Chapter Xll
Persecution Traditions: The Wars to End Witchcraft

"I have been engaged in the investigation of witchcraft throughout this district. I have found that in addition to the usual form of witchcraft . . . there exist in Tigania and Igembe two secret societies in which witchcraft is used to extort property or to enforce its orders. . . . These two . . . are known as Aathi and Kagitha."^[1]
Frank M. Lamb
District Commissioner, Meru
15 February 1928

The Case Against Witchcraft: Commissioner Lamb

By 1927, Meru's colonial administration was grinding slowly to a halt. At headquarters, district officers felt handicapped by the system of rotation that shifted them in and out of tribal regions once or twice a year. Frank M. Lamb, for example, who became Meru district commissioner in mid-1927, found himself reading the reports of no fewer than ten officers who had preceded him in the post during the prior decade.

Lamb had no doubt, however, as to what was happening to Meru's administrative structure. Within Tigania, Igembe, and parts of Imenti virtually every African colonial servant had stopped implementing British orders unless prodded by direct command. The other regions differed only in degree; tribunal members, chiefs, and headmen alike showed increasing reluctance to carry out even minimal administrative routines.

The pattern seemed most evident to Lamb in the behavior of Meru's Local Native Council. This body, launched with considerable colonial enthusiasm in 1925, consisted of eight Meru "elected" from their communities and fourteen nominated by the British district commissioner. In keeping with colonial ideas of vigorous administration, all members were former warriors, selected in part for their command of Swahili (the colonial lingua franca), success in prior posts (usually as tribal police), and pro-British attitudes. In British terms they were young, bright,

energetic, and just the men to make the legislative system come to life. In Meru terms they had been selected from among the family heads of the Murungi age-set, thus had no right to rule at all.

The Local Native Council (LNC) in fact began its work with vigor. Nominees and elected delegates found themselves in full agreement as to what they required from the government. During its opening session, for example, the LNC passed motion after motion, asking the British to provide secular rather than mission-based education, vocational rather than religious training, and the capital to begin service industries (e.g., grinding mills) to facilitate the provision of food. In 1926 and 1927, however, district officers noticed a curious passivity creep over the council, affecting nominated and elected members alike. Both groups attended regularly, yet never criticized nor even commented on any measure submitted to them by the district office. Nor, after the initial outburst of enthusiasm, did they bring forth substantive issues of their own. Indeed, British observers felt the members deliberately restricted discussions to the least significant issues they could resolve.^[2]

The Local Native Tribunals displayed similar symptoms. These had originally been established in each of the major subtribes. The Tharaka tribunal was stillborn, its selected elders nodding off to sleep during meetings. The others, however, had been the focus of concentrated attention, as each administrator in turn attempted to cure what he perceived as creeping lassitude by increasingly stringent anglicization.

The Local Native Tribunal of Imenti, for example, lay closest to Meru district headquarters. Its proximity permitted interested administrators to tinker with various internal procedures in an attempt to increase judicial enthusiasm. In 1924, for example, the number of "judicial elders" was cut, an appeals system was instituted, and all "judgments were recorded in a book." In 1925 a schedule of fines was instituted, as well as a system of court fees, to be charged to both accused and plaintiff. These payments were to form the basis of regular wages for tribunal members, thus "spurring interest" in their work. In 1926 each tribunal was given a court clerk in charge of keeping the records. In 1927 most of the original elders were "retired with honor," so that younger men could be selected in their places.^[3] The changes had no impact. Each move to anglicize the tribunals only drew them further from their Meru constituencies, eroding their willingness to act.

By 1927 passivity had spread across all Meru. After an initial inspection tour, Lamb found every chief in Igembe, all but one in Tigania, and all but the two nearest Imenti government headquarters either unable

or unwilling to function, and at least seventy-two of the appointed headmen were afraid to carry on their work. The solution did not lie in their replacement with younger men. Subsequent experience taught the district commissioner that almost every new appointee reacted to an administrative appointment in the same way. Initially, each greeted the new responsibility with enthusiasm, touring their administrative zones to acquaint themselves with local problems in much the same way as newly appointed Europeans. Perceiving hostility, they reacted by acquiring the traditional coterie of henchmen in numbers sufficient to sustain authority. Soon, however, the new appointees also grew passive, initially about enforcing government livestock levies, then to bringing those accused of lawbreaking before the colonial tribunals. In many cases this passivity was accompanied by an increasingly obvious interest in acquiring "protective magic" in the form of talismans and charms.^[4]

In other instances the new appointees resolved their inner conflicts by use of alcohol. Drunkenness had always been a problem among Meru colonial appointees, due in part to the problems of reconciling colonial requirements with their own tradition. By 1927, however, it had become endemic, and the "conflicts" were no longer solely with the British.

The relationship between colonial service and alcoholism can be most clearly illustrated by following the career of a single man, M'Mukura wa Kageta.^[5] At the time of conquest he had been a warrior. He began his colonial career as a tribal policeman in Imenti. Having served in the Carrier Corps in World War I, he proved unusually adept at languages, mastering both Swahili and English. As a result he became head interpreter for Imenti in the early 1920s. Skilled, enthusiastic, and pro-British, he was selected as chief of the "largest and most unruly divisions of Imenti" in 1924.

