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trial. This chapter/case raises questions about racism
in the application of the law and its pervasive influence
in the determination of the “reasonableness” standard
in the criminal law.
Chapter 6: Understanding Victims in the Crimi-
nal Justice System—Case #6: Facing the Demons:
Making Amends for Drunk Driving. The chapter
examines the victims’ rights movement, examines vic-
timology, and introduces the idea of restorative justice.
The case raises questions about the unique needs of
victims and their role in the criminal justice process.
Part III—Policing in a Democratic
Society
Chapter 7: Police and the Law—Case #7: Security
or Dignity: Rosa at the Border. This case invites stu-
dents to think about the importance of the Fourth
Amendment, and the delicate balance between the
needs of security and civil liberties. The chapter con-
tent provides an overview of the structure of U.S.
law, describing the variety of law enforcement agen-
cies and responsibilities. The chapter also presents a
detailed treatment of the impact of the Fourth and
Fifth Amendments on policing.
Chapter 8: Policing in the Twenty-First Century:
Past, Present, and Future—Case #8: The Thin Blue
Line: Rodney King and the LAPD. The King case
raises important questions about the relationship of
police, particularly urban police, to the citizenry they
are dedicated to serve and protect. In this case and
the accompanying text, students are invited to think
about the conditions within the culture and mission of
policing that promote the abuse of authority by those
sworn to uphold the law. The chapter also examines
the historical origins of police, examines current issues
in policing, and looks toward a vision of policing in the
new century.
Chapter 9: The Impact of 9/11 on Civil Liberties
and Law Enforcement—Case #9, False Patriots: The
Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Fear.
This case study is about terrorism, and what has come
to be referred to as a “home grown” terrorist. The
bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City
was a precursor to the profound events of September
2001. The content of the chapter focuses on under-
standing these acts and on the legal and quasi-legal
developments that follow in their tracks.
Preface / vii
Part IV—Courts and
American Justice
Chapter 10: The Structure of the American Judi-
ciary—Case #10: It’s Never Too Late for Justice: The
Prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen. The Killen case
presents a well-known case of violence aimed at civil
rights workers in the early 1960s. As we follow the case
through the legal system, you will be exposed to con-
cepts such as jurisdiction and appeals. The text covers
the overall structure of the state and federal court sys-
tem and explores the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court
decisions on criminal justice policy and practice.
Chapter 11: Trials, Juries, and Judgment—Case #11:
America in Black and White: The Celebrity Trial of
O.J. Simpson. The chapter looks at the players in the
courtroom work group and the formal and informal
roles played by each key player. The role of the prose-
cutor, defense attorney, and judge in “settling” justice
raises questions about the fairness of plea negotiations
and the continuing advantages of privileged defen-
dants in the informal processes of adjudication.
Chapter 12: The Workings of the Court—Case #12:
Bargaining for Justice: Bordenkircher v. Hayes. This
case explores the reality of adjudication through a
close examination of a failed plea negotiation, which
results in life in prison for defendant Paul Lewis Hayes.
The chapter also looks at the mechanics of the trial
process and examines the history and functioning of
the modern jury system.
Part V—Punishment and Social
Inequality
Chapter 13: The Justice of Sentencing—Case #13:
The Crime of Punishment: The Story of Kemba
Smith. The Kemba Smith case raises questions about
the purpose of sentencing and the goals of punish-
ment. The chapter reviews the goals of punishment,
the range of modern sentences, and the issue of capital
punishment.
Chapter 14: Inside the Prison World—Case #14:
Surviving Time: The Case of Rubin “Hurricane”
Carter. This case reveals much about the internal
world of the prison and raises many deep concerns
about conditions of confinement, inmate subculture,
race relations, issues in prison management, and the
value of incarceration. The accompanying text reviews
viii \ Preface
the historical origins of the prison, social dynamics
inside the prison, and key issues in prison manage-
ment today.
Chapter 15: Community and Corrections—Case
#15: Making Parole in California. This final chapter
examines the history of community-based corrections
and investigates the role of the community and victims
in the future of the justice system.
A Word about Case Selection
The cases in this book are not intended to be rep-
resentative or “typical” of any particular crime or
justice event. Cases serve as launching pads for the
exploration of broader themes, concepts, or dilemmas.
While singular in its details, each case was chosen for
its power to raise broad themes for analysis and dis-
cussion. Limits of space required a difficult winnow-
ing down of case selection: we chose the cases from
the former editions that were best utilized by faculty.
Suggestions for future cases from instructors who have
used the text or have developed other cases for their
own use will be highly appreciated in future revisions
of this book.
Additional Learning
Resources
For instructors, a complimentary Instructor’s Manual
(including chapter outlines, sample class exercises,
and discussion questions) and Test Bank (including
multiple choice, short answer, and essay questions)
is available. Email textbooks@rowman.com for more
information about these materials.
For students, a complimentary open-access web
site is available with interactive flash cards of each
chapter’s key terms, learning objectives, and links to
each chapter’s Check It Out materials. Visit http://text
books.rowman.com/boyes-watson3e to access these
materials.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
W e must begin by thanking Sarah Stanton of
Rowman & Littlefield for recognizing the value
of the Learning through Cases approach, and for her
support on this new edition. Thanks as well to Carli
Hansen of Rowman & Littlefield who assisted us as
well as Sarah Stanton, in bringing this edition to press.
One of the great pleasures of working on the sec-
ond and now third edition has been our professional
collaboration. We have discovered our personal styles
and work habits that make us a terrific team and we
look forward to many future collaborations based on
the Learning through Cases model.
 11
chapter

Two Line Title Will Be

Exploring Crime
Set in This Space
and Justice
Subtitle Style Will Set Here

FOCUS QUESTIONS

• How do voters think about

contending alternatives when
they are voting?
• How does the number of
alternatives affect voting?
• WHAT considerations con-
tend for attention in the minds
of voters? How might they
cooperate to support a partic-
ular choice?
• How does voters’ identific-
ation with a political party
affect voting?
• How do parties and candid-
ates maneuver to gain votes?
I
• WHAT does it mean for voter
choice to be meaningful?
II III IV V
PART

PART
PART

PART

PART
 1

chapter

Crime, Law, and Justice

In this chapter we present the

case of the Salem witch trials.
These trials illustrate the chal-
lenges in defining what a crime
is and in finding a just social
response to transgressions. The
chapter explains the social con-
struction of crime and deviance,
and explores what we mean
when we talk about justice.
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Explain the difference between “crime” and “deviance” and
explain why crime is a “social construction.”
• Identify a “moral entrepreneur” and explain their role in the Salem
witch trials and in the creation of deviance and crime.
• Articulate the difference between a “law” and other types of rules
within society.
• Explain the difference between the consensus and conflict theories
of law.
• Distinguish between “social control” and “crime control.”
• Identify the values underlying the crime control model of justice
and the due process model of justice.
4 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
Case #1: A Seventeenth-Century Crime Wave: The Salem Witch Trials
Women on trial for witchcraft in a seventeenth-century courtroom.
The year is 1692; the place is a small farming village
in Massachusetts. Inside the household of the Rever-
end Samuel Parris, a small group of young girls—nine-
year-old Betty, her twelve-year-old cousin Abigail, and
a pair of friends—has spent hours indoors amusing
themselves with secretive games of “fortune-telling”
and “little sorceries,” predicting futures and perform-
ing magic on household objects. These obsessions
with the occult were inspired by tales told by a West
Indian slave named Tituba who worked as a cook in
the Parris household. Before long, more girls from the
Village had joined in the mysterious club that met
in the kitchen of the parsonage during the long dull
afternoons.
The master of the household, Reverend Parris was
having troubles of his own during this difficult win-
ter. For a new church in the village of Salem he had
recently been appointed minister, a position of great
importance and power in the colonial community.
But this position was very shaky: only a handful of
people within the community had elected to join the
new church. Many more refused both to worship at
the Village meetinghouse and to pay the taxes to
support his salary, and in a recent annual election
in October, a majority in the village had voted out
of office those who had been responsible for his
appointment. The future of Reverend Parris seemed
very precarious in the winter of 1692 as the new Vil-
lage Committee challenged his right to the position
of minister and refused to even pay for firewood to
warm his hearth.
As winter wore on, the black magic games of the
young girls came to the attention of the adults within
the Parris household and wider village community.
Rumors spread that the girls were meeting in the
woods to perform the black magic Tituba had brought
with her from her native Barbados. The youngest of
the girls was the first to exhibit strange and worrisome
behaviors: sudden fits of screaming, convulsions, bark-
ing, and scampering about on all fours like a dog. The
adult women in the household fretted in muted tones
that the afflictions of the child were a malady brought
on by the dark forces of witchcraft.
Witchcraft was believed to be a particularly terrify-
ing and horrible crime, not only because it was respon-
sible for evil consequences such as murder, physical
torture, or destruction of property, but also because
it challenged the supremacy of God in the affairs of
human beings. The crime of witchcraft was written
into English statutes of law as early as the sixteenth
century. The Massachusetts Law of Statutes, likewise,
included the crime of witchcraft as a capital offense.
The belief in Satan and his role in the affairs of
humans and their evil doings was not confined to hys-
terical young girls or religious fanatics. On the con-
trary, the idea that the Devil was real and operated to
do malicious things in the affairs of human beings was
a widely accepted belief common to most individuals
of all social backgrounds and educational levels. It was
believed that a person who entered into a covenant
with the Devil by signing his book had the power to
call Satan to enter his or her body to perform evil
doings and deeds to others. By deploying the power of
the Devil, the witch was able to act out his or her own
petty hates toward other human beings.

