(M168) 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 Ngŭnŭngŭnŭt (the Bat) is

the life of a man, and the life of Yártatgŭrk (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.”(575) 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.”(576) In the Kurnai tribe of

Gippsland the emu-wren (_Stipiturus malachurus_) was the “man’s brother”

and the superb warbler (_Malurus cyaneus_) was the “woman’s sister”; at

the initiation of young men into the tribal mysteries the name of the

emu-wren was invoked over the novices for the purpose of infusing manly

virtue into them.(577) Among the Yuin on the south-eastern coast of

Australia, the “woman’s sister” was the tree-creeper (_Climacteris

scandens_), and the men had both the bat and the emu-wren for their

“brothers.”(578) In the Kulin nation each sex had a pair of “brothers” and

“sisters”; the men had the bat and the emu-wren for their “brothers,” and

the women had the superb warbler and the small nightjar for their

“sisters.”(579) It is notable that in South-Eastern Australia the animals

thus associated with the lives of men and women were generally flying

creatures, either birds or bats. However, in the Port Lincoln tribe of

South Australia the man’s “brother” and the woman’s “sister” seem to have

been identified with the male and female respectively of a species of

lizard; for we read that “a small kind of lizard, the male of which is

called _ibirri_, and the female _waka_, is said to have divided the sexes

in the human species; an event that would appear not to be much approved

of by the natives, since either sex has a mortal hatred against the

opposite sex of these little animals, the men always destroying the _waka_

and the women the _ibirri_.”(580) 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.(581) 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.”(582)

(M169) 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)(583) 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.(584) 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.(585)

§ 4. A Suggested Theory of Totemism.(586)

(M170) 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 connection 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.”(587) 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 harmonizes 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.”(588) 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.

(M171) 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,(589) as well as to savages.

It finds favour also with the sages of China, who tell us that every human

being is provided with what may be called a male soul (_shen_) and a

female soul (_kwei_), which by their harmonious co-operation compose an

organic unity. However, some Chinese philosophers will have it that each

of the five viscera has its own separate male soul (_shen_); and a Taoist

treatise written about the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh

century has even enriched science with a list of about three dozen souls

distributed over the various parts of the human frame; indeed, not content

with a bare catalogue of these souls, the learned author has annexed to

the name and surname of each a brief description of its size and stature,

of the kind of dress in which it is clothed and the shape of hat it

wears.(590) 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.(591) 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.(592) Some of

the Dyaks of Borneo and the Malays of the Peninsula believe that every man

has seven souls.(593) The Alfoors of Poso in Celebes are of opinion that

he has three.(594) 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.(595) 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.(596)

(M172) 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 Battas of Sumatra. The Battas

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.(597) Thus the Battas have

totemism in full. But, further, each Batta 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.(598) The writer

who mentions this belief says nothing about the Batta 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.

(M173) Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the

Batta 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.(599) 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(600)—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.

§ 5. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection.

(M174) 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 practise

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 the story of the 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.(601) 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.

(M175) 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 attend a meeting of the tribe. The

ceremonies of initiation are secret, and at them none but the men of the

tribe who have been initiated attend with the novices. At the spot where

the ceremonies are to be performed, a large oval space is cleared. The old

men of the tribe conduct the ceremonies, and the ‘medicine man’ of the

tribe is the master of them. Part of the proceedings consists in knocking

out a tooth and giving a new designation to the novice, indicating the

change from youth to manhood. When the tooth is knocked out, a loud

humming noise is heard, which is made with an instrument of the following

description: a flat piece of wood is made with serrated edges, and having

a hole at one end, to which a string is attached, and this swung round

produces a humming noise. The uninitiated are not even allowed to see this

instrument. Women are forbidden to be present at these ceremonies, and

should one, by accident or otherwise, witness them, the penalty is death.

The penalty for revealing the secrets is probably the same. When

everything is prepared the women and children are covered with boughs, and

the men retire, with the young fellows who are to be initiated, to a

little distance. It is said that the youths are sent away a short distance

one by one, and that they are each met in turn by a Being, who, so far as

I can understand, is believed to be something between a blackfellow and a

spirit. This Being, called Thuremlin, it is said, 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 undoubted.”(602)

(M176) The foregoing account, while it applies strictly to one tribe only,

may be regarded as typical of the initiation ceremonies performed on young

men throughout the tribes of South-Eastern and Central Australia, except

that among the Central tribes the practice of knocking out a tooth on

these occasions is replaced by the equally mysterious and much severer

bodily mutilations of circumcision and subincision, which are not

practised by the tribes of the South-East.(603) The instrument whose

humming or booming sound accompanies the critical operation of knocking

out the tooth of the novice, is the now well-known bull-roarer, which

figures in many savage rites of initiation. Its true nature is concealed

from the women and uninitiated lads, who are taught to believe that its

sonorous and long-drawn notes are the voice of the mythical being, often

called Daramulun, who lives in the sky, instituted the rites, and

superintends their performance. The hollow roar of the slat of wood, as it

is swung round and round, “represents the muttering of thunder, and the

thunder is the voice of Daramulun, and therefore its sound is of the most

sacred character. Umbara once said to me, ‘Thunder is the voice of him

(pointing upward to the sky) calling on the rain to fall and make

everything grow up new.’ ”(604) This supposed resemblance of the sound to

thunder probably explains a certain use which the Dieri, a tribe of

Central Australia, made of the instrument. When a young man had passed

through an initiatory rite, which consisted in cutting a row of gashes in

his back, he was given a bull-roarer, and when he went out in search of

game, he used to twirl the implement in the belief that by doing so, while

his wounds were still unhealed, he created a good harvest of snakes,

lizards, and other reptiles, which the natives employ as food; but on the

contrary they imagined that these supplies of food would be cut off for

ever, if a woman were to see a bull-roarer which had been swung at the

rites of initiation.(605) No doubt these savages, living in a parched

wilderness where the existence of plants and animals depends on rare and

irregular showers,(606) have observed that the fall of rain is regularly

followed by a great and sudden increase in the food supply, and that this

increase is most marked after violent thunder-storms. Hence by making a

noise like thunder with the help of bull-roarers they probably hope, on

the principle of imitative magic, to bring on a thunder-storm and with it

a fertilizing deluge of rain.

(M177) For the same reason in the parched and torrid regions of Arizona

and New Mexico the Indians make great use of the bull-roarer in their

ceremonies for procuring rain. For example, when Captain Bourke was at the

Pueblo Indian village of Walpi in the month of August, 1881, he saw the

instrument in use at the snake dance. “The medicine-men twirled it

rapidly, and with a uniform motion, about the head and from front to rear,

and succeeded in faithfully imitating the sound of a gust of rain-laden

wind. As explained to me by one of the medicine-men, by making this sound

they compelled the wind and rain to come to the aid of the crops. At a

later date I found it in use among the Apache, and for the same

purpose.”(607) The Zuñi Indians of New Mexico whirl bull-roarers “to

create enthusiasm” among the mythical beings who are supposed to cause

rain, or for the purpose of making them gather in the air over the

village.(608) In a Zuñi rain-making ceremony, while one medicine-man

whirls a bull-roarer, another whips up a mixture of water and meal into

frothy suds symbolic of clouds, and a third plays a flute. “All this is an

invocation to the gods for rain—the one great and perpetual prayer of the

people of this arid land.”(609) This supposed connexion of the instrument

with thunder-storms explains why the Navajos of the same torrid country

say that the bull-roarer should always be made of wood from a pine-tree

that has been struck by lightning;(610) and why the Bakairi of Brazil call

the unpretentious instrument by a name that means “thunder and

lightning.”(611) The resemblance of the sound of the bull-roarer to the

roaring of the wind is doubtless the reason why in the Torres Straits

Islands wizards whirled bull-roarers in order to make the wind to

blow,(612) and why, when Caffres wish for calm weather, they forbid boys

to play with bull-roarers, because they think that the booming noise

attracts a gale of wind.(613) Hence, as an instrument whose sound

resembles the rumbling of thunder, the roar of wind, and the patter of

rain, the bull-roarer is naturally swung by agricultural savages as a

powerful means of promoting the growth of the crops. In the island of

Kiwai, off the mouth of the Fly River in British New Guinea, bull-roarers

are whirled in order to ensure a good crop of yams, sweet potatoes, and

bananas.(614) Similarly the Yabim of German New Guinea imagine that by

twirling bull-roarers while they mention the names of the dead they

produce a fine crop of taro.(615)