The promotion proved his undoing. By 1925 he displayed several startling shifts in behavior. District officers described him as "increasingly obsessed with a fear of witchcraft" and uncertain that his protective talismans would protect him. In 1926 a new district officer described him as "having taken to heavy drinking," although his periods of sobriety were marked by flurries of administrative action. By 1927, Lamb perceived him as a magicphobe who had essentially stopped enforcing government authority within his district.

M'Mukura typifies the behavior of many Meru colonial servants of that era. Caught between conflicting wishes of the British, the fringe so-

cieties, and the Njuri, they grew fearful, escapist, and finally paralyzed. Lamb, not illogically, placed full blame on both the "illegal tribunals" and "secret witchcraft societies," which he perceived as having joined together through the device of potent curses "to rob the chiefs, and through them the entire machinery of British administration of all governing initiative, . . . [placing] the right of government veto directly into the hands of the most powerful and virulent of all, the Kiama of Njurincheke [sic]."^[6]

The Investigators: Hopkins And Lamb

In January 1928, Lamb was joined at Meru district headquarters by J. Gerald H. Hopkins, appointed assistant district commissioner. Unlike many colonial officers of that era Hopkins had developed an intense interest in traditional African life, notably its supernatural aspects. During prior postings he had actively investigated what he referred to as "witch doctoring," generally by talking to "the cranky old fellows themselves" in regions where supernatural practitioners were not perceived as sources of resistance to British rule.^[7]

Hopkins shared several of his conclusions with Lamb. He was unusual among his contemporaries in recognizing traditional forms of witchcraft as devices for social control. These controls, he felt, could take two forms: "verbal" and "visible." Visual controls among the Meru might include the vines of Kagita and the reddened sticks of A-Athi, or any other object obviously used to protect crops. Verbal controls, although taking the form of chants and curses, might also be used to scare off enemies or thieves.

Hopkins did not, however, envision the witch doctor as a positive social force. Aside from the medical merits to be derived from applying herbal remedies, he saw the entire profession as standing squarely in the path of British progress. "Surely," he argued in an earlier government report,

such fellows looked askance upon English attempts to undermine the very superstitions upon which their powers have been based. . . . Usually this opposition takes the form of insistence upon obsolete and undesirable native customs, achieved by reading omens in such fashion as to predict [a] disastrous end for any individual who agrees to adopt a progressive innovation. Should an actual or contrived disaster fall upon these people, the witchdoctors will continue to terrorize, . . . declaiming that same fate will befall all others who stray [to] the teachings of Europe.^[8]

Hopkins was initially unaware of the extent to which the A-Athi and the Kagita had spread throughout the northern Meru regions. During his first district tour, however, he was accompanied by a delegation of chiefs. Many times in Tigania and Igembe, Hopkins noted the unwillingness of his escorts to cross prominent paths that had been marked by reddened sticks or looping vines.

His requests for explanation were met with evasive responses, most chiefs simply stating that the markers denoted places where no one could pass. No wiser, Hopkins once ordered a chief to enter a forbidden area and was shocked when he refused. A second time he entered one himself and was startled to observe the faces of his entire escort become distorted with fear.

Hopkins chose to interpret both the markers and his escorts' refusal to ignore them as a restriction on British rule. No representatives of the king, he later told Lamb, could ever be restricted in their movements; nor could British authority run only into those areas where Africans approved.^[9]

Lamb responded to Hopkins's argument with a decision to actively investigate the most dangerous of the societies, seeking to learn whatever might be needed to ensure their eventual destruction. He divided the labor, assigning Hopkins the Kagita and reserving the A-Athi for himself. The men chose to work together in investigation of the "illegal tribunals" (Njuri Nceke), which they perceived correctly as the most difficult task.^[10]

Initially both men restricted inquiries to their own interpreters. Thereafter, they visited a considerable number of chiefs, headmen, and the most faithful of their subordinates. In addition they spoke with several converted Meru Christians, whose fear of traditional curses had been at least partially eroded by contact with English or Italian missionaries.

All of these informants were young, no elder having been willing to even discuss the topic. All proved markedly ambivalent, indicating distaste for both the fringe groups and (among Christians) the "illegal tribunals" but refusing to reveal either their whereabouts or the names of current members. Both officers found the process "quite maddening. One could spend hours patiently listening, while learning nothing at all. And yet, one was so sure that these fellows knew so much."^[11]

The second stage of the investigation proved equally unsatisfying. By 1927 many thoughtful elders, including those within the Njuri Nceke, had grown increasingly concerned at the fringe groups' rising ability to distort ancestral tradition; they had even begun to cut into the prerog-

atives of Njuri itself. By 1927 certain of the oldest men in northern Meru—the "retired" elders, those closest to death, thus most prepared to defend ancestral ways—proved willing to denounce the fringe societies. At first such declarations were made in hushed and fearful tones. The belief that any fringe group's collective curse caused death was not lightly cast aside. Once again a solution was found within Meru tradition, in this instance, the practice of "secret" (oblique, indirect) speech.^[12]

Meru tradition often alludes to the use of "secret" speech, usually during periods of crisis when men of the tribe have been captured by enemies. Under such circumstances each generation of warriors was taught to communicate indirectly ("secretly"), using proverbs, allegories, syllogisms, and even riddles to convey meaning. In such instances speakers can be certain only those who share a common oral heritage will comprehend, but outsiders—even those who learn the language—will be both subtly and suitably excluded.