At the suggestion of Aunt Mary Silbey who lived
in the house, Tituba was asked to prepare the tra-
ditional “witches cake,” a recipe guaranteed to iden-
tify the source of the affliction. By baking a “witches
cake”—a recipe which combined rye meal with the
child’s urine—and feeding the cake to a dog, it was
thought that the dog would immediately identify its
master, the witch. Before this method of investiga-
tion could be completed, however, Reverend Parris
called in the town physician, a William Griggs, who
examined the girls and proclaimed the chilling news.
Malevolent witchcraft was the source of their malady,
not any sickness responsive to the cures of medicine:
the Devil had come to Salem Village.
The strange behaviors first seen in the Parris house-
hold now began to spread like wildfire among the
group of girls who attended the secret meetings in
Parris’s kitchen. Parris and another minister, Thomas
Putnam (one of Parris’s key supporters and father to
Ann Putnam, aged twelve), urged the girls to reveal
the names of the individuals responsible for their
suffering. “Who are your tormentors?” they asked
repeatedly. “Name who is doing this to you!” The girls
hesitated, at first, but then named three women: Sarah
Good, a local beggar known throughout the village for
her nasty temper and bitter tongue; Sarah Osborne, an
elderly woman with a dubious reputation; and Tituba,
the slave woman herself. On February 29, several men
including Putnam traveled to Salem Town to swear
out formal complaints charging witchcraft against the
three women before the local magistrates. Warrants
were issued for the arrest of the three women and
an interrogation or preliminary hearing was hurriedly
scheduled for the following morning.
All three accused were typical of those found guilty
of witchcraft throughout Europe and colonial Amer-
ica. They were marginal, unrespectable, powerless, and
deviant in their conduct and lifestyle. Although they
lived within the community, they were, in a sense,
outsiders viewed with suspicion and disliked by the
majority of the community. Sarah Good, at the time of
accusation, was both homeless and destitute: she and
her husband William had been reduced to begging for
shelter and food from neighbors. In her requests for
assistance, she had the effrontery to be aggressive and
angry, cursing and muttering reprisals to those who
refused to offer her charity. Few in the community
stood to support her once she was accused; indeed, her
husband was one of the first to proclaim that she was,
in fact, “either a witch or would be one very quickly.”
CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 5
Sarah Osborne too was an “outsider.” Although she
possessed an estate from her first husband, she was
old, had no children, and had suffered the gossip and
disapproval of the community when several years ear-
lier she had cohabited with her second husband for
several months before becoming officially wed. The
slave women, Tituba, was, of course, a natural target
of suspicion and her involvement in the baking of the
cake only hardened assumptions that it was she who
was acting as an agent of the Devil.
The Investigations
The date for the first hearing to determine if there was
sufficient evidence to hand down an indictment for
the crime of witchcraft was scheduled to take place the
next day at the inn in Salem Village but on the morn-
ing of the hearing so many townspeople turned out to
witness the proceedings that the venue was changed
to the larger meetinghouse to accommodate the agi-
tated and curious crowd. The accusers—the afflicted
girls—were seated in the front row as one by one each
of the women was brought before the magistrates for
questioning. As each of the women came into view,
the girls began to exhibit the tortured and tormented
behavior in a dramatic enactment of the charge itself.
The behavior had frightened their parents, astonished
observers, and convinced many skeptical witnesses
that they were indeed suffering from an affliction of
supernatural causes.
These children were bitten and pinched by invisible
agents; their arms, necks and backs turned this way
and that way, and returned back again, so as it was
impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond
the power of any epileptic fits, or natural disease to
effect. Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouths
stopped, their throats choked, their limbs wracked
and tormented so as might move a heart of stone, to
sympathize with them.
During the proceedings, as the girls were contorting
in dramatic displays of torture and physical agony, the
magistrates pressed the women with questions: “Have
you made no contract with the devil?” “Why do you
hurt these children?” The girls themselves continued to
moan and plead for the women, especially Sarah Good,
to put an end to their torments. Before long, Tituba had
confessed, named the other two as her accomplices, and
announced that there were many others in the colony
engaged in the conspiracy against the community of
6 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
God. While Osborne continued to maintain her inno-
cence, Good eventually accused Osborne and by so
doing implicated herself in the eyes of the magistrate.
At the end of the interrogation and before a crowded
and tightly packed audience composed of the entire
village and many from neighboring communities as
well, the magistrates ordered all three sent to jail on
suspicion of witchcraft to be held there until trial.
The Prosecution
At the religious services the very next day, the fits
and afflictions of the young girls continued along with
more accusations of witchcraft directed against other
women in the community. During the service, twelve-
year-old Abigail Williams suddenly began to shout out
that she saw an apparition of one of the townspeople
in the rafters, a Martha Corey who had publically
expressed her own doubts over the whole affair. The
next day, Goodwife Corey was arrested to be examined
in the presence of their accusers before the magistrate.
Within a month, two more “witches” had been identi-
fied by the girls and were arrested: Rebecca Nurse and
the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good.
As the snows melted, the intensity of the girls’ afflic-
tion seemed to increase rather than wane. By the end
of April, a total of twenty-eight more people had been
accused and charged with the crime of witchcraft. The
month of May saw an additional thirty-nine people
accused. The town of Andover requested the afflicted
girls to come to their village and identify suspected
witches among the townspeople. Although the girls
did not personally know any of the people accused,
they managed to name more than forty persons as
witches. By the time of the first trial on June 2, 1692,
a total of 160 persons had been publically and legally
accused and many of them were languishing in the
local jail awaiting trial. These included not only those
men and women who were marginal or poor but a
large number of men and women of considerable
wealth and power, including the former minister of
the parish, George Burroughs, who was arrested in his
new parish in Maine and transported back to Salem
charged with being the master-wizard during the years
he had served in Salem Village.
The Trials
The royal governor of Massachusetts had just arrived
from England, when he was confronted with the
epidemic of witchcraft accusations which had swept
through the villages of New England in the preced-
ing four months. Governor Phipps responded to the
crisis with swift action appointing a special judicial
body known as the Court of Oyer and Terminer which
means literally to “hear and determine”; the Massachu-
setts attorney general was ordered to begin prosecu-
tions; a jury was selected; and on Friday, June 2, 1692,
the infamous Salem witchcraft trials began.
The first to appear for a formal trial was Bridget
Bishop, an unpopular and widely despised woman
who had been held in prison since her indictment
on April 18. The evidence against Goodwife Bishop
was considerable and many people came forward to
provide testimony to support the charge against her.
She was accused of causing the death of a child by
visiting as an apparition and causing the child to cry
out and decline in health from that moment onward.
Several men and women testified that she had visited
them and afterward they had suffered from strange
misfortune or peculiar experiences. The jury returned
a verdict of guilty against Goodwife Bishop and she
was sentenced to death by hanging. On June 10, 1692,
Bridget Bishop was the first to be executed during a
public hanging on a rocky hillside forever after known
as Witches Hill.
At the second sitting of the court of Oyer and Ter-
miner, the court tried and sentenced to death five more
accused witches. A session on August 5 produced six
more convictions and five executions, including that of
the former parish minister George Burroughs. In Sep-
tember, the court sat two more times, passing a death
sentence on six more persons in one sitting and nine
more in the final session of the court on September 17.
The last executions were held on September 22, when
eight persons, six women and two men, were hung at
the gallows. A total of twenty-three persons accused
of witchcraft died: most by hanging, a few while in jail
awaiting trial, and one by being crushed to death from
heavy rocks piled upon his prostrate body, an ancient
form of execution reserved for those who refuse to
testify at all.
The evidence used in the trials was typical of that
used to prove the crime of witchcraft but quite differ-
ent from that used to provide evidence for ordinary
murders, assaults, and thefts. The ordinary rules for
trial procedures called for two eyewitnesses in a cap-
ital offense but in the case of witchcraft the rule was
altered because witchcraft was deemed a “habitual”
offense. It was sufficient, therefore, that there be two

