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Our Sexuality 12th Edition Crooks Solutions Manual

Chapter 2: Sex Research: Methods and Problems

Learning Objectives
1 Define sexology and explain how it is impacted by politics. Describe the goals of
sexology, provide examples of each goal, and identify and discuss the most
controversial of the goals.

2 Describe and give examples of each of the following research methods: case
study, survey, direct observation, and experimentation. Under what circumstances
would each of these methods be likely to be used?

3 Define each of the following and distinguish among them: survey sample, target
population, representative sample, and random sample. Why are sampling issues
so important in research?

4 Discuss questionnaires and interviews, and the strengths and limitations of each.

5 Explain how nonresponse, self-selection (volunteer bias), demographic bias, and

inaccuracy present problems in survey research.

6 Describe the research studies of Alfred Kinsey and his associates, including
research methods used, subject populations studied, and strengths and limitations.
Identify which Kinsey results have remained consistent over time and which have
now appeared to change.

7 Describe the National Health and Social Life Survey, including research methods
used, subject populations studied, and strengths and limitations. Why was the
development of this survey critical to public health? Describe the National
Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, including research methods used, subject
populations studied, and strengths and limitations. Identify and discuss crucial
differences between these surveys.

8 Summarize some of the research findings on ethnicity and sexual behavior.

9 Describe the results of surveys on violent pornography and alcohol use.

10 Describe Masters and Johnson’s research, including the research method used,
subject populations studied, and strengths and limitations. Discuss the findings of
Masters and Johnson that have remained consistent over time.

11 Describe the experimental method of research. Distinguish between independent

and dependent variables, providing examples of each.

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a
publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

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15 Chapter 2 Sex Research: Methods and Problems

12 Describe some of the technologies that have been used in sexuality research,
including electronic devices, fMRI, and CASI.

13 Describe the impact of the Internet on sexuality research, including how

cyberspace is used for research purposes. Identify and discuss problems
associated with using the Internet for sexuality research.

14 Explain the ethical guidelines that are followed in sexuality research and identify
the institutional review board process.

15 Identify and discuss criteria that are helpful in evaluating various kinds of
research.

Discussion Questions
 What are the advantages and disadvantages of conducting sex research in cyberspace?
Be sure to discuss volunteer bias, demographics of the population sample, cost and
effectiveness of online surveys, response rate, and any other relevant issues.

 If you were a sex researcher today, what topics would you want to explore? In your
opinion, are there any issues or topics in sex research that you believe should NOT be
studied (because they are too controversial or too problematic to study)? What issues
(if any) do you believe should not be studied, and why?

 Would you want to be a participant in a study about sexual matters or behavior?

Would you want your friends or family to participate, or know about your
participation?

 If anonymity was guaranteed, do you think study participants would still lie about
their sexual behaviors? If yes, what would motivate them to do so? If no, is there
any way you could know this for certain? What does this say about the validity and
reliability of surveys, especially in the field of sexuality?

 Think of sex research topics that have been studied extensively (such as preventing
contraction of STIs, sexual responsiveness in both males and females). For each one,
discuss the benefits and problems (including ethics) with gaining such knowledge.

 If you were to design a questionnaire on sexual practices, which research method do

you believe would harness the most useful information (case study, class survey, field
research, questionnaire, interview, experiment) and why?

 In recent years there have been attacks on sexuality research by politicians. Under
what, if any, circumstances should politicians be able to block legitimate scientific
research?

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a
publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
16 Chapter 2 Sex Research: Methods and Problems

 Discuss the impact of the AIDS epidemic on sexuality research. Why is such
research important to public health?

Guest Speakers
 Have a researcher engaged in sexuality research lecture to the class on research
methods.

 Have a researcher who works with animals come to class to discuss the application of
animal research to human research in regards to sexual behavior. How does animal
research inform human research in this field? What are its disadvantages?

 Someone from the Women's Studies department could discuss the differences in
masculine and feminine "ways of knowing" with your class.

 Have a speaker from your Institutional Review Board discuss ethical guidelines in
regard to research.

 Invite a psychologist or sociologist who conducts research to teach about statistical

procedures for analyzing nonexperimental (descriptive) and experimental data.

 Invite a nursing instructor to discuss research on the sexuality of persons with

disabilities.

Teaching Ideas
Group Activity for Difficult Topics
Supplies needed: large unlined butcher paper and markers
Time: 45-60 minutes

Break students into groups of four to six. Tell students they are a research team that has
just been awarded a grant to study important questions in the field of human sexuality.
What is their question? What method will they use to conduct their research (survey,
face-to-face interviews)? Ask students to design a research study on a topic of their
choice, being sure to take into account such factors as ethical issues, volunteer bias, and
reliability.

Have students write their research question and outline their study design on the butcher
paper. After sufficient time (45 minutes or so) have students share their research projects
in front of the class. The class can vote on the best-designed research project, if desired.

