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gueiro of Engenho Velho; therefore she was sent for. I judged that the Mandinga was not set for Apollonario, but for the negress whose business it was to sweep the out-house. I threatened to confine the suspected woman at Gara unless she discovered the whole affair. She said the Mandinga was placed there to make one of the negresses dislike her fellowslaves, and prefer her to the other. The ball of Mandinga was formed of five or six kinds of leaves of trees, among which was the pomegranate leaf; there were likewise two or three bits of rag, each of a peculiar kind; ashes, which were the bones of some animals; and there might be other ingredients besides, but these were what I could recognize. This woman either could not from ignorance, or would not give any information respecting the several things of which the ball was composed. I made this serious matter of the Mandinga, from knowing the faith which not only many of the negroes have in it, but also some of the mulatto people. There is another name for this kind of charm; it is called feitiço, and the initiated are called feitiçeros; of these there was formerly one at the plantation of St. Joam, who became so much dreaded, that his master sold him to be sent to Maranham.

Speaking of the green-beads (contas verdas) which are another object of superstition in South America, and of the reliance placed upon them by the Valentoens, a lawless description of persons among the colonists of Brazil; the same author gives us this further view of the Mandingueiros and their charms. ་་ These men," says he, wore on their necks strings

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of green beads, which had either come from the coast of Africa, bearing the wonderful property of conveying in safety their possessors through all descriptions of perils, or were charmed by the Mandingueiros, African sorcerers, who had been brought over to the Brazils as slaves, and in secret continued the prohibited practice of imparting this virtue to them. Vincente had been acquainted with some of the men, and was firmly persuaded of the virtues of the green beads. When I expressed my doubts of the efficacy of the beads, against a musket ball well directed, his anger rose; but there was pity mingled with it."

Labat brings these stones from the Orellana, or river of the Amazons. "I was informed," says our author, that Contas verdas came from Africa; but some have found their way from the Orellana, and been put into requisition by the Mandingueiros. Mr. Southey has also given an account of the "green stones of the Amazons," in his history of Brazil, vol. 1. p. 107.

In another place, some traveller presents us with the Mandingueiros in the new character of charmer of snakes. "The Mandingueiros are famous, among other feats, for handling poisonous snakes, and can, by particular noises or tunes, call those reptiles from their holes, and make them assemble around them. These sorcerers profess to render innoxious the bites of snakes, to persons who submit to their charms and ceremonies. One of the modes which is adopted for this purpose, is that of allowing a tame snake to crawl over the head, face, and shoulders of the person who is to be curado de cobras, cured of snakes, as they

term it. The owner of the snake repeats a certain number of words during the operation, of which, the meaning, if they contain any, is only known to the initiated. The rattle-snake is said to be, above all other species. the most susceptible of attention to the tunes of the Mandingueiros. The above accounts I should not have related upon the authority of one or two authors. I have heard them repeated by several individuals, and even some men of education have spoken of the reputed efficacy of the tame snakes of the Mandingueiros, as if they were somewhat staggered in their belief of it. "These men do certainly play strange tricks and very dexterously." The same writer also observes, "One of the negroes whom I had hired with the plantation of Jaguaribi, had one leg much thicker than the other. This was occasioned, as he told me, by the bite of a rattlesnake; he said he had been cured from the bites of snakes by a certain curador de cobras, or Mandingueiro, and had therefore not died; but that as the moon was strong," he had not escaped receiving some injury from the bite.

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Beaver, in his African Memoranda, says, "There is another sort of people who travel about in the country, called Mandingo-men, (these are Mahommedans ;) they do not work; they go from place to place, and when they find any chiefs or people, whom they think they can make any thing of, they take up their abode some time with them, and make greegrees, and sometimes cast seed from them for which they make them pay.

On this, and other occasions, the word gree gree

is applied to a house whence oracles are delivered: but it is also used for a charm or obi. "They themselves,” (the natives of the coast) says the author, last quoted, "always wear gree-grees, or charms, which they purchase of the Mandingoes, to guard them against the effects of certain arms, or of poison, and on which they place the utmost reliance. They have one against poison; another against a musket; another against a sword; and another against a knife; and, indeed, against almost every thing that they think can hurt them. Mandingo priest, or gris gris merchant, that is, a seller of charms, which carried about a person, secure the wearer from any evils,— such as poison, murder, witchcraft, etc. To this priest I had made some handsome presents, and he, in return, gave me twelve gris-gris, and assured me that they would inevitably secure me from all danger, at the same time he gave me directions how to dispose of them. Some were to be carried about my person; one secretly placed over each archway; another kept under my pillow, and another under the door of the house I was then building." The Byugas hold these people in great reverence, and say that they 'talk with God.'

Mr. Long, in his history of the West Indies, states that, under the general name of Obi-men is also included the class of Myal men, or those who, by means of a narcotic poison, made with the juice of an herb (said to be the branched Calalue, a species of solanum) which occasions a trance of a certain duration, endeavour to convince the deluded spectators of their power to reanimate dead bodies.

Additional particulars of this superstition preserved by Labat, Edwards, and others, are to be joined with those now produced;* but after all, the questions to be solved are, whether Obi, Mandinga, and gree gree, are usually words of similar import, and whether those who are conversant in them are all alike, priests of one system of religious faith and worship, or whether the one does not belong to the worship of a good power, and the other to that of an evil one.

It is remarkable, that while the Etymology of Obi has been sought in the names of ancient deities of Egypt, and in that of the serpent in the language of the coast, the actual name of the evil deity or Devil, in the same language, appears to have escaped attention. That name is written by Mr. Edwards, Obboney; and the bearer of it is described as a malicious deity, the author of all evil, the inflictor of perpetual diseases, and whose anger is to be appeased only by human sacrifices. This evil deity is the Satan of our own

The superstition of Obi was never generally remarked upon in the British West Indies till the year 1760, when, after an insurrection in Jamaica, of the Coromantyn or Gold Coast negroes, it was found that it had been made an instrument for promoting that disturbance. An old Coromantyn negro, the chief instigator and oracle of the insurgents of the parish of St. Mary, in which the insurrection broke out, who had administered the Fetiche or solemn oath to the conspirators, and furnished them with a magical preparation, which was to make them invulnerable, was at that time apprehended and punished, and a law was enacted for the suppression of the practice, under which several examples were made, but without effecting for many years, any diminution of the evil sought to be remedied.

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