Fetichism in West Africa
Fetichism in West Africa PREFACECHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER XCHAPTER XICHAPTER XIICHAPTER XIIICHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XVCHAPTER XVICHAPTER XVIIGLOSSARYGLOSSARYCopyright
Fetichism in West Africa
Robert Hamill Nassau
PREFACE
On the 2d of July, 1861, I sailed from New York City on a
little brig, the “Ocean Eagle,” with destination to the island of
Corisco, near the equator, on the West Coast of Africa. My first
introduction to the natives of Africa was a month later, when the
vessel stopped at Monrovia, the capital of the Liberian Republic,
to land a portion of its trade goods, and at other ports of
Liberia, Sinoe, and Cape Palmas; thence to Corisco on September
12.Corisco is a microcosm, only five miles long by three miles
wide; its surface diversified with every variety of landscape,
proportioned to its size, of hill, prairie, stream, and lake. It is
located in the eye of the elephant-head shaped Bay of Corisco, and
from twelve to twenty miles distant from the mainland. Into the bay
flow two large rivers,—the Muni (the Rio D’Angra of commerce) and
the Munda (this latter representing the elephant’s
proboscis).The island, with adjacent mainland, was inhabited by the
Benga tribe. It was the headquarters of the American Presbyterian
Mission. On the voyage I had studied the Benga dialect with my
fellow-passenger, the senior member of the Mission, Rev. James L.
Mackey; and was able, on my landing, to converse so well with the
natives that they at once enthusiastically accepted me as an
interested friend. This has ever since been my status among all
other tribes.I lived four years on the island, as preacher, teacher, and
itinerant to the adjacent mainland, south to the Gabun River and
its Mpongwe tribe, east up the Muni and Munda rivers, and north to
the Benito River.In my study of the natives’ language my attention was drawn
closely to their customs; and in my inquiry into their religion I
at once saw how it was bound up in these customs. I met with other
white men—traders, government officials, and even some
missionaries—whose interest in Africa, however deep, was
circumscribed by their special work for, respectively, wealth,
power, and Gospel proclamation. They could see in those customs
only “folly,” and in the religion only “superstition.”I read many books on other parts of Africa, in which the same
customs and religion prevailed. I did not think it reasonable to
dismiss curtly as absurd the cherished sentiments of so large a
portion of the human race. I asked myself: Is there no logical
ground for the existence of these sentiments, no philosophy behind
all these beliefs? I began to search; and thenceforward for thirty
years, wherever I travelled, wherever I was guest to native chief,
wherever I lived, I was always leading the conversation, in hut or
camp, back to a study of the native thought.I soon found that I gained nothing if I put my questions
suddenly or without mask. The natives generally were aware that
white men despised them and their beliefs, and they were slow to
admit me to their thought if I made a direct advance. But, by
chatting as a friend, telling them the strange and great things of
my own country, and first eliciting their trust in me and interest
in my stories, they forgot their reticence, and responded by
telling me of their country. I listened, not critically, but
apparently as a believer; and then they vied with each other in
telling me all they knew and thought.That has been the history of a thousand social chats,—in
canoes by day, in camp and hut by night, and at all hours in my own
house, whose public room was open at any hour of day or evening for
any visitor, petitioner, or lounger, my attention to whose wants or
wishes was rewarded by some confidence about their habits or
doings.In 1865 I was transferred to Benito, where I remained until
the close of 1871. Those years were full of travels afoot or by
boat, south the hundred miles to Gabun, north toward the Batanga
region, and east up the Benito for a hundred miles as a pioneer, to
the Balengi and Boheba tribes,—a distance at that time
unprecedented, considering the almost fierce opposition of the
coast people to any white man’s going to the local sources of their
trade.After more than ten uninterrupted years in Africa, I took a
furlough of more than two years in the United States, and returned
to my work in 1874.I responded to a strong demand on the part of the supporters
of Foreign Missions in Africa, that mission operations should no
longer be confined to the coast. Unsuccessful efforts had been made
to enter by the Gabun, by the Muni, and by the Benito.On the 10th of September, 1874, I entered the Ogowe River, at
Nazareth Bay, one of its several embouchures into the Atlantic,
near Cape Lopez, a degree south of the equator. But little was
known of the Ogowe. Du Chaillu, in his “Equatorial Africa” (1861),
barely mentions it, though he was hunting gorillas and journeying
in “Ashango Land,” on the sources of the Ngunye, a large southern
affluent of the Ogowe.A French gunboat a few years before had ascended it for one
hundred and thirty miles to Lembarene, the head of the Ogowe Delta,
and had attached it to France. Two English traders and one German
had built trading-houses at that one-hundred-and-thirty-mile limit,
and traversed the river with small steam launches in their rubber
trade. Besides these three, I was the only other white resident.
