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
He had brothers and cousins. One of these cousins had a servant, a slave,
who had been bought from an interior tribe. It happened that this man had
not always been a slave, but in the tribe from which he had been sold he
was a freeman. The charge on which he had been sold by his own tribe was
that of sorcery and witchcraft murder, the death penalty for which had
been commuted to sale into slavery. He was deeply versed in a mystery of a
certain fetich or magic power called "Okove." He possessed it so
powerfully that no one was able to overcome him in contests of strength,
and people were greatly afraid of him.
So his owners intended to get rid of him by selling him out of the
country. To do this, they planned to catch him in the daytime; for he
exercised his okove power chiefly at night, when he could change himself
into a powerful being ready to overcome any one who should resist him.
One night when this great king, who also possessed the okove power (though
it was not generally known), went out to inspect, he saw a big tall man
walking up and down near his premises. The king said to him, "Ho! who are
you?" The man answered, "It is I." The king asked, "Who is I?" The man
replied daringly, "I have already told you that I am I." So the king asked
again, "Who are you? Where did you come from? And what are you doing
here?" The man said, "I go everywhere, and do what I please at other
people's places, and so I have come here." The king commanded him, "But,
no, not at this place. This is mine. Go back to your own!"
The slave gave answer, "No! that is not my habit. No one can master me!"
The king again ordered him, "Go!" He flatly refused, "No!" The king then
said plainly, "Are you not willing to leave my premises?"
He replied, "No, I never turn away from any one. I go away when I please.
When I am ready, I will go back to my place." At this the king,
restraining himself, slowly said, "Be it so!" and turned away, leaving the
slave standing in his yard.
The next day the king sent word for his cousin the owner of the slave to
come; to whom, when he had arrived at the house, the king told how he had
seen the man at night. And he inquired, "What does he do? Why does he
leave his place on the plantation and come to my place at night?" The
cousin was surprised to hear this, exclaiming, "So! indeed! he comes here
at night?" Then he went back to his house, and calling the slave, asked
him about this matter. "Do you go around at night, even to the king's
place?" The man said, "Yes." His master said, "Why do you do that? Do you
hear of other lower-caste people daring to go to the king's at night?" He
answered, "No; but it is I who do as I please." His master told him, "No;
you better return to the plantation, and live among the other slaves." He
replied "I will go, but not now." His master asked him, "But what are you
waiting for?" He only repeated, "Yes; but not now."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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