object:1.67 - The External Soul in Folk-Custom
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
LXVII. The External Soul in Folk-Custom
1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things
THUS the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter
time in some place of security outside the body, or at all events in
the hair, is found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to
show that the idea is not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale,
but is a real article of primitive faith, which has given rise to a
corresponding set of customs.
We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for
battle, sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his
body may be invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like
intention the savage removes his soul from his body on various
occasions of real or imaginary peril. Thus among the people of
Minahassa in Celebes, when a family moves into a new house, a priest
collects the souls of the whole family in a bag, and afterwards
restores them to their owners, because the moment of entering a new
house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural danger. In
Southern Celebes, when a woman is brought to bed, the messenger who
fetches the doctor or the midwife always carries with him something
made of iron, such as a chopping-knife, which he delivers to the
doctor. The doctor must keep the thing in his house till the
confinement is over, when he gives it back, receiving a fixed sum of
money for doing so. The chopping-knife, or whatever it is,
represents the woman's soul, which at this critical time is believed
to be safer out of her body than in it. Hence the doctor must take
great care of the object; for were it lost, the woman's soul would
assuredly, they think, be lost with it.
Among the Dyaks of Pinoeh, a district of South-eastern Borneo, when
a child is born, a medicine-man is sent for, who conjures the soul
of the infant into half a coco-nut, which he thereupon covers with a
cloth and places on a square platter or charger suspended by cords
from the roof. This ceremony he repeats at every new moon for a
year. The intention of the ceremony is not explained by the writer
who describes it, but we may conjecture that it is to place the soul
of the child in a safer place than its own frail little body. This
conjecture is confirmed by the reason assigned for a similar custom
observed elsewhere in the Indian Archipelago. In the Kei Islands,
when there is a newly-born child in a house, an empty coco-nut,
split and spliced together again, may sometimes be seen hanging
beside a rough wooden image of an ancestor. The soul of the infant
is believed to be temporarily deposited in the coco-nut in order
that it may be safe from the attacks of evil spirits; but when the
child grows bigger and stronger, the soul will take up its permanent
abode in its own body. Similarly among the Esquimaux of Alaska, when
a child is sick, the medicine-man will sometimes extract its soul
from its body and place it for safe-keeping in an amulet, which for
further security he deposits in his own medicine-bag. It seems
probable that many amulets have been similarly regarded as
soul-boxes, that is, as safes in which the souls of the owners are
kept for greater security. An old Mang'anje woman in the West Shire
district of British Central Africa used to wear round her neck an
ivory ornament, hollow, and about three inches long, which she
called her life or soul. Naturally, she would not part with it; a
planter tried to buy it of her, but in vain. When Mr. James
Macdonald was one day sitting in the house of a Hlubi chief,
awaiting the appearance of that great man, who was busy decorating
his person, a native pointed to a pair of magnificent ox-horns, and
said, "Ntame has his soul in these horns." The horns were those of
an animal which had been sacrificed, and they were held sacred. A
magician had fastened them to the roof to protect the house and its
inmates from the thunder-bolt. "The idea," adds Mr. Macdonald, "is
in no way foreign to South African thought. A man's soul there may
dwell in the roof of his house, in a tree, by a spring of water, or
on some mountain scaur." Among the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula
in New Britain there is a secret society which goes by the name of
Ingniet or Ingiet. On his entrance into it every man receives a
stone in the shape either of a human being or of an animal, and
henceforth his soul is believed to be knit up in a manner with the
stone. If it breaks, it is an evil omen for him; they say that the
thunder has struck the stone and that he who owns it will soon die.
If nevertheless the man survives the breaking of his soul-stone,
they say that it was not a proper soul-stone and he gets a new one
instead. The emperor Romanus Lecapenus was once informed by an
astronomer that the life of Simeon, prince of Bulgaria, was bound up
with a certain column in Constantinople, so that if the capital of
the column were removed, Simeon would immediately die. The emperor
took the hint and removed the capital, and at the same hour, as the
emperor learned by enquiry, Simeon died of heart disease in
Bulgaria.
Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man's soul or strength is
sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his
hair is cut off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboyna
used to think that their strength was in their hair and would desert
them if it were shorn. A criminal under torture in a Dutch Court of
that island persisted in denying his guilt till his hair was cut
off, when he immediately confessed. One man, who was tried for
murder, endured without flinching the utmost ingenuity of his
torturers till he saw the surgeon standing with a pair of shears. On
asking what this was for, and being told that it was to cut his
hair, he begged they would not do it, and made a clean breast. In
subsequent cases, when torture failed to wring a confession from a
prisoner, the Dutch authorities made a practice of cutting off his
hair.
Here in Europe it used to be thought that the maleficent powers of
witches and wizards resided in their hair, and that nothing could
make any impression on the miscreants so long as they kept their
hair on. Hence in France it was customary to shave the whole bodies
of persons charged with sorcery before handing them over to the
torturer. Millaeus witnessed the torture of some persons at
Toulouse, from whom no confession could be wrung until they were
stripped and completely shaven, when they readily acknowledged the
truth of the charge. A woman also, who apparently led a pious life,
was put to the torture on suspicion of witchcraft, and bore her
agonies with incredible constancy, until complete depilation drove
her to admit her guilt. The noted inquisitor Sprenger contented
himself with shaving the head of the suspected witch or wizard; but
his more thoroughgoing colleague Cumanus shaved the whole bodies of
forty-seven women before committing them all to the flames. He had
high authority for this rigorous scrutiny, since Satan himself, in a
sermon preached from the pulpit of North Berwick church, comforted
his many servants by assuring them that no harm could befall them
"sa lang as their hair wes on, and sould newir latt ane teir fall
fra thair ene." Similarly in Bastar, a province of India, "if a man
is adjudged guilty of witchcraft, he is beaten by the crowd, his
hair is shaved, the hair being supposed to constitute his power of
mischief, his front teeth are knocked out, in order, it is said, to
prevent him from muttering incantations. . . . Women suspected of
sorcery have to undergo the same ordeal; if found guilty, the same
punishment is awarded, and after being shaved, their hair is
attached to a tree in some public place." So among the Bhils of
India, when a woman was convicted of witchcraft and had been
subjected to various forms of persuasion, such as hanging head
downwards from a tree and having pepper put into her eyes, a lock of
hair was cut from her head and buried in the ground, "that the last
link between her and her former powers of mischief might be broken."
In like manner among the Aztecs of Mexico, when wizards and witches
"had done their evil deeds, and the time came to put an end to their
detestable life, some one laid hold of them and cropped the hair on
the crown of their heads, which took from them all their power of
sorcery and enchantment, and then it was that by death they put an
end to their odious existence."
