An indication as to what
class of baby the soul is to be repacked and sent up in. As wealth
in the Delta consists of women and slaves I do not believe the
under-world gods of the Niger would understand the status of a chief
who arrived before them, let us say, with ten puncheons of palm oil,
and four hundred yards of crimson figured velvet; they would say,
"Oh! very good as far as it goes, but where is your real estate?
The chances are you are only a trade slave boy and have stolen these
things"; and in consequence of this, killing at funerals will be a
custom exceedingly difficult to stamp out in these regions. Try and
imagine yourself how abhorrent it must be to send down a dear and
honoured relative to the danger of his being returned to this world
shortly as a slave. There is no doubt a certain idea among the
Negroes that some souls may get a rise in status on their next
incarnation. You often hear a woman saying she will be a man next
time, a slave he will be a freeman, and so on, but how or why some
souls obtain promotion I have not yet sufficient evidence to show.
I think a little more investigation will place this important point
in my possession. I once said to a Calabar man, "But surely it
would be easy for a man's friends to cheat; they could send down a
chief's outfit with a man, though he was only a small man here?"
"No," said he, "the other souls would tell on him, and then he would
get sent up as a dog or some beast as a punishment."
My first conception of the prevalence of the incarnation idea was
also gained from a Delta negro. I said, "Why in the world do you
throw away in the bush the bodies of your dead slaves? Where I have
been they tie a string to the leg of a dead slave and when they bury
him bring the string to the top and fix it to a peg, with the
owner's name on, and then when the owner dies he has that slave
again down below."
"They be fool men," said he, and he went on to explain that the
ghost of that slave would be almost immediately back on earth again
growing up ready to work for some one else, and would not wait for
its last owner's soul down below, and out of the luxuriant jungle of
information that followed I gathered that no man's soul dallies
below long, and also that a soul returning to a family, a thing
ensured by certain ju-jus, was identified. The new babies as they
arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles
belonging to deceased members whose souls are still absent; the
thing the child catches hold of identifies him. "Why he's Uncle
John, see! he knows his own pipe;" or "That's cousin Emma, see! she
knows her market calabash," and so on.
I remember discoursing with a very charming French official on the
difficulty of eradicating fetish customs.
"Why not take the native in the rear, Mademoiselle," said he, "and
convert the native gods?"
I explained that his ingenious plan was not feasible, because you
cannot convert gods. Even educating gods is hopeless work. All
races of men through countless ages, have been attempting to make
their peculiar deities understand how they are wanted to work, and
what they are wanted to do, and the result is anything but
encouraging.
As I have dwelt on the repellent view of Negro funeral custom, I
must in justice to them cite their better view. There is a custom
that I missed much on going south of Calabar, for it is a pretty
one. Outside the villages in the Calabar districts, by the sides of
the most frequented roads, you will see erections of boughs. I do
not think these are intended for huts, but for beds, for they are
very like the Calabar type of bed, only made in wood instead of
clay. Over them a roof of mats is put, to furnish a protection
against rain.
These shelters - graves or fetish huts they are wrongly called by
Europeans - are made by driving four longish stout poles into the
ground while at the height of about three feet or so four more poles
are tied so as to make a skeleton platform which is filled in with
withies and made flat. Another set of five poles is tied above, and
to these the roof is affixed. On the platform, is placed the
bedding belonging to the deceased, the undercloth, counterpane,
etc., and at the head are laid the pillows, bolster-shaped and
stuffed with cotton-tree fluff, or shredded palm-leaves, and covered
with some gaily-coloured cotton cloth. In every case I have seen -
and they amount to hundreds, for you cannot take an hour's walk even
from Duke Town without coming upon a dozen or so of these erections-
-the pillows are placed so that the person lying on the bed would
look towards the village.
On the roof and on the bed, and underneath it on the ground, are
placed the household utensils that belonged to the deceased; the
calabashes, the basins, the spoons cut out of wood, and the boughten
iron ones, as we should say in Devon, and on the stakes are hung the
other little possessions; there is one I know of made for the ghost
of a poor girl who died, on to the stakes of which are hung the
dolls and the little pincushions, etc., given her by a kind
missionary.
