Number of medicine men—How to become a witch-doctor—Mayeya and his long dive—Makwata and his talking spear—A simple trick—Female witch-doctors—Three kinds of witchcraft—Discredited witch-doctors—Fear of the witch-doctors.

There is not so great a variety of medicine men (nganga)^[41] among the Boloki as among the Bakongo of the Lower Congo, nor is the modus operandi of bewitching people and of removing the witchcraft so well defined. Among the Boloki the medicine man is much in evidence, but he is not regarded with much awe or respect. The office is hereditary, and it is difficult for a person to become a medicine man who has not already a near relative in the profession. The old medicine man teaches his son the tricks of his trade free of all charges; and when a novice is considered efficient he undergoes the following test: Something is hidden and he has to find it, and having discovered the secreted article he must then perform a magic ceremony, such as killing an animal possessed by a spirit—a trick he has easily learned from his father, and after that he blossoms out as a fully qualified medicine man.

If a person in whose family there has been a medicine man desires to join the profession he goes to an old witch-doctor, and on paying a heavy fee he is taught as though he were a son, but he must pass the usual tests as above; if, however, a person in whose family there has never been a medicine man wishes to join the profession, he is deterred from so doing by being told that he must first kill all the members of his family by witchcraft, as offerings to that spirit (mweta) of the particular branch he desires to join. This results in the man refusing to become a witch-doctor, and even if he were so callous as to still wish it, his family would not allow him to proceed, as they believe they would fall victims to his witchcraft. Thus the secrets of the profession are retained in a very few families. Still, I have known a slave belonging to a Boloki man become a great medicine man by pretending to perform a wonderful feat, which was as follows:

Mayeya, for that was the man’s name, went one day with a lad in a canoe across the river. By and by the lad returned without Mayeya, and on being asked where he was, the lad replied: “Mayeya fell from the canoe into the river, and since then I have not seen him.”

Seven days after this Mayeya walked up from the river into the town dressed in his best cloth, etc. The people gathered around him asking him where he had been, and he solemnly informed them that he had been under the river for the whole of the seven days, consulting with the water-spirits, and that now he was a witch-doctor. The people believed in him, and flocked to him with cases from all the neighbouring villages, towns, and districts, and by his many and large fees he became so wealthy that he was able to pay ten men and two women—one woman is equal in price to four men—for his ransom, and then became a slave-owner himself and a man of wealth.

One day I heard Mayeya boasting outside my house of the seven days he had spent under the water in company with the water-spirits; so going to him I said: “Mayeya, I hear you have lived under the river for seven days.”

“Yes,” he said, “I have.”

“Well,” I replied, “I will give you five thousand brass rods”—the currency of that district—“if you will remain under the water here in front of my house while I count them.”

He answered: “I cannot do it just now, but I will return on another day and do it for you.” Whenever I met Mayeya after that I always reminded him of his promise to stop under the river while I counted the rods.

The people at last used to urge him to accept my challenge and offer of 5000 brass rods. They argued with him, saying: “You have remained under the water for seven days, surely you can stay under it while the white man counts five thousand, for you know he counts very quickly. Go and get your five thousand rods, and then you will be able to buy two more wives.”

Mayeya, however, put them off with first one excuse and then another, until at last they chaffed him about it, laughed at him, and expressed the doubt as to whether he had stayed under the water half a day, much less seven whole days and nights.

As he still continued to make excuses the natives lost faith in him, his practice fell off, and the last I saw of Mayeya was his coming to borrow of me 100 brass rods, for he was in difficulties. To his request I replied: “No, you have cheated many people out of their money, and done to death many a person by your false accusations of witchcraft; I will not lend you a single brass rod, but there are five thousand waiting for you if you will only remain under the water while I count them.”

I was seated one day among some natives when they began to talk of the wonderful things Makwata (who was present) could do in making his spear shake and talk.

Now I never laughed at the pretensions of the natives, no matter how absurd they might be, nor did I ridicule their views, thoughts, and expressions. Perhaps that was the reason why they spoke so frankly to me, and tried to explain their ideas about things in general. I always dealt with them seriously and sympathetically.