or more witnesses coming forth with testimony about
different images or incidents to support the charge of
witchcraft.
The most abundant form of evidence came in the
form of spectral evidence. These were eyewitness
accounts of seeing the image or apparition of the
accused. This might be in a dream or in their bedroom
at night, or even in a crowded meetinghouse or court-
room. The unique difficulty with spectral evidence was
that it was believed that the image might be visible
only to those being tormented while completely invis-
ible to others present in the very same room. As long
as more than one person came forth with spectral evi-
dence, it was not necessary for them to be “seeing” the
same image. The behavior of the girls at the trial pro-
vided the most convincing evidence to the jurors since
the accusers often described the image of the accused
flying on the rafters, or exhibited signs of distress and
torment as the accused witch moved her head or arms.
In addition to testimony by witnesses of spectral
evidence, there were several other important forms of
evidence. Because it was believed that the Devil would
not permit a witch to proclaim the name of God or
recite the Lord’s Prayer without error, there was often a
trial by test in which the accused was asked to perform
these tasks. Errors, stumbles, or failures of memory
were seen as proof they were agents of the Devil. Evi-
dence of “anger followed by misfortune” was another
form of evidence. Since the crime of witchcraft was
believed to be an instrumental one in which the witch
takes out her personal anger against others using the
power of Satan, the testimony of those who gave exam-
ples of conflict, disputes, or angry outbursts followed
by bad fortune was also seen as compelling evidence of
the crime of malevolent witchcraft. In the case of Brid-
get Bishop, five townspeople came forth to accuse her
of being responsible for “murdering” a family member.
In each instance, evidence was presented of a display
of anger on the part of the accused followed some-
time afterward by an illness or accident befalling those
who had displeased her. A fourth form of evidence
came in the search for physical marks on the body of
the accused such as moles, warts, or scars which were
believed to be “witches teats” or places where the Devil
and other evil creatures gained sustenance from the
witch herself.
A final form of evidence, and ultimately one of the
most compelling, was the freely given confession on
the part of the accused. Beginning with Tituba herself,
as many as fifty of the accused eventually confessed
CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 7
to their status as witches, and to their involvement
in witchcraft in some cases providing elaborate detail
and accusing others in the process. During the hear-
ings, as soon as an accused confessed to the crime, the
agonized writhing of the girls suddenly and instantly
ceased and the girls fell upon the confessed witches
with kisses and tearful pledges of forgiveness. None
who confessed was brought to trial or hung: the inten-
tion of the court was to spare them in order to make
use of them in testifying against others in future trials.
Only those who continued to proclaim their inno-
cence were made to suffer the spectacle of the trial and
the horror of the public execution.
The Aftermath
Between June 10 and September 22, 1692, twenty-
four people were executed for the crimes of witch-
craft. As the New England fall began to cool the air,
an additional 150 people remained awaiting trial in
local jails and 200 more formal accusations had been
made against others as well. On the part of the judicial
authorities, there was a sudden sense of unease about
the quality of the evidence used to convict and hang
the accused. Anyone might indeed fail to recite the
Lord’s Prayer with a slip of the tongue, particularly if
they are standing before a packed courtroom charged
with being a representative of Satan. And legal opinion
was plagued by the question that it might be possible
for the Devil to present himself in the image of inno-
cent folk as well as those who had struck a covenant
with the Devil.
On October 3, Reverend Increase Mather, president
of Harvard College delivered an address that claimed
that evil spirits might be impersonating innocent men
and implied that it was possible the girls themselves
were fabricating their afflictions. Mather went on to
declare that “it was better that ten suspected witches
should escape, than that one innocent person should
be condemned.”ii Many more joined the chorus to
object to the fallibility of the court to prove the crime,
and the injustice of the proceedings in potentially con-
demning the innocent based on the unsubstantiated
accusations of the inflamed. Within days, the governor
had disbanded the court of Oyer and Terminer and
replaced it with a court that forbade the use of spectral
evidence. The jury acquitted forty-nine of the fifty-two
cases it heard; the remaining three had entered confes-
sions but these were given immediate reprieves by the
governor. The remaining prisoners were all discharged
8 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
and a general pardon was issued against all who had
been accused in the terrible and most infamous series
of trials within our nation’s history. Two years after the
trials, witchcraft was no longer a legal offense in the
colony of Massachusetts Bay.
Thinking Critically about
This Case
1. Do you believe the accused in the seventeenth-
century Salem received a “fair trial”? Why or why
not?
2. Why did so many people confess to the crime
of which they were accused? What forces might
induce innocent people to confess to a crime
they did not commit?
3. Consider the powerful statement made by
Increase Mather: “It is better that ten witches
should escape than one innocent person be con-
demned.” Do you agree with this statement?
Why or why not? Would you still agree with this
statement if we substituted the crime of murder,
rape, or drug dealing for the crime of witchcraft.
Why or why not?
4. Consider the spectacle of the public execution.
How do you think you would feel if you were to
witness such an event? Would you bring your
children to an execution? Why or why not?
5. The term “witch hunt” has moved into our
common everyday parlance. What does it mean
to you? Give some examples of contemporary
“witch hunts” in American society today?
References
Case adapted from:
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum., Eds. The Salem Witch-
craft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of
the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692. Vol. 1. (New York: Da
Capo Press, 1977).
Kai Erickson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of
Deviance (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1966).
Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in 17th Century
Massachusetts (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984).
 CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 9

What Is Crime?

T hrough contemporary eyes, it is tempting to dismiss the “crime” of witch-

craft as religious superstition. Given our knowledge of science and technol-
ogy, it is hard for us to believe that those girls were really tormented by witches
wielding the dark powers of the Devil. But to people in the seventeenth century,
the existence of God, Satan, and their active role in the affairs of human beings
was a form of “common sense,” a set of beliefs about the world shared by most
members of society, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, alike. Sociologists
claim that all human ideas, from our basic beliefs about the nature of the phys-
ical world, to the rules of social interaction, to our convictions about what is
right and wrong, are a product of that human society. Is a rock inhabited by
living spirits? Is it composed of tiny particles so infinitesimally small they can
never be seen with the human eye? What you believe depends on the society
you live in. Beliefs about “reality” are embedded in the cultural beliefs of the
entire society: most people (except, perhaps, those who are mentally deranged)
accept the social construction of reality defined by their culture. Members of
every society collectively define and interpret the world around them. This set
of shared understandings is what we call culture and is a product of the human
interaction.
Like all beliefs within society, crime too is a social construction. What we
believe to be crime is a result of the beliefs, values, and institutions of our society.
While we may no longer believe in witchcraft as a source of harmful conduct, our
own beliefs about crime are similarly rooted in our cultural worldview. While it is
true that most societies have categories of behavior they refer to as “criminal,” it
is not true that they identify the same kinds of behaviors as crime. What is crime
in one culture is not necessarily a crime in another culture. Moreover, definitions
of crime change over time: what is crime today (e.g., the manufacture, sale, and
distribution of cocaine) was not so one hundred years ago.