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a
publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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account of ‘the spirits’ hill,’ where people who go, carrying pots on their
heads, have them lifted off by the baboons, and hear a sound, ‘as of
people answering.’ They also speak of the ‘spirit-drums’—the small ones
sounding piye! piye! and the big ones, pi! pi! as though a dance were
going on, and so far as one can gather, these spirits seem to be thought of
as in sight like ordinary men and women—not the little εἴδωλα who
dwell in the spirit-houses.
The notion of a connection between religion and morality comes
comparatively late in human development; but we can perhaps see traces
of it in the idea of the chirope. This means that, when a man has killed
another man, he will either be ill, or be seized by a sort of murderous
madness till he has performed some expiatory ceremony. The accounts I
have before me are somewhat different, but are not, perhaps, inconsistent
with one another. Among the Yaos, in Macdonald’s time, it seems to
have been a condition that the victim should not be an enemy (towards
whom no obligations were recognised), or even a person of the same
tribe, whose kinsfolk could take up the feud and demand compensation.
But, if a Yao killed his own slave (or, apparently, his child, his younger
brother, or any one under his charge), he feared that he ‘would pine
away, lose his eyesight, and die miserably, unless he went to the chief,
paid him a certain fee, and said, “Give me a charm, for I have slain a
man.”’ The Angoni, like the Zulus, apply the notion to killing a man in
battle, and think that, unless they gash the bodies of the slain, so as to let
out the air from the intestines, and prevent the corpse from swelling, they
will be attacked by a mysterious disease which causes their own bodies
to swell up. (This precise symptom is not given in the accounts before
us, but is believed in by the Zulus, and probably by the Angoni.) The
Angoni afterwards dance a war-dance ‘to throw off the chirope.’ The
word appears to be connected with mlopa, ‘blood,’ used particularly of
blood shed in killing—as of animals in hunting—and the idea is that the
spirit of the slain enters the body of the slayer. This is even the case with
animals; and hence it is the custom for the hunter to cut off a small piece
of the meat as soon as he has shot any animal, throw it on the fire, and
eat it, ‘because of the spirit of the beast that enters into one if one does
not.’
The Angoni and various other tribes west of the Lake have a belief
that there is a distinct relation between smallpox and morality; that, if the
disease attacks a village where the moral tone is good, all the patients
will recover; whereas, in a place given, as the native statement puts it, ‘to
adultery and other sins,’ every one who sickens, young or old, will die.
The locality, and various other circumstances, make it unlikely that this
is an imported notion.
It is generally believed that the Eastern Bantu have no ‘idols’ properly
so called; and their charms, to which we shall come back later, do not
usually take the form of human figures. But the Tonga chiefs used to
carry about with them little wooden images called angoza—representing
men, women, or animals. Sometimes they were only sticks with a little
head carved at one end. The Rev. A. G. MacAlpine, who seems puzzled
what to make of them, does not state whether any are now in existence.
‘Long ago they used to be owned by chiefs only, and were lodged in the
house of the head-wife.... They were not displayed except on special
occasions. In the talking of important cases, they are said to have been
brought out and planted in the ground at some little distance from the
chief, and when he went on a journey they might be carried along with
him, both of which uses would suggest their being an emblem of
authority.... Often people came asking to see them, when they would be
brought out covered up and not exposed till some gift had been made.’
We find that the Achewa have articles described as ‘fetiches’ and
consisting ‘of a few short pieces of wood the size of one’s forefinger,
bound together with a scrap of calico into the figure of a child’s doll.
Inside the calico is concealed a tiny box made of the handle of a gourd-
cup, ... [and] supposed to contain the spirit of some dead ancestor.’
Spirits wandering homeless in the bush are apt to annoy the living in
various ways, till captured by a ‘doctor’ and confined in one of these
receptacles.
The Yao children play with dolls bearing about as much resemblance
to the human figure as a ninepin, but evidently intended to represent it. If
games are survivals of religious ceremonies, they may originally have
been teraphim, or fetiches of some sort. The ‘ugly images’ found by
Livingstone near Lake Mweru, in ‘huts built for them,’ which were used
in rain-making and cases of illness, seem to have been somewhat
different from the angoza of the Atonga.[14]
 CHAPTER IV
RELIGION AND MAGIC—II
Creation. Origin of death. Lake Nyasa. Rain-making. Charms. Witchcraft. Lycanthropy.
Divination. Food tabus. Dances.

