The Origin of Tarzan by Sarkis Atamian

Author:Sarkis Atamian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publication Consultants

Olanga does not die. Du Chaillu thinks such repeated instances (and watered down poison) had enabled him to develop a resistance to the toxin. Incidentally, some Bakalai and Olanga appear in the same context and are easily associated, imaginably. We must compare this passage with one in Buell. When Stanley visits the mission of the Reverend and Mrs. Ingham at Lukunga in 1844, his attaché, Mr. Herbert Ward, is with him. Mr. Ward repeats the details of a witchcraft scene to a Mr. Harvey whose description of it is what Buell is relating. Buell’s passage is more than a page long, single paragraph, and on page 405, he says:

The guilty person (who has allegedly bewitched someone) is supposed to be secretly devouring the spirit of the unhappy sufferer. Should he die, a ‘N’Ganga’ or medicine man, is usually sent for to determine who it is that is possessed of ‘N’Doki’ (the devil) or is guilty of the witchcraft…The ‘N’Ganga’ brings with him an elaborate apparatus, consisting of leopard’s teeth and claws, snakes and other skins, a fetich idol…he also adds a huge mask painted in the most grotesquely horrid manner…he is a fair conjurer…Even the mat upon which he sits seems now and then to be alive. He turns and looks at it occasionally…every now and then, he pauses in his mummeries…then he will bound up again, frantically clutching at the air as if trying to lay hold on some unseen being. He shrieks and wails like one possessed…before declaring the name of the guilty or suspected person, the payment for his service (previously agreed upon) has to be made…The guilty one being named, the poor wretch has to undergo the ordeal of poison. He must drink a certain amount of n’kasa, prepared poison bark by the ‘N’Ganga. Should the poison act as an emetic, the accused is pronounced innocent; otherwise, Satan’s presence in the man is proved.59

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