2. The External Soul in Plants
FURTHER it has been shown that in folk-tales the life of a person is
sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of
the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the
person. Among the M'Bengas in Western Africa, about the Gaboon, when
two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of
the same kind and dance round them. The life of each of the children
is believed to be bound up with the life of one of the trees; and if
the tree dies or is thrown down, they are sure that the child will
soon die. In the Cameroons, also, the life of a person is believed
to be sympathetically bound up with that of a tree. The chief of Old
Town in Calabar kept his soul in a sacred grove near a spring of
water. When some Europeans, in frolic or ignorance, cut down part of
the grove, the spirit was most indignant and threatened the
perpetrators of the deed, according to the king, with all manner of
evil.
Some of the Papuans unite the life of a new-born babe
sympathetically with that of a tree by driving a pebble into the
bark of the tree. This is supposed to give them complete mastery
over the child's life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die.
After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred
place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a
_tohu oranga_ or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the
child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured
the worst for the little one. In some parts of Fiji the navel-string
of a male infant is planted together with a coco-nut or the slip of
a breadfruit-tree, and the child's life is supposed to be intimately
connected with that of the tree. Amongst the Dyaks of Landak and
Tajan, districts of Dutch Borneo, it is customary to plant a
fruit-tree for a baby, and henceforth in the popular belief the fate
of the child is bound up with that of the tree. If the tree shoots
up rapidly, it will go well with the child; but if the tree is
dwarfed or shrivelled, nothing but misfortune can be expected for
its human counterpart.
It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany,
England, France, and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the
birth of a child. The tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child,
and it is tended with special care. The custom is still pretty
general in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland; an apple-tree is
planted for a boy and a pear-tree for a girl, and the people think
that the child will flourish or dwindle with the tree. In
Mecklenburg the afterbirth is thrown out at the foot of a young
tree, and the child is then believed to grow with the tree. Near the
Castle of Dalhousie, not far from Edinburgh, there grows an
oak-tree, called the Edgewell Tree, which is popularly believed to
be linked to the fate of the family by a mysterious tie; for they
say that when one of the family dies, or is about to die, a branch
falls from the Edgewell Tree. Thus, on seeing a great bough drop
from the tree on a quiet, still day in July 1874, an old forester
exclaimed, "The laird's deid noo!" and soon after news came that Fox
Maule, eleventh Earl of Dalhousie, was dead.
In England children are sometimes passed through a cleft ash-tree as
a cure for rupture or rickets, and thenceforward a sympathetic
connexion is supposed to exist between them and the tree. An
ash-tree which had been used for this purpose grew at the edge of
Shirley Heath, on the road from Hockly House to Birmingham. "Thomas
Chillingworth, son of the owner of an adjoining farm, now about
thirty-four, was, when an infant of a year old, passed through a
similar tree, now perfectly sound, which he preserves with so much
care that he will not suffer a single branch to be touched, for it
is believed the life of the patient depends on the life of the tree,
and the moment that is cut down, be the patient ever so distant, the
rupture returns, and a mortification ensues, and terminates in
death, as was the case in a man driving a waggon on the very road in
question." "It is not uncommon, however," adds the writer, "for
persons to survive for a time the felling of the tree." The ordinary
mode of effecting the cure is to split a young ash-sapling
longitudinally for a few feet and pass the child, naked, either
three times or three times three through the fissure at sunrise. In
the West of England it is said that the passage should be "against
the sun." As soon as the ceremony has been performed, the tree is
bound tightly up and the fissure plastered over with mud or clay.
The belief is that just as the cleft in the tree closes up, so the
rupture in the child's body will be healed; but that if the rift in
the tree remains open, the rupture in the child will remain too, and
if the tree were to die, the death of the child would surely follow.
A similar cure for various diseases, but especially for rupture and
rickets, has been commonly practised in other parts of Europe, as
Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden; but in these countries the
tree employed for the purpose is usually not an ash but an oak;
sometimes a willow-tree is allowed or even prescribed instead. In
Mecklenburg, as in England, the sympathetic relation thus
established between the tree and the child is believed to be so
close that if the tree is cut down the child will die.
3. The External Soul in Animals
BUT in practice, as in folk-tales, it is not merely with inanimate
objects and plants that a person is occasionally believed to be
united by a bond of physical sympathy. The same bond, it is
supposed, may exist between a man and an animal, so that the welfare
of the one depends on the welfare of the other, and when the animal
dies the man dies also. The analogy between the custom and the tales
is all the closer because in both of them the power of thus removing
the soul from the body and stowing it away in an animal is often a
special privilege of wizards and witches. Thus the Yakuts of Siberia
believe that every shaman or wizard keeps his soul, or one of his
souls, incarnate in an animal which is carefully concealed from all
the world. "Nobody can find my external soul," said one famous
wizard, "it lies hidden far away in the stony mountains of
Edzhigansk." Only once a year, when the last snows melt and the
earth turns black, do these external souls of wizards appear in the
shape of animals among the dwellings of men. They wander everywhere,
yet none but wizards can see them. The strong ones sweep roaring and
noisily along, the weak steal about quietly and furtively. Often
they fight, and then the wizard whose external soul is beaten, falls
ill or dies. The weakest and most cowardly wizards are they whose
souls are incarnate in the shape of dogs, for the dog gives his
human double no peace, but gnaws his heart and tears his body. The
most powerful wizards are they whose external souls have the shape
of stallions, elks, black bears, eagles, or boars. Again, the
Samoyeds of the Turukhinsk region hold that every shaman has a
familiar spirit in the shape of a boar, which he leads about by a
magic belt. On the death of the boar the shaman himself dies; and
stories are told of battles between wizards, who send their spirits
to fight before they encounter each other in person. The Malays
believe that "the soul of a person may pass into another person or
into an animal, or rather that such a mysterious relation can arise
between the two that the fate of the one is wholly dependent on that
of the other."
Among the Melanesians of Mota, one of the New Hebrides islands, the
conception of an external soul is carried out in the practice of
daily life. In the Mota language the word _tamaniu_ signifies
"something animate or inanimate which a man has come to believe to
have an existence intimately connected with his own. . . . It was
not every one in Mota who had his _tamaniu;_ only some men fancied
that they had this relation to a lizard, a snake, or it might be a
stone; sometimes the thing was sought for and found by drinking the
infusion of certain leaves and heaping together the dregs; then
whatever living thing was first seen in or upon the heap was the
_tamaniu._ It was watched but not fed or worshipped; the natives
believed that it came at call, and that the life of the man was
bound up with the life of his _tamaniu,_ if a living thing, or with
its safety; should it die, or if not living get broken or be lost,
the man would die. Hence in case of sickness they would send to see
if the _tamaniu_ was safe and well."
