People in between: the Matawai Maroons of Suriname

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9
Traditional Religion

Afro-American religions of the New World exhibit a large variety related to the socio-cultural heterogeneity of the areas of origin as well as to the specific historical conditions that influenced the development of religions. A focal point of most Afro-American religions is the belief in possession, but specific manifestations are often strongly influenced by the dominant world religions of the former colonies. Herskovits, for instance, pointed to the resemblance between the Roman Catholic belief in saints and the belief in spirits. He argued that this facilitated the emergence of syncretic cults in those colonies which were dominated by the Roman Catholic church (Herskovits 1937). The problem of continuity and discontinuity in Afro-American cultures and religions was a major theme in the pionering work of Herskovits. From the viewpoint of acculturation studies, the involuntary migration of slaves from different tribal origins to the Americas provided a unique experiment. This was clearly recognized by Herskovits who developed a comparative method with the aim of determining the degree to which a society reflects ‘Africanisms’. As has been observed by R.T. Smith, he was more interested in the symbolic level and in religious phenomena than in social structure (Smith 1963). Religion was considered to be a cultural focus which was more stable than, for instance, social organization. Various authors have stressed that continuity was particularly observed in the domain of religion. Religious concepts and ideas were better maintained or could better survive as recognizable ‘African’ forms than features of the economic and social organization which were more easily reshaped by the requirements

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of the plantation societies (see Bastide 1960: 179). A clear statement of this argument has been presented by Mintz (1970: 181-2).

The millions of enslaved Africans could only bring with them certain parts or aspects of their ancestral cultures - whatever they could carry in their minds. One includes here speech characteristics (pitch, intonation, timbre), folklore heroes and motives, religious beliefs or values, artistic skills and preferences, and the like. But the slaves had only harshly limited opportunities to maintain anything like the full content of their original cultures. Even more limited was their capacity to transfer cultural materials that depended upon some kind of social organization - not simply a religion, but its priesthood; not simply iron-working, but a guild of smiths; not only a regal tradition, but a royal lineage.

Recently the orientation in the study of Afro-American religions and cultures shifted to the creative and adaptive aspects in the development of socio-cultural institutions. These ideas have been elaborated by Mintz and Price (1976) (see also Price 1972, 1975; Price and Price 1980). According to them, West African religions shared a number of:

fundamental assumptions about the nature of causality and the ability of divination to reveal specific causes, about the active role of the dead in the lives of the living, about the responsiveness of (most) deities to human actions, about the close relationship between social conflict and illness or misfortune and many others (Mintz and Price 1976: 23).

The instrumental and creative character inherent in West African religions has, according to these authors contributed to the rapid synthesis of cultural forms and to the forming of new Afro-American religions.

The Afro-American religions in Suriname illustrate the particular importance of the early formative period in the development of religious

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systems. As has been emphasized by Price (1976: 20-1) the common characteristics in the religions of the Maroons and in those of the Creoles of the Para region are so evident that they can be considered as variants of a local Afro-American religious system.

We are keenly aware of the restrictions and trappings which descriptions and analyses of the religious conceptions of the Matawai have, when they are phrased, from sheer necessity, in the terminology of comparative religion. Distortions will arise from a language still so heavily dominated by western cultural and especially Christian conceptions. We have attempted, in our analysis of Matawai religion, to avoid a terminology, in which the beliefs of the people concerned are called into question. In fact the anthropologist's own belief or disbelief in the models operating in the society which he studies, are irrelevant.

In general terms Matawai religion^(1.) consists of two domains, which are closely interrelated. As a system of beliefs it provides the community with intellectual or cognitive models to explain, manipulate and control the world^(2.). As a set of rituals it provides standard practices in which people try to demarcate, stress and blurr the transitions and boundaries of the human and non-human world which are developed in the cognitive models. Ritual behaviour is couched in symbolic idiom. Apart from its cognitive components with their referents to different levels of existence, it also contains strong emotional aspects because of its bearing on significant existential questions. The supernatural world becomes visible, audible and tangible through these rituals such that the participants are transformed by their communal religious experiences.

The cosmology of Matawai religion thus provides models in which different levels of existence are related. These include both the relation between man and the various higher powers (i.e. their cognitive development of a pantheon), and the way in which these are rooted in man (i.e. the cognitive development of the concept of the multiple soul). The different levels of existence (gods, descent group and the aspects of the multiple soul of the individual) are linked with each other in the ancestor cult, the concept of kunu, spirit possession, reincarnation and manipulation by means of witchcraft and sorcery.

(1.) The distinction between magic and religion which has persisted in some anthropological circles, has little value. We agree with van Baal (1971: 2) that it has done more harm than good to the anthropological theory of religion.

(2.) This approach of religion has been most vigorously elaborated by Horton in a series of articles, in which he has stressed the similarity between African religion and Western science (1967, 1971 and 1975).

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The traditional religion of the Matawai is seen to be sufficiently similar to the religion of the Creoles and Para Negroes in the coastal area, which is generally described in terms of Winti (Herskovits and Herskovits 1936; Pierce 1973; Wooding 1972). For this reason this term is also used by Green to refer to Matawai religion (1974; 1978). We agree that these religions show considerable resemblances, and can, as we have already indicated, be considered as two subsystems of Afro-Surinamese religion. We have refrained, however, from applying the term for Matawai religion, for although the Matawai may use this Sranan term for spiritual agencies by which persons are possessed^(3.), they clearly prefer their own term of Gadu (God), with which they are able to refer to beings in different hierarchical positions within the pantheon. Moreover, it seems arbitrary to characterize a religion on the basis of one of its elements.

(3.) As a result of their frequent contact with the coastal area and the Para district, the Matawai have become acquainted with Creole beliefs and terminology. They tend to use Sranan terms, in particular when they explain or talk about their own religious concepts to strangers.

Cosmology

Matawai cosmology can be described as consisting of a number of pantheons, each of which centers around a specific class of deities, as Köbben (1968: 72), Thoden van Velzen (1977: 101) and Vernon (1980: 13) have done for the Djuka. However we prefer to analyze it in terms of a single pantheon. We base this analysis on the Matawai who consider the relation between the different levels and classes of deities as interconnected. Green has elaborated an adequate analysis of Matawai cosmology and the concept of kunu (1974; 1978). Since we agree with the main points of his analysis, we will restrict ourselves to a short review of this aspect of Matawai religion. There remain, however, some divergencies in our respective interpretations. Some of them have to be ascribed to the fact that Green collected data concerning religious concepts in the downstream area, where traditional belief was more manifest. Thus Green was able to escape the difficulty we faced when we sought coherence in traditional concepts in the upstream area, which was strongly dominated by Christianity. At the same time his data may show some recent Saramaka influence in this area, as Green himself suggests (1974: 243).

Hurault's scheme of hierarchical levels in Aluku cosmology

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(1961: 193), in which each level of existence is connected with a level of power (kaakiti) and in which a creator god is conceived at the top, followed by lesser gods, ancestors, humans, animals and finally by plants and inanimate things, is fundamentally in agreement with Matawai conceptualization, although some Matawai tend to give prominence to ancestors over lesser gods. We must note that as a result of the fact that each lineage has its specific historical linkage with certain ancestors and lesser gods whose prominence may vary, conceptualizations differ according to the descent group from which these concepts are investigated (see also Green 1974: 236).

The Supreme Being of the Matawai, who is known as Kediampo (his name in the ritual language of Koomanti), Gaan Gadu (the Great God) and Masa Gadu (God the Master), is considered to be the creator of the whole world. Since then he has retired way up in the sky, kept aloof from the affairs of man and delegated his power to interfere in human affairs to the lesser gods and deities, who are responsible to him, but act more or less autonomously. This god can be traced back to his West African origins in Pre-Christian times (see Herskovits and Herskovits 1934: 351). Despite his general protective attitude toward man, he is held responsible for droughts and famines, with which he punishes communities for the transgression of his divine laws. Nowadays communication is restricted between man and this god. He has no cult of his own, no shrines and no cult objects, although he is regularly addressed in prayers directed to the collective ancestors, who he precedes in gadukonde (land of the gods) as Prime Cause. He must be addressed first because he has made the world, it is said.

The former more elaborate cult for Gaan Gadu, in which priests addressed him at his special shrine, the Gaan Gadu pau, can be traced back to a Saramaka religious movement of 1844 initiated by Tiopo, in which the cult in this form was instituted (Schmidt 1846 and 1847). This shrine was in use in Matawai territory together with another shrine for the collective ancestors, called Owru nenge pau (which, for example, was mentioned by the Moravian evangelist Gaander, 1911). At present, as a result of the long Christian tradition, this traditional Supreme Being is assimilated with the Christian God, known as both Masa Gadu en Masa Jehova. Individuals regularly say prayers to this God. Before planting

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rice, prayers for an abundant harvest are directed to Masa Gadu instead of to the lesser god Goon Mama, as was previously the custom.

While the Matawai admit that they share this creator god with other Bush Negro groups, they also acknowledge a lesser deity which is closely linked with their own tribe. The Saramacca river, which is called Matawai lio is associated with a deity. In fact they refer to the river as a god, whom they call Gadu u di lio (God of the river). This God settled on the Pikin Saramacca, the larger tributary in the north, which together with the great falls in the south, mark the Matawai part of the Saramacca river. Most shrines of the river which were associated with specific water deities were broken down by the actions of the prophet Johannes King (see p. 210) and their former supernatural powers were neutralized, but those of the Pikin Saramacca, considered the most powerful, have remained until this time. This God of the river is mainly concerned with the banishment of certain forms of anti-social destructive behaviour. He punishes persons who transgress his laws, which are characteristically phrased in terms of taboos associated with him. Matawai river, they say, has a taboo (kina) for witchcraft (wisi), bad feelings (hogi ati) and for cursing (siba). These rules date back to the time of Gaaman Adai, who took an oath at the Pikin Saramacca, that persons who would use witchcraft etc. would not pass the Pikin Saramacca, but would shortly have to die.

Just as saying prayers and offering libations to the specific deities at the great rapids and dangerous places were presumed necessary to pass them without harm, so people had to address the God of the river before crossing the boundary between tribal and coastal area. Because Paramaribo and the coastal area were dangerous places, teeming with people trying to harm each other by witchcraft and other supernatural means, withholding their riches from the Bush Negroes who were able to get a share of it only through hard work and a lot of suffering, it was believed that Matawai who went to the coast to sell lumber or make a shopping trip would likely return with a grudge in their heart. On their way to the coast they would stop at the mouth of the Pikin Saramacca to address the God of the river with a prayer in which they declared their intention to seek work at the coast and asked for his protection when they went a di wotu sembe dendu (in the midst of the

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others). On their return to the villages they would address him declaring that they had not returned with witchcraft but, as they said, with a pure heart. Indeed he who returned with witchcraft would be killed on his journey home or soon after his arrival. Nowadays the God of the river still has his own cult and his revelations which are made known through the agency of his medium, are considered to have relevance for all Matawai villages along the river. When, for example, in the 1960s his medium revealed a new taboo forbidding women from washing themselves in the river during menstruation, this pronouncement was considered so important that the matter had to be settled in a tribal council at the gaaman.

More than with the creator god, who remains for the Matawai the Prime and also Final Cause, and the God of the river, who protects the Matawai as a tribal group from anti-social behaviour by acting as a punishing agent, communication is sought in daily life with the ancestor spirits and a host of gods and deities of non-human origin. These ancestors are the souls of former living persons who after death, at the conclusion of the funerary rites, become spirits (jooka), residing in the afterlife (gadukonde), together with other gods and deities and presided over by the creator god. In gadukonde the ancestors are hierarchically organized. The spirits of the recently dead owe deference to the more important and long deceased ones. In councils in which founding ancestresses of the lineage, and especially forbearers who led their kinsmen out of slavery during runaway times, former elders, religious specialists and functionaries all sit, the life of the living kinsmen is closely observed. The ancestors' help and protection is actively sought by addressing them as gaan sembe at the ancestor shrine.

The ancestor shrine, faaga pau, is the only public shrine which has withstood the challenge of Christianity, masqued as it is as a flagpole. Each village has its own ancestor pole, at which all important collective rituals are held, including not only the affairs of one of the lineages residing in the village in the case of illness of one of their members, but also general village affairs as the inauguration of a village headman.

Ancestors have considerable power over their living kinsmen. They can harm or bless them, punish them with illness and death or protect

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them against any adversity. Their intervention in human affairs, however, is not capricious. As long as they are honoured and respected and, on the other hand, as long as their living kinsmen dwell in harmony with each other, they will not cause harm. Otherwise, they will trouble their kinsmen with illness and adversity as koto sembe (ancestor spirits) or become avenging spirits (kunu).

Some ancestor spirits, who have been killed or mistreated during their lifetime, will become avenging spirits (kunu) after death. They will take revenge on the matrilineal kinsmen and descendants of the person who provoked them (pii di kunu) during their lifetime, by threatening them with illness of by actually killing them. According to the principle of collective responsibility operating within the lineage, persons can be punished for acts committed by their living or former lineage members. But such a kunu can also be provoked by a person who commits suicide (by taking poison e.g.) with the explicit purpose of taking revenge on another person and his family, with whom he was in conflict. This method of kunu provocation is accredited to Saramaka, but unknown among the Matawai where suicide is practically unheard of^(4.). A practice, akin to suicide whereby a kunu is provoked among the Matawai is cursing oneself (siba), invoking supernatural powers to intervene in a conflict and kill oneself, enabling the invoker after death to become a kunu for the person and matrilineage with whom he was in conflict (see further p. 311).

Aside from taking revenge on the kinsmen of his provoker, the avenging spirit selects from his own or from the provoker's lineage, a person whom he possesses. After the necessary ritual, the tormenting spirit which afflicts the person is brought under control and transformed into a guardian spirit, enabling his medium to reveal to his lineage members the motivations behind and justification for the action of his god (gadu), as the avenging spirit is called. Prayers and libations at the ancestor shrine are necessary to ward off any further adversity, thereby cooling the heart of the avenging spirit. In these rituals the lineage of the provoker becomes heavily dependent upon the lineage of the avenging spirit. Within the lineage of the provoker it calls for solidarity as well as avoidance of anti-social behaviour which would provoke intervention on the side of the kunu again.

(4.) Suicide occurred rarely in Matawai. We have heard of only two cases, which happened a few decennia ago.

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Each lineage then is related with a number of kunu, both from human and non-human origin (which we will consider later), by which it is marked off from other lineages. And although kunu are considered never to loose their power^(5.), regularly new ones are provoked by hunting accidents, siba etc.. Mediums of each of these kunu which can operate independently from each other, are made subservient to the medium of the major kunu of the lineage, which has been put under control long ago. Mediumship of a common kunu of human origin (also called jooka kunu) lacks some of the more dramatic cultic elements which characterize the mediumship of kunu of non-human origin. The trance of the latter involves the use of ritual language and a rich variety of dancing styles characteristic for the kunu involved. It also has shrines of its own and obia with which it is associated.

More developed are the cults centering around two kunu of human origin originating in the 19th century, in a time when by the expansion of economic opportunities outside of Matawai territory, mobility increased and the world view was altered. At the same time tribal territory was intruded upon by Saramaka and Djuka who settled downriver, and Matawai religious identity was affected by the introduction of the Gaan Tata cult by the Djuka (see p. 195). The two gaan kunu (major kunu) which were provoked, were considered to cross the lineage boundaries within which common kunu usually struck. They had a range of action which was tribal-wide and operated, like the God of the river, to mark the Matawai as an ethnic group (see also Green 1974: 264).

As we have already indicated (see p. 191-4) these kunu were provoked when persons accused of witchcraft, were brutally killed by Gaaman Adai, who implicated a great number of people in the sentence. By taking persons from each lineage (see also Green 1974: 263), he made all their lineages responsible for the death of the victim. Thus they became vulnerable to his revenge actions. Indeed the main plan of these gaan kunu after death was to wipe out all lineages who had shared in the murder. One of these persons who was accused of witchcraft, wat Tata Bomboi, who originated from the lineage of Maipakiiki. After being betrayed by a classificatory brother in 1883 he was caught and burned at the stake downriver at Koofaja kiiki. Nowadays this god is the centre of a vigorous cult. He selected his medium from Maipakiiki, in particular

(5.) For an excellent analysis of the relationship between lineage fission and kunu vulnerability in Saramaka society, we may refer to Price (1973: 86-107).

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from the women of his own matri-segment, by possessing them. The first of them was said to have travelled along the river, going into trance and summoning people to pay heed to his warnings (see also Green 1974: 267). His present medium, a woman from Pijeti, a village where the former residents of Maipakiiki settled, has become quite influential due to the of central role of the cult in both religious and socio-political life. Regularly the gaan kunu is consulted, via his medium, in the inner room of the medium's house, which serves as a hidden shrine for this god. Matters involving both her own lineage and others are laid before the god. Through the agency of his medium the god corroborates or rejects revelations of the various common village mediums and indicates which ritual actions have to be taken in cases of illness and adversity. More particularly, acts which are considered to be transgressions against the gaan kunu himself, have to be ritually settled through his medium.

The motivation behind most historical moves of villages to new sites, secessions of lineages or matri-segments moving from the upstream to the downstream area and migration of individuals to downriver villages to join their matrilineal kinsmen or to settle themselves in their father's or husband's village, has been the attempt to escape the vengeance of kunu. However, these attempts usually proved to be of no avail. New adversity would likely to be ascribed to the same kunu because, in principle, kunu is not bound by locality and lineage members are not able to escape his revenge by a change of residence. The only protection against such revenge can be found from the side of the gaan kunu. The result is that occasionally an individual, whose lineage has become nearly extinct due to the actions of a kunu and who feels himself highly threatened, will seek protection by settling in the village of the gaan kunu's medium, thus becoming a kind of client.

The medium of the gaan kunu also has a significant role in local and tribal politics. The god's advice is sought for councils and important political decisions. Also candidates for political functions cannot be appointed without the consent of the gaan kunu, who plays a crucial role in the selection of a new candidate. Only he is able to ascertain if the proposed candidate is reincarnated (nasi, see also p. 282). directly or indirectly from persons who were originally involved in the

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sentence of the ancestor who became a gaan kunu. If so, he would not be chosen since he would be particularly vulnerable to the vengeance of the god, who would be ready to kill him as soon as he was appointed. Moreover, an individual who is appointed as gaaman will be inaugurated both in his own village and in the village of the gaan kunu's medium.

Formerly the gaan kunu also had a public shrine, an ancestor pole, where he was worshipped. This worship was officiated by a male priest originating from the same matrilineage as his female medium. At this shrine offerings in rum, cloth etc. were made as payments for particular transgressions or as thanksgiving (tangi) for his intervention in certain matters. With the destruction of this shrine in 1924 in Maipakiiki (see p. 216), an end came to the public worship of the gaan kunu. No public shrine was erected in the newly established village of Pijeti. The still vigorous cult of the gaan kunu has since gone underground.

The sentence of another man accused of witchcraft, Amadja of the lineage of Manjabasu, who was buried alive in 1878 took place under similar circumstances as that of Bomboi and resulted in the birth of another gaan kunu. Although his revenge plan seemed to be more restricted (see also Green 1974: 272-3), this gaan kunu also developed into a central cult. The first mediums which were possessed by this god came from the downstream village of Bilawata.

Since the death some years ago of the last medium, chosen from the village of Santigoon (but belonging to the same lineage), no new medium has been selected by the god. In Bilawata the now dilapidated gadu wosu still bears witness to the cult's role in the past, which was far more central and public than in Pijeti. In this house the paraphernalia of the god are kept. Bottles of beer and other drinks are set for the god and most particularly the sacred bundle (bongola) of the god is stored. The bongola was owned by a male priest and used, like the Gaan Tata bundle in Santigoon, for divination.

