In Kiziba, a district of Central Africa on the western side of Lake Victoria Nyanza, the souls of dead kings become ruling spirits; temples are built in their honour and priests appointed to serve them. The people are composed of two different races, the Bairu, who are aboriginals, and the Bahima, who are immigrants from the north. The royal family belongs to the Bahima stock. In his lifetime the king's person is sacred; and all his actions, property, and so forth are described by special terms appropriated to that purpose. The people are divided into totemic clans: the totems (muziro) are mostly animals or parts of animals: no man may kill or eat his totem animal, nor marry a woman who has the same totem as himself. The royal family seems to have serpents for their totem; after death the king's soul lives in a serpent, while his body is buried in the hut where he died. The people revere a supreme god named Rugaba, who is believed to have created man and cattle; but they know little about him, and though they [pg 174] occasionally pray to him, particularly in the case of a difficult birth, he has no priests and receives no sacrifices. The business of the priests is to act as intermediaries, not between God and man, but between men and the spirits. The spirits are believed to have been formerly kings of the world. The highest of them is a certain Wamara, who rules over the souls of the dead, and who would seem to have been a great king in his life. Temples are built for him; they are like the houses of men, but only half as large. A perpetual holy fire is kept up in each temple, and the priest passes the night in it. He receives white sheep or goats as victims, and generally acts also as a diviner or physician. When a man is very ill, he thinks that Wamara, the lord of the spirits of the dead, is summoning him to the far country; so he sends a sacrifice to Wamara's priest, who prays to the spirit to let the sick man live yet a while.454 This great spirit of an ancient king, who now rules over the dead, resembles the Egyptian Osiris.
The Bantu tribes who inhabit the great tableland of Northern Rhodesia revere a supreme being whom they call Leza, but their ideas about him are hazy. Thunder, lightning, earthquakes, rain, and other natural phenomena are grouped together under his name as manifestations of his power. Among the more progressive tribes, such as the Awemba and the Wabisa, the great god is thought to take some interest in human affairs; and though they do not pray to him, they nevertheless invoke him by his names of praise, which set forth his attributes as the protector and judge of mankind. It is he, too, who receives the souls of the departed. “Yet, as far as the dominant Wemba tribe is concerned, the cult of Leza is outside their ordinary religion. There is no direct access to him by prayer or by sacrifices, which are made to Mulenga and the other great [pg 175] tribal and ancestral spirits instead. For upon such animism is founded the whole fabric of Wemba religion.”455 The ancestral spirits whom the Awemba and all other tribes of this region worship may be divided into two main classes. First come the spirits of departed chiefs, who are publicly worshipped by the whole tribe; and second come the spirits of near relations who are worshipped privately by each head of a family.456 “Among the Awemba there is no special shrine for these purely family spirits, who are worshipped inside the hut, and to whom family sacrifice of a sheep, a goat, or a fowl is made, the spirit receiving the blood spilt on the ground, while all the members of the family partake of the flesh together. For a religious Wemba man the cult of the spirit of his nearest relations (of his grandparents, or of his deceased father, mother, elder brother, or maternal uncle) is considered quite sufficient. Out of these spirit relatives a man will worship one whom he considers as his special familiar, for various reasons. For instance, the diviner may have told him that his last illness was caused because he had not respected the spirit of his uncle; accordingly he will be careful in future to adopt his uncle as his tutelary spirit. As a mark of such respect he may devote a cow or a goat to one of the spirits of his ancestors. Holding the fowl, for instance, in his hands, he will dedicate it, asking the spirit to come and abide in it, upon which the fowl is let go, and is afterwards called by the name of the spirit. If the necessities, however, of the larder demand that it should be killed, another animal is taken, and the spirit is asked to accept it as a substitute! Before beginning any special task, such as hoeing a new garden, or going on a journey, Wemba men invoke their tutelary spirits to be with them and to assist their efforts, in short ejaculatory prayers usually couched in a set formula. Among many of the tribes in the North Luangwa district longer formal prayers are still made to all the deceased ancestors of the clan at the time of harvest, asking them to protect the crops and to drive away illnesses and evil spirits from [pg 176] the family, which honours them with libations of beer and offerings of the first-fruits.”457