So far as we can get at the notions of the Bantu about creation, they do
not seem to have thought that this world ever had a beginning. All the
stories one has met with assume it as already existing, and explain how
this or that feature—mountains, rivers, lakes, animals, men—was
introduced into it. The Yaos tell that Mtanga pinched up the surface of
the earth into mountains, Chitowi—who had failed in performing the
operation himself—having called him in for the purpose. He then dug
channels for rivers, and brought down rain to fill them. The Yaos, being
mountaineers, assumed that a plain would be unfit for human habitation:
Mtanga, on first viewing their country, remarked, ‘This country is bad
because it is without a hill.’ There are also legends of the introduction of
the sun, moon, and stars, and of the origin of clouds, wind, and rain; but
all these presuppose the existence of people on the earth.
Mankind is held to have originated at Kapirimtiya, a hill—or as some
say, an island in a lake, far to the west of Nyasa. Here it is believed that
there is a rock covered with marks like the footprints of men and
animals, and that, when men were first created, the island was a piece of
soft mud, and Mulungu sent them across it, so as to leave their footmarks
there, before they were dispersed over the world. One native account
says that ‘they came from heaven and fell down below upon the earth’;
another, that they came out of a hole in the rock, which was afterwards
closed by ‘the people of Mulungu,’ and is now ‘in a desert place towards
the north.’
In the Bemba country, the natives speak of two such places; and one of
them was seen in 1902 by a European, who describes it in a letter to Life
and Work as ‘a conglomerate rock showing what the natives call
footprints of a man, a child, a zebra or horse, and a dog.’ The Bemba
people say that these footprints were made by Mulungu (or, as they call
him, Luchereng’anga) ‘and the people and animals he brought to occupy
the country.’ Offerings of beads, calico, and beer are placed on this rock.
The writer thought the marks certainly looked like footprints, but were
merely hollows where the rain had washed out the softer parts of the
rock. The old head-man of the place, naturally enough, would not hear of
this explanation, and maintained that the marks had once been much
plainer, but were now partly washed away by the rains.
This account agrees well enough with the vague indications given by
the Blantyre people as to the direction of Kapirimtiya. It seems to show
that the Yaos and Bemba had some common centre, though the latter also
say (which is confirmed by other testimony) that they came from the
west in comparatively recent times.
The story of the Chameleon is found among so many of the Bantu as
to suggest that they derived it from a common source. Whether it came
from the Hottentot legend of the Moon and the Hare—or from the story
out of which that was developed, I do not feel competent to discuss. The
Yaos, the Anyanja, and the Atonga all possess it in slightly differing
versions. I shall give the last-named.
‘Chiuta deputed the Chameleon and the Lizard (or Frog, as it is
variously given) to take to men the message, the one of life and the other
of death. The Chameleon was to tell men that they would die, but that
they would return again, while the Lizard was bid tell them that when
they died, they would die for good. The Chameleon had the start, but in
its slow, hesitating pace was soon outrun by the swift Lizard, which
darted in among men with its tale that dying they should end their
existence. A good while after, the Chameleon came lazily along and
announced that, though men should die, they would return to life again;
but he was met by the angry and sorrowful reply that they had already
heard that they must die without returning, and that they had accepted
the message first delivered.’
This is exactly like the Zulu story, where the people say, ‘Oh! we have
taken hold of the word of the Lizard, when it said, “People shall die.” We
never heard that word of yours, Chameleon—people will die!’
Consequently, Zulus, Yaos, Anyanja, Atonga, and, I suppose, most
Bantu, detest the poor Chameleon, and consider him an unlucky beast.
The Anyanja never pass one without putting snuff into its mouth, ‘that it
may die,’ and any one who knows what a value they set on this
commodity, and what minute quantities they seem, as a rule, to carry
about with them, will allow that this is, indeed, carrying enmity very far.
However, the Lake Anyanja seem to take a different view of the matter
from the Blantyre people. They hold that their ancestors were grateful for
the Chameleon’s message, though it came too late—perhaps they
reflected that it was not his fault: he was not built for fast travelling;—
and they give him tobacco as a reward; so that chameleons who die by
nicotine poisoning are the victims of ill-judged kindness, not of revenge.
It is worth noticing that the creature’s name in the Lake dialect—
gulumpambe or gwilampambe—seems to mean ‘seize the lightning’ (or
‘Mpambe’). Possibly there is some still recoverable tradition at the back
of this.
The Yaos have another very curious tale, in which the Chameleon is
directly concerned in the introduction of Man into the world. At first
Man was not—only Mulungu and the beasts. Apparently the Chameleon
has been forced by changed circumstances to alter his mode of living,
for, in those days he used to set traps for fish in the river—wicker
arrangements on the principle of the lobster-pot—as natives do now. One
morning, on visiting his trap, he found two unknown beings in it—no
other than the first man and woman, who had somehow blundered into it
during the night. (I have seen a mono big enough to contain one person,
with his knees drawn up, but the size of the First Parents is not stated.)
He consulted Mulungu as to what he should do with them, and was told,
‘Place them here, they will grow.’ They did grow, and developed various
activities—among others that of making fire by twirling a hard stick on a
bit of soft wood (kupeka moto), as is done to this day. But in the end they
set the grass alight, and thus drove Mulungu from his abode on this
earth. The Chameleon escaped by climbing a tree; but ‘Mulungu was on
the ground, and he said, “I cannot climb a tree.” Then Mulungu set off
and went to call the Spider. The Spider went on high and returned again
and said, “I have gone on high nicely,” and he said, “You now, Mulungu,
go on high.” Mulungu then went with the spider on high. And he said,
“When they die, let them come on high here.” And behold, men on dying
go on high in order to be slaves of God, the reason being that they ate his
people here below.’
That is, as soon as they had found out the use of fire, they began to kill
and cook buffaloes and other animals. No hint is given here as to where
or how these human beings originated. Mulungu evidently knows
nothing about them (while the animals, with which they have been
interfering, are ‘his people’), and makes the Chameleon responsible for
them, just as a chief at the present day would hold any man who
introduced strangers into a village responsible for their conduct. Two
other points are noteworthy—the region into which Mulungu makes his
escape is ‘above’; and the Spider, who helps him, is a conspicuous figure
in West African folk-lore and mythology. This is the only instance except
one where I have met with him in an Eastern Bantu story; but we have
numerous examples in Duala, and one at least from the Congo.