They were living in the Galwa tribe, cognate in language with the
Mpongwe. I settled at a one-hundred-and-fifty-mile limit, in the
Akele tribe (cognate with the Benga), building my house at a place
called Belambila.Two years later I abandoned that spot, came down to
Lembarene, and built on Kângwe Hill. There I learned the Mpongwe
dialect. I remained there until 1880, successful with school and
church, and travelling by boat and canoe thousands of miles in the
many branches of the Ogowe, through its Delta, and in the lake
country of Lakes Onange and Azyingo. In 1880 I took a second
furlough to the United States, remaining eighteen months, and
returning at the close of 1881.My prosperous and comfortable station at Kângwe was occupied
by a new man, and I resumed my oldrôleof pioneer. I travelled up the
Ogowe, one hundred and fifty miles beyond Lembarene, ascending and
descending the wild waters of its cataracts, and settled at
Talaguga, a noted rock near which was subsequently established the
French military post, Njoli, at the two-hundred-mile limit of the
course of the river. There I was alone with Mrs. Nassau, my nearest
white neighbors the two French officers five miles up river at the
post, and my successors at Kângwe, seventy miles down river. The
inhabitants were wild cannibal Fang, just recently emerged from the
interior forest. It was a splendid field for original
investigation, and I applied myself to the Fang
dialect.I remained at Talaguga until 1891, when I took a third
furlough to the United States, and stayed through 1892, during
which time the Mission Board transferred my entire Ogowe work, with
its two stations and four churches and successful schools, to the
French Paris Evangelical Society.In March, 1893, at the request of the Rev. Frank F.
Ellinwood, D.D., LL.D., I wrote and read, before the American
Society of Comparative Religions, a forty-minute essay on Bantu
Theology.At the wish of that Society I loaned the manuscript to them,
for their use in the Parliament of Religions at the Chicago
Exposition; but I carried the original draft of the essay with me
on my return to Africa in August, 1893, where I was located at
Libreville, Gabun, the Mission’s oldest and most civilized station.
There I found special advantage for my investigations. Though those
educated Mpongwes could tell me little that was new as to purely
unadulterated native thought, they, better than an ignorant tribe,
could and did give me valuable intelligent replies to my inquiries
as to the logical connection between native belief and act, and the
essential meaning of things which I had seen and heard elsewhere.