Thus among these tribes, who all belong to the great Bantu family, the public worship which a whole tribe pays to the souls of its dead chiefs is probably nothing but an extension of the private worship which every family pays privately to the souls of its dead members. And just as the members of his family whom a man worships privately are not mythical beings conjured up by imagination out of a distant past, but were once real men like himself whom he knew in life, it may be his father, or uncle, or elder brother, so we may be sure that in like manner the dead chiefs revered by the whole tribe are not creations of the mythical fancy, but were once real men of flesh and blood, who ruled over the tribe, and whose memory has been more or less faithfully preserved by tradition. In this respect the tribes of Northern Rhodesia are typical of all the tribes of that great Bantu family which occupies nearly the whole southern half of Africa, from the great equatorial lakes to the Cape of Good Hope. The main practical religion of all these numerous and widespread peoples appears to be the worship of their ancestors.
To adduce in full the evidence which points to this conclusion would lead us too far from our present subject; it must suffice to cite a few typical statements of competent authorities which refer to different tribes of the Bantu stock. Speaking with special reference to the tribes of South-Eastern Africa, the Rev. James Macdonald tells us that “the religion of the Bantu, which they not only profess but really regulate their conduct by, is based on the belief that the spirits of their ancestors interfere constantly in their affairs. Every man worships his own ancestors and offers sacrifices to avert their wrath. The clan worships the spirits of the ancestors of its chiefs, and the tribe worships the spirits of the ancestors of the paramount chief.”458 “The religion of the Bantu was based upon the supposition of the [pg 177] existence of spirits that could interfere with the affairs of this world. These spirits were those of their ancestors and their deceased chiefs, the greatest of whom had control over lightning. When the spirits became offended or hungry they sent a plague or disaster until sacrifices were offered and their wrath or hunger was appeased. The head of a family of commoners on such an occasion killed an animal, and all ate of the meat, as the hungry ghost was supposed to be satisfied with the smell.”459 For example, in the year 1891 the son of a chief of the Pondomisi tribe was arrested for an assault and sent for trial before a colonial court. It chanced to be a season of intense heat and severe drought, and the Pondomisi tribe attributed these calamities to the wrath of a dead chief named Gwanya, very famous in his lifetime, whose body, fastened to a log, had been buried under a heap of stones in a deep pool of the Lina river. This redoubtable chieftain was the seventh ancestor in the direct line of the man who had committed the assault; and he warmly resented the indignity which the whites had done to a noble scion of his house by consigning him to durance vile. To appease the natural indignation of the ghost, the tribesmen killed cattle on the banks of the pool which contained his grave, and threw the flesh into the water along with new dishes full of beer. The prisoner, however, was convicted of the assault and sentenced by the ruthless magistrate, who was no respecter of ghosts, to pay a fine. But the tribe clubbed together and paid the fine for him; and a few days later rain fell in plenty. The mollified ghost had opened the celestial sluices.460
Another writer, describing the religion of the South [pg 178] African Bantus, tells us that “the ancestral spirits love the very things they loved before they passed through the flesh; they cherish the same desires and have the same antipathies. The living cannot add to the number of the wives of ancestral spirits; but they can kill cattle in their honour and keep their praise and memory alive on earth. Above all things, they can give them beef and beer. And if the living do not give them sufficient of these things the spirits are supposed to give the people a bad time: they send drought, and sickness, and famine, until people kill cattle in their honour. When men are alive they love to be praised and flattered, fed and attended to; after death they want the very same things, for death does not change personality.... In time of drought, or sickness, or great trouble, there would be great searchings of heart as to which ancestor had been neglected, for the trouble would be supposed to be caused by the neglected ancestor. Most of the people would get the subject on their nerves (at least, as far as a Kafir could get anything on the leather strings which do duty for nerves), and some one would be sure to have a vivid dream in which an ancestor would complain that the people had not praised him half enough of late. So an ox would be killed, either by the head-man of the kraal or by a diviner. Then the man would say over the ox as it was being killed, ‘Cry out, ox of So-and-So; listen to us, So-and-So; this is your ox; we praise you by all your laud-giving names, and tell of all your deeds; do not be angry with us any more; do you not see that this is your ox? Do not accuse us of neglecting you; when, forsooth, have we ceased to praise you and offer you meat and beer? Take note, then, that here is another ox we are offering to you.’ When the ox is dead some of the meat is mixed with herbs and medicines and placed in a hut with a bowlful of blood. This meat is placed in the part of the hut where the man loved to sit while he was alive, and some one is told off to guard the sacrifice. The meat is left for a night, or longer, and the spirits are supposed to come and enjoy the smell, or drink the serum which oozes from the meat, and to inhale the smell of the beer. The priest or diviner will then sprinkle the people and the huts with medicine made from the contents of the [pg 179] stomach of the ox. He places a little on a sherd; when this is dry he burns it and calls on the spirits to smell the incense. After the meat has been left for a certain time it is taken out and cooked, and eaten by the men near the cattle kraal in public.... If the trouble does not vanish after this ceremony the people get angry and say to the spirits, ‘When have we ceased to kill cattle for you, and when have we ever refused to praise you by your praise-names? Why, then, do you treat us so shabbily? If you do not behave better we shall utterly forget your names, and then what will you do when there is no one to praise you? You will have to go and live on grasshoppers. If you do not mend your ways we shall forget you. What use is it that we kill oxen for you and praise you? You do not give us rain or crops, or cause our cattle to bear well; you show no gratitude in return for all we do for you. We shall utterly disown you. We shall tell the people that, as for us, we have no ancestral spirits, and this will be to your shame. We are disgusted with you.’ ”461 Thus the sweet savour of beef and beer does not suffice to content Caffre ghosts; they share the love of praise and flattery with many gods of higher rank.
Among the Basutos, an important Bantu people of South Africa, “each family is supposed to be under the direct influence and protection of its ancestors; but the tribe, taken as a whole, acknowledges for its national gods the ancestors of the reigning sovereign. Thus, the Basutos address their prayers to Monaheng and Motlumi, from whom their chiefs are descended. The Baharutsis and the Barolongs invoke Tobege and his wife Mampa. Mampa makes known the will of her husband, announcing each of her revelations by these words, ‘O re! O re!’ ‘He has said! he has said!’ They make a distinction between the ancient and modern divinities. The latter are considered inferior in power, but more accessible; hence this formula, which is often used: ‘New gods! entreat the ancient gods for us!’ In all countries spirits are more the objects of fear than of love. A deep feeling of terror generally accompanies the idea that the dead dispose of the lot of the living. [pg 180] The ancients spoke much of incensed shades. If they sacrificed to the manes, it was generally in order to appease them. These ideas perfectly correspond to those of the Basutos. They conjure rather than pray; although they seek to gain favours, they think more of averting chastisement. Their predominating idea as to their ancestors is, that they are continually endeavouring to draw them to themselves. Every disease is attributed to them; thus medicine among these people is almost entirely a religious affair. The first thing is to discover, by means of the litaola (divining bones), under the influence of what molimo the patient is supposed to be. Is it an ancestor on the father's side or the mother's? According as fate decides, the paternal or maternal uncle will offer the purifying sacrifice, but rarely the father or brother. This sacrifice alone can render efficacious the medicines prescribed by the ngaka (doctor).... As soon as a person is dead he takes his place among the family gods. His remains are deposited in the cattle-pen. An ox is immolated over his grave: this is the first oblation made to the new divinity, and at the same time an act of intercession in his favour, serving to ensure his happy reception in the subterranean regions. All those present aid in sprinkling the grave, and repeat the following prayer: ‘Repose in peace with the gods; give us tranquil nights.’ ”462
