Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/65

Rh This system of trading has already died out in large districts of the Congo, and is fast disappearing in the other districts. In the course of a few more years it will become absolutely obsolete, and that is the reason why I have troubled to describe it here in such detail.

As regards the beliefs of the Congo people, there are as many variations in their statements as there are people. Having no fixed standard, no written creed, no catechism, no court of appeal in matters of faith and practice, every one must be a law unto himself. There is, however, one thing all natives must believe, viz.: they must believe in an occult power called "loka," to bewitch, (the person who possesses this power becoming the "ndoki" or witch). This power is always malignant, never beneficent, and the supposed possessor of it is always hunted to death; and the ordeal test by nkasa is firmly believed to be the most sure means of detecting the ndoki. For a person to scout the idea of there being such a power as loka, and to sneer at nkasa being able to detect a witch, is to prove beyond doubt that he himself is a witch, and the sooner he is killed and out of the way the better.

The belief in witchcraft affects their lives in a vast number of ways, and touches them socially at a hundred different points. It regulates their actions, modifies their mode of thought and speech, controls their conduct towards each other, causes cruelty and callousness in a people not naturally cruel, and sets the various members of a family against each other. A man may believe any theory he likes about creation, about God, and about the abode of departed spirits, but he must believe in witches and their influence for evil, and must in unmistakable terms give expression to that belief, or be accused of witchcraft himself. A man may be a devoted believer in charms and fetishes, he may decorate his person, his house, his children, his pigs, his goats, and his dogs with as many charms as he can afford to buy, or he may quietly