(M67) In the preceding chapter we saw that among the rites of Eleusis were
comprised certain athletic sports, such as foot-races, horse-races,
leaping, wrestling, and boxing, the victors in which were rewarded with
measures of barley distributed among them by the priests.(312) These
sports the ancients themselves associated with the worship of Demeter and
Persephone, the goddesses of the corn, and strange as such an association
may seem to us, it is not without its analogy among the harvest customs of
modern European peasantry.(313) But to discover clear cases of games
practised for the express purpose of promoting the growth of the crops, we
must turn to more primitive agricultural communities than the Athenians of
classical antiquity or the peoples of modern Europe. Such communities may
be found at the present day among the savage tribes of Borneo and New
Guinea, who subsist mainly by tilling the ground. Among them we take the
Kayans or Bahaus of central Borneo as typical. They are essentially an
agricultural people, and devote themselves mainly to the cultivation of
rice, which furnishes their staple food; all other products of the ground
are of subordinate importance. Hence agriculture, we are told, dominates
the whole life of these tribes: their year is the year of the cultivation
of the rice, and they divide it into various periods which are determined
by the conditions necessary for the tilling of the fields and the
manipulation of the rice. “In tribes whose thoughts are so much engrossed
by agriculture it is no wonder that they associate with it their ideas of
the powers which rule them for good or evil. The spirit-world stands in
close connexion with the agriculture of the Bahaus; without the consent of
the spirits no work in the fields may be undertaken. Moreover, all the
great popular festivals coincide with the different periods of the
cultivation of the rice. As the people are in an unusual state of
affluence after harvest, all family festivals which require a large outlay
are for practical reasons deferred till the New Year festival at the end
of harvest. The two mighty spirits Amei Awi and his wife Buring Une, who,
according to the belief of the Kayans, live in a world under ground,
dominate the whole of the tillage and determine the issue of the harvest
in great measure by the behaviour of the owner of the land, not so much by
his moral conduct, as by the offerings he has made to the spirits and the
attention he has paid to their warnings. An important part in agriculture
falls to the chief: at the festivals he has, in the name of the whole
tribe, to see to it that the prescribed conjurations are carried out by
the priestesses. All religious ceremonies required for the cultivation of
the ground take place in a small rice-field specially set apart for that
purpose, called _luma lali_: here the chief’s family ushers in every fresh
operation in the cultivation of the rice, such as sowing, hoeing, and
reaping: the solemn actions there performed have a symbolical
significance.”(314)
(M68) Not only the chief’s family among the Kayans has such a consecrated
field; every family possesses one of its own. These little fields are
never cultivated for the sake of their produce: they serve only as the
scene of religious ceremonies and of those symbolical operations of
agriculture which are afterwards performed in earnest on the real
rice-fields.(315) For example, at the festival before sowing a priestess
sows some rice on the consecrated field of the chief’s family and then
calls on a number of young men and girls to complete the work; the young
men then dig holes in the ground with digging-sticks, and the girls come
behind them and plant the rice-seed in the holes. Afterwards the
priestesses lay offerings of food, wrapt in banana-leaves, here and there
on the holy field, while they croon prayers to the spirits in soft tones,
which are half drowned in the clashing music of the gongs. On another day
women gather all kinds of edible leaves in their gardens and fields, boil
them in water, and then sprinkle the water on the consecrated rice-field.
But on that and other days of the festival the people attend also to their
own wants, banqueting on a favourite species of rice and other dainties.
The ceremonies connected with sowing last several weeks, and during this
time certain taboos have to be observed by the people. Thus on the first
day of the festival the whole population, except the very old and the very
young, must refrain from bathing; after that there follows a period of
rest for eight nights, during which the people may neither work nor hold
intercourse with their neighbours. On the tenth day the prohibition to
bathe is again enforced; and during the eight following days the great
rice-field of the village, where the real crops are raised, is sowed.(316)
The reason for excluding strangers from the village at these times is a
religious one. It is a fear lest the presence of strangers might frighten
the spirits or put them in a bad humour, and so defeat the object of the
ceremony; for, while the religious ceremonies which accompany the
cultivation of the rice differ somewhat from each other in different
tribes, the ideas at the bottom of them, we are told, are everywhere the
same: the aim always is to appease and propitiate the souls of the rice
and the other spirits by sacrifices of all sorts.(317)
(M69) However, during this obligatory period of seclusion and rest the
Kayans employ themselves in various pursuits, which, though at first sight
they might seem to serve no other purpose than that of recreation, have
really in the minds of the people a much deeper significance. For example,
at this time the men often play at spinning tops. The tops are smooth,
flat pieces of wood weighing several pounds. Each man tries to spin his
own top so that it knocks down those of his neighbours and continues
itself to revolve triumphantly. New tops are commonly carved for the
festival. The older men sometimes use heavy tops of iron-wood. Again,
every evening the young men assemble in the open space before the chief’s
house and engage in contests of strength and agility, while the women
watch them from the long gallery or verandah of the house. Another popular
pastime during the festival of sowing is a masquerade. It takes place on
the evening of the tenth day, the day on which, for the second time, the
people are forbidden to bathe. The scene of the performance is again the
open space in front of the chief’s house. As the day draws towards
evening, the villagers begin to assemble in the gallery or verandah of the
house in order to secure good places for viewing the masquerade. All the
maskers at these ceremonies represent evil spirits. The men wear ugly
wooden masks on their faces, and their bodies are swathed in masses of
slit banana leaves so as to imitate the hideous faces and hairy bodies of
the demons. The young women wear on their heads cylindrical baskets, which
conceal their real features, while they exhibit to the spectators
grotesque human faces formed by stitches on pieces of white cotton, which
are fastened to the baskets. On the occasion when Dr. Nieuwenhuis
witnessed the ceremony, the first to appear on the scene were some men
wearing wooden masks and helmets and so thickly wrapt in banana leaves
that they looked like moving masses of green foliage. They danced
silently, keeping time to the beat of the gongs. They were followed by
other figures, some of whom executed war-dances; but the weight of their
leafy envelope was such that they soon grew tired, and though they leaped
high, they uttered none of the wild war-whoops which usually accompany
these martial exercises. When darkness fell, the dances ceased and were
replaced by a little drama representing a boar brought to bay by a pack of
hounds. The part of the boar was played by an actor wearing a wooden
boar’s head mask, who ran about on all fours and grunted in a life-like
manner, while the hounds, acted by young men, snarled, yelped, and made
dashes at him. The play was watched with lively interest and peals of
laughter by the spectators. Later in the evening eight disguised girls
danced, one behind the other, with slow steps and waving arms, to the
glimmering light of torches and the strains of a sort of jew’s harp.(318)
(M70) The rites which accompany the sowing of the fields are no sooner
over than those which usher in the hoeing begin. Like the sowing
ceremonies, they are inaugurated by a priestess, who hoes the sacred field
round about a sacrificial stage and then calls upon other people to
complete the work. After that the holy field is again sprinkled with a
decoction of herbs.(319)
(M71) But the crowning point of the Kayan year is the New Year festival.
