STRANGE TALE OF WIZARDS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6827, 21 June 1900, Page 2

STRANGE TALE OF WIZARDS.

• . ■ i — » -. EXPERIENCES IN THE WEST INDIAN^ .. FORESTS. /$ (By P. A. OBER.) (Washington Star.) The West Indian forests are full of wizards, witches and conjurors ; and not the forests only (rays the " San Francisco Bulletin"), but the plantations, the towns* the hamlets in the mountains, and the villages by the sea. They are not, many of them, of the vicioussort, but comparatively mild and inoffensive, though now and then one is met that is dangerous and had better b'e avoided. ' . . One of the strangest of my experiences was when in the woods of Tobago, an island not far from Trinidad on lihe South' American coast, I found myself not only completely surrounded by wizard! charms, but compelled, to use them myself as a protection or counter-charm. I had an old-time negro named Balfour as guide and assistant, who knew the forests and everything they contained. We were in pursuit of rare birds and beasts, and to obtain them it was thought necessary to establish a permanent camp in the heart of the woods, to last several months. My black friend built a little hut, in which we lived, a- hut made of palm logs and thatched with palm leaves, and after clearing a space on. the sloping hillside in front, he planted it with eddoes, sweet potatoes , yams, and such like tropical vegetables as would yield their increase in a short time. Then he capLured a few agoutis, or wild hares, obtained somewhere a cock and pair of hens, and we were as snugly established on our little farm as though we had lived there for years. We were x sc; far from all other human habitations that' l felt perfectly secure in our solitude; and I will add, in passing, that 1. never enjoyed myself more— perhaps never so much — either before or since, a9 when squatting on that wild Crown land at Tobago. Well, it seems thai; my sense of security was false, for one day, on returning home from a long hunt in the woods, we discovered the imprint of a big' bare human foot in various* parts of our garden. We were very much disturbed, of course, arid speculated upon the motives that might impel one to invade our retreat, finally agreeing that they could not be other than sinister. " Dat's a brack man's footstep," said my old guide, wagging his woolly head ; " an' he ain't here for no good, nohow. • But I fix him, sail. I done put chahm on himthat .make him neber some here 'gin- no mo'." The next night, as I took a walk fchroifpr the garden, I came across a stick about 4ft long, stuck slantwise into the soil, at the upper end of which was hung a parrot's head, a red rag, a rude imkavion of a 1 man,; whittled out of a sweet potato, and a rusty nail, which latter was struck through ihe chest of the potato man. "What's this nonsense?" I demanded of Balfour. " Pull it up and throw it away." " Dat, eah, is the obeah. chahm, an' please, massa, don't t'rpw it 'way, for it dm necussary to perfect de gyarden. Yissah, it am de truf, dat a man what make de footsteps done steal all de pervisions ef we diosf put out obeah cJiahm, sah. It am dt iruf, ef we don' let a man know dii't we 'hab chahm 'gainst Mm, he done run 'way with cbry tings we bad, an' p'raps cut our t'roa.t£, .00 ; buo when he see dat he know it kin' no use, an' he done run 'way hisself." Hj.s argument was unanswerable, so I let .he stuff remain, and, at all events, our garden was unmolested thenceforth, and, i »ave nib doubt .thus exception was owing to tie obeah charm. . . .;.-■'• The practice of obi, or obeaili, I later found upon investigation, is indeed a sipeaies of tmonology or d'evil worship, though tibe void is undoubtedly derived from Ob . . or Aub, ithe ancient Egypt.an for a serpent. In id, those who have attained the greatest proficiency in the art, and who are to-day he most feared, as the sorcerers of the Hai-, ien highland, are declared, serpent-worship-; dots. Even as the serpent was tie. visible 1 oresence of the Evil One -in the original Gar:en of Eden, so at present he- is selected to ■.