Liberia '^ 



short, belief in witchcraft is universal throughout the Negroes 

 of Liberia, as elsewhere in Africa. To it is united an equally 

 firm credence in medicine men or women, persons who might be 

 styled " white witches," doctors who use their occult powers for 

 beneficent purposes (it is hoped), or merely for destroying 

 enemies of the tribe or community. 



The native men and women avowedly given to the study 

 of medicine are doctors in the real sense of the word, in that 

 they become learned in the application of local remedies. They 

 know by acquired or inherited knowledge the virtues of many 

 leaves, roots, barks, seeds, and fruits, or of animal or even 

 mineral substances. They have practised from time immemorial 

 a kind of hypnotism. They can not only hypnotise others, 

 but can throw themselves into trances in which they see visions 

 and practise clairvoyance. Amongst the Vai and Mandingo, 

 the Arab practice of divination by sand (sifting or sprinkling 

 the sand and drawing some deduction from the figures it 

 assumes) has been introduced, evidently through Muhammadan 

 influence, as it is widely practised through Muhammadan Africa, 

 from the Senegal to the Red Sea, and from Egypt to Nyasa. 

 Amongst the Pagan peoples of Liberia, the wise men or women 

 divine by the study of the entrails of freshly killed animals, 

 by administering poison to fowls or goats, and waiting to see 

 whether they die or survive, by interpreting the cries of 

 birds or the behaviour of tame and sacred snakes (generally 

 a python).' 



Throughout this country concurrently with the belief in 

 witchcraft as being the origin of most deaths and misfortunes 

 runs the crude idea of justice that persons suspected of this 



' In the eastern parts of Liberia, behind the Kru and Grebo people of tlie 

 coast, practices exist in many villages strikingly like the snake-worship of Dahome. 

 This is referred to and illustrated in Captain d'Ollone's work. 



1064 



