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.
