani country. He sings in the language of the bush.
At night he goes into the street; all the people flock about him. With a tiger-cat
skin in his hand, he walks to and fro, until, singing all the while, he lays the tiger
skin at the feet of the witch. At the conclusion of his song the people seize the
witch, and put him, or her, in chains, saying, ‘If you don’t restore our brother to
health, we will kill you.’”
One evening, as Mr. Reade was sitting in a mission house at Corisco, with the
windows open, he heard a wild and piteous cry rising from a village at a short
distance. A sudden silence fell upon his friends. The school was in the next
room, and two girls who belonged to that village lifted up their voices and wept.
It was the death-knell, and the knell of more lives than one. A chieftain for some
time had been lying in a hopeless condition, and a woman had been denounced
for having bewitched him. She had a son of about seven years of age, and
fearing lest when he reached manhood, he should become her avenger, the
accusers included him also in their denunciation. Both had been made prisoners,
and on the death of the chief would be killed.
The following day was Sunday, and Mr. Reade accompanied Mr. Mackay, the
missionary, to the village. The man was not dead; but he had suddenly become
speechless, and his attendants had concluded that the spirit had departed.