The first elders to approach either Lamb or Hopkins, therefore, spoke indirectly, referring simply to the existence of certain "Kiamas of evil" and their desecration of ancestral ways. When pressed for details of the location and membership of specific branches, however, they became oblique, speaking in parables, riddles, and allegories, all intended to provide information to those familiar with the Meru way.

Such conversations proved exceptionally irritating to both Hopkins and Lamb, locked as they were into the British preference for brief, direct, and uncomplicated conversation. Still, although neither considered himself an expert on Meru culture, they were able to obtain detailed descriptions of fringe group activities in the 1920s as well as some insight into their history. Neither investigator managed to acquire accurate information on either the historical or recent activities of the Njuri Nceke, a topic that their elderly informants avoided. Instead they seem to have imposed a quasi-English judicial framework upon what they learned of the existing Meru system, crediting it with a degree of centralization and hierarchical order that no living Meru would have recognized:

In addition to the secret societies, there are in existence four superior tribunals, most of whose members belong either to Aathi or Kagitha. Appeals have always been from the lower to the higher of these Kiamas, the names of which in order of superiority are:
Njuri a Katha Kakai
Njuri a Mbere
Njuri a Mpingiri
Njuri a Ncheke.^[13]

For men of that era both Lamb and Hopkins proved skilled and diligent investigators. The first of their "tribunals" (Katha Kakai) was almost certainly Kathaka Kai (the small bush), previously mentioned as a traditional meeting point for the Njuri Nceke. The second and third (Mbere and Mpingiri) will be remembered as two of the more select subgroups, formed on an ad hoc basis by the Njuri Nceke to resolve problems too hard for the larger group. The final term, of course, refers to the Njuri Nceke itself.

The two investigators were inaccurate, however, in attributing a hierarchy to the groups. They assumed, not illogically, that the "illegal" tribunals formed a judicial system similar to that of England, with appeals moving upward, from the "Katha Kakai" to the "Ncheke." They also felt the core of each "court's" power lay not in native law but in simple fear, because each of the alleged judges held the power to "lay terrifying curses on people and things." In their view, then, native legal proceedings were a travesty.

Hopkins claimed to have identified at least two of the tribunal's secret meeting places, at which gatherings of elders from Tigania and Igembe had been held. He asserted that all participants in such meetings were compelled to attend. More important, he believed they had been ordered, under penalty of being cursed, to follow policies of passive obstruction toward the colonial government. Specifically, they were to refuse information to its officials, bring no cases of any kind before government tribunals, give no evidence of any kind against "witch doctors," or report any efforts at "extortion or injustice" by the Njuri themselves.

Interestingly, Lamb and Hopkins decided the power of the Njuri Nceke extended far beyond what could have been possible even under favorable circumstances. To them, all chiefs, headmen, and lesser government officials were either members of these tribunals or lived in terror of their curse. And behind the tribunals lay the image of the witch doctor: "It is essential, therefore, in order to make the work of both government headmen and the official [i.e., colonial] tribunals possible . . . to break the power of these societies. . . . The powers of the witchdoctors are enormous and each witchdoctor is a member of a secret society. This innovation will be checked."^[14]

Lamb was unaware, of course, of the temporary, ad hoc nature of the first three tribunals in his hierarchy. Nor did he recognize the role all four had once played in traditional government. On the contrary he decided the core of their power lay not within a framework of tribal law

but in the sheer terror its members could inspire through their alleged supernatural powers.

Lamb saw himself, therefore, as waging war to free his charges from a movement based entirely on fear. It is thus not surprising that both he and Hopkins placed the various levels of the Njuri squarely alongside the more overtly exploitive fringe societies, in compelling obedience from everyone in Meru: "The meetings of these tribunals are attended by the clans of Igembe and Tigania. . . . Those present are commanded under penalty of being cursed . . . if they give information to government, bring cases to be heard by government, give evidence against witchdoctors and report . . . extortions or injustice done by Kiamas."^[15]

The British officials, of course, saw only the continued erosion of their own position. Having claimed a monopoly on the dispensing of justice, they could hardly allow competition from an earlier tribal institution, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition. Having established an administrative monopoly over the mainstream Meru, they could hardly make exceptions for those of the fringe. Nor, ultimately, could they permit the expansion of areas within Meru life—however neatly marked by sticks or vines—from which they or their servants were barred.

Lamb's decision to wipe out the witchcraft system was thus based on his conviction that its practitioners were centralized, hierarchical, politically malevolent, psychologically effective, and swiftly spreading. He also believed he had little choice. If colonial government was to function, its servants had to be freed from their fears. To do that, it was necessary to break the power of every supernatural society by force. Nor was the traditional witchcraft system to be spared, because both investigators believed the "witch doctors" had been more or less universally absorbed into the societies. For the sake of the British colonial system, it was clear, every facet of tribal witchcraft had to be uprooted and allowed to die.