We should note that we have not fully elaborated the concepts of kunu and gaan kunu. Only those aspects are mentioned which are relevant for our further description. For more specific data we refer to Green (1974), although we do not fully agree with the conclusions concerning the generality of the extension of the range of action of kunu towards

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‘fathered children’.

In the lower stratums of the hierarchy of deities the Matawai distinguish gods like koomanti and deities such as snake- and forest gods who have become the centre of more or less established mediumstic cults from lesser deities like water gods without such a cult. But we have to bear in mind that they also conceptualize these gods as top ranking in the hierarchy of lesser gods, each associated with its own domain in which the world is divided, i.e. the air, the water, the forest and the cultivated area.

The koomanti gods occupy a position apart among the lower gods. They can be traced back to Africa and are said to have helped the Bush Negroes in their guerilla war against the white colonizers. Koomanti gods will either seek out an individual to act as their medium by possessing him or are sought by the individual, who after a training period will become a medium. Only men are possessed by this class of deities, in contrast to the mediumship of human and non-human kunu where female mediums are more numerous.

Especially for djebi the older form of koomanti, who is associated with the jaguar (hogi meti fu matu) men become mediums after voluntary training. Initiation involves mastering the ritual language, seclusion and a number of particular taboos that restrict his relations with menstruating and childbearing women. This ritual language which is used during trance, has to be interpreted by a ritual specialist who is well versed in this language. Koomanti mediums are also ritually prepared with obia (loango) to make them resistant to strikes of a machete or bullets of a gun.

These days the koomanti cult is waning, especially upriver. In 1974 the only medium of djebi upriver, a man in his sixties, had recently died, while another koomanti medium (out of three), a man in his forties, had migrated to the coast. Even downriver, where koomanti and djebi are more numerous, there are no Matawai specialists to initiate new ones. They are highly dependent upon specialists from other tribal groups, i.e. the Kwinti along the Coppename river.

A number of factors contributed to the waining of the koomanti cult. To begin with, the koomanti cult, which was originally introduced from the eastern tribes, never became a full blown and thriving cult in

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Matawai as it did in Djuka. Furthermore cults such as koomanti and papa gadu (which we will consider next) with strong dramatic and expressive character, have been weakened by the Christian mission's strong opposition towards any manifestation of Matawai religion. It is indeed possible that due to the relatively small size of the Matawai tribal group, factors such as migration, which was especially radical for the isolated villages, and oppostion on the part of the mission, have had a much more profound effect on cult life than in tribal groups with a more centralized and numerous population.

Moreover there are indications that the changes in religious orientation which Price signalled in Saramaka society, have also operated in Matawai. Sketching a society of a century ago which was characterized by a high level of physical violence and a prevalence of direct revenge as a means of social redress, with its central male values of power and force, Price indicated how the religious ‘tone’ was altered because of the changing relationship with the outside world. ‘The focus of religion shifted from power, as seen for example in gaán-obiás (the magical forces to which Saramakas credited their military victories and ability to survive in a hostile environment) to morality, represented by, among others, the soí-gádus (oracle-deities used widely in divination)’, contrasting the stress of these deities on ‘good living’, with the former stress of gaán-obiás on the adherence to taboos (Price 1975: 43).

Finally we make mention of the justification given by Matawai men for their disinclination to prepare for koomanti mediumship. They argue that because they regularly go to the coastal area, taboos associated with ritual preparation for mediumship and obia are likely to be violated (see also Green 1974: 246). Indeed the powers of these obia are so strong that any contact with a newborn child would threaten the life of the child. So violation of these taboos (e.g. through contact with a menstruating woman or food prepared by a menstruating women) would weaken the power of these obia, and endanger their life.

Other more or less elaborate cults are centered around a number of deities who, like the avenging spirits of human origin, may become avenging spirits (kunu) when these deities are provoked (pii). There are the more common snake gods (papa gadu, also called vodu or daguwe) who may be provoked if, during the clearing and burning of a garden plot

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the giant snake (boa constrictor), considered as the deity's earthly abode or temple, is accidentally killed. Less frequently provoked is the god of the water snake (wata wenu) by the killing of an anaconda. There are the gods of the forest who dwell in anthills and termite mounds (akantamasi), who may be provoked when their dwelling is disturbed or destroyed. Still other forest gods (ampuku) may be provoked when a hunter wandering through the forest disturbs their dwelling place in a rock formation.

Like kunu of human origin, these deities will take revenge by afflicting the matrilineal kinsmen and descendants of the provoker. In addition, by possessing a medium selected from this lineage and revealing the reason of his anger, he becomes the centre of a cult in which the lineage of his provoker is indebted into regular worship. But whereas kunu of human origin may be linked with the lineages of both the provoker and the victim in which he possesses a medium, kunu of non-human origin are necessarily linked with the lineage of the provoker. Some may even be linked with more than one provoker's lineage. Papa gadu kunu, for example, tend to become linked with two lineages when the snake is killed during the clearing of a garden plot worked by both husband of wife. This god will then possess a medium in the lineage of both the husband and the wife, thereby victimizing both lineages.

Around each of these classes of deities (ampuku, akantamasi and papa gadu) specific cults have developed, with their own ritual language, shrines, dancing styles, ritual paraphernalia, obia, etc.

The forest spirits are generally considered to be indifferent rather than malevolent to man, and can be manipulated by ritual specialists and persons practicing witchcraft. Ampuku and akantamasi are most particularly susceptible to being bribed by food offerings to help a witch with his immoral practices.

Of more recent origin (see p. 299), another class of deities, bakulu, small dwarflike creatures bought in town by witches, are especially expert in het work with which they are instructed. They are extremely malevolent and apart from directly afflicting the person who was pointed to him by his master, they are capable of becoming avenging spirits (kunu) for the lineage of the appointed victim, even bringing harm into other associated lineages (see p. 300). Like papa gadu kunu,

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the bakuku kunu are likely to possess more than one medium, even selecting a number of mediums in the same lineage.

On a still lower level the world is populated with a host of lesser deities, divided according to the domain over which they reign. There are the numerous gods of the water (wata gadu) who are sometimes collectively addressed despite the fact that they are associated with specific locations along the river. Head of the gods of the water is Wata Mama, a mermaid type of goddess. Both lesser water spirits (tone) and people who are born with a caul and are considered water people (also called tone)^(6.), are reincarnations of this goddess. The gods and spirits of the water will hunt other beings in their domain in the same way as piranha hunt other fish. Most of these lesser spirits are considered to be indifferent to man as long as they are not provoked, but the Matawai are inclined to acknowledge the existence of both good and evil water spirits.

Then there are the gods of the forest, the matu gadu or busi gadu ruling over the forest and watching closely that the natural balance is not disturbed. One of these gods is Matu Mama, the goddess with long hair who dwells in specific parts of the forest which the Matawai call gadu wosu (gods house). The Matawai distinguish various vegetation types in the forest according to the species of trees which grow in them. They prefer to cultivate primary forest (pau matu, or lala matu), with its great diversity of tree species and its greater soil fertility, over already cultivated forest (kapee). However, their choice is restricted in this matter. In the rocky landscape called gadu wosu, with large stretches along the river, no gardens can be cleared. Whoever would dare to fell trees there would be killed by Matu Mama.

Finally there are the gods of the cultivated area, goon gadu, who are held responsible for the fertility of the gardens. Formerly prayers were said to Goon Mama, before sowing rice, a ritual which has been replaced by a prayer to the Christian God. And annually around the turn of the year harvest rituals called goon gadu pee were performed which included food offerings and spirit possession (see p. 282).

Although no real mediumistic cults have been instituted in relation to these lesser gods, people have sometimes been possessed by these gadu, during which they learned specific obia. In this way, for example,

(6.) Formerly tone were feared and thrown into the river directly after birth. Nowadays they have to observe a number of food taboos, the most important of which concerns a prohibition against eating fish without scale.

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an obia was acquired with which pollution taboos of the river could be ritually lifted. This obia was revealed to an ancestress of the Baaka lineage of Posugunu. The story is told that this woman, who drowned in the river and stayed under water for a whole day, was rescued by a water spirit by whom she had been possessed and who revealed to her this sacred obia during trance. Since that time this obia has been transmitted in her lineage.

Multiple soul

In life man has three souls, collectively called jeje. These are aspects of his consciousness, each of which is uniquely linked with the world outside him. Although people do not seem able to present systematized and generalized ideas about these concepts, much can be inferred from the observations and explanations of incidental behaviour which has a bearing on these concepts.

The concept of the akaa, or in older terminology okaa, is most clearly defined. The akaa is a life force which is strongly connected with the individual during his whole life, and which, if duly honoured by the person himself and respected by others, will protect him against illness, bad luck and any harm. This akaa is present at birth, stays throughout life, and leaves at death. As we will elaborate later, if the corpse is properly buried, the akaa will return after death to the world of the living, acting as a ‘supernatural genitor’ (Price 1975: 51) at the conception of a newborn child^(7.). Each person's destiny then, as we will see, is to reveal himself and be remembered by his living kinsmen. Because the akaa develops its protective power in relation to the individual in the course of his life, children, whose akaa is still feeble, are not able to return to the living when they die.

The akaa is localized in the head, especially in the fontanel (ahume) where its presence is indicated by the beating. Before birth, the child grows in the womb and is regularly fed via his fontanel by the semen and blood of his parents contributed during their frequent intercourse. The akaa always stays with its bearer. Dream experiences are the experiences of the akaa, leaving the body during sleep and wandering around to meet with gods, deities or other agencies of the

(7.) At this point we disagree with Green, who mentions that at the moment of conception a ghost (jooka) of a dead person is received (1974: 190-1). Our analysis of the multiple soul also deviates from Hurault's analysis of Aluku data (1961: 216-21).

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other world. Information acquired in these dreams contains significant keys for the future behaviour of the individual. Because the separation of the akaa from the person's body is dangerous to his health, it is not good to awake a person suddenly during his dreams. Actual separation of the akaa and the person leads to unconsciousness and other symptoms of illness. In particular when a person suddenly happens to meet with a dangerous situation, when he is threatened by an animal in the forest, falls in the river and nearly drowns, looses track in the forest during hunting and gathering, or is suddenly frightened, he is bound to loose his akaa on the spot. Measures are taken to return the akaa to his owner. When a small child falls down or gets frightened and starts crying, people are ready to comfort him by putting some sand on his head to return the akaa which has left his body. Also, when a person is found in a state of unconsiciousness after a hunting incident, a ritual specialist will return as soon as possible to the fatal place in the bush to fetch the person's soul and replace it to the man's head before further treatment is possible. Finally, when a person falls in the river and nearly drowns, his akaa is immediately fetched by a ritual specialist who returns to the landing place near the river, catches the akaa in a calebash with the help of his rattle (tjaka), hastily covers it up with a white cloth and finally puts it again in the head of the owner, who is protected against its loss by a white cloth firmly tied around his head.

A person's akaa is conceptualized as an aspect of the soul which has an identity apart from the person involved and with whom the person daily communicates. During early childhood a person's akaa is so strongly dominated by the soul of the ancestor who reincarnated in him, that he is likely to refer to the idiosyncrasies of his ancestor. For the Matawai this is proof of the child's memory of his former life. As the child grows to maturity and gains more experience, the association with this ancestor weakens. Illness in a young child may be ascribed to the ancestor who reincarnated in the child and wanted to reveal himself to be remembered. However, in later life, illness or bad luck are more likely to be ascribed to the person himself who did not heed the special wishes and idiosyncrasies of his akaa or angered his akaa (mandi) by improper or neglectful behaviour. This belief leads to many kinds of

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ritual behaviour by which an individual pays homage to his akaa. When he drinks rum in a council, for example, he will pour some rum over his hands as a libation offering to his akaa, analogous to a libation offered to an ancestor spirit. He will also wear particular dresses or colours to please his akaa. Some people credit man with two akaa, using the older term okaa, and ascribe a peron's destiny to the struggle between the two powers within him: the bad soul (hogi okaa), tries to kill him and on the other hand the good one (bunu okaa), tries to prevent this.

According to the Djuka, one of the means applied by witches to sicken or kill others is tai akra (tying a person's soul) (van Lier 1940: 226). Similarly, the Matawai acknowledge that other living people are able to harm a person's akaa, causing illness in a person. In most cases the person concerned is not aware of this. In the case of twins, for example, one child is able to unconsciously afflict the child born directly afterwards, the agosu. In fact his soul is responsible for pinching (pindja) the sibling. In order to treat the patient, people direct themselves to the akaa of the twin to beg him to release the other. There are also cases in which a person consciously will harm another, because he is said to act so with evil intentions or with a grudge in his heart. Thus, when a person publicly calls a child, using the personal name (gaan ne)^(8.) of his supernatural ancestor with such evil intentions, the child will surely be affected.

In most ritual contexts references are made to the akaa. Men, who take leave to go work in the coastal area are ‘clothed’ by others, who by tying cloths belonging to themselves onto the man and thereby giving him something of their own soul (there is indeed a strong association between cloth and akaa), try to protect the man against any dangers he might encounter on his way to the coast. Notice that for this ritual tying of cloths the term tuwe koosu is used, the same term which is used for other offerings to the ancestor spirits, libations of rum and water (tuwe daan, tuwe wata) or food offerings (tuwe njanjan). In most rites of passage the giving of cloths is intended to please a person's akaa.

As the akaa may be used to provide guidance to the person himself in a dream, it can also be used to reveal information to others as an oracle. Questions are set forth concerning illness to this oracle, for

(8.) A person's gaan ne (big name or true name) is the name given to him in infancy and is considered to be most strongly associated with him personally.

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which someone's akaa is caught and put in a calabash (akaa kuja).

Another soul concept which is less elaborated is that of the shadow, called somba. A common representation of a man having three souls (jeje) is expressed in terms of his shadows. When a man walks he sometimes has two shadows, one in front and the other behind. Man is not alone in possessing an akaa and a somba. Animals, trees, guns, machetes and even obia, i.e. powerful magical medicines, are accredited with these aspects of a soul. The shadow is a powerful aspect, deriving its strength from the cosmological world. Because shadows differ from each other in their degree of power, the potency of a shadow can be weakened by his being ‘overshadowed’ by a shadow whose power is greater. An example of this is apparent in the prohibition against the use of machetes and guns by the father of a newborn child whose shadow is still considered to be weak. Also the prohibition against the use of guns when powerful obia are applied for the treatment of certain illnesses, insure that the potency of the obia will not be weakened.

The human soul which may reveal itself as a shadow is considered to be an easy prey for the manipulation of spiritual agencies. Measures are therefore taken to protect those in close contact with the non-human world, from danger. For this reason there are only two moments of the day considered proper to bury a corpse: eight o'clock in the morning or four o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun does not cast a shadow. This is done in order to prevent the possibility of an individual's shadow falling into the grave, thereby causing his death. For the same reason, the time of the ritual separation of a person from an ancestor spirit, is set late in the afternoon. This prevents the patient's shadow from being ‘overshadowed’ by the ritual specialist, or caught by the ancestor spirit.

The concept of somba must be related to the inclination of the Matawai to consider cosmological powers as hidden, only to be revealed occasionally, and with their tendency to elaborate the conception that things are related which are mirror images (sipee). We will argue that the Matawai concept of somba can best be considered as the opposite or mirror image of the akaa, which remains hidden while the shadow will reveal itself. The Matawai were not sure what happened to a person's shadow after death. We can only infer that loosing one's shadow or being

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overshadowed by a stronger shadow leads to the death of its bearer.

Finally there is a third soul aspect with which man is credited during his lifetime, called jooka. While this aspect remains largely inert during the lifetime of the individual, it is strongly involved with the accumulation of his life experiences. After death, when the jooka becomes a spirit, it attains its own identity and is most extremely connected with the now deceased person, who the jooka represents as a moral and social being toward his living kinsmen. At the time of death, when the life forces of akaa and somba leave the body, the heart stops beating, leaving a lifeless corpse which, like other material aspects, is called kakisa. The jooka hoovers around the corpse. Funerary rites are performed in order to separate the spirit from the corpse and to enable him to join the ancestor spirits in the afterlife, or to enter God's realm, as taught by the missionaries. According to most Matawai traditional and Christian afterlife are merged. They do not bother to seperate the specific details of each tradition. Formerly, immediately following death, when separation had not yet been effected, and the jooka still dwelled in and near the corpse, it would be contracted for divinatory purposes, i.e. to seek out the cause of the person's death and to settle his legacy. For this purpose hair and nail clippings of the deceased were fabricated into an oracle (bongola), which was believed to respond to questions put to the oracle by guiding the movements of two men who would carry the oracle on a plank on their heads.

After burial the jooka wanders around restlessy between the cemetery where the corpse is buried and the dede gangasa in the village where his kinsmen perform their funerary rites. Although the kinsmen have parted from the spirit explicitly warning him to remain there and not to bother them anymore, the spirit is still pleased in the village; being given light and being addressed in the dede gangasa. At the same time the kinsmen and former marriage partner of the deceased are ritually protected. Actually, the whole cycle of funerary rites and mourning rituals which are performed are intended to both separate the spirit (jooka) from the world of the living, and to redefine the lineage which is disturbed by the loss of a kinsmen. The jooka, spirit of the deceased, is feared because of his ability to bring illness and harm to kinsmen

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because of unjust behaviour during his lifetime or neglect in ritual observances after his death. In this function the term koto sembe is more commonly used for this jooka, especially in the period immediately following the death. Because illness and adversity in the living may be ascribed to this koto sembe spirit, the separation between living and dead and the attempt to reaffirm and improve the relations between ancestors and living kinsmen, lies at the core of most rituals concerned with these afflcitions.

After the separation is completed, the jooka spirit is considered to have joined the other ancestor spirits in the afterlife. Conceptualization of this afterlife is, as in most African religions, relatively unelaborated. The ancestor spirits, now called gaan sembe, reside in a domain called gadukonde, which parallels village life and the social structure of the living. In gadukonde they reside with their closest kin, presided over by former elders and functionaries, i.e. the ancestors who died before them. They communicate with each other in councils and also communicate with other spiritual agencies of the pantheon. They remain highly interested in the well-being of their living kinsmen, in the reproduction and survival of the lineage, and in the observance of rules and norms which were instituted by them. Matawai acknowledge that there are both good ancestor spirits and those with evil intentions. Communication with these ancestors looms large in Matawai religion, both in ritual prayer, offerings and in spirit mediumship. By taming avenging spirits (kunu), who reveal themselves in possessing people and turn such persons into mediums who make revelations to their lineage, a new balance is brought about between the ancestor spirits and the living.

Mediumship

The repression of mediumistic cults in Matawai society by the Christian church has not succeeded in eliminating communication between the community and the supernatural world, which is maintained by a variety of mediums consulted in all kinds of matters. As we have already indicated, Matawai mediums may be possessed by four kinds of spirits: firstly by avenging spirits of human origin, generally called kunu but

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also known as koto sembe kunu or jooka kunu (the spirit of an ancestor); secondly by avenging spirits of non-human origin, by snake gods (papa gadu kunu) and forest gods (ampuku kunu and akantamasi kunu); thirdly by a koomanti god; and finally by a tormentor (bakulu kunu), a lesser spirit which can be manipulated in witchcraft practice. The spirit selects his medium by possessing him, which is referred to as kisi sembe a jedi (to come in someone's head). In the case of a kunu, the spirit is most likely to choose a member of the offender's lineage, but he may also prefer a member of the victim's lineage. The baluku kunu will select a person from the lineage of the victim who was originally pointed out to him by his master, the wisiman. In general, spirits have a clear preference, in selecting their medium among persons whom they love.