I turned to Makwata and asked him whether he could do the wonderful things his companions were talking about or not. He very emphatically asserted that he could “make his spear shake and talk.”

“I suppose,” I said, “you will stand near the spear, or put the spear in a lot of grass.”

“No,” he replied, “I will stick my spear on the bank by the river, and I will sit here.”

“Very good,” I answered; “I will give you five hundred rods if you do it.”

“I can do it in my town,” he asserted, “but not here.”

“All right,” I said; “I am coming to visit your town next Sunday, and will bring the rods with me.” But when I went to the town at the appointed time, Makwata was not there; he had, however, left me a message to say that he would bring his spear up to Monsembe and do the wonderful performance there.

Several weeks passed away, and while talking to some natives on the verandah of my house I saw Makwata pass, so I called to him and asked if he had brought his talking spear, for the 500 rods were ready.

“No,” he replied, “I have not brought my spear.”

Turning to my native companions I said: “Your witch-doctors will never do their tricks before me, although I offer them many brass rods; but my wife and I will do a trick before you without payment. I will put three articles on the verandah, my wife shall go into her bedroom, and when she comes out she will tell you which article you touched.”

“Oh, no!” they said in chorus; “she is not able to do that.”

The articles were arranged in a line, my wife went to her room, one of the things was touched, and she came and pointed out which they had touched. “Let her do it again,” they requested. It was done again and again, until one young man thought he had fathomed the trick, and he, with much excitement, said: “Mama looks through the window. Let someone go into the room with her.”

“Certainly,” I at once acceded to their request, and two native women accompanied my wife, and on their return the natives asked: “Did Mama look through the window?”

“Oh, no,” the women replied; “she went right to the other side of the room.”

My friends were nonplussed. They could not see through the trick, and many came in ones and twos afterwards and asked me how many fowls or goats did I want to teach them the trick. They never again boasted in my presence of what their witch-doctors could do.

There are some quasi “doctors.” Men and women who have recovered from a serious complaint set up to cure that particular sickness. They use massage with hot or cold water, or no water at all, and simple herbs, and there is no doubt that they do a considerable amount of good.

There are female witch-doctors who perform the same rites as the male ones, such as the witch-doctors who conduct their ceremonies either enclosed in a mat or out in the open; but the one who cures anæmia and debility, makes the necessary “medicine” for pregnant women, attends confinements, and takes certain cases of sickness among men is always a female. Each is more or less famous in his own line, and with one or two exceptions rarely goes beyond his own limits.

There is the general practitioner, who is not a specialist as the other medicine men are. He is regarded, however, as knowing more than the others, with the exception of the one who performs in a mat. He uses all kinds of herbs, prepares the different charms for warding off diseases, and cures divers complaints; but he never attempts to exorcise spirits or to find witches. He is called by the natives nganga ya mono, i.e. the medicine man who uses medicines, herbs, or charms. His fees are comparatively small, and he is consulted in the first stages of an illness in the hope that he will be able to effect a cure, and thus save the larger fees demanded by other branches of the profession.

When rain is falling, and for some reason or other it is not desirable, the rain-doctor takes a small leaf and puts it on the closed fist of his left hand, and extending the arm in the direction from which the rain is coming he waves it to and fro in a semicircle; he then strikes the leaf with the open palm of the right hand, and should the leaf burst at the first smack the rain will stop in “one paddling,” i.e. the time paddlers paddle on one side of a large canoe before changing to the other side—this is about twenty minutes; if the leaf does not burst at the first smack but at the second, then the rain will not stop for “two paddlings,” i.e. forty minutes, and so on; but if the leaf does not burst at all after repeated slaps, then the rain will not stop for a very long time. When rain is threatening, this ceremony is performed in order to ascertain how long it will be before the rain will fall. If the leaf breaks at the first blow the rain will begin to fall in twenty minutes, and so on to two blows and three blows. They will start a journey or remain at home according to the indications of this performance. The lads have often asked me to postpone a journey because the divination of the leaf predicted rain.