Mbogore's War On Witchcraft

The enthusiasm of a conqueror often becomes the zeal of a convert, and none proved more zealous in their war against witchcraft than the "Kamuchunku," the Meru who were known as "little whites" through their acceptance of British ways. The most enthusiastic of these converts emerged in Meru's southern regions, where the chiefs of Mwimbi and Muthambi had proved particularly receptive to Western attitudes,

particularly those that enhanced their own authority by striking at other sources of power. In upper Mwimbi, for example, the conflict between the highest Kiama of elders and Mbogore M'Mwendo, on his appointment as that region's colonial chief, led to the eventual arrest of the elders involved. Thereafter, Mbogore also launched himself against members of both the traditional witchcraft system and the fringe groups, perceiving all of them as obstacles to power.^[16]

Mbogore's antipathy to tribal ritualists preceded the British conquests. As a war leader, he had raged continually at any obstacle to Mwimbi's military strength, even seeking to stop female circumcision on the military ground that it inhibited the birth of future warriors. The ritualists incurred his anger for similar reasons. He was often angered by prophecies that failed to meet his military needs or curses that temporarily struck down his strongest warriors.

After the conquest he was surprised to learn that his feelings were shared by the whites. He was particularly impressed, during the first months of British rule, with a decision by E. B. Horne (Kangangi) to chastise every man in Meru who practiced magic. The decision may have been prompted by Horne's irrepressible sense of showmanship and the conviction that British rules were best imposed by dramatic demonstrations. Meru tradition declares that during the first year of his rule Horne commanded the former warriors who now made up his personal guard to bring all known witch doctors to his camp on the edge of Imenti's Kazita River (near the present Meru Town). The ritualists were duly assembled. Horne is said to have scolded them, threatening them with dire punishment unless they ceased to practice. To enforce his orders, he confiscated all of the goatskin bags in which they kept their magic powders and tossed them into the Kazita River, declaring that no further witchcraft would be permitted where England ruled.^[17]

The incident made little impact on the ritualists, who simply gathered new supplies. It did, however, make a profound impression on Mbogore. Although not present at the time, he had found powerful support for his prior conviction. Like Mbogore, Horne refused to differentiate between "good" and "bad" witchcraft, having denounced healers and cursers as one and the same. Now Mbogore could translate his earlier hostility into action.

Thus over the next two decades Mbogore, his tribal retainers, and other chiefs under his influence waged sporadic war against practitioners of the supernatural. His earliest targets were the traditional ritu-

alists who had obstructed him in the past. During the early years of his chieftainship—to select one typical example—he was angered by reports that warriors in three clans under his jurisdiction had been bewitched by Arogi (sorcerers).^[18] In fact oral informants declare that the warriors had become drunk on beer, having violated the tradition that prohibited them from drinking. Clan elders had retaliated with a collective curse upon them all, causing them to sicken.

Mbogore entered the area with an escort of tribal police. Assembling every member of the clans involved, he unexpectedly proclaimed a ban on every form of witchcraft, in exact imitation of Horne's earlier declaration years before. Several elders protested that the services of Aga (curse removers, healers) were required as protection. Mbogore answered that "all Aga are Arogi" and therefore banned. He then ordered every ritualist to appear before him within one day to surrender their goatskin bags of magic powders.

At first not a single man complied, as the gathering dispersed in total silence. That night Mbogore pitched a tent, the gift of a British official, then ordered his police escort to sleep two hundred yards away. Mwimbi informants declare that the ritualists later appeared, circling seven times around the tent and chanting to curse any man who harmed them. To intensify the ritual, they then poured blood and castor oil around the tent site, to further warn the victim by a chant that anyone who crossed it would be cursed.

The next morning Mbogore rose, crossed the circle without hesitation, and promptly ordered the arrest of every ritualist in the region. Once assembled, the elders were forced to carry water in their goatskin bags from the Maara River to Mbogore's camp. They were then compelled to cast the bags, in imitation of Horne's earlier decree, into the river itself. Having provided the chief with goats as a gesture of reconciliation, they were reprimanded and sent away.

From then on Mbogore campaigned, somewhat fitfully, against what his colonial supervisors termed "outbreaks" of traditional witchcraft. During the earlier years his struggle was conducted generally within the confines of Meru custom. Complaints against practitioners led to their arrest by his retainers. Those accused were brought forcibly to his camp. Their goatskin bags and magic powders were burned before their eyes. Each practitioner was then fined one goat for having defied the witchcraft ban. Thereafter, each provided a second goat, to form the sacrificial basis of a cleansing oath, intended to insure that they never practiced again.

This cleansing oath became the heart of Mbogore's war on witchcraft, the single means to hold a suspect to his promise to give up the practice. To carry out the oath required that the liver of each sacrificial animal be removed and sliced in eight pieces. Four strips of wood were cut from an appropriate tree (usually the mukenia ), with two pieces of meat placed on each stick.

