But I Have Never Been Able
To Hunt It Down, Though I Am Sure It Is There, And A Very Quaint
Idea It Undoubtedly Is.
The usual answer is, "It was the custom of
our fathers," but that always and only means, "We don't intend to
tell."
Funeral customs vary considerably between the Negro and Bantu, and I
never yet found among the Bantu those unpleasant death charms which
are in vogue in the Niger Delta.
The Calabar people, when the Consular eye is off them, bury under
the house. In the case of a great chief the head is cut off and
buried with great secrecy somewhere else, for reasons I have already
stated. The body is buried a few days after death, but the really
important part of the funeral is the burying of the spirit, and this
is the thing that causes all the West Africans, Negro and Bantu
alike, great worry, trouble, and expense. For the spirit, no matter
what its late owner may have been, is malevolent - all native-made
spirits are. The family have to get together a considerable amount
of wealth to carry out this burial of the spirit, so between the
body-burying and the spirit-burying a considerable time usually
elapses; maybe a year, maybe more. The custom of keeping the affair
open until the big funeral can be made obtains also in Cabinda and
Loango, but there, instead of burying the body in the meantime,
{329} it is placed upon a platform of wood, and slow fires kept
going underneath to dry it, a mat roof being usually erected over it
to keep off rain.
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