This Reason For Killing Wives At A Funeral
Is Another Instance That, However Strange And Cruel A Custom May Be
Here in West Africa, however much it may at first appear to be the
flower of a rootless superstition, you
Will find on close
investigation that it has some root in a religious idea, and a
common-sense element. The common-sense element in the killing of
wives and slaves among both the Tschwi and the Calabar tribes
consists in the fact that it discourages poisoning. A Calabar chief
elaborately explained to me that the rigorous putting down of
killing at funerals that was being carried on by the Government not
only landed a man in the next world as a wretched pauper, but added
an additional chance to his going there prematurely, for his wives
and slaves, no longer restrained by the prospect of being killed at
his death and sent off with him would, on very slight aggravation,
put "bush in his chop." It is sad to think of this thorn being
added to the rose-leaves of a West Coast chief's life, as there are
99.9 per cent. of thorns in it already.
I came across a similar case on the Gold Coast, when a chief
complained to me of the way the Government were preserving vermin,
in the shape of witches, in the districts under its surveillance.
You were no longer allowed to destroy them as of old, and therefore
the vermin were destroying the game; for, said he, the witches here
live almost entirely on the blood they suck from children at night.
They used, in old days, to do this furtively, and do so now where
native custom is unchecked; but in districts where the Government
says that witchcraft is utter nonsense, and killing its proficients
utter murder which will be dealt with accordingly, the witch
flourishes exceedingly, and blackmails the fathers and mothers of
families, threatening that if they are not bought off they will have
their child's blood; and if they are not paid, the child dies away
gradually - poison again, most likely.
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