At the moment of oathing, suspects were surrounded by the chief's retainers, lest they break and run. Each man ate one of the two slices off each stick and tossed the other over one shoulder while chanting: "If I practice cursing [Urogi], let this meat kill me. If I practice curse removing [Uga], let this meat kill me. If I practice divining [Uraguri], let this meat kill me," and so forth.^[19] Allegedly, violation of the oath led to rapid swelling of the stomach, a symptom visible to everyone in the community. Thus identified, practitioners could easily be rearrested.

Mbogore's War on Fringemen

In later years Mbogore extended the scope of his antiwitchcraft campaigns to include the ritualists of the Kagita, A-Athi, and other supernatural societies. As a wealthy cattle- and landowner he was not pleased with the continued encroachment of the stomach Kiamas into his administrative jurisdiction. Nor did he perceive that the societies might offer either entertainment or famine relief. Rather, he more or less shared the view of his colonial supervisors that all fringe groups were composed of "the idle, the hungry, and those who give shelter into which Arogi can creep."^[20]

By the 1920s, however, Mbogore's earlier methods of enforcement had been sharply modified by continued contact with the whites. After World War I several of his more "tribal" administrative practices drew sharp criticism from district officers. Accepting goats from suspects was interpreted as bribery and forbidden. The use of oaths to cleanse witchcraft practitioners was labeled a repetition of the very type of activity it was meant to stamp out. Nor was the burning of goatskin bags and magic powders accepted as an adequate substitute for the more "progressive" British punishments of whipping, imprisonment, and hard labor.

Mbogore adjusted. During the 1920s, individuals accused of membership in a fringe Kiama were more and more frequently caught up in one of Mbogore's antiwitchcraft campaigns and imprisoned alongside ordinary ritualists for a one-month prison sentence at the chief's camp.

"Prison," however, meant being placed in the middle of a cleared field, under continuous guard, to do "hard labor." That labor, in turn, was redefined as collecting sufficient firewood for cookfires, bringing water from the river in the suspect's goatskin bags, and, to avoid leisure, cultivating a thorny weed known as ngonko .

"Prison" also meant, however, that at the end of each work day men and women alike received five strokes of a whip as their daily wages. Over a thirty-day period, denied all medical care, this requirement must have been terrifying to the captives. It was, however, far more satisfactory to Mbogore's British supervisors, several of whom lauded the progressive nature of his administration.

Interestingly, Mbogore managed to retain the most significant Meru tradition, having refused to abandon the cleansing oath. On completing the one-month sentence prisoners were still required—although now in strictest secrecy—to take the oath previously described, swearing they would never again practice any form of supernatural ritual. Afterward they left with Mbogore's promise in their cars that violation of the oath would no longer merely bring on illness but a two-month prison sentence as well.

Nevertheless, both the traditional ritualists and the fringe societies survived, no doubt because their services were still needed. The fringe groups, always more flexible in adversity, soon learned to cancel their activities and lie low when Mbogore's anger had been aroused. When his attention turned elsewhere, they would sing oblique new variants of songs he had previously banned, then "sell A-Athi" (or Mwaa, Kagita, Wathua, etc.) only to those they believed would not betray them. Gradually, the bands reassembled, gathering in areas sufficiently remote to allow them to feast in peace.

Mbogore strove erratically to prevent such reappearances, angrily goading neighboring chiefs in Muthambi as well as his own headmen. Occasionally, he tried to repeat his earlier successes against the traditional ritualists, camping without guards where the fringe societies were strong, in the hope that they would attempt to bewitch him. To his disappointment, no one ever tried. Angered, he often responded by appointing more and more tribal retainers to take action against each separate band, hoping that sheer numbers would eventually resolve the problem completely.

In one sense his efforts were successful. By the 1920s his uncompromising attitudes, reflected to some degree by certain chiefs in adjacent regions, communicated themselves to subordinates both among his

personal retainers and the official tribal police. On occasion bands of these less powerful Kamuchunku would express support of their chief by launching private antiwitchcraft campaigns of their own, usually with the tacit approval of superiors. Before the 1920s these illicit expeditions took the traditional form of scattering the gatherings of fringe groups and burning their huts. After the 1920s, however, the raiders often acted as self-declared colonial police, "arresting" every suspected fringe group member they could catch. Usually, each arrest led to a minor beating, halted by promises to supply the "police" with sufficient goats to pay the "fine." Resistance, however, could mean incarceration in a chief's camp for violation of the witchcraft ordinance.^[21]

However, the efforts of Meru's "little whites" ultimately failed. As chief, Mbogore and others like him could make elderly ritualists cut wood, carry water, and hoe thorns. His men could keep them under guard or even whip them. But none of the Kamuchunku could actually resolve the problem by imposing either African or British law. The former, calling ultimately for the communal execution of frequently convicted sorcerers, had been forbidden by the British. The latter, demanding long-term physical imprisonment, could be imposed only by British courts. In consequence the antiwitchcraft campaigns launched by converts to the cause seem, in retrospect, like elaborate charades. Driven by both economic and social needs, the supernatural practitioners inevitably returned to both the activities that sustained them and a community that required their services. Lacking the power to stop them, the "little whites" could only demonstrate continued zeal.

War Against Witchcraft: Hopkins And Lamb

By early 1928 sufficient data had been collected to allow Lamb, Hopkins, and two cadet subordinates to launch what was initially referred to as an anti-witch doctor campaign.^[22] Interestingly, it was initially in no way different from those launched over past decades by the Njuri Nceke, "campaigns" of which both district officers remained completely unaware.