Crime and Deviance social

construction of
People in our culture who believe in witchcraft or the idea that invisible powers reality
of the Dark underworld cause personal misfortune or illnesses among children process by which
are not expressing the social construction of reality taught to most members of a members of every
modern industrial society. People who hold the view that illnesses are caused by society collectively define
spells cast by witches using the dark power of Satan are “deviant” in adhering to and interpret the world
around them.
those beliefs. These ideas no longer form the basis of “common sense” as they did
for the people of Salem Village. Those who follow these beliefs form a distinct crime as social
construction
minority by holding views that are not widely shared.
behaviors defined as
Sociologists use the term deviance to refer to conduct which is contrary to crime are the result
the norms of conduct or social expectations of the group. Not all forms of devi- of the beliefs, values,
ant conduct are considered crimes. We might think a person who believes in the and institutions of that
Devil quite odd, and we might not want to associate with that person, hire them society.
as a babysitter, or fully believe their testimony in a court of law, but in our society, Deviance
to believe in unusual ideas is not a crime. Many other forms of conduct would conduct which is contrary
be considered deviant but not criminal in our society, such as picking one’s nose to the norms of conduct
or social expectations of
in public, piercing one’s nostrils, dying one’s hair green, or talking to oneself on
the group.
the subway.
10 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
This style may be deviant, but if
it does not violate the law, it is
not a crime.
moral
entrepreneurs
people who identify
certain forms of conduct
as dangerous to society
and mobilize others to
exert social control over
those who engage in the
conduct.
moral panic
shared belief that a
particular behavior is
significant threat to the
well-being of the entire
society.
Norm
expected behavior for
a member of a group
within a specific set of
circumstances.
Sociologists have long argued that there is
nothing inherently “deviant” about any form
of conduct: a behavior is deviant if it is viewed
and reacted to as such by others within the
society. Kai Erikson, who wrote about the
Salem witch trials, suggests, “The term devi-
ance refers to conduct which the people of a
group consider so dangerous or embarrassing
or irritating that they bring special sanctions
to bear against the persons who exhibit it.”1
We need to ask: Who makes the rules? Who
identifies the rule-breaker? Who proclaims
the violation as a serious threat to the social
well-being of the community? According to
sociologists, what constitutes “deviance” is the
labeling, identification, and successful applica-
tion of that label to a particular person and their conduct.
Harold Becker coined the term moral entrepreneurs to refer to those peo-
ple who seek to impose a particular view of morality on others within society.
Moral entrepreneurs, he believed, are those people who identify certain forms of
conduct as particularly dangerous and in need of social control by others within
the group. These moral entrepreneurs are often responsible for mobilizing the
group against the behavior or for making sure that a law is written against a cer-
tain form of conduct. These activists are also able to construct a sense of “moral
panic” about the threat of this behavior to the well-being of the entire society.
Crime as Legal Construction
As we noted above, not all forms of deviant behavior are crimes. It is also true that
not all kinds of crime are really deviant. Some crimes are so commonplace that it
would be hard to describe these behaviors as “deviant” at all. An estimated one-
third of all Americans cheat on income taxes despite the law. Probably more people
violate the speed limits on our nation’s highways than observe them; and having sex
before marriage may still be illegal in several state criminal codes, but it can hardly
be considered deviant according to national polls of premarital sexual behavior.
Both deviance and crime, therefore, are social constructions—that is, they are
a product of collective action by individuals within society. What distinguishes
the rules of the criminal code from other types of social rules which govern our
behavior in society such as the rule that we should eat with a fork, or shake some-
one’s hand when it is extended toward us in friendly greeting? In a sense, the
answer is quite simple: crime is behavior that violates the criminal law: without
the criminal law there is, literally, no such thing as “crime.” It is possible for any
behavior to be “transformed” to crime by being written into the criminal code. In
many U.S. states, it is a crime for a man to dress as a woman; in some countries,
there are criminal laws regulating the acceptable lengths of a woman’s skirt; and
in Iran, women are prohibited from wearing any clothing other than a full-length
robe and a veil which covers both their head and face.
But what makes a “law” different from a social taboo, convention, habit, or
custom? Sociologists refer to rules of society as norms. A norm is a societal
 CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 11

expectation of “normal” or acceptable behavior for a member of that group

within a specific set of circumstances. Human behavior is deeply rule bound
yet many of these rules are never written down nor are they even necessarily
verbalized. Yet human beings raised within a given society learn these rules as
part of the normal process of growing up within that culture, a process known
as socialization. Much of the rules we learn through the socialization process
belong to the category of rules William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) identi-
fied as folkways.2 Sumner studied a wide range of societies and argued that
much of human behavior is governed by informal rules beyond the codified
criminal code.
Folkways are unplanned but expected ways of behaving within a society.
These include telling us what to wear and what is appropriate attire for any given
social setting. Take a quick look at your fellow students tomorrow in class and
observe the normative nature of the unwritten dress code. Has anyone chosen
to come to school in pajamas? Or beach attire? Or evening dress? Considering
the fact that most colleges do not have a written dress code, there is a remark-
able degree of conformity because we are regulated by informal rules to an even
greater extent than we are regulated by formal rules. Folkways include rules
about appropriate foods to consume, rituals for making oneself attractive and
presentable, manners, etiquette, and so forth. Failure to adhere to the standards
of dress, for instance, in your college classroom would probably elicit some
odd stares from your fellow classmates, a disapproving comment or two, and
a tendency for others to gossip about, or withdraw from, such an odd person.
These minor sanctions operate quite effectively (and often unconsciously) to
maintain the dress code. Since most human beings tend to avoid ridicule and
desire social acceptance, these forms of “punishment” work quite efficiently to
enforce social norms.
Mores, according to Sumner, are far more important rules of conduct within
all societies than folkways. While failure to comply with a dress code may elicit
some negative reactions, failure to conform with a societal more is taken far
more seriously by others within that society. A more is a rule that defines not
simply what is expected or appropriate, but what is right or wrong. For an adult
to wear strange clothing in public may violate a folkway, but wearing no clothes Socialization
in public violates a more, at least in our culture. The sanctions for failing to abide process of learning the
by a social more are far more substantial than our myriad responses to breaches norms, values and beliefs
of a given culture.
of social etiquette, manners, or social custom.
How is law different from both mores and folkways? Laws are norms which Folkways
unplanned but expected
are codified and enforced through the use of coercion backed by the authority ways of behaving within
of the state. The key element in defining “law” according to Max Weber is that any given culture.
laws are norms which are enforced by specialized institutions that are granted
Mores
the power to use force to obtain compliance. In order to have law in a modern important rules of
sense, it is necessary for societies to develop political institutions such as legis- conduct within a society
latures, governments, courts, law enforcement and penal systems that enact the which define right and
formal laws of a society enforce compliance with those laws, and punish those wrong.
who fail to do so. The legal system endows certain individuals within society with Law
the legal right to use physical coercion in order to ensure compliance with the social norms which are
law. These institutions are those agencies and organizations we collectively refer codified and enforced
through the authority of
to as the criminal justice system. The institutions of the criminal justice system
the state.
include the legislature that creates the laws, the police that enforce the law, the
12 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
natural law
the belief that law is
grounded in a higher
set of moral principles
universal to all human
societies.
courts to adjudicate and interpret the law, and the penal system that provides
sanctions to those who are found to have violated the law.
Crime and Morality
Many people assume that crime and morality are two sides of the same coin: a
behavior is crime because it is immoral and all immoral behavior is criminal. It
is natural to assume that all conduct we think immoral is included in the crim-
inal code and that the criminal law reflects the moral values of the majority of
law-abiding American citizens. But the relationship between crime and morality
is not as simple as it seems. First, not all conduct that we would agree is immoral is
necessarily criminal. For instance, we may think it wrong for a person to refuse to
come to the aid of another who has collapsed on the street gasping for breath, but
the person who stands and stares or who turns away with a shrug is not commit-
ting a crime unless there is a specific legal rule which requires them to assist their
fellow citizens and many states do not have such a law within their criminal codes.
It is also possible for governments to write immoral laws. Nazi Germany
passed many laws which legalized the theft and murder of innocent citizens
because they were Jewish; both South Africa and the United States have had legal
systems which sanctioned the cruel and murderous treatment of other human
beings because they were nonwhite. Not all immoral or harmful conduct is nec-
essarily criminalized within our society, and not all laws are necessarily moral
and just.
What is the relationship between crime and morality? If crime does not reflect
our moral values, is it merely a set of legal rules established by the state to reg-
ulate conduct? If it is not grounded in our sense of right and wrong, must we
obey the law? Do we obey the law simply because the state is powerful and we
are afraid of legal sanctions? Are we morally obligated to follow the law even if
we believe it is unjust?
Many people argue that law is grounded in a higher set of moral principles:
what makes the law a system of justice is that it embraces ideals of right and
wrong which are universally agreed upon. This is the idea of natural law—the
belief that there are agreed-upon standards of right and wrong common to all
human societies and ethically binding for all human societies.3 For some, the
precepts of the Ten Commandments, such as the prohibition against murder,
theft, and the obligation to be faithful to one’s spouse and to honor one’s parents,
are so fundamental to human societies they believe them to be found in all moral
and ethical codes. The idea of natural law says that there are sources of right and
wrong above the particular human rules created by particular men and women
in any given society.
We find a powerful belief in the idea of a “natural law” across many different
societies who believe in many different kinds of gods. In the case of Salem Vil-
lage, this higher power was God. We find this belief too in our own Constitution.
When our founding fathers wrote “And we find these principles to be self-evi-
dent” they were stating a principle that the right of all persons to liberty, life,
and the pursuit of happiness was a principle established beyond the whims and
preferences of human powers reflecting a higher authority governing the affairs
of human society. The “Bill of Rights” is based on the “natural law” concepts of
John Locke (1632–1704) according to which all men are, by nature, free, equal,
and independent. Underlying our faith in the justice of our legal system is a
 CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 13