The harvest has then been fully housed: abundance reigns in every family,
and for eight days the people, dressed out in all their finery, give
themselves up to mirth and jollity. The festival was witnessed by the
Dutch explorer Dr. Nieuwenhuis. To lure the good spirits from the spirit
land baskets filled with precious objects were set out before the windows,
and the priestesses made long speeches, in which they invited these
beneficent beings to come to the chief’s house and to stay there during
the whole of the ceremonies. Two days afterwards one of the priestesses
harangued the spirits for three-quarters of an hour, telling them who the
Kayans were, from whom the chief’s family was descended, what the tribe
was doing, and what were its wishes, not forgetting to implore the
vengeance of the spirits on the Batang-Lupars, the hereditary foes of the
Kayans. The harangue was couched in rhyming verse and delivered in
sing-song tones. Five days later eight priestesses ascended a sacrificial
stage, on which food was daily set forth for the spirits. There they
joined hands and crooned another long address to the spirits, marking the
time with their hands. Then a basket containing offerings of food was
handed up to them, and one of the priestesses opened it and invited the
spirits to enter the basket. When they were supposed to have done so, the
lid was shut down on them, and the basket with the spirits in it was
conveyed into the chief’s house. As the priestesses in the performance of
the sacred ceremonies might not touch the ground, planks were cut from a
fruit-tree and laid on the ground for them to step on. But the great
feature of the New Year festival is the sacrifice of pigs, of which the
spiritual essence is appropriately offered to the spirits, while their
material substance is consumed by the worshippers. In carrying out this
highly satisfactory arrangement, while the live pigs lay tethered in a row
on the ground, the priestesses danced solemnly round a sacrificial stage,
each of them arrayed in a war-mantle of panther-skin and wearing a war-cap
on her head, and on either side two priests armed with swords executed war
dances for the purpose of scaring away evil spirits. By their
gesticulations the priestesses indicated to the powers above that the pigs
were intended for their benefit. One of them, a fat but dignified lady,
dancing composedly, seemed by her courteous gestures to invite the souls
of the pigs to ascend up to heaven; but others, not content with this too
ideal offering, rushed at the pigs, seized the smallest of them by the
hind legs, and exerting all their strength danced with the squealing
porker to and from the sacrificial stage. In the evening, before darkness
fell, the animals were slaughtered and their livers examined for omens: if
the under side of the liver was pale, the omen was good; but if it was
dark, the omen was evil. On the last day of the festival one of the chief
priestesses, in martial array, danced round the sacrificial stage, making
passes with her old sword as if she would heave the whole structure
heavenward; while others stabbed with spears at the foul fiends that might
be hovering in the air, intent on disturbing the sacred ministers at their
holy work.(320)
(M72) “Thus,” says Dr. Nieuwenhuis, reviewing the agricultural rites which
he witnessed among the Kayans on the Mendalam river, “every fresh
operation on the rice-field was ushered in by religious and culinary
ceremonies, during which the community had always to observe taboos for
several nights and to play certain definite games. As we saw, spinning-top
games and masquerades were played during the sowing festival: at the first
bringing in of the rice the people pelted each other with clay pellets
discharged from small pea-shooters, but in former times sham fights took
place with wooden swords; while during the New Year festival the men
contend with each other in wrestling, high leaps, long leaps, and running.
The women also fight each other with great glee, using bamboo vessels full
of water for their principal weapons.”(321)
(M73) What is the meaning of the sports and pastimes which custom
prescribes to the Kayans on these occasions? Are they mere diversions
meant to while away the tedium of the holidays? or have they a serious,
perhaps a religious or magical significance? To this question it will be
well to let Dr. Nieuwenhuis give his answer. “The Kayans on the Mendalam
river,” he says, “enjoy tolerably regular harvests, and their agricultural
festivals accordingly take place every year; whereas the Kayans on the
Mahakam river, on account of the frequent failure of the harvests, can
celebrate a New Year’s festival only once in every two or three years. Yet
although these festivities are celebrated more regularly on the Mendalam
river, they are followed on the Mahakam river with livelier interest, and
the meaning of all ceremonies and games can also be traced much better
there. On the Mendalam river I came to the false conclusion that the
popular games which take place at the festivals are undertaken quite
arbitrarily at the seasons of sowing and harvest; but on the Mahakam
river, on the contrary, I observed that even the masquerade at the sowing
festival is invested with as deep a significance as any of the ceremonies
performed by the priestesses.”(322)
“The influence of religious worship, which dominates the whole life of the
Dyak tribes, manifests itself also in their games. This holds good chiefly
of pastimes in which all adults take part together, mostly on definite
occasions; it is less applicable to more individual pastimes which are not
restricted to any special season. Pastimes of the former sort are very
rarely indulged in at ordinary times, and properly speaking they attain
their full significance only on the occasion of the agricultural festivals
which bear a strictly religious stamp. Even then the recreations are not
left to choice, but definite games belong to definite festivals; thus at
the sowing festivals other amusements are in vogue than at the little
harvest festival or the great harvest festival at the beginning of the
reaping, and at the New Year festival.... Is this connexion between
festivals and games merely an accidental one, or is it based on a real
affinity? The latter seems to me the more probable view, for in the case
of one of the most important games played by men I was able to prove
directly a religious significance; and although I failed to do so in the
case of the others, I conjecture, nevertheless, that a religious idea lies
at the bottom of all other games which are connected with definite
festivals.”(323)
(M74) If the reader should entertain any doubt on the subject, and should
suspect that in arriving at this conclusion the Dutch traveller gave the
reins to his fancy rather than followed the real opinion of the people,
these doubts and suspicions will probably be dispelled by comparing the
similar games which another primitive agricultural people avowedly play
for the purpose of ensuring good crops. The people in question are the Kai
of German New Guinea, who inhabit the rugged, densely wooded mountains
inland from Finsch Harbour. They subsist mainly on the produce of the taro
and yams which they cultivate in their fields, though the more inland
people also make much use of sweet potatoes. All their crops are root
crops. No patch of ground is cultivated for more than a year at a time. As
soon as it has yielded a crop, it is deserted for another and is quickly
overgrown with rank weeds, bamboos, and bushes. In six or eight years,
when the undergrowth has died out under the shadow of the taller trees
which have shot up, the land may again be cleared and brought under
cultivation. Thus the area of cultivation shifts from year to year; and
the villages are not much more permanent; for in the damp tropical climate
the wooden houses soon rot and fall into ruins, and when this happens the
site of the village is changed.(324) To procure good crops of the taro and
yams, on which they depend for their subsistence, the Kai resort to many
superstitious practices. For example, in order to make the yams strike
deep roots, they touch the shoots with the bone of a wild animal that has
been killed in the recesses of a cave, imagining that just as the creature
penetrated deep into the earth, so the shoots that have been touched with
its bone will descend deep into the ground. And in order that the taro may
bear large and heavy fruit, they place the shoots, before planting them,
on a large and heavy block of stone, believing that the stone will
communicate its valuable properties of size and weight to the future
fruit. Moreover, great use is made of spells and incantations to promote
the growth of the crops, and all persons who utter such magical formulas
for this purpose have to abstain from eating certain foods until the
plants have sprouted and give promise of a good crop. For example, they
may not eat young bamboo shoots, which are a favourite article of diet
with the people. The reason is that the young shoots are covered with fine
prickles, which cause itching and irritation of the skin; from which the
Kai infer that if an enchanter of field fruits were to eat bamboo shoots,