Similarly among the Thonga, another Bantu tribe of South Africa, “any man, who has departed this earthly life, becomes a shikwembu, a god”;463 “when an old decrepit man or woman dies, he at once becomes a god: he has entered the domain of infinity.”464 In this tribe “the spirits of the ancestors are the main objects of religious worship. They form the principal category of spirits.”465 “On the one hand, the ancestor-gods are truly gods, endowed with the attributes of divinity; whilst, on the other, they seem to be nothing but mere human beings, exactly on the same level as their worshippers.”466 There are two great classes [pg 181] of these ancestor-gods, to wit, “those of the family, and those of the country, the latter being those of the reigning family. They do not differ as regards their nature. In national calamities those of the country are invoked, whilst, for purely family matters, those of the family are called upon. Moreover, each family has two sets of gods, those on the father's side and those on the mother's, those of kweru and those of bakokwana. They are equal in dignity. Both can be invoked, and the divinatory bones are always asked to which the offering must be made. It seems, however, as if the gods on the mother's side were more tender-hearted and more popular than those on the father's. The reason for this is, perhaps, that relations are easier with the family of the mother than with that of the father. It is also just possible that it is a relic of the matriarchal period, when the ancestors of the mother only were known, and consequently invoked. At any rate, the part played by batukulu [uterine] nephews in the offerings shows that they are the true representatives of the gods, not of those of their father, but of their mother.”467 Among the Thonga “the belief in the continuation of life after death is universal, being at the base of the ancestrolatry, which is the religion of the tribe.”468 “How real is the ancestrolatry, the religion of the Thonga, of, in fact, all the South African Bantus! How frequent and manifold are its manifestations! This is the first, and the most perceptible set of their religious intuitions, and any European, who has stayed in their villages, learnt their language, and tried to understand their customs, has had the opportunity of familiarizing himself with this religion.”469
Among the Basutos and Bechuanas, who also belong to the great Bantu family, the sacrificial ritual is not highly developed. “Only in great misfortunes which affect the whole people or the royal family, a black ox is slaughtered; for in such cases they always think that the angry spirits of the departed are the cause of all the suffering. ‘Re amogioa ki badimo,’ say the people, ‘the spirits are robbing us.’ The ox is led to the chiefs grave; there they [pg 182] pray, ‘Lord, we are come to call upon thee, we who are thy children; make not our hearts troubled; take not, Lord, that which is ours.’ The old chief is honoured and praised in songs, he is invoked by all his praise-names, the ox is killed and its flesh eaten, but the blood and the contents of the stomach are poured on the grave, and there the bones of the sacrificed animal are also deposited.”470
The Zulus, another great Bantu tribe of South Africa, believe in the existence of a being whom they call Unkulunkulu, which means “the Old-Old-one, the most ancient man.” They say that “it is he who was the first man; he broke off in the beginning. We do not know his wife; and the ancients do not tell us that he had a wife.”471 This Old-Old-one or Great-Great-one “is represented as having made all things—men, cattle, water, fire, the mountains, and whatever else is seen. He is also said to have appointed their names. Creation was effected by splitting a reed, when the first man and other things issued from the cleft.”472 Further, the Zulus and other Caffre tribes of Natal “believe that, when a person dies, his i-hloze or isi-tute survives. These words are translated ‘spirit,’ and there seems no objection to the rendering. They refer to something manifestly distinguished from the body, and the nature of which the prophets endeavour to explain by saying that it is identical with the shadow. The residence of the ama-hloze, or spirits, seems to be beneath; the practice of breaking a man's assagais, before they are buried with him, shows that he is believed to return to earth through the grave; while it appears to be generally thought that, if the earth were removed from the grave, the ghost would return and frighten his descendants. When spirits have entered the future state, they are believed to possess great power; prosperity is ascribed to their favour, and misfortune to their anger; they are elevated in fact to the rank of deities, and (except where the Great-Great is worshipped concurrently with them) they are the only objects of a Kafir's adoration. Their attention [pg 183] (or providence) is limited to their own relatives—a father caring for the family, and a chief for the tribe, which they respectively left behind them. They are believed to occupy the same relative position as they did in the body, the departed spirit of a chief being sometimes invoked to compel a man's ancestors to bless him.”473