The British effort began with a series of public proclamations, also identical to Njuri tradition. Before the conquest Njuri messengers would run from ridgetop to ridgetop denouncing one or another of the traditional fringe societies. By 1928 this role had been taken up by the British, who rode among the chiefs' camps from Imenti to Igembe proclaiming that every known witchcraft group was henceforth to disband.

Before colonialism the regional Njuris had assembled bands of chanting warriors to march against the fringe societies. Under colonialism the enforcers mobilized bands of tribal retainers, police, and even clerks and process servers along for the excitement. To the victims, little must have seemed to change.

As the government enforcers approached a hut, they invariably halted at first sight of the A-Athi Ndindi stick or a Kagita vine. Silently, elders of the society involved appeared to face the equally silent accusers. A chief informed them of the European order to disband. As proof of compliance they were to place the symbols of their magic (Ndindi, goatskin bags, etc.) in their huts, then set them afire. None of the enforcers violated their protected zone, but neither did they leave.

The men of the fringe groups had virtually no options. Their protective magic was useless against those who remained outside its zone. Nor could they collectively curse the assembled representatives of colonial authority without guaranteeing their own arrest and imprisonment under the antiwitchcraft ordinances. Under such circumstances, compliance was universal. The drums of several Kagita groups were seized throughout Tigania and Igembe, then deposited at Meru district head-quarters. Lamb himself visited certain A-Athi locations to collect some of the goatskin bags and magic powders as material evidence. The rest were left within A-Athi huts, to be consumed in flames.

For several weeks the campaign appeared to have succeeded. Thereafter, rumors once again began of dances, feasts, nighttime visits to wealthy homesteads, and subsequent "gifts" of goats and cattle. These were followed by a noticeable slackening in the performance of colonial servants in both lgembe and Tigania.

At this point a number of the "retired elders," the oldest surviving age-set, appear to have chosen to intervene once more. They may well have been spokesmen for the Njuri Nceke, reflecting that group's decision to eliminate the fringe Kiamas once and for all. Or they may have acted alone, emboldened by the whites' earlier successes, to defend tradition once again. In either case available evidence suggests that several men of extreme age sought out either Hopkins or Lamb. Although still unwilling to accuse directly, they fell once more into oblique speech patterns but managed this time to identify specific persons as fringe Kiama members.

At one point, for example, a single elder is recalled as having spoken privately with Lamb, who asked him outright to name members from his region who practiced forbidden forms of witchcraft. Perhaps to

Lamb's surprise, he did so. Thereafter, he is said to have declared that his violation of an oath of secrecy would cause him to die within three days. He proved correct. His body was subsequently examined by Dr. H. Brassington, then a Protestant medical missionary in Igembe. "Physically," Brassington later recalled, "there was no sign of death at all. His body was in good health, with no evidence of poisoning."^[23]

Lamb reacted to the acquisition of this information with the decision to arrest every known practitioner of witchcraft in Meru. With total disregard for the subtleties of "good" and "bad" witch doctoring, he enlisted the aid of every European in the district to help "sweep up the lot." Missionaries, medical personnel, and agricultural officers joined in with enthusiasm. As a result sixty-two alleged practitioners were rounded up within a single day for deposit in E. B. Horne's log-cabin jail. At one point Dr. Brassington was pressed into service with his mission truck to carry suspects collected from two Igembe locations off to district headquarters. All were very old, frightened, and bewildered. The roads were rough ("shaped like nineteenth-century washboards"), and Brassington was forced to "bump the old fellows rather terribly about."^[24] They were, however, deposited with other ritualists and fringe group members in the district jail.

Reports conflict as to what happened thereafter.^[25] Both Meru and colonial informants agree that a considerable number of very elderly suspects were incarcerated in the district jail's single room. Informants also agree that the group contained members of the fringe societies as well as traditional ritualists. At one point a district officer, probably Hopkins, interrogated them as a single group.

The Englishman first asked who among them practiced sorcery (Urogi). All the men in the room denied it, declaring that they were nothing more than simple heaters, thus innocent of causing harm. To demonstrate their innocence, the administrator then commanded each to "lick" samples of the magic powders (Mithega: medicine, magic substances) that had been collected from their goatskin bags. In theory the request was perfectly in accord with Meru tradition. For decades, supernatural practitioners had publicly tasted their Mithega before giving them to others, thereby demonstrating they were intended to heal.

Unfortunately, in collecting samples of the magic substances, colonial officials had made no effort to establish to which individual practitioners each substance belonged. The arrested elders thus unexpectedly found themselves ordered to ingest the magic of other ritualists. If this command was indeed given, it must have created feelings of utter

terror within every man in the room, the cause of which would have simply bewildered the administrator.

Meru's supernatural practitioners shared traditions of their own. One was the nearly universal belief that many of their competitors, although publicly engaged in benevolent forms of ritual (e.g., healing, divination, prophecy), practiced sorcery in private. To be required to "lick" the magic substances of other practitioners, therefore, was to risk death. The demand lay so far outside normal patterns of behavior that it was horrifying to those concerned.