the contagion of their prickles would be conveyed through him to the
fruits and would manifest itself in a pungent disagreeable flavour. For a
similar reason no charmer of the crops who knows his business would dream
of eating crabs, because he is well aware that if he were to do so the
leaves and stalks of the plants would be dashed in pieces by a pelting
rain, just like the long thin brittle legs of a dead crab. Again, were
such an enchanter to eat any of the edible kinds of locusts, it seems
obvious to the Kai that locusts would devour the crops over which the
imprudent wizard had recited his spells. Above all, people who are
concerned in planting fields must on no account eat pork; because pigs,
whether wild or tame, are the most deadly enemies of the crops, which they
grub up and destroy; from which it follows, as surely as the night does
the day, that if you eat pork while you are at work on the farm, your
fields will be devastated by inroads of pigs.(325)
(M75) However, these precautions are not the only measures which the Kai
people adopt for the benefit of the yams and the taro. “In the opinion of
the natives various games are important for a proper growth of the
field-fruits; hence these games may only be played in the time after the
work on the fields has been done. Thus to swing on a long Spanish reed
fastened to a branch of a tree is thought to have a good effect on the
newly planted yams. Therefore swinging is practised by old and young, by
men and women. No one who has an interest in the growth of his crop in the
field leaves the swing idle. As they swing to and fro they sing
swing-songs. These songs often contain only the names of the kinds of yams
that have been planted, together with the joyous harvest-cry repeated with
variations, ‘I have found a fine fruit!’ In leaping from the swing, they
cry ‘_Kakulili_!’ By calling out the name of the yams they think to draw
their shoots upwards out of the ground. A small bow with a string, on
which a wooden flag adorned with a feather is made to slide down (the Kai
call the instrument _tawatawa_), may only be used when the yams are
beginning to wind up about their props. The tender shoots are then touched
with the bow, while a song is sung which is afterwards often repeated in
the village. It runs thus: ‘_Mama gelo, gelowaineja, gelowaineja; kikí
tambai, kíki tambai._’ The meaning of the words is unknown. The intention
is to cause a strong upward growth of the plants. In order that the
foliage of the yams may sprout luxuriantly and grow green and spread, the
Kai people play cat’s cradle. Each of the intricate figures has a definite
meaning and a name to match: for example ‘the flock of pigeons’ (_Hulua_),
‘the Star,’ ‘the Flying Fox,’ ‘the Sago-palm Fan,’ ‘the Araucaria,’ ‘the
Lizard and the Dog,’ ‘the Pig,’ ‘the Sentinel-box in the Fields,’ ‘the
Rat’s Nest,’ ‘the Wasp’s Nest in the Bamboo-thicket,’ ‘the Kangaroo,’ ‘the
Spider’s Web,’ ‘the Little Children,’ ‘the Canoe,’ ‘Rain and Sunshine,’
‘the Pig’s Pitfall,’ ‘the Fish-spawn,’ ‘the Two Cousins, Kewâ and Imbiâwâ,
carrying their dead Mother to the Grave,’ etc. By spinning large native
acorns or a sort of wild fig they think that they foster the growth of the
newly-planted taro; the plants will ‘turn about and broaden.’ The game
must therefore only be played at the time when the taro is planted. The
same holds good of spearing at the stalks of taro leaves with the ribs of
sago leaves used as miniature spears. This is done when the taro leaves
have unfolded themselves, but when the plants have not yet set any tubers.
A single leaf is cut from a number of stems, and these leaves are brought
into the village. The game is played by two partners, who sit down
opposite to each other at a distance of three or four paces. A number of
taro stalks lie beside each. He who has speared all his adversary’s stalks
first is victor; then they change stalks and the game begins again. By
piercing the leaves they think that they incite the plants to set tubers.
Almost more remarkable than the limitation of these games to the time when
work on the fields is going forward is the custom of the Kai people which
only permits the tales of the olden time or popular legends to be told at
the time when the newly planted fruits are budding and sprouting.”(326) At
the end of every such tale the Kai story-teller mentions the names of the
various kinds of yams and adds, “Shoots (for the new planting) and fruits
(to eat) in abundance!” “From their concluding words we see that the Kai
legends are only told for a quite definite purpose, namely, to promote the
welfare of the yams planted in the field. By reviving the memory of the
ancient beings, to whom the origin of the field-fruits is referred, they
imagine that they influence the growth of the fruits for good. When the
planting is over, and especially when the young plants begin to sprout,
the telling of legends comes to an end. In the villages it is always only
a few old men who as good story-tellers can hold the attention of their
hearers.”(327)
(M76) Thus with these New Guinea people the playing of certain games and
the recital of certain legends are alike magical in their intention; they
are charms practised to ensure good crops. Both sets of charms appear to
be based on the principles of sympathetic magic. In playing the games the
players perform acts which are supposed to mimic or at all events to
stimulate the corresponding processes in the plants: by swinging high in
the air they make the plants grow high; by playing cat’s cradle they cause
the leaves of the yams to spread and the stalks to intertwine, even as the
players spread their hands and twine the string about their fingers; by
spinning fruits they make the taro plants to turn and broaden; and by
spearing the taro leaves they induce the plants to set tubers.(328) In
telling the legends the story-tellers mention the names of the powerful
beings who first created the fruits of the earth, and the mere mention of
their names avails, on the principle of the magical equivalence of names
and persons or things, to reproduce the effect.(329) The recitation of
tales as a charm to promote the growth of the crops is not peculiar to the
Kai. It is practised also by the Bakaua, another tribe of German New
Guinea, who inhabit the coast of Huon Gulf, not far from the Kai. These
people tell stories in the evening at the time when the yams and taro are
ripe, and the stories always end with a prayer to the ancestral spirits,
invoked under various more or less figurative designations, such as “a
man” or “a cricket,” that they would be pleased to cause countless shoots
to sprout, the great tubers to swell, the sugar-cane to thrive, and the
bananas to hang in long clusters. “From this we see,” says the missionary
who reports the custom, “that the object of telling the stories is to
prove to the ancestors, whose spirits are believed to be present at the
recitation of the tales which they either invented or inherited, that
people always remember them; for which reason they ought to be favourable
to their descendants, and above all to bestow their blessings on the
shoots which are ready to be planted or on the plants already in the
ground.” As the story-teller utters the prayer, he looks towards the house
in which the young shoots ready for planting or the ripe fruits are
deposited.(330)
(M77) Similarly, the Yabim, a neighbouring tribe of German New Guinea, at
the entrance to Huon Gulf, tell tales for the purpose of obtaining a
plentiful harvest of yams, taro, sugar-cane, and bananas.(331) They
subsist chiefly by the fruits of the earth which they cultivate, and among
which taro, yams, and sugar-cane supply them with their staple food.(332)
In their agricultural labours they believe themselves to be largely
dependent on the spirits of their dead, the _balum_, as they call them.
Before they plant the first taro in a newly cleared field they invoke the
souls of the dead to make the plants grow and prosper; and to propitiate
these powerful spirits they bring valuable objects, such as boar’s tusks
and dog’s teeth, into the field, in order that the ghosts may deck
themselves with the souls of these ornaments, while at the same time they
minister to the grosser appetites of the disembodied spirits by offering
them a savoury mess of taro porridge. Later in the season they whirl
bull-roarers in the fields and call out the names of the dead, believing
that this makes the crops to thrive.(333)
(M78) But besides the prayers which they address to the spirits of the
dead for the sake of procuring an abundant harvest, the Yabim utter spells
for the same purpose, and these spells sometimes take the form, not of a
command, but of a narrative. Here, for instance, is one of their spells:
“Once upon a time a man laboured in his field and complained that he had
no taro shoots. Then came two doves flying from Poum. They had devoured
much taro, and they perched on a tree in the field, and during the night
they vomited all the taro up. Thus the man got so many taro shoots that he
was even able to sell some of them to other people.” Or, again, if the
taro will not bud, the Yabim will have recourse to the following spell: “A
muraena lay at ebb-tide on the shore. It seemed to be at its last gasp.
