[FN#15]
The poison ordeal is a necessary corollary to witchcraft. The
plant most used by the Oganga (medicine man) is a small red
rooted shrub, not unlike a hazel bush, and called Ikazya or
Ikaja. Mr. Wilson (p. 225) writes "Nkazya:" Battel (loc. cit.
334) terms the root "Imbando," a corruption of Mbundu. M. du
Chaillu (chap. xv.) gives an illustration of the "Mboundou leaf"
(half size): Professor John Torrey believes the active principle
to be a vegeto-alkali of the Strychnos group, but the symptoms do
not seem to bear out the conjecture. The Mpongwe told me that the
poison was named either Mbundu or Olonda (nut) werere--perhaps
this was what is popularly called "a sell." Mbundu is the
decoction of the scraped bark which corresponds with the "Sassy-
water" of the northern maritime tribes. The accused, after
drinking the potion, is ordered to step over sticks of the same
plant, which are placed a pace apart. If the man be affected, he
raises his foot like a horse with string-halt, and this convicts
him of the foul crime. Of course there is some antidote, as the
medicine-man himself drinks large draughts of his own stuff: in
Old Calabar River for instance, Mithridates boils the poison-nut;
but Europeans could not, and natives would not, tell me what the
Gaboon "dodge" is.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130