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Updated: June 26, 2025
Such crude organization as existed was left to the hands of a Council of Elders. There is no doubt that witch-doctors attained to a certain degree of power, but even this was utterly insignificant as compared with that which was wont to be enjoyed by the savage priests of Central Africa.
Doubtless it was chance, and yet this Spirit Whom the Messenger preached was one of Whom it seemed wisest not to speak lightly. But still the trouble grew, for by now the witch-doctors, with Hokosa at the head of them, were frightened for their place and power, and fomented it both openly and in secret. Of the women they asked what would become of them when men were allowed to take but one wife?
Indeed, the question is one that I often have had cause to ask where Kafir "witch-doctors" or prophets are concerned, notably in the instance of a certain Mavovo, of whom I hope to tell one day, whose predictions saved my life and those of my companions.
I came back and sat down, for my curiosity, a great failing with me, was excited. "Thank you, Zikali," I said, "but I will have no dealings with more of your witch-doctors." "No, no, because you are afraid of them; quite without reason, Macumazahn, seeing that they are all cheats except myself.
This peremptory message, coupled no doubt with the experiences of the preceding night, had its desired effect; for while the sun was still a quarter of an hour distant from that part of the heavens that Gowland had indicated, we saw a procession issue from the fetish-house in the centre of the town, which our telescopes enabled us to make out as consisting of a group of white men, closely guarded by a body of some two hundred armed warriors, detailed, it would appear, for the purpose of guarding the whites from the fury of the witch-doctors, or priests, who were thus most unwillingly deprived of their prey, and who accompanied the party right down to the shore, doing their best to instigate the people to attack the escort and recapture the released prisoners.
I can sympathise with you in your reluctance to do this thing, old chap; merely to depose M'Bongwele was one thing, to hang him and his crowd of murdering witch-doctors is quite another, and this is the first affair of the kind that you have been mixed up in. With me it is different.
Such was the popular feeling in the fashionable town of Hastings only seven years ago; very probably it is the same now. In the north of England, the superstition lingers to an almost inconceivable extent. Lancashire abounds with witch-doctors, a set of quacks, who pretend to cure diseases inflicted by the devil.
In one shape or another, ancient wonder-workers, Scandinavian and mediaeval seers, modern Spiritualists, classical interpreters of oracles, Indian fakirs, savage witch-doctors and medicine men, all submitted or submit themselves to the yoke of the same rule in the hope of attaining an end which, however it may vary in its manifestations, is identical in essence.
Like myself, he has been a marked man from the hour when he held back from joining those who supported M'Bongwele, and it was but yesterday that the witch-doctors found a cause against him. His punishment was to begin this morning at sunrise." "Oh, horror! and it is now nearly noon," exclaimed the professor, in horrified accents. "Why did you not mention it before, man?
As I soon heard, they were of a single family, the grandfather, the father, and the eldest son, who had been seized upon some ridiculous charge of witchcraft, but really in order that the king might take their cattle. Having been tried and condemned by the Nyangas, or witch-doctors, these poor wretches were now doomed to die.
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