About this enigmatic man, the expert
in African magic, Miad Hoyora Korahon, recounted the following:
« About sixty years ago, there
were brought to the estate of L___ among other new slaves, two men who were
distinguished from the rest by reason of their light brown color, and straight
hair. They are also described as having had unusually large heads, prominent
noses, and long arms. These peculiarities are inherited to some extent by the
descendants of one of them, some of whom I have seen. I have no doubt that
these men were Moors, as these descendants’ physical characteristics go to
show.
Some six
months after their arrival, one of the brothers disappeared, bodily, and
completely. The other, who meanwhile had ‘married’ a black woman, accounted for
his brother’s disappearance by saying he had ‘flown away back to Africa, and
that he would have done so too, had he not eaten something that prevented him
doing so’ (my informants say, salt.) He —the remaining brother— became known as
‘Kongo Brown’ and was one of the most highly accomplished professors of Obeah
ever known here.
On one
occasion Mr. Kongo Brown gave a party at his house, and for the entertainment
of his guests, said he would show them something. He first sent out to his
garden, and had a plantain ‘sucker’ about eighteen inches long brought in. He
then dug a hole in the clay floor of his house, in a corner; and therein
planted the said plantain sucker, which was then covered with a sheet. Then he
stood up and waved his hands over it, and talked to it in a tongue not
understood by his guests. Next, he had fetched into the centre of the floor a
washing tub, which was filled with fresh water brought in buckets from a spring
close by. This done, he produced a walking sticky a piece of twine about two
feet long, and a fish-hook.
These he put
together, and asking the company to sit round the tub, saying he was going to
fish. After waving his hands, and saying some unknown words over the tub, he
began, and to the great wonderment of the company fished out of that tub of
fresh water over a dozen large sized and living “snappers,” and “groupers,”
(which are two kinds of sea fish). These he made over to certain members of the
company, and told them to go out to his kitchen and cook the fish for him. When
the fishing was over (and it took about two hours), he again turned his
attention to the plantain-sucker in the corner.
Being
uncovered it was observed to have grown under the sheet, and was now about four
feet high. Again putting the sheet over it, he held his hands above it for some
time, occasionally muttering some words in the unknown tongue, and between
times talking to the company. Finally, calling for a knife to cut this bunch of
plantains, the sheet was taken off, and there stood a full grown plantain tree,
bearing a large and well developed bunch of green — ripe plantains. These were
duly cut, and also sent to be cooked.
My
informants in this case are two old men, who were among the guests on this
occasion and helped to consume these victuals. One of them remarked that
‘although there was plenty of fish for all hands, there was only that one bunch
of plantains,’ and he thinks Kongo Brown must have put some Obeah into them to
make them go round, ‘as all hands had a plenty.’
One of the
old men was also present on an occasion when Kongo Brown, having committed some
offence, was tied up to be flogged. Brown took the matter very coolly, and told
the manager he had better not flog him in case the flogging hurt the wrong
person. However the flogging proceeded, and about three lashes had been given,
at which Brown only laughed, when piercing shrieks were heard from the great
‘House’ (Manager’s residence) which was close by: upon this the operation was
suspended, and it was ascertained that the shrieks were uttered by the
manager’s wife in the house, on whose back it seems those three lashes had
simultaneously fallen.
Brown got
off the rest of that flogging, and it appears that the manager’s wife who
suffered, was in some way the cause of the punishment being administered.
Another feat
accredited to Brown was this:
L___ is a
sugar estate, and it happened that towards the end of our crop season there
were about 100 hogsheads (of 1 ton each) of ‘cured’ sugar in the ‘curing
house’; when information came one afternoon that a vessel to take the sugar on
board had arrived in the shipping bay, which is about two miles from the
‘Works’ of that estate, down a very rough and precipitous road.
Preparations
at once commenced for carting down the sugar next day. However, Brown went to
the manager and asked him what he would get if he could get that sugar conveyed
down to the bay by daylight next morning.
The manager
laughed at him, and finally offered to bet him something it would not be done.
Next morning the hundred hogsheads of sugar were found down at that bay, but
how it got there, no one but Kongo Brown seemed to know, and he does not appear
to have been much given to revelation. Carting it down, would have occupied the
estate’s cattle for fully a week.
These four
feats of Kongo Brown are well known to all the black men in this locality, and
my two old informants, —apart, and at different times— merely corroborated what
I had already frequently heard.
No other
Obeahman I have yet heard of here, is credited with performances of such a high
grade, and it does not seem that the powers such as appear to have been
involved, pertain at all to the ordinary practitioner.
The fishing
feat is one that has been heard of before in other parts of the world, while
the plantain growing is a replica of the most scientific, from an occult point
of view, — way of performing the ‘Indian mangoe trick’: and the one bunch of
plantains proving a plenty for a housefull of black men, — to any one who knows
what the average black man appetite is like, — savors very strongly of
‘reduplication.’
If the
‘Kodak’ camera had been invented in those days, I very much doubt its power to
explain these ‘tricks’ as hypnotism. The story of the flogging possibly might
be explained from a hypnotic point of view, but under the circumstances there
is scarcely any room to suspect that, while the action of the process of
‘repercussion’ is distinctly suggested.
The removal
of the 100 tons of sugar to a distance of about two miles in a single night, is
a feat which recalls the legendary one of how the great Michael Scot got the
peak of the Eildore hill in Scotland split into three in a single night, and
the sugar was most probably removed by the same kind of ‘deil,’ i. e., elemental force.
_ _ _ _
Altogether
Mr. Kongo Brown seems to have been in possession of considerable ‘powers,’ and
it is not easy to imagine how in such case he became a slave, or remained one ;
instead of —for instance— flying away homo to Africa, as ‘his brother’ is
reputed to have done. At any rate it is not likely that the eating of salt
prevented him doing so, although that may have been suggested by him, to cover
the real cause.
Taking them
as a whole, the details of these stories are not the style of thing the black
man brain is given to invent or concoct, and I can scarcely avoid believing in
their verity: and in sequence thereof that Kongo Brown was a real Moorish
Initiate, who in some unexplained manner had contrived to get very much out of his
latitude.
Further, although these stories date back more than half a century, the
knowledge that produced the feats by no means seems to be extinct at the
present time in the West Indies, as I have heard of other events, which
parallel these, as having happened within the last decade. »
(Theosophist, April 1891,
p.412-415)
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