foundation of belief in the “natural law” which protects the inalienable “natural
rights” of all individuals. According to Thomas Jefferson, the purpose of govern-
ment is to protect the natural rights retained by the people and it was extremely
important that the government itself not be permitted to transgress these rights.
Yet is there really such a thing as “natural law” and if there is, how do we explain
the existence of the legal crime of witchcraft in the seventeenth century and its
absence today? They too believed in the idea of “natural law” in which the rules of
human society were ultimately created by a higher authority—but which society
is correct? Concepts of “natural law” upheld ideas to which we would no longer
subscribe today, such as the “natural” inferiority of women, blacks, and Native
Americans. Theories of “natural law” claiming that there are universal principles of
right and wrong found in all societies are also hard to square with the wide range
of different ways societies define criminal behavior. All societies condemn killing
other human beings but only under some circumstances and only in some types
of relationships. In Comanche society, husbands are free to kill their wives and this
act is not considered “murder.” In our society, the taking of a life in defense of one’s
own self or one’s own property may also not be deemed to constitute the wrong of
“murder.” Before the Civil War, in the South, a slave owner could legally kill a slave
if he or she was engaged in routine discipline. If there is such a thing as “natural
law,” how can there be such variation between different social groups in how they
define rights and wrongs of behavior that is as clearly wrong as murder?
Morality refers to the beliefs about the rightness and wrongness of human
conduct. Sociologists have long argued that there is no universal moral code to
which all societies adhere. They point out that the belief that behavior is wrong,
immoral, or evil is a product of human collective definition making. Crime and
morality are a part of a cultural belief system. Like our beliefs about the physical
world, moral beliefs are a collective human product.

Crime and Power

If the law does not reflect a natural or divinely inspired order of right and wrong
common to all human societies, where does law come from and whose morality
does it represent? There are two broad theories that explain the social forces that
create the law: one set of theories is based on forces of consensus and another set
of theories focuses on conflict as a source of law. The consensus theory holds Morality
that the law, especially the criminal law, reflects the widely shared values and beliefs about the
beliefs of that society. rightness and wrongness
According to Emile Durkheim, all societies define some conduct as crime: of human conduct.
“crime” and its broader category “deviance” are normal parts of any society. consensus theory
People collectively define some conduct as unacceptable, harmful, dangerous, of law
or immoral. Even a “society of saints,” according to Durkheim, would define law reflects the collective
conscience or widely
some types of behavior as unacceptable or deviant or criminal. Durkheim stated, shared values and beliefs
“An act is criminal when it offends strong and defined states of the collective of any given society.
conscience.”4 Defining certain conduct as deviant, in Durkheim’s view, serves a
latent function of
kind of natural bonding function for any given group, drawing the community law
together in its mutual disgust at the deviant, affirming the identity of the commu- a by-product of law that
nity while simultaneously defining boundaries of acceptable conduct. defines the identity of
In the consensus model, law reflects the common morality of the social group and strengthens the
and it serves a latent function of strengthening the social bonds of the group. social bonds among
members of a group.
Kai Erikson, following the consensus model, believed that the Salem witch trials
14 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
conflict theory of
law
law reflects the values,
beliefs, and interests of
powerful elites within any
given society and serves
to help those in power
preserve their position
within society.
social control
formal and informal
processes that maintain
conformity with social
norms.
tightened the bonds of a community undergoing substantial social change. The
moral panic instigated by the witch trials was a barometer of the strength of those
widely shared moral values. Just as today communities rally against the threat of
illegal drugs to “just say no” to the dealers who threaten the safety of their com-
munity, the villagers of New England were taking the steps they believed necessary
to protect themselves and their families from both physical and moral destruction.
The conflict theory of the law argues that law reflects the power hierarchy
within any given society. Because societies are composed of diverse groups with
different perspectives on moral values (based on race, class, age, gender, religion,
ethnicity, region, and so forth), laws will inevitably be shaped by the interests of
those who have the most resources to influence the law. Powerful groups shape
the law to insure that it reflects their morality and preserves their position of
power within society. The law may even be thought of as a tool that enables that
group to maintain its position of power over others in the society. For exam-
ple, laws that declare black men were not really full human beings upheld a
social order of white supremacy over nonwhites. Nonwhites, obviously, were not
involved in the making of those laws.
Jeffrey Reiman5 argues that the conflict perspective is relevant to interpreting
public attitudes toward serious crimes of violence in our society. Many forms of
conduct that cause substantial harm within our society are not “criminalized”
by our legal system. When we think of “murder” our first mental image is of a
vicious individual who has personally attacked, shot, or knifed another human
being. Yet the number of deaths each year from criminal homicide is only a
fraction of the number of deaths caused by willful neglect by corporations in the
workplace. Reiman asks, “Is a person who kills another in a bar brawl a greater
threat to society than a business executive who refuses to cut into his profits to
make his plant a safe place to work?”6 Yet because of the specific way that the law
defines homicide, the business executive is not viewed as a criminal and is seen
to be pursing legitimate business goals despite the lethal consequences of his or
her actions on others within society.
Social norms do not simply “become” crimes through some kind of divine,
natural, or automatic process. Rather there is a social process whereby some-
one or some group creates a law and ensures that it will be enforced. The social
construction of criminal law, its application, interpretation, and enforcement
by particular social agencies and actors within this society is the business of
the criminal justice system. To understand the criminal justice system, we must
study the processes whereby laws are made; why some forms of conduct are
included in the criminal code and others are not; why some laws are enforced
and others are ignored; and why some persons who violate the law are never
suspected, arrested, prosecuted, or punished.
Social Control versus Crime Control
Law and the institutions of the criminal justice system are only one type of social
control in modern society. Sociologists recognize that the power of formal social
control exercised by the law and its agents such as police and the courts is trivial
compared to the subtle and awesome power of other sources of social control
within society. Law is simply one form of social control among many, and argu-
ably, it is far from the most powerful form of social control.
 CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 15

Crime control, unlike social control, is a reactive form of societal control.

For the most part, crime control enters the picture only after a criminal viola-
tion has occurred. Can the criminal justice system really “control” crime? As we
will see in later chapters, criminal justice professionals such as the police or the
correctional system cannot address the social conditions within the community
that generate serious criminal behavior. Fair and just working of the major insti-
tutions within our society, such as the family, the economy, schools, and so forth,
creates peaceful communities. Conditions of injustice or unfairness within our
communities with endemic poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, unemployment,
alienation, boredom are societal conditions that lead to high rates of crime
within society. The criminal justice system itself is not designed to address these
widespread societal problems.
Reiman believes that the criminal justice system cannot really “control crime”
but he goes further to state that the criminal justice system does not even really
aim to control crime: the criminal justice system is one that depends upon its
own failures for its continued success in society. The more the system fails to
reduce crime, the more resources we devote to crime control. Reiman (and many
others) point out that if we are serious about controlling crime, we would focus
on strengthening the forms of social control in society such as work, family, and
community which enhance conformity for positive reasons.7
Van Ness and Strong8 see a more positive role for the criminal justice system.
It is the job of the justice system to maintain a just order. The criminal justice
system is not simply about crime control but about the creation of a just society.
But what do we mean by “justice”? What does a just order look like? What does
justice mean to us as Americans? How do we define justice and how do our
institutions deliver it to us? Let us return to the tragic summer of 1692 to ask:
Was this justice?