The spirit reveals himself for the first time by a persistent screaming sound which causes strong headaches. During this phase the spirit remains inarticulate and does not reveal his name. He is said to call in the head (ta bai na en jedi). Sometimes the presence of the spirit is only indicated by various symptoms of illness, which are considered to be caused by the touch (panja) of the spirit. In this stage the spirit is said to be in the patient's body (ta de na en sikini).

When the spirit becomes manifest for the first time, a number of people are called together, mainly elders and mediums of established avenging spirits, who may help to interprete the utterances of the spirit from the mouth of the patient and to become acquainted with his identity. We may clarify this by an example:

Aseni, one of the elders of Boslanti, was called late in the evening while he was attending a funerary wake (booko di dia) to come to Sita who was troubled by a spirit. The spirit revealed to him: ‘I am the one, who was killed when the house burned down’. Aseni concluded that it was evidently the spirit of Sita's father who wanted to possess her. This explanation is related to the circumstances surrounding the death of her father, Feedi. One morning Feedi stood up early, still before dawn, to return to his own village. In the dark he tried to discern the amount

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of gasoline left in the barrel which stood under his wife's house. While thoughtlessly lighting a match to look into the barrel, the gasoline caught fire. In a few minutes the house was on fire and he himself was badly burned. His wife escaped just in time and in her anger accused him of trying to kill her. He was brought to the hospital in town, where he died. During the boattrip taken by his widow to attend the funerary rites held in his village, a heavy rain broke out. It continued raining during the whole voyage, suddenly ceasing when she went ashore to walk to the place where the rite was held. This break continued till the moment she reached the place. For the Matawai this was the first evidence that her husband's spirit was teasing her, and would eventually become an avenging spirit.

In this stage an avenging spirit is considered to be very dangerous. As long as he is not brought onder control (seeka) by a cleansing ritual and is not yet ready to speak, he may kill the person whom he possesses.

Some avenging spirits are, however, more difficult to bring into harness than others. The spirit of the snake god (papa gadu) is less dangerous than others because, in most cases, he only seeks a mouthpiece (ta suku buka), while the spirit of ampuku is likely to cause trouble. Illness caused by these spirits tends to be more serious and persisting. Even more dangerous are the spirits of ancestors (koto sembe kunu) and the bakulu spirit who does not listen to prayers and who is therefore thought to kill rapidly. A religious specialist (basi) who himself is often an established spirit medium, has the task of bringing the spirit under control (seeka), partly by activating him to speak. Nowadays there are only a few specialists left, who live in the downstream area. In the 1920s there were at least four specialists available to treat these cases, two of them lived in the upriver region. Presently some people also turn to religious specialists in the Para district or to Saramaka or Djuka. For initiation in the koomanti cult, the Matawai as we already indicated, are dependent on religious specialists of the Coppename river, because there are no Matawai able to perform the appropriate rituals. If it is revealed through a medium

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or through another method of divination that the spirit is a bad one, people will try to exorsize him (puu en) or (wasi en puu), washing him away, as long as he has not revealed his identity. In particular, ampuku or bakulu spirits, which are sent by a witch, are bad spirits. This was traditionally and is still performed by the same specialist. In the upstream area some people reject the advances of a spirit because of their affiliation with the Christian church. They may go to the evangelist or to the minister to ‘exorsize the Devil’. In such a case he prays to God to liberate the man or woman from the Devil. The spirit is then believed to choose another person as his medium.

After the patient has been ritually washed with the kunu's specific herbal water, the spirit is called by beating the apinti drum. The spirit will yell out loudly (bai), using ritual language and will announce his name. During this initiation, the future medium is given specific food taboos and is instructed in the dancing style of his spirit. He also learns how to worship his spirit through offerings and how to wash with herbal preparations. Ritual washings, for koomanti and other spirits, are organized on the days which traditionally, before the introduction of Christianity, were designated for this purpose: piki saba (Wednesday) and dimingo (Friday)^(9.).

To provide more insight into the way in which avenging spirits reveal their identity and into the succession of different stages in the process of transformation of an avenging spirit into a guardian spirit (see Thoden van Velzen 1966a: 47; van Wetering 1973: 16) who can be consulted, we will consider two cases in greater detail. Each emphasizes a different stage of the same process.

Shortly after her elder sister Lona was chosen as a medium by a snake spirit (papa gadu), Suliki was frequently troubled by a spirit who wanted to possess her, without yet announcing his identity. Some months after the first signs of the spirit, both sisters visited their father's village, where they spent some weeks being treated (seeka). Although the religious specialist of this village was able to induce Lona's spirit to speak, he was less successful with her younger sister. She was plagued by a persistent headache which lasted for a long

(9.) Traditional day names are dimingo (Friday), sata (Saturday), sonde (Sunday), fodaka (Munday), feifi daka (Tuesday), piki saba (Wednesday) and gaan saba (Thursday).

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time. It was believed that her situation was dangerous, in as much as she could be killed by the spirit. A month after their return in the village, a lineage member revealed a dream which she had. According to the dream it was the spirit of her younger brother Jonas, who had drowned in the river about ten years earlier, who was teasing her and was becoming an avenging spirit. The young man had suffered from attacks of epilepsy and was not considered accountable. Often he entered the houses of his sisters to search for some food or tobacco and would even penetrate into the sleeping room, which was considered to be a strictly private domain. Once, when he was caught by Suliki, she cursed him in her anger (siba) and her curse was explained as the cause of her brother's death. More people were inclined to associate the possession of Suliki with the death of her brother. Shortly before the dream was revealed, Jules a man belonging to the matri-segment of Suliki, who lived with his wife in the downriver area, came to spend some days in his own village. In his drunkenness he accused his sisters of withholding food from him, adding ‘be careful that I will not become a kunu for the family, like saigi^(10.) Jonas did’. After the revelation, the lineage members hurried to gather in their part of the village to pray (begi) to Jonas on three subsequent occassions. In these prayers it was stressed that neither the lineage nor Suliki herself had done him any wrong. They also turned to other ancestors to induce Jonas to leave his sister alone ‘Don't kill her, but settle yourself’ (na kii en, ma bai na en jedi), they begged him. They promised him an offering of rum and cloths, which would be given to him when Suliki recovered. To demonstrate their intentions an empty rum tin and a number of cloths were put on the ground. Someone even carried his new plastic shopping bag, adding that this bag too would be for him.

In the next case background information on the kunu precedes a description of the final stage of the process.

(10.) Saigi is a term of reference for a deceased kinsman which is used to show respect.

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Suzi, a woman from the village of Pijeti who lived already some years in Paramaribo was troubled by a spirit who was not willing to reveal his identity. When the medium of the gaan kunu was consulted, it was explained that she was possessed by an avenging spirit of an ancestor, her mother's father. The medium also indicated the procedure which had to be followed. Suzi's grandfather Poobe originated from the village of Sukibaka. He had many children in different villages of his own and also fostered children of a later wife. One of Poobe's foster sons, Monki wanted to marry one of Poobe's daughters and impregnated her during the betrothal period (kiia). The lineage members of his first wife, arguing that it was Poobe who was ultimately responsible because he did not rear his children well, beat him. Outraged and ashamed about the fact that he was beaten because of this affair, Poobe went to the forest, where he cursed himself (siba). It was believed that his death was caused by the curse. The Matawai suggested that there were indications that he had already taken revenge on his wife's lineage in Pijeti where several cases of illness and death had occurred. Now they wanted to loose no further time in preventing further accidents, by praying to the avenging spirit. Some notables from Suzi's lineage turned to Poobe's lineage members in Sukibaka to ask for assistance in their attempts to cool the avenging spirit's anger. For this purpose the medium of the gaan kunu specified a number of cloths and bottles of rum which were bought. Suzi was called from town. Also the village headman of Sukibaka who resided in the downstream village of Balen, well-known for his competence in religious matters, had been summoned. Already the day before the pee (ritual dancing party) was to be held many people from Pijeti were assembled in Sukibaka to be cleansed with medicines (koto sembe deesi, see p. 268). The next morning the cleansing rituals proceeded and at day break Suzi was ritually prepared with obia near the ancestor pole (faaga pau). At this occasion the basia directed himself to the ancestor spirit and addressed

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(da tongo) him as follows:

‘Well uncle, you have brought us here together in the village. Look at all the people of Pijeti. God has blessed you, you have so many children. But when you had the children, they blamed you and they beat you. And when that happened, you were so grieved, that you uttered a curse. Many of your children died. Therefore they have the feeling that they were not in the right, when they beat you, but that the right was on your side. Now they are in distress, and they hurried to us, to your own kinsmen, in order that we would pray to you for them. Now we address you and beg you. If you still were alive, you would be able to revoke these siba words yourself, but now I will take them back as basia, because these words must be revoked. No one of these people must die or become ill. Let there be an end to the conflict between you and them, which was provoked when they fought with you. Look, we have put the rum, which we owe you, 16 litres of rum we have put before the ancestor pole and 10 pieces of cloth. For they did an injustice to you, as you did to them’.
Libations of water and rum were made. Meanwhile people from other villages had arrived to attend the dancing party. Inside a house food was offered to the ancestor spirit (tuwe njanjan) with the words: ‘Look how the people of Pijeti give food to you in order to pay you’. All participants were given dishes and food and drinks were shared together. Soon the beating of the apinti drum announced the pee. Women of Pijeti pushed forward and started the dance. Suzi danced while going into trance. Again and again other mediums surrounded her and tried to stimulate the spirit to speak. Between some elder women she was led to the ancestor pole, where women of Sukibaka were singing adonke (traditional songs for the ancestors) to the spirit, while other mediums continued questioning the spirit. However the kunu still was not able to answer. The dancing continued for a long time. Early in the morning the headman and basia of Sukibaka went to Suzi to consult her spirit. Now the spirit declared that the matter was settled and that after

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she would be ritually washed with the specified herbs, she would be ready. Everyone in need could come to consult her. He was not longer troubling Suzi.
Two days thereafter the lineage of Sukibaka assembled to divide among themselves the cloths which were collected by the lineage of Pijeti and to drink communally the last bottle of rum left from the 16 bottles that were gathered for this occasion. One bottle had been used to prepare the obia with which the washing was performed; another was poured out as a libation to the ancestor spirit; two bottles were sent to the medium of the gaan kunu; the remaining eleven bottles were drunk during the dancing. Aside from some older lineage members who were given cloths, cloths were sent to the medium of the gaan kunu, and to two other mediums of the Sukibaka lineage who were living downstream.

From these cases it is evident that spirit possession is not an individual affair. In some cases a great number of people may participate in possession cults. Also the interdependence of different lineages and the need for cooperation in rituals has been illustrated. However it must be noted that due to the repression of the Christian church, these large public rituals have become rare (see p. 344).

When the kunu has been brought under control and is established in a medium, a process which is referred to as seeka sindo na en jedi (has taken a seat in his head), others may consult him. Formerly each village had its own shrine, which was called kunu wosu, gadu wosu or obia wosu, in which the ritual objects were stored and offerings of beverages and cloths were placed for the kunu. Only a few villages in the downstream area still have such shrines (see p. 244), while in the upstream area almost all external signs of the traditional religion have disappeared. In these villages only hidden shrines remain. The backroom of the house of a medium is used to store ritual objects and to place offerings. The spirit is said to use this place to rest when not active, i.e. does not possess his medium.

Mediums will be consulted in the case of many different types of human affairs such as planning to go to the coast for wage labour,

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choosing a partner, appointing a village official, but most especially in the case of illness and emergency (fuka). The consultation itself is described in terms of nango suku sondi (to find out things) and suku di libi fu ju (to find out your fate). Usually an individual will go by himself. Sometimes, however, one of the lineage members is asked to explain the matter the evening before the consultation when the medium does not become possessed. The next day the proper consultation takes place in the backroom of the medium's house in the presence of some elders and in most cases of a village headman or basia. Formerly there were specialists who were needed to interpret the words of the medium often pronounced in ritual language. They would explain the meaning not only to the client but also to the medium after his trance, since he himself does not know what the spirit has said via his mouth in the state of possession.

Because cults, like koomanti, involving the use of a ritual language have declined and the number of mediums has diminished, ritual specialists are no longer needed to interpret and translate the revelations of the medium. In fact for mediums of spirits of human origin, any elder may nowadays act as interpreter. After the medium has been washed with herbal juice, the spirit is summoned by calling him by the name with which he originally revealed himself, that is to say, with the name of the ancestor in the case of a koto sembe kunu, or with a name like e.g. pinde kioo (the spickled man) in the case of a snake spirit. Then the spirit starts to speak. Via the mouth of the medium he reveals the cause of illness and adversity. This may, for example, be due to an ancestor (koto sembe) whose anger has been provoked by the client's neglectful behaviour, or due to an ancestor (neseki) who reincarnated in the client and wants to reveal himself expressing grievances about mistreatment during his lifetime. The temporary infecundity of a client is frequently ascribed to the fact that after the delivery of her last child the placenta has been burried upside down. A woman's menstrual disorder may be due to the fact that the woman has prepared cane juice during her menstruation period, which was drunk by a man having an obia with this taboo. The medium will also indicate how the case has to be settled, specify the character of the offering which will cool the heart of the grieved ancestor, the quantity

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of rum to be poured out at the ancestor pole, etc.. He may also specify the ingredients of the medicines to be used in the cure. The spirit is rewarded for the divination only if his instructions prove correct, in other words, when the client has recovered.

In 1974 the four upstream villages with an adult population (age 25 and up) of 203 counted 18 mediums, 14 women and 4 men. 10 of them were mediums of ancestor spirits, 4 of snake spirits (papa gadu), only 1 of a bush spirit (ampuku), and 3 of koomanti spirits. Only one of them was a medium of two different spirits. Both the percentages of Matawai female mediums, 12% over 25 years old (N=115), and of adult men, 4,5% (N=88) are low when compared with Saramaka percentages compiled by Price. In the upriver Saramaka area 41% of the women and 7% of the men are kunu mediums (Price 1973: 89). These values are also low when compared with those of the Tapanahoni Djuka^(11.). The regularity with which they are consulted varies and is dependent of the occurrence of illness in a certain period. Furthermore gossip in the village affects the process of divination by directing its attention to one or a restricted number of spirits. Mediums of a papa gadu spirit are consulted quite regularly, averaging from once in a month to two or three times a week, while for a well-known lineage medium of an ancestor spirit the consultation frequency is somewhat higher. Although the revelations of the mediums are not equally trusted by everyone, people are generally indubious when a medium predicts impending death. Even for sceptics - those who speak slightingly of mediums ‘they only speak nonsense’ (ta taki bangula) - it becomes impossible to ignore the pronouncements of a medium when it concerns their own lineage.

In some cases it is considered advisable to consult a medium of another village or lineage instead of a medium in one's own lineage, especially when the illness is thought to have been caused by an act of transgression against the avenging spirit (misi a di kunu). If the medium indicates that one's illness is due to such a transgression against the kunu in one's own lineage, the person is referred to the medium of the kunu in his own lineage with whom he must settle the matter ritually.

In most cases of illness, in the upriver area, the medium of the gaan kunu is consulted. The pronouncements of this medium have authority

(11.) The percentage of upriver Matawai mediums is, especially when compared with that of the Tapanahoni Djuka, extremely low. For reasons of comparison we have calculated the Matawai percentages for adults over 30 years.

Table: Kunu mediumship among upriver Matawai and Tapanahoni Djuka

	Matawai	Djuka	Source Djuka data: van Wetering 1973: 16; Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering n.d.
Women	13%	47%
Men	5%	38%
_____
Total	9.8%	43%

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over those of common lineage mediums. Moreover transgressions against this god (misi a di gaan kunu) are considered to be more serious. Cursing, for example, which has remained unnoticed and weakens the power of the obia of the gaan kunu, has to be ritually settled with his medium. Especially in a case where it is revealed by this medium that the person concerned has been reincarnated directly or indirectly from an ancestor who during his life played an active role in the sentence of the kunu, the client has to fear for his life or settle the matter with the medium of the gaan kunu as soon as possible.

The spirits of the dead: rituals of affliction

In order to delineate the specific relationship which exists between ancestors and their living kinsmen, we will concentrate on some afflictions caused by the ancestors and follow their course. We have already dealt with the early phase, in which a medium is consulted, by whose revelation a specific ancestor is designated. We now turn to an analysis of some later phases in terms of the ritual complexes which are essential in the further treatment procedure.

After death not all ancestors become permanent avenging spirits (kunu). Some ancestors or spirits of the dead (koto sembe) will only incidentally injure others to signify dissatisfaction evoked by the neglectful or incorrect behaviour of their kinsmen. The spirits of the deceased warn their kinsmen by touching them (ta panja den). When people regularly get troubled by fever in the afternoon, it is a result of having been touched by an ancestor spirit. They have to be ritually washed with herbal water to remove the hand of the spirit of the deceased from their shoulder (fu puu di koto sembe mau).

Firstly let us give some examples of the way in which ancestor spirits can signify their dissatisfaction with the behaviour of their kinsmen.

When Selita's house caught fire, her baby child was badly burned. After the incident Selita's mother's sister, possessed by the avenging spirit of her lineage, explained that the fire was due to Selita's ‘uncle’ (MMB) Sandi who had died a

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few months earlier. His spirit was searching the house for the money his three ‘nephews’ (ZS) had borrowed from him and had not returned before his death.

Generally ancestors remain strongly involved with the activities of their living kinsmen, as is apparent in the following case:

For three months Poca had been seriously ill. Members of the other segment of his lineage knew only too well the cause of his illness. It was said that he had evoked the anger of the spirit of his sister by the unfair way in which he had divided her legacy. He had appropriated not only her house, but also all her money for his own use. Thereby he had robbed the other lineage members, who usually would have been the recipients of the equally divided inheritance. While taking his sister's house, Poca give his own house to a young boy of his lineage. This house was in such a bad condition, that the boy had to pay other people to repair it for him and cover it with a new roof of plaited palm fronts. The planks, Poca had sawed himself in his own village and the plates of corrugated iron which he had bought with the very money of his deceased sister, he had taken with him to his wife's village, where he gave them to his daughter's son. With envious eyes they witnessed how one boatload after another with soap and kerosene passed to his wife's village. Now they observed how the lineage members of his wife came to settle the matter ritually with old Majana, Poca's ‘sister’ (his MZD), who should have been the recipient of the plates of corrugated iron and who had blamed him for this behaviour.

Finally a case is presented which testifies to the belief that any neglectful behaviour towards the ancestors will surely be punished by them:

Within a short period of time Apalai met with various accidents. When he was sawing planks together with Manus, a piece of wood fell on his leg. He barely avoided breaking his leg and did not recover for some time. Some months later, while going upriver

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to hunt for a few days, his camp caught fire, and again he just barely managed to escape. Subsequently he was troubled by fever. Some women of his lineage had dreams from which they inferred that these happenings were signs with which the spirit of Apalai's deceased mother was trying to let him understand that she was angry because he had failed to organize a ritual dance after her death. When his mother had died a year earlier, Apalai, because of lack of money for sufficient rum, had not celebrated the end of mourning with the usual ritual dance. The medium to whom his kinsmen propounded his case also confirmed this diagnosis and determined that three consecutive ritual prayers had to be performed during which they would beg for his life and the promise of payment would be held out to the ancestor spirit. Some time later, when he recovered, the payment was made. Rum was poured out as a libation to the spirits of the deceased and was shared communally during a ritual dance. Apalai was ritually separated from the spirit of his deceased mother who had harmed him.

We will now analyse and describe some frequently returning rituals involved with illness and death, i.e. the prayer to the ancestors (begi) and the ritual washing to separate the patient from the influence of the spirit of the dead (wasi djafu paati). These rituals of separation and reunion give us a good starting point in an understanding of Matawai conceptions concerning the relations between a lineage and its ancestors, Because the rituals are daily phenomena in which many persons are mobilized, they enable us to clarify the nature of the network of social relations in the village community.

