LIFE AMONG THE VIRGINIA NEGROES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 145, 11 February 1876, Page 13

LIFE AMONG THE VIRGINIA NEGROES.

We take the following interesting sketch from the Kichmond correspondence of the ' N. Y. Tribune :'— Not long ago a police officer of this city, whose beat includes the famous Mayo s Bridge, saw a negro woman steal from the shadow of a neighboring buildiug and glide quickly out on the bridge. Reachnig a point where the current of the river beneath was swift and strong, she drew a bundle from under her shawl and threw it into the water. With the responsibilities of freedom to the colored race have come also its crimes. Infanticide is common among them, and few weeks elapse m which one or more abandoned infants are not picked up dead or alive by the Richmond police. Any clue to their parentage is rarely obtained, and the officer in this instance congratulated himself upon having detected not only the crime, but the culprit also. Ihe woman was forthwith arrested, and, despite her protestations of innocence, was marched off to the nearest police station. The something which she had thrown into the river could not be recovered, but it was of course presumed to bo the body of a murdered infant. The woman stated, in explanation and defence, that her daughter was subject to "fits," and that believing her " tricked " (/. c. bewitched) she had applied for relief to a doctor of her own color. He— a Voudou curer of great repute— had directed her to take some o? the girl's hair, the parings of her nails, and some of her clothing, fieshly soiled from wearing— make these things into a bundle, and throw them after sunset into the river as far from the t-hore as she could. This done, he assured her, the charm with which an enemy had bewitched her daughter would be removed and her recovery be certain. As might have been expected, the police justice gave very little credence to this story. Other witnesses wore summoned, medical testimony was appealed to, and the girl herself brought into court. The investigation resulted in acquittal from all suspicion of infanticide, and full coroboration of the mother's story. Ono often hears this mystery of Voudou spoken of as a spectre of the past, and is horrified when, as in this instance, it rises to confront him at the breakfast table through the medium of a paragraph copied irom some Southern newspaper. There is no doubt that it still lives and nourishes, while not a few men and women in the Southern States support themselves by their prictice as Voudou doctors. If an isnoi ant negro is smitten with a disease which he cannot comprehend he otten imagines himself the victim of witchcraft, and having no faith in ' white folks' physic " for such ailments must apply to one of these quacks. A physician residing near this city Avas invited by such a one to witness his mode of procedure with a dropsical patient for whom the physician m question had occasionally charitably prescribed. Curiosity led him to attend the seance— having previously informed the quack that since the case was in such hands he relinquished all connection with it. Ou the coverlet of the bod, in which the sick man lay, was spread a quantity of bones, feathers and other trash. The charlatan went through with a series of so-called conjurations, burned leathers, hair and tiny fragments of wood in a charcoal furnace, and mumbled gibberish past the physician's comprehension. He then proceeded to rip open the pillows and bolsters, and took from them some queer conglomerations of feathers. These he said had caused all the trouble. Sprinkling a whitish powder over them he burnt them in his furnace. A bl.ick, offensive smoke was produced, and he announced triumphantly that the evil influence was destroyed, and that the patient would surely get well. He died not many days later believing m common with all his friends and relatives, that the con.luratwns of the " trick doctor" had failed to save him only because resorted to too late.