The Ibo were good fieldworkers but also believed in “the doctrine of the transmigration of souls”; they often killed themselves so that their souls would return to Africa. To dissuade others, planters sometimes cut off or mutilated the head of an Ibo who had committed suicide, reasoning that the Ibo would not want to appear in their homeland disfigured.

Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ …, loc. 77