(M178) But why among the Dieri of Central Australia should the power of

attracting rain and so ensuring a supply of food be specially attributed

to a young man whose back has just been scored and whose wounds are still

raw? Perhaps the reason may be that the blood dripping from the gashes is

thought to resemble rain and therefore to be endowed with a magical

potency of drawing showers from the clouds. The conjecture is confirmed by

the observation that the Dieri actually do bleed themselves avowedly for

the purpose of making rain, and they are not the only people in Australia

and elsewhere who have resorted to this singular mode of putting an end to

a drought.(616) Altogether the foregoing evidence seems to hint that the

whole virtue of the bull-roarer resides, as its English name implies, in

its voice, and that its original significance was simply that of a magical

instrument for causing thunder, wind, and rain.(617) When these natural

phenomena came to be personified as spirits, the sound of the bull-roarer

was naturally interpreted as their voice.

(M179) Among the tribes on the Brisbane River in Queensland the weird

sound of the bull-roarers swung at initiation was believed by the women

and children to be made by the wizards in swallowing the boys and bringing

them up again as young men. The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River said

that 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.(618) In the Arunta tribe of Central Australia, at the moment when

the lads are being circumcised, the bull-roarer sounds in the darkness all

round the ceremonial ground; and the awestruck women, listening in the

distance, believe that it is the voice of a spirit called Twanyirika, who

lives in wild and inaccessible regions and only comes out when a youth is

initiated. They think that the spirit enters the body of the lad after the

operation of circumcision has been performed and carries him away into the

bush, keeping him there till his wound is healed. While the newly

circumcised youth is out in the wilds, carefully secluded from the sight

of the women and children, he constantly sounds the bull-roarer. When he

has recovered from the wound, the spirit leaves him and he returns to camp

an initiated, or rather partially initiated, man. He has learned, at all

events, the secret of Twanyirika; for no sooner is he circumcised than an

elder brother comes up to him, and placing in his hands a bundle of sacred

sticks or stones (_churinga_), says, “Here is Twanyirika, of whom you have

heard so much. They are _churinga_ and will help you to heal quickly;

guard them well, or else you and your mothers and sisters will be

killed.”(619)

(M180) In this account nothing is said about killing the lad and bringing

him to life again; but a belief in the death and resurrection of the

novices at initiation is expressly affirmed to be part of the feminine

creed in other tribes of Central Australia. Thus in the Unmatjera tribe

both women and children believe that 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.(620) In the

Urabunna tribe of Central Australia a lad at initiation receives a

bull-roarer, the very name of which (_chimbaliri_) is never heard by women

and children. They are taught to believe that the sound of it is the voice

of a spirit called Witurna, who takes the boy away, cuts out all his

bowels, provides him with a new set, and brings him back an initiated

youth. The lad is warned that on no account may he allow a woman or a

child to see the sacred stick, else he and his mother and sisters will

fall down as dead as stones.(621) 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.(622) 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. In this tribe,

after a lad has been subincised as well as circumcised, he is presented

with a bull-roarer and informed that the instrument was originally made by

the whirlwind, that it is sacred or tabooed, and that it may on no account

be shewn to women or children.(623)

(M181) 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. Before they were privileged to witness this edifying

spectacle they had been raised to the dignity of manhood by an old man,

who promoted them to their new status by the simple process of knocking a

tooth out of the mouth of each with the help of a wooden chisel and

hammer. The ceremony of the resurrection has been described for us in

detail by an eye-witness, the late Dr. A. W. Howitt, one of the best

authorities on the customs of the Australian aborigines. The scene

selected for the sacred drama was the bottom of a deep valley, where a

sluggish stream wound through a bed of tall sharp-edged sedge. Though the

hour was between ten and eleven o’clock in the morning, the sun had but

just peeped over the mountains which enclosed the valley like a wall on

the east; and while the upper slopes, clothed with a forest of tall rowan

trees, looked warm and bright in sunshine, which shot between the grey

stems and under the light feathery foliage of the trees, all the bottom of

the dell was still in deep shadow and dank with the moisture of the

night’s rain. While the novices rested and warmed themselves at a

crackling fire, the initiated men laid their heads together, prepared a

stock of decorations made of stringy bark, and dug a grave. There was some

discussion as to the shape of the grave, but the man who was to be buried

in it decided the question by declaring that he would be laid in it on his

back at full length. He was a man of the eagle-hawk totem and belonged to

the tribal subdivision called Yibai. So while two men under his directions

were digging the grave with sticks in the friable granitic soil, he

superintended the costume of the other actors in the drama. Sheets of bark

were beaten out into fleeces of stringy fibre, and in these garments six

performers were clothed from head to foot so that not even a glimpse could

be obtained of their faces. Four of them were tied together by a cord

which was fastened to the back of their heads, and each of them carried

two pieces of bark in his hands. The other two walked free, but hobbled

along bent double and supporting their tottery steps on staves to mark the

weight of years; for they played the part of two medicine-men of venerable

age and great magical power. By this time the grave was ready, and the

eagle-hawk man stretched himself in it at full length on a bed of leaves,

his head resting on a rolled-up blanket, just as if he were a corpse. In

his two hands, crossed on his chest, he held the stem of a young tree

(_Persoonia linearis_), which had been pulled up by the roots and now

stood planted on his chest, so that the top of it rose several feet above

the level of the ground. A light covering of dried sticks filled the

grave, and dead leaves, tufts of grass, and small plants were artistically

arranged over them so as to complete the illusion. All being now ready,

the novices were led by their sisters’ husbands to the grave and placed in

a row beside it, while a singer, perched on the trunk of a fallen tree at

the head of the grave, crooned a melancholy ditty, the song of Yibai.

Though the words of the song consisted merely of a monotonous repetition

of the words _Burrin-burrin Yibai_, that is, Stringy-bark Yibai, they were

understood to refer to the eagle-hawk totem, as well as to the tribal

subdivision of the buried man. Then to the slow, plaintive but well-marked

air of the song the actors began to move forward, winding among the trees,

logs, and rocks. On came the four disguised men, stepping in time to the

music, swaying from side to side, and clashing their bark clappers

together at every step, while beside them hobbled the two old men keeping

a little aloof to mark their superior dignity. 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, him of the eagle-hawk totem, who

lay buried here in the lonely valley, now illumined by the warm rays of

the sun; for by this time the morning was wearing on to noon. 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 sisters’ husbands 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 tuneful 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.(624)

(M182) In some tribes of Central and Northern Australia the initiation of

a medicine-man into the mysteries of his craft is supposed to be

accomplished by certain spirits, who kill him, cut out his internal

organs, and having provided him with a new set bring him to life again.