The prayer to the ancestors (begi) is a ritual element which is more or less considered to be standard procedure in the treatment of an illness the cause of which has been attributed to the action of ancestors. After consultation, the prayer to the ancestors is the first step towards recovery. It is a frequently held ritual that is even common in the upriver villages where opposition to it by the church is the strongest.

Especially when an avenging spirit is involved, the ritual prayer

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is held at the ancestor pole (faagu pau) and will be attended by almost all lineage members or the whole village community. Prayers are said to the ancestors, most commonly referred to as gaan sembe, elder people, or gadukonde, land of the ancestor spirits or land of the death. Three consecutive sessions are held, in the morning, in the afternoon and on the morning of the following day. Three, in fact, is regarded as the right number (en na wan soivi maaka) or the holy number. The patient, for whose life prayers are said, usually is not present. Lineage members of the patient will address themselves to the ancestors. However, in the case of a patient who had been cursing (siba) (see p. 303), a transgression which is considered to be extremely grave, the patient must revoke his words (fula buka), and will therefore also be called to attend the meeting. To become appeased the ancestor spirit has to be given offerings of rum and cloths. At this meeting, however, the offerings charged by the kunu are given only in promise. He is addressed and shown the offerings of rum and cloths, i.e. an empty tin of rum (a tin contains 16 litres of rum) and a pile of some ten cloths are presented (tja go naki) at the ancestor pole. Promises are made to the ancestor that, when the patient recovers, he will pay his debt (paka paiman). Then these offerings in promise will be replaced by a full tin of rum and newly bought, unsewn cloths. The term kua-kua koosu that is used in this context is derived from the sphere of food preparation. Here, raw, unprepared food (kua-kua) is set against food that is cooked (boi-boi) with the help of fire. Similarly, cloths as they are bought per Dutch ell (69 centimetres) in town, kua-kua koosu are set against nai-nai koosu, cloths that are sewn and have been used already. A libation of water is poured out (tuwe wata) from a calabash onto a small plank or piece of wood, and in this way the ancestors are called in. Then, a libation of rum (tuwe daan) is presented. Words are directed to the ancestors not to kill the patient, but to let him live until his hair is white. Other important ancestors, former headmen and basia or ancestors who have become avenging spirits, are called upon. Sometimes the person who makes the libation will also speak to the ancestors, but it is considered more respectfull when a person, while speaking himself, lets another make the libation for him. Those directing themselves towards the ancestors are ritually protected by taking a sewn cloth

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from the pile and putting it folded over their knee. These folded cloths are called pau, lit. tree or wood, and are analogous to the branch with which a path can be blocked against evil spirits. The cloth provides protection: nothing will happen to them (fu hogi an mu miti den), as they say. The prayer is supported by the other participants with rythmic hand-clapping. While pointing to the offerings, they say to the ancestor: ‘Look, here is your payment, a tin of rum, ten cloths and one bottle of rum to propitiate you’, fu koto ju ati,^(12.) (to cool down your heart). The prayer is concluded by drinking together (bebe makandi) a bottle of rum, which strengthens the mutual link between lineage members and their ancestors.

Two different terms can be used to describe communication with the ancestors: Fan, which means speaking, is also used in common parlance. Da tongo, giving the word, is only utilized in quite formal ritual contexts. Usually the tone used in communications with the ancestors is somewhat matter of fact. This is especially true for prayers to the ancestors which are not held at the ancestor pole, but rather in front or under a house and which attract less people. The phases of the less elaborate rituals, generated by small cases, are much clearer. In this case also, prayers are held to the koto sembe at three consecutive meetings: ‘We beg you, if it was you who touched this man, because we found that you touched him, please let him go, how much he may owe you’. Some time later, when they see that the patient is recovering, a new session is held, in which gratitude is expressed (da tangi) to the ancestor, libations of rum are presented to him (tuwe daan) and rum is drunk together (bebe makandi).

When the patient is wholly recovered he finally is separated ritually from the ancestor who touched him. This ritual is called in full: wasi djafu paati ku di koto sembe. Like the ritual praying it can be considered a ritual complex consisting of a number of sub-rituals, each of which can be performed separately. It includes the ritual washing (wasi) with herbal medicines (koto sembe deesi) by which the patient is loosened from the influence of the ancestor. The other element is the definite cutting (djafu) of the ties between patient and ancestor (koto sembe).

The sub-ritual of wasi is a standard procedure in the mourning

(12.) The ancestor, who is considered to be angered (en ati bonu) has to be propitiated by his kinsmen, his heart has to be cooled down (koto en ati). The cold/warm opposition koto/kindi is ritually significant, although it is not univocally used in different contexts. It is especially used to refer to disturbances in a kind of balance, in which the social world or the body is considered to be. The balance can be distrubed on two sides, both of which have unfavourable associations. Reference can be made to the undesirability of the restriction on social contacts (see p. 76). Most illnesses, not only those accompanied by fever, are referred to as states of kindi (heat), which have to be cooled down by ritual means. Remarkably, the balance is not reintroduced by elements of the opposite category, but by elements of the same category. Thus when a woman has given birth her physical condition is so much associated with the state of kindi, that her house, in which a fire is constantly kept burning, is temporarily sealed off all around by canvass; she regularly drinks bush tea prepared from bita vines (a bitter tasting vine) and other warm drinks. She is forbidden to take cold food (koto njanjan) like watermelon, okers and sugar cane for some months. Also the birth of twins with its more pronounced association of both excessive fertility and sexual activity endangers the health of both parents and children. It is said that it is the kindi which harms their belly, which has to be redressed before normal sexual relations between the parents can be resumed. In this ritual context the sexual element is stressed when the villagers shame the parents who are sealed off in a ritual space and sit with their heads bent low, by singing ribald sexual songs.

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ritual, in which it forms a part of the final mourning rite, puu a baaka, (pull out of black). In this ritual they try carefully to loosen the ties between the ancestor and his matrilineal kinsmen and between the widow and her former husband. In this case, only two sub-rituals, i.e. wasi and lembe (sprinkling) are performed. The complete ritual complex, is held in case of illness attributed to either koto sembe or to an ancestor who reincarnated in the patient (neseki). The whole ritual complex also forms a part of the ritual of the widow's remarriage, thereby cutting the ties she had with her former marriage partner. Furthermore, the ritual is performed in cases in which the temporary infecundity of a woman is attributed to the fact that the placenta of her last born child was buried upside down. In such a case the power the placenta still has over the woman has to be severed.

For this ritual people may approach a restricted number of religious specialists (obiaman) who own the medicine. Some of them are well-versed in the whole ritual complex, while others are only versed in a sub-ritual which they inherited from an ancestor^(13.). Till today, the ritual is frequently held in all Matawai villages. In the morning a libation is poured, the ancestors are addressed and all the lineage members drink together. The washing does not take place before five or six in the afternoon, the time when the sun begins to set and no longer casts a shadow. The ritual is performed at the fringe of the village, in the backyard of a house bordering either the secondary forest or the river. In the area of the backyard which is demarcated by shrubs on which rubbish is thrown away, the obiaman has already arranged all things needed for the ritual: a winnowing tray with medicines he has gathered that day in the forest (among others lembe konde wwi), a lump of white clay called keeti or pimba doti (white kaoline, frequently used in ritual), a bucket of river water, a calabash to wash the patient, and a machete. He has also put a sangaafu (Costus niveus G.F.W. Meyer), a particular plant dug up with its root, the leaf part of the plant, is blackened with soot (memebasu) scaped from the ceiling of a cooking house, while the root is whitened with white clay (keeti). Therefore the ritual is also called weti ku baaka (white and black), colours which, in this context, are associated with the concepts limbo (pureness) and nasi (dirtyness) and thereby also to the contrast between the village

(13.) Commonly specific specialist knowledge about traditional medicines is passed to a younger generation by means of inheritance. Among the Matawai, who have been missionized for a long time, literacy has become so widesprad, that its application in inheritance has become quite general. After the death of a kinsman, a person will be given a toompu (metal box) included in which are specific medicines or ritual knowledge which had been written down by his kinsman during his lifetime. In contrast to goods, which are predominantly inherited by matrilineal kinsmen of the deceased, specialist ritual knowledge or traditional medicines are passed down both to a matrilineal kinsman and from a father to his son. Therefore at this time some specialist knowledge is not restricted any longer to one or a small number of lineages. Especially for the koto sembe deesi, there are in nearly all lineages of the upstream area a number of people who are well-versed in the application of some part of this ritual complex (either djafu paati, the ritual washing or in the sprinkling).

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in which the yards are swept and kept clean, and the shrubs where it is [dir...].

When the time of the washing has come, the patient takes his place opposite the specialist. The specialist has turned his back to the village and his face to the forest, while the patient opposite him is facing the village and has the forest at his back. The obiaman first shakes out medicine over himself and washes. At the same moment he addresses Masa Gadu and the ancestors. While taking a mouthfull of these medicines and spitting them out on the ground (fula buka), he speaks as follows: ‘I say to you, it is not me who found out that it was you, but another called me to come here, because he said that he knew it was you who touched this man here. Now I wash you and remove thereby your hand. I beg you, please, stay away from here and leave him to lanti. It is not me who is asking you this, but it is lanti, the village community’. Subsequently, he washes the patient by sprinkling medicines over his head and shoulders and by washing them away with clear water. This is repeated several times. The bystanders also step forward and are washed in the same way.

The obiaman then proceeds to the central part of the ritual, the djafu paati. First he crumbles little pieces of pimba doti and puts them on the patient's head and feet, and sprinkles them on the ground, in order to appease the patient's soul (akaa). Then he throws pieces of pimba in the direction of the forest and of the river to ‘pay’ the deities of the forest (matu gadu) and of the river (wata gadu), that is to say, to propitiate them. He then gives the sangaafu to the patient to hold. While the patient holds the white side in his hand, and he himself holds the leaf side, the specialist grasps the machete in his other hand and addresses the ancestor spirit in the following way: ‘Look here, we are now separating dirtyness and purity. May the pure go home where all good things belong, and may the dirt stay behind were there is only rubbish’. With one blow of his machete he cuts the sangaafu at the place where black and white meet. The leaf side falls to the ground. The patient tightly holds the white side of the sangaafu and walks carefully in the direction of the village without looking back. Sometimes the sangaafu is not made black and white, but is tied up in the middle and is cut at this place.

So far the meaning of the ritual is clear. The ties are cut between

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patient and koto sembe, symbolized by the colours white and black^(14.), and associated with the concepts limbo and nasi, and thereby also referring to the world of the living, the village (ganda), and the fringe of the forest (matu buka), dominated by supernatural powers. The spirit of the patient is lead off from the spirit world to the world of the living. It is for this reason that the patient, when he walks in the direction of the village, must not look back, because he has averted himself from the world of forest- and water deities and the world of the spirits of the ancestors.

This element may also be seen in other ritual contexts. When, for instance, a boat has been sunk and the boatman has fallen into the river, his soul (akaa) is believed to be lost and has to be retrieved ritually. The spirits of the water (wata gadu) have to be compensated for the loss of their ‘prey’ with lumps of white clay. The water spirits are considered to hunt down people and make them drown in the same manner as would predatory animals. Also in such a case the patient, after having emerged from the water, will turn his back to the river, facing the landing or the village and must walk straight to the village without looking back.

Now let us return to the wasi djafu paati ritual. There are people who see the contrast between the goodness of the akaa of the living and the evilness of the jooka of the deceased (koto sembe) as also present within the human being himself. In fact, they credit man with two souls, two akaa (see p. 251) a bad soul (hogi okaa), and a good one (bunu okaa). Although it is admitted that these souls in man cannot be separated, they, however, sometimes address the patient, while sprinkling pimba doti just before the djafu paati as follows: ‘Look here, may your good soul follow you to your house, but may your bad soul stay behind in the dust’.

In the ritual complex the separation (djafu paati) is followed by a subsequent ritual episode called lembe, sprinkling. The patient, who has in the meantime arrived at the village with the sangaafu still in his hand, is sprinkled with strongly smelling herbal water. His kinsmen as well are usually sprinkled. In this way they are purified from any stains resulting from their former contact with the spirit of the deceased. Now they are prepared to resume normal village life. In other

(14.) The colour contrast white-black has symbolic meaning. In the context of the wasi-djaafu-paati ritual, in which these colours are clearly associated with the concepts of purity and impurity, these meanings tend to dominate other meanings, prominent in other ritual contexts, that here remain somewhat latent. In many of these contexts the colour white is assigned a mediating role in the contact with the world of ancestors and deities. Because it is merely one, though the most important, of the contrasts involved in the colour triade white, red and black, the full significance of which is revealed in, for example, the funerary and mourning rites, it would take us too far astray to analyse here in full.

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contexts this ritual always has the same meaning, marking the passage from a situation in which people are exposed to supernatural danger to one in which this danger is conquered, from restricted to normal social relations, from a disturbance in the relation with the supernatural to a redetermination of a new equilibrium. It is therefore a clear ritual marker of what Turner called liminality^(15.).

We will not attempt to consider all contexts in which the sub-ritual of lembe plays a part. Mention of a couple will suffice. At the end of the mourning ritual, for example, widow and mourning kinsmen of the deceased are sprinkled. Afterwards the items used by the widow during this time, such as cloths and hammock are purified in the same manner. In the case of a person who has drowned in the river, not only the water of the river itself, but also people from all neighbouring villages are sprinkled. This ritual restores the relationship with the surrounding nature which has been disturbed and purifies the water which has been stained by the death.

While the cut off part of the sangaafu now remains behind in the bush, the patient, after having been sprinkled, will return to the village, enter his house and not leave for the night. The white part of the sangaafu, he still holds in his hand, will be placed between the palm-leaves or planks of the house on the side which he faces when he is sleeping in his hammock. Not before sunrise will he leave the house.

Meanwhile his lineage members, who have stayed behind at the sprinkling place with the obiaman, finish the last part of the ritual: the paying of the obiaman. The specialist takes his place opposite a lineage member of the patient, he begins to call out loudly what they owe him. Three times he calls out madjomina (debt). Each time he is answered by the other calling out loudly akaa (soul). Immediately a little piece of wood is put on the ground by the kinsmen of the patient as a promise of payment. Now the roles are reversed, the other leads the calling of madjomina three times, answered by the specialist's call of akaa. A second piece of wood is laid down on the ground. When the obiaman has called out his madjomina three times, each time reciprocated by the other's akaa, a third piece of wood is laid along the others. Now the obiaman calls out the payment, which is hastily brought to him by

(15.) It was van Gennep (1909) who originally developed the concept of liminal phase. In his analysis of rites of passage, which he defined as rites accompanying every change of place, state, social position and age, in other words transition, he showed how these rituals were characterized by a fixed number of successive ritual phases, each with a distinct ritual character, namely separation, margin (for which he also used the Latin limen) and aggregation. Van Gennep pointed out that the first phase of separation was accompanied by symbolic behaviour which signified detachment of the individual or the group from either earlier fixed points in the social structure or from a set of cultural conditions or both. The intervening liminal period was characterized by a certain amount of ambiguity for the ritual subject who passed through a cultural realm which neither had the attributes of his past nor that of his coming state. Finally during the third phase of reaggregation the ritual subject was reincorporated in a relatively stable state, with clearly defined rights and obligations towards others, accorded in a new structural position. Turner (1964: 4-20; 1967: 93-111 and 1969: 80-194) further concentrated on the transitional phase with its strong ritual potentialities and defined the characteristics of individuals in such liminal state with the help of a great number of cases from both initiation rites and other ritually marked passages. He aptly defines, for example, the liminality of the initiate as ‘betwixt and between, neither here nor there, no longer a child and not yet an adult’ and probes deeper into the symbols associated with this concept.

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the kinsmen of the patient. In this ritual, the amount varies, but in most cases consists of half a bottle of rum, called a white bottle (wan weti bata daan) and one piece of cloth (wan koosu). The ritual is finished when the specialist and the other participants drink a part of the rum.

In this manner the ancestor from whom the specialist inherited his ritual knowledge is paid. It is one of the most common ways a specialist is rewarded for the lifting of certain food taboos (taboo on monkey flesh, called liba meti kina, which has to be lifted for twins), for the lifting of the taboo on sexual intercourse by the parents after the birth of twins, for the treatment of fractures and accidents caused during hunting, or for the lifting of the taboo of the river after a person has been drowned in it.

The spirits of the dead: mourning and widowhood

We have analysed the relationship between the living and the spirits of the dead when they belonged to the same lineage. We will now consider the relationship between the spirits of the dead and the former marriage partners of the deceased. Descriptions of the rituals involved in protecting widows and widowers in the case of mourning and remarriage, will enable us to elaborate the conceptions which play an important role in Matawai ideology concerning the relationship between the living and the dead.

Normally the widow is protected by the spirit of her former husband during the mourning period. However, any adversity, such as illness, which she encounters during this period, is considered to be a result of the anger of her deceased husband's spirit. This is apparent in the following case:

As is customary Tjontjonfou spended the mourning period in the house of her deceased husband. Confusion arose, however, when the two lineage members of her former husband, who were appointed to support her during this period, informed their kinsmen that Tjontjonfou had caught fever and that she could not loosen her hammock. This was considered an indication

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that her deceased husband was troubling her. Of course this was eagerly used by those, who commented adversely on the fact that Tjontjonfou had spent a long time at the coast to help her granddaughter deliver, some months before the death of her husband. She had left her husband unattended, they said. This old man, who was reputed to be a heavy drinker, had drowned on the boat trip back to his wife's village after a drinking party. His corpse was never found. Another bad omen was that Tjontjonfou had to chase a snake away with a stick, which threatened her during sleep. Evil tongues said that her husband cursed himself before his death (siba), and had added that when he would die his corpse must not be found by the others. All kinds of shamefull things (sjen sondi) about the relationship between Tjontjonfou and her husband became public gossip. In order to pray for her life, she was forced to tell them what she had done to her husband. However, Tjontjonfou's kinsmen became indignant when they heard that the kinsmen of her husband had held a prayer to the ancestors for her without informing them beforehand. They were presented with a ‘fait accompli’ and were given the message that her husband's lineage had decided to shorten her mourning period, due to her illness.

At the ending of the mourning period, at the ritual which is called puu a baaka (to draw out of black, i.e. mourning) the widow is ritually washed and in this way separated from her former marriage partner. Because she is still the woman of a deceased person, a koto sembe mujee as they refer to her, she is not allowed to engage in sexual relations until, after several months, she has undergone a second ritual washing in which the ties with her former marriage partner are loosened. If she had relations with a man during this period, she would evoke the anger of her former husband, who would punish the man, with whom she initiated relations, with illness. Usually venereal deseases are ascribed to the action of the spirit of a woman's former husband, and are considered as a warning. As can be expected, however, transgressions still occur frequently.