When a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities of a man the people present will call the beloved child of the deceased, and giving him (or her) a lighted ember from the hearth with a vine twined round it, they will ask him to stop the rain. The lad steps forward and waves the vine-encircled ember towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says: “Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral ceremonies.” The son after this rite must not drink water—he may drink sugar-cane wine—nor put his feet in water for one day. Should he not observe these prohibitions the rain will fall at once.

When it is desirable to have rain the native takes down from the shelf some sticks which have “medicine” bound round them and plunges them into water mixed with arrowroot leaves, and then the rain will soon begin to fall. It is rarely that they have to resort to the rain-doctor to bring rain, as the rains fall with great regularity all the year round; they employ him more frequently to predict when the rain will stop, or to stop it with his charms. On the Upper Congo throwing salt on the fire will cause a superabundance of rain to fall, but on the Lower Congo salt is a charm for stopping the rain.

When a family is troubled with much sickness or frequent deaths the medicine man of the mat (nganga ya bwaka) is engaged, who, on his arrival, puts some stakes in the ground and ties a mat round them, thus making an enclosure in which he sits while performing his ceremonies. A string is stretched from the roof of his client’s house to one of the stakes of this mat enclosure, and the end of the string drops inside; dried plantain leaves, twigs, etc., dangle from the string, and outside the mat sit some young men and lads with drums and horns, and the various folk interested in the rites stand or sit around.

When all is ready the medicine man enters his enclosure and pulling the string, he shakes the leaves and the lads beat their drums and blow their horns, and the men and women sitting around chant a chorus in admirable time. Directly the leaves stop shaking the drummers and singers understand it as a sign for them to remain quiet. The medicine man then begins to speak to the various spirits, and answers himself in assumed voices, thus pretending to hold conversations with them. As often as he feels tired with his efforts he shakes the leaves, and the drums are beaten, and the folk chant until he has recovered his breath, whereupon he starts the pseudo-conversations again. These conversations he maintains through the whole day (sometimes for two or three days), but generally towards the afternoon of the second day he comes out of the enclosure holding a bleeding head in his hand, and assures the family that he has killed the animal in which the troublesome spirit was residing, and now the family will no more be afflicted with sickness and death. 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 drink 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. The accused must take the ordeal alone, and should he (or she) fall repeatedly he is condemned, and is left either to die as the result of the large doses of ordeal or is hung on a tree. The corpse is left unburied—it is the body of a witch, the most hated being in all Congoland.

This medicine man of the mat in killing a spirit troubling a family works hard and earns his money. After spending several hours a day in the mat discussing with the spirits and trying to discover which is menacing the family, he at last decides on one, and when the right moment arrives the medicine man makes a terrific noise inside the mat, as though he were fighting for his life. Shouts, screams, derisive laughter, whacks, thuds, and smacks proceed from the interior of the mat, and at last the witch-doctor rushes out panting and sweating profusely, holding in his hand a bleeding head, and declaring that he has killed the animal possessed by the particular spirit that was troubling the family. With the bleeding head he rushes to the river and throws it far out into the running water. The family is supposed now to recover its health, the medicine man pulls down his mats, receives his fee, and departs.

What is the bleeding head? On one occasion some of our school lads chased one of these medicine men who came from his mat with a bleeding head. He ran for the river, but they headed him off, and in desperation he ran to a pool of water and threw the head into it. The boys entered the water, and bringing it out they found it was a lizard’s head. On another occasion it was a rat’s head. Thus the family had paid a big fee to have a rat or lizard killed, and the bleeding neck shown to them. Up to that time the folk had always believed that it was some mysterious animal which the medicine man dug up from the ground inside his mat, killed by his occult power and threw into the river so that it could never more harm his clients.

This medicine man who operates in a mat is the most feared and respected of all the witch-doctors. It is believed that he can see the disembodied spirits, i.e. ghosts, also the souls of people, and the different spirits of disease, and hold communication with them. He bottles in calabashes or imprisons in saucepans the local spirits that will otherwise hinder the hunters trapping the wild animals; he makes the dogs keen hunters with his charms and medicines; he gives the reasons for the floods, and indicates the best way to cause them to subside; and he also has very close dealings with the spirit of wealth.

