FETICHISM OF THE BANTU NEGROES. 767 



FETICIIISM OF THE BANTU NEGROES. 



By max BUCHNEE. 



THE African negroes, like all primitive peoples, are great children. 

 Too much should, therefore, not be made of their mental acts. 

 That wonderful system of mystic conceptions which closet theologians 

 believe they can discover among them can not stand the test of serious, 

 imprejudiced examination. More time and sharper acumen than many 

 writers on the subject possess are needed for the formation of a valid 

 idea of the religious conceptions of these people. A five-year-old girl 

 playing with her doll is a better medium for studying primitive my- 

 thologies than the heaviest volumes of anthropologists and ethnogra- 

 phists. 



I believe that much that is said about fetich-worship rests on no 

 solid foundation ; neither a kind of worship nor any serious service is 

 addressed to the harmless toy we call a fetich, but only a mysterious 

 good or evil spirit is fancied to dwell within it. 



A negro, as is his habit, is sitting and thinking about nothing. 

 Casually he casts his eye upon a knotted limb of strange growth that 

 may bear some indistinct resemblance to a human face. Amused at 

 it, he takes his knife and makes an effort to help out Nature by scratch- 

 ing the nose, mouth, and eyes into plainer prominence. At last the 

 thing appears so curious that he concludes he will take it home and set 

 it up before his hut. It becomes his "fetich," and grins to-day pleas- 

 antly, to-morrow with a cross air, at him. To heighten the effect, he 

 paints it red around the eyes, or adorns it with bright ornaments. In 

 some such way as this, I believe, we may explain the origin of the first 

 images of the gods, new illustrations of which we may still observe to 

 be brought before us from time to time. I do not regard the process 

 as a religious one, but rather as an instance of the development of the 

 first idea of art. 



It is not, however, the pleasure of contemplating new forms that 

 secures their preservation and the attention that is afterward given 

 them. In the feeling of the need of some protection against evil the 

 objects become associated with the events that happen to their owner, 

 and endowed with a power to influence their course. Then they are 

 copied, and a fixed type is established ; but the utilization of them for 

 religious purposes is, in my opinion, a secondary matter. Instead of 

 fetiches or idols, such objects might be called amulets or medicines. 

 In the course of time great numbers of religious medicinal structures 

 have been foi'med, all of them originating in some such way as we 

 have outlined, representatives of which may be found everywhere, 

 most curious figures, in the towns, in the fields, at the cross-roads, and 

 in the most out-of-the way and lonesome jjlaces. If we ask what they 



