Mfumu (the earth chief). There is some evidence of Lesa as a feminine owner of the earth, a “mother-earth” spirit that “gives birth to crops as a mother brings forth children.”136 However, many names related to Lesa indicate an association with thunder and with the sky, which contrast with the spirits of the earth below.137 The earliest recorded stories about Lesa tell of it giving a man and a woman the choice between food and eternal life; the couple chose food, and hence humans became mortal, returning from the sky to the earth below.138 Of course, this story may have been influenced by biblical Eden narratives that could have spread across the region from the eighteenth century, if not earlier. Indeed, since so many proverbs and narratives have been influenced by the Christian missionary translation of Lesa as the Christian God, a precise precolonial definition of Lesa is elusive.139 Nevertheless, while Lesa may have been thought of as the original spirit, omnipresent and allowing life and death, it was marginal compared to the ancestral and nature spirits who intervened directly in the affairs of family and in the immediate bounties of nature, or who were agents in causing illness and death.
Lesa or similar spirits were favorable and benevolent spirits, an indication of emotional well-being, the way relationships between people and nature should be in the absence of turmoil. Yet times of death and upheaval led to a proliferation of angry and jealous spirits, almost evil, that disrupted normal life. Chiwa and chibanda were the bad living dead, those who died with a grudge, from suicide, or who were wrongly accused by their relatives.140 Or they were roaming ancestors, unable to find their people and have their names restored to newborn babies.141 Stories of capture and consumption by such angry spirits were frequent. Specialists dealt with this type of spirits; if the disruption was connected with the dead, they dug up the bones of the dead and burned them, so that they could no longer haunt the living. In other cases, disembodied chiwa evil, almost an evil wind (umuze uwipe), inspired people to do harmful acts, such as killing a neighbor or relative.142 Sometimes harm originated from savage mythical figures, such as Mwansakabinga or Kanama, who kidnapped and carried away young children.143 Such angry forces inspired antisocial actions in men; agency lay in what the missionary Edouard Labrecque termed “occult” forces, rather than living people. A murderer, for example, was one who was “seized” by such magic (Bamwikata bwanga).144
Jealous people mobilized occult forces and were perhaps even initiated into associations of witches (baloshi). They accessed spiritual power to harm others and were also experts in the use of poison. Among the Luba, witches were detected by the use of potions or horns with powder inside, objects that gave people the power to see the invisible. If caught, the accused persons could be subjected to the mwavi poison ordeal. Those who were guilty would die instead of vomiting the poison. The killing of a witch was dangerous, as unless certain ritual prescriptions were followed, the spirit of the witch returned to cause havoc in the community. People cut up and burned witches in a ritual that resembled the burning of the original jealous husband, Mwase, so that they could no longer employ their witchcraft.145 At the center of the Bemba polity, the Crocodile Clan claimed to deal with such dangerous individuals, obviating the need for other shinganga.
Good fortune could also “fall upon” (ukuwilwa) people. When possession was good, it meant a step on the path toward recovery from sickness, misfortune, or even anger and jealousy. A benevolent ngulu spirit spoke through the possessed and often entranced person, who prophesized (ukusesema), revealed unknown things, including the name of the ngulu protective spirit. Henceforth, the person would belong to that spirit, they would become bangulu, and through their possession they would help others to understand the spiritual forces behind possession.146 An early twentieth-century description points to women as especially potent victims and agents of possession:
These women assert that they are possessed by the spirit of some dead chief, and when they feel the “divine afflatus,” whiten their faces to attract attention, and anoint themselves with flour which has a religious and sanctifying potency. One of their number beats a drum, and the others dance, at the same time singing a weird song, with curious intervals. Finally when they have arrived at the requisite pitch of religious exaltation the possessed fall to the ground, and burst forth into a low and almost inarticulate chant, which has a most uncanny effect. All at once are silent and the b’asing’anga [Bashinganga] gather round to interpret the voice of the spirit.147
Women were especially prone to such emotional possession, perhaps because they were closer to the spirit realm of the bush (mpanga) or that of the earth or bush spirits of Lesa and Shakapanga.148 But these explanations are the intellectual reasonings of Western scholars. Perhaps women felt the spirits, and because of this ability, women were prophets, but also victims of possession and agents of witchcraft who met in the most secret of associations.149 They were most closely linked to the spirit world, with its opportunities and dangers—in other words, its powers.
Crocodile Clan attempts to harness and control the spiritual power of women is further illustrated in their relationship to the chisungu ceremonies that introduced girls after puberty into womanhood and prepared them for marriage and childbirth. The consistency of chisungu instruction was maintained by the molding of clay figurines, mbusa—a lion, a tree, a bracelet, a stupid husband, a snake—which were associated with songs and dances that taught of the duties and relationships between husband and wife. A “mother” of the mbusa relics, nachimbusa, organized the ceremonies and was responsible for teaching songs and dances along with their meanings to the girls. In addition to being paid to oversee ceremonies, she attained a special status and could wear a feathered headdress reserved for royalty. The ceremonies, which lasted for several months, culminated in a celebration at the transition to womanhood and marriage.150 Even in this rite, the Crocodile Clan’s influence became evident. The Chilimbulu design painted on the huts used for the chisungu rites reminded initiates of Chilimbulu’s scarified skin that had seduced Chiti and led to his death.151 Around the Crocodile mbusa, women sang: “Take the girl to the crocodile,” meaning the initiate should be put under the authority of the Crocodile Clan.152 Twentieth-century accounts of the ceremony associate its history with the oral tradition of the Crocodile Clan and claim that the migrants, Chiti, Nkole, and Chilufya, brought it with them—even while its widespread prevalence indicates an older and autochthonous presence.153 According to Hinfelaar, in the nineteenth century the royal clan began to appoint nachimbusa, and the ceremony prepared women to be submissive wives of royals rather than emphasize their autonomy and religious importance.154 Yet evidence for the depth of this transformation in the precolonial period is spotty; one of the earliest twentieth-century observers reported neither crocodile mbusa nor the imposition of the authority of the Crocodile Clan on the ceremonial rites.155 Outside the Bemba political center, chisungu rites remained autonomous of Crocodile Clan influence.
The Crocodile Clan royalty incorporated local spheres of politico-religious experience by replicating their ancestral shrines in the villages that they conquered and over which they claimed authority, thus replacing shrines to local ancestral and nature spirits with ones to their own ancestors. They claimed responsibility for overcoming and harnessing spiritual emotions and for getting rid of witches. Their personal bwanga, the babenye relics, ensured prosperity. All termite mounds represented the graves in which the titleholder Shimwalule buried Chiti and Nkole. Such sacred sites became conduits for the spread of the Crocodile Clan’s power. Like the colonial administrative centers, the Bomas, which later spread the constellations of power of indirect rule, the authority of the Bemba court spread to outlying villages through its sacred sites.
These sacred sites were not only about legitimizing the Crocodile Clan, however; locals viewed them as an opportunity to indicate their own agency in the Crocodile Clan government.156 This was particularly the case in oral traditions for which there were no authoritative texts that established and fixed their meanings, no dogma. Individuals could retell and refine stories in substantially different ways, appealing to different interpretations. Shimwalule, the caretaker of the graveyard, told a different version of the story, for example. He was not a slave of Chimbala (the original owner of the Crocodile Clan graveyard) but her lover, and he married her upon the request of Nkole. In exchange for the land and for taking care of the graveyard, Chitimukulu was to send a portion of his wealth to Shimwalule.157For such leaders, the reciprocity
