On that afternoon I had a great success as an artist. My drawings of pigs, trees and men went the rounds and were quite immoderately admired, and preserved as we would a sketch of Holbein's. These drawings have to be done as simply as possible and fairly large, else the natives do not understand them. They consider every line essential, and do not understand shadows or any impressionistic treatment. We must remember that in our civilized art we work with many symbols, some of which have but a vague resemblance to the object they represent, whose meaning we know, while the savage does not. This was the reason why I had often no success at all with what I considered masterpieces, while the natives went into raptures over drawings I thought utter failures. At any rate, they made me quite a popular person.
The sick chief complained to me that a late wife of his had been poisoned, and as he took me for a great "witch-doctor," he asked me to find out the murderer. To the native, sickness or death is not natural, but always the consequence of witchcraft, either on the part of enemies or spirits. The terribly high death-rate in the last years makes it seem all the more probable that mysterious influences are at work, and the native suspects enemies everywhere, whom he tries to render harmless by killing them. This leads to endless murders and vendettas, which decimate the population nearly as much as the diseases do. The natives know probably something about poisons, but they are always poisons that have to be mixed with food, and this is not an easy thing to do, as every native prepares his food himself. Most of the dreaded poisons are therefore simply charms, stones or other objects, which would be quite harmless in themselves, but become capable of killing by the mere terror they inspire in the victim. If the belief in these charms could be destroyed, a great deal of the so-called poisoning would cease, and it may be a good policy to deny the existence of poison, even at the risk of letting a murderer go unpunished. I therefore felt justified in playing a little comedy, all the more, as I was sure that the woman had died of consumption, and I promised the chief my assistance for the next morning.
