The Arizona sentinel., 1886-06-12
OB EAH POISONING.
Superstition Which FIOurishes in All (
 the West Indian Islands.

| A Superstition Which FIourishes in All o the West Indian Islands.
 "Obeah is the dread of nine negroes out of every ten in the West Indies, said the Trinidad gentleman, whom, for the sake of convenience, 1 shall call MT. Smith. ''It is a nuisance to them and to the whites, but all the efforts ot the various governments to crush it out have been unavailing. It has as many believers now as ever, notwithstanding the education of many of the blacks, and wherever there is any conflict be- tween the two races it is still dangerous. can not tell you the derivation of the word Obeah (which, as you must have noticed, is always pronounced 'oby) is not an imaginary being or tangible thing, but simply the name of the wretched system of juggling and poisoning. Certain men among the negroes set up for 'Obeah men, and profess to be able to do marvellous things. I suppose there are five hun dred 'Obeah men on this island, to whom the other colored people go for as- s stance and advice. They have to pay for this assistance, so the conclusion is inevitable that the Obeah men go into it as matter of business, seeing a way to make an easy living out of the super stition of their comrades. They are naturally shrewd fellows, who know how to give some impressiveness and plausibility to their nonsense. There IS something like system in the 'Obeah worship but it has so many varia- tiOns that it is difficult to trace. It is substantially the same in all the islands, with such differences as each performer chooses to invent. In every island, for instance, three white cocks heads are used to bring trouble to an enemy. | There is no variation in that Though there IS great deal of the Obeah busi- ness in Tr,n dad, this island is by no means one of the worst. It fOurishes more in Hayti than anywhere else. In Jamaica it is very much on the increase. There is no doubt that it came original ly from Africa. Nearly every African negro in the West Indies is a firm be- liever in it. There is great deal of 1t Tn Sierra Leone. and there it fiourishes in it's worst form, that of poisoning Its home in the West Indies is St Vincent. There 1t Is carried to greater extent than anywhere else, and old Obeah men for consideration teach the secrets of the trade to beginners and make them accomplished poisoners and jugglers. Pupils of these humbugs have spread through the other islands, and St Vincent Obeah man is considered an ic done by them in the West Indies now (unless it may be in Hayti), because there is no occasion for it. In the slave times it always had to be guarded against.
 Some of the Obeah men are very ex- pert in preparing poisons. They have several kinds, to be used according to circumstances. One of the worst of them is made from the root of the cas- sara. They express the juice and allow it to ferment, and quantities of small worms are soon seen in the liquid, one of which taken into the stomach is almost certain to cause death. One of the worms is concealed under thumb nail, which is allowed to grow long for the purpose, and the operator in hand ing his victim a cup of coffee or some dish of food manages to drop the worm into it. In Jamaica almost every negro has growing in his garden numbers of arsenic bean plants, which are neither useful for food nor handsome in ap- pearance, but the beans are very poi sonous. It is said, too, that dangerous poison is made from the liver and gall of the alligator. The Obeah men are also too handy in the manufacture of narcotics They could procure