Sometimes the spirits kindly replace the man’s human organs by their own

spiritual organs; sometimes along with the new organs they insert magical

stones in his body or even a serpent, and the stones or the serpents

naturally endow the new wizards with marvellous powers. In some tribes the

initiation takes place in a cave, where the spirits dwell. After the man

has been restored to life with a new heart, a new pair of lungs, and so

forth, he returns to his people in a more or less dazed condition, which

his friends may at first mistake for insanity, though afterwards they

recognize its true character as inspiration.(625) One eminent medical

practitioner in the Unmatjera tribe assured Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

that when he came to himself after the operation, which in his case was

performed by an aged doctor, he had completely forgotten who he was and

all about his past life. After a time his venerable friend led him back to

the camp and shewed it to him, and said, “That woman there is your wife,”

for she had gone clean out of his head.(626) We shall see presently that

this temporary oblivion, a natural effect of the shock to the nervous

system produced by resuscitation from the dead, is characteristic of

novices under similar circumstances in other lands. Among the Arunta of

Alice Springs the cave where the mystic initiation takes place is a

limestone cavern in a range of hills which rises to the north of the wide

level expanse known as the Emily plain. None of the ordinary natives would

dare to set foot in the awful grotto, which they believe to extend for

miles into the bowels of the earth and to be tenanted by certain ancestral

spirits, who live there in perpetual sunshine and amid streams of running

water, an earthly paradise by contrast with the arid sun-scorched steppes

and barren mountains outside. White men have explored the cave, and if

they perceived no spirits, they found bats in plenty. The man who aspires

to the rank of a wizard lies down at the mouth of the cave and falls

asleep; and as he sleeps one of the ancestral spirits steals up to him and

drives an invisible spear through his neck from back to front. The point

of the spear comes out through the man’s tongue, leaving a hole through

which you could put your little finger, and this hole the man retains for

the rest of his natural life, or at least so long as he retains his

magical powers; for if the hole should close up, these spiritual gifts and

graces would depart from him. A second thrust from the invisible spear

transfixes the man’s head from ear to ear; he drops down dead, and is

immediately transported into the depths of the cavern, where the spirits

dissect his dead body, extract the old viscera, and replace them with a

new set in the manner already described.(627)

(M183) In this account of the manner in which medicine-men obtain their

magical powers not only are the supposed death and resurrection of the

novice worthy of attention, but also the exchange of internal organs which

in the Binbinga and Mara tribes is supposed to be effected between the man

and the spirit;(628) for this exchange resembles that which, on the theory

I have suggested, may be thought to take place between a lad and his totem

at the ceremonies of initiation which mark the momentous transition from

boyhood to manhood. Further, the bodily mutilation which is the visible

sign of the medicine-man’s initiation (for however the hole may be made it

certainly exists in the tongues of regular Arunta practitioners)

corresponds to the bodily mutilations of other sorts, which in many savage

tribes attest to the world that the mutilated persons are fullgrown men.

What the precise meaning of such mutilations may be, still remains very

obscure; but they seem in some cases to be directly associated with the

conception of death and resurrection.

(M184) This association certainly comes out plainly in the rites of

initiation through which in some parts of New Guinea all lads must pass

before they attain to the status of adults. The rites are observed by a

group of tribes who occupy contiguous territories about Finsch Harbour and

Huon Gulf in German New Guinea. The tribes in question are the Yabim, the

Bukaua, the Kai, and the Tami. All of them except the Kai belong to the

Melanesian stock and are therefore presumably immigrants from the

adjoining islands; but the Kai, who inhabit the rugged, densely wooded,

and rainy mountains inland from Finsch Harbour, belong to the aboriginal

Papuan stock and differ from their neighbours in speech as well as in

appearance. Yet the rites of initiation which all these tribes celebrate

and the beliefs which they associate with them are so similar that a

single description will apply accurately enough to them all. All of them,

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 men.

(M185) 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; among the Yabim they beguile the tedium of

this enforced leisure by weaving baskets and playing on certain sacred

flutes, which are never used except on these occasions. The instruments

are of two patterns. One is called the male and the other the female; and

they are believed to be married to each other. No woman may see these

mysterious flutes; if she did, she would die. When the long seclusion is

over, the lads, now ranking as initiated men, are brought back with great

pomp and ceremony to the village, where 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

awaking from a stupor, and next day they bathe and wash off the crust of

white chalk with which their bodies had been coated.(629)

(M186) 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. The word in the speech of

the Yabim and Bukaua is _balum_; in that of the Kai it is _ngosa_; and in

that of the Tami it is _kani_. 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.(630) 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.(631)

(M187) 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. The ceremonies were

performed in certain sacred precincts of oblong shape, enclosed by low

walls or rows of stones but open to the sky. Such a precinct was called a

_Nanga_, and it might be described as a temple dedicated to the worship of

ancestors; for in it sacrifices and prayers were offered to the ancestral

spirits. For example, the first-fruits of the yam harvest were regularly

presented with great ceremony to the souls of the dead in the temple

before the bulk of the crop was dug for the people’s use, and no man might

taste of the new yams until this solemn offering had been made. The yams

so offered were piled up in the sacred enclosure and left to rot there; if

any man were so bold as to eat of these dedicated fruits, it was believed

that he would go mad.(632) Any initiated man had the right of approaching

the ancestral spirits at any time in their holy place, where he would pray

to them for help and protection and propitiate them by laying down his

offering of a pig, or yams, or eels, or cloth, or what not.(633) Of these

offerings perhaps the most curious was that of the foreskins of young men,

who were circumcised as a sort of vicarious sacrifice or atonement for the

recovery of a sick relative, it might be either their father or one of

their father’s brothers. The bloody foreskins, stuck in the cleft of a

split reed, were presented to the ancestral gods in the temple by the

chief priest, who prayed for the sick man’s recovery.(634) The temple or

sacred enclosure was divided into two or three compartments by cross walls

of stones, and the inmost of these compartments was the

_Nanga-tambu-tambu_, or Holy of Holies.(635)

(M188) In these open-air temples of the dead the ceremony of initiating

young men was performed as a rule every year at the end of October or the

beginning of November, which was the commencement of the Fijian New Year;

hence the novices who were initiated at that season went by the name of

_Vilavou_ or New Year’s Men. The exact time for celebrating the rite was

determined by the flowering of the _ndrala_ tree (_Erythrina_); but it

roughly coincided with the New Year of the Tahitians and Hawaiians, who

dated the commencement of the year by observation of the Pleiades. The

highlanders of Fiji, who alone celebrated these rites, did not trouble

their heads about the stars.(636) As a preparation for the solemnity the

heads of the novices were shaved and their beards, if they had any, were

carefully eradicated. On four successive days they went in procession to

the temple and there deposited in the Holy of Holies their offerings of

cloth and weapons to the ancestral spirits. But on the fifth and great day

of the festival, when they again entered the sacred ground, they beheld a

sight which froze their souls with horror. Stretched on the ground was a

row of dead or seemingly dead and murdered men, their bodies cut open and

covered with blood, their entrails protruding. At the further end sat the

High Priest, regarding them with a stony glare, and to reach him the

trembling novices had to crawl on hands and knees over the ghastly

blood-bedabbled corpses that lay between. Having done so they drew up in a

line before him. Suddenly he blurted out a piercing yell, at which 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. The High Priest now unbent his starched dignity, and skipping

from side to side cried in stridulous tones, “Where are the people of my

enclosure? Are they gone to Tonga Levu? Are they gone to the deep sea?” He

was soon answered by a deep-mouthed chant, and back from the river marched

the dead men come to life, clean, fresh, and garlanded, swaying their

bodies in time to the music of their solemn hymn. They took their places

in front of the novices and a religious silence ensued. Such was the drama

of death and resurrection. It was immediately followed by a sacramental

meal. Four old men of the highest order of initiates now entered the Holy

of Holies. The first bore a cooked yam carefully wrapt up in leaves so

that no part of it should touch the hands of the bearer: the second

carried a piece of baked pork similarly enveloped: the third held a

drinking-cup full of water and wrapt round with native cloth; and the

fourth bore a napkin of the same stuff. The first elder passed along the

row of novices putting the end of the yam into each of their mouths, and

as he did so each of them nibbled a morsel of the sacred food: the second

elder did the same with the hallowed pork: the third elder followed with

the holy water, with which each novice merely wetted his lips; and the

fourth elder wiped all their mouths with his napkin. Then the high priest

or one of the elders addressed the young men, warning them solemnly

against the sacrilege of betraying to the profane vulgar any of the high

mysteries which they had witnessed, and threatening all such traitors with

the vengeance of the gods. The general intention of the initiatory rites

seems to have been to introduce the young men to the worshipful spirits of

the dead at their temple, and to cement the bond between them by a

sacramental meal.(637)