The theory of an external soul deposited in an animal appears to be
very prevalent in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, the
Cameroons, and the Gaboon. Among the Fans of the Gaboon every wizard
is believed at initiation to unite his life with that of some
particular wild animal by a rite of blood-brotherhood; he draws
blood from the ear of the animal and from his own arm, and
inoculates the animal with his own blood, and himself with the blood
of the beast. Henceforth such an intimate union is established
between the two that the death of the one entails the death of the
other. The alliance is thought to bring to the wizard or sorcerer a
great accession of power, which he can turn to his advantage in
various ways. In the first place, like the warlock in the fairy
tales who has deposited his life outside of himself in some safe
place, the Fan wizard now deems himself invulnerable. Moreover, the
animal with which he has exchanged blood has become his familiar,
and will obey any orders he may choose to give it; so he makes use
of it to injure and kill his enemies. For that reason the creature
with whom he establishes the relation of blood-brotherhood is never
a tame or domestic animal, but always a ferocious and dangerous wild
beast, such as a leopard, a black serpent, a crocodile, a
hippopotamus, a wild boar, or a vulture. Of all these creatures the
leopard is by far the commonest familiar of Fan wizards, and next to
it comes the black serpent; the vulture is the rarest. Witches as
well as wizards have their familiars; but the animals with which the
lives of women are thus bound up generally differ from those to
which men commit their external souls. A witch never has a panther
for her familiar, but often a venomous species of serpent, sometimes
a horned viper, sometimes a black serpent, sometimes a green one
that lives in banana-trees; or it may be a vulture, an owl, or other
bird of night. In every case the beast or bird with which the witch
or wizard has contracted this mystic alliance is an individual,
never a species; and when the individual animal dies the alliance is
naturally at an end, since the death of the animal is supposed to
entail the death of the man.
Similar beliefs are held by the natives of the Cross River valley
within the provinces of the Cameroons. Groups of people, generally
the inhabitants of a village, have chosen various animals, with
which they believe themselves to stand on a footing of intimate
friendship or relationship. Amongst such animals are hippopotamuses,
elephants, leopards, crocodiles, gorillas, fish, and serpents, all
of them creatures which are either very strong or can easily hide
themselves in the water or a thicket. This power of concealing
themselves is said to be an indispensable condition of the choice of
animal familiars, since the animal friend or helper is expected to
injure his owner's enemy by stealth; for example, if he is a
hippopotamus, he will bob up suddenly out of the water and capsize
the enemy's canoe. Between the animals and their human friends or
kinsfolk such a sympathetic relation is supposed to exist that the
moment the animal dies the man dies also, and similarly the instant
the man perishes so does the beast. From this it follows that the
animal kinsfolk may never be shot at or molested for fear of
injuring or killing the persons whose lives are knit up with the
lives of the brutes. This does not, however, prevent the people of a
village, who have elephants for their animal friends, from hunting
elephants. For they do not respect the whole species but merely
certain individuals of it, which stand in an intimate relation to
certain individual men and women; and they imagine that they can
always distinguish these brother elephants from the common herd of
elephants which are mere elephants and nothing more. The recognition
indeed is said to be mutual. When a hunter, who has an elephant for
his friend, meets a human elephant, as we may call it, the noble
animal lifts up a paw and holds it before his face, as much as to
say, "Don't shoot." Were the hunter so inhuman as to fire on and
wound such an elephant, the person whose life was bound up with the
elephant would fall ill.
The Balong of the Cameroons think that every man has several souls,
of which one is in his body and another in an animal, such as an
elephant, a wild pig, a leopard, and so forth. When a man comes
home, feeling ill, and says, "I shall soon die," and dies
accordingly, the people aver that one of his souls has been killed
in a wild pig or a leopard and that the death of the external soul
has caused the death of the soul in his body. A similar belief in
the external souls of living people is entertained by the Ibos, an
important tribe of the Niger delta. They think that a man's spirit
can quit his body for a time during life and take up its abode in an
animal. A man who wishes to acquire this power procures a certain
drug from a wise man and mixes it with his food. After that his soul
goes out and enters into an animal. If it should happen that the
animal is killed while the man's soul is lodged in it, the man dies;
and if the animal be wounded, the man's body will presently be
covered with boils. This belief instigates to many deeds of
darkness; for a sly rogue will sometimes surreptitiously administer
the magical drug to his enemy in his food, and having thus smuggled
the other's soul into an animal will destroy the creature, and with
it the man whose soul is lodged in it.
The negroes of Calabar, at the mouth of the Niger, believe that
every person has four souls, one of which always lives outside of
his or her body in the form of a wild beast in the forest. This
external soul, or bush soul, as Miss Kingsley calls it, may be
almost any animal, for example, a leopard, a fish, or a tortoise;
but it is never a domestic animal and never a plant. Unless he is
gifted with second sight, a man cannot see his own bush soul, but a
diviner will often tell him what sort of creature his bush soul is,
and after that the man will be careful not to kill any animal of
that species, and will strongly object to any one else doing so. A
man and his sons have usually the same sort of animals for their
bush souls, and so with a mother and her daughters. But sometimes
all the children of a family take after the bush soul of their
father; for example, if his external soul is a leopard, all his sons
and daughters will have leopards for their external souls. And on
the other hand, sometimes they all take after their mother; for
instance, if her external soul is a tortoise, all the external souls
of her sons and daughters will be tortoises too. So intimately bound
up is the life of the man with that of the animal which he regards
as his external or bush soul, that the death or injury of the animal
necessarily entails the death or injury of the man. And, conversely,
when the man dies, his bush soul can no longer find a place of rest,
but goes mad and rushes into the fire or charges people and is
knocked on the head, and that is an end of it.
Near Eket in North Calabar there is a sacred lake, the fish of which
are carefully preserved because the people believe that their own
souls are lodged in the fish, and that with every fish killed a
human life would be simultaneously extinguished. In the Calabar
River not very many years ago there used to be a huge old crocodile,
popularly supposed to contain the external soul of a chief who
resided in the flesh at Duke Town. Sporting vice-consuls used from
time to time to hunt the animal, and once an officer contrived to
hit it. Forthwith the chief was laid up with a wound in his leg. He
gave out that a dog had bitten him, but no doubt the wise shook
their heads and refused to be put off with so flimsy a pretext.
Again, among several tribes on the banks of the Niger between Lokoja
and the delta there prevails "a belief in the possibility of a man
possessing an _alter ego_ in the form of some animal such as a
crocodile or a hippopotamus. It is believed that such a person's
life is bound up with that of the animal to such an extent that,
whatever affects the one produces a corresponding impression upon
the other, and that if one dies the other must speedily do so too.