“To these shades of the dead, especially to the ghosts of their great men, as Jama, Senzangakona, and Chaka, their former kings, they look for help, and offer sacrifices; that is, slaughter cattle to them, and offer a sort of prayer, in time of danger and distress.... When they are sick, they slaughter cattle to the shades, and say, ‘Father, look on me, that this disease may cease from me. Let me have health on the earth, and live a long time.’ They carry the meat into the house, and shut it up there, saying, ‘Let the paternal shades eat, so shall they know that the offering was made for them, and grant us great wealth, so that both we and our children may prosper.’ In the cattle-fold they talk a long time, praising the ghosts; they take the contents of the stomach, and strew it upon all the fold. Again they take it, and strew it within the houses, saying, ‘Hail, friend! Thou of such a place, grant us a blessing, beholding what we have done. You see this distress; may you remove it, since we have given you our animal. We know not what more you want, whether you still require anything more or not.’ They say, ‘May you grant us grain, that it may be abundant, that we may eat, of course, and not be in need of anything, since now we have given you what you want.’ They say, ‘Yes, for a long time have you preserved me in all my going. Behold, you see, I have just come to have a kraal. This kraal was built by yourself, father; and now why do you consent to diminish your own kraal? Build on us as you have begun, let it be large, that your offspring, still here above, may increase, increasing in knowledge of you, whence cometh great power.’ Sometimes they make beer for the ghosts, and leave a little in the pot, saying, ‘It will be eaten by the ghosts that they may grant an abundant harvest again, that we may not have a famine.’ If one is on the point of being injured by anything, he says, ‘I was preserved [pg 184] by our divinity, which was still watching over me.’ Perhaps he slaughters a goat in honour of the same, and puts the gall on his head; and when the goat cries out for pain of being killed, he says, ‘Yes, then, there is your animal, let it cry, that ye may hear, ye our gods who have preserved me; I myself am desirous of living on thus a long time here on the earth; why then do you call me to account, since I think I am all right in respect to you? And while I live, I put my trust in you, our paternal and maternal gods.’ ”474
“Black people,” say the Zulus, “do not worship all Amatongo indifferently, that is, all the dead of their tribe. Speaking generally, the head of each house is worshipped by the children of that house; for they do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names. But their father whom they knew is the head by whom they begin and end in their prayer, for they know him best, and his love for his children; they remember his kindness to them whilst he was living; they compare his treatment of them whilst he was living, support themselves by it, and say, ‘He will still treat us in the same way now he is dead. We do not know why he should regard others besides us; he will regard us only.’ So it is then although they worship the many Amatongo of their tribe, making a great fence around them for their protection; yet their father is far before all others when they worship the Amatongo. Their father is a great treasure to them even when he is dead. And those of his children who are already grown up know him thoroughly, his gentleness, and his bravery. And if there is illness in the village, the eldest son lauds him with the laud-giving names which he gained when fighting with the enemy, and at the same time lauds all the other Amatongo; the son reproves the father, saying, ‘We for our parts may just die. Who are you looking after? Let us die all of us, that we may see into whose house you will enter.475 You will eat grasshoppers; you will no longer be [pg 185] invited to go anywhere, if you destroy your own village.’ After that, because they have worshipped him, they take courage saying, ‘He has heard; he will come and treat our diseases, and they will cease.’ Such then is the faith which children have in the Itongo [ancestral spirit] which is their father. And if there is a chief wife of a village, who has given birth to children, and if her husband is not dead, her Itongo is much reverenced by her husband and all the children. And that chief wife becomes an Itongo which takes great care of the village. But it is the father especially that is the head of the village.”476 Thus among the Zulus it is the spirits of those who have just died, especially the spirits of fathers and mothers, who are most revered and worshipped. The spirits of the more remote dead are forgotten.