This tale seems to be a very crude form of the myth in which a divine
being is driven from earth by the wickedness of mankind—like Astræa
and the Kintu of the Baganda. The curious, and, to us, inconsistent
limitations of his power are just what one may expect to find in stories of
this kind.
Perhaps we might include among legends of creation a story told at the
mysteries (to which we shall recur later on) to account for the origin of
Lake Nyasa.
‘In old days the Lake was small as a brook. Then there came a man
out of the west with a silver sceptre.’ (The story is ‘taken down from
native lips’; I do not know what is the original wording in this place; but
we may suppose that the Lake people knew silver through the coast
traders even before they were acquainted with Europeans. In any case,
the ‘silver sceptre’ need not prove the story to be a recent invention; one
constantly finds touches of ‘actuality’ introduced by the tellers of these
tales.) ‘He married, and brought his wife to return with him to his
country. She consented, and her brother said, “Yes, and I will go too.”
But his brother-in-law said, “I will not have you go too.” Then he wept
bitterly for his sister, when he saw her cross the lake, and he grew very
angry, and he took his stick and struck the water, till it swelled up and
covered all things and became a flood. Then the woman and her brother
died, both of them together, and the corpse of the woman went to the
north, and that of her brother to the south. When a cloud weeps in the
south, the sister rests quietly in the north, and when a cloud appears and
weeps in the north, the brother rests quietly in the south.’
In another chapter we shall find a legend of a river struck with a staff
with the opposite purpose, viz., to make a passage through it. It is
possible that these may be echoes of the Biblical stories heard from the
missionaries, though, as a matter of fact, I do not think this is the case.
In the last chapter I spoke of magic as distinguished from religion. By
the latter I mean appeals to—or attempts to propitiate—some unseen,
superior powers, whether these be thought of as ancestral spirits, nature-
powers, or what we generally understand by a Deity. Magic, on the other
hand, consists in performing certain actions which will, in some occult
way, have such an effect on natural forces as to produce the result
desired; that is to say (to put it roughly), it enables man to control nature
on his own account. I must confess, however, that I do not always see
where the line should be drawn, and have included several matters in this
chapter without attempting to decide how they should be classified.
Usually people attempt to do magic on the principle that like produces
like—as when water is poured out on the ground in the hope of bringing
rain.
It will be remembered that, when we spoke in the last chapter of
Chigunda’s people calling on Mpambe for rain, it was said that the
ceremony concluded with ‘a rain-charm.’ This is described as follows:
—‘The dance ceased, a large jar of water was brought and placed before
the chief; first Mbudzi (his sister) washed her hands, arms, and face; then
water was poured over her by another woman; then all the women rushed
forward with calabashes in their hand, and dipping them into the jar,
threw the water into the air with loud cries and wild gesticulations.’
This, however, might be taken as prayer and not magic, if we are to
understand the water to be thrown into the air as a sign that water is
wanted. Sometimes people smear themselves with mud and charcoal to
show that they want washing. If the rain still does not come, they go and
wash themselves in the rivers and streams.
In 1893 the rains were unusually late. In the West Shiré district we
only had one or two showers up to December 12—by which time the
crops should have been in the ground in the ordinary course of things;
and though that day and the next were wet, the weather cleared again—
except for delusive thunder and lightning which led to nothing. After
about a week of this, I happened to go to a village, and found all the
women busy cleaning out the well whence they obtained their usual
water-supply. It was a large hole, three or four feet across, and perhaps
ten or twelve feet deep, and pegs had been driven into one side, by which
even the white-haired old grandmother of the party ascended and
descended with the greatest agility. They had already dug out a large
heap of mud, and seemed serious and preoccupied, and none of the men
were to be seen—in fact, the huts appeared to be deserted. But it never
struck me that they were doing anything else but digging out their well
because the water had come to an end.
Some years later, when I read M. Junod’s Les Baronga, a passage in it
forcibly recalled this scene, and showed that it had a meaning which had
never occurred to me at the time. The Ronga women, it appears, have a
solemn rite of clearing out the wells in time of drought. For this, they lay
aside all their usual garments, clothing themselves only with grass or
leaves, and start for the well, with special songs and dances. I did not
notice anything special about the costume of the women at Pembereka’s,
nor did I hear any singing, but probably that would accompany the
dance, which would have taken place before they actually got to work.
As the well was quite close to the huts, there would be no marching in
procession—two or three of the women may have come from other
kraals, but there were so few in all that the ceremony must have taken
place on a very small scale. Not knowing of the Ronga usage, I could not
ascertain whether or not the Anyanja women carried it out on the
following points: (1) Before starting for the well, they go in a body to the
house of a woman who has had twins, and pour water over her out of
their calabash dippers; (2) When they have finished cleaning out the
well, they go and pour water on the graves in the sacred grove.
It will be remembered that the ceremony at Chigunda’s was conducted
(though in the presence of the chief and all his people) by women only. I
did not hear of any case of twins among these people during the time of
our stay, and do not know how they are looked on. I have been told that
the Yaos, when twins are born, kill one, but this is an unsupported
statement (made by a native, however), which I have not been able to
test. It seems clear that the Atonga and other tribes by the lakeside
consider them unlucky, and act on that belief in varying degrees.
We do not find a special class of rain-doctors apart from the ordinary
sorcerer, diviner, or ‘witch-doctor.’ Public ceremonies are conducted—or
at least presided over—by the chief, though no doubt the ‘doctor’ is
frequently consulted. M. Junod, in the account above referred to, says
that the chief gives orders for the women to go out and clean the wells,
after having ascertained, through lots cast by the principal diviners, that
such a step is necessary.
There is no bar, however, to the exercise of special powers by
individuals who possess them. Sir Harry Johnston speaks of an old rain-
maker named Mwaka Sungula, at the north end of Lake Nyasa. His
power extended to wind as well as rain. He was once resorted to by the
native crew of the Domira when she stuck on a sandbank, and, as the
wind changed during the night following his incantations, he had a
triumphant success.
 There are charms, as might be expected, not only for bringing rain, but
for keeping it away. When travelling from the Upper Shiré district to