My ignorant friends at other places had given me a mass of isolated
statements. My Mpongwe friends had studied a little grammar, and
were somewhat trained to analyze. They helped me in the collocation
of the statements and in the deduction of the philosophy behind
them. It was there that I began to put my conclusions in
writing.In 1895 Miss Mary H. Kingsley journeyed in West Africa, sent
on a special mission to investigate the subject of freshwater
fishes. She also gratified her own personal interest in native
African religious beliefs by close inquiries all along the
coast.During her stay at Libreville in the Kongo-Français,
May-September, 1895, my interest, common with hers, in the study of
native African thought led me into frequent and intimate
conversations with her on that subject. She eagerly accepted what
information, from my longer residence in Africa, I was able to
impart. I loaned her the essay, with permission to make any use of
it she desired in her proposed book, “Travels in West Africa.” When
that graphic story of her African wanderings appeared in 1897, she
made courteous acknowledgment of the use she had made of it in her
chapters on Fetich.On page 395 of her “Travels in West Africa,” referring to my
missionary works, and to some contributions I had made to science,
she wrote: “Still I deeply regret he has not done more for science
and geography.... I beg to state I am not grumbling at him ... but
entirely from the justifiable irritation a student of fetich feels
at knowing that there is but one copy of this collection of
materials, and that this copy is in the form of a human being, and
will disappear with him before it is half learned by us, who cannot
do the things he has done.”This suggestion of Miss Kingsley’s gave me no new thought; it
only sharpened a desire I had hopelessly cherished for some years.
In my many missionary occupations—translation of the Scriptures,
and other duties—I had never found the strength, when the special
missionary daily work was done, to sit down and put into writing
the mass of material I had collected as to the meaning and uses of
fetiches. Nor did I think it right for me to take time that was
paid for by the church in which to compile a book that would be my
own personal pleasure and property.Impressed with this idea, on my fourth furlough to America in
1899, I confided my wish to a few personal friends, telling them of
my plan, not indeed ever to give up my life-work in and for Africa,
but to resign from connection with the Board; and, returning to
Africa under independent employ and freed from mission control, but
still working under my Presbytery, have time to gratify my
pen.One of these friends was William Libbey, D. Sc., Professor of
Physical Geography and Director of the E. M. Museum of Geology and
Archæology in Princeton University. Without my knowledge he
subsequently mentioned the subject to his university friend, Rev.
A. Woodruff Halsey, D.D., one of the Secretaries of the Board of
Foreign Missions. Dr. Halsey thought my wish could be gratified
without my resigning from the Board’s service.In November, 1899, the following action of the Board was
forwarded to me: “November 20th, 1899. In view of the wide and
varied information possessed by the Rev. Robert H. Nassau, D.D., of
the West Africa Mission, regarding the customs and traditions of
the tribes on the West Coast, and the importance of putting that
knowledge into some permanent form, the Board requested Dr. Nassau
to prepare a volume or volumes on the subject; and it directed the
West Africa Mission to assign him, on his return from his furlough,
to such forms of missionary work as will give him the necessary
leisure and opportunity.”On my return to Africa in 1900, I was located at Batanga, one
hundred and seventy miles north of Gabun, and was assigned to the
pastorate of the Batanga Church, the largest of the twelve churches
of the Corisco Presbytery, with itineration to and charge of the
sessions of the Kribi and Ubĕnji churches.During intervals of time in the discharge of these pastoral
duties my recreation was the writing and sifting of the multitude
of notes I had collected on native superstition during the previous
quarter of a century. The people of Batanga, though largely
emancipated from the fetich practices of superstition, still
believed in its witchcraft aspect. I began there to arrange the
manuscript of this work. There, more than elsewhere, the natives
seemed willing to tell me tales of their folk-lore, involving
fetich beliefs. From them, and also from Mpongwe informants, were
gathered largely the contents of Chapters XVI and
XVII.And now, on this my fifth furlough, the essay on Bantu
Theology has grown to the proportions of this present
volume.The conclusions contained in all these chapters are based on
my own observations and investigations.Obligation is acknowledged to a number of writers on Africa
and others, quotations from whose books are credited in the body of
this work. I quote them, not as informants of something I did not
already know, but as witnesses to the fact of the universality of
the same superstitious ideas all over Africa.By the courtesy of the American Geographical Society,
Chapters IV, V, X, and XI have appeared in its Bulletin during the
years 1901-1903.I am especially obligated to Professor Libbey for his
sympathetic encouragement during the writing of my manuscript, and
for his judicious suggestions as to the final form I have given
it.ROBERT HAMILL NASSAUPhiladelphia,March 24,
1904
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II