There is another class of medicine men that scorns to perform its ceremonies inside a mat, but practises its craft in the open before all the people. These are called (nganga ya libanda) medicine men of the open, outside. A family suffering from much sickness has called in one medicine man after another without experiencing relief, and they may have had even the “mat witch-doctor” and felt no better after having paid him his large fee, so now they try again with this one who works in the open.

He arrives dressed in monkey skins, bush-cat skins, etc., and well decorated with charms. Men beat drums, sing chants and choruses; the medicine man dances about, working himself into a frenzy. He peers here, there, everywhere, looking for the spirit that is troubling the family. He sees it in a plantain tree, hurls his spear at it, but no, he misses it; he sees it on the roof of a house and away darts the spear, only to miss it again. He prods his spear into the different parts of the outside of the house, but he misses the elusive spirit every time; he is, however, working it towards the doorway. At last the spirit takes refuge in the house, the medicine man springs forward with alacrity, enters the house, darts his spear in all directions, yelling loudly and screaming terrifically; then a frightful cry is heard, and in a few moments the medicine man comes out with the blade of his spear well smeared with blood. He has killed the spirit, or rather the animal possessed by the spirit.

I have often watched this performance, and they always killed these animals possessed by spirits in the house. I often wondered why, and from whence came the blood on the spear. The son of one of these medicine men told us that when his father wanted blood to smear over his spear-head, he dug his finger-nail into his gum and procured from thence the blood for the purposes of this trick. On showing the spear thus stained with blood he asserted that he had destroyed the spirit that was troubling the family, he received his fee, and went. The semi-darkness of the native hut rendered a trick of this kind quite possible.

We have seen in the preceding chapter on spirits that certain spirits cause certain diseases, and that the names of many diseases are really the names of those spirits that are supposed to cause them. To deal with the spirit of extreme debility there are “doctors,” who are always women, and these are engaged to treat both men and women suffering from this complaint. The “doctor” in dealing with this spirit dances, chants, and shakes a rattle, until the patient says he has the spirit (bwete) of debility stirring in him; he knows it by the way it jerks and sways his body. The medicine woman prepares the post (etoli) and invites the spirit to go and reside in it and not trouble the patient any more.

These female “doctors” attend the women of certain totem families, whose children five days after birth have their ears pierced; such families are supposed to be patronized by a parturition spirit (bwete bwa boweya) that will help the child to grow strong, fat, and healthy if its ears are pierced on the fifth day with the proper dance and ceremony; but will cause the child’s death if the mother when enceinte does not use the proper medicines under the guidance of this female “doctor,” or does not have its ears pierced in the proper way.

When a man is troubled with a sickness which has failed to yield to other means, or one in whose family there has been a death and he cannot afford to hire a witch-finder, he goes to a medicine man whose fee is comparatively small, for his operations are simple and his paraphernalia small. He, on being hired, brings out his fetish saucepan of water, and placing it in a good position he pours some sugar-cane wine by its side, for souls or embodied spirits are very fond of this drink. He then calls the spirits by putting a leaf on the closed fist of the left hand and striking it with the palm of the right hand; thereupon they show themselves one by one in the fetish saucepan (likenge), into which only the witch-doctor is allowed to look.

A spirit appears, turns, and shows its face when challenged to do so, and shakes its head negatively, and as the showing of the face is regarded as a proof that it belongs to an innocent person, it is told to pass. By and by a spirit appears in the saucepan that persistently refuses to show its face after being repeatedly ordered to do so by the medicine man, therefore he stabs it with a splinter of bamboo, and the owner of that spirit, who is the witch, is now supposed to die very soon, and thus release this medicine man’s client from its malign influence. It is interesting to note that a person’s soul can be called from him by a witch-doctor, for the word used in this connection is elimo, and that means the soul of a living person. It is also noteworthy that they expect more truthfulness in the soul of a person than in the person himself.