Their terror would have intensified, moreover, if men of the main-stream had been forced into contact with magic from men of the fringe. Here, there was no ambivalence: each group "knew" the other practiced sorcery. Their antipathy and fear reached back over generations. To be commanded to overcome it in a single moment would have been paralyzing. Cultivators had been taught that even the sight of fringe group magic led to illness; the fringemen had known for generations that only their magic held others at bay. To be suddenly stripped of those defensive symbols by exchanging them with their enemies was beyond their capacity to absorb.

Trapped by circumstances, however, every one of the prisoners complied. Within days large numbers of them fell ill, displaying increasingly severe "chest and dysentery symptoms."^[26] Colonial sources suggest these were due to the dampness and cold of the jail, but the psychological impact of arrest, incarceration, and enforced ingestion of allegedly lethal substances must also have played a role. The stricken were transferred to the district hospital, where ten of them died. The cause of death was recorded as "chiefly through age, but also possibly through their own witchcraft, as after arrest they had been made to handle their fellow practitioners' symbols of office."^[27]

The remaining elders were placed on trial. Under the Revised Kenya Witchcraft Ordinance of 1928, any individual "pretending" to exercise supernatural power was liable to one year's imprisonment and a fine of £50—a staggering sum from an African perspective. Any person practicing witchcraft with the "intent to cause injury, death, or misfortune," however, was subject to seven years in prison and a fine of £200, a sum that could be paid only by the sale of flocks and herds from an entire clan.^[28]

By British standards the trials were unexceptional. Every one of the fifty-two assembled elders was found guilty under the 1928 ordinance and sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to ten years.

Five of those considered ringleaders were "rusticated" as well and had to serve their sentences in an isolated prison outpost in Meru's scorching northern desert. Five more of the alleged ringleaders were deported from Meru altogether, among them one man considered by Lamb to have been the "high priest" of the A-Athi movement, perhaps partially because of his unfortunate name, M'Murogi wa Ndorobo (sorcerer, son of forest hunter).^[29]

Although the sentences were implemented without incident, their impact on the Meru population was staggering. Ruling elders may have welcomed the imprisonment of fringe group leaders, but they were thunderstruck by the inclusion of widely respected healers, diviners, and foretellers. Their anxiety was briefly intensified by widespread rumors that the whites now intended to imprison everyone who "frightened people," even while removing a curse. Because inducing fear was a major component of ritualized healing, elders throughout Meru grew insecure. If no one could remove curses in the traditional manner, curse victims were certain to die.

From the traditional Meru perspective their fears were justified. Through a single show of force the British had undone, at least for the moment, the entire ritualized system of alleviating both physical illness and social conflict. For the first time in memory, informants declare, "no one dared to practice magic." Among the Meru that is the same as stating that no one practiced either medicine or law enforcement. The result was widespread insecurity, particularly among the aged. Removing the systems used to both reflect on and resolve life's calamities left them psychologically defenseless.

Ritualized "Cleansing": The System Dissolves

The Meru responded to the destruction of their witchcraft system in several ways. One was an increasing willingness to accept European forms of healing. The shift was perhaps most dramatically illustrated in Igembe, where the United Methodist Mission had commissioned Dr. Brassington to construct a medical facility. Earlier reaction to the clinic had been a universal boycott, explained by those willing to discuss it as an unwillingness to enter an area where "curses [here, illnesses] are collected and people come to die." After the enforced removal of Igembe ritualists, however, much of this aversion disappeared. Nonetheless, those who did reach out for Western healing approached in despera-

tion, and the "anxiety of the elderly over [the loss of] their former Aga [here, healers] was often pathetic to behold."^[30]

Hopkins replaced Lamb as district commissioner in March 1929. The promotion gave him ample opportunity to extend his investigation of Meru tradition. After extensive consultation with chiefs and prominent elders, he decided that the custom of "ritualized cleansing" might be modified to restore the less threatening prisoners back to full fellowship with the tribe.

Cleansing rituals were clearly rooted in Meru tradition. Even before the conquest those accused of sorcery, adultery, or repetitive theft were almost always allowed to recant, taking a cleansing oath to proclaim that any return to antisocial practices would result in their death. Oaths varied from region to region, but followed a similar pattern. The most common was that used by Mbogore: accused individuals consumed the raw liver (in other areas, the heart) of a slaughtered goat while chanting oaths declaring that further practice of the supernatural would lead the oath itself to kill them.

Neither Hopkins nor his Meru advisors saw any reason why the oath could not be modified to meet a modern need. The rituals that subsequently developed adhered closely to the Meru way, deviating only rarely because because of British sensibilities. After 1929, persons accused of witchcraft, including those released from their imprisonment, would walk with a committee of elders chosen by the administration to the edge of a river. There, each slaughtered a goat, drawn from their own herds, removed the liver, then held it high for inspection by ancestral spirits. The consumption of raw meat had been eliminated from the ritual at Hopkins's order. Instead, the liver was cast into the flowing waters, accompanied by an appropriately worded sequence of oaths.