Then the tide flowed on, and the muraena came to life again and plunged
into the deep water.” This spell is pronounced over twigs of a certain
tree (_kalelong_), while the enchanter smites the ground with them. After
that the taro is sure to bud.(334) Apparently the mere recitation of such
simple tales is thought to produce the same effect as a direct appeal,
whether in the shape of a prayer or a command, addressed to the spirits.
Such incantations may be called narrative spells to distinguish them from
the more familiar imperative spells, in which the enchanter expresses his
wishes in the form of direct commands. Much use seems to be made of such
narrative spells among the natives of this part of German New Guinea. For
example, among the Bukaua, who attribute practically boundless powers to
sorcerers in every department of life and nature, the spells by which
these wizards attempt to work their will assume one of two forms: either
they are requests made to the ancestors, or they are short narratives,
addressed to nobody in particular, which the sorcerer mutters while he is
performing his magical rites.(335) It is true, that here the distinction
is drawn between narratives and requests rather than between narratives
and commands; but the difference of a request from a command, though great
in theory, may be very slight in practice; so that prayer and spell, in
the ordinary sense of the words, may melt into each other almost
imperceptibly. Even the priest or the enchanter who utters the one may be
hardly conscious of the hairbreadth that divides it from the other. In
regard to narrative spells, it seems probable that they have been used
much more extensively among mankind than the evidence at our disposal
permits us positively to affirm; in particular we may conjecture that many
ancient narratives, which we have been accustomed to treat as mere myths,
used to be regularly recited in magical rites as spells for the purpose of
actually producing events like those which they describe.
(M79) The use of the bull-roarer to quicken the fruits of the earth is not
peculiar to the Yabim. On the other side of New Guinea the instrument is
employed for the same purpose by the natives of Kiwai, an island at the
mouth of the Fly River. They think that by whirling bull-roarers they
produce good crops of yams, sweet potatoes, and bananas; and in accordance
with this belief they call the implement “the mother of yams.”(336)
Similarly in Mabuiag, an island in Torres Straits, the bull-roarer is
looked upon as an instrument that can be used to promote the growth of
garden produce, such as yams and sweet potatoes; certain spirits were
supposed to march round the gardens at night swinging bull-roarers for
this purpose.(337) Indeed a fertilising or prolific virtue appears to be
attributed to the instrument by savages who are totally ignorant of
agriculture. Thus among the Dieri of central Australia, when a young man
had undergone the painful initiatory ceremony of having a number of gashes
cut in his back, he used to be given a bull-roarer, whereupon it was
believed that he became inspired by the spirits of the men of old, and
that by whirling it, when he went in search of game before his wounds were
healed, he had power to cause a good harvest of lizards, snakes, and other
reptiles. On the other hand, the Dieri thought that if a woman were to see
a bull-roarer that had been used at the initiatory ceremonies and to learn
its secret, the tribe would ever afterwards be destitute of snakes,
lizards, and other such food.(338) It may very well be that a similar
power to fertilise or multiply edible plants and animals has been ascribed
to the bull-roarer by many other peoples who employ the implement in their
mysteries.
(M80) Further, it is to be observed that just as the Kai of New Guinea
swing to and fro on reeds suspended from the branches of trees in order to
promote the growth of the crops, in like manner Lettish peasants in Russia
devote their leisure to swinging in spring and early summer for the
express purpose of making the flax grow as high as they swing in the
air.(339) And we may suspect that wherever swinging is practised as a
ceremony at certain times of the year, particularly in spring and at
harvest, the pastime is not so much a mere popular recreation as a magical
rite designed to promote the growth of the crops.(340)
With these examples before us we need not hesitate to believe that Dr.
Nieuwenhuis is right when he attributes a deep religious or magical
significance to the games which the Kayans or Bahaus of central Borneo
play at their various agricultural festivals.
(M81) It remains to point out how far the religious or magical practices
of these primitive agricultural peoples of Borneo and New Guinea appear to
illustrate by analogy the original nature of the rites of Eleusis. So far
as we can recompose, from the broken fragments of tradition, a picture of
the religious and political condition of the Eleusinian people in the
olden time, it appears to tally fairly well with the picture which Dr.
Nieuwenhuis has drawn for us of the Kayans or Bahaus at the present day in
the forests of central Borneo. Here as there we see a petty agricultural
community ruled by hereditary chiefs who, while they unite religious to
civil authority, being bound to preside over the numerous ceremonies
performed for the good of the crops,(341) nevertheless lead simple
patriarchal lives and are so little raised in outward dignity above their
fellows that their daughters do not deem it beneath them to fetch water
for the household from the village well.(342) Here as there we see a
people whose whole religion is dominated and coloured by the main
occupation of their lives; who believe that the growth of the crops, on
which they depend for their subsistence, is at the mercy of two powerful
spirits, a divine husband and his wife, dwelling in a subterranean world;
and who accordingly offer sacrifices and perform ceremonies in order to
ensure the favour of these mighty beings and so to obtain abundant
harvests. If we knew more about the Rarian plain at Eleusis,(343) we might
discover that it was the scene of many religious ceremonies like those
which are performed on the little consecrated rice-fields (the _luma
lali_) of the Kayans, where the various operations of the agricultural
year are performed in miniature by members of the chief’s family before
the corresponding operations may be performed on a larger scale by common
folk on their fields. Certainly we know that the Rarian plain witnessed
one such ceremony in the year. It was a solemn ceremony of ploughing, one
of the three Sacred Ploughings which took place annually in various parts
of Attica.(344) Probably the rite formed part of the _Proerosia_ or
Festival before Ploughing, which was intended to ensure a plentiful
crop.(345) Further, it appears that the priests who guided the sacred
slow-paced oxen as they dragged the plough down the furrows of the Rarian
Plain, were drawn from the old priestly family of Bouzygai or “Ox-yokers,”
whose eponymous ancestor is said to have been the first man to yoke oxen
and to plough the fields. As they performed this time-honoured ceremony,
the priests uttered many quaint curses against all churls who should
refuse to lend fire or water to neighbours, or to shew the way to
wanderers, or who should leave a corpse unburied.(346) If we had a
complete list of the execrations fulminated by the holy ploughmen on these
occasions, we might find that some of them were levelled at the impious
wretches who failed to keep all the rules of the Sabbath, as we may call
those periods of enforced rest and seclusion which the Kayans of Borneo
and other primitive agricultural peoples observe for the good of the
crops.(347)
(M82) Further, when we see that many primitive peoples practise what we
call games but what they regard in all seriousness as solemn rites for the
good of the crops, we may be the more inclined to accept the view of the
ancients, who associated the Eleusinian games directly with the worship of
Demeter and Persephone, the Corn Goddesses.(348) One of the contests at
the Eleusinian games was in leaping,(349) and we know that even in modern
Europe to this day leaping or dancing high is practised as a charm to make
the crops grow tall.(350) Again, the bull-roarer was swung so as to
produce a humming sound at the Greek mysteries;(351) and when we find the
same simple instrument whirled by savages in New Guinea for the sake of
ensuring good crops, we may reasonably conjecture that it was whirled with
a like intention by the rude forefathers of the Greeks among the
cornfields of Eleusis. If that were so—though the conjecture is hardly
susceptible of demonstration—it would go some way to confirm the theory
that the Eleusinian mysteries were in their origin nothing more than
simple rustic ceremonies designed to make the farmer’s fields to wave with
yellow corn. And in the practice of the Kayans, whose worship of the rice
offers many analogies to the Eleusinian worship of the corn, may we not
detect a hint of the origin of that rule of secrecy which always
characterised the Eleusinian mysteries? May it not have been that, just as
the Kayans exclude strangers from their villages while they are engaged in
the celebration of religious rites, lest the presence of these intruders
should frighten or annoy the shy and touchy spirits who are invoked at
these times, so the old Eleusinians may have debarred foreigners from
participation in their most solemn ceremonies, lest the coy goddesses of
the corn should take fright or offence at the sight of strange faces and
so refuse to bestow on men their annual blessing? The admission of
foreigners to the privilege of initiation in the mysteries was probably a
late innovation introduced at a time when the fame of their sanctity had
spread far and wide, and when the old magical meaning of the ritual had
long been obscured, if not forgotten.