The Boloki folk, like others more advanced in civilization, are very anxious to know about the future, so they have a soothsayer whose special function it is to predict coming events. This diviner dances to the beat of drums and chants, the chorus being taken up by all who are present. When he has worked himself and his audience up to a certain pitch of excitement he looks into his fetish bag of medicines, and from what he sees there he foretells war, or the reverse, its success or failure, and other events, such as the success or non-success of a trading expedition, fishing and hunting parties, etc.

The natives, both male and female, are not always successful in their love affairs, hence they have a special medicine man who makes their love philtres. A woman takes the nail-parings, hair-cuttings, and chewed pith of the sugar-cane of the person whose love she desires, to this particular “doctor.” He makes them into a medicine which, after well drying, he pounds into a powder. This powder the woman takes and blows over the object of her love while he is asleep.

The man procures the nail-parings and hair-cuttings of the woman he loves, and carries them to this maker of love philtres; but instead of the powder being blown over the sleeping object of his passion, he mixes it with sugar-cane wine and gives it to her to drink. A slave will use the same method to gain an easier time from his master or mistress; and this philtre is also used on people to cause them to forget a wrong or grant a request.

There are to be found among them witch-doctors to help them in every emergency of life, and not the least curious is the one who aids them to vanish in the midst of danger. The medicine man who thus serves them takes his name from the charm he makes, which is rubbed on the body, or tied on the wrist or leg of his client, who, when thus protected, can walk right among his enemies, and if they catch him they find only his cloth in their hands, for the person in the cloth has vanished. This charm (called ndemo) is largely used in times of war, as the possessor of it can fight and kill without being seen by the enemy, and it is also in great favour with thieves. The charm consists of a yellow pigment rubbed on the temples, or “medicine” mixed with the pigment and fixed to brass wire and tied round the wrist, the leg, or the waist.

They frequently told me of the wonderful power of this charm in rendering a thief invisible; but they never accepted my challenge to put the matter to the test. I offered to allow any one of them to keep any article he could steal in my rooms; the conditions were that I was to be in the room and the thief was to take the article while I was present and yet be invisible to me—I should simply see the thing move, apparently of itself, out of the room. They said it could be done, but they never proved it.

When there is smallpox in a district the nervous go to a medicine man, who makes small cuts on his client’s body and sucks out some blood, which he spits on to a leaf and examines very carefully. If some small threads are seen in the blood, the “doctor” points them out to the others present, and says that “as I have sucked out the witchcraft (likundu) the person will not die, although he may become infected with smallpox.” Should no threads be seen and by and by the person catches smallpox, his relatives will tell him that he cannot recover unless he confesses to having bewitched one or more persons. Under pressure of constant nagging the patient will confess (and who among them has not desired the death of one or more enemies and acquaintances?) to his mother, or father, or to an intimate friend, that he has bewitched several persons, and will even mention them by name; and after this confession he may become better.

It is a very crafty performance. The person’s blood is sucked, and the threads are shown, and if he does not have smallpox, then the “doctor” has the credit of having drawn all the witchcraft out of him. If, however, he has smallpox, then he has his own witchcraft in him and that has caused the illness, and the only way to ensure recovery is to confess his guilt—this exonerates the “doctor.” If no threads are seen in the blood and the person has smallpox, then his own witchcraft has given it, and he must confess; and here again the “doctor” is cleared. Now if a person has not been operated upon by the “doctor” and gets smallpox, he must confess to bewitching others, and should he recover, well, his confession has cured him; should he die, then either he has not fully confessed, or someone else has bewitched him to death. If a person does not catch smallpox, then he is not bewitched by anyone, and he himself has no witchcraft.

During an epidemic of smallpox at Monsembe in 1893 it was absolutely impossible to isolate patients, for, according to their belief regarding infectious diseases—that no one would have it unless he were bewitched to have it—there was no need for isolation. I have seen the hut of a patient literally crowded with women, lads, and girls, giving advice and showing sympathy with the sick. Many died from the loathsome disease.

This particular “doctor” also looks at the arteries in the stomach of a dead person to discover whether the person died by his or her own witchcraft, or by the witchcraft of another. For full details see the chapter on “Death and Burial,” where it deals with death by witchcraft.