It happened not very long ago that an Englishman shot a hippopotamus
close to a native village; the friends of a woman who died the same
night in the village demanded and eventually obtained five pounds as
compensation for the murder of the woman."
Amongst the Zapotecs of Central America, when a woman was about to
be confined, her relations assembled in the hut, and began to draw
on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as
soon as it was completed. This went on till the moment of birth, and
the figure that then remained sketched upon the ground was called
the child's _tona_ or second self. "When the child grew old enough,
he procured the animal that represented him and took care of it, as
it was believed that health and existence were bound up with that of
the animal's, in fact that the death of both would occur
simultaneously," or rather that when the animal died the man would
die too. Among the Indians of Guatemala and Honduras the _nagual_ or
_naual_ is "that animate or inanimate object, generally an animal,
which stands in a parallel relation to a particular man, so that the
weal and woe of the man depend on the fate of the _nagual._"
According to an old writer, many Indians of Guatemala "are deluded
by the devil to believe that their life dependeth upon the life of
such and such a beast (which they take unto them as their familiar
spirit), and think that when that beast dieth they must die; when he
is chased, their hearts pant; when he is faint, they are faint; nay,
it happeneth that by the devil's delusion they appear in the shape
of that beast (which commonly by their choice is a buck, or doe, a
lion, or tigre, or dog, or eagle) and in that shape have been shot
at and wounded." The Indians were persuaded that the death of their
_nagual_ would entail their own. Legend affirms that in the first
battles with the Spaniards on the plateau of Quetzaltenango the
_naguals_ of the Indian chiefs fought in the form of serpents. The
_nagual_ of the highest chief was especially conspicuous, because it
had the form of a great bird, resplendent in green plumage. The
Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado killed the bird with his lance,
and at the same moment the Indian chief fell dead to the ground.
In many tribes of South-Eastern Australia each sex used to regard a
particular species of animals in the same way that a Central
American Indian regarded his _nagual,_ but with this difference,
that whereas the Indian apparently knew the individual animal with
which his life was bound up, the Australians only knew that each of
their lives was bound up with some one animal of the species, but
they could not say with which. The result naturally was that every
man spared and protected all the animals of the species with which
the lives of the men were bound up; and every woman spared and
protected all the animals of the species with which the lives of the
women were bound up; because no one knew but that the death of any
animal of the respective species might entail his or her own; just
as the killing of the green bird was immediately followed by the
death of the Indian chief, and the killing of the parrot by the
death of Punchkin in the fairy tale. Thus, for example, the
Wotjobaluk tribe of South-Eastern Australia "held that 'the life of
Ngunungunut (the Bat) is the life of a man, and the life of
Yrtatgurk (the Nightjar) is the life of a woman,' and that when
either of these creatures is killed the life of some man or of some
woman is shortened. In such a case every man or every woman in the
camp feared that he or she might be the victim, and from this cause
great fights arose in this tribe. I learn that in these fights, men
on one side and women on the other, it was not at all certain which
would be victorious, for at times the women gave the men a severe
drubbing with their yamsticks, while often women were injured or
killed by spears." The Wotjobaluk said that the bat was the man's
"brother" and that the nightjar was his "wife." The particular
species of animals with which the lives of the sexes were believed
to be respectively bound up varied somewhat from tribe to tribe.
Thus whereas among the Wotjobaluk the bat was the animal of the men,
at Gunbower Creek on the Lower Murray the bat seems to have been the
animal of the women, for the natives would not kill it for the
reason that "if it was killed, one of their lubras [women] would be
sure to die in consequence." But whatever the particular sorts of
creature with which the lives of men and women were believed to be
bound up, the belief itself and the fights to which it gave rise are
known to have prevailed over a large part of South-Eastern
Australia, and probably they extended much farther. The belief was a
very serious one, and so consequently were the fights which sprang
from it. Thus among some tribes of Victoria "the common bat belongs
to the men, who protect it against injury, even to the half-killing
of their wives for its sake. The fern owl, or large goatsucker,
belongs to the women, and, although a bird of evil omen, creating
terror at night by its cry, it is jealously protected by them. If a
man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their
children, and will strike him with their long poles."
The jealous protection thus afforded by Australian men and women to
bats and owls respectively (for bats and owls seem to be the
creatures usually allotted to the two sexes) is not based upon
purely selfish considerations. For each man believes that not only
his own life but the lives of his father, brothers, sons, and so on
are bound up with the lives of particular bats, and that therefore
in protecting the bat species he is protecting the lives of all his
male relations as well as his own. Similarly, each woman believes
that the lives of her mother, sisters, daughters, and so forth,
equally with her own, are bound up with the lives of particular
owls, and that in guarding the owl species she is guarding the lives
of all her female relations besides her own. Now, when men's lives
are thus supposed to be contained in certain animals, it is obvious
that the animals can hardly be distinguished from the men, or the
men from the animals. If my brother John's life is in a bat, then,
on the one hand, the bat is my brother as well as John; and, on the
other hand, John is in a sense a bat, since his life is in a bat.
Similarly, if my sister Mary's life is in an owl, then the owl is my
sister and Mary is an owl. This is a natural enough conclusion, and
the Australians have not failed to draw it. When the bat is the
man's animal, it is called his brother; and when the owl is the
woman's animal, it is called her sister. And conversely a man
addresses a woman as an owl, and she addresses him as a bat. So with
the other animals allotted to the sexes respectively in other
tribes. For example, among the Kurnai all emu-wrens were "brothers"
of the men, and all the men were emu-wrens; all superb warblers were
"sisters" of the women, and all the women were superb warblers.
But when a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his
brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem.
Accordingly in the tribes of South-Eastern Australia which we have
been considering the bat and the owl, the emu-wren and the superb
warbler, may properly be described as totems of the sexes. But the
assignation of a totem to a sex is comparatively rare, and has
hitherto been discovered nowhere but in Australia. Far more commonly
the totem is appropriated not to a sex, but to a clan, and is
hereditary either in the male or female line. The relation of an
individual to the clan totem does not differ in kind from his
relation to the sex totem; he will not kill it, he speaks of it as
his brother, and he calls himself by its name. Now if the relations
are similar, the explanation which holds good of the one ought
equally to hold good of the other. Therefore, the reason why a clan
revere a particular species of animals or plants (for the clan totem
may be a plant) and call themselves after it, would seem to be a
belief that the life of each individual of the clan is bound up with
some one animal or plant of the species, and that his or her death
would be the consequence of killing that particular animal, or
destroying that particular plant. This explanation of totemism
squares very well with Sir George Grey's definition of a totem or
_kobong_ in Western Australia. He says: "A certain mysterious
connexion exists between a family and its _kobong,_ so that a member
of the family will never kill an animal of the species to which his
_kobong_ belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed he always kills
it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to escape.