In some of these cases the spirit of the deceased may even become a sort of avenging spirit. The spirit does not, however, possess an

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individual and his revenge plan is different from that of other avenging spirits. In fact when a man during his lifetime is injured by his wife, he may become a kunu after his death, taking revenge on all men who have sexual relations with his former wife during her lifetime. Matawai only know of men who become such avenging spirits. They call the woman of this avenging spirit a kunu mujee, in the same way as a widow is called koto sembe mujee for some time, the woman of a deceased husband. In their revenge plan these cases correspond, but they differ from each other mainly in the length of time in which they are said to harm their victims. While in the case of a koto sembe mujee, the spirit of her deceased husband will only punish a man with whom she has sexual relations during her mourning period and the few months before the ritual of separation has been performed, in the case of a kunu mujee, the spirit will revenge itself on all men having relations with the woman as long as the woman lives. Because every man who has sexual relations with a kunu mujee, during a new marriage as well as in an adulterous relationship (pii taki), will be killed, it is no wonder that these women stigmatized as kunu mujee will be avoided and will have difficulty in finding a partner. Some of them are even known to initiate relations by ‘calling’ men a practice which is virtually unheard of in Matawai society. The following case is a poignant example:

Sidonia had treated her first husband Kodjo badly. She did not give him enough food and refused to fulfill her sexual duties towards him. Soon he got ill and had to be brought to town to seek treatment. Accompanied by his uncle Koosu and his wife, he was brought to the hospital, while they stayed in the backyard. There Koosu had an adulterous relation with Sidonia. Because she was the wife of his sister's son and he had to refer to her as his mai, he was committing a grave sin. When Kodjo did not recover, they brought him back to the village. Shortly afterwards he died. After his death, when they carried his hair and nail clippings (bongola) to find out the cause of his death, it was revealed that he was killed by witchcraft (wisi). Some time later Koosu went one day to attend church. On his return, he passed

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by the village of Sidonia, visited her and made an appointment to meet her in the bush. She would take the footpath through the bush, while he would go by boat to the meeting place. After they met each other at the appointed place, he dropped down dead. In panic Sidonia fled back to the village. After some time Koosu was missed and people were sent to search for him. First his boat and then finally his corpse, was found. In the bark of a tree was found the knife Sidonia had stuck in to have her hands free, and which she had entirely forgotten. When they brought the corpse to the village, they heard Sidonia wail and cry. After the supernatural cause of his death was revealed by a medium, i.e. that he was killed by the spirit of his sister's son, and the knife was sent for as witness, Sidonia gave in. Hastily they tried to propitiate the spirit of Kodjo, but in vain. Further accidents could not be prevented any more. Not long thereafter her son, begotten by Kodjo, died. The carrying oracle (bongola) indicated that he was killed by his father's spirit because the spirit was angry about the things his mother had done to him. Some time later Sidonia married a second husband. He frequently had frightening dreams in which he was threatened by two men holding bush knives. They warned him that if he did not give heed, he would die soon. He then complied and divorced. Also the third husband she took did not stay long with her and was pressed to divorce her when he became ill. Her fourth husband did not survive. He died a sudden death. The divination of a medium, which revealed that every man with whom she would have relations, would be killed by the spirit of her first husband, came true. This happened to a man who shortly after he had been involved in adultery with her, died. Although he admitted the adultery during his illness, all prayers to the ancestor spirits and the libation with which they tried to soften the hearth of the avenging spirit were in vain. When some months after this happened, another man fell ill and declared that he had sexual relations with her, they feared the worst.

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Sometimes even in normal cases a new marriage after the death of a former partner can be threatened by supernatural danger, as is apparent in the following case:

Djama, who had been widower for two years, expressed the wish to remarry with Natali, a woman of a neighbouring village, who had been deserted by her husband a year and a half earlier when he went to work in the coastal area. Both lineages however had quite a lot of objections to his proposal. The fact that they had been brought up by the same woman when they were children, and therefore were thought to be too familiar with each other (gwenti tumusi) did not work in favour of their proposed marriage, nor did the fact that the houses in which they now lived practically touched each other in the rear (de nama tumusi). A more serious objection, however, was that Djama had formerly quarreled because of Natali with her first, now deceased, husband. Now his anger was feared. People argued that the relations between them had been so bad, that they did not even speak to each other for a while (buuse); but they did not remember if they were still on bad terms with each other when this man died. They warned him: ‘If you already have had relations with a woman, whose husband has died, you better not take her again because otherwise you would risk your life’. Because Djama still wanted to marry her and pushed on the marriage, his kinsmen gave in and provided him with some protection against eventual harm through the necessary ritual preventative measures. However within a month after the consummation of the marriage he became serious ill. Of course this confirmed the suspicion towards the spirit of Natali's former husband. After three months Djama had still not recovered. He was troubled by fever and frequently had dreams in which he saw himself bringing golden chains to the house of his deceased wife. This was an indication that they had to search for the cause of his illness in another direction. The circumstances in which his former wife had died could also be connected with an explanation in this direction. This woman had suffered from

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epilepsy. When Djama had not been able to cohabit with her for a year because her condition grew increasingly worse, he had propounded his problems to her lineage. The woman, who was called to account by her kinsmen, did not want to cohabit with him, nor to divorce him officially. Now her lineage advised Djama, that as long as no definite solution was found, they should live apart from each other in their own respective villages. He was hardly back in his village, when he received news that his wife drowned. Because the conflict had not been settled in a council after her death, as would have been the appropriate procedure, she could have injured him, as people said. Now this question firstly had to be settled in the village of his former wife.

The initiation of a new marriage relation is invested with ritual precautions for this reason. The power of the spirit of the deceased over his former marriage partner has to be completely severed. The spirit of the deceased must also be appeased so that he favours the new marriage partner. To this end, the widower is brought over to the village of his deceased wife, together with his wife-to-be. Both are ritually washed with medicines, the so-called koto-sembe deesi, whereby calebashes with herbal water and white clay (pimba doti) are poured out over their head and shoulders, and washed off with water. This ritual is repeated several times throughout the day, so that their faces finally become ash-coloured from the pimba doti and small pieces of herbs remain in their hair. The repeating aspect of washing, which is also common in many other rituals, is considered necessary to achieve the desired effect of loosening the influence of the ancestor spirit.

At the end of this day, the two people are lodged in separate houses and spend the night in the village of the former marriage partner of the widower. Usually the man spends the night in the quarter of his deceased former wife, in the house of one of the persons who was designated to care for him during the mourning period, where he, after the puu a baaka, spent the rest of his mourning period. His wife-to-be is lodged in the house of the other individual who cared for the widower after the death of his wife, and who ideally belongs to the other quarter

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of the village. On this evening the lineage members of the deceased wife will symbolically fight (meki toobi) with the widower and his wife-to-be. While beating the house with sticks, they cry ‘you have taken away our husband, therefore you have to pay us’. The following morning, when coming together in the quarter of the deceased wife, to be ‘given in’ marriage, the husband indeed has to pay rum to settle the fight. Some of the rum is offered in libation to the spirit of the deceased. This marriage ceremony (da manu ku mujee), contrary to other kinds of marriage ceremonies, takes place inside a house, in the quarter of the deceased wife, and is attended by the three families concerned: those of the deceased wife, those of the husband and those of the wife-to-be. They formally speak with the spirit of the deceased (da tongo), and pour out libations of water and rum (tuwe wata, tuwe daan). In the afternoon they are both washed and separated definitively from the spirit of the deceased (wasi djafu paati). We have described this ritual above. The ritual washing takes place near a hole (baaku) that is dug for this purpose. At the washing the water from their heads falls into the hole which is refilled with earth after the washing is completed. Similarly with the placing of a new ancestor pole, a hole is dug, at which village headmen, basia and lineage elders are ritually washed. In this way a relationship with the ancestors (gadukonde) is achieved, in which the spiritual power of the living is drawn off by the dead. The reverse of this ritual is also performed. When a person is frightened so terribly that he becomes unconsicous or falls ill, his soul (akaa) is considered to have left his corpse. Immediately sand is put on his head to return his soul to his head. He is, then, believed to have been strengthened by the spiritual power of the supernatural world.

The washing is followed by the ritual of djafu paati, as already described (see pp. 269-273). The widower continues to hold the white part of the sangaafu in his hand. His wife is brought into contact with this by holding her husband. Together they walk to the village where, after having been sprinkled (lembe), they will spend the night together for the first time in the same house. Usually they stay for some nights in the village of the deceased wife, before they, if the new wife was also a widow, proceed to the village of the woman's deceased husband to repeat the whole ritual complex. It is stressed that the husband does

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right to spend as many nights as possible with his wife in the village of his former partner, so that the spirit of his former wife can get acquainted with the new wife and will finally accept her.

After some weeks a food offering (tuwe njanjan) is made by the newly married husband in the village of his deceased wife, libations are made and speeches are held toward the spirit of the deceased wife. This offering in the quarter of the village of the deceased is held indoors and attended mostly by the three lineages concerned. If the newly married wife was a widow the same food offerings is performed thereafter in behalf of her former marital partner in the village of the deceased husband, also attended by members of the three lineages concerned.

Usually the spirit of the deceased is warned the evening before the food will be offered and is directed to in the same house: ‘Look here, tomorrow we will bring a food offering to you, as we are accustomed to do. A good friend of yours, you may call, but you must not call in bad angered people who like to make trouble’.

The following morning a great variety of foods, cooked early in the morning, are set on a small table in the house of a lineage member of the deceased: weti alisi (white rice), satu okoki, i.e. coconoto alisi (coconut rice), batata (sweet patatoes), taja supu (cooked malanga), taja wwi (malanga leaves), bakuba tonton (pounded bananas), baka bakuba (roasted bananas), nana (pine apple), lalu (okra), pingo meti (pingo meat), jasa fisi (roasted fish) etc.. After people have gathered around the table, a kinsman is asked to talk to the deceased spirit. He pours out water and talks as follows: ‘Look here, here is water to rinse your mouth and wash your face. Look we bring you food, as we always did. If you have a good friend call him to come to eat together with you, but bad-hearted people you must not call’. Food taken from each dish is placed on a plate and set apart under the table for the spirit of the deceased. Then food is handed out for all the others, who now eat together (njan makandi). The meeting is concluded with libations of locally made rum prepared from sugarcane (kwinti daan) and bought rum, and drinking together. The bones, which are spread here and there on the flour, are gathered and the house is swept. The plate of the deceased is not touched until the spirit is believed to have taken the essence of the food. The rest is thrown away in the river.

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Like so many other traditional ritual practices, food offerings and libations used to be far more common in Matawai society than they are today. This holds true when we compare the present-day practices with those of the past, i.e. before the influence of the Moravian church significantly affected religious practices. A difference is also observable in the present-day practices of the upstream villages as compared to those in the downriver area. We can clearly see a differentation not only in the frequency of particular ritual elements, but also in the way in which they are performed. Food offerings are an example in point. Food offerings were common elements of the mourning period after death. Usually one week after death, at the so-called booko di dia, a large food offering ceremony was held in behalf of the spirit of the dead and attended by both close kinsmen and people from other villages. As a result of the opposition of the Moravian mission, an opposition which was particularly strong towards most elements of the traditional funerary rites and mourning rites due to their close links with the ancestor religion (see p. 330), the food offering at the booko di dia is now abandoned, although food is eaten together by the same group of people. Another food offering which has been affected by the mission's opposition is the customary offering, part of the same mourning rites, which takes place about one year after the death. While this offering has become less frequent, it has basically withstood the strong opposition of the mission and is nowadays performed indoors. Like the former food offerings at the booko di dia, this food offerings is attended by far more people from other villages than the food offerings after remarriage. It is a question of honour for the lineage to invite many people, to provide them with food and enable them to share in the reunion with the ancestors. In this way they acquire fame (bai nen) and will be praised (gafa). Because the organization of such a food offering is highly dependent upon successful hunting and fishing, the time between the death and the offering is always somewhat variable. However, a deceased kinsman should not be forced to wait too long or his displeasure will be evoked. Although rituals are performed in the upstream area in which public food offerings are given to an avenging spirit, such public

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rituals have become far less frequent. For example, annual harvest rites (goon gadu pee) were performed around new year which were accompanied by large-scale food offerings, attracting very much people. Such rituals were announced long beforehand. When the day arrived the food was put in newly-made washed boats. Part of the food was divided, put in big banana leaves, and set apart for the ancestors behind the houses. At such occasions all mediums, but also pregnant women were ritually washed until all became possessed by their spirits and started to perform the specific dancing steps of their gods. These days such rituals are not longer performed in the upstream villages, which are too closely watched by the resident evangelist. In the downstream villages, however, where identification with the Moravian mission is weaker, where Djuka and Saramaka religious specialists have always played an important role and where in some Roman Catholic villages opposition against traditional religious practices has always been less strong (see p. 359), these large-scale public rituals are still performed. The result is that the religious practices in the downriver villages, which have close contacts with Creoles and other Bush Negro groups and which are greatly affected by migration, resemble more closely the former upriver religious situation than do those of the present-day upriver villages, where traditional social organization is much more intact.

The spirits of the dead: reincarnation

The belief in reincarnation (nasi) is another aspect of the Matawai conceptualization of the interaction between spirits of the dead and their living kinsmen. After death people will return in newborn children. Matawai use the terms nasi and goo to refer to the person who reincarnated in me (di sembe di nasi mi; di sembe di goo mi)^(16.). This is an explicit reference to the growing and budding of plants and crops. For the formation of new tubers of, for example, the napi (Dioscorea trifida), also the word nasi is used.

However, not every man is believed to return after death. Young children, who, as people say, do not have sense, and at whose death the mourning ritual is not held wholly, will not return. The former burial method was meant to stimulate a rapid return of the ancestor spirit.

(16.) The term nasi in Djuka is used in this context, when people refer to their ancestors as na en nasi mi, or na en booko mi doti (personal communication Thoden van Velzen).

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When a grave was dug, the so called gaan baaku (large hollow), a side entrance was made, called piki a se (little aside) in which the corpse of the deceased was placed. This grave was also called mama ku miii (mother and child). Thereafter earth could be thrown on the empty grave, so that the corpse was not squeezed too much^(17.). This burial method is compared with the way in which an iguana buries her eggs in the sand by first digging down- and then sideways, so that the eggs will come out rapidly, when the sand is moistened by the rain. As we already indicated (see p. 249) the soul of a former ancestor, his akaa, is reborn in the child. On this point we disagree with Green who asserts that it is the aspect of the jooka of the ancestor who is reborn in the child (1974: 190). Price rightly speaks of a ‘kind of supernatural genitor’, who plays a role in conception (1975: 51).

In their conception that male ancestors do not necessarily need to return in male children, nor female ancestors in female children, the Matawai agree with the Saramaka (van Lier 1940: 173), but differ from the Djuka who believe that the ancestor has to be reborn in a person of the same sex (van Lier 1940: 172).

A strong relationship is believed to exist between the child and his ancestor. Because he is in fact the same person, it is dangerous for him to call out his ancestor's personal name (gaan ne) or to be confronted by another calling this name openly. Although it may happen casually in some cases, it may also be done intentionally and with evil intentions (fu hogi ati fasi). Therefore parents try to prevent the harmfull consequences that would result from openly calling this name, by ritually raising the child (opo di miii). While lifting up the child and holding it wrapped in an unsewn cloth (kua-kua koosu) in their lap, they address the akaa of the child, and in this way also the spirit of the ancestor who returned in him: ‘Look here. I do not know who has been reborn in you. But if a person comes to you and calls you openly by name, nothing must happen to you. You came here to live after all. You must stay with me and not return (to the land of the ancestors). If someone calls out your name, you must not die. Therefore I pay you with this piece of cloth’. After the prayer, they wrap the child in this cloth until it has grown older.

The ancestor who is reborn in the child is also known as his neseki.

(17.) A similar burial method is described in Albitrouw for the Saramaka (1979: 159). The Matawai referring to this method of burial merely indicated that it was a usual burial method in the past. We do not know if it was a special method used only for a restricted group of notables, as is mentioned for the Djuka.

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This term is derived from the English and also means namesake. The term is commonly used to refer to persons sharing the same Christian name and to persons holding the same political function. The term is used both for direct adress and for reference.

Usually the child is not given the name of his spiritual ancestor^(18.). He does however inherit his ancestor's tata kina, that is to say, a food taboo his ancestor had inherited in the paternal line. Eating this forbidden food, his neseki kina, will cause illness. In contrast to a person's tata kina, his neseki kina can be lifted ritually^(19.). The neseki kina, also mentioned for the Saramaka (van Lier 1940: 178), is not common for the Aluku, as Hurault observes ‘il n'impose aucun kina et ne demande pas d'offrandes’ (1961: 221).

In addition to this food taboo, a child inherits from his supernatural ancestor certain physical attributes, such as scars or birth marks corresponding to injuries or illnesses of his neseki (as van Lier also mentions for the Saramaka (1940: 137), and Hurault for the Aluku (1961: 221)). Moreover, particular childhood behaviour is ascribed to remembrances of a former life. Nelson, a Moravian evangelist who worked for a long time in the Matawai area during the 1930s, suggested a relationship between the belief in reincarnation and over-indulgent behaviour towards small children. They tend to be humoured and spoiled for fear that otherwise they would go to the underworld or die^(20.).

The strong connection with the neseki will especially come to the foreground if the neseki died a violent death (e.g. in case of drowning) or if the neseki comes to take revenge on the child for the injustice done to him during his life. In both cases the spirit of the child has to be ritually separated from the ancestor (wasi djafu paati). We will return to this later.

For many people knowledge of the ancestor who reincarnated in them is not necessary and indeed remains unknown throughout their lifetime. Incidentally, they come to know their neseki kina, by their reaction when eating the prohibited food, without actually identifying the neseki himself.

It is believed that one ancestor may be reborn in a number of others, as van Lier also mentions for the Saramaka (1940: 173). It is important to

(18.) Some weeks after a child's birth, he will be given two Christian names, which will also be used for the church baptism. Usually his father selects these names from his close kinsmen who are still alive. Since at birth, a child's supernatural ancestor is still unknown, the neseki's Christian name is not taken into account. It would therefore be highly unlikely that the child is given this name.

(19.) The ritual lifting of one's neseki kina (the tata kina of one's neseki) is done by a specialist who prepares a deesi (medicine). For this purpose pounded herbs and rum are mixed with a piece of the tabooed animal, and drunk by the patient. Thereafter the food has lost its spiritual force and may be freely eaten.

(20.) Jaarverslag Boven Saramacca 1930.

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ascertain with whom they share the ancestor, without, however, the ancestor in question having to be identified. People who share a common neseki are referred to as de abi du wan pau, thus sharing the same pau lit. (tree, staff). In this context pau probably refers to the connection with the ancestors, just as the faaga pau, the pole of the ancestors, is also pre-eminently the place to address the ancestors. The sharing of a common ancestor involves a number of restricting implications for the persons in question. Since they are believed to be the same person, they are not allowed to sleep in the same house. The closeness of their souls would disturb their identities. This Somo experienced when he went out hunting in the upriver area together with Vitalon with whom he shared a neseki. A rain storm forced them to tie their hammocks in the same camp, but they did not close their eyes that night because of a burning sensation in their eyes. Moreover, when two men are involved, it is said that they must not fight each other. It is also dangerous for one to bury the other, because it would seem that he buries himself. The marriage of persons who share a common supernatural ancestor is believed to be especially dangerous for the health of the persons involved and is therefore forbidden (as it is for the Saramaka, see Price 1975: 86).

Anjanbiten, for whom it probably was found out too late that he and his wife shared the same pau, had always been sickly. When his wife died, he refused to pay attention to the warning of his kinsmen not to attend the burial. Three days later he also died. His wife's spirit had killed him.

A person's neseki can become known in various ways. Sometimes it is the mother who has a dream during pregnancy or shortly after delivery, but otherwise both parents or other kinsmen have a dream after the birth of the child. In these dreams a deceased kinsman is seen to come to them. He comes, for example, to tie his hammock, to sit with him in his boat or to bring money to him. Such a dream is submitted to a medium, who will identify the ancestor. Usually, however, it is the medium who takes the initiative in this matter and informs the parents about the neseki of the child. It may also happen that the child at birth or some time later shows certain physical marks, bearing a resemblance to the way in which his neseki was wounded or died.

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When after the birth of Lando a spot was found on his leg that ulcerated, prayers were said to his nasi on the indication of a medium. This was his FMB, who died two years before after his leg had been cut off due to a snake bite. A prayer to this ancestor was held and subsequently the wound which appeared on the same place on the leg of the child, was said to be cured.

