Chapter VII: The Search for the Witch

People believe their chief died by witchcraft--They send for the
witch-finder--His arrival and antics--The ceremony of discovering
the witch--Satu’s brother, Mavakala, is accused--Why was Mavakala
accused?--He takes the ordeal--Proves his innocence--Other tests are
forced on him--He is done to death.

During the illness of the deceased chief there was a widespread feeling in the town that some one was bewitching him, and that therefore the “medicine men” were unable to cure him. At last one of their wizards stated plainly that a witch was at work destroying their best efforts; and although they tried charms to ward off, and threats to frighten, the witch from pursuing his (or her) wicked purpose, yet their patient continued to grow worse, and at last died. And now that their chief was buried the people demanded that a proper witch-finder should be engaged to seek out the witch.

A great witch-finder was called from a distant town, and on his arrival I noticed that he was a small, active man with keen piercing eyes that seemed to jump from face to face and read the very thoughts of those who stood around.

He was dressed in the soft skins of monkeys and bush-cats; around his neck was a necklace of rats’ teeth mixed with the teeth of crocodiles and leopards. His body was decorated with pigments of different colours; thick circles of white surrounded the eyes, a patch of red ran across the forehead, broad stripes of yellow chased each other down the cheeks, bands of red and yellow went up the arms and across the chest, and spots of blue promiscuously filled in the vacant spaces. At the different points of his curious dress were bells that tinkled at every movement. The boys looked at him in deep awe, the girls and women cowered away from him, and the men, though they feared him, greeted him with a simulated friendliness that ill-accorded with their nervousness.

The witch-finder (or _N gang’ a N gombo_) was supposed to find his own way to the town and home of his client; for how could they believe in a man’s occult power to discover a witch if he had not the ability to walk straight, without being shown, to the house of his employer.

To meet this difficulty the witch-finder had one or two apprentices, among whose duties it was to question cautiously the messenger, and to obtain from him all the needed information about the town, house, circumstances attending the death of the person, and the relations of the townspeople to one another. If the messenger would not, or could not, give the required knowledge, then the assistant accompanied him back to his town, and, as he went, he dropped at the cross-roads twigs or leaves to guide his master--the witch-finder--right up to the house of his client.

The assistant ferreted out the quarrels of the family employing his master, and their animosities towards each other, or towards one of their number. In every family there is to be found at least one who is the object of the suspicion, jealousy or hatred of the family--the unpopular member; and all the information thus gathered is secretly told to the witch-finder and the disliked person pointed out to him.

On the appointed day a great crowd gathered. No member of the clan was absent, except those on trading expeditions. The assembled people formed a great circle, into the middle of which the witch-finder danced and chanted to the beat of the drums. It was a hot day and the sun poured down its scorching rays on the performer, making him perspire so profusely that the various colours on his face and body ran into each other, adding grotesqueness to his ugliness.

As he pranced and danced up and down the circle he put question after question, and was answered by the people with _ndungu_,[18] or _otuama_,[19] as he guessed wrongly or rightly about the dead man’s ways.

Footnote 18:

See note 16, p. 347.

Footnote 19:

See note 17, p. 347.

Presently he elicited the fact that the deceased had had a very bad quarrel with some one, and then he discovered that it was with a man in the town. By crafty questions the witch-doctor narrowed the circle of examination, the people, all excitement, really helping him though quite unaware that they did so; and at last, in a fandango of whirling skins and rotating arms and legs, he brought himself to a standstill in front of one of the men, and accused him of being the person who had bewitched the late chief to death.

It was the unpopular man, Satu’s brother, who was thus publicly declared the witch, and the whole crowd was astonished that they had never thought of him before as the monster who used witchcraft to do his own brother to death.

Immediately on the declaration there was a tremendous hubbub of voices; insults were heaped on the accused, he was jostled about, weapons were raised threateningly, and each tried to outvie his neighbour in abusing the denounced man as a proof of his own guiltlessness.

Amidst the _mêlée_ the accused protested his own innocence, and demanding to take the ordeal, he ran for his gun[20] to shoot the witch-finder who had, by his false accusation, brought all this trouble on him. But the crafty _nganga_ had received his large fee, and was already well on his way back to his own town. None doubted the _bona fides_ of the _nganga_ except Mavakala, the accused man; and how could he prove his guiltlessness except by voluntarily taking the ordeal.