What Is Justice?
“Remove justice, and what are kingdoms, but gangs of criminals on a large
scale?”

St. Augustine (AD 354–430)

The criminal justice system is not simply about catching criminals or “crime
control” but about delivering “justice” in our society. When we talk about the
modern criminal justice system, many people ask: Justice for whom? Is obtain-
ing justice for victims of crime within society the system’s highest priority?
Or are we talking about justice for the person who has been accused? Are all
citizens in this country equally subject to the justice process, or are minorities
right when they complain that the criminal justice system is a “just us” system
which delivers harsh punishment only to those who are poor, young, and power-
less. Do all defendants, rich and poor, get an equal chance at “justice for all”? Do
all communities get equal protection from the police? crime control
Along with the need to understand what “crime” is, sociologically, we need formal and informal
processes that respond to
to understand what “justice” is, substantively and procedurally. Is a process
violations of legal norms.
“just” as long as it is “legal”? Is justice something different from the law or is it
16 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
due process model
of justice
prioritizes rules of due
process which guarantee
and protect individual
civil liberty and fairness
in the enforcement of the
criminal law.
crime control
model of justice
prioritizes the
efficient and effective
enforcement of the law
as a basic precondition
for a free society.
only attainable through the rule of law? What do we mean when we talk about
“justice”? Do all Americans agree on what “justice” means?
Crime Control versus Due Process Models of Justice
The first question to consider is the relationship between law and justice. When
you read the events of those proceedings back in 1694, did you feel that the
women and men accused of those crimes were treated “justly”? What makes a
process just? Traditionally, the American system of justice has sought a balance
between the rights of individuals and the power of the state to respond to crime.
The two poles of this delicate balance are referred to as the interests of due
process and the interests of crime control.9 According to many observers, the
due process model of the system competes with the crime control agenda of the
system in a more or less constant struggle over the defining notion of justice.
Both sets of values are important to our system and are deeply incorporated in
the structure of our justice system.
Crime control advocates point out that a society in which no one is free to walk
within the streets of their community or dwell within their own home without
constant fear of being robbed, mugged, or assaulted by their fellow citizens is not a
free society. As President Clinton remarked in his 1994 State of the Union address,
“Violent crime and the fear it provokes are crippling our society, limiting personal
freedom and fraying the ties that bind us.” Women argue that fear of rape forces
many women to live according to a restricted “rape schedule” with a substantial
reduction in personal freedom for half of the American population.10 Black Amer-
icans who lived in fear of getting lynched by angry white mobs were not really free
to walk the streets of their own town or sit at a lunch counter and enjoy a quiet
meal.11 Parents in many urban communities today complain that they are not free
in our society if they cannot let their children walk to school or ride a bicycle on
the sidewalk without fear of gunfire from rival gangs fighting over drug turf.12
If violence is rampant in the streets, no one is free to enjoy the “life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness” promised in the Constitution. Crime control advo-
cates point out that it is the responsibility of an effective government to prevent
citizens from terrorizing one another. Efficient and effective enforcement of the
law is a basic precondition for a free society.
A competing and equally important notion of freedom centers on the right of
the individual to be free from governmental tyranny. The values of due process
claim that no one is free in a society where the government can knock on your
door whenever it chooses, search your house, and arrest you without answering
to a higher authority. This is the basic notion of individual liberty and individual
rights. According to this view, no one is really free within society if they must
fear the unbridled power of the state to arrest, charge, convict, or punish without
adequate protections against the abuse of that power.
Recall that the definition of “crime” is a rule that is enforced by the legal power
of the state. The important concept here is “legal power”: we grant the state the
legal right to use force against us under certain circumstances, that is, when we
violate the legitimate laws of the land. But, in our system, we do not give the state
carte blanche in the use of force: that force is limited to only the “legal” circum-
stances. Every police officer on the street, every correctional officer, every judge,
and every prosecutor must obey these laws and is not free to use their power in
any way they please. These limits are what are known as the rules of “due process.”
 CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 17

From this perspective, the power of the state to control crime must be limited
by due process protections for individuals accused of a crime. Without those pro-
tections, the unchecked power of the state would threaten the liberty and basic
freedom of all citizens. The fundamental value at the heart of due process rules
is “fairness.” Proponents of a due process model of the criminal justice system
remind us that police states such as Nazi Germany enjoyed very low crime rates
because there were no rights for citizens; the police had the right to use force in
any way they saw fit and while crime was down, the citizens of Germany paid the
terrible price of loss of individual liberty. Since we give the state the legal power
to use force, we must have protections against the abuse of that power. We grant
the power to control crime to the state because we value security as a basic ingre-
dient of freedom but we need the procedures of due process to protect us against
the abuse of that legal right by the criminal justice system itself.

Due Process in the Seventeenth Century

Let us closely examine the procedures used in the Salem witch trials in order to
better understand our own system of due process. Due process of law in criminal
proceedings is generally understood to include the following basic elements: the
principle of legality which means that a law is written down which clearly states
what the criminal conduct is and what the punishment will be for those who do
it; there is some impartial body that will hear the facts of the case; the person who
is accused is told what they are accused of and given an opportunity to defend
themselves against the charge; at the trial, evidence is heard according to a set of

Individual Rights Guaranteed by

the Bill of Rights
18 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
rule of law
the basic principle
that the exercise
of governmental
power is regulated by
laws formulated by
legitimate institutions
of representative
government.
substantive
criminal law
actions which are
prohibited or prescribed
by the criminal law.
procedural
criminal law
the lawful process for
creating, enforcing,
and implementing the
criminal law.
writ of habeas
corpus
a petition to the court
contesting the legality of
imprisonment.
fair rules and procedures which places the burden on the state to prove its case
against the accused; and if the person is legally found to be not guilty, they are
free to return to a complete state of liberty just like any other free citizen.
Most of the rights of the accused are defined in the Bill of Rights. Yet the Salem
trials took place almost one hundred years before the framing of the U.S. Consti-
tution. The colonists brought with them from England some important elements
of the due process. What elements of due process were present then and which
were not in the Salem witch trials?
The rule of law is a basic foundation for democratic society in which the
exercise of governmental power is legitimated by the institutions of representa-
tive government. The crime of witchcraft was codified within the statute books of
the Massachusetts Bay colony as early as 1641.13 The substantive criminal law,
therefore, specifically defines those actions which are prohibited by the law (or,
far less frequently, those which are required), as well as the penalty for violation
of the criminal law. Basic to criminal process is the rule of nullum crimen sine lege
which means “No crime without a law.” A fundamental element of fairness is the
requirement that citizens have advance warning of the behavior that is unlawful
and that these rules be clearly spelled out so that citizens will know what they
should not do or what they are required to do.
Procedural criminal law refers to the nature of the proceedings whereby
someone is accused, arrested, investigated, tried, and convicted of a crime. While
substantive criminal law defines those actions or omissions which are unlawful,
the procedural criminal law defines the lawful process for creating, enforcing,
and implementing the criminal law. Procedural law defines the rights of an
accused person and the protections that exist within the law to guarantee that
they will be tried according to legally established procedures. The Magna Carta
or Great Charter signed in 1215 by the English monarch guaranteed that “no
freeman shall be . . . in any way imprisoned . . . unless by the lawful judgment of
his peers, or by the law of the land.”14 Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution
offers the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus to citizens to challenge the
legality of imprisonment by state or federal authorities within a court of law. No
governmental authority may legally detain or confine an individual if they violate
the rules of criminal procedure enshrined in the Constitution.
Adversarial versus Inquisitorial System
Most contemporary observers will notice immediately that a defense attorney
did not represent those accused of witchcraft during the trials. The absence
of a defense attorney in these trials strikes us as fundamentally unfair. With-
out an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and present evidence, there is
little opportunity for the accused to question the credibility of those testifying
against them. In the seventeenth century, the defendant was required to speak in
response to the questions by the magistrate and by the prosecutors, but they were
not permitted an attorney to speak, ask questions, or interview witnesses on their
behalf. It is the one-sided nature of the trial itself that seems to make the Salem
witch trials patently unfair.
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the accused the right
to a defense. Although this right was enshrined in the Bill of Rights as of 1791,
it was a privilege that was only available to those who could afford to pay for a
lawyer in their own defense. As we will see in later chapters, it was not until the
 CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 19