Attention may be drawn to the neseki by the child himself. Generally this will happen with children who are four or older. While playing the child may call out the gaan ne (personal name) of his neseki or may talk of certain things, which seem to indicate that he is remembering a former life. Thus Filia, whose neseki had been a major servant in church, said, while playing with the other children, that she wanted to sit with the servants and insisted that she had to sweep, a special task for female church servants.

Sometimes illness of the child is interpreted as a sign that the ancestor wants to reveal himself. This is especially true in the case of illnesses which are accompanied by fever in the afternoon, a very common occurrence during the first year of one's life. The medium who pronounces the judgement that the illness is caused by a neseki indicates to which ancestor they have to address themselves (da tongo) and pour out a libation. This is the task of a close relative of the neseki, who is still living, for example, the neseki's brother or sister. The ritual complex to settle this kind of neseki sondi, as it is commonly called, matters involving a supernatural ancestor, like other illnesses caused by other kinds of koto sembe involves three sessions: prayers are said to the ancestors (the ritual of begi) in which the ancestor is begged to leave off; thank giving to the ancestor (the ritual of da tangi), in which libations are made after the patient is recovered; and finally ritual washing in which the separation between neseki spirit and patient is accomplished (the ritual of wasi djafu paati).

When Lisiati was six months old he was frequently troubled by fever. The kunu speaking through the medium of his mother's sister indicated that it was his father's deceased brother. who was calling him. She designated the person who had to

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settle the matter. On three consecutive mornings, sessions were held, in which a classificatory brother of his grandfather on the father's side said the prayers. He addressed the baby child on his mother's arm and prayed for his health as follows: ‘You were here with us until you went away. Now you are back. We do not want illness. Therefore we talk with you, we beg you and say, look here, with this piece of cloth we pay you’. Meanwhile he pointed to a piece of cloth. After this speech an elder woman from the child's lineage backed him up in the praying. She begged that the child would live on until it was old, and that he would build a house, and so on. Some weeks later, when the fever had disappeared, they came together again to pour out a libation to thank the neseki, and shortly thereafter the child was brought to his father's village to be separated from the spirit of his neseki by a ritual washing (wasi djafu paati).

It is believed that all ancestors want to return and reveal themselves to remind the living of their presence. Some however, return with evil intentions (fu hogi ati fasi), because they feel wronged by their relatives. They may take revenge by causing illness in the child. When they intend to kill the child they will not let themselves be appeased by the prayers of their living kinsmen.

For Nita, a 19 year old woman, just married to a migrant, who herself was still living in the tribal area, a neseki sondi had to be settled because of her illness. She had a sore on her feet. She turned in vain to the clinic in the tribal area and to the doctor in town, to be cured. The medium of the gaan kunu, to whom she turned thereafter to find the cause of this illness (fu suku en libi), told her by whom this illness was caused and in which way it had to be settled. The medium ascribed the illness to the same ancestor, who some years before had caused illness in two young women, lineage members of Nita, in whom the ancestor was reincarnated. This neseki, Sapolina, Nita's classificatory grandmother (her MMMZD) had died because she had cursed herself (siba). Sapolina formerly

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lived in a house built so close to the river, that there was almost no place left between the house and the river. One day this old lady became ill and went to the water side to empty the chamber. Usually the chamber is emptied in the forest at the back of the houses, very cautiously and in the absence other people. By this act she invoked the curiousity of children washing dishes at the water side. One of them, Sapolina's sister's daughter called out to the other girls ‘Look how aunty is throwing the dirt in the water’. The old woman felt herself so affronted and ashamed because of these words, that she called on an ancestor spirit to kill her, and so she cursed herself. She died a few weeks later. The two other women in whom she reincarnated had paid for this incident some four years earlier with the same illness. They had to be ritually separated from her, had made a payment of a tin of rum and ten pieces of cloth, and ritual dancing had been held in which the rum was drunken together. Only then did they recover.

Other forms of adversity besides illness, such as miscarriage, still-born children and sterility may be attributed to the neseki. These must be ritually settled for the persons concerned at a later age.

When Thesa, a 15 year old girl, became pregnant, a medium divulged the fact that her neseki, her father's sister, had died shortly after delivery of her first child. It was decided to separate Thesa from the spirit of this ancestor to insure that she too did not die during childbirth.

Also in the following case a neseki sondi had to be settled after childhood:

Seepi, a young migrant, always had bad luck. In fact for a long time he had difficulty in finding a house in town, a wife and a stable job. After a while it was found that his neseki caused these troubles. This ancestor during his lifetime had been chased out of his house. Now he was revealing this injustice by troubling his neseki. During Seepi's

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youth the identity of his neseki had never been investigated, and consequently the matter had not been settled. After the matter was ritually settled and his soul (akaa) was paid, the situation changed. He found a steady job, was able to buy a house of his own, and his marriage relation improved.

Social relations between the living acquire an extra dimension as a result of the belief in reincarnation. Social relations between ancestors, in fact, are extended to the presently living, so that people remain involved in conflicts which have occurred in the past.

Leo, an 18 year old boy of the downriver village of Bilawata, never dared to swim in deep water. Through a medium it was discovered that his neseki, (a Creole named Bape), who had been a gold-digger, had been drowned near Mamadan. This happened, when he had been quarreling over a woman with another gold-digger, named Boti. Boti was said to have caused his death by bewitching him (buta sondi da en). After Bape's death, Boti also died and reincarnated in Ludi, a village member of Leo. To settle the quarrel, Ludi now had to pay Leo a fine, in order to purify the disturbed relationship between the boys.

This is one of the few cases reported in which non-Matawai were involved in the reincarnation chain^(21.). Now let us consider another example of the way in which conflicts of the past are extended to the present through the nasi-belief.

When Asomu took Akeesia as his wife, Amonia was called in to give her to him. The neseki of Asomu had been married with two wives. The first wife the ancestor had taken in the upriver area, was a woman who as was discovered later, had reincarnated in Akeesia. Her husband had tormented her and troubled her with poverty during her lifetime. Later this man had taken a second wife in a downriver village, a woman who after her death reincarnated in Amonia. He returned with this second wife to Akeesia's neseki, whom he had left behind sick and poor. Thus Amonia was now called in to give Akeesia to Asomu, because, as they said, it was she (properly speaking her

(21.) Although people believe it is possible that a person after his death may return in a non-kinsman, they think that such cases are less common than those of returning in people who are related. Moreover they are unable to point to many specific examples, particularly not in the upstream area. Such cases seem to be more frequently reported in Djuka society. The endogenic character of the upriver Matawai villages, and the lesser frequency of direct contact with people of other ethnic groups is probably responsible for the fact that non-kinsmen are less significant in the reincarnation chain.

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neseki), by whom Akeesia (meaning her neseki) had been wronged so badly. When Akeesia became pregnant and her child died directly after delivery, they turned again to Amonia to settle the matter ritually, because they said that it was Amonia who was bent on ruining her (kaba en a soso), as Amonia's neseki had done to Akeesia's neseki. Asomu, who meanwhile had become a servant in the church, said that he was no longer willing to join in the prayer. They let the matter take its own course, but till today Asomu's and Akeesia's weak physical condition is explicitly ascribed to this neseki-case.

The extension, of conflicts that took place between ancestors, to the living has other important implications and wide ramifications, as we shall see. Following this principle, person B, in whom person A after his death was reborn, is considered culpable for transgressions committed by A during his lifetime against an avenging spirit (misi a di kunu). Even person C, in whom B in turn has been reincarnated, is held culpable for the transgressions of his for-forbear A, and so on. The kunu besides taking revenge on the matrilineal kinsmen and descendants of the original provoker of his death, is bound to persecute those persons, in whom the original provoker is reincarnated.

The belief in a kind of indirect reincarnation is perhaps most evident in the case of the revenge plan of the gaan kunu. It will be remembered that Gaaman Adai, when he was planning to execute the witchcraft suspect Bomboi by burning him at the stake, ordered some persons from each village to help him. He thereby inculpated all these persons in the death of Bomboi. According to the kunu principle all matrilineal kinsmen and descendants of these persons, in other words, nearly all existing Matawai lineages^(22.), became threatened by the revenge action of this kunu. Moreover, people explained, the kunu sought as ready targets just those people who were reincarnated by the small group of people who had killed him, and even those reincarnated by the ones reincarnated by the guilty. Thus even today there are persons who are held personally culpable in the death of the gaan kunu and must settle the matter ritually with his medium^(23.). Although they themselves are innocent, the fact that they were reincarnated by an ancestor who was

(22.) Green points to the claim of a few lineages to partial exemption from the gaan kunu, because their ancestral captains had only nodded their assent, refusing to give it verbally. Especially the lineages of Paka Paka, Makajapingo and Misalibi are mentioned, having in part a non-Matawai population (1974: 264).

(23.) The culpability of people who by virtue of their being a reincarnation or a reincarnation of a reincarnation of a person who wronged the gaan kunu (misi a di gaan kunu) is settled by a communal ritual, in principle held yearly. All people who belong to this category and for whom this matter is not settled already, come together to be ritually washed in the forest and held throughout a whole nightduring ritual dancing in which the assembled rum is shared between men and ancestors.

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involved in the murder, or as is more probable in most cases, reincarnated by an ancestor whose neseki was guilty, as is indicated by the medium of the gaan kunu, they are now identified with the people who, as the Matawai believe, were among them, bi de a dendu, to have been involved in the plot. In this case the principle in which certain persons are held directly responsible interferes with the general kunu principle in which collective responsibility operates within the matrilineage. The fear inspired by all those considered to be accomplices in the death of the gaan kunu is clearly shown in the following case:

When a man died in Njukonde, nobody dared touch the corpse. It was believed that he was reincarnated by the former Gaaman Adai, who had been guilty of the death of so many people. It was he who had ordered the execution of a lineage member, who became a gaan kunu^(24.).

Also for this reason, before functionaries such as headmen and basia can be appointed, the medium of the gaan kunu must ascertain to what extent their neseki or neseki's neseki was involved in the death of the gaan kunu. If involvement is ascertained the functionary will not be appointed, because it is believed that he will not live long. This is said to be the reason that a former headman of Misalibi died soon after his inauguration. He was so eager to fulfill the function of headman, that he refused to withdraw, when it became known that his neseki belonged to the culprits of the gaan kunu.

As we have seen, there is a close relationship between burial and reincarnation analogous to planting and budding. This relationship might facilitate an understanding of the reason why certain people, in the past, were not buried. Persons accused of witchcraft (wisi) or those connected with certain taboos (kinaman) (e.g. those who died by drowning)^(25.) were intentionally not buried in the past to prevent their return to the world of the living, where their neseki would be guilty again for their misery or sin.

In this context, it is interesting to note a comment of Bastide made in reference to the frequency of suicide cases in slave societies during the eighteen century. The suicides, Bastide argues, were partly committed in despair, but also in the hope of being reborn in Africa.

(24.) Jaarverslag Nieuw Jacobkondre 1951.

(25.) Formerly the corpses of people who died by drowning were not buried as those of other common people. Their corpses, put in a broken boat, would be hastily dropped in the forest close by the water, in fear of the waterspirits whose prey had been stolen.

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The plantation owners knew well about these conceptions, as seems apparent from their reaction. By decapitating the corpses of the suicides, the planters discouraged other slaves from committing suicide, since the other slaves feared that once decapitated they would be reborn multilated (Bastide 1965: 11)^(26.).

Because of the taboo on calling the name of one's own neseki, and the name of those of his close relatives, it was not possible to collect quantitative data on nasi-cases or on cases of the reincarnation type, as Stevenson calls them^(27.). In addition, many people did not know their own or other people's neseki. We were, however, able to gather some data on this subject in the course of our fieldwork. Certain cases of illness were ascribed to neseki, and neseki were called in casual conversations, which we overheard. Out of the 34 cases, about which we have data, three were cases in which the neseki's neseki was known, but the direct neseki not. These three are not taken into consideration. Most ancestors returned in a person of the same sex, only two of the sixteen men were traced to female ancestors and four of fifteen women to male ancestors. In most cases there was a direct kinship relationship with the neseki. In one case a Matawai was said to have been reborn in the child of a Creole teacher, while as we saw in two cases Creole gold-diggers were said to have been reborn in Matawai. Children were traced to the father's kinsmen as well as to the mother's. This is in contrast to the situation of the Aluku, where generally the father's side is emphasized (Hurault 1961: 221).

Table 1 Origin of supernatural ancestor (neseki) in mother's and father's kingroup in Matawai society
	mother's kinsmen	father's kinsmen	total
Male	6	7	13
Female	9	6	15
	_____
	15	13	28

In 17 out of 28 cases the distance between the child and his neseki was one of two generations. In 4 cases there was a gap of three generations

(26.) Bastide based himself on Surinamese sources.

(27.) Extensive studies in the phenomonon of reincarnation have been conducted by the psychiatrist Stevenson, who since 1953 collected cases in a number of different cultures. He defines a case of the reincarnation type as ‘one in which the subject claims that he has lived before and justifies this claim by narrating memories of his previous life’ (1970: 2). He mentions that this is accompanied by the following features: 1) announcing dreams (usually the subject's mother when pregnancy concerning the identity of the person ostensibly being reborn; 2) birth marks or deformities of the subject corresponding in appearance and location to wounds on the body of the related previous personality; 3) most of the subjects show behavioural traits which the informants report resemble to a significant extent those of the related previous personality. His cases of the Tlingit and the Haida, cultures in which conceptions and belief in reincarnation exist, show a marked correspondence with the Matawai cases about which we have information (for example, rebirth in a particular family, announcing dreams, birth marks said to correspond with wounds of the deceased person with whom the child is identified and imagined memories of a previous life). However, unlike our investigation, directed at elaborating the belief in reincarnation in terms of its bearing on social relations, Stevenson attempted to verify individual cases by finding witnesses who could confirm that a child must have acquired his knowledge about a previous life by other than normal sensory means.

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and in 7 cases, a gap of 1 generation^(28.). Concerning the interval between the time of death of the neseki and the birth of the child the modus was between one and two years, in some cases the time lapse was greater.

Finally we may pay attention to the fact that most neseki sondi are settled for persons when they have reached young adulthood. At that moment they are dependent on the still living close relatives of their neseki, mainly of the generation of their grandparents. Because these elder people know the cause and the circumstances of the death of their kinsmen, and are emotionally involved with conflicts which have happened in the past, they may extend these conflicts to the young generation. They, thereby, acquire a dominant position in the power system within the village community.

(28.) Exact genealogical specifications for the 28 nasi-cases of the Matawai:

3 generations:	FMF(1), MMB(1), MMMMZS(1), MMMMMMZDDS(1)
2 generations:	FF(2), FM(2), MM(1), FMB(2), MMB(1), MFFS(1), MMZ(2), MMMMZDS(1), MMMZD(3), MMMBD(1), MMMMMZDD(1)
1 generation:	FB(2), FZ(2), MMMMZDDS(1), FMMMZDD(1), FMMMBDDS(1)

Witchcraft

The Matawai believe that people are able to harm or kill others by means of witchcraft (wisi). A witch (wisiman) is someone who uses supernatural means for destructive ends. These are actions which are considered illegitimate and are socially condemmed. People who are consumed by envy and jealousy, those who harbour revengeful feelings against others, those whose hearts are not pure (en ati an limbo), are likely to commit witchcraft. They are people who abi hogi ati (have a bad heart), or abi taku ati, or as is also said abi wan ati fu wan wotuwan, whose heart is not actually perverted or wicked in its nature, but who resent something. Although illness and death may be ascribed to witchcraft, individuals suspected of it are never accused in public. They may be gossiped about behind their back. Witchcraft is considered to be one of the most serious transgressions. Because of the oath made in the past at the Pikin Saramacca (see p. 239), the God of the Saramacca river has a taboo for witchcraft. Those violating his taboos by practising witchcraft are believed to be punished by him with death.

The attitude towards individuals suspected of witchcraft has changed significantly in the course of time. Before the turn of the century accusations of witchcraft were quite frequent, as can be inferred from historical sources. Persons suspected of witchcraft were charged at the

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gaaman. Commonly the suspected person was called to come to the gaaman and was subjected to a trial. He had to drink an oath (bebe soi). If he was found guilty, he would die within a short time, killed by the ancestors (gadukonde). If he was found to be innocent nothing would happen to him. People charged with witchcraft could be exiled from the Matawai territory. Sometimes they were persecuted by their kinsmen, which in some cases lead to cruel executions.

We have no evidence as to whether this trial procedure remained or felt into disuse after the turn of the century. We do know, however, that a post-mortem trial to determine the supernatural cause of the death by means of the carry-oracle was a standard procedure, applied in all cases. As far as we could verify, this was a common procedure in the upstream villages until the establishement of the church in the beginning of the 1920s. The carry-oracle was used to determine the ultimate cause of the death: whether the person died a natural death, called gadusiki (illness of God) because it was his time, as is said, or whether his death had a supernatural cause resulting from his own use of witchcraft against others (en egi wisi) for which he was punished by the ancestors, or from the witchcraft of another (wotu sembe wisi)^(29.).

For the trial by the carry-oracle (bongola), nails and hair clippings of the deceased were wrapped in cloths and medicines (deesi), and this bundle was carried on a plank by two pall bearers. The bundle was believed to contain the sabi, the component of knowledge of the deceased The bundle guided the movements of the bearers in answer to questions that were put to the oracle. While the bongola was carried in this manner in order to determine who was guilty in the death and the way in which his inheritance and succession should to be dealt with, the coffin (with the corpse) was carried in a similar manner in order to discover more details concerning cause of death. The coffin would rush at the individual who had killed the deceased through witchcraft, and provided them with more information about the reasons and the way in which, he had bewitched him. If it was ascertained that the deceased was killed because of his own wisi, all his possessions had to be brought to Santigoon, the centre of the Gaan Tata cult. One of the major aims of this cult was to combat witchcraft^(30.) (see p. 195).

(29.) We must note that this classification of the causes of death among the Matawai differs significantly from that of the Djuka. Among the Djuka it is the gravediggers, who by means of hearing the spirit of the deceased, firstly establish if the person had died because he had infringed the law of Gaan Gadu, in which case they speak of gadu dede, or because he died from other circumstances, a more respectable death and classified as jooka dede. After having established that the person was killed by Gaan Gadu, they will investigate whether witchcraft was involved, classifying it as wisi dede, or whether the person died a sinner's death (misi dede) (Thoden van Velzen 1966b: 113-5, 240).

(30.) For a detailed description of a specific carrying oracle among the Djuka, the carrying oracle for the Great Deity (Bigi Gadu, Sweli Gadu or Gaan Tata) we refer to Thoden van Velzen (1966b: 122 ff.).

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Formerly, a person found to be a witch became the object of hostility and persecution. Now their attitudes towards him changed. He was believed to be exposed to supernatural danger in that the spirit of his deceased victim was likely to harm him. They tried to protect him by reconciling him with the spirit of the deceased and at the same time by separating them ritually, or as the Matawai say, to remove the hand of the deceased from him (fu puu di koto sembe mau). The coffin was used as an oracle to determine the fine, the number of bottles of rum for the libation which was to be offered to the spirit of the deceased by the reputed witch. Hoping that they could satisfy the spirit of the deceased, they would pray to him (da tongo) as follows: ‘Look, here is the man who killed you. But instead of killing him in turn, we let him pay you. Look, with these bottles of rum he pays you. Here is your paiman (payment), we pour out to you. Now leave this case to us’. Sometimes the coffin refused the fine, indicating that he did not consider the case as finished. He was still determined to kill the witch. Indeed when this happened, the death would be ascribed to the spirit of his former victim, who had taken revenge.

