Journal of American Folk-Lore/Volume 12/Issue 45/Notes and Queries
NOTES AND QUERIES.
Sacrifice among the Wakamba in British East Africa.—In the summer of 1896 a mission station was established among the Wakamba in British East Africa.[1] The facts stated below are derived from letters from Mr. Willis R. Hotchkiss, a missionary connected with the station, and from Mr. Charles E. Hulburt, of Coatesville, Pa., the American director of the work, who has just returned from a trip to the mission field.
The Wakamba live in a mountainous country, about 325 miles from the coast, but still about the same distance eastward from Victoria Nyanza. They occupy a lofty valley, the elevation of which is about 5000 feet above the sea. The portion of this valley where the mission is located is about 15 miles south of the equator. Northward 90 miles rises Mount Kenia, 18,000 feet high, while about the same distance to the south is Kilmia Njaro, 19,000 feet high,—both snow-capped the year round. The nearest town, which consists of a fort and a few houses, is Machakos, on the line of the Uganda Railway, which is being built from Mombasa to Lake Victoria.
The Wakamba belong to what is known as the Bantu family of Africans, who are superior to the purely negro races. Keane describes the Bantus as of "lighter color, larger cranial capacity, smaller teeth, and less pronounced prognathism," than the negroes. "They are," he says, "distinctly more intelligent, more civilized, and more capable of upward development than the full-blood negro."[2]
Mr. Hulburt says[3] of the Wakamba that they raise their own millet, corn, and beans, on which they live almost exclusively. They get their meat from the various members of the antelope family, which abound in vast numbers in the plains, together with the zebra, which may be found in droves of thousands, and of which the natives are very fond. They keep cattle, goats, and the African hairy sheep. They have no towns, as the people do not congregate, save as they live along the hillsides or valleys. The only commerce or exchange known among them, Mr. Hulburt declares to be the exchange of their daughters for a certain number of goats. The men are almost universally nude, while the women wear a curious apron made of skins, and sometimes worked with beads.
When the mission was established, the language of the Wakamba had never been studied by the outside world. It was necessary for the missionaries to learn it by actual contact, without grammars or other helps. The information which Mr. Hotchkiss gives of their form of sacrifice is therefore quite new.
Writing under date of January 15, 1899, he says that, while they believe in a God, most of their religious exercises are devoted to the propitiation of evil spirits. They make offerings of goats, and, at certain seasons, of the produce of their fields, but all this is, he says, offered to Aimu, the chief of the evil spirits.
The blood is poured out as a propitiation to the demon, while the flesh furnishes a feast for the old men. While this feast is going on, the women engage in an indecent dance, which is continued until many go into convulsions, and have to be carried away.
There are several features in this sacrifice which furnish parallels to Semitic sacrifices. 1. The propitiation of the demon Aimu with the blood of a goat, although it is accomplished in a different way, reminds one of the goat with which Azazel was propitiated in the ritual of the Day of Atonement in Leviticus xvi. 2. The festal character of the sacrifice is parallel to the festal character of all ancient Semitic sacrifice, as W. R. Smith has shown us in the "Religion of the Semites." 3. That the old Semitic scrificial feasts were accompanied with dancing, which were in the early times religious, but which tended to assume an orgiastic character, and become a sort of intoxication of the senses, Smith has also shown. (Op. cit. 260–262, and 430–433.)
Such rites in some form are, it would seem, characteristic of most religions at an early stage of development.[4]
George A. Barton.
Bryn Mawr, Pa.
Two Negro Witch-Stories.—I. The following story of witchcraft was told by a mulatto or quadroon stewardess of Baltimore, on a steamer sailing from Boston to Baltimore. The stewardess had learned the particulars of her mother, who, with the mother's half-brother, the hero of the story, lived in Salisbury, Md.
Every night a black cat came and rode on the man's chest. He was told that it was not really a cat but a witch, and was advised to set a trap for it in the usual way, that is, by thrusting a fork through a sieve, so that the tines would project inside of it.
This he did, placing the sieve close beside him. The cat, in attempting to leap on his chest as usual, was impaled on the fork, and unable to get off.
Next morning it was found that the next-door neighbor, a woman, was sick abed with a "misery in her breast," the location of the pain corresponding exactly to the wounded place on the chest of the cat. This neighbor died of the injury within a week.
II. The same woman related the following: Her mother, when a girl, lived in Salisbury, Md., in service with two reputable and well-to-do old maiden ladies. She noticed that one of these old ladies was frequently in the habit of going out at 10 P.M. or later, and remaining out very late,—perhaps all night. She told her mother of this, saying she thought there was something queer about the old ladies, and the mother suggested that possibly they were witches.
