A great number of persons are reported to lose their lives annually
in different districts of Angola by the cruel superstitions
to which they are addicted, and the Portuguese authorities either
know nothing of them, or are unable to prevent their occurrence.
The natives are bound to secrecy by those who administer the ordeal,
which generally causes the death of the victim. A person,
when accused of witchcraft, will often travel from distant districts
in order to assert her innocency and brave the test. They come to a river
on the Cassange called Dua, drink the infusion of a poisonous tree,
and perish unknown.
A woman was accused by a brother-in-law of being the cause of his sickness
while we were at Cassange. She offered to take the ordeal,
as she had the idea that it would but prove her conscious innocence.
Captain Neves refused his consent to her going, and thus saved her life,
which would have been sacrificed, for the poison is very virulent.
When a strong stomach rejects it, the accuser reiterates his charge;
the dose is repeated, and the person dies. Hundreds perish thus every year
in the valley of Cassange.
The same superstitious ideas being prevalent through the whole of the country
north of the Zambesi, seems to indicate that the people must originally
have been one. All believe that the souls of the departed still mingle
among the living, and partake in some way of the food they consume.
In sickness, sacrifices of fowls and goats are made to appease the spirits.
It is imagined that they wish to take the living away from earth
and all its enjoyments. When one man has killed another, a sacrifice is made,
as if to lay the spirit of the victim. A sect is reported to exist
who kill men in order to take their hearts and offer them to the Barimo.
The chieftainship is elective from certain families.
Among the Bangalas of the Cassange valley the chief is chosen
from three families in rotation. A chief's brother inherits
in preference to his son. The sons of a sister belong to her brother;
and he often sells his nephews to pay his debts. By this and other
unnatural customs, more than by war, is the slave-market supplied.
The prejudices in favor of these practices are very deeply rooted
in the native mind. Even at Loanda they retire out of the city in order
to perform their heathenish rites without the cognizance of the authorities.
Their religion, if such it may be called, is one of dread. Numbers of charms
are employed to avert the evils with which they feel themselves
to be encompassed. Occasionally you meet a man, more cautious or more timid
than the rest, with twenty or thirty charms round his neck.