This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the
species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a great
crime, and to be carefully avoided. Similarly, a native who has a
vegetable for his _kobong_ may not gather it under certain
circumstances, and at a particular period of the year." Here it will
be observed that though each man spares all the animals or plants of
the species, they are not all equally precious to him; far from it,
out of the whole species there is only one which is specially dear
to him; but as he does not know which the dear one is, he is obliged
to spare them all from fear of injuring the one. Again, this
explanation of the clan totem harmonises with the supposed effect of
killing one of the totem species. "One day one of the blacks killed
a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) [_i.e._ a man
of the Crow clan] named Larry died. He had been ailing for some
days, but the killing of his _wingong_ [totem] hastened his death."
Here the killing of the crow caused the death of a man of the Crow
clan, exactly as, in the case of the sex-totems, the killing of a
bat causes the death of a Bat-man or the killing of an owl causes
the death of an Owl-woman. Similarly, the killing of his _nagual_
causes the death of a Central American Indian, the killing of his
bush soul causes the death of a Calabar negro, the killing of his
_tamaniu_ causes the death of a Banks Islander, and the killing of
the animal in which his life is stowed away causes the death of the
giant or warlock in the fairy tale.
Thus it appears that the story of "The giant who had no heart in his
body" may perhaps furnish the key to the relation which is supposed
to subsist between a man and his totem. The totem, on this theory,
is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life, as Punchkin
kept his life in a parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in a golden
fish. It is no valid objection to this view that when a savage has
both a sex totem and a clan totem his life must be bound up with two
different animals, the death of either of which would entail his
own. If a man has more vital places than one in his body, why, the
savage may think, should he not have more vital places than one
outside it? Why, since he can put his life outside himself, should
he not transfer one portion of it to one animal and another to
another? The divisibility of life, or, to put it otherwise, the
plurality of souls, is an idea suggested by many familiar facts, and
has commended itself to philosophers like Plato, as well as to
savages. It is only when the notion of a soul, from being a
quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological dogma that its
unity and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The savage,
unshackled by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the
assumption of as many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for
example, the Caribs supposed that there was one soul in the head,
another in the heart, and other souls at all the places where an
artery is felt pulsating. Some of the Hidatsa Indians explain the
phenomena of gradual death, when the extremities appear dead first,
by supposing that man has four souls, and that they quit the body,
not simultaneously, but one after the other, dissolution being only
complete when all four have departed. Some of the Dyaks of Borneo
and the Malays of the Peninsula believe that every man has seven
souls. The Alfoors of Poso in Celebes are of opinion that he has
three. The natives of Laos suppose that the body is the seat of
thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the
eyes, and so on. Hence, from the primitive point of view, it is
perfectly possible that a savage should have one soul in his sex
totem and another in his clan totem. However, as I have observed,
sex totems have been found nowhere but in Australia; so that as a
rule the savage who practises totemism need not have more than one
soul out of his body at a time.
If this explanation of the totem as a receptacle in which a man
keeps his soul or one of his souls is correct, we should expect to
find some totemic people of whom it is expressly said that every man
amongst them is believed to keep at least one soul permanently out
of his body, and that the destruction of this external soul is
supposed to entail the death of its owner. Such a people are the
Bataks of Sumatra. The Bataks are divided into exogamous clans
(_margas_) with descent in the male line; and each clan is forbidden
to eat the flesh of a particular animal. One clan may not eat the
tiger, another the ape, another the crocodile, another the dog,
another the cat, another the dove, another the white buffalo, and
another the locust. The reason given by members of a clan for
abstaining from the flesh of the particular animal is either that
they are descended from animals of that species, and that their
souls after death may transmigrate into the animals, or that they or
their forefathers have been under certain obligations to the
creatures. Sometimes, but not always, the clan bears the name of the
animal. Thus the Bataks have totemism in full. But, further, each
Batak believes that he has seven or, on a more moderate computation,
three souls. One of these souls is always outside the body, but
nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it may be at the
time, that same moment the man dies also. The writer who mentions
this belief says nothing about the Batak totems; but on the analogy
of the Australian, Central American, and African evidence we may
conjecture that the external soul, whose death entails the death of
the man, is housed in the totemic animal or plant.
Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the
Batak does not in set terms affirm his external soul to be in his
totem, but alleges other grounds for respecting the sacred animal or
plant of his clan. For if a savage seriously believes that his life
is bound up with an external object, it is in the last degree
unlikely that he will let any stranger into the secret. In all that
touches his inmost life and beliefs the savage is exceedingly
suspicious and reserved; Europeans have resided among savages for
years without discovering some of their capital articles of faith,
and in the end the discovery has often been the result of accident.
Above all, the savage lives in an intense and perpetual dread of
assassination by sorcery; the most trifling relics of his
person--the clippings of his hair and nails, his spittle, the
remnants of his food, his very name--all these may, he fancies, be
turned by the sorcerer to his destruction, and he is therefore
anxiously careful to conceal or destroy them. But if in matters such
as these, which are but the outposts and outworks of his life, he is
so shy and secretive, how close must be the concealment, how
impenetrable the reserve in which he enshrouds the inner keep and
citadel of his being! When the princess in the fairy tale asks the
giant where he keeps his soul, he often gives false or evasive
answers, and it is only after much coaxing and wheedling that the
secret is at last wrung from him. In his jealous reticence the giant
resembles the timid and furtive savage; but whereas the exigencies
of the story demand that the giant should at last reveal his secret,
no such obligation is laid on the savage; and no inducement that can
be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing
its hiding-place to a stranger. It is therefore no matter for
surprise that the central mystery of the savage's life should so
long have remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it
together from scattered hints and fragments and from the
recollections of it which linger in fairy tales.
4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection
THIS view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of
which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been
offered. Amongst many savage tribes, especially such as are known to
practice totemism, it is customary for lads at puberty to undergo
certain initiatory rites, of which one of the commonest is a
pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to life again. Such
rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance
consists in extracting the youth's soul in order to transfer it to
his totem. For the extraction of his soul would naturally be
supposed to kill the youth or at least to throw him into a
death-like trance, which the savage hardly distinguishes from death.
His recovery would then be attributed either to the gradual recovery
of his system from the violent shock which it had received, or, more
probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from the
totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they
consist in a simulation of death and resurrection, would be an
exchange of life or souls between the man and his totem. The
primitive belief in the possibility of such an exchange of souls
comes clearly out in a story of a Basque hunter who affirmed that he
had been killed by a bear, but that the bear had, after killing him,
breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear's body was now
dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the bear's soul.
This revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous to
what, on the theory here suggested, is supposed to take place in the
ceremony of killing a lad at puberty and bringing him to life again.