(M83) Lastly, it may be suggested that in the masked dances and dramatic
performances, which form a conspicuous and popular feature of the Sowing
Festival among the Kayans,(352) we have the savage counterpart of that
drama of divine death and resurrection which appears to have figured so
prominently in the mysteries of Eleusis.(353) If my interpretation of that
solemn drama is correct, it represented in mythical guise the various
stages in the growth of the corn for the purpose of magically fostering
the natural processes which it simulated. In like manner among the Kaua
and Kobeua Indians of North-western Brazil, who subsist chiefly by the
cultivation of manioc, dances or rather pantomimes are performed by masked
men, who represent spirits or demons of fertility, and by imitating the
act of procreation are believed to stimulate the growth of plants as well
as to quicken the wombs of women and to promote the multiplication of
animals. Coarse and grotesque as these dramatic performances may seem to
us, they convey no suggestion of indecency to the minds either of the
actors or of the spectators, who regard them in all seriousness as rites
destined to confer the blessing of fruitfulness on the inhabitants of the
village, on their plantations, and on the whole realm of nature.(354)
However, we possess so little exact information as to the rites of Eleusis
that all attempts to elucidate them by the ritual of savages must
necessarily be conjectural. Yet the candid reader may be willing to grant
that conjectures supported by analogies like the foregoing do not exceed
the limits of a reasonable hypothesis.
CHAPTER IV. WOMAN’S PART IN PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE.
(M84) If Demeter was indeed a personification of the corn, it is natural
to ask, why did the Greeks personify the corn as a goddess rather than a
god? why did they ascribe the origin of agriculture to a female rather
than to a male power? They conceived the spirit of the vine as masculine;
why did they conceive the spirit of the barley and wheat as feminine? To
this it has been answered that the personification of the corn as
feminine, or at all events the ascription of the discovery of agriculture
to a goddess, was suggested by the prominent part which women take in
primitive agriculture.(355) The theory illustrates a recent tendency of
mythologists to explain many myths as reflections of primitive society
rather than as personifications of nature. For that reason, apart from its
intrinsic interest, the theory deserves to be briefly considered.
(M85) Before the invention of the plough, which can hardly be worked
without resort to the labour of men, it was and still is customary in many
parts of the world to break up the soil for cultivation with hoes, and
among not a few savage peoples to this day the task of hoeing the ground
and sowing the seed devolves mainly or entirely upon the women, while the
men take little or no part in cultivation beyond clearing the land by
felling the forest trees and burning the fallen timber and brushwood which
encumber the soil. Thus, for example, among the Zulus, “when a piece of
land has been selected for cultivation, the task of clearing it belongs to
the men. If the ground be much encumbered, this becomes a laborious
undertaking, for their axe is very small, and when a large tree has to be
encountered, they can only lop the branches; fire is employed when it is
needful to remove the trunk. The reader will therefore not be surprised
that the people usually avoid bush-land, though they seem to be aware of
its superior fertility. As a general rule the men take no further share in
the labour of cultivation; and, as the site chosen is seldom much
encumbered and frequently bears nothing but grass, their part of the work
is very slight. The women are the real labourers; for (except in some
particular cases) the entire business of digging, planting, and weeding
devolves on them; and, if we regard the assagai and shield as symbolical
of the man, the hoe may be looked upon as emblematic of the woman.... With
this rude and heavy instrument the woman digs, plants, and weeds her
garden. Digging and sowing are generally one operation, which is thus
performed; the seed is first scattered on the ground, when the soil is dug
or picked up with the hoe, to the depth of three or four inches, the
larger roots and tufts of grass being gathered out, but all the rest left
in or on the ground.”(356) A special term of contempt is applied to any
Zulu man, who, deprived of the services of his wife and family, is
compelled by hard necessity to handle the hoe himself.(357) Similarly
among the Baronga of Delagoa Bay, “when the rains begin to fall, sometimes
as early as September but generally later, they hasten to sow. With her
hoe in her hands, the mistress of the field walks with little steps; every
time she lifts a clod of earth well broken up, and in the hole thus made
she plants three or four grains of maize and covers them up. If she has
not finished clearing all the patch of the bush which she contemplated,
she proceeds to turn up again the fields she tilled last year. The crop
will be less abundant than in virgin soil, but they plant three or four
years successively in the same field before it is exhausted. As for
enriching the soil with manure, they never think of it.”(358) Among the
Barotsé, who cultivate millet, maize, and peas to a small extent and in a
rudimentary fashion, women alone are occupied with the field-work, and
their only implement is a spade or hoe.(359) Of the Matabelé we are told
that “most of the hard work is performed by the women; the whole of the
cultivation is done by them. They plough with short spades of native
manufacture; they sow the fields, and they clear them of weeds.”(360)
Among the Awemba, to the west of Lake Tanganyika, the bulk of the work in
the plantations falls on the women; in particular the men refuse to hoe
the ground. They have a saying, “Is not each male child born for the axe
and each female child for the hoe?”(361)
(M86) The natives of the Tanganyika plateau “cultivate the banana, and
have a curious custom connected with it. No man is permitted to sow; but
when the hole is prepared a little girl is carried to the spot on a man’s
shoulders. She first throws into the hole a sherd of broken pottery, and
then scatters the seed over it.”(362) The reason of the latter practice
has been explained by more recent observers of these natives. “Young
children, it may here be noted, are often employed to administer drugs,
remedies, even the Poison Ordeal, and to sow the first seeds. Such acts,
the natives say, must be performed by chaste and innocent hands, lest a
contaminated touch should destroy the potency of the medicine or of the
seedlings planted. It used to be a very common sight upon the islands of
Lake Bangweolo to watch how a Bisa woman would solve the problem of her
own moral unfitness by carrying her baby-girl to the banana-plot, and
inserting seedlings in the tiny hands for dropping into the holes already
prepared.”(363) Similarly among the people of the Lower Congo “women must
remain chaste while planting pumpkin and calabash seeds, they are not
allowed to touch any pig-meat, and they must wash their hands before
touching the seeds. If a woman does not observe all these rules, she must
not plant the seeds, or the crop will be bad; she may make the holes, and
her baby girl, or another who has obeyed the restrictions, can drop in the
seeds and cover them over.”(364) We can now perhaps understand why Attic
matrons had to observe strict chastity when they celebrated the festival
of the Thesmophoria.(365) In Attica that festival was held in honour of
Demeter in the month of Pyanepsion, corresponding to October,(366) the
season of the autumn sowing; and the rites included certain ceremonies
which bore directly on the quickening of the seed.(367) We may conjecture
that the rule of chastity imposed on matrons at this festival was a relic
of a time when they too, like many savage women down to the present time,
discharged the important duty of sowing the seed and were bound for that
reason to observe strict continence, lest any impurity on their part
should defile the seed and prevent it from bearing fruit.
