154 



W. HOSTEj B.A., ON FETICHISM — 



sufficiently evolved to have any idea of carrying a thing for 

 luck, but this is only one of the many dicta of the Evolutionary 

 School which it is safe to accept with caution. A negro will put 

 a small shell into his woolly hair at night as a charm against 

 dreams, of which there is a common dread, and I doubt if he 

 thinks much more of a spirit dwelling in the shell than the man 

 who nails a horseshoe over his door for luck. 



A fetich may be anything — a roughly carved doll, a model of 

 a travelling load, a bit of serpent's skin. Most raw natives of 

 any standing carry round the neck like an amulet a small deer's 

 horn or tiny bag containing some protective fetich. 



If you buy a leopard skin, you had better keep an eye on the 

 claws, or they will be stolen for fetiches, the popular idea being 

 that discarnate spirits have a predilection for beasts of prey. 

 The tip of the nose or tail of such animals are also much in vogue. 



There are public fetiches at the entrances of villages con- 

 sisting of poles stuck in the ground surmounted with the bleached 

 skulls of animals sacrificed to the spirits. Each pole represents 

 a spirit of some dead person, which has been appeased in the 

 fashion to be described later. 



The most potent fetich of all in Western Angola is called a 

 kandundu. It is a sort of shrine large enough to hold a man, 

 and there is a special class of persons who tend it, and in it 

 certain rites of great potency are enacted. I never saw one, 

 to my knowledge, but I have heard of it on good authority. 

 I suppose the man who gets inside becomes indwelt by the spirit 

 for the time being. 



The native dreads the consequences of breaking the laws 

 imposed by the diviners. Sometimes certain food is forbidden, 

 and such is rigidly avoided. Sometimes a certain stream is 

 put out of bounds, but if somebody will hold the native's hand 

 as he goes over, the spell is broken. 



When we come to inquire what fetichism is we get some 

 bewildering definitions. Auguste Comte is on the side of the 

 evolutionists and uses the term as describing " a necessary 

 stage in the development of all reUgion, in which all material 

 bodies are supposed to be animated by souls essentially analogous 

 to our own." Certainly this would not be a difficult conception 

 for the simple negro. Our children up to the age of four or five 

 easily imagine their playthings alive, like the little girl who 

 was accused of beating the hens, because her favourite stick 

 was found in the hen-yard and the hens were in an evident state 



