Chapter XVI · (continued 2)

The children, wearied, came back together unto their father, and said, “We did not see the brush.” When he went another morning, then he himself brought it.

XII. Malanda—an Initiation into a Family Guardian-Spirit Company.

(Manjana was my cook at Batanga in 1902. He is a young married man with several small children. He is of a mild, kindly disposition, obliging and smiling, without much force of character, slightly educated, civilized in manner and dress, but without even a pretence of Christianity; at heart a heathen, though a member of the Roman Catholic church, into which he consented to be baptized as the means of obtaining in marriage his wife, who had been raised in that church.

His Romanism sat lightly on him, for he voluntarily attended my Protestant evening-prayers, taking his turn with others in reading verses around in the chapter of Scripture for the day; then he liked to take part in the general conversation which followed about native beliefs and native customs.

Yâkâ, or family fetich, is no longer, at Batanga, a matter of dread, even to the heathen; so Manjana was not afraid to tell me freely what happened when he was initiated into it as a lad. I wrote down his story hastily, as soon as he left that evening. I later wrote it out in full, while it was all fresh in my memory. I could not exactly reproduce his graphic native words, so I did not attempt them. The description is my own. But I followed exactly the line of his story, and used only his thoughts. He said:)

“I knew that a house was being built on the edge of the forest, a short distance from our village. I and other lads and young men assisted the strong adult men who were building it. But I did not then know for what purpose or why it was being built. I remembered afterward that no girls or women were either assisting or even lounging about it, watching the process of building and chatting with the workmen, as when other houses were built. I did not know that they had been told not to look there. I remembered afterward that the house was located separately from the other houses of the village, but that did not just then strike me as strange. Somewhat similar houses had been built, as temporary sheds in making a boat or canoe. Such houses are built rapidly, and not with the same care as is used in the erection of dwellings. So it did not occur to me as noticeable that this house was finished in the short time of two weeks. One gable of it was left open.

Nor did I connect its erection with the fact that a prominent man of our family had died just two weeks before. I know now that, in the manner of his death, or in things that happened immediately afterward, the elders of the family had seen inauspicious signs that made them fear that evil was being plotted against us. As I now know, some six or eight of our leading adult male members of the family had had a secret consultation, and had decided that Malanda should be invoked.

I did not then know much about Malanda. I knew the name, that it was a power, that it was dreaded; but how or why I had not been told.

I know now that while this house was being built one or two other men were carving an image of a male figure; also, that when the house was completed, that very night some of those elders had secretly disinterred the corpse that had been already two weeks in its grave, and had brought it to that house. There they had extracted two teeth, and had fastened them in the hollowed-out cavities representing the eyes of the image, and had hidden them there by fastening over them, with a common resinous gum of the forest, two small pieces of glass. And they had stood the image, painted hideously, on the cover of a large box, made of the flexible inner bark of a tree, at the closed end of the house.

Then they had cut off the head of the corpse and had scooped out its rotten brains. These they had mixed with chalk and powdered red-wood and the ashes of other plants, and had tied up the mixture carefully in a bundle of dry plantain leaves. I already knew and had seen such things regarded as very valuable “medicine,” used to rub on the forehead or other parts of the body. Then they had tied the headless corpse erect against a side wall of the house, keeping its arms extended by cross pieces of wood.

The first that I knew that anything unusual was about to occur was early one morning, just after the completion of the house, when the voices of the elders were heard in the street, “Malanda has come!” The women and girls were frightened. They knew they were not to look at Malanda. And we lads were oppressed with a vague dread that subdued us from our usual boisterous plays. We knew the name “Malanda.” It was a power, it was mysterious. Mystery is a burden; it might be for good or for evil.

Immediately all the adult men went into the forest. In about an hour they returned, bearing on their shoulders a long, large log of a tree. They cast it into the middle of the street, facing the sun. The hour was about 8 A. M.

They sternly ordered about twenty of the young men and lads to sit down on the log. The mystery that had burdened me now fell heavier. Our mothers and sisters were afraid to look on us, even with sympathy. These men were our fathers and uncles and elder brothers, but their voices were harsh, their faces set with severity, their eyes had no light of recognition as relatives, and their hands handled us roughly. I was dazed and helpless in my own village and among my own relatives, but not a word of pity nor a look of even kindness from a single person! Each of the twenty also was too occupied with his own destiny to speak to a fellow victim. As far as our treatment was concerned we might have been slaves in another tribe. With no will of our own we blindly did as we were bidden.

We were told to throw our heads back, bending our necks to the point of pain, and to stare with unblinking eyes at the sun. As the sun mounted all that morning, hot and glaring, toward the zenith, we were sedulously watched to see that we kept our heads back, arms down, and eyes following the burning sun in its ascent. My throat was parched with thirst. My brain began to whirl, the pain in my eyes became intolerable, and I ceased to hear; all around me became black, and I fell off the log.

As each one of us thus became exhausted or actually fainted, we were blindfolded and taken to that house. On reaching it still blindfolded I knew nothing that was there. I smelled only a horrible odor. The same rough hands and hard voices had possession of me. Though blindfolded, I could feel that the eyes that were looking on me were cruel.