(M189) 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.(638) In New Britain all males are members

of an association called the Duk-duk. The boys are admitted to it very

young, but are not fully initiated till their fourteenth year, when they

receive from the Tubuvan or Tubuan a terrible blow with a cane, which is

supposed to kill them. The Tubuan and the Duk-duk are two disguised men

who represent cassowaries. They dance with a short hopping step in

imitation of the cassowary. Each of them wears a huge hat like an

extinguisher, woven of grass or palm-fibres; it is six feet high, and

descends to the wearer’s shoulders, completely concealing his head and

face. From the neck to the knees the man’s body is hidden by a crinoline

made of the leaves of a certain tree fastened on hoops, one above the

other. The Tubuan is regarded as a female, the Duk-duk as a male. The

former is supposed to breed and give birth to the novices, who are

accordingly looked upon as newly born. The female masks are very plain

compared with the male masks. Two of them are regularly kept from year to

year in order that they may annually breed new Duk-duks. When they are

wanted for this purpose they are brought forth, decorated afresh, and

provided with new leaf dresses to match. According to one account, women

and children may not look upon one of these disguised men or they would

die. So strong is this superstition among them that they will run away and

hide as soon as they hear him coming, for they are aware of his approach

through a peculiar shrieking noise he utters as he goes along. In the

district of Berara, where red is the Duk-duk colour, the mere sight of a

red cloth is enough to make the women take to their heels. The common herd

are not allowed to know who the masker is. If he stumbles and his hat

falls to the ground, disclosing his face, or his crinoline is torn to

tatters by the bushes, his attendants immediately surround him to hide his

person from the vulgar eye. According to one writer, indeed, the performer

who drops his mask, or lets it fall so that the sharp point at the top

sticks in the ground, is put to death. The institution of the Duk-duk is

common to the neighbouring islands of New Ireland and the Duke of

York.(639)

(M190) Among the Galelareese and Tobelorese of Halmahera, an island to the

west of New Guinea, boys go through a form of initiation, part of which

seems to consist in a pretence of begetting them anew. When a number of

boys have reached the proper age, their parents agree to celebrate the

ceremony at their common expense, and they invite others to be present at

it. A shed is erected, and two long tables are placed in it, with benches

to match, one for the men and one for the women. When all the preparations

have been made for a feast, a great many skins of the rayfish, and some

pieces of a wood which imparts a red colour to water, are taken to the

shed. A priest or elder causes a vessel to be placed in the sight of all

the people, and then begins, with significant gestures, to rub a piece of

the wood with the ray-skin. The powder so produced is put in the vessel,

and at the same time the name of one of the boys is called out. The same

proceeding is repeated for each boy. Then the vessels are filled with

water, after which the feast begins. At the third cock-crow the priest

smears the faces and bodies of the boys with the red water, which

represents the blood shed at the perforation of the _hymen_. Towards

daybreak the boys are taken to the wood, and must hide behind the largest

trees. The men, armed with sword and shield, accompany them, dancing and

singing. The priest knocks thrice on each of the trees behind which a boy

is hiding. All day the boys stay in the wood, exposing themselves to the

heat of the sun as much as possible. In the evening they bathe and return

to the shed, where the women supply them with food.(640)

(M191) In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian

association.(641) 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 recognized 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 by 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.

(M192) 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 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 shew 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 new-born 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.

(M193) 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_. The society had nothing to do with

puberty or circumcision, though the custom of circumcision is common in

the country. Young people and adults of both sexes might join the guild;

after initiation they were called “the Knowing Ones” (_nganga_). To found

a branch of the society it was necessary to have an albino, who, whether a

child, lad, or adult, was the acknowledged head of the society.(642) The

ostensible reason for starting a branch of the guild in a district was

commonly an epidemic of sickness, “and the idea was to go into _ndembo_ to

die, and after an indefinite period, from a few months to two or three

years, to be resurrected with a new body not liable to the sickness then

troubling the countryside. Another reason for starting a _ndembo_ was a

dearth of children in a district. It was believed that good luck in having

children would attend those who entered or died _ndembo_. But the

underlying idea was the same, _i.e._ to get a ‘new body’ that would be

healthy and perform its functions properly.” The quarters of the society

were always a stockaded enclosure in a great thick forest; a gate of

planks painted yellow and red gave access to it, and within there was an

assemblage of huts. The place was fenced to keep intruders from prying

into the mysteries of the guild, and it was near water. Uninitiated

persons might walk on the public roads through the forest, but if they

were caught in bye-paths or hunting in the woods, they were flogged,

fined, and sometimes killed. They might not even look upon the persons of

those who had “died _ndembo_”; hence when these sanctified persons were

roving about the forest or going to the river, the booming notes of a drum

warned the profane vulgar to keep out of their way.

(M194) When the stockade and the huts in the forest were ready to receive

all who wished to put off the old man or woman and to put on the new, one

of the initiates gave the sign and the aspirant after the higher life

dropped down like dead in some public place, it might be the market or the

centre of the town where there were plenty of people to witness the

edifying spectacle. The initiates immediately spread a pall over him or

her, beat the earth round about the pretended corpse with plantain stalks,

chanted incantations, fired guns, and cut capers. Then they carried the

seemingly dead body away into the forest and disappeared with it into the

stockade. The spectacle proved infectious; one after another in the

emotional, excitable crowd of negroes followed the example, dropped down

like dead, and were carried off, sometimes in a real cataleptic state. In

this way fifty to a hundred or more novices might feign death and be

transported into the sacred enclosure. There they were supposed not only

to die but to rot till only a single bone of their body remained, of which

the initiated had to take the greatest care in expectation of the joyful

resurrection that was soon to follow. However, though they were both dead

and rotten, they consumed a large quantity of food, which their credulous

relatives brought to them in baskets, toiling with the loads on their

backs over the long paths through the forest in the sweltering heat of the

tropical day. If the relations failed to discharge this pious and

indispensable duty, their kinsman in the sacred enclosure ran a risk of

dying in good earnest, or rather of being spirited away to a distant town

and sold as a slave.

(M195) Shut up within the stockade for months or years, the men and women,

boys and girls, dispensed with the superfluity of clothes, rubbed their

naked bodies with red ochre or powdered camwood instead, and gave

themselves up to orgies of unbridled lust. Some feeble attempts were made

to teach them the rudiments of a secret language, but the vocabulary was

small and its principles lacking in ingenuity. The time during which this

seclusion lasted might vary from three months to three years. When the

circumstances which had furnished the pretext for instituting the society

had passed away, whether it was that the epidemic had died out or that the

birth-rate had sensibly increased, murmurs would begin to be heard among

friends and relatives in the town, who did not see why they should be

taxed any longer to support a set of idle and dissolute ruffians in the

forest, and why they should trudge day after day in the sweat of their

brow to carry provisions to them. So the supplies would begin to run

short, and whenever that happened the mystery of the resurrection was sure

to follow very soon after.