When the missionaries inquired into the religious ideas of the Herero, a Bantu tribe of German South-West Africa, they heard much of a certain Mukuru, whom at first they took to be the great god of heaven and earth. Accordingly they adopted Mukuru as the native name for the Christian God, and set out on their mission to preach the glad tidings of Mukuru and his divine Son to the poor benighted heathen. But their first experiences were disconcerting. Again and again when they arrived in a village and announced their intention to the chief, they were brought up very short by that great man, who told them with an air of astonishment that he himself was Mukuru. For example, Messrs. Büttner and Irle paid a visit to an old chief named Tjenda and remonstrated with him on the impropriety of which he had been guilty in giving a baptized girl in marriage to a native gentleman whose domestic arrangements were framed on the polygamous patriarchal pattern. “Mukuru will punish you for that,” said Mr. Büttner. “What?” roared the chief. “Who's Mukuru? Why, I am Mukuru in my own tribe,” and he [pg 186] bundled the two missionaries out of the village. A repetition of these painful incidents at last impressed on the minds of the missionaries the conviction that Mukuru was not God at all but merely the head of a family, an ancestor, whether alive or dead.477 They ascertained at the same time that the Herero recognize a good god who dwells in heaven and bears the name of Ndjambi Karunga. But they do not worship him nor bring him offerings, because he is so kind that he hurts nobody, and therefore they need not fear him. “Rather they share the opinion of the other Bantu tribes that Ndjambi, the good Creator, has withdrawn to heaven and left the government on earth to the demons.”478 “It is true that the Herero are acquainted with punishment for what is bad. But that punishment they ascribe to Mukuru or their ancestors. It is their ancestors (Ovakuru479) whom they must fear; it is they who are angry and can bring danger and misfortune on a man. So it is intelligible that the whole of their worship turns, not on Ndjambi Karunga, but on their ancestors. It is in order to win and keep their favour, to avert their displeasure and wrath, in short to propitiate them, that the Herero bring their many offerings; they do so not out of gratitude, but out of fear, not out of love, but out of terror. Their religion is a worship of ancestors with here and there touches of fetishism.”480 “Thus among the Herero, as among all Bantu tribes, there exists a religious dualism: they know the highest, the true God, but they worship their ancestors.”481 And among the worshipful [pg 187] ancestors “the old dead chiefs of every tribe take the first place. The son of a great dead chief and the whole tribe worship that old father as their god. But the remote ancestors of that chief they do not worship, indeed they hardly know them by name and can no longer point to their graves.”482 Thus with the Herero, as with the Zulus, it is the recent and well-remembered dead who are chiefly or exclusively worshipped; as the souls of the departed recede [pg 188] further and further into the past their memory perishes, and the nimbus of supernatural glory which encircled it for a time fades gradually away.
