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9 Sorcery at Kukalaya, 1877 Wilhelm Siebörger, “Zauberei und Gaukelei unter den Heiden” [Sorcery and Deception among the Heathens], Missions-Blatt aus der Brüdergemeine (1878): 207–9. The sukia, or traditional spiritual doctor, was the missionary’s strongest competitor for indigenous souls. When an epidemic struck the Tawira village of Kukalaya in 1877, people naturally sought relief with a sukia. This short piece is Wilhelm Siebörger’s effort to describe the practices of the sukia. It appears that Siebörger did not witness what he describes; rather, he relates a report provided to him by Peter Blair, a Moravian teacher and lay missionary from Jamaica who was ordained in 1882. Siebörger was born in Göttingen, Germany, in 1842. He was trained as a tailor and came to the Mosquito Reserve as a missionary in 1874. There he apprenticed under Christian Martin at Wounta Haulover before taking over duties at Kukalaya, and then returning to take over the Ephrata station in 1881. He became mission superintendent in 1888 and retired in 1899. Siebörger is perhaps best known for coauthoring in 1888, with Blair, the first published translation of the Gospels and Acts, or Dawan Bila in Miskito. On the occasion of a terrible epidemic in Kukalaya in the summer of 1877, the heathens of this place arranged for a sukia to come in order to banish the evil spirits of the disease, since the sukias of that place appeared unequal to the task. That person let them petition him for a long time; moreover, upon arriving he acted as though he would not be able to take on so difficult a challenge. Only after prolonged reluctance, and after he had 130 | Sorcery at Kukalaya collected his pay—one shilling per head, infants excluded—on July 9 he commenced his work, which Brother Siebörger’s letter describes as follows.1 In the evening the sukia went from house to house, filled his mouth with ginger water, and spit it out not only on the people but on the outside of their homes as well. The objective of this process, which he repeated for several evenings, was to ward off the evil spirits, whom another sukia living on the savanna had sent to bedevil the inhabitants of this place. During this period it was prohibited to eat salt, meat, or ripe fruit. On the twelfth a few men were sent into the forest in order to fetch wax—but they had to discard the honey. Moreover, they had to peel off the bark of tree and break it into small pieces. Other men, who were not permitted to look at the first group, had to cut down wood and build a huge fire. From the wax and tree bark the sukia fashioned figures of men, women, and children as well as of common animals.2 He selected certain men and boys to help with the event and led them to a clearing where the evil spirits could best be overcome. Here, too, they erected great piles of wood. On the thirteenth the order went out that everyone was to eat before 2 a.m., since on this day they would have to fast until the wood piles had burned to embers. The sukia stood on one of them and chanted a sorcerer’s incantation, but prudently climbed down before the fire could reach him. He then arranged the embers in small heaps and sang as he danced between them and on top of them, until they were extinguished altogether. On the morning of the fourteenth the people, under orders of the chieftain , had to divide themselves between men and women, leave the village, and place themselves under the command of the sukia. Only Brother Blair was exempted from this order. Our Christian converts were threatened that if they failed to comply they would be tied to a flagpole, smeared with filth, and then thrashed. Brother Blair thereupon counseled them to flee to Ephrata, which they did. That night the sukia danced once more amid the glowing embers. Then he took the figures of the men and shook them around the men; he then did the same with those of the women and children. It was forbidden to sleep that night, and the infants, to whom one could deny nothing, were laid within eyeshot on the ground, so that the evil spirit would not secretly devour their hearts. The singing, calling out, and blowing [smoke] on wax...

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