A person suffering from sleeping-sickness has his own special “doctor” to look after him. He scarifies the body of the patient with numerous cuts, and then sprinkles hot water over him, rubs pepper paste into the cuts, and puts a drop or two of pepper juice in each eye. This practitioner is called by the natives nganga ya luwa—the medicine man of sleeping-sickness, or of the spirit that causes that complaint.

There are many cases of debility, lack of energy, and anæmia in which the symptoms are somewhat similar to sleeping-sickness, such as drowsiness, no desire to move about, loss of appetite, etc. Such cases are greatly benefited by the massage of warm water and pepper paste, and by the change of scene and life necessitated by the visit to the “doctor’s” village; and when the patients return to their own towns after four or five weeks’ treatment, much better and sometimes quite well, they are regarded by the natives as cured cases of sleeping-sickness. The pepper juice in the eyes causes great agony, but it keeps the patient awake and moving about. The “doctor” puts various taboos on his patients, both as to what they shall eat and how their food shall be cooked.

My wife had a girl about fifteen years of age who fell a victim to sleeping-sickness. She was smart in her house-work, intelligent and quick in school, and neat and clean in her person. She gradually lost her smartness, forgot all she gained in school, and became dirty and slovenly in her dress, etc. She also had a temperature every morning of about 100 degrees that yielded to no treatment. It was an undoubted case of sleeping-sickness, but as it occurred in 1894 not much was known of the complaint, and there were very few suggestions as to treatment. Those suggestions, however, we followed, and the patient became no better for tonics, bromide of potassium, etc. I was then told about this kind of “doctor,” and finding there was nothing really objectionable in his mode of procedure I asked the girl if she would like to undergo his treatment. She readily expressed her wish to be put under him, and seemed to have great faith in him. The girl went, and I watched the treatment with much interest. At first she brightened up under the pepper massage, but at last she died in our house, for finding the treatment failed we brought her, at her own desire, back to our house.

It is needless to say that I never came across a single case of true sleeping-sickness cured by this class of “doctors.” There are some curious contradictions about this complaint. In some cases there is loss of appetite, and in others a ravenous hunger; in some great drowsiness, and it is almost impossible to keep the patient awake, in others entire insomnia; in some saneness to the last, but others exhibit insanity and even violent madness.

When a boy or girl is very thin and weakly, his father kills a monkey, or buys a large piece of meat or a big fish and sends for the medicine man, who has a reputation for conversing with the spirits of unborn children (called bingbongbo), and interpreting their demands. On his arrival he shuts himself up in one of his client’s houses and is heard to speak with these spirits. After a time he comes out and tells his client that the spirits complain because he has never given them a feast, and that if he desires to see his son improve in health he must at once prepare one for them.

The father gives the monkey, meat, or fish he has procured ready for this demand. It is cooked and the medicine man takes the food on a plate into the house, puts it down on the floor and, coming out, shuts the door. After a time he again enters the house, brings out the plate and shows that the food has partly disappeared, and that the edge of the plate is smeared with the food (there are always plenty of rats and mice in a native hut). This is accepted as evidence that the spirits have partaken of the feast, and the patient will get better as the offering has been accepted. The medicine man gives the patient a new name—if a girl, Bolumbu, and if a boy, Loleka.

The spirits of unborn babies are supposed to be supplied to the family preserves (called liboma) by the disembodied spirits of the deceased members of the family. These are responsible for keeping the preserves well filled with spirits awaiting birth. The preserves may be a pool on an island, a pond in the bush or forest, or a great bombax tree.

The “doctor” who deals with madness has simply a saucepan of water in which he mixes some medicines, and the patient immerses his face every day in it, and then he drops some juices from plants into his eyes until the person is cured of his madness. Madness is called mokalala, and the “doctor” who treats it is named by that title also—the “doctor for madness.”

When the death of a prominent man has occurred, and the “doctor for witchcraft” has inspected the entrails of the deceased and has stated that the departed one was bewitched to death, the family then calls in the witch-finder to point out the person guilty of that detestable thing called witchcraft. The usual fee is one slave, but if the witch-finder is a very famous one he will demand and receive two slaves. He insists on receiving his fee before he begins operations, as he may have to rush off with undignified haste directly he has pointed out the witch, for the accused person does not always take the charge quietly, but sometimes rushes off for spear or gun to kill his accuser, hence the demand for the fee first.

