divine, and was looked upon as such for the rest of his 
life. 
In the above tribes, when the person showed his inno- 
cence or began to regain vitality, he was given an anti- 
dote to rid his stomach of the poison. This antidote was 
usually palm oil or a repugnant organic mixture. This 
naturally suggests that some might have tried to fortify 
themselves against the poison ahead of time. But this 
rarely happened, for the medicine men had succceded 
well in maintaining the people’s faith in the judgement 
of the ordeal spirit. 
Turning now to the Congo, it is found that there was a 
basic difference in the preparation of the drink, and several 
differences in custom and in the interpretation of effects. 
In a civil case, in one tribe, each party sent out a 
proxy to gather the poison bark from a mature tree trunk 
(called n’kassa), rather than from the roots of a shoot 
(called m’boundou). The bark of the trunk was non-fatal, 
while that of the roots usually caused death. These men 
would cut a block about 20 by 30 centimeters from the 
bark, grate it to powder on a stone, and return to the 
village with this powder and with some intact bark to 
demonstrate their knowledge of the correct tree. The 
medicine men openly mixed the powder with water to 
show that no foul play was involved, and the two partici- 
pants drank the resulting concoction. This had to take 
place before ten o’clock in the morning if it were to be 
successful. If a participant vomited, he was declared 
innocent. But, if the poison acted as a purge, he was 
judged guilty and was forced to submit to a prescribed 
punishment. (Perrot and Vogt, 1913) 
The Boloki tribe based their judgement of guilt or in- 
nocence on the degree of inhibition of physical ability. 
T'wo medicine men simultaneously fed about one table- 
spoon of the bark to each defendant in a civil case. After 
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