A Fowl Is Tied To The Right Hand Of
Each Widow, And Should That Fowl Fail To Cluck At The Sight Of The
Fire The Woman Is Held Guilty Of Having Bewitched Her Dead Husband
And Is Dealt With Accordingly.
Among the Bantu, although the killing among the wives from the
accusation of witchcraft is high, some of them being almost certain
to fall victims, yet there is not the wholesale slaughter of women
and slaves sent down with the soul of the dead that there is among
the Negroes.
In doubtful cases of death, i.e. in all cases not arising from
actual violence, when blood shows in the killing, the Bantu of the
S.W. Coast make post-mortem examinations. Notably common is this
practice among the Cameroons and Batanga region tribes. The body is
cut open to find in the entrails some sign of the path of the
injected witch.
I am informed that it is the lung that is most usually eaten by the
spirit. If the deceased is a witch-doctor it is thought, as I have
mentioned before, that his familiar spirit has eaten him internally,
and he is opened with a view of securing and destroying his witch.
In 1893 I saw in a village in Kacongo five unpleasant-looking
objects stuck on sticks. They were the livers and lungs, and in
fact the plucks, of witch-doctors, and the inhabitants informed me
they were the witches that had been found in them on post-mortems
and then been secured.
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