(M196) Accordingly it would be announced that on a certain market-day the

new initiates, now raised from the dead, would reveal themselves in all

their glory to the astonished gaze of the public. The glad tidings were

received with enthusiasm, and crowds assembled from all the country round

about to welcome those who had come back from the world beyond the grave.

When all were gathered in eager expectancy in the market-place, the sounds

of distant music would be heard, and soon the gay procession would defile

into the open square and march round it, while the dusky skins, reddened

with camwood powder, glistened in the sunshine, the gay garments fluttered

in the wind, and the tassels of palm-leaf fibre dangled at every arm. In

the crowd of spectators many parents would recognize their children in the

marching figures of the procession, and girls and boys would point out

their brothers and sisters and eagerly call out their names. But in the

stolid faces of the initiates not an eye would gleam with recognition, not

a muscle would twitch with an involuntary expression of delight; for

having just been raised from the dead they were supposed to know nothing

of their former life, of friends and relations, of home and country. There

might be in the crowd a mother or a sister not seen for years; or, more

moving still, the novice might look in vain for loved and remembered faces

that would never be seen in the market-place again. But whatever his

feelings might be, he must rigidly suppress them under pain of a flogging,

a fine, or even death. At last the parade was over and the procession

broke up. Then the old hands introduced the new hands to their own parents

and brothers and sisters, to their old homes and haunts. For still the

novices kept up the pretence that everything was new and strange to them,

that they could not speak their mother tongue, that they did not know

their own fathers and mothers, their own town and their own houses; nay

that they had forgotten even how to eat their food. So everything and

everybody had to be shewn to them and their names and meanings explained.

Their guides would lead them about the town, pointing out the various

roads and telling where they led to—this one to the watering-place on the

river, this to the forest, that to the farms, and so on: they would take

up the commonest domestic utensils and shew what they were used for: they

would even chew the food and put it into the mouths of the novices, like

mother birds feeding their callow young. For some time afterwards the

resuscitated persons, attended by their mentors, would go about the town

and the neighbourhood acting in a strange way like children or mad folk,

seizing what they wanted and trying to beat or even kill such as dared to

refuse them anything. Their guardian would generally restrain these

sallies; but sometimes he would arrange with his hopeful pupils to be out

of sight when two or three of them clubbed together to assault and rob an

honest man, and would only return in time to share the booty. After a

while, however, the excitement created by the resurrection would wear off;

the dead folk come to life were expected to have learned their lessons,

and if they forgot themselves, their memory was promptly refreshed by the

law.(643)

(M197) The following account of the rites, as practised in this part of

Africa, was given to Adolf Bastian by an interpreter. “The great fetish

lives in the interior of the forest-land, where nobody sees him and nobody

can see him. When he dies, the fetish priests carefully collect his bones

in order to bring them to life again, and they nourish them, that he may

be clothed anew in flesh and blood. But it is not good to speak of it. In

the land of Ambamba every one must die once, and when the fetish priest

shakes his calabash against a village, all the men and lads whose hour is

come fall into a state of lifeless torpidity, from which they generally

arise after three days. But if the fetish loves a man he carries him away

into the bush and buries him in the fetish house, often for many years.

When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his

understanding is gone and the fetish man must teach him and direct him in

every motion, like the smallest child. At first this can only be done with

a stick, but gradually his senses return, so that it is possible to talk

with him, and when his education is complete, the priest brings him back

to his parents. They would seldom recognize their son but for the express

assurances of the fetish priest, who moreover recalls previous events to

their memory. He who has not gone through the ceremony of the new birth in

Ambamba is universally looked down upon and is not admitted to the

dances.”(644)

(M198) In the same part of Africa we hear of a fetish called Malassi, the

votaries of which form a secret order of the usual sort with a variety of

ranks to which the initiates are promoted. “The candidate is plunged into

a magic sleep within the temple-hut, and while he sleeps he beholds a bird

or other object with which his existence is henceforth sympathetically

bound up, just as the life of the young Indian is bound up with the animal

which he sees in his dream at puberty. All who have been born again at

initiation, after their return to a normal state, bear the name of Swamie

(a sacred designation also in India) or, if they are women, Sumbo (Tembo),

and wear as a token the ring called _sase_, which consists of an iron hoop

with a fruit attached to it.”(645) Similarly among the Fans of the Gaboon

a young warrior acquires his guardian spirit by dreaming. He is secluded

in the forest, drinks a fermented and intoxicating liquor, and smokes

hemp. Then he falls into a heavy sleep, and next morning he must describe

exactly to the fetish priest the animal, tree, mineral, or whatever it may

have been which he saw in his dream. This magical dream is repeated on

three successive nights; and after that the young man is sent forth by the

priest to seek and bring back the beast, bird, reptile, or whatever it was

of which he dreamed. The youth obeys, reduces the animal or thing to

cinders or ashes, and preserves these calcined remains as a talisman which

will protect him against many dangers.(646) However, in these rites there

is no clear simulation of dying and coming to life again.

(M199) Rites of death and resurrection were formerly observed in Quoja, on

the west coast of Africa, to the north of the Congo. They are thus

described by an old writer:—“They have another ceremony which they call

Belli-Paaro, but it is not for everybody. For it is an incorporation in

the assembly of the spirits, and confers the right of entering their

groves, that is to say, of going and eating the offerings which the simple

folk bring thither. The initiation or admission to the Belli-Paaro is

celebrated every twenty or twenty-five years. The initiated recount

marvels of the ceremony, saying that they are roasted, that they entirely

change their habits and life, and that they receive a spirit quite

different from that of other people and quite new lights. The badge of

membership consists in some lines traced on the neck between the

shoulders; the lines seem to be pricked with a needle. Those who have this

mark pass for persons of spirit, and when they have attained a certain age

they are allowed a voice in all public assemblies; whereas the uninitiated

are regarded as profane, impure, and ignorant persons, who dare not

express an opinion on any subject of importance. When the time for the

ceremony has come, it is celebrated as follows. By order of the king a

place is appointed in the forest, whither they bring the youths who have

not been marked, not without much crying and weeping; for it is impressed

upon the youths that in order to undergo this change it is necessary to

suffer death. So they dispose of their property, as if it were all over

with them. There are always some of the initiated beside the novices to

instruct them. They teach them to dance a certain dance called _killing_,

and to sing verses in praise of Belli. Above all, they are very careful

not to let them die of hunger, because if they did so, it is much to be

feared that the spiritual resurrection would profit them nothing. This

manner of life lasts five or six years, and is comfortable enough, for

there is a village in the forest, and they amuse themselves with hunting

and fishing. Other lads are brought thither from time to time, so that the

last comers have not long to stay. No woman or uninitiated person is

suffered to pass within four or five leagues of the sacred wood. When

their instruction is completed, they are taken from the wood and shut up

in small huts made for the purpose. Here they begin once more to hold

communion with mankind and to talk with the women who bring them their

food. It is amusing to see their affected simplicity. They pretend to know

no one, and to be ignorant of all the customs of the country, such as the

customs of washing themselves, rubbing themselves with oil, and so forth.

When they enter these huts, their bodies are all covered with the feathers

of birds, and they wear caps of bark which hang down before their faces.