Blantyre towards the close of the rainy season, I found that one of the
carriers was provided with mankwala a mvula (rain-medicine) to ensure
fair weather during the journey. I inspected this talisman, and found it to
consist of two sticks, about a foot long, firmly lashed together with strips
of bark, and, inserted between them, a piece of charred wood, and
perhaps some other things which I could not clearly make out. He had
paid the local practitioner a goat for it. He kept it in his hand on the
march, and, from time to time, pointed it towards the quarter from which
rain might be expected. It is a fact that none fell till we were within a few
miles of the Mission; and Chipanga might have argued that the power of
the charm was here neutralised by the more powerful influence of the
white men.
This brings us to the subject of mankwala, variously translated
‘medicine,’ or ‘charms,’ and including what we understand by both
terms. I have never been able to ascertain the etymology of the Nyanja
word mankwala (a plural without a singular); in Yao, mtela, ‘a tree or
plant,’ is, like the Zulu umuti, used with this meaning. Native doctors,
both men and women, often have a very good knowledge of medicinal
herbs, but it is the other kind of ‘medicine’ with which we have to do just
now.
This may be divided, roughly, into offensive and defensive. You enter
the little courtyard and see growing in the space between the huts, a
cherished bush of cayenne peppers, to which is tied a protective
apparatus consisting of a small wooden hoop with a goat’s or ram’s horn
filled with heaven knows what messes, fastened into it. Or a string is
hung at the door of a house, which is supposed to turn into a snake if any
one enters to steal. Or a bamboo is set up close to the garden, with a horn
on the top of it; or a string is run round the crops, or you may see ashes
laid beside the path which passes by them; or, again, the medicine may
be buried. Snail-shells and bundles of leaves may be used in this way.
Those who attempt to steal in spite of these contrivances will either die
on the spot or be taken ill afterwards.
The word winda, which means to protect a garden (or anything else) in
this way, is also used of women letting their hair grow while their
husbands are on a journey, lest any ill should befall the travellers. They
are also supposed (among the Yaos at any rate) to refrain from washing
their faces or anointing their heads till the absent ones return.
 It would be impossible to enumerate all the different varieties of
‘medicine.’ I believe there is some preventive of every ill likely to befall
mankind, and those who understand such things can do a profitable
business. The Shiré people venture recklessly into the water if they are
provided with ‘crocodile medicine’; and there are medicines against
lions, leopards, and, I suppose, every variety of dangerous wild beast, not
to mention the ‘gun medicine,’ which enables the hunter to shoot
straight, and which, perhaps, ought to be classed in the ‘offensive’
category, but that it is free from sinister associations. Most European
sportsmen, if at all successful, have been importuned for this, and it used
to be firmly believed that the late Mr. Monteith Fotheringham, who was
a very good shot, wore a belt charged with exceedingly powerful
‘medicines’ next his skin. There are also ‘medicines’ to make a man
bullet-proof, like Chibisa, the Nyanja chief, who was brought down at
last by a sand-bullet, as Dundee was with a silver one at Killiecrankie.
Some natives once assured me that Chikumbu, a Yao chief, who at one
time gave the Administration some trouble, was invulnerable by shot or
steel; the only thing that could kill him—since he had not been fortified
against it by the proper medicine—was a sharp splinter of bamboo. This
reminds one of Balder and the mistletoe. The East African Wadoe have a
legend about a magician who could be killed by one thing only—the
stalk of a gourd. But as the gourd-stalk was ‘a forbidden thing’ to him,
this suggests the subject of miiko or tabu-prohibitions, which we must
take up presently.
Various seeds, nuts, claws of animals, and other things are worn round
the neck as ‘medicine’ of this kind. Sometimes it takes the shape of
wedge-shaped wooden tablets, or bits of stick about an inch long, which
are also seen strung on the band which people wear round the head as a
remedy for headache—a kind of combination of ‘natural’ and
‘supernatural’ means, as the string is supposed to give relief by pressure.
As for ‘offensive’ medicine, there are various kinds. Some are ‘buried
against people’—usually in the form of horns—by the witch (mfiti) who
wishes to do the said people a mischief. I have no doubt that horns are
really sometimes buried with such intent; but it more frequently happens
that they are unburied by the witch-detective who has probably the best
of reasons for knowing where to find them. Then there is a very immoral
kind of medicine which, like the Hand of Glory, enables thieves to steal
without detection, by throwing the owners of the stolen property into a
deep sleep, or even (adding insult to injury) forces them to answer,
unconsciously, any questions as to the whereabouts of their wealth.
There are several kinds of this charm, but I do not know the composition
of any; though, in some parts of East Africa, a plant with the botanical
name of Steganotaenia is supposed to possess these marvellous
properties. There is also a charm by means of which thieves can make
themselves invisible; but as it might also enable honest men to escape
from their enemies, it ought perhaps to have been enumerated in the first
category. One kind, at least, of this medicine is the drug strophanthus
(obtained from a plant locally called kombe), and with this the chief
Msamara poisoned himself in 1892, imagining that it would enable him
to walk unseen out of prison at Fort Johnston. He had previously taken
off all his clothes, reasoning that the drug would not make them
invisible.
I remember being told that native burglars (I understand that such
exist, but cannot say I have come across them personally, and do not
believe that they are common, except in the coast towns), when setting
out for their night’s work, strip and oil themselves all over. This, I
understood at the time, was to make it difficult for any one to get a grip
of them, if caught; but it has since occurred to me that it was also part of
the process for rendering themselves invisible—the medicine being
applied externally as an unguent.
Secret theft is looked on with horror, as probably connected with
witchcraft. Natives are so ready to share everything they have with their
neighbours, that a person who stealthily takes what he might have for the
asking lays himself open to suspicion of yet darker dealings. It is the
Bewitcher, the Mfiti, who is the great terror of native life.
Witchcraft is not, so far as I can make out, thought of as a system of
compelling the unseen powers (whether dead ancestors or nature-spirits)
to work one’s will. The mfiti, however, employs certain animals as
messengers—the owl, and the jackal, whose bark summons him to
midnight orgies; but I do not know that he intrusts these creatures, as
Zulu sorcerers are said to do the baboon and the wild-cat, with
‘sendings’ to injure an enemy. Besides bewitching, as aforesaid, by
means of ‘medicines,’ the things one most frequently hears of his doing
are turning himself into a hyena, leopard, or other animal, and digging up
