Fetichism in West Africa : $b forty years' observation of native customs and superstitionsNassau, Robert Hamill
Philosophy
Fetichism in West Africa : $b forty years' observation of native customs and superstitions
Nassau, Robert Hamill
Ethnology -- Africa, West; Fetishism -- Africa, West
The mission dwelling consisted of two houses joined by a covered
veranda,--one, a one-storied bamboo; the other framed of boards, one and a
half story. Mrs. Nassau was in the latter, closing it. Before I had
finished closing the former, the enemies came, and I was alone in the
bamboo house. Shots rattled against the walls. Through the chinks I could
see the young men were guarding all entrances and firing. I think that in
this difficult situation, defending me against their own people, they
purposely fired wide, for no one was even wounded. But their armed stand
checked the enemies, who then soon retired. In after years these were
ashamed of their assault, and tried to minimize it, when it was related to
new missionaries, by representing that they did not intend to kill me. I
accepted that as a kindly after-thought. Certainly the spy at the spring
intended, and tried hard, to kill me. Certainly, also, their gunshots left
their marks on the walls of the bamboo house, and, for aught they knew,
had penetrated the thin walls and might have struck me.
That their interdict had been successfully broken, and that, too, by the
aid of their own sons, was a great blow to the Ukuku party. It was the
beginning of the end of its power. Four years later, while I was absent on
my furlough, the number of the church-members having largely increased,
two young men, themselves of strong character and imbued with the courage
of my able successor at Benita, Rev. Samuel Howell Murphy, deliberately
determined to "reveal Ukuku." They walked through a village street openly
shouting to the women that "Ukuku is only a man." At once their lives were
demanded; but so many of their companions stood up for them, and said to
their fathers, "The day you kill those two you will have to kill all of
us, for we all say also that Ukuku is only a person," that Ukuku was
amazed. Nevertheless the society met. But when the members looked in each
other's faces, each one knew that in voting to put to death the other
men's sons, he was voting also against his own son. The society could have
dared to kill one or two, but to kill a score! They shrank from it. Every
one thought of his own son thus involved, and the great lie was exposed
and died.
In 1879, on the Ogowe River, at my interior station, Kângwe, near the town
of Lambarene, one hundred and thirty miles up the course of the river, I
had a similar experience with that same society, known there in the Galwa
tribe by the name of Yasi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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