But after a time they are dressed in clothes and taken to a great open

place, where all the people of the neighbourhood are assembled. Here the

novices give the first proof of their capacity by dancing a dance which is

called the dance of Belli. After the dance is over, the novices are taken

to the houses of their parents by their instructors.”(647)

(M200) Miss Kingsley informs us that “the great point of agreement between

all these West African secret societies lies in the methods of initiation.

The boy, if he belongs to a tribe that goes in for tattooing, is tattooed,

and is handed over to instructors in the societies’ secrets and formulae.

He lives, with the other boys of his tribe undergoing initiation, usually

under the rule of several instructors, and for the space of one year. He

lives always in the forest, and is naked and smeared with clay. The boys

are exercised so as to become inured to hardship; in some districts, they

make raids so as to perfect themselves in this useful accomplishment. They

always take a new name, and are supposed by the initiation process to

become new beings in the magic wood, and on their return to their village

at the end of their course, they pretend to have entirely forgotten their

life before they entered the wood; but this pretence is not kept up beyond

the period of festivities given to welcome them home. They all learn, to a

certain extent, a new language, a secret language only understood by the

initiated. The same removal from home and instruction from initiated

members is observed also with the girls. However, in their case, it is not

always a forest-grove they are secluded in, sometimes it is done in huts.

Among the Grain Coast tribes, however, the girls go into a magic wood

until they are married. Should they have to leave the wood for any

temporary reason, they must smear themselves with white clay. A similar

custom holds good in Okÿon, Calabar district, where, should a girl have to

leave the fattening-house, she must be covered with white clay.”(648)

(M201) Among the natives of the Sherbro, an island lying close to the

coast of Sierra Leone, there is a secret society called the _purra_ or

_poro_, “which is partly of a religious, but chiefly of a political

nature. It resembles free-masonry in excluding females, and in obliging

every member by a solemn oath, which I believe is seldom violated, not to

divulge the sacred mysteries, and to yield a prompt and implicit obedience

to every order of their superiors. Boys of seven or eight years of age are

admitted, or rather serve a novitiate until they arrive at a proper age;

for it is difficult to procure exact information, and even somewhat

dangerous to make many inquiries. Every person on entering the society

lays aside his former name and assumes a new one; to call him by his old

name would produce a dispute. They have a superior or head _purra_ man,

assisted by a grand council, whose commands are received with the most

profound reverence and absolute submission, both by the subordinate

councils and by individuals. Their meetings are held in the most retired

spots, amid the gloom of night, and carried on with inquisitorial secrecy.

When the _purra_ comes into a town, which is always at night, it is

accompanied with the most dreadful howlings, screams, and other horrid

noises. The inhabitants, who are not members of the society, are obliged

to secure themselves within doors; should any one be discovered without,

or attempting to peep at what is going forward, he would inevitably be put

to death. To restrain the curiosity of the females, they are ordered to

continue within doors, clapping their hands incessantly, so long as the

_purra_ remains. Like the secret tribunal, which formerly existed in

Germany, it takes cognizance of offences, particularly of witchcraft and

murder, but above all of contumacy and disobedience in any of its own

members, and punishes the guilty with death in so secret and sudden a

manner, that the perpetrators are never known: indeed, such is the dread

created by this institution, that they are never even inquired

after.”(649) When the members of the _purra_ or _poro_ society visit a

town, the leader of the troop, whom an English writer calls “the Poro

devil,” draws discordant notes from a sort of reed flute, the holes of

which are covered with spiders’ webs. The only time when this devil and

his rout make a prolonged stay in the town is on the evening before the

day on which the newly initiated lads are to be brought back from the

forest. Then the leader and his satellites parade the streets for hours,

while all the uninitiated men, women, and children remain shut up in their

houses, listening to the doleful strains of the flute, which signify that

the devil is suffering the pangs of childbirth before he brings forth the

initiated lads; for he is supposed to have been pregnant with them the

whole of the rainy season ever since they entered into the forest. When

they come forth from the wood, they wear four or five coils of twisted

ferns round their waists in token of their being initiated members of the

order.(650) Among the Soosoos of Senegambia there is a similar secret

society called _semo_: “the natives who speak English call it African

masonry. As the whole ceremonies are kept very private, it is difficult to

discover in what they consist: but it is said that the novices are met in

the woods by the old men, who cut marks on several parts of their bodies,

but most commonly on the belly; they are also taught a language peculiar

to the _semo_, and swear dreadful oaths never to divulge the secrets

revealed to them. The young men are then made to live in the woods for

twelve months, and are supposed to be at liberty to kill any one who

approaches and does not understand the language of the _semo_.... It is

said, when women are so unfortunate as to intrude upon the _semo_, they

kill them, cut off their breasts, and hang them up by the side of the

paths as a warning to others. This circumstance is perhaps less deserving

of credit, because the Soosoos are fond of telling wonderful and horrid

stories respecting this institution. They say, for instance, that when

first initiated their throats are cut, and they continue dead for some

time; at length they are reanimated and initiated into the mysteries of

the institution, and are enabled to ramble about with much more vigour

than they possessed before.”(651)

(M202) While the belief or the pretence of death and resurrection at

initiation is common among the negroes of West Africa, few traces of it

appear to be found among the tribes in the southern, central, and eastern

parts of that continent; and it is notable that in these regions secret

societies, which flourish in the West, are also conspicuously absent.

However, the Akikuyu of British East Africa “have a curious custom which

requires that every boy just before circumcision must be born again. The

mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go

through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a

babe and is washed. He lives on milk for some days afterwards.”(652) A

fuller description of the ceremony was given by a member of the Kikuyu

tribe as follows: “A day is appointed, any time of year, by father and

mother. If the father is dead another elder is called in to act as proxy

in his stead, or if the mother is not living another woman to act in her

place. Any woman thus acting as representative is looked upon in future by

the boy as his own mother. A goat or sheep is killed in the afternoon by

any one, usually not by the father, and the stomach and intestines

reserved. The ceremony begins in the evening. A piece of skin is cut in a

circle, and passed over one shoulder of the candidate and under the other

arm. The stomach of the goat is similarly treated and passed over the

other shoulder and under the other arm. All the boy’s ornaments are

removed, but not his clothes. No men are allowed inside the hut, but women

are present. The mother sits on a hide on the floor with the boy between

her knees. The sheep’s gut is passed round the woman and brought in front

of the boy. The woman groans as in labour, another woman cuts the gut, and

the boy imitates the cry of a new-born infant. The women present all

applaud, and afterwards the assistant and the mother wash the boy. That

night the boy sleeps in the same hut as the mother.”(653) Here the cutting

of the sheep’s gut, which unites the mother to the boy, is clearly an

imitation of severing the navel string. Nor is it boys alone who are born

again among the Akikuyu. “Girls go through the rite of second birth as

well as boys. It is sometimes administered to infants. At one time the new

birth was combined with circumcision, and so the ceremony admitted to the

privileges and religious rites of the tribe. Afterwards trouble took place

on account of mere boys wishing to take their place alongside of the young

men and maintaining they were justified in doing so. The old men then

settled the matter by separating the two. Unless the new birth has been

administered the individual is not in a position to be admitted to

circumcision, which is the outward sign of admittance to the nation. Any

who have not gone through the rite cannot inherit property, nor take any

part in the religious rites of the country.”(654) For example, a man who

has not been born again is disqualified for carrying his dying father out

into the wilds and for disposing of his body after death. The new birth

seems to take place usually about the tenth year, but the age varies with

the ability of the father to provide a goat, whose guts are necessary to

enable the boy or girl to be born again in due form.(655)