After the introduction of Christianity with its increasingly strong opposition to divination practices, these oracles gradually fell into disuse^(31.). The public investigation into witchcraft was consequently pushed into the background. Another divination method^(32.), which also existed in the past, is used these days to ascertain cases of witchcraft. These divinatory judgements are obtained by consulting the akaa kuja, a calabash commonly used in cases of illness. By putting some sand on a person's head and in this way catching his soul (akaa) into the calabash, in which medicines are put, they acquire an oracle to which questions can be put to determine the cause of illness and death. The quivering motions of the calabash on someone's head are interpreted as answers to questions put to this oracle. By means of this oracle, for example, they are able to find out if the illness is caused by cursing (siba), by witchcraft of another person or as a result of the punishment of the ancestors for his own use of witchcraft. The name of the witch is also discovered through this method, but action against the suspected person will not be taken. People believe that God or the ancestors, who do not love people harming others in such a way, will punish him.

(31.) In the upriver villages with their strong involvement with the Christian church and resident evangelist, the carrying of this oracle (bongola) had already been abandoned since the 1920-30s. In the other villages, however, it had still been carried for quite a long time. It was only because the ‘owner’ of this oracle of one of the downriver villages recently died in the 1970s, that it was no longer carried in the downriver villages as people suggested.

(32.) There are a number of divination methods (fii-fii) which can be distinguished technically. Apart from the already mentioned carry oracle (bongola) and calabash oracle (akaa kuja), there are, for instance, the oracle of the large earthenware pots (agban), the bottle oracle (fii bata), the divinatory device which is called naki naki after the way in which the hands may clap together in answer to questions posed, and the killing of a cock, and kangaa, a divinatory method which is used to detect thieves by means of a special kind of grass.

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Sometimes, however, people will use counter-actions, by applying anti-witchcraft.

In the downstream area we heard about more cases of witchcraft than in the upstream area. In one downstream village we observed a mock fight. The matrilineal kinsmen of a witchcraft victim came to take vengeance against the kinsmen of the reputed witch. They refer to this kind of fight as meki toobi (quarreling). In the past, large-scale fights (boto feti) took place in this sort of case and preceded the ritual praying to the ancestors. The mock fight we observed was a formalized and dramatized performance of the revenge actions which were common in the past. In this case kinsmen of the witch were scolded, their houses were beaten with sticks and machetes, and they were threatened with the burning of their houses. However, no bodily injury was inflicted on them. They were forced to admit that the others were right (ju abi leti) and to pay a large fine.

The Matawai are familiar with various witchcraft methods and differentiate them linguistically. They say that there are people who take off their skin. They suck other people or drink their blood. The following morning they take on their skin again. These people are called azeman. Old people (gaanpe sembe) in particular are suspected of these practices, seeking their victims in adults and little children, who become feeble and meager. They are believed to do it consciously and willfully. With this kind of witchcraft is associated a feeble light which shines early in the morning and slowly disappears. When someone is recognized and suspected by his behaviour, countermeasures may be taken. His skin is taken and rubbed with pepper. Although the belief in azeman is widespread, people were not able to point to actual cases of this kind of witchcraft, at least not in the upstream area.

Magical practices such as the preparation of witchcraft substances for another (buta wisi da sembe; buta sondi da sembe) are far more common. There are various procedures with which magical substances are manipulated for destructive ends, like the burying of a bottle with witchcraft (bei bata), holding a hand to another person while witchcraft is hidden under the fingernails, sprinkling of such substances over food or drinks thereby poisoning it, or using the earth of the burying ground

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(geebi doti) to touch another. These practices are performed covertly, to avoid observation. No wonder charms are badly needed. Protective charms, called tapa, lit. ‘to close’ and ‘to stop’, are prepared by the specialist for a client (a buta en da ju). Charms are numerous and varied. A bottle (tapa bata) buried under the threshold will neutralize the force of witchcraft and protect the people who live in the house. Medicines hung in a string around the neck (tatai) protect the wearer. People can also protect themselves by ritually washing with particular herbs (wasi deesi) or by cutting notches at the joints and rubbing them with a magical substance (koti). The great need of charms is also caused by the fact that it is believed that people are inclined to test others to find out if they are protected against witchcraft (fii luku efu ju abi tapa a ju sikini).

Particular kinds of illnesses or accidents, such as blindness or paralysis, are imputed to result from this form of witchcraft.

Charles of the village of Pniël went out working balata together with a group of men from the upstream area. A vigorous man, he suddenly became paralysed and was no longer able to speak. In the town hospital he was treated for a year without success. His illness was ascribed to witchcraft. Six years earlier a group of men were working for the Geological and Mining Service. They stayed in a working camp opposite Pijeti. One day they came to Pniël and made trouble (suku toobi). The men of Pniël came to blows with them. Charles beat one of them so badly that they believed that this man had taken revenge by means of witchcraft.

The Matawai are convinced that other ethnic groups not only have more expertise in witchcraft, but are also conversant with more dangerous methods and apply them more frequently. The Negroes of the Para-district, for example, are suspected of rubbing their skin with a substance which causes leprosy in whomever they touch.

Applying witchcraft by means of bai wisi or bai taku sondi (by buying witchcraft, or bad things) is considered as the puchase of magical substances at an expert, but in some cases spirits are involved who are made subservient. Especially bush spirits of the type ampuku, akantamasi

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and the dwarf-like bakulu are inclined to let themselves be bribed for these kinds of nefarious practices, as long as they are served in the proper way by offerings of food. The witch thus calls the help of this spirit to harm his victim. The illness that is caused by action of this spirit who possesses his victim, can only be treated by driving out the tormenting spirit in time (wasi en puu). Uncommon events are most likely to be ascribed to this kind of supernatural power:

The inhabitants of Wanati were alarmed by a rattling noise they used to hear at the waterside in the evening. They presumed that a taku sondi was producing this noise, possibly an ampuku or bakulu. However nobody dared to go and look fearing to be killed, because only its owner (en masa) can remove it, as they said.

Unusual behaviour may also lead to suspicions of witchcraft.

Some years ago the upstream villages were threatened by jaguars (hogi meti). They ventured close to the villages, killing hunting dogs and even troubling people. On a hunting trip Nathan was attacked and wounded by a huge jaguar, from whom he was able to escape thanks to his hunting dog who attacked the jaguar from behind. Now this jaguar was considered to be a spirit sent by a witch to attack him. Soon old Elias was imputed to be the witch. He regularly went out hunting with Nathan, always returning empty-handed, while Nathan returned with lots of game. These suspicions were confirmed, by Elias himself, who shortly before his death admitted having used witchcraft and named people he had killed by his malicious practices. In fact, such a relevation was very uncommon in Matawai.

Applying witchcraft involves the risk of being affected in return, as happened to the men in the following case:

Two migrants, Jemias and Lisienne, married to two sisters, had to stay in the forest in connection with their work as bush-policemen. For long periods they remained in the forest, far from their wives who stayed behind in their houses in the

[p. 299]

outskirts of Paramaribo. To be sure that their wife would not be visited by other men, both men bought witchcraft and instructed the spirit to kill any man, who would have relations with their wives. No man in fact visited their wife in their absence. However, when they came back and wanted to resume relations with them, they were stricken. All treatment was in vain and they died not long after each other.

Finally, a special kind of spirit that is bought for applying withcraft, is bakulu. Matawai refer to this kind of witchcraft as sending a bakulu, manda bakulu. The spirit is a small dwarf-like androide, about knee high, who speaks with a nasal voice and lives in a bottle. In contradistinction to bush spirits like ampuku, bakulu are made by men and are bought by a witch to work for him or to harm his enemies. The owner can give the spirit instructions, and point out people to injure or kill. The bakuku demands compensation. He must be provided with certain kinds of food, such as eggs. He may even claim the owner's own child. This spirit is feared more than all other bush spirits. People do not dare call him by name and commonly refer to him obliquely while gesticulating with their hands as high as their knee above the ground, as di sembe aki so, that small man, or more impersonally as to di sondi, that thing.

In the downstream villages, where belief in bakulu plays a more important role than upriver, bakulu are frequently oberved, as is said:

One evening Lesli, a boy of Balen, walked through the village and supposed that he saw a child standing near a house. He asked him ‘what are you doing there?’ But when he wanted to strike him over his head, he felt how frizzy the hair was and realized that it was not a child. He ran to his house, followed at his heels by the bakulu, and just managed to close the door. The next morning he was caught by fever, and when they examined the cause by means of an oracle, they concluded: ‘o, it was a bakulu’.

In the upstream villages we only recorded one case involving bakulu. This happened in 1962.

It was said that Moni from the upriver village of Sukibaka

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had bought a bakulu. It was not known if he did so intending to let the bakulu work for him or to harm other people, but when he went to work at the Pikin Saramacca he fell ill and died. Meanwhile ‘the thing’ had stayed back in his house. Toi, his sister's son had to go to the downriver area to find someone to remove it for him. In the Amerindian village of Bigipoika he finally met with an Indian who was the owner. He took him upriver by boat. At first even this man did not dare to touch ‘the thing’. Later he succeeded to getting hold of the bottle, in which he was said to live. The Indian's hands trembled, when he took the bottle in his hands. But finally he removed it for them.

In the downstream villages illness and death are frequently ascribed to this tormenting spirit. Non-Matawai, especially Pala-nenge and Foto-nenge, are always suspected of having sent the bakulu. It is believed that in some cases the bakulu does not kill the individual originally pointed out by his owner as victim, but will become an avenging spirit, victimizing the lineage of the original victim, choosing several members of this lineage as medium to make himself known (kisi sembe a jedi). A clear example of this is the bakulu kunu of the Abennet bee, mentioned by Green (1974: 254-5). This kunu was provoked around 1910. In fact the desertion of the old village of Jacobkonde and the subsequent settlement in Njukonde was an attempt to escape the operation of this kunu. There are indications that a bakulu kunu may even manifest itself in an affinal lineage of the original victim, as is shown in the following case:

Alienne, a young woman of the village of Misalibi, who was living with her husband in town, had been ill for a long time. Within half a year she had lost a lot of weight. The Matawai readily recognized the cause of her illness and said that a bakulu was fighting with her. They inferred this from the way she turned her neck. Attempts were made to induce the bakulu who had possessed her to express and pronounce himself (seeka). These attempts took place in the Matawai area, on emancipation day (1 July) when she visited her home village. But it only

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grew worse. At the beginning of November treatment was sought with a Matawai specialist living in town, but he was also unable to cure her. Meanwhile her kinsmen went to a lukuman in town to discover who sent the bakulu, since according to the Matawai, the Creoles were always sending bakulu. Various rumours were spread in the Matawai migrant community about the person presumed to be guilty. Someone had pointed her out to a bakulu while she was attending a party in the outskirts. A man whom she had rejected had sent the bakulu to her. Meanwhile Alienne's condition incresingly detoriated. Her husband did not sleep anymore and all felt pity for her. In mid-November they decided to bring her to Mao, downriver along the Saramacca where she had kinsmen through her father. She was accompanied by a number of Matawai townsmen. Here another person was found guilty of having send the bakulu to her. A former tenant of the house in which she lived in town, who had not wanted to leave the house when it was sold, had in revenge bought a bakulu from a specialist and had left him in the house. Only a week after she had been brought to Mao she died.
After a month Stella, a young woman from Misalibi, lineage member of Alienne (her MMMZDDDD), started to exhibit the same symptoms. Hastily she was brought over to Kwakugoon, because in the tribal area, meanwhile, the ‘real’ identity of the bakulu of Alienne had been discovered. This was also affirmed by elder migrants from the downstream villages in town. Lebega, a woman of Balen, was thought to have incurred this bakulu. When she had worked in town for a woman in the Para district and stole something from her, the woman had sent a bakulu to her. This bakulu turned itself into a kunu and chose his first victim in the lineage of Lebega, killing Lebega's sister's daughter, a young woman. Afterwards this kunu was said to have crossed over to the lineage of Lebega's husband of Misalibi. He made Alienne, the daughter of Lebega's husband's sister, his vitim. Now they were afraid that the kunu would seize Stella, Lebega's husband's niece (his MMZDDDD), if she returned to her own village.

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Cursing

The last section was devoted to a consideration of the ways in which people can harm others by resorting to witchcraft, a particular kind of illegitimate use of supernatural powers. There are still other ways in which supernatural powers can be manipulated for destructive ends^(33.), the most important of which is cursing. Cursing in Matawai is called siba, taki tongo or taki buka and is a form of invocation. If a person engaged in conflict, feems himself so wronged, misunderstood, offended or shamed by the other, that he maintains a grudge against him (holi ati), he may, in his indignation, curse the other by calling on supernatural powers to harm him, i.e. to strike him with illness or death. The individual who invokes the curse turns to Masa Gadu (the God in which concepts of traditional religion and Christianity have been syncretized), to lesser deities of the Matawai pantheon, to the collective ancestors or, as is most frequently the case, to a closely related ancestor. It is believed that if the invoker is justified in the conflict, these powers will immediately interfere injuring or even killing his opponent.

Firstly, we will describe a case which happened some 30 years ago and was considered as a case in which the invoker was believed to be justified to his act of siba.

Old Tata Awai from the village of Maipakiiki was known to be a powerful sorcerer and healer. After he had worked on the coast lumbering, he brought his logs to sell at Kwakugoon. Bush Negroes used to sell the wood at the saw mill, where it was bought by Creoles. One day, when Tata Awai sold his lumber one Creole, Johny, paid him only part of the money. Knowing that he was cheated, he went to the riverside and cursed the man. He invoked the water gods (wata gadu) and told them to share the money with this man. He argued that while he had lost so much sweat, this Creole had refused to give him his rightful share. Therefore he told them to do as they pleased with him. Some days afterwards when Johny went to the little office in Kwakugoon to take his money, he fell by accident on

(33.) Other ways in which supernatural powers are manipulated for destructive ends are, among others, publically calling a person by the name of his supernatural ancestor (neseki) with evil intentions, bringing adversity to other people's children by casting an evil eye on them (hoogi ai), praising a person excessively with evil intentions (kai sembe nen, sembe buka), and revealing secret information about a person behind his back towards others (sei sembe).

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the saw mill and lost his leg. The accident was imputed by the Matawai to the revenge of Awai. The water gods had punished the man for his wrongdoing.

Cursing, however, is a precarious matter, for if it is spoken out unjustly, the ancestors will turn against the invoker himself or against one of his lineage members. According to a general principle in traditional belief people may become victim of supernatural powers by the unjust action of one of their lineage members^(34.). It is for these reasons that siba is considered by most people to be the most dangerous form of witchcraft, insisting that siba en na gaan wisi. As we have explained before, the God of the Saramacca river is thought to have taboos for witchcraft (wisi), bad feelings (hogi ati) and cursing (siba). Therefore invocation calls for strong supernatural sanctions.

The pronouncement of a curse outside of the village, on the river or in the forest is believed to be particularly dangerous because of the risk of direct intervention of supernatural beings, which may cause the invoker to be drowned or killed by a falling tree. Moreover, when no other people are around, the risk of being killed is far more greater, because the pronouncement is not overheard and the invoker can not be forced to revoke his words in time. The syndromes and circumstances of death ascribed to siba differ from those ascribed to witchcraft. While diseases related to witchcraft are often enduring, heavy gripes and sudden strokes are ascribed to cursing.

Formerly the ritual revoking of the words pronounced during the curse was, as far as we know, the only customary action taken to evade the intervention of supernatural powers. Nowadays it is still one of the ritual measures taken directly after it has become public that a person has been cursing. The ritual is called fula buka^(35.) (rinsing one's mouth) and is conducted in the following manner: Some lineage elders come together and the invoker is required to sit down in the middle. In a calabash water is prepared in which herbs are broken down (one of the most widely used of which is lembe konde wwi). He takes a mouthful of water from the calabash and sprays it on the ground through his teeth, repeating the words he has uttered during his curse. First he calls on Masa Jehova (the Christian God), as is customary today, and the ancestors,

(34.) The same principle applies in fio fio, by which close lineage members can be harmed by the ancestors who intervene in a conflict and punish the party who was wrong via his closest relatives.

(35.) The ritual revoking of one's words (fula buka) is not exclusively related to cursing. It is, in fact, the most secular ritual generally applied in cases in which conflicts are settled, also in village councils.

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then he revokes his words, underlining them with the frequent spraying of water, and begs them to protect him from harm. He ends his prayer with the following standard phrase: ‘Now I take my words back. I do not have anything of it in my heart any longer. Let nothing harm me, neither in the day, nor at night’. The elders back him up in his prayer, adding: ‘Look, as we have settled this case, let this man walk in the night and may nothing happen him. Let him walk in the day and may nothing happen to him. May this case continue being settled as it is settled by the council and may nothing happen to this man any longer’.

In the upstream area Christian beliefs became quite familiar. In Christianity the concepts of swearing and cursing were also well-known. Sermons in church warned that swearing and cursing would surely be punished by God. Soon the traditional concept of cursing (siba) became closely associated with these Christian concepts, which were referred to by a word derived from the Dutch ‘vloek’, fuluku. These terms came to be used interchangeably both for calling on supernatural powers to strike another person, and for the other form of cursing (siba), in which a person was believed to be able to call a curse upon himself (ju siba ju seepi), a traditional concept which has also been reported in other Bush Negro societies^(36.). Such an invocation is generally uttered when a person feels himself so offended, misjudged, misdone and especially shamed by another, that he as it were becomes beside himself with anger and calls on an ancestor or God to kill him, or to come and take him, as it is usually formulated. These words, which like those of the other form of siba, are thought to give rise to the direct intervention of supernatural beings, are believed to be just as dangerous. The actions that are taken towards the invoker are the same as for the person who curses someone else.

During the government of Gaaman Kiné, who was in power between 1924 and 1947, a tribal law was instituted, in which cursing (siba) was punished. The law claimed that the person who pronounced a curse committed illegal behaviour. Such a person was brought to the pole of the ancestors and humiliated by being whipped publically. In addition he had to pay a fine consisting of a number of bottles of rum. The exact amount of the bottles depended upon the time that had passed between the day that the siba words had been uttered and the day on which the act

(36.) This form of cursing is also known among other Bush Negro groups. For the Djuka a special form of invocation is described by van Lier known as seepi gogo. According to van Lier the invocation is performed in the following way: ‘In order to give power to his words, he utters the curse, while, having pulled out his clothes, sitting naked on the ground, moves forward leaning on his hands and thereby scraping his buttocks over the ground’ (1940: 221; our tr.). This practice is, however no longer in use (van Wetering 1973: 88).

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became known and he could be punished. If only one night had been passed, he had to pay one bottle of rum, if two nights, two bottles were required until the maximum of one benki (16 bottles) was reached if the case became public two weeks or more after it was committed. The revoking rite (fula buka) was also required. These measures are taken to prevent that cursing does not become public until the invoker himself becomes ill and by means of divination (fii-fii) or a medium the cause of his illness is revealed as being a result of an act of cursing some time before, a common occurence. Because cursing is believed to be a special offence against the main avenging spirit (misi a di gaan kunu) of the upriver region^(37.), prayers have to be made and a libation to be poured out, a fine consisting of one benki of rum to this avenging spirit.

It was under the direct influence of Christianity that a change was brought about which had significant repercussions on the development of traditional religious concepts. The strategy of the mission, along with the introduction of Christianity, was to supplant the traditional values, on which the socio-religious life of the Bush Negroes depended, with western values. In their attack on the lineage organization, they tried to introduce a new social structure which crossed lineage and village boundaries, and to strenghten the elementary family. On a lower level they tried to stress the authority of the father over his children as opposed to that of lineage elders over their sister's sons. Along the same lines they stressed in their preachings the responsibility of the individual towards God instead of the joint responsibility of lineage members towards each other.

