When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and mentions
the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately perceived that
he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned personage,
called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately sent for to
Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The male
inhabitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, the learned
doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and administers a
dance of a most terrific nature, during the exhibition of which
remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls:- ‘I am the
original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow yow yow! No
connexion with any other establishment. Till till till! All other
Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo Boroo! but I perceive
here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh Hoosh Hoosh! in whose
blood I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer, Blizzerum Boo! will
wash these bear’s claws of mine. O yow yow yow!’ All this time
the learned physician is looking out among the attentive faces for
some unfortunate man who owes him a cow, or who has given him any
small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has conceived a
spite. Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is
instantly killed. In the absence of such an individual, the usual
practice is to Nooker the quietest and most gentlemanly person in
company. But the nookering is invariably followed on the spot by
the butchering.
Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Catlin was so strongly
interested, and the diminution of whose numbers, by rum and
smallpox, greatly affected him, had a custom not unlike this,
though much more appalling and disgusting in its odious details.
The women being at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian corn, and
the noble savage being asleep in the shade, the chief has sometimes
the condescension to come forth, and lighten the labour by looking
at it. On these occasions, he seats himself in his own savage
chair, and is attended by his shield-bearer: who holds over his
head a shield of cowhide – in shape like an immense mussel shell –
fearfully and wonderfully, after the manner of a theatrical
supernumerary. But lest the great man should forget his greatness
in the contemplation of the humble works of agriculture, there
suddenly rushes in a poet, retained for the purpose, called a
Praiser. This literary gentleman wears a leopard’s head over his
own, and a dress of tigers’ tails; he has the appearance of having
come express on his hind legs from the Zoological Gardens; and he
incontinently strikes up the chief’s praises, plunging and tearing
all the while. There is a frantic wickedness in this brute’s
manner of worrying the air, and gnashing out, ‘O what a delightful
chief he is! O what a delicious quantity of blood he sheds! O how
majestically he laps it up! O how charmingly cruel he is! O how
he tears the flesh of his enemies and crunches the bones! O how
like the tiger and the leopard and the wolf and the bear he is! O,
row row row row, how fond I am of him!’ which might tempt the
Society of Friends to charge at a hand-gallop into the Swartz-Kop
location and exterminate the whole kraal.
When war is afoot among the noble savages – which is always – the
chief holds a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion of his
brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be
exterminated. On this occasion, after the performance of an
Umsebeuza, or war song, – which is exactly like all the other
songs, – the chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends,
arranged in single file. No particular order is observed during
the delivery of this address, but every gentleman who finds himself
excited by the subject, instead of crying ‘Hear, hear!’ as is the
custom with us, darts from the rank and tramples out the life, or
crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities on the
body, of an imaginary enemy. Several gentlemen becoming thus