(M203) Among the Bondeis, a tribe on the coast of German East Africa,

opposite to the island of Pemba, one of the rites of initiation into

manhood consists in a pretence of slaying one of the lads with a sword;

the entrails of a fowl are placed on the boy’s stomach to make the

pretence seem more real.(656) Among the Bushongo, who inhabit a district

of the Belgian Congo bounded on the north and east by the Sankuru River

and on the west by the Kasai, young boys had formerly to undergo certain

rites of initiation, amongst which a simulation of killing them would seem

to have had a place, though in recent times the youths have been allowed

to escape the ordeal by the payment of a fine. The supreme chief of the

tribe, who in old days bore the title of God on Earth (_Chembe Kunji_),

used to assemble all the lads who had just reached puberty and send them

away into the forest, where they remained for several months under the

care of one of his sons. During their seclusion they were deemed unclean

and might see no one; if they chanced to meet a woman, she had to flee

before them. By night the old men marched round the quarters of the

novices, raising hideous cries and whirling bull-roarers, the noise of

which the frightened lads took to be the voices of ghosts. They wore

nothing but a comb, and passed their leisure hours in learning to make

mats and baskets. After about a month they had to submit to the first

ordeal. A trench about ten feet deep was dug in the ground and roofed over

with sticks and earth so as to form a dark tunnel. In the sides of the

tunnel were cut niches, and in each niche a man took post, whose business

it was to terrify the novices. For this purpose one of them was disguised

in the skin of a leopard, a second was dressed as a warrior with a knife

in his hand, a third was a smith with his furnace and red-hot irons, and a

fourth was masked to look like an ugly ape, while he too gripped a knife

in his hand. The novices generally recoiled in dismay from each of these

apparitions, and it was only by means of reiterated taunts and threats

that the elders forced them to traverse the whole length of the tunnel.

After the lapse of another month the youths had to face another ordeal of

a similar character. A low tunnel, about three feet deep, was dug in the

earth, and sticks were inserted in it so that their tops projected from

the surface of the ground. At the end of the tunnel a calabash was set

full of goat’s blood. By way of encouraging the timid novices the master

of the ceremonies himself crawled through the tunnel, his progress under

ground being revealed to the novices above ground by the vibrations of the

sticks with which he collided in the dark passage. Then having bedabbled

his nose, his mouth, and all the rest of his body with the goat’s blood,

he emerged from the tunnel on hands and knees, dripping with gore and to

all appearance in the last stage of exhaustion. Then he lay prostrate on

his stomach in a state of collapse; the elders declared him to be dead and

carried him off. The chief now ordered the lads to imitate the example set

them by the master of the ceremonies, but they begged and prayed to be

excused. At first the chief was inexorable, but in time he relented and

agreed to accept a fine of so many cowries as a ransom paid by the youths

for exemption from the ordeal. A month later the last of the ordeals took

place. A great trunk of a tree was buried with its lower end in the earth

and surrounded for three-quarters of its circumference with arrows stuck

in the ground so that the barbs were pointed towards the tree. The chief

and the leading men sat down at the gap in the circle of arrows, so as to

conceal the gap from the eyes of the novices and other spectators, among

whom the women were allowed to be present. To the eyes of the uninitiated

it now seemed that the tree was surrounded by a bristling hedge of arrows,

to fall upon which would be death. All being ready the master of the

ceremonies climbed the tree amid breathless silence, and having reached

the top, which was decorated with a bunch of leaves, he looked about him

and asked the women, “Shall I come down?” “No! no!” they shrieked, “you

will be killed by the arrows.” Then, turning disdainfully from these

craven souls, the gallant man addressed himself to the youths and repeated

his question, “Shall I come down?” A shout of “Yes!” gave the answer that

might have been expected from these heroic spirits. In response the master

of the ceremonies at once slid down the tree and, dropping neatly to the

ground just at the gap in the hedge of arrows, presented himself unscathed

to the gaze of the excited assembly. The chief now ordered the young men

to go up and do likewise. But the dauntless courage with which they had

contemplated the descent of the master of the ceremonies entirely forsook

them when it came to their turn to copy his shining example. Their

mothers, too, raised a loud cry of protest, joining their prayers and

entreaties to those of their hopeful sons. After some discussion the chief

consented to accept a ransom, and the novices were dispensed from the

ordeal. Then they bathed and were deemed to have rid themselves of their

uncleanness, but they had still to work for the chief for three months

before they ranked as full-grown men and might return to their

villages.(657)

(M204) Among the Indians of Virginia, an initiatory ceremony, called

_Huskanaw_, took place every sixteen or twenty years, or oftener, as the

young men happened to grow up. The youths were kept in solitary

confinement in the woods for several months, receiving no food but an

infusion of some intoxicating roots, so that they went raving mad, and

continued in this state eighteen or twenty days. “Upon this occasion it is

pretended that these poor creatures drink so much of the water of Lethe

that they perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of

their parents, their treasure, and their language. When the doctors find

that they have drunk sufficiently of the Wysoccan (so they call this mad

potion), they gradually restore them to their senses again by lessening

the intoxication of their diet; but before they are perfectly well they

bring them back into their towns, while they are still wild and crazy

through the violence of the medicine. After this they are very fearful of

discovering anything of their former remembrance; for if such a thing

should happen to any of them, they must immediately be _Huskanaw’d_ again;

and the second time the usage is so severe that seldom any one escapes

with life. Thus they must pretend to have forgot the very use of their

tongues, so as not to be able to speak, nor understand anything that is

spoken, till they learn it again. Now, whether this be real or

counterfeit, I don’t know; but certain it is that they will not for some

time take notice of anybody nor anything with which they were before

acquainted, being still under the guard of their keepers, who constantly

wait upon them everywhere till they have learnt all things perfectly over

again. Thus they unlive their former lives, and commence men by forgetting

that they ever have been boys.”(658)

(M205) 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 shewed 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.(659) 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.(660) Among

the Dacotas the institution of the medicine-bag or mystery-sack was

attributed to Onktehi, the great spirit of the waters, who ordained that

the bag should consist of the skin of the otter, raccoon, weasel,

squirrel, or loon, or a species of fish and of serpents. Further, he

decreed that the bag should contain four sorts of medicines of magical

qualities, which should represent fowls, quadrupeds, herbs, and trees.

Accordingly, swan’s down, buffalo hair, grass roots, and bark from the

roots of trees are kept by the Dacotas in their medicine-bags. From this

combination there proceeds a magical influence (_tonwan_) so powerful that

no human being can of his own strength withstand it. When the god of the

waters had prepared the first medicine-bag, he tested its powers on four

candidates for initiation, who all perished under the shock. So he

consulted with his wife, the goddess of the earth, and by holding up his

left hand and pattering on the back of it with the right, he produced

myriads of little shells, whose virtue is to restore life to those who

have been slain by the medicine-bag. Having taken this precaution, the god

chose four other candidates and repeated the experiment of initiation with

success, for after killing them with the bag he immediately resuscitated

them by throwing one of the shells into their vital parts, while he

chanted certain words assuring them that it was only sport and bidding

them rise to their feet. That is why to this day every initiated Dacota

has one of these shells in his body. Such was the divine origin of the

medicine-dance of the Dacotas. The initiation takes place in a special

tent. The candidate, after being steamed in a vapour-bath for four

successive days, plants himself on a pile of blankets, and behind him

stands an aged member of the order. “Now the master of the ceremonies,

with the joints of his knees and hips considerably bent, advances with an

unsteady, uncouth hitching, sack in hand, wearing an aspect of desperate

energy, and uttering his ‘Heen, heen, heen’ with frightful emphasis, while

all around are enthusiastic demonstrations of all kinds of wild passions.