graves to eat the flesh of corpses. But I am not sure that the latter ever
happens without the former, it being usually for this purpose that the
hyena shape is supposed to be assumed. So much of the funeral
ceremonies is connected with this belief that we shall have to treat it
more fully when we come to them.
Witchcraft and cannibalism are synonymous. ‘Why did So-and-So
have to drink mwavi?’ ‘Chifukwa wodiera antu—because he was an
eater of men.’ This need not imply that he actually has eaten any one,
only that he has caused (or tried to cause) some one’s death with the
intention of eating the corpse. It is the reverse of the vampire
superstition, where the corpse will not stay dead, but gets up and feeds
on the living; and as there was a recognised remedy for this evil in the
Middle Ages, so there are various ways of preventing witches from
getting at the graves, as we shall see in due course. It has been said that
cannibalism of this sort is actually prevalent among the Anyanja; but the
statements on this subject require to be carefully sifted. The Yaos were
thirty years ago in the habit of using certain parts of their slain enemies
as a charm for producing strength and courage; they reduced them to
ashes and mixed them with gruel, which had to be eaten in a particular
way. Ordinary cannibalism may have been practised in times of scarcity.
But the Europeans who were in the Shiré during the terrible famine of
1862-3, heard of no such cases, though nine-tenths of the Anyanja
population perished, many committing suicide in despair. There may, of
course, be some foundation in fact for this very widespread belief, but it
is quite capable of flourishing on little or none.[15]
Certain medicines (called mphiyu by the Atonga) have the power of
turning those who take them into some animal—each kind, leopard,
hyena, crocodile, or what not, having its own particular medicine. The
Atonga belief presents some interesting features.
‘The living man might inform his friends that he had medicine to
change him into a crocodile, and if after his death a crocodile made its
appearance in a pool where crocodiles had not often been seen before, it
was of course believed to be their friend come back. If these animals
took to killing people, a representation would very probably be made to
the relatives of the dead to go and attend to their spirit, and have it
appeased. That a man-eating lion or other beast of prey was a real mzuka
(one risen from the dead under another form) people could easily tell,
when the corpses were left uneaten: a real lion, it was thought, would be
sure to devour its victim. If this killing went on after complaint had been
made to the supposed relatives of the mzuka, the issue would probably be
a mlandu with these on account of their alleged carelessness of the rites
due to their dead. People who were known to have eaten mphiyu were
not mourned for in the ordinary way with loud wailing and outcry. They
were silently wept for by their relatives, the only sound of mourning that
might be heard being the mimic pounding in the empty grain-mortar into
which pieces of rubber were thrown from time to time to still further
deaden the sound. When after a time they heard lions or leopards roaring
in the bush, the villagers said, “There’s Karakatu (i.e. one risen), he’s
mourning for himself.”’
Not only do the natives firmly believe that their neighbours can thus
on occasion transform themselves, but occasionally a man is found to be
convinced that he can do so himself and has actually done it. Du Chaillu
mentions a case like this in West Africa, and Sir H. H. Johnston has
recorded another. A number of murders had taken place near Chiromo in
1891 or 1892, and were ultimately traced to an old man who had been in
the habit of lurking in the long grass beside the path to the river, till some
person passed by alone, when he would leap out and stab him, afterwards
mutilating the body. He admitted these crimes himself.
‘He could not help it (he said), as he had a strong feeling at times that
he was changed into a lion and was impelled, as a lion, to kill and
mutilate. As according to our view of the law he was not a sane person,
he was sentenced to be detained “during the chief’s pleasure,” and this
“were-lion” has been most usefully employed for years in perfect
contentment keeping the roads of Chiromo in good repair.’
An Englishman who had lived for some time in the Makanga country
told me that these people credit the were-hyena with a human wife, who
lives in a village and performs the ordinary work of a native woman by
day, but by night opens the door of the goat-kraal to admit her husband,
and then goes away into the bush with him to join in the feast. A goat
was carried off one night from the village near which the narrator lived,
and the people showed him, in the morning, the hyena’s tracks, and,
running parallel with them, the print of bare human feet. It was in vain to
point out that some one might have attempted to pursue the hyena and
rescue his prey, or, at any rate, have run out to see what had happened—
they were positive that the footprints were those of the hyena’s wife.
Rats, too, may be wizards in animal shape, which is a reason for their
nibbling the toes of sleepers.
Watching the grass-fires one night towards the end of the dry season, I
remember seeing a strange, sudden blaze on Nyambadwe Hill; the
flames rushing to an enormous height—whether from some change of
wind, or because they had caught a large dead tree, I do not know. I
happened to speak of this next day to an old man (a good-for-nothing old
man he was, by the bye, though that is nothing to the present purpose),
and he said that he had looked out of his hut and seen it too, remarking,
cryptically, that it was due to afiti. He went on to tell me that he
sometimes heard them passing by at night—they flew over the tree-tops
with a great whirring of wings. In fact, it appeared that they could do
‘most anything.’ The boys, who dared not go out at night for fear of afiti,
asserted that they carried a light which you could see afar off, but put it
out when you came near them, and that they could make themselves
large and small instantaneously. Some held that it was good to pluck up
heart and address them; others, that if you spoke to them, you would
become dumb like Mœris, when the wolf saw him first. I did not at the
time understand the precise connection between the witches and the fire;
but it appears that the grave itself becomes luminous when they gather
there. ‘When a fire is seen on a distant hill, where no fire can be
accounted for’—that is the place of their assembly. They call the dead
man by his childish name (which none ever uses after he has once passed
through the mysteries), and he cannot choose but come out of the grave
—then they tear him limb from limb and eat him. When you consider
that people believe this, not as a piece of curious folk-lore, but as a solid
conviction forming part of everyday life, it is hardly surprising that they
think no treatment too bad for the witches—if they can be caught.
This may be done in various ways—most, if not all of which, we must
remember, are used for the detection of other things besides witches.
There is the Mabisalila or Mavumbula, the woman who dances herself
into a state of frenzy, and reveals the name of the guilty person. She
comes to stay at the village which has requisitioned her services, and so
gains time to glean all the gossip of the place before pronouncing her