Gradually, due to the influence of Christianity, the opinion was increasingly voiced among the upriver Matawai that it was indeed wrong when innocent people became the victim of the unlawful acts, such as cursing, of their lineage members. Because, as they argued, it were not these people who had urged their kinsmen to utter these words, they could not be compelled to help their kinsmen pay their fine for a libation to the ancestors. In the 1960s people flocked to the great council in Posugunu to settle this matter with God and the ancestors. After a libation of rum was poured out to the ancestors (tuwe daan) prayers were said in which they implored the ancestors, from that time on to kill only the person who had spoken the curse, saying ‘may henceforth the

(37.) Siba is considered to be an offence against the gaan kunu, because this major avenging spirit is said to have a taboo for siba. Siba would destroy the power of the obia (medicines) with which the medium is established, and developed into a shrine to be used in times of crises.

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curse go back to the person who made the curse’.

This change in opinion concerning siba has had important consequences. Fewer people were inclined to curse others by means of siba. In recent years, the number of illnesses ascribed to this form of siba was very small indeed. One of the rare cases, in the recent past, in which a person's death was ascribed to the curse of another, was an occasion used to reinforce the recently established rule. This happened at the end of the 1960s.

When an old woman of the village of Wanati died preparations had to be made to cook food for the assembled people (lanti). As usual, this event attracted a great deal of people from other villages, who came together on the day before the whole night wake in the shed made for this purpose. Coconuts were needed for the preparation of the coconut rice, a great preference on such occasions. Feldia, the young female basia went to Joram, her ‘uncle’ (MMB) to ask permission to cut some coconuts from his tree. After Feldia had cut them, she brought some coconuts to her uncle, thus showing him the usual respect. Joram, however, who was a heavy drinker on such occasions, could not remember that he had given her permission to cut them. In anger he cursed her (a taki tongo da di mujee) and this worked out badly. At the moment of the invocation she was pregnant. When the time of delivery approached she hastily had to be brought to the clinic, were one of the twins was born. After delivery of the other twin, a dead child, the mother also died. After her death her kinsmen tried to insure, by means of a ritual prayer, that she would not turn into an avenging spirit and harm one of them.

There are indications that up to the present days cursing of others occurs more frequently downriver than upriver. In addition, people in the downriver villages are more inclined to ascribe cases of illness to this kind of cursing.

When we visited the village of Njukonde, an elderly woman inquired about the health of a lineage member, Joseph. This man was treated in the upriver clinic. When we informed her

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that he still could not walk without a stick, she confided in a half-whisper that he had been crippled, and explained that his wife of Makajapingo had called a curse upon him by saying that if he would go once again to his other wife^(38.) in Santigoon, an accident would strike him. ‘You can not defy the women of Makajapingo’, she added, having another woman of this village in mind, who was supposed to have stricken her former husband by supernatural means not long ago. The man, who recently had left her for a younger one, had become gravely ill (venereal disease) and had gone to town for treatment.

Also as a result of the influence of Christian ideas about cursing, especially in the upstream area, the fear for self-cursing has increased. At this time there is no consensus about the agent believed to punish the person who is committing siba. Some believe that it is the ancestors who will punish the individual, while others think that it is the Christian God. All agree that when someone has made an invocation, direct action must to be taken. Some say, to avoid provoking the anger of the ancestors. Others believe in accordance with Christian tenets, that invocation which provokes death at a self-determined time, unjustly interferes in God's matters thereby denying that He alone knows and determines the moment of death. Moreover, since they believe that when a person is cursing the Devil enters his heart, the punishment of whipping is thought to be the only way to exorcise the spirit. For those who consider the act of cursing to be a transgression against the ancestors, this punishment is justified because it is meted out at the pole of the ancestors.

It is remarkable that in the upstream area, were, as we have seen, cursing of others only rarely occurs, self-cursing is a frequent phenomenon. This kind of siba is often immediately renounced. During a period of one year, we witnessed twelve cases of self-cursing in the four most upriver villages. Generally the whole village community was mobilized to settle the matter ritually. Before we consider further the consequences of self-cursing, we will present some cases:

Mattias made Olka pregnant. She was a young divorcee. At the same time he initiated sexual relations with Olka's younger

(38.) This was in the 1970s one of the two cases of men who had been polygynously married. His marital circumstances were, although sharply criticized among the Matawai, tolerated because they were not able to exert pressure on his relationship with the woman of Santigoon, being outside of the sphere of influence of the Matawai.

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sister Eseline, who was still unmarried. When these facts became public, he came into conflict with his wife, Linia, who belonged to the same lineage as Olka and Eseline. She chased him out of the house. At the palaver he was reconciled with his wife. It was decided that he would be punished by a whipping and a fine of some bottles of rum. Also Eseline would be whipped. Because of her pregnancy Olka would not be punished at that moment, but only after delivery. Bundles of twigs with which the whipping would be meted out, were already cut and people forced their way out of the council house outside to see the whipping at the ancestor pole. There was much excitement. Mattias was whipped and escorted to a nearby cooking house. Then Eseline had to step forward. But suddenly there was some confusion. The unlookers got upset and hysterically screamed to each other, running to and fro. Fiida, Eseline's mother's sister was roaring like a madman, while Awani, her mother's brother could not contain himself and had to be kept under control by four men. Finally Eseline was pushed to the ancestor pole. People could hardly prevent Awani from attacking her. They just heard Eseline invoke her deceased mother to come to kill her, thus cursing herself (siba). After she had been pushed forward to be whipped, the villagers remained, agitatedly discussing the event for hours in small groups. The fact that the girl pronounced these words at the ancestor pole filled them with horror. Only after a long time the palaver was continued. Eseline had to revoke her words ritually (fula buka) and was fined half a bottle of rum because of the siba.

Another case:

Darkness had already fallen over Wanati when Apodo, an affine (konlibi) in the village, called some kinsmen of his wife together. He told them that he had quarreled with his wife Waana. When he asked her to fill the lamp with kerosene, she snapped that the kerosine was finished. Moreover she accused him of all kinds of things and reproached him that he neglected her. After having complained that she could not stand this

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life any longer, she finally in her anger invoked her ancestors to kill her over there, under the waki tree. Apodo now did not want to stay any longer in the house and announced that although it was night already, he would take the boat and go to his own village. He was afraid of the consequences of her curse if he would stay that night. They urged him to stay and he agreed on the condition that, as he said, the woman would revoke her words (di tongo di a taki a mu fula en puu). Immediately they began to settle the case. The following morning a small palaver was held in which Waana was fined to pay a bottle of rum, because of her cursing. However they hastened to admit that in fact she had been right and in the future Apodo had to supply her with essentials.

In the last case it was a man who pronounced the curse:

At midnight Caluina, Aseni's wife, awakened some kinsmen in her neighbourhood and called: ‘Hurry up, look at Aseni he is sick to death’. Aseni was groaning with pain in his belly and refused to explain what was wrong with him. Finally he admitted that he had called a curse upon himself (taki tongo). He had invoked his grandfather A. and his supernatural ancestor (neseki). He begged them to kill him, to drag him into the forest so that they would not be able to bury him. They hastened to make him revoke his words. However, a short time later he repeated his curse. Little by little he felt himself growing sicker and being sure that he would die soon, he divided his five boats among his most beloved kinsmen.
Not before the cocks began to crow, when he felt sleepy, did he send the others who had remain awake with him, to go to bed. Early in the morning the news of his illness and his curse was passed over from his wife's to his own village. There was a large palaver. People hurried to the other side of the river to attend the meeting. Some of them first peeped in to look at Aseni who was now walking around in his yard and felt somewhat better. After having heard the stories of his affines who spend the whole night with him, they concluded that it was

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indeed a serious case, because, as they said, one did not invoke lightly A, who had become a major avenging spirit nor did one invoke one's own neseki. They were afraid that the consequences would be grave. However, when they called Aseni in the palaver and asked him to tell himself what he had done, he did not want to admit that he had provoked an act of siba. He started to grumble (gangi) and reproached the others of lying about him. He had just been ill and that was all, he said. Finally he was forced to admit to the deed. After, revoking his words, others supported him to pray for his life. One of them directed himself to the major avenging spirit, saying: ‘You were there quietly in Santigoon^(39.) and now Aseni called you. But I beg you, return and don't kill him’. The immediate cause of Aseni's act was the following event. Shortly before the turn of the year some kinswomen of Aseni had called him. They knew that Aseni liked to drink excessively at such festivities, but also that he could not stand too much liquor and used to quarrel easily. Therefore they had warned him not to quarrel and agreed that if he would become involved in a conflict he had to pay them, otherwise they would pay him. After hearing that Aseni had quarreled with his wife, his sister reproached Aseni that he had not adhered to his promise. Aseni felt ashamed and when he arrived home he called a curse upon himself.

Women seem to be more inclined to curse themselves than men. The Matawai recognize this fact and explain it by arguing that women are more inflammable (en ati bonu esi). Therefore, they say, they are more inclined to show their indignation than men. When men take recourse to siba, the curse is usually spoken during a state of drunkenness.

Shame appears to be the main motivating factor in self-cursing. Shame is a focal theme in this society. The Matawai commonly say: ‘Sjen ta kii mi’ (I am shamed to death). Particularly when a person is publicly charged be they right or wrong, feelings of shame are aroused. For this reason, for example, it is preferable to settle marital disputes in an intimate circle instead of making them public, and so being forced

(39.) For a number of years the medium for this major avenging spirit has been recruited from Santigoon instead of from Bilawata.

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to settle them in a community-wide palaver.

The question remains whether people who curse themselves really want to die. Sometimes, indeed, the offender refuses to revoke his words ritually, thereby leaving the responsibility to others. However, it seems evident that often the purpose of siba, as in the case of attempted suicides in our society, is to draw attention to a serious problem. In our last case, for example, the old man Aseni had strong ambitions to fill the role of village headman (which recently was passed to another younger kinsman), and felt that others did not allot to him the authority he expected.

The frequency of self-cursing in the upstream area, has, aside from the many cases of illness and death ascribed to it, another implication. Self-cursing by means of siba has become such a focal point in religious belief that it is now one of the main means by which new avenging spirits (kunu) are evoked in the upstream area. It is believed that a person justified in a conflict with another, who curses himself and subsequently dies, will return to take revenge on the kinsmen of the person with whom he quarelled, sickening and killing them. The following case is a recent example of this:

The people of Boslanti were stricken with grief at the sudden death of Adoi. This young woman, while pounding rice at the height of the day, had suddenly fallen on the ground and died. Immediately after her death people whispered to each other that surely fio fio had been involved. Indeed the first indications of a conflict in which she had been involved were revealed by one of the candidates together with whom she had been preparing for communion in church. It appaered that when she had accompanied her husband to the village near the great falls of which he was headman, they had become involved in a conflict concerning the gardenplot. She opposed her husband's plan to clear the gardenplot near his village that year. Although the conflict had been rapidly settled in his village, after their return to Boslanti their relationship had remained so strained, that she had declared to the evangelist that she was no longer willing to prepare for a marriage celebration

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in church with her husband. But soon a lineage medium revealed the real cause of her death. Not only had Adoi been involved in a conflict with her husband, but when she returned to her village she had come in a ‘poi konde’ (spoiled village) that is a village in which the sphere was troubled because of another important impending conflict. It was revealed that Kisla, a classificatory sister of Adoi had been involved in a conflict with old Paulina who had died only some months before. Young Kisla and Paulina, who belonged to the same lineage, although to different matri-segments, had been neighbours. In fact it was Paulina who had granted Kisla permission to set up a washing house in her yard. When one of Kisla's children climbed up the matapi pole, and had broken Paulina's calabash tree, the calabashes fell on the ground and began to rot. Mampoi now turned to Kisla to make a complaint. Lightly tempered Kisla proposed immediately to divide the yard and started to tear down the washing house. Paulina, who felt highly angered and ashamed about this act, would have called a curse upon herself and died. Although at that time no official attempts were made to seek the cause of her death, her kinsmen had already pointed out that the symptoms of her short illness and the way in which she had died were similar to the circumstances of the death of another woman, who had died after self-cursing. It was believed that Adoi's death was due to the intervention of the spirit of Mampoi, taking revenge on a lineage segment member of Kisla, interfering in the quarrel between Adoi and her husband. Now, ritual action was needed to prevent this spirit from taking revenge on other kinsmen. The case was laid before the medium of the major avenging spirit. Ritual prayers were held at the ancestor pole of Boslanti, where Paulina's spirit was propitiated by means of an offering of rum. The spirit was entreated not to bother Kisla or any other near kinsman of Kisla anymore. A large fine of a tin of rum and ten cloths were promised. Finally, Kisla herself and other close kinsmen were protected against any eventual damaging influence of this ancestor spirit by ritual washing in a

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backyard during the afternoon for some days.

The above mentioned recent case gives an indication of the significance of the concept of siba, and especially self-cursing for the religious life of the Matawai. Indeed we would suggest that in this way traditional religious beliefs and practices have been strengthened. Because of the large number of recent avenging spirits believed to have been evoked by means of self-cursing in the upstream area, the number of public measures taken to ritually protect lineages and involving a great number of people, have strongly increased. They have become so important for the upstream Matawai that they could override the strong grip which the Christian mission has exerted in this area for a long time.

Continuity and Discontinuity

The discussion about ancestors and elders, which was held among Africanists, is relevant for Matawai conceptions about ancestors, and their significance in relation to the corporate group of the lineage and the authority of the elders. In this discussion, Kopytoff points out that anthropologists, due to their western conceptual ethnocentrism, have created a false dichotomy between ‘elders’ and ‘ancestors’ in their descriptions and analyses of African societies. He shows that in many of these societies ancestors and elders are terminologically as well as conceptually merged. He emphasizes that there is a continuum of eldership and ancestorship, and concludes that in dealing with African cultures the terms ‘ancestor worship’ and ‘ancestor cult’ are ‘semantically inappropriate, analytically misleading and theoretically unproductive’ and that African ancestorship is only an aspect of the broader phenomenon of ‘eldership’ (Kopytoff 1971: 140).

Brain agrees with Kopytoff that many African languages do not make terminological distinctions between ancestors and elders, he points out, however, that they still have a distinct term for the concept of ancestor spirit. He rightly indicates that despite a kind of continuum between elders and ancestors in terms of authority, there are differences in power between them. Brain summarizes his position by admitting that he agrees with Kopytoff ‘that the term “ancestor worship”, but not “ancestor

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cult” is “semantically inappropriate”. The latter term is valid... (For) although it is true that Africans generally treat their elders with more respect and reverence than is customary in western society, this does not necessarily place them on a par with the ancestors, who are believed to be aware not only of the actions, but also of the thoughts of their living descents’ (Brain 1973: 131).

Matawai conceptions of ancestors and elders include elements of both continuity and discontinuity. Whether ancestors and elders are terminologically or conceptually distinguished is dependent on the context. The term gaanwan (old one or great one), which is semantically most closely associated with the concept of relative age and eldership, is most frequently used to refer to a lineage elder. It is applied as a term of address as well as of reference, both for a specific elder and for the elders collectively. The derived term gaan sembe (the elder people), is only used as a term of reference for the elders collectively. Both these terms are used by the Matawai when directing themselves towards the ancestors to solicit their approval, their guidance in decisions taken in lineage councils, to ask for their protection before undertaking dangerous actions, and to avert eventual harm. In fact in these contexts the continuity of the judicial authority maintained by the elders over their living lineage members even after death, is stressed. In particular, present political functionaries and living elders as representative authority holders of the present village and lineage, fulfill the role of links between lineage and ancestors and are conisdered most authorized to direct themselves to these ancestors. The same authority model which accords elders judicial authority over their younger lineage members, while they are in turn controlled by their oldest generation, also operates when crossing the boundary from living to dead, thus granting ancestors who died in the distant past authority over the recently dead.

In another context, however, the relationship between living and dead is conceptualized as discontinuous. The ancestors have a closer relationship to the supreme being, other gods and deities in the afterlife (gadukonde), thus they are credited with important powers over the living. It is in such contexts that some ancestors will be referred to as koto sembe or kunu, terms which are used mostly to refer to

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individual ancestor spirits.

The conceptualization of continuity between living and dead is given expression in rituals in which aspects of communality and reunion are stressed. We may refer to the ritual of communally drinking rum by all present, which concludes most public events, councils, rites of passage etc.. In this ritual, expression is given to the feeling of involvement and agreement with the decisions of all present; former factions are in this way reunited. This reunion is often emphasized when, for instance, the widow is brought back to her own village at the end of the mourning period. The content of two bottles of rum, which were given by the two kingroups, are mixed and poured into other bottles to be equally divided and drunk by all the members of both groups present. Libations to the ancestors, in which rum (tuwe daan) or water (tuwe wata) is poured out, are made with the same purpose: to involve the ancestors in the life of their kinsmen and in their decisions.

Continuity is also stressed in food offerings (tuwe njanjan) made to the ancestors and accompanied by the communal eating of food. Symbolic communion is achieved by putting together different kinds of food on one plate, sometimes even mixing it on the plate before handing it out to the participants.

Finally, communion is expressed through bodily contact, for example, in the funerary rite. Before the coffin is carried to the cemetery, an elder directs himself to the spirit inside the house. People stand in long rows, radiating from inside the house to the outside, each holding the person who is before him on the shoulder, to keep in touch with the departing ancestor. In this manner, all present kinsmen take leave of his spirit.

On the other hand the conceptualization of discontinuity between living and dead, and more generally between the world of man and the supernatural world, is expressed in a variety of ritual forms, in which separation and apartness are stressed. We refer to a number of symbolic actions, meant to loosen and cut the ties between living and dead, as described in the ritual complex of the wasi-djafu-paati in connection with ancestor spirits who harm their kinsmen (see p. 269 ff.). But there are also other ritual means by which the spheres which are symbolised as ‘social world’ and ‘supernatural world’ are ritually kept apart from

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each other, or by which the gap between them is stressed. During a grave illness for example, a patient, who is considered to be in close contact with the world of the spirits, may be effectively sealed off from the social world by shutting him up in a hut and imposing a taboo on him restricting contact with all women in reproductive ages. In the same way widows and widowers, persons preparing specific traditional medicines (obia), and menstruating women are sealed off from the social world. Moreover, in most contexts ritual spaces are marked which symbolise the ‘other world’. We may refer to temporarily built huts in which ritual washings will take place, and to tjanga, with white clay (pemba doti) marked rings or rectangulars on the ground, in which persons during a ritual will be set apart to stress the liminal character. They can only be removed from this ritual space by a person, who, while standing outside the circle and holding a stick in his hand, extends it to the individual standing inside. Accompanied by the loud call of woko-ho three times by the other participants (an element of the transition idiom of birth)^(40.), he draws him out of the ritual space. This ritual episode can be most clearly observed in the ritual complex performed after the birth of twins.

Finally we may refer to the ritual acts of reversion, where the separation between the two spheres is expressed, for example, in either facing and turning one's back in the direction associated with one of these spheres (see p. 271).

Matawai religious conceptions are, in fact, dominated by the search for a balance between continuity and discontinuity in the relations with gods and ancestors. Whenever the balance is destoyed by too close an association between the spheres of man and that of gods and ancestors or by some intrusion on their part into the world of the living the boundaries between these to spheres have to de redefined.

(40.) At delivery the birth of a child is announced by three times calling out loudly woko-ho. Also in other ritual contexts use is made of this idiom to accompany transitions of ritual states. At the coming-out ceremony (puu a doo) one or two weeks after birth, when the child is brought out of the house in which he was born and incorporated in the social group, the child is carried over the threshold in the following way: while he is passed in and out the door three times, participants call out woko-ho three times.