The lad dies as a man and comes to life again as an animal; the
animal's soul is now in him, and his human soul is in the animal.
With good right, therefore, does he call himself a Bear or a Wolf,
etc., according to his totem; and with good right does he treat the
bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren, since in these animals
are lodged the souls of himself and his kindred.
Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at initiation are
as follows. In the Wonghi or Wonghibon tribe of New South Wales the
youths on approaching manhood are initiated at a secret ceremony,
which none but initiated men may witness. Part of the proceedings
consists in knocking out a tooth and giving a new name to the
novice, indicative of the change from youth to manhood. While the
teeth are being knocked out an instrument known as a bull-roarer,
which consists of a flat piece of wood with serrated edges tied to
the end of a string, is swung round so as to produce a loud humming
noise. The uninitiated are not allowed to see this instrument. Women
are forbidden to witness the ceremonies under pain of death. It is
given out that the youths are each met in turn by a mythical being,
called Thuremlin (more commonly known as Daramulun) who takes the
youth to a distance, kills him, and in some instances cuts him up,
after which he restores him to life and knocks out a tooth. Their
belief in the power of Thuremlin is said to be undoubted.
The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River said that at initiation the
boy met a ghost, who killed him and brought him to life again as a
young man. Among the natives on the Lower Lachlan and Murray Rivers
it was Thrumalun (Daramulun) who was thought to slay and resuscitate
the novices. In the Unmatjera tribe of Central Australia women and
children believe that a spirit called Twanyirika kills the youth and
afterwards brings him to life again during the period of initiation.
The rites of initiation in this tribe, as in the other Central
tribes, comprise the operations of circumcision and subincision; and
as soon as the second of these has been performed on him, the young
man receives from his father a sacred stick (_churinga_), with
which, he is told, his spirit was associated in the remotest past.
While he is out in the bush recovering from his wounds, he must
swing the bull-roarer, or a being who lives up in the sky will swoop
down and carry him off. In the Binbinga tribe, on the western coast
of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the women and children believe that the
noise of the bull-roarer at initiation is made by a spirit named
Katajalina, who lives in an ant-hill and comes out and eats up the
boy, afterwards restoring him to life. Similarly among their
neighbours the Anula the women imagine that the droning sound of the
bull-roarer is produced by a spirit called Gnabaia, who swallows the
lads at initiation and afterwards disgorges them in the form of
initiated men.
Among the tribes settled on the southern coast of New South Wales,
of which the Coast Murring tribe may be regarded as typical, the
drama of resurrection from the dead was exhibited in a graphic form
to the novices at initiation. The ceremony has been described for us
by an eye-witness. A man, disguised with stringy bark fibre, lay
down in a grave and was lightly covered up with sticks and earth. In
his hand he held a small bush, which appeared to be growing in the
soil, and other bushes were stuck in the ground to heighten the
effect. Then the novices were brought and placed beside the grave.
Next, a procession of men, disguised in stringy bark fibre, drew
near. They represented a party of medicine-men, guided by two
reverend seniors, who had come on pilgrimage to the grave of a
brother medicine-man, who lay buried there. When the little
procession, chanting an invocation to Daramulun, had defiled from
among the rocks and trees into the open, it drew up on the side of
the grave opposite to the novices, the two old men taking up a
position in the rear of the dancers. For some time the dance and
song went on till the tree that seemed to grow from the grave began
to quiver. "Look there!" cried the men to the novices, pointing to
the trembling leaves. As they looked, the tree quivered more and
more, then was violently agitated and fell to the ground, while amid
the excited dancing of the dancers and the chanting of the choir the
supposed dead man spurned from him the superincumbent mass of sticks
and leaves, and springing to his feet danced his magic dance in the
grave itself, and exhibited in his mouth the magic substances which
he was supposed to have received from Daramulun in person.
Some tribes of Northern New Guinea--the Yabim, Bukaua, Kai, and
Tami--like many Australian tribes, require every male member of the
tribe to be circumcised before he ranks as a full-grown man; and the
tribal initiation, of which circumcision is the central feature, is
conceived by them, as by some Australian tribes, as a process of
being swallowed and disgorged by a mythical monster, whose voice is
heard in the humming sound of the bull-roarer. Indeed the New Guinea
tribes not only impress this belief on the minds of women and
children, but enact it in a dramatic form at the actual rites of
initiation, at which no woman or uninitiated person may be present.
For this purpose a hut about a hundred feet long is erected either
in the village or in a lonely part of the forest. It is modelled in
the shape of the mythical monster; at the end which represents his
head it is high, and it tapers away at the other end. A betel-palm,
grubbed up with the roots, stands for the backbone of the great
being and its clustering fibres for his hair; and to complete the
resemblance the butt end of the building is adorned by a native
artist with a pair of goggle eyes and a gaping mouth. When after a
tearful parting from their mothers and women folk, who believe or
pretend to believe in the monster that swallows their dear ones, the
awe-struck novices are brought face to face with this imposing
structure, the huge creature emits a sullen growl, which is in fact
no other than the humming note of bull-roarers swung by men
concealed in the monster's belly. The actual process of deglutition
is variously enacted. Among the Tami it is represented by causing
the candidates to defile past a row of men who hold bull-roarers
over their heads; among the Kai it is more graphically set forth by
making them pass under a scaffold on which stands a man, who makes a
gesture of swallowing and takes in fact a gulp of water as each
trembling novice passes beneath him. But the present of a pig,
opportunely offered for the redemption of the youth, induces the
monster to relent and disgorge his victim; the man who represents
the monster accepts the gift vicariously, a gurgling sound is heard,
and the water which had just been swallowed descends in a jet on the
novice. This signifies that the young man has been released from the
monster's belly. However, he has now to undergo the more painful and
dangerous operation of circumcision. It follows immediately, and the
cut made by the knife of the operator is explained to be a bite or
scratch which the monster inflicted on the novice in spewing him out
of his capacious maw. While the operation is proceeding, a
prodigious noise is made by the swinging of bull-roarers to
represent the roar of the dreadful being who is in the act of
swallowing the young man.
When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the
operation, he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing
mother is told that the monster has a pig's stomach as well as a
human stomach, and that unfortunately her son slipped into the wrong
stomach, from which it was impossible to extricate him. After they
have been circumcised the lads must remain for some months in
seclusion, shunning all contact with women and even the sight of
them. They live in the long hut which represents the monster's
belly. When at last the lads, now ranking as initiated men, are
brought back with great pomp and ceremony to the village, they are
received with sobs and tears of joy by the women, as if the grave
had given up its dead. At first the young men keep their eyes
rigidly closed or even sealed with a plaster of chalk, and they
appear not to understand the words of command which are given them
by an elder. Gradually, however, they come to themselves as if
awakening from a stupor, and next day they bathe and wash off the
crust of white chalk with which their bodies had been coated.
