Witchcraft was greatly practiced in Kavirondo, and the practioners were greatly feared. Luos in particular were feared by Kavirondo Bantus as specialists in sorcery.
In 1902 the first administrator at Kisumu wrote :
"The wizard is greatly dreaded, and it is easy for an unscrupulous Kavirondo to obtain his neighbour's property by accusing him of having killed one of his relations by witchcraft, knowing that he will have his neighbours' support and sympathy."
Neverthless, the wizard was sought both for good and evil purposes. His aid was invoked alike to detect criminals and to do harm to an adversary.
Northcote who served as the District Commissioner at Kisii claimed witchcraft and sorcery were rarely practiced in traditional Gusii communities. But with time they increased greatly as the Kisii learned the art from the Luo.
According to him Gusii men came to train as sorcerers in Luoland adding that " the typical kind of sorcery practiced today in Gusiiland has its origin in what the Luo called Kingo."
While the Gusii and Luos believed in witchcraft, the Kipsigis who were also part of Kavirondo, remained sceptical about it and were little concerned with witches and sorcery. When one woman was accused of witchcraft and chased out of her home the senior chief of the Kipsigis adopted an attitude of incredulity and moved the woman into his own compound to prove that she could do no harm. Eventually the community took her back. The Gusii senior chief, on the other hand, regularly employed a sorcerer for protection against evil influences.
In the traditional Kavirondo witches were usually treated as public offenders, forced to undergo ordeals, and killed anonymously with community consent. But with time as local administrations were established , the natives began taking witchcraft cases to court.
In 1907 one District Officer presiding over the Gusii and Luo courts noted one thing . He observed that Luos constantly brought witchcraft allegations to court while the Gusii, who were considerably more litigious, rarely did so.
Northcote narrated a number of cases he was involved in while stationed at Kisumu. In one case a man was accused of murdering one of his wives by witchcraft. According to his accusers, the supposed murderer missed his razor and accused two of his wives of the theft. They both denied all knowledge of the missing article, and he gave them till the evening of that day to find it.
When their term of grace came to an end, and the razor was not produced, he produced two charms which he affixed to their respective huts, threatening that the thief would be detected by the charm and would die.
Next day one of the wives died after producing a still-born child. The man was consequently tried for murder, the accusers believing that the crime had been committed by witchcraft. The man was eventually let off the hook by the magistrate due to lack of evidence, much to his accusers' disgust.
Another superstitious belief in Kavirondo was the evil eye. It was claimed, the evil eye could make a sound man sick, and kill a man who was ill, or an unborn child. During those days most diseases were attributed to the evil eye or to malignant spirits, and so the best remedy was to make as much noise near the sick man as possible, in order to drive the evil ones away.
In addition to the above remedy, the Luos consulted medicinemen who use a considerable variety of herbal medicines. Northcote narrated how on one occasion he saw a man who was on the verge of death rising up and walking just minutes after being treated by a medicine-man.
And on another occasion he was involved in a case in which a medicine-man sued his patient's husband for assault . The husband had invited the medicine-man to treat his ailing wife.After much cogitation, the medicine-man ordered the ailing woman to climb to the roof of her hut and stay there till she was better.Unfortunately, the patient died while undergoing the open-air cure.
The woman's husband laid her death at the medicine-man's door and took steps to settle the matter with a wooden club breaking the medicine-man's jaw.
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