Report on Obeah in Jamaica, 1788

This testimony comes from a report to Parliament by the Board of Trade. The report contains much useful information about the condition of enslaved people living in the British Caribbean colonies. In this particular section on Jamaica, Stephen Fuller, Edward Long, and James Chisholme reported on the presence of Obeah in the colony. It offers many useful insights into how colonists perceived the practice of Obeah. Furthermore, Obeah is described as witchcraft rather than as a religion.

Are Negro Slaves subject to any peculiar Diseases, to which White Inhabitants or Free Negroes are not subject; and if they are so subject, assigned the Causes?

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Other Causes there may be of this and other Maladies, which the Practioners are best acquainted with.

We may add the Effects of Witchcraft or Obeah, which, whether they arise from a distempered Imagination and Credulity, or from Poison secretly administered, are very fatal to many of the Slaves. The Legislature of Jamaica, in order t o check, as much as it lies in its Power, this desctructive Practice, inflict Death upon Conviction of Obeah-men or pretended Wizards.

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Whether Negroes called Obeah-Men, or under any other Denomination, practicing Witchcraft, exist in the Island of Jamaica?

By what Arts or by what Means, do these Obeah-Men cause the Death, or otherwise injure, those who are supposed to be influenced thereby; and what are the Symptoms and Effects that have been observed to be produced in People who are supposed to be under the Influence of their Practice?

Are the Instances of Death or Diseases produced by these Arts or Means frequent?

Are these Arts or Means brought by the Obeah-Men from Africa, or are they Inventions which have been originated in the Island?

Whether any or what Laws exist in the Island of Jamaica for their Punishment, and what Evidence is generally required for their Conviction?

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As far as we are able to decide from our own experience and information when we lived in the island, and from the current testimony of all the negroes we have ever conversed with on the subject, the professors of Obi are, and always were, natives of Africa, and none other; and they have brought the science with them from thence to Jamaica, where it is so universally practised, that we believe there are few of the large estates possessing native Africans, which have not one or more of them. The oldest and most crafty are those who usually attract the greatest devotion and confidence; those whose hoary heads, and somewhat peculiarly harsh and forbidding in their aspect, together with some skill in plants of the medicinal and poisonous species, have qualified them for successful imposition upon the weak and credulous. The negroes in general, whether Africans or Creoles, revere, consult, and fear them; to these oracles they resort, and with the most implicit faith upon all occasions, whether for the cure of disorders, the obtaining revenge for injuries or insults, the conciliating of favour, the discovery and punishment of the thief or the adulterer, and the prediction of future events. The trade which these impostors carry on is extremely lucrative; they manufacture and sell their Obies adapted to different cases and at different prices. A vail of mystery is studiously thrown over their incantations, t o which the midnight hours are allotted, and every precaution is taken to conceal them from the knowledge and discovery of the white people. The deluded negroes, who thoroughly believe in their supernatural power, become the willing accomplices in this concealment, and the stoutest among them tremble at the very sight of the ragged bundle, the bottle or the egg-shells, which are stuck in the thatch or hung over the door of a hut, or upon the branch of a plaintain tree, to deter marauders. In cases of poison, the natural effects of it are by the ignorant negroes ascribed entirely to the potent workings of Obi. The wiser negroes hesitate to reveal their suspicions, through a dread of incurring the terrible vengeance which fulminated by the Obeah-men against any who should betray them: it is very difficult therefore for the white proprietor to distinguish the Obeah professor from any other negro upon his plantation; and so infatuated are the blacks in general, that but few instances occur of their having assumed courage enough to impeach these miscreants. With minds so firmly prepossessed, they no sooner find Obi set for them near the door of their house, or in the path which leads to it, than they give themselves up for lost. When a negro is robbed of a fowl or a hog, he applies directly to the Obeah man or woman; it is then made known among his fellow blacks, that Obi is set for the thief; and as soon as the latter hears the dreadful news, his terrified imagination begins to work, no resource is left but in the superior skill of some more eminent Obeah-man of the neighbourhood, who may counteract the magical operations of the other; but if no one can be found of higher rank and ability, or if, after gaining such an ally, he should still fancy himself affected, he presently falls into a decline, under the incessant horror of impending calamities. The slightest painful sensation in the head, the bowels, or any other part, any casual loss or hurt, confirms his apprehensions, and he believes himself the devoted victim of an invisible and irresistible agency. Sleep, appetite, and cheerfulness forsake him, his strength decays, his disturbed imagination is haunted without respite, his features wear the settled gloom of despondency: dirt, or any other unwholesome substance, become his only food, he contracts a morbid habit of body, and gradually sinks into the grave. A negro, who is taken ill, inquires of the Obeah-man the cause of his sickness, whether it will prove mortal or not, and within what time he shall die or recover? The oracle generally describes the distemper to the malice of some particular person by name, and advises to set Obi for that person; but if no hopes are given of recovery, immediate despair takes place, which no medicine can remove, and death is the certain consequence. Those anomalous symptoms which originate from causes deeply rooted in the mind, such as the terrors of Obi, or from poisons, whose operation is slow and intricate, will baffle the skill of the ablest physician.

Considering the multitude of occasions which may provoke the negroes to exercise the powers of Obi against each other, and the astonishing influence of this superstition upon their minds, we cannot but attribute a very considerable portion of the annual mortality among the negroes of Jamaica to this fascinating mischief.

The Obi is usually composed of a farrago of materials, most of which are enumerated in the Jamaica law, viz. ‘Blood, feathers, parrots beaks, dogs teeth, alligators teeth, broken bottles, grave-dirt, rum, and egg-shells.’

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It may seem extraordinary, that a practice alleged to be so frequent in Jamaica should not have received an earlier check from the legislature. The truth is, that the skill of some negroes, in the art of poisoning, has been noticed ever since the colonists became much acquainted with them….The secret and insidious manner in which this crime is generally perpetrated, makes the legal proof of it extremely difficult. Suspicions therefore have bee frequent, but detections rare; these murderers have sometimes been brought to justice, but it is reasonable to believe that a far greater number have escaped with impunity. In regard to the other and more common tricks of Obi, such as hanging up feathers, bottles, egg-shells, &c. &c. in order to intimidate negroes of a thievish disposition from plundering huts, hog-styes, or provision grounds, these were laughed at by the white inhabitants as harmless stratagems, contrived by the more sagacious, for deterring the more simple and superstitious blacks, and serving for much the same purpose as the scarecrows which are in general used among our English farmers and gardeners. But in the year 1760, when a very formidable insurrection of the Koromantyn or Gold Coast negroes broke out in the parish of St. Mary, and spread through almost every other district of the island, an old Koromantyn negro, the chief instigator and oracle of the insurgents in that parish, who had administered the fetish or solemn oath to the conspirators, and furnished them with a magical preparation which was to render them invulnerable, was fortunately apprehended, convicted, and hung up with all his feathers and trumperies about him; and his execution struck the insurgents with a general panic, from which they never afterwards recovered. The examinations which were taken at that period, first opened the eyes of the public to the very dangerous tendency of the Obeah practices, and gave birth to the law which was then enacted for their suppression and punishment. But neither the terror of this law, the strict investigation which has ever since been made after the professors of Obi, nor the many examples of those who from time to time have been hanged or transported, have hitherto produced the desired effect. We conclude, therefore, that either this sect, like others in the world, has flourished under persecution; or that fresh supplies are annually introduced from the African seminaries.