Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/180



By the kind courtesy of the proprietors of the Daily Graphic we are enabled to give the accompanying sketch-plan (drawn by Reuter's Correspondent with the Aro Field Force) of the "Long Ju-ju," which Count di Cardi (Ju-Ju Laws and Customs of the Niger Delta, in J. A. I., vol. xxix, p. 52) describes as "the great oracle of all the tribes dwelling in the Niger Delta." "To it," he says, "all family disputes are referred, and its decision is recognised as final; it is also appealed to to decide the guilt or innocence in cases where a man of position has been accused of murder, witchcraft, or poisoning Human sacrifices are not made to this Ju-ju after the manner of the sacrificial rites practised in Ashanti, Dahomey, and Benin. Still, a certain amount of slaughtering of human beings goes on at the Long Ju-ju to this day, for when two men go to Long Ju-ju for the settlement of any dispute between them, it is customary for the losing party to be destroyed by its power; but in many cases to my certain knowledge the priests have found it much more remunerative to sell the losing litigant into slavery."

Only one man among such slaves questioned by the Count expressed a wish to return home; the others "being satisfied that their own people would never acknowledge they were anything else but spirits." Count di Cardi's own ship was considered to be so thoroughly defiled by the presence of "the spirit of a man from Long Ju-ju" (namely, the exceptional man just mentioned), that none of the natives would visit the vessel till the Ju-ju King had "made ju-ju" on board.

The ensuing descriptions of the place by correspondence with the Aro expedition supplement each other, and seem well worth