One night the old ladies asked the colored girl to have her mother come to stay with her, as they were both to go away that night. The mother came, bringing a companion with her. As the evening wore on, the old ladies sent the colored girls and the mother to bed, saying that they themselves would lock up the house. Then the ladies went to their chamber, ostensibly to dress. The negroes, suspecting something, watched them through a keyhole, and saw them go to the hearth in their chamber, and there slip out of their human skins, appearing as two black cats, which then scrambled up the chimney.
One of the delighted witnesses of the transformation thereupon suggested putting salt and pepper on the empty skins that lay on the hearth-rug, and this was quickly done. Afraid to stay to watch the consequences, they ran from the house, telling the neighbors to watch in the morning, and see what would happen. The neighbors were on hand at an early hour, and, on peeping through the shutters, saw first one, then the other of the black cats crawl back into the human skin that belonged to it, then leap out in an agony of smarting, and so in and out, in and out, for a long time.
The peals of laughter with which the stewardess told this story, and her genuine enthusiasm over the stratagem just narrated, as well as incidental remarks which she made in regard to the existence of witches at the present day, showed undoubting faith in their reality.
Louisiana Ghost Story.—Told in August, 1889, by a negro man of forty-five or thereabouts, employed as dairy-hand at Chestertown, Md. He had come from Louisiana, where he had been a slave.
"About two years ago, I reckon, an ole man died in the place whar I useter live. He lef a heap o' proputty ter his heirs; the' was a right smart head o' chillun, an' he give 'em ev'y one a farm, an' the' was one mo' farm yit lef over. 'T was a good farm an' the house all furnished up, but no one did n' keer ter live thar, fer they all said the house was haanted.
"But one o' the heirs he said he wan't no way feared but he could lay that ghost ef they 'd give him the farm, 'n' they tole him the farm was his ef he could lay the ghost so 's ter live thar. So he went ter a man o' the name o' Peacock that lived neighbor ter him, an' 't was a church-member, an' offered him a heap o' money ter go an' lay that ghost.
"Mr. Peacock, he went that same night ter the house, takin' his Bible along, 'n' he set thar a-readin' it backward and forward; he did n' mind it none whether the ghost came a-nigh or not.[5] Sho' nuff, the ghost came along while he was a-readin', an' it went all about thro' the house, so 's Mr. Peacock could hear it goin' inter the diffunt rooms an' a-movin' things this-a-way an' that-a-way. But he did n' let on to hear the ghost,—no indeed,—but he kep' a-readin' away ter his Bible.
"Arter a while the ghost blowed out his lamp, but he jes' lighted it an' read on, 'n' then he went inter the bedroom an' lay down. That sort o' made the ghost mad, so 's it come inter the bedroom an' he see it, like as ef 't was an ole woman. Fer the' was an ole woman's ghost that haanted the house anyhow; they said it could n't rest no way, 'count o' the murder the ole lady done when she was alive. Anyhow Mr. Peacock see her reach out her arm, long an' skinny-like, under the bed, 'n' she jes' turned it over so,[6] with him on it. But he on'y crep' out from under it an' went back inter the kitchen 'n' begun to read away in his Bible. An' thar he stayed all night, on'y afore day the ghost came once mo' an' said, ' Ef yo' come back 'yer agen, yore a dead man.'
"Well, nex' night Mr. Peacock came back again, yes indeed, an' he 'd got two preachers ter come too an' try to lay that ghost. One was a Methodis' 'n the other was a Catholic, an' they both brought their Bibles, 'n' all of 'em kep' readin' forward an' backward. 'T wan't no time at all tell that ghost came agen, an' then it jus' went on mos' outrageous.
"The Methodis' he did n' stay ter hear much o' the racket tell out he run an' never come back that night. The Catholic he hel' out a good bit, but 'fore long he run an' lef Peacock ter stay it out by himself.
"Well, they say the ghost never spoke ter him no mo', but sho' nuff in the mornin' thar was Peacock a-lyin' dead with his head cut clean off,—yes indeed, sir!—'an the' ain't no one ever tried to lay that ghost sence."
Fanny D. Bergen.
- ↑ This mission is independent and self-governing. It is represented in this country by the Philadelphia Missionary Council.
- ↑ Ethnology, p. 271.
- ↑ In a letter to the writer.
- ↑ Cf. Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, pp. 180–182.
- ↑ Reading the Bible backward is supposed to keep ghosts from entering; reading it forward, to prevent them (if already in the house) from harming one.
- ↑ With a graphic imitation of the ghost's action.