The religion of the Ovambo, another Bantu tribe of German South-West Africa, is similar. They also recognize a great being named Kalunga, who created the world and man, but they neither fear nor worship him. A far greater part is played in the religion of the Ovambo by their belief in spirits, and amongst the worshipful spirits a conspicuous place is assigned to the souls of the dead. Every man leaves behind him at death a spirit, which continues to exist on earth and can influence the living; for example, it may enter into their bodies and thereby cause all sorts of sickness. However, the souls of ordinary dead men can exert their influence only on members of their own families; the souls of dead chiefs, on the other hand, have power over the rain, which they can either give or withhold. To these powerful spirits a portion of the new corn is offered at harvest as a thank-offering for their forbearance in not visiting the people with sickness, and above all for their bounty in sending down the fertilizing showers on the crops. The souls of dead magicians are particularly dreaded; and to prevent the multiplication of these dangerous spirits it is customary to dismember their bodies, severing the arms and legs from the trunk and cutting the tongue out of the mouth. If these precautions are taken immediately after death, the soul of the dead man cannot become a dangerous ghost; the mutilation of his body has practically disarmed his spirit.483
The Wahehe, a Bantu tribe of German East Africa, believe in a great invisible spirit named Nguruhi, who created the world and rules both human destiny and the elements. He it is who makes the rain to fall, the sun to shine, the wind to blow, the thunder to roll, and the crops to grow. “This god is accordingly conceived as all-powerful, yet with the limitation that he only exercises a general power of direction over the world, especially human fate, while the masoka, the spirits of the dead, wield a permanent [pg 189] and very considerable influence on the course of particular events. Nguruhi is lord also of all the spirits of the dead (masoka), but his relation to them has not been further thought out. With this Supreme Being the people hold no intercourse by means of prayer, sacrifice, or in any other way. He stands remote from the religious life of the Wahehe and really serves only as an explanation of all those things and events which are otherwise inexplicable. All religious intercourse, all worship centres alone on the spirits of the dead. Hence if we speak of a religion of the Wahehe, it must be described as a pure worship of ancestors.”484 The human soul quits the body at death and at once becomes an ancestral spirit (m'soka), invisible and endowed with complete liberty of motion. Even the youngest children have souls which rank among the ancestral spirits at death. Hence the great multitude of the dead comprises spirits of all ages, from the infant one day old to the grey-haired patriarch. They are good or bad according as they were good or bad in life, and their social position also is unchanged. He who was powerful in life is powerful also in death; he who was a nobody among men is a nobody also among the spirits. Hence the ghost of a great man can do more for the living than the ghost of a common man; and the ghost of a man can do more than the ghost of a woman. Yet even the meanest ghost has power over the greatest living man, who can only defend himself by appealing for help to stronger ancestral spirits. Thus while the Supreme Being exercises a general superintendence over affairs, the real administration is in the hands of the ancestral spirits. While he, for example, regulates the weather as a whole, it is the ghosts who cause each particular shower to fall or the sun to break out in glory from the clouds. If he sends plagues on the whole people or stays the ravages of disease, it is the ghosts who make each individual sick or sound. These powerful spirits exert themselves especially to help their descendants, though they [pg 190] do not hesitate to plague their own kith and kin if they think themselves neglected. They flit freely through the air and perch on trees, mountains, and so forth, but they lodge by preference at their graves, and you are always sure of finding them there, if you wish to consult them.485 That is why in the country of the Wahehe the only places of sacrifice are the graves; temples and altars are unknown.486 However, it is only the bodies of considerable persons that are buried; the corpses of common folk are simply thrown away in the bush;487 so that the number of graves and consequently of sacrificial places is strictly limited. The spirits of the dead appear to the living most commonly in dreams to give them information or warning, but oftener to chide and torment them. So the sleeper wakes in a fright and consults a diviner, who directs him what he must do in order to appease the angry ghost. Following the directions of his spiritual adviser the man sacrifices an ox, or it may be only a sheep or a fowl, at the tomb of one of his ancestors, prays to the ghost, and having scattered a few morsels of the victim's flesh on the grave, and spat a mouthful of beer upon it, retires with his family to feast on the remainder of the carcase. Such sacrifices to the dead are offered on occasion of sickness, the lack of male heirs, a threatened war, an intended journey, in short, before any important undertaking of which the issue is doubtful; and, they are accompanied by prayers for health, victory, good harvests, and so forth.488