were torn and bleeding; at last they came back to the assembly, whirled round again, and rushed down the path to fall panting and exhausted in the hut of one of a chief's wives, the sticks rolling to her very feet, denouncing her as the thief. She denied it, but the medicine-man answered, 'The spirit has declared her guilty, the spirit never lies.' However, the 'muavi' or ordeal-poison was administered to a cock, as deputy for the woman ; the bird threw it up, and she was acquitted.[1]
Fetishism in the lower civilization is thus by no means confined to the West African negro with whom we specially associate the term. Yet, what with its being in fact extremely prevalent there, and what with the attention of foreign observers having been particularly drawn to it, the accounts from West Africa are certainly the fullest and most minute on record. The late Professor Waitz's generalization of the principle involved in these is much to the purpose. He thus describes the negro's conception of his fetish. 'According to his view, a spirit dwells or can dwell in every sensible object, and often a very great and mighty one in an insignificant thing. This spirit he does not consider as bound fast and unchangeably to the corporeal thing it dwells in, but it has only its usual or principal abode in it. The negro indeed in his conception not uncommonly separates the spirit from the sensible object which it inhabits, he even sometimes contrasts the one with the other, but most usually combines the two as forming a whole, and this whole is (as the Europeans call it) the "fetish," the object of his religious worship.' Some further particulars will show how this principle is worked out. Fetishes (native names for them are 'grigri,' 'juju,' &c.) may be mere curious mysterious objects that strike a negro's fancy, or they may be consecrated or affected by a priest or fetish-man; the theory of their influence is that they belong to or are made effectual by a spirit or demon yet they have to stand the test of experience, and if they
- ↑ H. Rowley, 'Universities' Mission to Central Africa,' p. 217.