Symbolically, each man thereby cast away his capacity to practice sorcery. The oaths, however, were also modified to preserve the most respected aspects of the witchcraft system. No oath forced those recently jailed to admit prior guilt. Nor did they prevent anyone from healing. Rather the oaths were rephrased to reaffirm the elder's declaration of innocence in the past, which allowed the practice of "innocent" rites in the future: "If I practice sorcery [in the future], let this oath kill me. If I curse [someone in the future], let this oath kill me. If I harm [someone in the future], let this oath kill me," and so on.^[31]

Elders throughout Meru embraced the restoration of a cleansing oath with enthusiasm. Over time these basic versions were extended to

include whatever social deviations tended to reappear (e.g., "if I ask for cows, let this oath kill me"), until every action formerly associated with the fringe societies had publicly been cast away.

Thus by the early 1930s, practitioners of the more beneficial aspects of Meru magic—such as the healers, the diviners, and the foretellers—returned unobtrusively to their work, always to the relief of elders in their communities. In theory the shadowy figure of the sorcerer returned as well, for "good" ritualists of every type still proved eager to accuse their competitors of practicing "bad" magic whenever conflicts emerged or individuals fell ill. Having thus identified the cause, they felt free to combat it in traditional fashion.

The same was not true, however, for the A-Athi, the Kagita, and the smaller fringe societies. Their songs, feasts, dances, chants, and drumming, as well as the entire complex of supernatural rites that gave them meaning, were finally dissolved, remaining only in the memories of their aging former members. Hopkins, writing in 1932, could thus declare with considerable accuracy: "The campaign against both the Aathi and Kagitha secret societies was carried out by me personally . . . as Mr. Lamb's assistant in 1928. Neither society is now active. Witchcraft has ceased."^[32]

Meru informants, however, add more to the story of the fringe groups' demise. "The Kagita [or, Aathi, Mwaa, Wathua, and so on] stopped," the elders declare, "because people feared whites more than they loved feasting." Members of every group were long aware that whites were not affected by their curses. They were increasingly concerned at the spreading belief among imitation whites (Kamuchunku) that working for the British or professing their religion might also render them immune.

Fringe group members were also increasingly aware of the demonstrable effectiveness of Western forms of healing. This proved particularly true in Imenti and Mwimbi (still administered from neighboring Embu), where enthusiastic and aggressive Protestant missionaries also proved highly competent medical practitioners. Perhaps the most striking example can be found in Mwimbi, where Rev. Clive Irvine, the founder of that branch of the Church of Scotland Mission in 1923, soon perceived himself as locked in battle against what he considered the quackery of local witch doctors.

Irvine began by systematically acquainting himself with the areas of healing in which ritualists specialized.^[33] Discovering, for example, that the "witch doctors of Kagita" were known to cure diseases of the feet, he actively solicited people with foot and leg problems to approach him

for treatment, usually with great success. Each cure shook both the medical monopoly of the Kagita healers and the collective confidence of those who had heretofore been forced to seek its aid. To them Irvine proved a welcome alternative. As his influence grew, tolerance of his fringe competitors decreased in relative proportion.

Missionaries had also struck at the fringe societies in other ways. Their Victorian morality placed them squarely alongside Meru tradition in condemning drunkenness, dancing in darkness, and, certainly, illicit copulation. To most Europeans of that era those activities were objectionable for Africans of any age. Among the Meru they were only forbidden to youths, warriors, and family heads, who were perceived as encroaching on prerogatives (such as beer drinking) explicitly reserved for ruling elders.

Thus by the 1930s, men of the former fringe societies were trapped between two fires. On one side, rising numbers of Christian converts actively opposed their restoration. On the other, Meru's traditionalists no longer sanctioned their actions as permitted deviations from an ancestral norm. Behind them both stood the government, personified in Hopkins, prepared to reach out and imprison anyone who dared restore that portion of the past.

It was thus the change in Meru's social climate that ultimately destroyed its fringes. The unprecedented sequence of physical arrests, public trials, and subsequent imprisonment was shattering, but the shift in public tolerance was the final blow. The change was partially based on fear. What had always been perceived as minor social deviation was now redefined as serious transgression. What had once been punished by the whack of a warrior's spear and the command to disburse was now cause for arrest and imprisonment. What could once be protected by wooden sticks and creeping vines was now an invitation to destruction by a mob.

Under such circumstances, permitted social deviations became private affairs. The earlier practice of assembling at dusk to feast, drink, drum, chant, and dance "in Kiama" was gone. Over time everything the fringe societies espoused was held up to public scorn. Youngsters, now enmeshed in mission schools, were taught to belittle many of their own traditions, and none more fiercely than those once tolerated as permitted deviations. Thus meat feasts, beer drinking, nocturnal dancing, traditional drumming, and "pagan" songs were increasingly associated with sorcery and held up to the rising generation to scorn as things of a "primitive" past.

Unable to refute or even reply to these charges, former members of the fringe societies retreated into silence, many denying they had ever joined such groups or even that they had existed. Today, memories of their existence have all but disappeared, remaining only in the tales—often obliquely told—of the men of the oldest living age-set. When these men die, the rites, oaths, songs, riddles, and laughter of which the fringe groups were composed will pass away as well, and with them yet another priceless portion of the Meru past.