(M87) Of the Caffres of South Africa in general we read that “agriculture
is mainly the work of the women, for in olden days the men were occupied
in hunting and fighting. The women do but scratch the land with hoes,
sometimes using long-handled instruments, as in Zululand, and sometimes
short-handled ones, as above the Zambesi. When the ground is thus
prepared, the women scatter the seed, throwing it over the soil quite at
random. They know the time to sow by the position of the constellations,
chiefly by that of the Pleiades. They date their new year from the time
they can see this constellation just before sunrise.”(368) In Basutoland,
where the women also till the fields, though the lands of chiefs are dug
and sowed by men, an attempt is made to determine the time of sowing by
observation of the moon, but the people generally find themselves out in
their reckoning, and after much dispute are forced to fall back upon the
state of the weather and of vegetation as better evidence of the season of
sowing. Intelligent chiefs rectify the calendar at the summer solstice,
which they call the summer-house of the sun.(369)
(M88) Among the Nandi of British East Africa “the rough work of clearing
the bush for plantations is performed by the men, after which nearly all
work in connexion with them is done by the women. The men, however, assist
in sowing the seed, and in harvesting some of the crops. As a rule trees
are not felled, but the bark is stripped off for about four feet from the
ground and the trees are then left to die. The planting is mostly, if not
entirely, done during the first half of the _Kiptamo_ moon (February),
which is the first month of the year, and when the _Iwat-kut_ moon rises
(March) all seed should be in the ground. The chief medicine man is
consulted before the planting operations begin, but the Nandi know by the
arrival in the fields of the guinea-fowl, whose song is supposed to be,
_O-kol, o-kol; mi-i tokoch_ (Plant, plant; there is luck in it), that the
planting season is at hand. When the first seed is sown, salt is mixed
with it, and the sower sings mournfully: _Ak o-siek-u o-chok-chi_ (And
grow quickly), as he sows. After fresh ground has been cleared, eleusine
grain is planted. This crop is generally repeated the second year, after
which millet is sown, and finally sweet potatoes or some other product.
Most fields are allowed to lie fallow every fourth or fifth year. The
Nandi manure their plantations with turf ashes.... The eleusine crops are
harvested by both men and women. All other crops are reaped by the women
only, who are at times assisted by the children. The corn is pounded and
winnowed by the women and girls.”(370) Among the Suk and En-jemusi of
British East Africa it is the women who cultivate the fields and milk the
cows.(371) Among the Wadowe of German East Africa the men clear the forest
and break up the hard ground, but the women sow and reap the crops.(372)
So among the Wanyamwezi, who are an essentially agricultural people, to
the south of Lake Victoria Nyanza, the men cut down the bush and hoe the
hard ground, but leave the rest of the labour of weeding, sowing, and
reaping to the women.(373) The Baganda of Central Africa subsist chiefly
on bananas, and among them “the garden and its cultivation have always
been the woman’s department. Princesses and peasant women alike looked
upon cultivation as their special work; the garden with its produce was
essentially the wife’s domain, and she would under no circumstances allow
her husband to do any digging or sowing in it. No woman would remain with
a man who did not give her a garden and a hoe to dig it with; if these
were denied her, she would seek an early opportunity to escape from her
husband and return to her relations to complain of her treatment, and to
obtain justice or a divorce. When a man married he sought a plot of land
for his wife in order that she might settle to work and provide food for
the household.... In initial clearing of the land it was customary for the
husband to take part; he cut down the tall grass and shrubs, and so left
the ground ready for his wife to begin her digging. The grass and the
trees she heaped up and burned, reserving only so much as she needed for
firewood. A hoe was the only implement used in cultivation; the blade was
heart-shaped with a prong at the base, by which it was fastened to the
handle. The hoe-handle was never more than two feet long, so that a woman
had to stoop when using it.”(374) In Kiziba, a district immediately to the
south of Uganda, the tilling of the soil is exclusively the work of the
women. They turn up the soil with hoes, make holes in the ground with
digging-sticks or their fingers, and drop a few seeds into each hole.(375)
Among the Niam-Niam of Central Africa “the men most studiously devote
themselves to their hunting, and leave the culture of the soil to be
carried on exclusively by the women”;(376) and among the Monbuttoo of the
same region in like manner, “whilst the women attend to the tillage of the
soil and the gathering of the harvest, the men, unless they are absent
either for war or hunting, spend the entire day in idleness.”(377) As to
the Bangala of the Upper Congo we read that “large farms were made around
the towns. The men did the clearing of the bush, felling the trees, and
cutting down the undergrowth; the women worked with them, heaping up the
grass and brushwood ready for burning, and helping generally. As a rule
the women did the hoeing, planting, and weeding, but the men did not so
despise this work as never to do it.” In this tribe “the food belonged to
the woman who cultivated the farm, and while she supplied her husband with
the vegetable food, he had to supply the fish and meat and share them with
his wife or wives.”(378) Amongst the Tofoke, a tribe of the Congo State on
the equator, all the field labour, except the clearing away of the forest,
is performed by the women. They dig the soil with a hoe and plant maize
and manioc. A field is used only once.(379) So with the Ba-Mbala, a Bantu
tribe between the rivers Inzia and Kwilu, the men clear the ground for
cultivation, but all the rest of the work of tillage falls to the women,
whose only tool is an iron hoe. Fresh ground is cleared for cultivation
every year.(380) The Mpongwe of the Gaboon, in West Africa, cultivate
manioc (cassava), maize, yams, plantains, sweet potatoes, and ground nuts.
When new clearings have to be made in the forest, the men cut down and
burn the trees, and the women put in the crop. The only tool they use is a
dibble, with which they turn up a sod, put in a seed, and cover it
over.(381) Among the Ashira of the same region the cultivation of the soil
is in the hands of the women.(382)
(M89) A similar division of labour between men and women prevails among
many primitive agricultural tribes of Indians in South America. “In the
interior of the villages,” says an eminent authority on aboriginal South
America, “the man often absents himself to hunt or to go into the heart of
the forest in search of the honey of the wild bees, and he always goes
alone. He fells the trees in the places where he wishes to make a field
for cultivation, he fashions his weapons, he digs out his canoe, while the
woman rears the children, makes the garments, busies herself with the
interior, cultivates the field, gathers the fruits, collects the roots,
and prepares the food. Such is, generally at least, the respective
condition of the two sexes among almost all the Americans. The Peruvians
alone had already, in their semi-civilised state, partially modified these
customs; for among them the man shared the toils of the other sex or took
on himself the most laborious tasks.”(383) Thus, to take examples, among
the Caribs of the West Indies the men used to fell the trees and leave the
fallen trunks to cumber the ground, burning off only the smaller boughs.