twentieth century that defense counsel became a right for rich and poor alike.
In an adversarial system, the two sides must be equal if the battle is to be
genuinely fair.
But the Salem witch trials did not follow a strictly adversarial model. Like
our current crime control efforts against terrorism or drug trafficking, the fight
against witchcraft was given the highest priority by the members of the New
England communities who feared the loss of security from these dangerous
individuals within their communities. The crime of witchcraft was viewed with
the same sense of “moral panic” that as we feel about terrorists or drug dealers.
Just as we are motivated today to relax many procedural due process protections
in order to fight terror and the “war on drugs,” the colonists opted to utilize spe-
cialized judicial procedures in order to stem the tide of this serious crime wave.
The specialized higher court that heard the witch trials was, in fact, not
structured on an adversarial model but followed instead a more inquisitorial
structure. The inquisitorial system places the judge in charge of the questioning
or fact-finding process. It is the judge who calls forth witnesses and actively
examines them. It is the judge who investigates and collects information by call-
ing expert witnesses to the stand. Judges, in short, perform many functions our
system typically assigns to the two opposing attorneys. Notice that in the Salem
trials, the judges ask questions of the witnesses, victims, and the accused. In the
inquisitorial model, the presentation of the facts is very one-sided: there is only
one truth and the judge is charged with uncovering that truth.
In the adversarial model, the business of presenting the truth is shared by two
opposing attorneys. The truth is achieved through a kind of contest between two
competing and quite partial views of reality. Each side presents its own facts and
interpretation of the facts before an impartial judge and jury who declares one
side the “winner” of the battle for truth and one side the “loser.” Central to the
adversarial system is the concept of advocacy to allow each side to vigorously
argue its case before a fair and impartial jury.
Before the adversarial method for determining the truth, there was a method
known as trial by ordeal or trial by test. Belief in the truth-finding capacity of such
processes rested upon a belief in God. If the accused denied guilt, they would be
required to undergo some ordeal such as walking over red-hot coals, or having
one’s hands plunged into boiling water to retrieve a stone. The guilt was determined
by the healing of the skin: it was believed that God would prevent the accused from
being scalded if he or she was indeed innocent. Evidence of the burn was evidence
of guilt. At the time of the witch trials, trial by test was still a legal method for deter-
mining truth: the accused were ordered to recite the Lord’s Prayer and any mistake adversarial system
or hesitation in their recitation was believed to be a signal from God. the state and the
accused are represented
by equal advocates
The Confessions before a neutral judge
and jury.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides citizens various rights such
inquisitorial
as the right to a grand jury hearing before being formally indicted; the right
system
to due process of law; and protection against double jeopardy. The most well- the state represented
known and most important right articulated within the Fifth Amendment is the by the judge has the
privilege against self-incrimination. No person accused of a crime can be forced power to investigate,
to provide testimony against him or herself. The accused has the right to remain interrogate, adjudicate,
silent before the court: failure to answer questions cannot be used as evidence convict, and sanction the
accused.
of one’s guilt. At the time of the Salem witch trials, this right was not granted to
20 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice

those accused of a crime. Indeed the worst punishment was reserved for the one
man who refused to respond at all to the interrogations during the trial.
The importance of the right to remain silent or privilege against self-
incrimination can be seen in the readiness to confess by so many of those
accused of witchcraft. The vast majority of those who confessed did so after the
first wave of mass hangings. Upon hearing that the magistrates had decided to
exempt those who admitted their guilt from execution, the accused acted to save
their necks. In the words of one women who tried to retract her confession in
order to spare the lives of those she had implicated, “they told me if I would not
confess, I should be put down into the dungeon and would be hanged, but if I
would confess I should have my life.”15 Her retraction was ignored and those she
had implicated were summarily put to death even though she herself was spared.
The framers of our Bill of Rights recognized that the use of threats and tor-
ture to force people to confess to crimes makes a mockery of the justice system.
Unless the accused is protected against the coerced confessions through the use
of physical beatings, deprivation of liberty, or psychological intimation, the right
of individual citizens to be free from the arbitrary power of the government
simply did not exist.

The Punishment
Nineteen persons were hanged after they were legally convicted of witchcraft;
three persons died while being held in jail awaiting trial or punishment; and one
person was crushed to death beneath heavy stones for remaining mute during
the trial itself. One of the most dramatic differences between the justice system
of the colonial period and the justice system today lies in the area of punishment.
Although there is much we share in common in the legal process of the court-
room, the legal and social norms around the punishment of criminal offenses are
profoundly different between the two societies.
The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution offers to the citizen the protection
against “cruel and unusual punishment.” But it is important to remember that
what was cruel and unusual by the standards of the seventeenth century and
by today’s standards would be quite different. The colonists brought with them
from Europe many forms of the death penalty that we would find repugnant
today. Few of us would advocate bringing children to witness the execution of an
offender; and few would rest easy if the decaying body of the condemned were
hanging in the town square for days after the event. How do we decide what
constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment”?
The Supreme Court has ruled that execution itself, for heinous and shocking
crimes, does not violate standards of public decency. However, the court has also
established that the infliction of unnecessary pain and suffering in the process of
execution is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. By today’s moral standards,
we require the painless execution of those we condemn to die. To our forefathers
in the seventeenth century, this would seem as strange as their use of torture and
public humiliation does to us today.

The Values of Crime Control versus Due

Process
The witch trials in Salem marked the end of an era in our nation’s history.
Two years after the epidemic, the criminal statute prohibiting the practice of
 CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 21

witchcraft was removed from the Massachusetts law. After that fateful summer,
no one was ever prosecuted as a witch on U.S. soil again. Why was there such a
dramatic shift away from these prosecutions? What did people at the time feel
about these events? What lasting impact did these trials have on the criminal
justice system?
Today, we have adopted the phrase “witch hunt” to refer to a powerful con-
spiracy to prosecute individuals without due process and without protections
of individual rights. The Salem experience made a lasting impression on the
colonists who recognized the awesome power of a judicial system that failed to
preserve the rights of those accused of crimes. In the throes of a “moral panic,”
the citizenry of New England abandoned the values of the due process model
in favor of an aggressive campaign of crime control. That delicate balance was
severely tipped against those accused of this crime and in their zeal to protect
their community from a feared criminal conspiracy, the process of justice swept
up many who appeared to have been unjustly accused, convicted, and executed.
In the wake of that bloody summer, influential thinkers within New England
realized the danger in abandoning the due process protections even when the
threat seemed serious and overwhelming.
Increase Mather wrote the following words in a speech in 1692: “It is bet-
ter that ten suspected witches should escape, than one innocent person be
condemned.” This statement reflects the values of the due process model. For
those who are concerned about the power of government to infringe on the
rights and liberties of individual citizens, it is far more important that we
ensure against wrongful convictions than we do against wrongful acquittals.
It is true that the crime of witchcraft was a serious threat to the communities
of New England. They felt about witchcraft the same way that contemporary
communities feel about child abuse or terrorism. These are terrible and serious
crimes, often hidden from view and often hard to prove in the court of law. We
are upset by the thought that persons who are guilty of these crimes are able to
use the rules of evidence and criminal procedure to “get off ” on technicalities
of the law. In our zeal to protect our children and our communities, we may
wish these procedural rules be relaxed when faced with a criminal defendant
whom we believe to be guilty. At times such as these, when we are fearful, we
are far more likely to adopt the values of the crime control model and prefer
that the balance of power be tipped in favor of the state to put away those who
are a danger to us all.
The values expressed by Increase Mather’s statement remain central to the due
process model. Substitute the word “child molester” or “terrorist” for the term
“witch” and the difficult choice of adopting that position may be more meaning-
ful to modern readers. Protecting the rights of those who may truly be guilty is
the only way to insure the rights of those who are innocent. If we desire “perfect”
crime control, we would have to relinquish certain rights such as the right to
privacy, right to defense attorney, right against self-incrimination, right against
unreasonable searches, and so forth. Without these protections, the state would
have fewer obstacles in their pursuit of criminals. And it is inevitable that among
those who are accused and convicted, some will be innocent of the crime. With-
out the obstacles that put the burden on the state to prove “beyond a reasonable
doubt” that a person is guilty of a crime, many more innocent persons will be
swept up in the powerful net of the criminal justice system.
The choice made by the framers of our Constitution is clear. They chose the
protection of individual rights and liberties above the ability to limit and control
22 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice

crime. Today we continue to operate a system of crime control that is bound by

the law of criminal procedure enshrined in the Bill of Rights. We have a system
that pursues the control of crime regulated by due process procedures of the
law. As a society, we continue to debate the relative balance of due process and
crime control when we are faced with what we perceive as serious threats to our
own communities. In the effort to fight the crime of illegal drug trafficking or
to prevent the crime of terrorism, we have significantly limited the due process
procedures in order to enhance the power of the system to catch, convict, and
punish those who are guilty of this crime. For many, the fight against these dan-
gers is well worth the sacrifice of individual liberties. Others see these aggressive
crime control strategies as the greater danger unjustly infringing on the liberty
of law-abiding citizens, particularly minority citizens.

