1. Georges Devereux, Mohave Ethnopsychiatry and Suicide; The Psychiatric Knowledge and the Psychic Disturbances of an Indian Tribe (Washington, D.C Government Printing Office: 1961). For comparable work on Senegal see, Andras Zempleni, L’interprétation et la thérapie traditionnelles du désordre mental chez les Wolof et les Lebou (Sénégal), Thèse de 3ème cycle, 1968.
2. Association des Chercheurs Sénégalaise La Folie au Sénégal (Dakar, 1997), p. 15 and p. 209.
3. For example, legislation of February 11, 1941, article 74 of the code pénal indigêne, outlawed divination throught the administration of poison, even in cases where the parties consented. Section VIII, article 92, outlawed ‘calumnious denunciation’ (which would presumably cover accusations of witchcraft), Section VIII, article 105, outlawed sorcerey, magic and ‘charlatanism’ (which would include some instances of traditional healing), establishing a punishment of 15 days to 6 months imprisonment. See, La justice indigêne en Afrique occidentale française (Rufisque; Imprimerie du Haut Commissariat, 1941), pp. 31 and 38–39. Colonial laws were unevenly enforced, and customary law was allowed precedence in many instances. René Pautrat, La justice locale et la musulmane en A.O.F. (Rufisque, Imprimerie du Haut Commissariate de la République en Afrique occidentale française, 1957), states that in cases where customary law “deeply shocks our sense of humanity” it could be contravened (p. 92). This would apply, for example, in divination by administration of poison, in accusations of witchcraft, and in cannibalism.
4. Gaston Jean Bouvenet, Recueil annoté des textes de Droit Pénal applicables en Afrique Occidentale Française (Paris, Editions de l’Union française, 1955), cites legislation of Sept. 9, 1945, article 8, on the illegal practice of medicine, which became applicable in AOF in 1952 (p. 427); November 19, 1947, law against cannibalism (p. 51).
5. Myron Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–1945 (Portsmouth, NH; Heinemann: 2002), pp. 161 and 165.