medicine men among the Red Indians, were an
important class, second only to the chiefs. They were not a caste,
though very often the son of a wizard would be brought up to the
profession. The practitioners were on the lookout for promising boys,
and would take and train one to witchcraft, imparting their secrets,
which included a remarkable knowledge of the properties of various
plants available for poison or healing. Sometimes the wizard acted as a
physician; sometimes he would attempt to make rain; sometimes he would
profess to deliver messages from the unseen world, and in these cases he
might become a terrible power for mischief. Such a revelation made to
the Kosa clans on the south coast in 1856-57, directing them to kill
their cattle and destroy their grain, because the ghosts of their
ancestors were coming to drive out the whites, led to the death by
famine of more than 30,000 people. Such a revelation proceeding from a
soothsayer, occasionally called the Mlimo, who dwelt in a cavern among
granite rocks in the Matoppo Hills at a place called Matojeni,
south-east of Bulawayo[13] (oracles have always tended to come from
caves), had much to do with the rising of the Matabili in 1896. But the
most frequent and most formidable work done by the wizard was that of
"smelling out" persons who were bewitching others so as to cause
sickness or misfortune. In this branch of his profession the wizard
often became the engine of the jealousy or rapacity of the chief, who
would secretly prompt him to denounce a prominent or a wealthy man.
Suspicion being once roused, the victim had little chance: he was
despatched, and his property seized by the chief. Witchcraft, and the
murders it gave rise to, have been the darkest side of native life. The
sorcerer has usually been the enemy of the missionary, who threatens his
gains; but his power is now generally declining, and the British
Government forbids the practice of smelling out witches, as well as many
other shocking and disgusting rites which used to accompany the
admission of boys and girls to the status of adults, or were practised
at sundry festivals. Of the faith in minor and harmless spells one finds
instances everywhere. In Matabililand, for instance, a boy was pointed
out to me who had just been occupied in putting a charm into the
footprint of a lion, in order to prevent the unwelcome visitor from
returning; and nearly every native wears some kind of amulet.[14] These
beli