Section 3?, 
ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 
1. — SUPERSTITIONS OP THE WEST AFRICAN TRIBES. 
By Professor R. 0 . GARNER , Pittsburg , Pennsylvania. 
No God ; no spirits ; no idols ; witchcraft ; fetishes ; medicine ; Yassi ; masks ; 
fear ; the moon ; the future ; death ; the resurrection. 
It is often said that all tribes of the human family believe in a 
Supreme Being of some kind, and have some form of worship ; but 
the facts do not sustain the proposition. 
Among the African tribes living near the equator, on the west 
side of the continent,* there is no trace of a belief in anything having 
the attributes of deity ; nor is there in use among them any rite or 
ceremony that suggests the idea of worship, sacrifice, or devotion to 
anything superior to man. It is true that they believe in witchcraft, 
but that cannot be regarded as belief in deity. All tear is not super- 
stition, and all superstition is not a belief in deity. 
They believe that certain persons possess some secret power by 
which they accomplish certain strange things, but they do not believe 
this power is inherent in the person who possesses it ; they ascribe it to 
the use of some “ medicine” employed by him, but they do not regard 
the “ medicine,” or the one using it, as of divine or spiritual origin. 
The fears they entertain are purely of a physical kind. They fear 
injury to the body at the present time ; they fear sickness or death 
as the result of the use of “ medicine.” and they shrink from it as 
other animals do. The native does not believe that there is any power 
in the ceremonies and incantations used with the “ medicine, nor 
does he believe that the person using it imparts to it any power of 
good or ill. He believes the “ medicine” itself possesses some secret 
power, but he cannot conceive of such power existing apart from the 
u medicine.” 
Their faculties of abstraction are too feeble to allow them to 
form the faintest conception of a spirit apart from matter ; and all 
their conceptions are of the materialistic kind. 
The word mbuiri in their language, which is commonly rendered 
by the word “fetish,” signifies mystery, strange ; and anything which 
they cannot explain they call mbuiri. The word has no reference to the 
cause of the phenomena, but all things which they do not understand 
are said to be m'buiri ; however, they do not imply by this word that 
there is a Supreme Being, or any being superior to man. It simply 
means that they cannot explain the cause. 
They have great faith in the power of certain charms and amulets, 
but it is not so absurd as some of our own ideas of the powers of 
darkness, because they base their faith on the concrete and not on 
Near the Gaboon and Ogowe Rivers. 