opinion, and also to bury the horns during her nightly prowls, ostensibly
undertaken for the purpose of spying on the Witches’ Sabbath, and
seeing who leaves the village to attend it. She is able to make her
investigations quite undisturbed, as no one likes to venture out after dark
during her stay, lest he should meet her and be fixed on as the culprit.
When her preparations are complete, the people are called together by
the sound of the great drum. Then she begins to dance, working up
herself and the spectators to a furious pitch of excitement, rushes round,
smells their hands to see if she can detect any traces of strange food
eaten at the unholy banquet, and at last calls on the guilty person by the
name she pretends to have heard him addressed by at the grave. When no
one answers, she says ‘So-and-So is known in the village by such and
such a name,’ and then leads the way to his house, where the horns are
dug up. The enraged people usually lynch the accused on the spot.
The ordeal of the mwavi is resorted to when people are suspected
either of witchcraft or of some other crime, such as theft; and as it is a
regular form of judicial procedure, it is perhaps best to consider it more
fully under that heading. Here I need only say that the poison is
administered to the suspected person; if he dies, his guilt is established;
if he recovers, he is ipso facto acquitted. In some districts the poison
used does not cause death, but the guilt or innocence of the accused is
decided according to the different symptoms produced.
Under the heading of ‘oracles’ we may include a great many different
processes of divination, some partaking of a judicial character, such as
the following, of which a very curious description is given by an eye-
witness, the Rev. H. Rowley. If there was no cheating, it seems to have
been a case of what is known as ‘motor automatism.’
‘Some corn had been stolen from the garden of one of Chigunda’s
people. The owner complained to the chief, who employed the services
of a celebrated medicine-man living near. The people assembled round a
large fig-tree, and the magician ... first of all produced two sticks, about
four feet long, and about the thickness of an ordinary broom-handle;
these, after certain mysterious manipulations and utterings of
unintelligible gibberish, he delivered, with much solemnity, to four
young men, two being appointed to each stick. Then from his goat-skin
bag he brought forth a zebra-tail, which he gave to another young man,
and after that a calabash filled with peas, which he delivered to a boy.
The medicine-man rolled himself about in hideous fashion and chanted
an unearthly incantation; then came the man with the zebra-tail, followed
by the boy with the calabash, moving, first of all, slowly round the men
with the sticks, but presently quickening their pace and shaking the tail
and the calabash over the heads of the stick-holders.... Ere long the spell
worked. The men with the sticks were subject to spasmodic twitchings of
the arms and legs. These increased rapidly, until they were nearly in
convulsions; they foamed at the mouth; their eyes seemed starting from
their heads.... According to the Mang’anja notion, it was the sticks that
were possessed primarily, the men through them.... The men seemed
scarcely able to hold the sticks, which took a rotary motion at first and
whirled the holders round and round like mad things. Then headlong
they dashed off into the bush, through stubborn grass and thorny shrub,
over every obstacle—nothing stopped them; their bodies were torn and
bleeding. Round to the gaping assembly again they came, went through a
few more rotary motions, and then, rushing along the path at a killing
pace, halted not until they fell down, panting and exhausted, in the hut of
one of Chigunda’s slave-wives. The woman happened to be at home, and
the sticks were rolled to her very feet.’ She, however, vehemently
asserted her innocence, and offered to take mwavi to prove it, which she
did by proxy, the poison being administered to a fowl. The second oracle
reversed the decision of the first, and the defendant was acquitted; but,
curiously enough, no one’s faith seems to have been shaken by the
contradiction between two infallible ordeals.
The Rev. Duff Macdonald alludes to this kind of divination, but very
briefly; it seems to be more Nyanja than Yao. He says that the sorcerer
‘occasionally makes men lay hold of a stick which, after a time, begins
to move as if endowed with life, and ultimately carries them off bodily
and with great speed to the house of the thief.’
I have never heard of this oracle of the sticks in the Blantyre or Upper
Shiré district. Of course, it by no means follows that it is not used; but
from various indications I fancy that the witch-detective, the Mabisalila,
whose operations have already been described, has been more popular
since the time of the Yao settlement. The ‘sticks’ are still in vogue on the
Lake. The Rev. H. B. Barnes, of the Universities’ Mission, was told of a
man at Ngofi who possessed this charm, and ‘had bought it with much
money at the coast.... It was described to me as consisting of two short
pieces of wood, with a large feather behind the second. The master of the
charm sets it on the ground near the place whence the disappearance has
taken place, and keeps his hand on the feather, following it as it moves
off on the track. It is also used when war is threatening, in order to
ascertain the safest direction in which to flee.’[16]
There are various methods of divination besides those already referred
to. The sorcerer puts bits of stick and pebbles into a gourd, shakes them
up, and throws them out, deducing his answer to the questions put from
their position as they lie on the ground. I am sorry to say I never saw this
done, and cannot discover from any of the native accounts before me
whether there is a system of interpretation which allows one to get an
answer out of almost any possible combination of the ‘pieces’—as
among the Delagoa Bay people; but it is probable that the diviner follows
some such rules. Neither the ‘divining tablets’ of the Mashona, nor the
knuckle-bones of sheep and goats seem to be used—their place is taken
by small pieces of wood (mpinjiri), sometimes neatly cut into shape, and
the claws of the tortoise, which are divided into four pieces—the front or
tip of the claw being halved to make a ‘male’ and a ‘female’ piece
(which are marked on the under side), and in like manner the back. One
way of consulting this oracle is to spread all the pieces on a dry skin and
then knock it from underneath, and catch in the hand the piece (if any)
which jumps off; if the same piece comes twice running, it is a
conclusive proof that the person whom the diviner thought of, when he
made the inquiry, is the correct one. Another way is to put the lots into a
jar, cover it up, and leave it for a time; if they still keep their relative
positions when next looked at, the omens for the journey or other
undertaking inquired about are favourable. Mr. Macdonald found that the
Yao professional diviners were usually very intelligent men, who gave
sensible advice according to their own lights, and invested it with a
certain impressiveness by means of the ‘lot,’ thinking people would care
nothing about it, or perhaps take offence, unless they could attribute it to
a supernatural source.
Many men consult the oracle on their own account, especially on a
journey, either by means of the flour-pyramid, as already described, or