It is highly significant that all these tribes of New Guinea apply
the same word to the bull-roarer and to the monster, who is supposed
to swallow the novices at circumcision, and whose fearful roar is
represented by the hum of the harmless wooden instruments. Further,
it deserves to be noted that in three languages out of the four the
same word which is applied to the bull-roarer and to the monster
means also a ghost or spirit of the dead, while in the fourth
language (the Kai) it signifies "grandfather." From this it seems to
follow that the being who swallows and disgorges the novices at
initiation is believed to be a powerful ghost or ancestral spirit,
and that the bull-roarer, which bears his name, is his material
representative. That would explain the jealous secrecy with which
the sacred implement is kept from the sight of women. While they are
not in use, the bull-roarers are stowed away in the men's
club-houses, which no woman may enter; indeed no woman or
uninitiated person may set eyes on a bull-roarer under pain of
death. Similarly among the Tugeri or Kaya-Kaya, a large Papuan tribe
on the south coast of Dutch New Guinea, the name of the bull-roarer,
which they call _sosom,_ is given to a mythical giant, who is
supposed to appear every year with the south-east monsoon. When he
comes, a festival is held in his honour and bull-roarers are swung.
Boys are presented to the giant, and he kills them, but
considerately brings them to life again.
In certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian
Islands, the drama of death and resurrection used to be acted with
much solemnity before the eyes of young men at initiation. In a
sacred enclosure they were shown a row of dead or seemingly dead men
lying on the ground, their bodies cut open and covered with blood,
their entrails protruding. But at a yell from the high priest the
counterfeit dead men started to their feet and ran down to the river
to cleanse themselves from the blood and guts of pigs with which
they were beslobbered. Soon they marched back to the sacred
enclosure as if come to life, clean, fresh, and garlanded, swaying
their bodies in time to the music of a solemn hymn, and took their
places in front of the novices. Such was the drama of death and
resurrection.
The people of Rook, an island between New Guinea and New Britain,
hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads
covered with wooden masks, go dancing through the village, followed
by all the other men. They demand that the circumcised boys who have
not yet been swallowed by Marsaba (the devil) shall be given up to
them. The boys, trembling and shrieking, are delivered to them, and
must creep between the legs of the disguised men. Then the
procession moves through the village again, and announces that
Marsaba has eaten up the boys, and will not disgorge them till he
receives a present of pigs, taro, and so forth. So all the
villagers, according to their means, contribute provisions, which
are then consumed in the name of Marsaba.
In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian
association. Modern writers have commonly regarded this association
as primarily a political league instituted to resist foreign
domination. In reality its objects are purely religious and social,
though it is possible that the priests may have occasionally used
their powerful influence for political ends. The society is in fact
merely one of those widely-diffused primitive institutions, of which
a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent years the
true nature of the association has been duly recognised by the
distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house
is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the
depth of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it
is impossible to see what goes on in it. Every village has such a
house. Thither the boys who are to be initiated are conducted
blindfold, followed by their parents and relations. Each boy is led
by the hand of two men, who act as his sponsors or guardians,
looking after him during the period of initiation. When all are
assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon the
devils. Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the
shed. It is made by men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly
introduced into the building by a back door, but the women and
children think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified.
Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one at a
time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a
dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword
or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the
shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that
the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to
regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the
mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their
children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through
an opening made in the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's
beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The
boys remain in the shed for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark,
they hear the blast of the bamboo trumpets, and from time to time
the sound of musket shots and the clash of swords. Every day they
bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a yellow dye, to
give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the devil.
During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two crosses
tattooed with thorns on his breast or arm. When they are not
sleeping, the lads must sit in a crouching posture without moving a
muscle. As they sit in a row cross-legged, with their hands
stretched out, the chief takes his trumpet, and placing the mouth of
it on the hands of each lad, speaks through it in strange tones,
imitating the voice of the spirits. He warns the lads, under pain of
death, to observe the rules of the Kakian society, and never to
reveal what has passed in the Kakian house. The novices are also
told by the priests to behave well to their blood relations, and are
taught the traditions and secrets of the tribe.
Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have gone home to weep
and mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted as guardians or
sponsors to the novices return to the village with the glad tidings
that the devil, at the intercession of the priests, has restored the
lads to life. The men who bring this news come in a fainting state
and daubed with mud, like messengers freshly arrived from the nether
world. Before leaving the Kakian house, each lad receives from the
priest a stick adorned at both ends with a cock's or cassowary's
feathers. The sticks are supposed to have been given to the lads by
the devil at the time when he restored them to life, and they serve
as a token that the youths have been in the spirit land. When they
return to their homes they totter in their walk, and enter the house
backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk properly; or they
enter the house by the back door. If a plate of food is given to
them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their
wants by signs only. All this is to show that they are still under
the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their sponsors have to
teach them all the common acts of life, as if they were newborn
children. Further, upon leaving the Kakian house the boys are
strictly forbidden to eat of certain fruits until the next
celebration of the rites has taken place. And for twenty or thirty
days their hair may not be combed by their mothers or sisters. At
the end of that time the high priest takes them to a lonely place in
the forest, and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of
their heads. After these initiatory rites the lads are deemed men,
and may marry; it would be a scandal if they married before.
In the region of the Lower Congo a simulation of death and
resurrection is, or rather used to be, practised by the members of a
guild or secret society called _ndembo._ "In the practice of Ndembo
the initiating doctors get some one to fall down in a pretended fit,
and in that state he is carried away to an enclosed place outside
the town. This is called 'dying Ndembo.' Others follow suit,
generally boys and girls, but often young men and women. . . . They
are supposed to have died. But the parents and friends supply food,
and after a period varying, according to custom, from three months
to three years, it is arranged that the doctor shall bring them to
life again. . . . When the doctor's fee has been paid, and money
(goods) saved for a feast, the _Ndembo_ people are brought to life.
At first they pretend to know no one and nothing; they do not even
know how to masticate food, and friends have to perform that office
for them. They want everything nice that any one uninitiated may
have, and beat them if it is not granted, or even strangle and kill
people. They do not get into trouble for this, because it is thought
that they do not know better. Sometimes they carry on the pretence
of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they had returned from the
spirit-world. After this they are known by another name, peculiar to
those who have 'died Ndembo.' . . . We hear of the custom far along
on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region."
Among some of the Indian tribes of North America there exist certain
religious associations which are only open to candidates who have
gone through a pretence of being killed and brought to life again.