It was useless to resist, as they began to beat me with rods. My outcries only brought severer blows. I perceived that submission lightened their strokes. When finally I ceased struggling or crying, the bandage was removed. The horror of that headless corpse standing extending its rotting arms toward me, and the staring glass eyes of the image overcame me, and I attempted to flee. That was futile. I was seized and beaten more severely than before, until I had no will or wish, but utter submission to the will of whatever power it might be, natural or supernatural, into whose hands I had fallen.

When all twenty of us had been thus reduced to abject submission, we were treated less severely. Some kindness began to be shown. Our physical wants were looked after and regarded. Food and drink were supplied us. I observed an occasional look of recognition. I began to feel that I was being admitted into a companionship. There was something manly in the thought of being entrusted with a secret to which younger lads were not admitted and from which all of womankind were debarred. This gave me a sense of elevation. There were some people whom I could look down upon! It began to be worth while to have suffered so much. I began to be accustomed to the corpse of my relative. True, I was a prisoner; but the days were relieved by a variety of instructions and ceremonies practised over us by the doctor.

At first we were, in succession, solemnly asked whether we were possessed of any witchcraft power (“o na jemba?” Have you a witch?) Elsewhere we all would have indignantly denied having any such evil doings. But in the face of that corpse, under the presence of the unknown power to which we were being introduced, in the hands of a pitiless inquisition, and with the obliteration of our own wills, we did not dare lie. Would not the power know we were lying? We told what we imagined to be the truth; some admitted, some denied.

The Yâkâ bundle was opened; some of its dust was added to the brain-mixture (already mentioned). Of this compound an ointment was made. On the breasts of those who denied were drawn commendatory longitudinal lines of that ointment. On the breasts of those who admitted were drawn corrective horizontal lines with the same mixture. Instructions appropriate to our respective condition, as witch possessed or non-possessed, were given by the doctor.

We were interested also in watching the digging of a pit in the floor of the house. When this had reached a depth of over six feet, a tunnel was driven laterally under one of the side walls, and opening out, a rod or two beyond, where a low hut was built to conceal it. Into this tunnel the doctor and three or four of the strongest of the elders carried the corpse, and left it there for about ten days, the doctor passing much of that time with it.

After we had been in the house almost twenty days, although still confined, I did not feel that I was a prisoner; I was deeply interested in seeing and taking part in this great mystery. I no longer dreaded the dead. Even if physical pain were yet to be inflicted on me, I would take it gladly as the price of a knowledge which ministered to manly pride. I was being made a sharer in the rights and possession of the family guardian-spirit.

A few days after this the corpse, now reduced almost to a skeleton, was brought up from the tunnel, and bisected longitudinally. The halves were laid a few feet apart, parallel and a short distance away from the two sides of the house. We were gathered in two companies against the walls, and were told to advance toward each other, carefully stepping over, and by no means to tread on, our half of the remains. And the two companies met in the centre.

We now felt we were free, though not formally told so. We had made a fearful oath of secrecy. We preferred to remain and assist in the final order of the house. The doctor and elders now disarticulated the skeleton (for such it was, the man being dead now at least five weeks, and the decomposed flesh having almost all fallen away). The bones were put into the bark box on which stood the image. They were an addition to the contents of the Yâkâ, or family fetich. Then, at the close of three weeks’ confinement in the house, we emerged in procession, the elders bearing the box and the image on the top, and proceeded to the village street. There the box and image were set; and a joyous dance was started with drum and song, with all the people of the village, male and female. A sheep or goat was killed, and a feast prepared. While the dance was going on, the elders around the box were bowing and praying to the image on their knees. From time to time a man would parade by, lifting his steps high and bowing low, and as suddenly erecting himself and strongly aspirating, “Hah! hah!” And the village was glad, for it felt sure no evil could now come to it. I was safe, and ready, at the next time of danger, to assist in torturing the next younger set of lads, for was I not a freeman of the family guardian-spirit?

The box and image were stowed away in a back room of the village headman’s dwelling, who would often take a plate full of food to it, as a sacrifice, and sometimes an offering of cloth or other goods; and the village felt safe.

Nevertheless, the house was not torn down; it stood empty and unused. But if, even a year later, evil still fell on the village, the elders knew that something about the Malanda had not been rightly performed. And it must all be done over again with the next dead adult male (never a female) and with a new lot of neophytes.

A woman may be subjected to a part of the above ceremonies if she is suspected of witchcraft, or if, on examination, she confess to using black art. To purge her of this evil, and to counteract the consequences of what she may have done, she is taken to the little hut over the end of the tunnel, and some of the above described ceremonies are performed over her; but she is never taken into the house, nor into the presence of the corpse.

XIII. Three-Things Came Back too Late.

(The following narrative was told me by a Batanga native Christian woman who, herself less than thirty years of age, is a great-granddaughter of the man one of whose wives was the witch of this story. I bade her, in giving me the account, to speak, not from her present Christian standpoint and her only slight superstitious bias, but from the full heathen view-point. The confusing mixture of singular and plural pronouns referring to the witch is an exact reproduction of my informant’s words.)