Then the women came and planted manioc, potatoes, yams, and bananas
wherever they found room among the tree-trunks. In digging the ground to
receive the seed or the shoots they did not use hoes but simply pointed
sticks. The men, we are told, would rather have died of hunger than
undertake such agricultural labours.(384) Again, the staple vegetable food
of the Indians of British Guiana is cassava bread, made from the roots of
the manioc or cassava plant, which the Indians cultivate in clearings of
the forest. The men fell the trees, cut down the undergrowth, and in dry
weather set fire to the fallen lumber, thus creating open patches in the
forest which are covered with white ashes. When the rains set in, the
women repair to these clearings, heavily laden with baskets full of
cassava sticks to be used as cuttings. These they insert at irregular
intervals in the soil, and so the field is formed. While the cassava is
growing, the women do just as much weeding as is necessary to prevent the
cultivated plants from being choked by the rank growth of the tropical
vegetation, and in doing so they plant bananas, pumpkin seeds, yams, sweet
potatoes, sugar-cane, red and yellow peppers, and so forth, wherever there
is room for them. At last in the ninth or tenth month, when the seeds
appearing on the straggling branches of the cassava plants announce that
the roots are ripe, the women cut down the plants and dig up the roots,
not all at once, but as they are required. These roots they afterwards
peel, scrape, and bake into cassava bread.(385)
(M90) In like manner the cassava or manioc plant is cultivated generally
among all the Indian tribes of tropical South America, wherever the plant
will grow; and the cultivation of it is altogether in the hands of the
women, who insert the sticks in the ground after the fashion already
described.(386) For example, among the tribes of the Uaupes River, in the
upper valley of the Amazon, who are an agricultural people with settled
abodes, “the men cut down the trees and brushwood, which, after they have
lain some months to dry, are burnt; and the mandiocca is then planted by
the women, together with little patches of cane, sweet potatoes, and
various fruits. The women also dig up the mandiocca, and prepare from it
the bread which is their main subsistence.... The bread is made fresh
every day, as when it gets cold and dry it is far less palatable. The
women thus have plenty to do, for every other day at least they have to go
to the field, often a mile or two distant, to fetch the root, and every
day to grate, prepare, and bake the bread; as it forms by far the greater
part of their food, and they often pass days without eating anything else,
especially when the men are engaged in clearing the forest.”(387) Among
the Tupinambas, a tribe of Brazilian Indians, the wives “had something
more than their due share of labour, but they were not treated with
brutality, and their condition was on the whole happy. They set and dug
the mandioc; they sowed and gathered the maize. An odd superstition
prevailed, that if a sort of earth-almond, which the Portugueze call
_amendoens_, was planted by the men, it would not grow.”(388) Similar
accounts appear to apply to the Brazilian Indians in general: the men
occupy themselves with hunting, war, and the manufacture of their weapons,
while the women plant and reap the crops, and search for fruits in the
forest;(389) above all they cultivate the manioc, scraping the soil clear
of weeds with pointed sticks and inserting the shoots in the earth.(390)
Similarly among the Indians of Peru, who cultivate maize in clearings of
the forest, the cultivation of the fields is left to the women, while the
men hunt with bows and arrows and blowguns in the woods, often remaining
away from home for weeks or even months together.(391)
(M91) A similar distribution of labour between the sexes prevails among
some savage tribes in other parts of the world. Thus among the Lhoosai of
south-eastern India the men employ themselves chiefly in hunting or in
making forays on their weaker neighbours, but they clear the ground and
help to carry home the harvest. However, the main burden of the bodily
labour by which life is supported falls on the women; they fetch water,
hew wood, cultivate the ground, and help to reap the crops.(392) Among the
Miris of Assam almost the whole of the field work is done by the women.
They cultivate a patch of ground for two successive years, then suffer it
to lie fallow for four or five. But they are deterred by superstitious
fear from breaking new ground so long as the fallow suffices for their
needs; they dread to offend the spirits of the woods by needlessly felling
the trees. They raise crops of rice, maize, millet, yams, and sweet
potatoes. But they seldom possess any implement adapted solely for
tillage; they have never taken to the plough nor even to a hoe. They use
their long straight swords to clear, cut, and dig with.(393) Among the
Korwas, a savage hill tribe of Bengal, the men hunt with bows and arrows,
while the women till the fields, dig for wild roots, or cull wild
vegetables. Their principal crop is pulse (_Cajanus Indicus_).(394) Among
the Papuans of Ayambori, near Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, it is the men who
lay out the fields by felling and burning the trees and brushwood in the
forest, and it is they who enclose the fields with fences, but it is the
women who sow and reap them and carry home the produce in sacks on their
backs. They cultivate rice, millet, and bananas.(395) So among the natives
of Kaimani Bay in Dutch New Guinea the men occupy themselves only with
fishing and hunting, while all the field work falls on the women.(396) In
the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, when the natives have decided to
convert a piece of grass-land into a plantation, the men cut down the long
grass, burn it, dig up the soil with sharp-pointed sticks, and enclose the
land with a fence of saplings. Then the women plant the banana shoots,
weed the ground, and in the intervals between the bananas insert slips of
yams, sweet potatoes, sugar-cane, or ginger. When the produce is ripe,
they carry it to the village. Thus the bulk of the labour of cultivation
devolves on the women.(397)
(M92) Among some peoples of the Indian Archipelago, after the land has
been cleared for cultivation by the men, the work of planting and sowing
is divided between men and women, the men digging holes in the ground with
pointed sticks, and the women following them, putting the seeds or shoots
into the holes, and then huddling the earth over them; for savages seldom
sow broadcast, they laboriously dig holes and insert the seed in them.
This division of agricultural labour between the sexes is adopted by
various tribes of Celebes, Ceram, Borneo, Nias, and New Guinea.(398)
Sometimes the custom of entrusting the sowing of the seed to women appears
to be influenced by superstitious as well as economic considerations. Thus
among the Indians of the Orinoco, who with an infinitude of pains cleared
the jungle for cultivation by cutting down the forest trees with their
stone axes, burning the fallen lumber, and breaking up the ground with
wooden instruments hardened in the fire, the task of sowing the maize and
planting the roots was performed by the women alone; and when the Spanish
missionaries expostulated with the men for not helping their wives in this
toilsome duty, they received for answer that as women knew how to conceive
seed and bear children, so the seeds and roots planted by them bore fruit
far more abundantly than if they had been planted by male hands.(399)
(M93) Even among savages who have not yet learned to cultivate any plants
the task of collecting the edible seeds and digging up the edible roots of
wild plants appears to devolve mainly on women, while the men contribute
their share to the common food supply by hunting and fishing, for which
their superior strength, agility, and courage especially qualify them. For
example, among the Indians of California, who were entirely ignorant of
agriculture, the general division of labour between the sexes in the
search for food was that the men killed the game and caught the salmon,
while the women dug the roots and brought in most of the vegetable food,
though the men helped them to gather acorns, nuts, and berries.(400) Among
the Indians of San Juan Capistrano in California, while the men passed
their time in fowling, fishing, dancing, and lounging, “the women were
obliged to gather seeds in the fields, prepare them for cooking, and to
perform all the meanest offices, as well as the most laborious. It was
painful in the extreme, to behold them, with their infants hanging upon
their shoulders, groping about in search of herbs or seeds, and exposed as
they frequently were to the inclemency of the weather.”(401) Yet these
rude savages possessed a calendar containing directions as to the seasons
for collecting the different seeds and produce of the earth. The calendar
consisted of lunar months corrected by observation of the solstices, “for
at the conclusion of the moon in December, that is, at the conjunction,
they calculated the return of the sun from the tropic of Capricorn; and
another year commenced, the Indian saying ‘the sun has arrived at his
home.’ ... They observed with greater attention and celebrated with more
pomp, the sun’s arrival at the tropic of Capricorn than they did his
reaching the tropic of Cancer, for the reason, that, as they were situated
ten degrees from the latter, they were pleased at the sun’s approach
towards them; for it returned to ripen their fruits and seeds, to give
warmth to the atmosphere, and enliven again the fields with beauty and
increase.” However, the knowledge of the calendar was limited to the
_puplem_ or general council of the tribe, who sent criers to make
proclamation when the time had come to go forth and gather the seeds and
other produce of the earth. In their calculations they were assisted by a
_pul_ or astrologer, who observed the aspect of the moon.(402) When we
consider that these rude Californian savages, destitute alike of
agriculture and of the other arts of civilised life, yet succeeded in
forming for themselves a calendar based on observation both of the moon
and of the sun, we need not hesitate to ascribe to the immeasurably more
advanced Greeks at the dawn of history the knowledge of a somewhat more
elaborate calendar founded on a cycle of eight solar years.(403)
(M94) Among the equally rude aborigines of Australia, to whom agriculture
in every form was totally unknown, the division of labour between the
sexes in regard to the collection of food appears to have been similar.
