Among Sierra Leoneans the Sherbro country enjoys a reputation for mysteriousness. A country where every object, from the sandy soil one treads in the streets to the bamboo chair one sits upon at home, is supposed to possess intelligence and to be capable of "catching" one, to wit, afflicting one with disease; a country where the penalty for such a venal offence as stubbing one's devoted foot against the roots of a famous cotton tree, which stands perilously near the roadside, is a sure attack of elephantiasis; a country which boasts of a certain holy city upon whose soil no man on earth may walk shod and live to see the next day, a tradition for which the District Commissioners, adventurous Britons as they are, have had so much respect that they have been content to get only a cruising knowledge of the place, always summoning the headmen to conferences on the beach and delivering instructions from the safe precincts of a boat awning; such a country evidently deserves to be called a land of mystery.

Now, to this air of mystery is added one of interest for students of archÆology in general, and particularly for all Negroes who are interested in the study of the history of their race with a view to discover whether it has really made any worthy achievements in the past or, as its traducers love to make us believe, it is indeed a backward race, that is only just emerging from barbarism and beginning to enjoy and assimilate the blessings of Western culture. I refer to certain sculptured finds which are from time to time made in the country and are naturally looked upon by the unsophisticated native mind as nothing short of a mystery.

These images, or nomolis, as they are called in the vernacular, are by no means the empirical efforts of some crude artists, but are the products of finished workmanship wrought in steatite or soapstone, which abounds in the Protectorate. They present purely Egyptian and Ethiopian features, and are apparently of great antiquity, possibly thousands of years old. They are dug out from old graves in the course of ploughing, and the finder of one of them considers himself a lucky man indeed. He sees visions of an unprecedentedly rich harvest, or of an extraordinarily brisk trade, if he happens to be in the commercial line, as the nomoli is the presiding deity of crops and commerce. If the good services of the god are required on the farm a small shrine is erected there for it and a great big hamper and a bundle of rods placed in front of it. The demon is then addressed in some such manner as this: "I wish you to protect this farm from injury. Make the crop prosper more than everybody's else, and, to do this, every day you must steal from other people's farms and fill this hamper to the full. If you do this I shall treat you well; but if you fail, this bundle of rods is reserved for your punishment." The god is then heartily treated to a sample of the walloping it should expect in case of default. When its help is needed in the store a similar temple is put up for it in a corner within, and its duty is then to protect the store from burglary, to replenish it by theft and to "draw" custom by a sort of personal magnetism. In either case it must be well cared for. Whatever food or drink its owner partakes every day, a portion must be given to it—and don't forget the whipping. Whether you realize or are disappointed in your expectations of it the guardian angel respects force more than gentleness, and must be whipped soundly every morning.

It will be seen from this that the morality of the nomoli is of a rather naughty order. The controlling principle of its life is theft; in fact it idealizes this vice, since ownership in regard to it cannot be transferred except by stealing. The god argues it this way: "He who is so careless of me that he allows me to be stolen from him, is not worthy to be my master; but he who so much believes in my powers that he risks the consequences of theft for the sake of getting possession of me, is deserving to be my master and I will serve him." In the event of discovery the culprit is taken to the barre or native court and the Chief inflicts a fine on him; and, "whereas, contrary to customary law, Kai Baki, the plaintiff, did harbour a 'big man' stranger (to wit, a nomoli) in the chiefdom without intimating the Chief in order that his majesty might pay his homage etc., etc.," the aforesaid plaintiff, who in native law is entitled to receive the amount of defendant's fine as compensation, is not only mulcted in the same amount more or less, but his nomoli becomes forfeited to the crown in the bargain. Obviously, then, it does not pay to prosecute for nomoli stealing, and the robbed native would rather bear his trouble like a philosopher, secretly admiring the cuteness of the other fellow and stealing his property back at the earliest opportunity.

