Superstition in some form has always existed, especially among illiterate people, regardless of color, and the more illiterate the greater the amount of superstition, and as a case of strong evidence of this, I point to the “spirit dance” by the Indians of the far West, where the excitement created by it has been so great, that an uprising was only kept down by the vigilance of the regular army. While conjuring, tricking and gophering, and the like, were believed in by the slaves, and spirit dances and other forms of superstition were practiced by the Indians, the American white people believed as strongly in another form of superstition called “witch craft,” that they burnt innocent men and women at the stake.
In order to show that education and intelligence are the great powers which have been the means of dispelling the gloom of superstition and voodooism among the Colored people especially, I will state that the Colored people of Missouri, particularly those of Chariton, Howard, Carroll and Randolph counties, were above the ordinary slaves in the more extreme Southern states in intelligence and education, and did not believe in voodooism or conjuration nearly as much as those in old Virginia, and when one was brought to Missouri who claimed to be able to exercise those miraculous powers, he was immediately laughed at and openly defied by all excepting a few of the more illiterate. I recall one instance where a man named Magruder, who owned about forty slaves, which he brought to Brunswick, Missouri, from Virginia, and bought land near the town and settled thereon. Among his slaves was an old, whiteheaded, crippled man, known as a conjuror. He claimed to be able to do many mysterious and impossible things, and among those who belonged to his master he was believed and feared, but the Colored people in that vicinity laughed at him, defied his threats, and denounced him as an old humbug, for in truth such he was, and when those who believed in him saw him defied and denounced, and his inability to carry out his threats, they took courage and denounced him too. When he saw his business assailed and himself defied, with no more opportunity to gull the people, he gave it out that his favorite plants and roots did not grow or could not be found in that country, and that alone was the reason why he could not practice his profession. The truth of the matter was, that the Colored people in that state were more intelligent than those from whence he came, and therefore could not be easily humbugged.