While the men hunted game, the labour of gathering and preparing the
vegetable food fell chiefly to the women. Thus with regard to the
Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia we are told that while the men
busied themselves, according to the season, either with fishing or with
hunting emus, opossums, kangaroos, and so forth, the women and children
searched for roots and plants.(404) Again, among the natives of Western
Australia “it is generally considered the province of women to dig roots,
and for this purpose they carry a long, pointed stick, which is held in
the right hand, and driven firmly into the ground, where it is shaken, so
as to loosen the earth, which is scooped up and thrown out with the
fingers of the left hand, and in this manner they dig with great rapidity.
But the labour, in proportion to the amount obtained, is great. To get a
yam about half an inch in circumference and a foot in length, they have to
dig a hole above a foot square and two feet in depth; a considerable
portion of the time of the women and children is, therefore, passed in
this employment. If the men are absent upon any expedition, the females
are left in charge of one who is old or sick; and in traversing the bush
you often stumble on a large party of them, scattered about in the forest,
digging roots and collecting the different species of fungus.”(405) In
fertile districts, where the yams which the aborigines use as food grow
abundantly, the ground may sometimes be seen riddled with holes made by
the women in their search for these edible roots. Thus to quote Sir George
Grey: “We now crossed the dry bed of a stream, and from that emerged upon
a tract of light fertile soil, quite overrun with _warran_ [yam] plants,
the root of which is a favourite article of food with the natives. This
was the first time we had yet seen this plant on our journey, and now for
three and a half consecutive miles we traversed a fertile piece of land,
literally perforated with the holes the natives had made to dig this root;
indeed we could with difficulty walk across it on that account, whilst
this tract extended east and west as far as we could see.”(406) Again, in
the valley of the Lower Murray River a kind of yam (_Microseris Forsteri_)
grew plentifully and was easily found in the spring and early summer, when
the roots were dug up out of the earth by the women and children. The root
is small and of a sweetish taste and grows throughout the greater part of
Australia outside the tropics; on the alpine pastures of the high
Australian mountains it attains to a much larger size and furnishes a not
unpalatable food.(407) But the women gather edible herbs and seeds as well
as roots; and at evening they may be seen trooping in to the camp, each
with a great bundle of sow-thistles, dandelions, or trefoil on her
head,(408) or carrying wooden vessels filled with seeds, which they
afterwards grind up between stones and knead into a paste with water or
bake into cakes.(409) Among the aborigines of central Victoria, while the
men hunted, the women dug up edible roots and gathered succulent
vegetables, such as the young tops of the _munya_, the sow-thistle, and
several kinds of fig-marigold. The implement which they used to dig up
roots with was a pole seven or eight feet long, hardened in the fire and
pointed at the end, which also served them as a weapon both of defence and
of offence.(410) Among the tribes of Central Australia the principal
vegetable food is the seed of a species of Claytonia, called by white men
_munyeru_, which the women gather in large quantities and winnow by
pouring the little black seeds from one vessel to another so as to let the
wind blow the loose husks away.(411)
(M95) In these customs observed by savages who are totally ignorant of
agriculture we may perhaps detect some of the steps by which mankind have
advanced from the enjoyment of the wild fruits of the earth to the
systematic cultivation of plants. For an effect of digging up the earth in
the search for roots has probably been in many cases to enrich and
fertilise the soil and so to increase the crop of roots or herbs; and such
an increase would naturally attract the natives in larger numbers and
enable them to subsist for longer periods on the spot without being
compelled by the speedy exhaustion of the crop to shift their quarters and
wander away in search of fresh supplies. Moreover, the winnowing of the
seeds on ground which had thus been turned up by the digging-sticks of the
women would naturally contribute to the same result. For though savages at
the level of the Californian Indians and the aborigines of Australia have
no idea of using seeds for any purpose but that of immediate consumption,
and it has never occurred to them to incur a temporary loss for the sake
of a future gain by sowing them in the ground, yet it is almost certain
that in the process of winnowing the seeds as a preparation for eating
them many of the grains must have escaped and, being wafted by the wind,
have fallen on the upturned soil and borne fruit. Thus by the operations
of turning up the ground and winnowing the seed, though neither operation
aimed at anything beyond satisfying the immediate pangs of hunger, savage
man or rather savage woman was unconsciously preparing for the whole
community a future and more abundant store of food, which would enable
them to multiply and to abandon the old migratory and wasteful manner of
life for a more settled and economic mode of existence. So curiously
sometimes does man, aiming his shafts at a near but petty mark, hit a
greater and more distant target.
(M96) On the whole, then, it appears highly probable that as a consequence
of a certain natural division of labour between the sexes women have
contributed more than men towards the greatest advance in economic
history, namely, the transition from a nomadic to a settled life, from a
natural to an artificial basis of subsistence.
(M97) Among the Aryan peoples of Europe the old practice of hoeing the
ground as a preparation for sowing appears to have been generally replaced
at a very remote period by the far more effective process of
ploughing;(412) and as the labour of ploughing practically necessitates
the employment of masculine strength, it is hardly to be expected that in
Europe many traces should remain of the important part formerly played by
women in primitive agriculture. However, we are told that among the
Iberians of Spain and the Athamanes of Epirus the women tilled the
ground,(413) and that among the ancient Germans the care of the fields was
left to the women and old men.(414) But these indications of an age when
the cultivation of the ground was committed mainly to feminine hands are
few and slight; and if the Greek conception of Demeter as a goddess of
corn and agriculture really dates from such an age and was directly
suggested by such a division of labour between the sexes, it seems clear
that its origin must be sought at a period far back in the history of the
Aryan race, perhaps long before the segregation of the Greeks from the
common stock and their formation into a separate people. It may be so, but
to me I confess that this derivation of the conception appears somewhat
far-fetched and improbable; and I prefer to suppose that the idea of the
corn as feminine was suggested to the Greek mind, not by the position of
women in remote prehistoric ages, but by a direct observation of nature,
the teeming head of corn appearing to the primitive fancy to resemble the
teeming womb of a woman, and the ripe ear on the stalk being likened to a
child borne in the arms or on the back of its mother. At least we know
that similar sights suggest similar ideas to some of the agricultural
negroes of West Africa. Thus the Hos of Togoland, who plant maize in
February and reap it in July, say that the maize is an image of a mother;
when the cobs are forming, the mother is binding the infant on her back,
but in July she sinks her head and dies and the child is taken away from
her, to be afterwards multiplied at the next sowing.(415) When the rude
aborigines of Western Australia observe that a seed-bearing plant has
flowered, they call it the Mother of So-and-so, naming the particular kind
of plant, and they will not allow it to be dug up.(416) Apparently they
think that respect and regard are due to the plant as to a mother and her
child. Such simple and natural comparisons, which may occur to men in any
age and country, suffice to explain the Greek personification of the corn
as mother and daughter, and we need not cast about for more recondite
theories. Be that as it may, the conception of the corn as a woman and a
mother was certainly not peculiar to the ancient Greeks, but has been
shared by them with many other races, as will appear abundantly from the
instances which I shall cite in the following chapter.