Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/511

 The Congo Medicine-Man. 469

man. Should a woman give birth to weakly children that soon die, this nganga is called, and on arrival he digs a trench and puts water in it. He helps the woman over it by the interlocking of the little fingers of the right hands, and the sickness from which she was suffering, and which caused the death of her children, will not follow her across the running water.

It will be observed in the above list that there is a nganga for every known disease, and one for every possible emergency in native life. The native was afraid to take a single important step in any direction from birth to death without first invoking the aid of the witch-doctor and his fetishes. When a native was not helped by one nganga, he, as a rule, did not blame him, but thought the diagnosis was wrong, and that the disease or misfortune was not under the control of his particular fetish. His faith in ngangas was not affected, but he simply changed one medicine-man for another, hoping that the new nganga would have a fetish to meet his case.

It is not to be thought for a moment that all these ngangas sprang simultaneously into existence, or that they are the product of only one tribe ; they are undoubtedly the evolution of many generations, and a free appropriation from neighbouring tribes of fetish ceremonies, etc., that appealed to them through being made widely known by some famous nganga of the time. The Congo native was always ready to try a new fetish, hoping thereby to gain some advantage to his fortune or his health.

The following is probably the history of the rise of many of the nganga cults now in vogue : — A quick-witted, observant man noticed that a certain herb, or a certain mode of procedure, such as massage or inducing perspira- tion by steaming, was beneficial to a patient suffering from a certain disease. If he had given the herb in a simple way without any hanky-panky, or did a little medical rubbing without accompanying it with ceremonies, or had