Origin of the Nomoli

If one depends upon the aborigines for a clue as to the origin of the nomoli the enquiry would, like Kipling's "eathen," "end where it began." The whole thing is veiled in mystery; there is not even a legend about it. All that the native would tell you, and it is what he honestly believes to be the truth, is that the image was created by Gehwor (God) and came down directly from heaven. The fact that no sculpturing of the kind is now-a-days prosecuted in the country, although the Sherbros are clever at wood-carving, makes him ridicule the idea that the nomoli is man's handiwork. The enquiring student must for the present, therefore, go upon very scanty basis to formulate his theory. In order to help in the solution of this problem I shall state one or two facts about the natives of these regions. The Sherbros and Mendis, both of whom inhabit the vast territory known as Sherbroland, are, of all primitive Africans, the least given to fetish worship. This fact has always proved a stumbling-block to the spread of Mohammedanism in that part of the world. Arab as well as Negro Moslem missionaries have always found the Sherbro and Mendi man rather hard nuts to crack. Many an emissary of the prophet has invaded Sherbroland, exposing for sale all the tempting superstitious paraphernalia of the faith, but the native has almost invariably beaten him with his cold logic.

"How long does it take to come here from Mecca?" once asked a native of an Arab Sheik, who went out hawking some charms in the course of a religious tour. "Oh, more than a month," answered the unsuspecting Moslem. "A month!" exclaimed the intended convert. "Yes." "And you have come all that distance to help us with these things?" "Yes." "Then you must have paid quite a lot of money for your passage?" "Quite a lot." "And I dare say, you must have only a little money left now?" pursued the native. "Oh, yes, that's why I am selling these potent charms so cheaply, because I wish to raise money to go back home," confessed the true believer. "But how is that?" queried the native; "if, as you say, these charms can make a poor man become rich, how is it that you did not stay in Mecca and use them yourself to become rich instead of coming all the way here to sell them to get money?"

As this attitude towards charms, which is typical of the Sherbro natives, shows that they are not a fetish worshipping people, it can hardly be supposed that the nomolis are relics of that superstition. If this were the case, it could easily be suggested by those who wish to discredit the race that the images might have been made by members of some foreign race and exported to the "heathen," who are supposed to delight in "bowing down to wood and stone," a sort of execution to order. This should be quite possible, because it was recently discovered that a certain London firm did a thriving business in idols with China; and it has even been suggested that the nomolis were imported into Sherbroland from Phoenicia.

But such a contingency being ruled out of court, in view of the Sherbro native's antipathy to idol worship, we must look for an explanation of the origin of the nomoli to one other feature in the customs of Sherbroland. The Sherbros have a custom almost similar to that of the Timnis, a kindred people. The latter are given to ancestor worship. At the burial of a Timni, a few stones are placed upon the grave, and after three days, when the spirit of the deceased is supposed to have entered into the stones, they are removed to a little shrine in the porch of the family house. The spirit then becomes a guardian angel, and offerings are made at the shrine from day to day. The Sherbros also make use of stones for the reception of the spirits of their departed ones, but not with a view to ancestor worship. If a Sherbro happened to die away from home, which is considered a great calamity, the remains are either exhumed and brought back to the old familiar scenes, or, if the distance be too great, three stones are taken to the last resting place and, after three days in the case of a male, or four days in the case of a female, the spirit is supposed to have entered the stones, and the latter are brought to the old town and buried.

Is it not possible, then, that the nomolis are real pictures of some ancient Sherbro men and women, and that these people, dying away from "home, sweet home," their images, after having supposedly received their spirits, were interred in the old homeland? I believe the Rev. Dr. Hayford in his "Ethiopia Unbound" suggests that Ethiopia or Negrodom was once the mistress of the world; that much-talked-of Egypt was but a province of hers, and the pharaohs not real kings, but merely governors sent from the mother country. If this be true, might it not be that some of these nomolis are sculptures of eminent men and women, natives of the region now known as Sherbroland, who went to far-away Egypt as Empire builders, lost their lives in the land of the sphynx; and, since distance prevented the return of their bodies, their busts, after receiving their imperishable parts, were brought back home and buried with due solemnity "under the stately walls of Troy?"

Walter L. Edwin

Sierra Leone, West Africa