-present Satan by those who worship the alien archangel. The priest of obi, or the " obeaih man," s always an African by birth or descent, sine hoar-beaded and taciturn old negro ho has some knowledge of mediicinal plamits nd poisons, and who resides alone or ir lonely locality. What he doesn't really enow th<» incredulity of the negro supplies, is they invest him with every kind of knowdge, and especially endow him with superatural talecits. He may bs a marked man 0 all the negroes p» a larcre plantation or 1 a wide district, yet wholly unknown to ■iy white person within that area. . Around !1 his doings is drawn a veil of mystery, s he works only at night and performs his i.c.'sntatJons only between the hours, of sun<et- and dawn. Apropos p.f the loyalty of the negroes to his wizard of their* race, it is related tihat i certain gentleman residing i n Jamaica, vho owned a large plantation in that isand, suddenly became aware that his slaves vere dying at a rapid l rate, and that of those vho remained alive more than half were >k>a<ted and terriblv d?bilitGibed. This coalition of affairs prevailed for several years, untU tihe planter lost, first and last, by "this -nysterious malady more than 100 negroes. He strongly suspected that obeah was at the bottom of it, but could not verify his suspicions, as neither it<he well nor tihe sick, nor even those ha questioned when at the poinit of death, would admit as much. At last an old negress came to him, one day and' said 'that she knew she had not long to live, and she felt herself brand to impart to him the iterrible secret, in hope that the deaths of many otihers might be averted. She then confessed that heir stepmother, a " Popo " negrass, more than eighty years of age, had "put obeah on her," and tihat sbe had put it. on all those w-Ik> had died, as well as. upon many others who were suffering from the mysterious illness. No sooner were the other negroes acquainted with the confession the old woman (had made, and realised that no harai could come to them from wealing their knowledge, than they all hastened to verify all she (had said. How the black witch induced her victims to take her nauseous ■- medicines '- is not known, but it was directly that she was the caitse of most of the deaths on the plantation. After >he was arrested and the negroes became convinced their tormentor was un-able to work them further mrschief tbr-y all began to mend, and most, of tihose afflicted recovered, the place regainins its "■rirmal tone and the curse being : lifted. The old woman's but was burned' to the Tround, with all it contained, and .fie beldams, instead of \mvg hanged or burned as she richly deserved, was transported. ' It does not need ac+ua.l contact with tne obnah charm, or the taking of an obeah preparation into the system, to bring abowfc the death •of an individual. So firm is the negro s belief in tSie terrible efficacy of the sorcerer's concoctions; that as soon as he finds dbeaih set for him,, either in the path that leads, to the door of liis ihut or at 'the doorstep itself ho at once gives himself up for lost. His enly recourse then :s to some other obeah man whose supernatural skill may possibly be greater than that of his enemy. If such cannot be found, or if he doubbs the superior "medicine" of his own practitioner, the victim soon sinks into a decline. The "obi," or charm, which is set for the victim may be composed of many materials, as of soms already enumerated, hut the most common are bl'cod, feathers, broken glass, and boiitles, parrots' beaks, dog, cat, monkey, and alligator teeth, rum, eggshells, and graveyard dirt. The practice has been known in the West Indies ever since the. first importation of slaves from Africa, and so long as the negroee confined their arts, to the hans,nng up <i things the English took, be of' the nature of . scarecrows, such as feathers, bottles," etc., in order to prevent the plundering of hen roosts and pigsties, no obiec-

''>,.'■'•. *■'■ ■■"-' '■ ■ .tion tfais" made by the ruling class or the 'whiles.! Bub when, in one of .the gnat •insurrections, the chief instigator: ivas • found to be an obeah man, who'ti'dmin&steT«d to each inlsurgent a magical draught: which was to make him invulnerable, it was seen to be a very serious busiuess. Every black devil in the conspiracy, having full faith in his invulnerability, fought like a fiend, and it was not until several of them had been /killed and the* obeah man himself hung in chains with all his war paint on him that the deluded blacks saw how they had been fooled'. But the obeah man, whether he believed in his own incantations cr not, died game, and trld the executioner as he swung him off that it was not in. his power to kill- him; so that*the onlooking negroes were very much perplexed which they finally