At this point the sack is raised near a painted spot on the breast of the

candidate, at which the _tonwan_ is discharged. At the instant the brother

from behind gives him a push and he falls dead, and is covered with

blankets. Now the frenzied dancers gather around, and in the midst of

bewildering and indescribable noises, chant the words uttered by the god

at the institution of the ceremony, as already recorded. Then the master

throws off the covering, and chewing a piece of the bone of the Onktehi,

spirts it over him, and he begins to show signs of returning life. Then as

the master pats energetically upon the breast of the initiated person, he,

convulsed, strangling, struggling, and agonizing, heaves up the shell

which falls from his mouth on a sack placed in readiness to receive it.

Life is restored and entrance effected into the awful mysteries. He

belongs henceforth to the medicine-dance, and has a right to enjoy the

medicine-feast.”(661)

(M206) 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.”(662) 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.(663) 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,(664) 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.

(M207) This conjectural explanation of the ceremony has, since it was

first put forward, been 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. The name

Tlokoala is a foreign word among the Nootka Indians, having been borrowed

by them from the Kwakiutl Indians, in whose language the word means the

finding of a _manitoo_ or personal totem. The Nootka tradition runs that

this secret society was instituted by wolves who took away a chief’s son

and tried to kill him, but, failing to do so, became his friends, taught

him the rites of the society, and ordered him to teach them to his friends

on his return home. Then they carried the young man back to his village.

They also begged that whenever he moved from one place to another he would

kindly leave behind him some red cedar-bark to be used by them in their

own ceremonies; and to this custom the Nootka tribes still adhere. 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.(665) 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.(666)

(M208) 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.(667) 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.(668) 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.

(M209) The Carrier Indians, who dwell further inland than the tribes we

have just been considering, are divided into four clans with the grouse,

the beaver, the toad, and the grizzly bear for their totems. But in

addition to these clan totems the tribe recognized a considerable number

of what Father Morice calls honorific totems, which could be acquired,

through the performance of certain rites, by any person who wished to

improve his social position. Each totem clan had a certain number of

honorific totems or crests, and these might be assumed by any member of

the clan who fulfilled the required conditions; but they could not be

acquired by members of another clan. Thus the Grouse clan had for its

honorific totems or crests the owl, the moose, the weasel, the crane, the

wolf, the full moon, the wind, and so on; the Toad clan had the sturgeon,

the porcupine, the wolverine, the red-headed woodpecker, the “darding

knife,” and so forth; the Beaver clan had the mountain-goat for one of its

honorific totems; and the goose was a honorific totem of the Grizzly Bear

clan. But the common bear, as a honorific totem or crest, might be assumed

by anybody, whatever his clan. The common possession of a honorific totem

appears to have constituted the same sort of bond among the Carrier

Indians as the membership of a secret society does among the coast tribes

of British Columbia; certainly the rites of initiation were similar. This

will be clear from Father Morice’s account of the performances, which I

will subjoin in his own words. “The connection of the individual with his

crest appeared more especially during ceremonial dances, when the former,

attired, if possible, with the spoils of the latter, was wont to personate

it in the gaze of an admiring assemblage. On all such occasions, man and

totem were also called by the same name. The adoption of any such ’rite’

or crest was usually accompanied by initiatory ceremonies or observances

corresponding to the nature of the crest, followed in all cases by a

distribution of clothes to all present. Thus whenever anybody resolved

upon getting received as _Lulem_ or Bear, he would, regardless of the

season, divest himself of all his wearing apparel and don a bear-skin,

whereupon he would dash into the woods there to remain for the space of

three or four days and nights in deference to the wonts of his intended

totem animal. Every night a party of his fellow-villagers would sally out

in search of the missing ‘bear.’ To their loud calls: _Yi! Kelulem_ (Come

on, Bear!) he would answer by angry growls in imitation of the bear. The

searching party making for the spot where he had been heard, would find by

a second call followed by a similar answer that he had dexterously shifted

to some opposite quarter in the forest. As a rule, he could not be found,

but had to come back of himself, when he was speedily apprehended and

conducted to the ceremonial lodge, where he would commence his first

bear-dance in conjunction with all the other totem people, each of whom

would then personate his own particular totem. Finally would take place

the _potlatch_ [distribution of property] of the newly initiated ‘bear,’

who would not forget to present his captor with at least a whole dressed

skin. The initiation to the ‘Darding Knife’ was quite a theatrical

performance. A lance was prepared which had a very sharp point so arranged

that the slightest pressure on its tip would cause the steel to gradually

sink into the shaft. In the sight of the multitude crowding the lodge,

this lance was pressed on the bare chest of the candidate and apparently

sunk in his body to the shaft, when he would tumble down simulating death.

At the same time a quantity of blood—previously kept in the mouth—would

issue from the would-be corpse, making it quite clear to the uninitiated

gazers-on that the terrible knife had had its effect, when lo! upon one of

the actors striking up one of the chants specially made for the

circumstance and richly paid for, the candidate would gradually rise up a

new man, the particular _protégé_ of the ‘Darding Knife.’ ”(669)

(M210) In the former of these two initiatory rites of the Carrier Indians

the prominent feature is the transformation of the man into his totem

animal; in the latter it is his death and resurrection. But in substance,

probably, both are identical. In both the novice dies as a man and revives

as his totem, whether that be a bear, a “darding” knife, or what not; in

other words, he has deposited his life or some portion of it in his totem,

with which accordingly for the future he is more or less completely

identified. Hard as it may be for us to conceive why a man should choose

to identify himself with a knife, whether “darding” or otherwise, we have

to remember that in Celebes it is to a chopping-knife or other iron tool

that the soul of a woman in labour is transferred for safety;(670) and the

difference between a chopping-knife and a “darding” knife, considered as a

receptacle for a human soul, is perhaps not very material. Among the

Thompson Indians of British Columbia warriors who had a knife, an arrow,

or any other weapon for their personal totem or guardian spirit, enjoyed

this signal advantage over their fellows that they were for all practical

purposes invulnerable. If an arrow did hit them, which seldom happened,

they vomited the blood up, and the hurt soon healed. Hence these

arrow-proof warriors rarely wore armour, which would indeed have been

superfluous, and they generally took the most dangerous posts in battle.

So convinced were the Thompson Indians of the power of their personal

totem or guardian spirit to bring them back to life, that some of them

killed themselves in the sure hope that the spirit would immediately raise

them up from the dead. Others, more prudently, experimented on their

friends, shooting them dead and then awaiting more or less cheerfully

their joyful resurrection. We are not told that success crowned these

experimental demonstrations of the immortality of the soul.(671)

(M211) The Toukaway Indians of Texas, one of whose totems is the wolf,

have a ceremony in which men, dressed in wolf-skins, run about on all

fours, howling and mimicking wolves. At last they scratch up a living

tribesman, who has been buried on purpose, and putting a bow and arrows in

his hands, bid him do as the wolves do—rob, kill, and murder.(672) The

ceremony probably forms part of an initiatory rite like the resurrection

from the grave of the old man in the Australian rites.

(M212) The simulation of death and resurrection or of a new birth at

initiation appears to have lingered on, or at least to have left traces of

itself, among peoples who have advanced far beyond the stage of savagery.

Thus, after his investiture with the sacred thread—the symbol of his

order—a Brahman is called “twice born.” Manu says, “According to the

injunction of the revealed texts the first birth of an Aryan is from his

natural mother, the second happens on the tying of the girdle of Muñga

grass, and the third on the initiation to the performance to a Srauta

sacrifice.”(673) A pretence of killing the candidate perhaps formed part

of the initiation to the Mithraic mysteries.(674)

(M213) 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.