Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/818

 8o4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Barotse depend on the magical efficacy of their spittle as a charm. Spittle, as comparative folk-lore has abundantly shown, is very generally regarded as retaining a real part of the spitter's per- sonality. What more natural then, that when the natives "do not want a thing touched they spit on straws and stick them all about the object."^^ Kavirondo peoples suspend a ball of clay by a string which is fastened to a stick, and set up one of these in a field of sweet potatoes to prevent thieving.^^ In the Gabun country (Kongo-Frangaise) a fetish is hung on the plantation fence to frighten away marauders.^^ As Miss Kingsley in her heightened but picturesque way remarks: "Your human police- man can be evaded or outrun if you steal a few potatoes from a field, but the spirit policeman cannot be so circumvented when he hangs done up in a bit of rag or put inside a little horn, on guard over an African farm. He will most certainly have you, and you will swell up and 'bust.' "^^ The efficacy of such prohibitions will be better understood when we consider that the plantations of a Ba-Akele or Fan town are not fenced-in back-gardens, but open clearings a mile or more from any settlement. For weeks at a time no one of their owners is near them by day ; there is nothing to guard them against human robbers but the ban.^® Similar superstitions serve to foster the "silent trade" as found among these West African peoples. You may be in the depths of the forest far from human haunts ; you notice by the pathside a little cleared space neatly laid with plantain leaves; on it are various objects disposed for sale — ^leaf tobacco, a few yams, and so forth. Beside each article are so many stones, beans, or cowries, to indicate its price. Hanging from a branch above is an image of the market god "who will visit with death any theft from that shop, or any cheating in price given, or any taking away of sums left by previous customers."^'

"Lionel Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa (London, 1900), p. 77.

"Hobley in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (1903)1 XXXIII, 343.

•*R. H. tiassau, Fetichistn in West Africa (London, 1904), p. 85.


 * West African Studies', p. 397.

•• Ibid., p. 408.

" Ibid.