"[63] Of the wild tribes
in Kondhistan, too, we read that "it is only, however, when they go
out to battle ... that they adorn themselves with all their
finery."[64]
AMULETS, CHARMS, MEDICINES.
The African tribes along the Congo wear on their bodies
"the horn, the hoof, the hair, the teeth, and the bones of
all manner of quadrupeds; the feathers, beaks, claws,
skulls, and bones of birds; the heads and skins of snakes;
the shells and fins of fishes, pieces of old iron, copper,
wood, seeds of plants, and sometimes a mixture of all, or
most of them, strung together."
Unsophisticated travellers speak of these things as "ornaments"
indicating the strange "sense of beauty" of these natives. In reality,
they have nothing to do with the sense of beauty, but are merely a
manifestation of savage superstition. In Tuckey's _Zaire_, from which
the above citation is made (375), they are properly classed as
fetiches, and the information is added that in the choice of them the
natives consult the fetich men. A picture is given in the book of one
appendage to the dress "which the weaver considered an infallible
charm against poison." Others are "considered as protection against
the effects of thunder and lightning, against the attacks of the
alligator, the hippopotamus, snakes, lions, tigers," etc.
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