saw ihim expire. It was because of the terrible power exercised, by the priests of Obeah over their followers that the laws of Jamaica * passed in the last century" contained two clauses especially aimed at them. Although the blacks of the British West Indies hare been free for nearly two generations, yet they have not become freed from the supeiistitions. brought by their ancestors from Africa. Superstition, in fact, will rather increase than diminish unless vigorously, and constantly combated, and this is well illustrated in the condition of the freed negroes to-day. There are thousands of them who, though nomicallv Christians, ar& yet enchained by Obeah and devoted votaries of the prevailing cevil worship. It is a strange fact that, while this degraded superstition flourishes amongst the French and British islands, it does not j.revail to any great extent in the Spanish, as in Cuba and Port* Rico. The natives of those islands are sunken deep in other superstitions, but tfhey are mainly such as tihe white man has fostered, and not the black. But itjs in the negro island of Haiti that we find obeahism rampant, i have said that it is infrequently- harmful in the British islands; but in. Haiti tEis cannot be affirmed. r Known there under the «ame of the vaudou (derived from -" vaudois " and g'Vingorigin to the commvn "hoodoo") the obeah practice- -flourishes i'in all its pristine vigour and is -really an unadulterated form of the African serpent worship. . . i The. Africans of the West Coast, bf sides a number of deities, believed in a family deity or tutelar saint, who was supposed* originally to have been one like themselves and the first iounder tf their family. On the anniversary of this saint's burial the, whole number of his descendants gather around his grave, and the oldest man. in. the assemblage, after offering up praises to, Accompong, - Assaroi,- Ipboa, and the tutelar deity, sacrifices a cock or a goat by cutting its throat and shedding its blood upon tfre grave. Every head of a lurasehold does the same, and as soon as all those who are able to bring such sacrifices have made their oblations the animals which lave been killed are prepared, and a great ft-stivul follows. This custom is followed out almost exactly in the feasts of the Haitien P6i"p9nt worshippers, tr the Vaudou. If you porchance find yours&lf in the great f ofest which lies between Port au Prince and the mountain lake Enriquillo, and should hear the muffled boom ot the native drum, or " goombay " (which is formed by stretching a skin over a hollow log), you should by aill means make haste to seek a place of salely, Not that the average Haitien, even the savage mountaineer, would in cold' mood strike you down, but if you should follow the s\ und of the drum you might run into the charmed circle of the serpent worshippers, ami bs sacrificed because of your temerity. - These vaudou people have their priests and priestessfis, whom they call the "'papa and mamma lot," and mo^ of these are n-ot only sorcerers, but also cannibals. That is, they are ritual cannibals, and offer human sacrifices to their gods. Starting out Kith the African ceremony! alraady mentioned of offering to the names of their ancestors a cock or goat without a blemish, they have at last descended to actual cannibalism. Assembled in the secret receseas of the f crest, a small company will work itself into a fury over the incantations of the priest or priestess, and -then, when the excitement is at its height, someone will demand the sacrifice to their deity of the " goat without horns." Tf the demand be complied with, a cldld is nroduced (generally white or cf light complexion, its bands 'tied behind its back. At a given sk<mal the innocent victim is jerked to the root of the hut in which tihey are assembled, by a rope attached to its feet, its throat cut and the blood eagerly drunk by the votaries. Then the child Js dismembered ami disembowelled, cast into a Qwjge iron pot, an*] when the flesh is ecoked it is devoured by the cannibals. These children a~e procured by fiends in human shape called "loup garous," who prowl abiut tihe towns and cities, ever on the watch for V7ct : ms. Sometimes they are in leasne with nurses, who deliver their charges to them alive ; sometimes they rob ■newly made graves of ohald.ren that ibaive been cast into a trance ; but the victims are always forthcoming. -The obeah man of Haiti is surely a monster to be feared.