Landscapes of Fear

9. Fear of Human Nature: Witches

a Fear of Human Nature: Witches It is reasonable to fear the wilder manifestations of nature. We still see the need to protect ourselves against flood, lightning, and the rattlesnake. What we do not see from the safety of our built environment is the horror these natural elements once inspired because they also stoodfor human maliciousness. People the world over have shown a tendency to anthropomorphizethe forces of nature. We cannot, in fact, feel strongly about any object , animate or inanimate, without endowing it with human attributes. But the physical environment of dark nights and mountaintops acquires an extra dimension of ominousness,beyond the threat ofnatural forces and spirits, when it is identified with human evil of a supernatural order, that of witches or ghosts. A witch is a person who inflictsinjury through the exercise of exceptional powers.These powers may be regarded as supernatural because they operate in a manner that cannot be detected; the cause is recognizable only in the damage that comes to light. Belief in witches in some form is universal. The importanceof witches in the scheme of things varies greatly, however, from culture to culture. Witches are necessary to explain individual rather than communal misfortune.Whendroughtafflicts the entirecommunity, perhaps the gods are angry and a communalrain dance is called for to restore the harmony of the universe. But if lightning should strike one man's livestock and not those of other herders, or if only one man's son should fall sick while other people's children remain healthy, how is the afflicted individual to assuage his anguish? He does so by finding a cause or answer for the personal disaster. Fourtypesofanswer are possible: it is fate, Landscapes of Fear 106 the working of a mysterious order that all mortals must accept; it is truly an accident which only a statistical law can explain; it is a just punishment for an individual's faults, such as failure to observe certain rites; it is caused by a malicious and envious being—a witch. Without a philosophical acceptance of fate or statistical sophistication, only the last two answers are viable, and of them it is easier to favor the idea that another person rather than oneself is to blame. The witch looks like an ordinary human being. He or she may be my next-doorneighbor or even a close relative—one can seldom tell. The person I see every day, who smiles so ingratiatingly , may, at night, be casting spells that will make me break a leg or lose a child. Witchesare incognitoenemies within: that is why theyarouse somuch unease. Considerthe Amba, an agricultural people of western Uganda.The 30,000 or so Amba are divided amongnumerous small settlements, mostofwhich used to be independent political entities that made war against one another from time to time. Villagers in a different part of Amba territory are actual or potential enemies. Intercoursewith them is utilitarian during the peaceful interludes and violent when the tensions of a blood feud build up. These other villagers, however, are not witches. Witches are a problem only where people live close together and recognize communal ties. It is among members of the same settlement—Amba who claim descent from a common ancestor—that suspicions of witchcraft are rife. Despite emphasis on the ideal of harmony within the village, the Amba are keenlyaware ofthe fragility oftheir social bond.1 Witches are a plague of the local community.Yet the people in one village may overlooktheir own social tensions and point to other villages as especially witch-possessed. This happens when the relationship betweendifferent settlements, unlikethat of the Amba, is not one of open hostility but one of wariness and suspicion. The attitude then becomes: these other villagers are like us and we have dealings with them, but somehowthey are also not quite like us. In the American Southwest,for example, the NavahoIndians at Ramah believe that the Canyon de Chelly and Canoncito are two witch-infested areas. They tend to feel that their fellow tribesmen there are in some sense aliens, "Navahos who are not quite Navaho." Subtle differences do in fact exist, as the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn has pointed out. Unlike the Ramah Navahos, those who live in the Canyon de Chelly have a high proportion of Pueblo blood, and those in the Canoncito area are mostly descendants of tribesmen who 107 Fear of Human Nature: Witches came strongly under the influence...