What had Mavakala done to draw such an accusation upon himself? On his brother’s death he had cried as long and as loudly as any of them; he had neglected his person, worn old clothes, dressed his hair in mourning fashion, gone unwashed, and had carefully observed all the usual ceremonies of “crying” for a near relative, and yet they charged him with bewitching his brother to death. Yes, all his neighbours recalled these facts, but they interpreted them now in the light of this serious charge. Of course, he had observed all these rites simply to deceive them. He must have thought them fools to be duped by his proofs and protestations. No, he must take the ordeal, and that quickly, and the ordeal-giver must be sent for immediately. The whole of Mavakala’s family was alienated from him, for was he not accused of the most heinous crime of which a human being can be guilty--witchcraft?

Footnote 20:

See note 18, p. 347.

What had Mavakala done to render himself so fatally unpopular? That evening the declaration of the witch-finder was discussed round all the fires, and as Bakula went from group to group I picked up many items of the indictment.

Mavakala was an energetic, successful trader, and from each trading journey he came back the richer for his enterprise. They were jealous of his wealth; but among themselves they whispered that his increased riches were really due to witchcraft and not to his ability; and were not their suspicions justified, for was he not now accused of selling his brother’s corpse to the white traders?

I heard, too, that Mavakala was a skilled blacksmith, and had made good knives out of odd pieces of hoop iron taken from old cases, and bought, by him, from traders on the river; and had even made hoes and axes out of old bale iron. Many other clever things he had done, all of which were now by these superstitious people accepted as proofs of his witchcraft. He had awakened their jealousy by his energy and smartness in business; his skill and ingenuity in smithing had aroused their suspicions, and his prosperity had provoked their hatred. In any other country his ability would have been admired and honoured, but on the Congo it was a sign of witchcraft, and always ended in death by the ordeal.

It was then I understood the reason for the backwardness of these people. They destroy their leaders and their best men, and the only hope of the people is deliverance from the curse of the witch-doctors.

The next day the ordeal-giver (or _ngol’a nkasa_) arrived, bringing with him the ordeal bark which he had procured from the nkasa tree in the following manner. This tree is supposed to have a spirit; hence, when they are about to cut some of its bark for ordeal purposes, they address it in these words: “I come to take a piece of your bark, and if the man for whom it is intended is a witch, let my machet bend when I strike you; but if he is not a witch, let my machet enter into you, and let the wind stop blowing.” The machet had bent under the blow, and the omen being against Mavakala the ordeal-giver made his preparations with smug satisfaction.

Mavakala, accompanied by many of the men and lads of the town, was led to the bare top of a neighbouring hill, where a rough shanty of palm fronds was built. The accused was pushed into this, and told to stretch out his arms, and not to touch anything. The ordeal-giver pushed a stone towards the poor wretch, with twenty-seven pieces of nkasa bark on it; and then he ground each piece of bark and slowly fed Mavakala with the powders.

During the process the accused man vomited three times, and should therefore have been set free and carried back to the town with shouts of honour; but was not the omen against him? and besides, was he not obnoxious to his jealous and superstitious neighbours?

Consequently, when the ordeal-giver proposed that further tests should be applied, there were none to lift up their voices in protest against the injustice of continuing the cruelty.

Mavakala was dazed with the narcotic effects of the drug that had been forced on him, and his wits were dulled and muddled. He was taken with rough hands from the temporary hut and made to stand by himself, a swaying, lonely, pathetic figure--a type of all those who have been persecuted or have laid down their lives for the sole crime of being in the vanguard of their generation.

While Mavakala stood swaying there, six twigs in rapid succession were thrown at his feet, and he as quickly had to name the trees to which they belonged. This he did successfully, and then he was told to name the birds and butterflies that were sailing by. Again he unerringly gave each its proper name; but now, just when he wanted his eyes to be at their keenest, he could feel them becoming blurred with the dregs of the drug he had been forced to take. His tormentors called on him to name the ants crawling at his feet. He faltered, stammered confusedly, and in stooping, that his poor, hazy eyes might have a better chance to recognize them, he fell, with a moaning cry, to the ground.

In an instant the heartless, superstitious crowd was on him; sticks and machets, knives and guns, soon did their work on the poor mangled body. None was too poor or mean to kick his carcass and spit in his face, and his bruised, gory corpse was left unburied upon the bare hill-top--a feast for the beasts of the forests and the birds of the air.

By and by the stars peeped out, half ashamed to look on a world where such tragedies were enacted, and as they looked they saw that _thing_ there upon the bare hill-top. It was covered with wounds, and every wound had a tongue that cried to its God, and to their God: “How long, how long, shall darkness cover the land, and gross darkness the people?”