by sticking a knife into the ground and leaning two small sticks against
it, or laying two sticks on the ground, and a third across them. If they fall
down, or are disturbed from their position, the omen is unfavourable.
There are many other omens which would cause a party to turn back,
unless very much set on an expedition—such as one of them striking his
foot against a stump (a common accident, to judge by the number of
ulcerated toes one sees), or certain creatures crossing the path—some
kinds of snakes, the chameleon, etc.—the partridge’s cry, and so on. The
evil-smelling mdzodzo and mtumbatumba ants, on the other hand, are
supposed (perhaps by the rule of contraries) to be of good augury.
There is a certain system of abstinence from different kinds of food
which is probably connected originally with totemism; but either no one
has succeeded in getting at the matter except in a very fragmentary way,
or else the natives of the present day have forgotten the reasons for the
practice, and it only survives in a number of apparently casual and
isolated usages. Certain people will not eat some particular kind of meat,
either ‘because it makes one ill, or because of some religious scruple or
vow, or because one’s mother has for no apparent reason decreed in
one’s infancy that a certain food is to be tabu to one.’ It might be more
correct to reduce these three alternative reasons to one, because, as a
matter of fact, people who have been forbidden some food in their
infancy usually become ill if they eat it; and it is no stretch of language
to say that they are transgressing ‘a religious scruple’ in doing so.
Further inquiry is needed before we can decide whether or not there is a
reason behind these prohibitions; quite possibly, as already stated, the
people have forgotten that there ever was one, and have no notion of any
relationship supposed to exist between them and the forbidden animal or
plant, such as the Bechwana clans recognise in the case of the lion, the
crocodile, etc. The Rev. D. C. Scott says: ‘Each tribe or family has its
particular abstinence from certain foods.’ The Achikunda, so my
boatmen told me on the Zambezi, don’t eat hippo; the Apodzo do, as
might be expected, they being a tribe who get their living by hunting that
animal. This really resolves itself into ‘Apodzo and not Apodzo,’
because the Achikunda are not really a tribe, but a mixed multitude of
slaves brought into the country by the Portuguese; and a good many
different tribes look on the hippopotamus as sacred. Some of the boys at
Blantyre mission-school ‘did not eat hippo’—but on what exact tribal or
family grounds, I never made out. The practical result was that some
other food had to be provided for them, when one of the teachers arrived
from the River with a supply of this meat sufficient for the whole school.
The Machinga are looked down on by some other tribes because they eat
fish, which the Angoni, e.g., never touch. Rats are forbidden to women,
and to those who offer sacrifice; they are considered ‘uncanny,’ for very
comprehensible reasons, though this does not prevent their being a very
popular article of diet with those not so restricted. Doctors or others who
have to treat a patient by scarifying, or, as the natives say, ‘cutting
medicine in,’ must not eat elephant. ‘In other cases the individual
himself objects to certain meats as being bad for him, specially
producing heat and spots all over.... God, they say, made men with these
necessities in them; people can’t make mistakes in what abstinence is
essential for them.’ On the whole, the various regulations one can find
look like scattered parts of a system no longer understood. Doctors, as on
the Congo, prescribe abstinence from various things when their patients
are recovering from illness. The animals most generally avoided are
those which we should class as unclean feeders, such as crocodiles,
hyenas, vultures, etc.; because they are afiti—feeding on the dead.
Folk-stories frequently refer to such prohibitions. Thus, in one, when a
girl is married, her mother tells the bridegroom that she must never be
asked to pound anything but castor-oil beans. His mother, determined to
overcome this fancied laziness, insists on the young wife’s helping to
pound the maize; she does so, and is immediately turned to water.
Various ‘dances on several occasions,’ which are important items in
native life, ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in this place, since they
undoubtedly are religious ceremonies; but they can be considered more
fully in the course of the following chapters. The same may be said of
the unyago or chinamwali ‘mysteries’; but one or two points in
connection with the latter may be just touched on here. The zinyao
dances held in the villages of the Anyanja on these occasions perhaps
embody some tradition, though what it is, no one, so far as I know, has
yet made out. Figures are traced by scattering flour on the smooth
ground of the bwalo, representing animals, usually the leopard, the
crocodile, and, strangely enough, the whale. What the word namgumi,
which is thus translated in Dr. Scott’s dictionary, really means, or is
derived from, it would be interesting to know—though reports of such an
animal may have been received from the coast people. Never having
seen the zinyao, as these figures are called, I can form no opinion as to
what the namgumi is intended to represent. The word is common to
Nyanja and Yao; perhaps adopted by the former from the latter, in which
it means ‘a large fish, the picture of which is drawn on the ground by the
head-instructor on the day of sending the boys back to their homes.’ But
some light may be thrown on the matter by the fact that Mr. Lindsay (of
the Limbi, Blantyre), passing through the bush where one of these
ceremonies had been held, saw a huge clay model (he thought about
forty feet long) of some creature which the English-speaking native with
him told him was ‘a whale,’ but which was more like one of the extinct
saurians of the Oolitic period. He was certain it was like no living
creature he knew of. One observer describes circles filled with
geometrical patterns traced on the ground, but makes no mention of the
animals, except from hearsay. Besides the drawing of these figures,
dances are performed by men got up as various animals. This is done by
means of real heads carefully preserved and mounted on sticks, while the
bodies are represented by calico stretched over wooden hoops. One such
figure—say that of an elephant or buffalo—requires several men to move
it, of course hidden by the draperies. Other performers wear masks of
plaited grass, and are weird figures supposed to represent the spirits of
the dead. These dances are held by moonlight; and the explanation
generally given is that they are intended to frighten and impress the
young people who have that day come of age. What ideas are embodied
may be a matter of conjecture, but, for the present at least, nothing
certain can be said on the subject.

Note.—Since the above chapter was written, I have learned from a correspondent in Nyasaland
that there are secret societies among the Yaos, which practise cannibalism, and that the practice
has been spreading of late years. In the absence of further particulars, it is impossible to
determine how much of this was ceremonial in origin and how much due to a depraved taste in
certain individuals which may have originated in a time of famine. See also Sir H. H. Johnston,
British Central Africa, pp. 446, 447.