The soul of the Bantu; a sympathetic study of the magico-religious practices and beliefs of the Bantu tribes of Africa

Front matter

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PRINCETON, N. J.

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Preface

Bae Ananias, the moth, wrote his slashing attack On Caterpillars, he produced one of the “best sellers” of the season; and Sapphira, the caterpillar, ran him close when she dipped her pen in gall and told the world what she felt about The High-fliers; for both writers were fluent of speech, touched with a fine frenzy that spurned inconvenient evidence, and wedded, moreover, to their own opinions. Entomologists poured contempt on both books, it is true; but the crowd, finding its fancy tickled by caterpillars squirming and moths airing their self-complacency, sneered at the spoil-sports for mooning about in outof-the-way places, treating bugs as bosom friends, and never coming to market. So both books went off like hot-cross buns on Good Friday morning, and nobody cared for digestion.

This book is written in another temper, and looks for no such high reward. In the belief that the law of the upward urge (the attractive force of the Divine) is as universal in its application to humanity as the law of gravitation, it examines Bantu ancestor-worship, hoping to find some particle of good therein that can be used for the moral and social betterment of the men who hold it dear, and especially for reconciling them to the most uplifting influence that has ever played upon humanity—the religion of Jesus. From its pages the prosaic fact stands forth clear, I think, that the Bantu are neither more nor less than people who differ from us in nothing that is essential to humanity, being strange only in this, that they are but now passing through a phase of civilisation that our fathers outgrew ages ago and their children have forgotten.

The book that I have tried to write is really overdue. A great change has come over Africa during the last two or three decades: Government officials, professional men, publicists, merchants, and missionaries, are alike facing the human problem in Africa as never before; and facing it as practical men, not as dilettanti. They have come to see that he who does not deal justly with a vill

Vill POR Ards tribesman, can never help him to fit himself for an honourable place in the world, and that if we are to do him justice we must look out on life through his eyes; and so they have made it their business to study the life of the tribe or group of tribes around them, and to assess afresh the ethical values of Bantu social tradition. Some have written books on the subject, or articles for the Journals of learned Societies; but many plod on with their chosen task, content to know without publishing their knowledge. One or two African governments, sure of their need of an intimate knowledge of people whom they rule, have set apart officers for the study of social anthropology in their territories, and others, with slenderer purses, encourage their Native Affairs officials to give time and thought to this subject. Regional studies in social anthropology were never so popular in Africa as they are to-day; and yet no one who knows the Bantu at first hand has tried to gather up and compare all that has been discovered concerning their religion, though all admit that their religion holds the key to their mentality and that without understanding it we cannot get at the heart of their thought on the ordinary affairs of life. Macdonald’s Africana and Rowley’s Religion of the Africans, both useful books, were written nearly half a century ago, before much was known about Bantu religion. Le Roy’s Religion of the Primitives, a much more recent book, hardly comes in this category; for he ran in blinkers and dealt in ex cathedra deliverances and fulminations rather than carefully sifted evidence. No other book in the English tongue, so far as I know, attempts the task. Whether I have succeeded in filling the gap, others must judge; but I am sure that students of comparative religion in our home colleges and people who are doing actual field-work in Africa are calling for a comparative conspectus of what has been written concerning Bantu ancestor-worship; and if my book provokes an abler man to write a better, that will be recompense enough for my labour.

A word or two of explanation may prevent misunderstanding.

Some people say it is wrong to speak of “the Bantu race”: that there is a Bantu family of languages, but no Bantu race. They base their opinion upon the exploded notion that “race” can be precisely and scientifically defined in terms of biology; but I hold that it is a convenient descriptive term—like “nationality,” only

PREPACE ix vaguer—for a great group of communities which share the same culture and tradition, and that the Bantu-speaking tribes have a common culture and tradition that is as distinctive as their common speech,—though both, being human, share many things with other branches of humanity.

This volume deals only with ancestor-worship, and neglects many “magico-religious practices and beliefs of the Bantu tribes.” It is complete in itself, however, and if it pays the cost of production, I hope to issue a second volume (much of which is already written) on Nature-worship, High Gods, the Supreme Being, Taboo, and Magic; and then the sub-title of the book will be fully justified.

Much space might have been saved by giving the gist of what writers have said and the page on which they said it, instead of quoting them verbatim; by omitting footnotes that men versed in the classics and comparative religion can well do without; and by severely pruning the General Index. But the book is intended to help busy field-workers in Africa who cannot give much time to the classics and comparative religion nor come within a hundred miles of a library, as well as students at home; and these people are not content with a ready-to-wear judgment, however shapely its pattern; they want to ponder the evidence and form their own opinion. Many facts specified in the text illustrate other aspects of belief than those which caused me to cite them; and yet it was out of the question to quote them again in other connections. I have therefore tried to supply what is needed by rearranging the facts in a very copious General Index, which has the additional advantage of making the book more useful as a source-book in Bantu ancestor-worship for students of comparative religion and social anthropology.

Readers have a right to know what my qualification is for the task that I have undertaken. While I was working as a missionary among the Bamangwato, Khama, then chief of that tribe (better known as “King Khama”), seeking my advice in a boundary dispute, made it easy for me to gain insight into the customary land-laws of his people; and I became deeply interested in their views of Jand-rights. After judgment had been given in favour of the tribe, I told Khama of my desire to make a thorough study of the tribal conception of life—law, religion, x PRERAGE custom, folklore: and he made my path easy by publicly appointing one or two of his wise old men to instruct me in these subjects. For a quarter of a century after that I diligently studied the life and thought of tribes between the Vaal and the Zambesi, and read widely in relevant literature. The more I knew, the more ready were my native neighbours to correct my mistakes and provide what was lacking in my knowledge. My duties brought me into close touch with old native men and women all over the country who were steeped in the collective impressions of their own communities, and I had hundreds of enlightening conversations with them; but it was my habit to set apart definite periods every week for being tutored in native law and custom by wise old men of the tribe with which I happened to be living, and to use the typewriter freely when they talked and when I was reading what other observers have written on this theme. In this way my files became well stocked with information that had been closely scrutinised and carefully sifted. In 1919, having to retire from Africa, I was called to the Chair of Missions in Africa in the Kennedy School of Missions, which is one of the three constituent schools of the Hartford Seminary Foundation—an “interdenominational university of religion,” as it is called in its charter, with a staff of thirty professors and twenty-five lecturers, and a library of over a hundred and twenty-six thousand books. Here I have had leisure to think through the mass of notes that I had written in Africa and keep abreast of current literature on Bantu life, and the rare privilege of turning when in doubt to colleagues who are acknowledged authorities in their own fields of sacred learning. And another godsend has been given me: missionaries on furlough, many of them from Africa, come to Hartford for post-graduate study, and I owe them much for their criticisms and suggestions.

It is an axiom among astronomers, I am told, that no observer’s work is reliable till his personal equation is known—the allowance that must be made in all his observations for his personal peculiarity of vision; and unfortunately there is no known scientific method of accurately measuring the personal equation of an observer of Bantu religion. I have tried to put truth always in the place of pre-eminence, and am not conscious of having any other end in view; but I am aware that when a white man writes

PRUE PAO) xi on African religion, he is providing, not knowledge, but enlightened opinion, or else unenlightened opinion; and every student who uses this book must test my judgments for himself. I do not claim to have given a final interpretation of Bantu ancestor-worship; I have but tried to do a little intensive cultivation in a field that has hitherto had only its surface scratched. Throughout a long and active life I have worked in the faith that God has never ceased striving to clear the vision and nerve the will to righteousness of even the most backward races; that for them as for us it is the Divine within that is the hope of glory; and every year of labour has given me a firmer grip upon this inspiring belief. Whatever else I doubt, I am sure of this: that he who regards the religious ideas with which this book teems as the incoherent babblings of disordered fancy, will miss whatever of value they contain, and that he who regards them as responses of the human spirit to the Eternal Spirit that broods over humanity, can never willingly lie idle in a world where they exist.

Contents

INTRODUCTION: RELATION OF THE MIssIONARY TO BANTU

CHAPTER

RELIGION Theme: An cnatiects comprehension of “a true inwardness