The great-grandfather was a heathen and a polygamist. He had four wives. One of them was a member of an interior tribe, the Boheba, more heathenish and superstitious than his own Batanga coast tribe. Unknown to him, she was a member of the Witchcraft Society, had power with the spirits, and they with her, attended their secret night meetings, and engaged in their unhallowed orgies.

The husband, though not a member of the society, had acquired some knowledge of witchcraft art, and, though without the power to transform himself, as wizards did, was able to see and know what was being done at distances beyond ordinary human sight.

One night she arose from her bed to go and attend a witchcraft play. She left her physical “house,” the fleshly body, lying on the bed, so that no one not in the secret, seeing that body lying there, would think other than it was herself, nor would know that she was gone out. In her going out she willed to emerge as Three-Things, and this triple unit went off to the witchcraft play. The husband happened to see this, and watched her as she disappeared, saw where she went, and, though distant and out of sight, knew what she was doing. So he said to himself, “She is off at her play; I also will do some playing here; she shall know what I have done.”

Among the several things of which followers of witchcraft are afraid, and which weaken their power, is cayenne pepper. So this man gathered a large quantity of pepper-pods from the bushes growing in the behu (kitchen-garden), and bruised them in a mortar to a fine soft pulp. This he smeared thoroughly all over the woman’s unconscious body as it lay in her bedroom. He left not the smallest portion of her skin untouched by the pepper,—from her scalp, and in the interstices of her fingers and toes, minutely over her entire body.

Meanwhile, with the woman at her play, the night was passing. The witches’ sacred bird, the owl, began its early morning warning hoot. She prepared to return. As she was returning, the first morning cock-crow also warned her to hasten, lest daybreak should find her triple unit outside of its fleshly “house.” So the three came rushing with the speed of wind back to her village. Her husband was on the watch; he heard this panting sound as of a person breathing rapidly, and felt the impulse of their wind as she reached her hut and came in to re-enter their house.

He saw her approach every possible part of the body, seeking to find even a minute spot that was not barred by the pepper. She searched long and anxiously, but in vain; and in despair they went and hid herself in a wood-pile at the back of one of the village huts, waiting in terror for some possible escape.

All this the husband saw silently. When morning light finally came, he knew that this wife was dead, for her life-spirit had not succeeded in returning to its body within the specified time. It was therefore a dead body. But he said nothing about it to any one, and went off fishing.

As the morning hours were passing while he was away and the woman’s door of her hut was still closed, his children began to wonder and to say, “What is this? What is the matter? Since morning light our father’s wife has not come out into the street.” After waiting awhile longer, their anxiety and curiosity overcame them, and they broke in the door. There they saw the woman lying dead. They fled in fear, saying, “What is this that has killed our father’s wife?” They went down to the beach to meet him as he returned from fishing, and excitedly told him, “Father, we have found your Boheba wife dead!” The man, to their surprise, did not seem grieved. He simply said, “Let another one of my wives cook for me; I will first eat.” Still more to their surprise, he added, “And you, my children, and all people of the village, do not any of you dare even to touch the body. Only, at once, send word to her Boheba relatives to come.”

This warning he gave his people, lest any of them should sicken by coming close to the atmosphere that the witch had possibly brought back with her from her play.

By the time he had finished eating, the woman’s relatives had arrived. They were all heavily armed with guns and spears and knives, and were threatening revenge for their sister’s death.

The man quietly bade them delay their anger till they had heard what he had to say; and took them to the woman’s hut, that they themselves might examine the corpse, leaving to them the chance of contamination.

They examined; they lifted up the body of their sister, and searched closely for any sign of wound or bruise. Finding none, but still angry, they were mystified, and exclaimed, “What then has killed her?” And they seated themselves for a verbal investigation. But the man said, “We will not talk just yet. First stand up, and you shall see for yourselves.” As they arose, the man said, “Remove all those sticks in that wood-pile. You will find the woman there.” So they pulled away the sticks; and there they found Three-Things. “There!” said the husband, “see the reason why your sister is dead!” At that the relatives were ashamed, and said, “Brother-in-law! we have nothing to say against you, for our eyes see what our sister has done. She has killed herself, and she is worthy to be punished by fire.” (Burning was a common mode of execution for the crime of witchcraft.)

In her terror at being unable to get back into her mortal body, the Three-Things, all the while she was hidden in the wood-pile, had shrivelled smaller and smaller until what was left were three deformed crab-shaped beings, a few inches long, with mouths like frogs. These, paralyzed with fear, could not speak, but could only chatter and tremble.

So the relatives seized these Three-Things, and also carried away the body; and, followed by all the people of the village, they burnt it and them on a large rock by the sea.

That rock I pass very often as I walk on the beach. At high tide it is cut off from the shore a distance of a few yards; at low tide one can walk out to it. It is only a few hundred yards from our Batanga Mission Station.