The people gather on the appointed day in a large circle, and the medicine man, dressed as a woman in skins and cloths fantastically arranged, his face, legs, and arms decorated with pigments of various colours, takes his place in the centre and dances throughout the whole of the first day to the beat of drums. Towards the end of afternoon of the second day he points out the witch, and then hurries at once to his waiting canoe. The accused must take the ordeal and abide by the result. The “doctor of the mat” very often performs this ceremony of discovering the witch.

There is another class of medicine men who scrape their eyes with the sharp edge of the sugar-cane grass, which operation clears the vision and enables them to see spirit witches afar off and frustrate their evil designs. He pretends to see the witch at night running off with the soul of a person, and this soul he rescues and restores to its owner. The next day the medicine man will go to the owner of the soul he rescued and say: “Last night I saw a witch spirit running away with your soul, and I stopped it or you would be dead by now.” And then he demands a present, which is at once given through fear; for if they refuse to satisfy this medicine man he will allow the witch spirit to escape another time with the soul, and death will be the result.

Now a man who has many and powerful enemies needs someone to help him, and there is a special branch of the profession created on purpose to render him assistance. Such a man goes to a proper medicine man, who will give him a medicine that will overawe or soothe his enemies so that they will no longer desire to work him any harm. They will become subject to his will and influence. This medicine man (he goes by the name of nganga y’ elembia = overawe, subdue, soothe) also initiates his clients into various tricks for striking awe into the onlookers that they may fear their power, and respect them accordingly.

When a man is ill, or has lost a relative by death, he may in his vexation accuse the other members of his family of witchcraft. They of course indignantly deny the charge, so the accuser challenges them to drink the water from a fetish bell. Should anyone refuse to drink from the fetish bell he is regarded as guilty of witchcraft. If, however, they agree to accept the challenge the particular kind of medicine man who operates with the fetish bell is called, and on his arrival he gives to each person a draught to drink from his fetish bell. And it is firmly believed that the one guilty of witchcraft will soon die from the effects of the bell medicine, whereas the innocent will suffer no inconvenience from it.

It will be seen from the above-mentioned medicine men that the natives have a medicine man to help them in every emergency of life, and also one to control, soothe, or destroy every kind of spirit that is likely to do them any harm personally, and bring any sort of misfortune or ill-luck upon them. However, witchcraft is at the bottom of all their fears, and it will be noticed that the majority of the different branches of medicine men deal with, or pretend to avert, that most dreaded and hated thing witchcraft.

There are three kinds of witches among the Boloki people, viz. the active, that is the person who fees a medicine man to kill his enemy or procures some medicine to do him to death. The passive, that is the person who in a temper, or because of some grievance, wishes So-and-so were dead, or in a curse shouts at his tormentor and oppressor: “May you die quickly”; but takes no active measures to procure the death of the said person. There is scarcely a person who has not wished for the death of one or more persons; and when the ordeal of the fetish bell is administered and the drinker of the “bell water” has not desired the death or illness of that particular person he feels secure; but if he has desired the death of that person he feels nervous, doubtful, refuses to drink the ordeal and is accused of witchcraft or drinks it and perhaps dies from sheer fear. The third kind of witch might be called the self-inflicted one, that is, a person in utter misery desires to die, and the witchcraft works in him and he dies; the natives think that many people die by their own witchcraft. On the Lower Congo I found no idea of suicidal witchcraft among the people.

I think many of the medicine men thoroughly believe in themselves; and even those who assert that they see spirits or have performed such wonders as living under the water for seven days, or making their spear shake and talk relate the incident so often that they come to believe that they really did it. Many of the people before we went there had no faith in the medicine men; but they were afraid to oppose or ridicule them for fear of being charged with witchcraft, so they pretended to accept all that was said and done by them. Our presence inspired many with the courage to test the witch-doctors, and finding them frauds they turned from them with contempt.