morality (p. 13) beliefs about the rightness and

Key Terms
social construction of reality (p. 9) process by
which members of every society collectively define
and interpret the world around them.
crime as social construction (p. 9) behaviors
defined as crime are the result of the beliefs, values,
and institutions of that society.
deviance (p. 9) conduct which is contrary to the
norms of conduct or social expectations of the
group.
moral entrepreneurs (p. 10) people who identify
certain forms of conduct as dangerous to society
and mobilize others to exert social control over
those who engage in the conduct.
moral panic (p. 10) shared belief that a particu-
lar behavior is significant threat to the well-being of
the entire society.
norm (p. 10) expected behavior for a member of a
group within a specific set of circumstances.
socialization (p. 11) process of learning the
norms, values and beliefs of a given culture.
folkways (p. 11) unplanned but expected ways of
behaving within any given culture.
mores (p. 11) important rules of conduct within a
society which define right and wrong.
law (p. 11) social norms which are codified and
enforced through the authority of the state.
natural law (p. 12) the belief that law is grounded
in a higher set of moral principles universal to all
human societies.
wrongness of human conduct.
consensus theory of law (p. 13) law reflects the
collective conscience or widely shared values and
beliefs of any given society.
latent function of law (p. 13) a by-product of
law that defines the identity of and strengthens the
social bonds among members of a group.
conflict theory of law (p. 14) law reflects the val-
ues, beliefs, and interests of powerful elites within
any given society and serves to help those in power
preserve their position within society.
social control (p. 14) formal and informal pro-
cesses that maintain conformity with social norms.
crime control (p. 15) formal and informal pro-
cesses that respond to violations of legal norms.
crime control model of justice (p. 16) prioritizes
the efficient and effective enforcement of the law as
a basic precondition for a free society.
due process model of justice (p. 16) prioritizes
rules of due process which guarantee and protect
individual civil liberty and fairness in the enforce-
ment of the criminal law.
rule of law (p. 18) the basic principle that the
exercise of governmental power is regulated by
laws formulated by legitimate institutions of repre-
sentative government.
substantive criminal law (p. 18) actions which are
prohibited or prescribed by the criminal law.
procedural criminal law (p. 18) the lawful process
for creating, enforcing, and implementing the crim-
inal law.

writ of habeas corpus (p. 18) a petition to the
court contesting the legality of imprisonment.
adversarial system (p. 19) the state and the
accused are represented by equal advocates before
a neutral judge and jury.
inquisitorial system (p. 19) the state represented
by the judge has the power to investigate, interro-
gate, adjudicate, convict, and sanction the accused.
Review and Study Questions
1. What does it mean to say, “crime is a social
construction”?
2. What is the difference between “crime” and
“deviance”? What does it mean to say, “crime
is a legal construction”?
3. Explain the distinction between the concept of
a “folkway,” “more,” and a “law.” What is the
distinguishing feature of a “law”?
4. What is the role of the “moral entrepreneur”
in the deviance process? Who was the “moral
entrepreneur” in the Salem witch trials? What is
the meaning of the concept of a “moral panic”?
5. What is the concept of “natural law”? How
does this concept differ from the sociological
view that morality is a social construction?
6. Explain the difference between a “consensus”
theory of law and a “conflict” theory of law?
Discuss the Salem witch trials from each of
these theoretical perspectives.
7. Identify forms of social control, other than the
law, which operate in society today. Explain the
distinction between crime control and social
control.
8. What are the greatest threats to individual free-
dom from the perspective of the crime control
model? What are the greatest threats to indi-
vidual freedom from the perspective of the due
process model?
9. Explain the difference between the substantive
criminal law and the procedural criminal law.
10. What is the “adversarial” system of justice and
how does it differ from an inquisitorial system
of justice?
CHAPTER 1 • Crime, Law, and Justice / 23
Check It Out
Websites:
Salem Massachusetts Witch Trials, http://www.
history.com/topics/salem-witch-trials
The Salem Witch Museum at http://www.salem
witchmuseum.com/ to learn more about Salem
in the seventeenth century.
Witchcraft in Salem Village, http://etext.virginia.
edu/salem/witchcraft/ Check this website for
access to the detailed information about the vic-
tims and the accused. Read narratives of the
“examinations” of each of the accused; search
rare documents of current debates and dialogues
on the crime of witchcraft. Explore historical sites
and consult the experts with your questions!
Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism and the
Witchhunt. http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/
senatorjosephmccarthy.asp Check out this web
site on the investigation conducted by Joseph
McCarthy at the Cold War Museum.
Wenatchee Witch Hunt: Child Sex Abuse Trials
In Douglas and Chelan Counties. http://www.
historylink.org/File/7065 Read the story of the
largest child abuse case in U.S. history indicting
43 adults on more than 29,000 counts of rape
and molestation of sixty children. But are these
charges true or is this a miscarriage of justice
similar to the Salem witch trials?
Videos:
McMartin Preschool: Anatomy of a Panic. Watch
a video with background on the criminal pros-
ecution of the McMartin Day Care, a modern-
day version of Salem witch trials. See critique
of use of expert testimony and impact of hys-
teria on criminal process. https://www.nytimes.
com/video/us/100000002755079/mcmartin-pre-
school-anatomy-of-a-panic.html
When Children Accuse: Sex Crimes, 43 minutes—
ABC News What happens when overzealous
social workers and investigators coach young
children as witnesses in cases concerning accu-
sations of sexual molestation? Are there parallels
to the Salem witch trials where 19 people were
executed based on the accusations of children?
24 \ PART I • Exploring Crime and Justice
Available from Films for the Humanities and Sci-
ences at www.films.com
Innocence Lost: PBS documentary about the Little
Rascals Day Care Center trial charging a gross
miscarriage of justice based on the testimony
of children coached by therapists and investiga-
tors. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
shows/innocence/
Movies:
The Crucible (1996). This is a film starring Winona
Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis with a screenplay
written by the original playwright Arthur Miller.
Miller fictionalizes the events of 1692 in the
invention of an affair between Abigail Williams
and John Proctor as a key motive but otherwise
presents a historically accurate narrative of the
climate and events of the time. The Crucible
was written and produced in the 1950s as a
deliberate effort to criticize the anti-communist
“witch hunt” of Senator Joseph McCarthy as he
accused hundreds of celebrities and politicians
of being communists forcing people to defend
their innocence, confess, and name names or
risk losing their careers and livelihoods.
Notes
1
Kai Erickson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociol-
ogy of Deviance (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1966), 6.
2
William Graham Sumner, On Liberty, Society and Poli-
tics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed,
Robert C. Bannister (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992).
3
Howard Abadinsky, Law and Justice: An Introduction
to the American Legal System (Chicago: Nelson Hall,
1995), 5–11.
4
Emile Durkheim, Division of Labor in Society (Glencoe,
IL: The Free Press, 1960), 73–80.
5
Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get
Prison: Ideology, Class and Criminal Justice (Needham
Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1998).
6
Reiman, The Rich Get Rich, 77.
7
Elliot Currie, Confronting Crime: An American Chal-
lenge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985).
8
Daniel Van Ness and Karen Heetderks, Strong, Restor-
ing Justice (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, 1997), 63.
9
Herbert Packer, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968).
10
Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and
Rape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975).
11
Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime and the Law (New York:
Vintage Books, 1998).
12
John DiIulio, “The Question of Black Crime,” National
Affairs 117, (1994): 3–32.
13
Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in
17th Century Mass (Boston: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1984), 12.
14
Theodore F.T. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Com-
mon Law (London, UK: Butterworth and Co, 1956), 24.
15
Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in
17th Century Mass (Boston: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1984), 157.
Another random document with
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN