"On Trivial Occasions Any Initiated Man May Personate Ukuku Or Issue
Commands For The Family.
On other occasions, as in Shiku, to raise
prices, the society lays its commands on foreign traders."
Some cases of Ukuku proceedings against white traders have come
under my own observation. A friend of mine, a trader in the Batanga
district, in some way incurred the animosity of the society's local
branch. He had, as is usual in the South-West Coast trade several
sub-factories in the bush. He found himself boycotted; no native
came in to his yard to buy or sell at the store, not even to sell
food. He took no notice and awaited developments. One evening when
he was sitting on his verandah, smoking and reading, he thought he
heard some one singing softly under the house, this, like most
European buildings hereabouts, being elevated just above the earth.
He was attracted to the song and listened: it was evidently one of
the natives singing, not one of his own Kruboys, and so, knowing the
language, and having nothing else particular to do, he attended to
the affair.
It was the same thing sung softly over and over again, so softly
that he could hardly make out the words. But at last, catching his
native name among them, he listened more intently than ever, down at
a knot-hole in the wooden floor. The song was - "They are going to
attack your factory at . . . to-morrow. They are going to attack
your factory at . . . to-morrow," over and over again, until it
ceased; and then he thought he saw something darker than the
darkness round it creep across the yard and disappear in the bush.
Very early in the morning he, with his Kruboys and some guns, went
and established themselves in that threatened factory in force. The
Ukuku Society turned up in the evening, and reconnoitred the
situation, and finding there was more in it than they had expected,
withdrew.
In the course of the next twenty-four hours he succeeded in talking
the palaver successfully with them. He never knew who his singing
friend was, but suspected it was a man whom he had known to be
grateful for some kindness he had done him. Indeed there were, and
are, many natives who have cause to be grateful to him, for he is
deservedly popular among his local tribes, but the man who sang to
him that night deserves much honour, for he did it at a terrific
risk.
Sometimes representatives of the Ukuku fraternity from several
tribes meet together and discuss intertribal difficulties, thereby
avoiding war.
Dr. Nassau distinctly says that the Bantu region leopard society is
identical with the Ukuku, and he says that although the leopards are
not very numerous here they are very daring, made so by immunity
from punishment by man. "The superstition is that on any man who
kills a leopard will fall a curse or evil disease, curable only by
ruinously expensive process of three weeks' duration under the
direction of Ukuku. So the natives allow the greatest depredations
and ravages until their sheep, goats, and dogs are swept away, and
are roused to self-defence only when a human being becomes the
victim of the daring beast. With this superstition is united
another similar to the werewolf of Germany, viz., a belief in the
power of human metamorphosis into a leopard. A person so
metamorphosed is called 'Uvengwa.' At one time in Benito an intense
excitement prevailed in the community. Doors and shutters were
rattled at the dead of night, marks of leopard claws were scratched
on door-posts. Then tracks lay on every path. Women and children
in lonely places saw their flitting forms, or in the dusk were
knocked down by their spring, or heard their growl in the thickets.
It is difficult to decide in many of these reports whether it is a
real leopard or only an Uvengwa - to native fears they are
practically the same, - we were certain this time the Uvengwa was the
thief disguised in leopard's skin, as theft is always heard of about
such times."
When I was in Gaboon in September, 1895, there was great Uvengwa
excitement in a district just across the other side of the estuary,
mainly at a village that enjoyed the spacious and resounding name of
Rumpochembo, from a celebrated chief, and all these phenomena were
rife there. Again, when I was in a village up the Calabar there
were fourteen goats and five slaves killed in eight days by
leopards, the genuine things, I am sure, in this case; but here, as
down South, there was a strong objection to proceed against the
leopard, and no action was being taken save making the goat-houses
stronger. In Okyon, when a leopard is killed, its body is treated
with great respect and brought into the killer's village. Messages
are then sent to the neighbouring villages, and they send
representatives to the village and the gall-bladder is most
carefully removed from the leopard and burnt coram publico, each
person whipping their hands down their arms to disavow any guilt in
the affair. This burning of the gall, however, is not ju-ju, it is
done merely to destroy it, and to demonstrate to all men that it is
destroyed, because it is believed to be a deadly poison, and if any
is found in a man's possession the punishment is death, unless he is
a great chief - a few of these are allowed to keep leopards' gall in
their possession. John Bailey tells me that if a great chief
commits a great crime, and is adjudged by a conclave of his fellow
chiefs to die, it is not considered right he should die in a common
way, and he is given leopards' gall. A precisely similar idea
regarding the poisonous quality of crocodiles' gall holds good down
South.
The ju-ju parts of the leopard are the whiskers.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 138 of 190
Words from 140360 to 141361
of 194943
