Kinship of Man with Animals 161 
forced in self-defence to kill a lion, they do so with great regret and 
rub their eyes carefully with its skin, fearing to lose their sight if 
they neglected this precaution’, A Mandingo porter has been known 
to offer the whole of his month’s pay to save the life of a python, be- 
cause the python was his totem and he therefore regarded the reptile 
as his relation; he thought that if he allowed the creature to be killed, 
the whole of his own family would perish, probably through the venge- 
ance to be taken by the reptile kinsfolk of the murdered serpent. 
Sometimes, indeed, the savage goes further and identifies the 
revered animal not merely with a kinsman but with himself; he 
imagines that one of his own more or less numerous souls, or at all 
events that a vital part of himself, is in the beast, so that if it is 
killed he must die. Thus, the Balong tribe of the Cameroons, in 
West Africa, think that every man has several souls, of which one is 
lodged in an elephant, a wild boar, a leopard, or what not. When 
any one comes home, feels ill, and says, “I shall soon die,” and is as 
good as his word, his friends are of opinion that one of his souls has 
been shot by a hunter in a wild boar or a leopard, for example, and 
that that is the real cause of his death® A Catholic fmissionary, 
sleeping in the hut of a chief of the Fan negroes, awoke in the 
middle of the night to see a huge black serpent of the most dangerous 
sort in the act of darting at him. He was about to shoot it when the 
chief stopped him, saying, “In killing that serpent, it is me that you 
would have killed. Fear nothing, the serpent is my elangela*.” 
At Calabar there used to be some years ago a huge old crocodile 
which was well known to contain the spirit of a chief who resided in 
the flesh at Duke Town. Sporting Vice-Consuls, with a reckless 
disregard of human life, from time to time made determined attempts 
to injure the animal, and once a peculiarly active officer succeeded in 
hitting it. The chief was immediately laid up with a wound in his 
leg. He said that a dog had bitten him, but few people perhaps were 
deceived by so flimsy a pretext’. Once when Mr Partridge’s canoe- 
1 T, Arbousset et F. Daumas, Relation d’un Voyage d@ Exploration au Nord-Est de la 
Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Paris, 1842), pp. 349 sq., 422—24. 
2M. le Docteur Tautain, ‘Notes sur les Croyances et Pratiques Religieuses des 
Banmanas,” Revue d’Ethnographie, m1. (1885), pp. 396 sq.; A. Rancon, Dans la Haute- 
Gambie, Voyage d’Exploration Scientifique (Paris, 1894), p. 445. 
3 J, Keller, “Ueber das Land und Volk der Balong,” Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 
1 Oktober, 1895, p. 484. 
4 Father Trilles, “Chez les Fang, leurs Moeurs, leur Langue, leur Religion,” Les 
Missions Catholiques, xxx. (1898), p. 322. 
5 Miss Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1897), pp. 5388 sq. As 
to the external or bush souls of human beings, which in this part of Africa are supposed to be 
lodged in the bodies of animals, see Miss Mary H. Kingsley, op. cit. pp. 459—461 ; R. Hen- 
shaw, “Notes on the Efik belief in ‘bush soul,’” Man, vt. (1906), pp. 121 sq.; J. Parkinson, 
“Notes on the Asaba people (Ibos) of the Niger,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 
xxxvi. (1906), pp. 314 sq. 
D. 11 
