One major consequence of black African independence has been the redirection of the continent's historians. Since the 1960s, researchers have sought not only to rediscover but revise Africa's pre-colonial image. On one hand, efforts have been made to recover those aspects of history and tradition that had been suppressed or destroyed by colonial power. On the other, attempts continue to restore other areas which were merely distorted by European rule. Too often it was the European distortion rather than the African tradition that was passed on to the younger generations by colonial educators. As a result, youngsters throughout the continent were deprived of those portions of their heritage of which Europeans disapproved.

This is nowhere more true than in the sphere of the African supernatural. The entire network of relationships between the gods, ancestral spirits and the living, which formed so great a portion of the latters' daily lives, was initially greeted by colonial hostility and contempt. Trapped within their own religious framework, Europe's missionaries and administrators—with a few striking exceptions—were unwilling to examine what they saw. They placed every form of supernatural practitioner and practice under the labels of “witchcraft” and “witchdoctor,” while attempting to replace them with values of their own.

A few European and African scholars have opposed the general trend. Their works have probed deeply into supernatural tradition at a regional or tribal level. In West Africa, Bohannen, Debrunner, Basen and Field, in studies of Nigerian and Ghanaian societies, have investigated the relations between West African gods and their human servants.