In 1766 or 1767 Captain Jonathan Carver witnessed the admission of a
candidate to an association called "the friendly society of the
Spirit" (_Wakon-Kitchewah_) among the Naudowessies, a Siouan or
Dacotan tribe in the region of the great lakes. The candidate knelt
before the chief, who told him that "he himself was now agitated by
the same spirit which he should in a few moments communicate to him;
that it would strike him dead, but that he would instantly be
restored again to life; to this he added, that the communication,
however terrifying, was a necessary introduction to the advantages
enjoyed by the community into which he was on the point of being
admitted. As he spoke this, he appeared to be greatly agitated; till
at last his emotions became so violent, that his countenance was
distorted, and his whole frame convulsed. At this juncture he threw
something that appeared both in shape and colour like a small bean,
at the young man, which seemed to enter his mouth, and he instantly
fell as motionless as if he had been shot." For a time the man lay
like dead, but under a shower of blows he showed signs of
consciousness, and finally, discharging from his mouth the bean, or
whatever it was that the chief had thrown at him, he came to life.
In other tribes, for example, the Ojebways, Winnebagoes, and Dacotas
or Sioux, the instrument by which the candidate is apparently slain
is the medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal (such
as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel),
of which it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society
has one of these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make
up his "medicine" or charms. "They believe that from the
miscellaneous contents in the belly of the skin bag or animal there
issues a spirit or breath, which has the power, not only to knock
down and kill a man, but also to set him up and restore him to
life." The mode of killing a man with one of these medicine-bags is
to thrust it at him; he falls like dead, but a second thrust of the
bag restores him to life.
A ceremony witnessed by the castaway John R. Jewitt during his
captivity among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless belongs to
this class of customs. The Indian king or chief "discharged a pistol
close to his son's ear, who immediately fell down as if killed, upon
which all the women of the house set up a most lamentable cry,
tearing handfuls of hair from their heads, and exclaiming that the
prince was dead; at the same time a great number of the inhabitants
rushed into the house armed with their daggers, muskets, etc.,
enquiring the cause of their outcry. These were immediately followed
by two others dressed in wolf-skins, with masks over their faces
representing the head of that animal. The latter came in on their
hands and feet in the manner of a beast, and taking up the prince,
carried him off upon their backs, retiring in the same manner they
entered." In another place Jewitt mentions that the young prince--a
lad of about eleven years of age--wore a mask in imitation of a
wolf's head. Now, as the Indians of this part of America are divided
into totem clans, of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal,
and as the members of each clan are in the habit of wearing some
portion of the totem animal about their person, it is probable that
the prince belonged to the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony
described by Jewitt represented the killing of the lad in order that
he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the
Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to have come
to life again as a bear.
This conjectural explanation of the ceremony has, since it was first
put forward, been to some extent confirmed by the researches of Dr.
Franz Boas among these Indians; though it would seem that the
community to which the chief's son thus obtained admission was not
so much a totem clan as a secret society called Tlokoala, whose
members imitated wolves. Every new member of the society must be
initiated by the wolves. At night a pack of wolves, personated by
Indians dressed in wolf-skins and wearing wolf-masks, make their
appearance, seize the novice, and carry him into the woods. When the
wolves are heard outside the village, coming to fetch away the
novice, all the members of the society blacken their faces and sing,
"Among all the tribes is great excitement, because I am Tlokoala."
Next day the wolves bring back the novice dead, and the members of
the society have to revive him. The wolves are supposed to have put
a magic stone into his body, which must be removed before he can
come to life. Till this is done the pretended corpse is left lying
outside the house. Two wizards go and remove the stone, which
appears to be quartz, and then the novice is resuscitated. Among the
Niska Indians of British Columbia, who are divided into four
principal clans with the raven, the wolf, the eagle, and the bear
for their respective totems, the novice at initiation is always
brought back by an artificial totem animal. Thus when a man was
about to be initiated into a secret society called Olala, his
friends drew their knives and pretended to kill him. In reality they
let him slip away, while they cut off the head of a dummy which had
been adroitly substituted for him. Then they laid the decapitated
dummy down and covered it over, and the women began to mourn and
wail. His relations gave a funeral banquet and solemnly burnt the
effigy. In short, they held a regular funeral. For a whole year the
novice remained absent and was seen by none but members of the
secret society. But at the end of that time he came back alive,
carried by an artificial animal which represented his totem.
In these ceremonies the essence of the rite appears to be the
killing of the novice in his character of a man and his restoration
to life in the form of the animal which is thenceforward to be, if
not his guardian spirit, at least linked to him in a peculiarly
intimate relation. It is to be remembered that the Indians of
Guatemala, whose life was bound up with an animal, were supposed to
have the power of appearing in the shape of the particular creature
with which they were thus sympathetically united. Hence it seems not
unreasonable to conjecture that in like manner the Indians of
British Columbia may imagine that their life depends on the life of
some one of that species of creature to which they assimilate
themselves by their costume. At least if that is not an article of
belief with the Columbian Indians of the present day, it may very
well have been so with their ancestors in the past, and thus may
have helped to mould the rites and ceremonies both of the totem
clans and of the secret societies. For though these two sorts of
communities differ in respect of the mode in which membership of
them is obtained--a man being born into his totem clan but admitted
into a secret society later in life--we can hardly doubt that they
are near akin and have their root in the same mode of thought. That
thought, if I am right, is the possibility of establishing a
sympathetic relation with an animal, a spirit, or other mighty
being, with whom a man deposits for safe-keeping his soul or some
part of it, and from whom he receives in return a gift of magical
powers.
Thus, on the theory here suggested, wherever totemism is found, and
wherever a pretence is made of killing and bringing to life again
the novice at initiation, there may exist or have existed not only a
belief in the possibility of permanently depositing the soul in some
external object--animal, plant, or what not--but an actual intention
of so doing. If the question is put, why do men desire to deposit
their life outside their bodies? the answer can only be that, like
the giant in the fairy tale, they think it safer to do so than to
carry it about with them, just as people deposit their money with a
banker rather than carry it on their persons. We have seen that at
critical periods the life or soul is sometimes temporarily stowed
away in a safe place till the danger is past. But institutions like
totemism are not resorted to merely on special occasions of danger;
they are systems into which every one, or at least every male, is
obliged to be initiated at a certain period of life. Now the period
of life at which initiation takes place is regularly puberty; and
this fact suggests that the special danger which totemism and
systems like it are intended to obviate is supposed not to arise
till sexual maturity has been attained, in fact, that the danger
apprehended is believed to attend the relation of the sexes to each
other. It would be easy to prove by a long array of facts that the
sexual relation is associated in the primitive mind with many
serious perils; but the exact nature of the danger apprehended is
still obscure. We may hope that a more exact acquaintance with
savage modes of thought will in time disclose this central mystery
of primitive society, and will thereby furnish the clue, not only to
totemism, but to the origin of the marriage system.
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