hrough countless
generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of
nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some
of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others
calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the
dignitaries.[2]

[Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African regime is J.A.
Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I. A fuller survey
is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of the
sources. Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularly
notable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture of
coast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincing
discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A.B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe-
and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along the
Gold Coast.]

No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans the
forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive. To invest them
with spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was perhaps
an obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate system of
superstition. Not only did the wind and the rain have their gods but each
river and precipice, and each tribe and family and person, a tutelary
spirit. These might be kept benevolent by appropriate fetish ceremonies;
they might be used for evil by persons having specially great powers over
them. The proper course for common-place persons at ordinary times was to
follow routine fetish observances; but when beset by witch-work the only
escape lay in the services of witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices were
called for, and on the greatest occasions nothing short of human sacrifice
was acceptable.

As to diet, vegetable food was generally abundant, but the negroes were not
willingly complete vegetarians. In the jungle game animals were scarce, and
everywhere the men were ill equipped for hunting. In lieu of better they
were often fain to satisfy their craving for flesh by eating locusts and
larvae, as tribes in the interior still do. In such conditions cannibalism
was fairly common. Especially prized was an enemy slain in war, for not
only would his body feed the hungry but fetish taught that his bravery
would pass to those who shared the feast.

In African economy nearly all routine work, including agriculture, w