manifested by the common custom of avoiding the mention of their names.
If their names were those of common objects, the words are dropped from
the language of the district so long as the memory of the departed
persists, and new names are substituted for them. For example, when a
man named Binama, which means the hornbill, died at Wagawaga, the name
of the bird was changed to _ambadina_, which means "the plasterer."[349]
In this way many words are either permanently lost or revived with
modified or new meanings. Hence the fear of the dead is here, as in many
other places, a fertile source of change in language. Another indication
of the terror inspired by ghosts is the custom of abandoning or
destroying the house in which a death has taken place; and this custom
used to be observed in certain cases at Tubetube and Wagawaga.[350]
[Sidenote: Beliefs and customs concerning the dead in the island of
Kiwai.]
Thus far I have dealt mainly with the beliefs and practices of the
Papuo-Melanesians in the eastern part of British New Guinea. With regard
to the pure Papuan population in the western part of the possession our
information is much scantier. However, we learn that in Kiwai, a large
island at the mouth of the Fly River, the dead are buried in the
villages and the ghosts are supposed to live in the ground near their
decaying bodies, but to emerge from time to time into the upper air and
look about them, only, however, to return to their abode beneath the
sod. Nothing is buried with the corpse; but a small platform is made
over the grave, or sticks are planted in the ground along its sides, and
on these are placed sago, yams, bananas, coco-nuts, and cooked crabs and
fish, all for the spirit of the dead to eat. A fire is also kindled
beside the grave and kept up by the friends for nine days in order that
the poor ghost may not shiver with cold at night. These practices prove
not merely a belief in the survival of the soul after death but a desire
to make it comfortable. Further, when the deceased is a man, his bow and
arrows are stuck at the head of the grave; when the deceased is a woman,
her petticoat is hung upon a stick. No doubt the weapons and the garment
are intended for the use of the ghost, when he or she revisits the upper
air. On the ninth day after the burial a feast is prepared, the drum is
beaten, the conch shell blown, and the chief mourner declares that no
more fires need be lighted and no more food placed on the grave.[351]
[Sidenote: Adiri, the land of the dead, and Sido, the first man who went
thither. The fear of ghosts.]
According to the natives of Kiwai the land of the dead is called Adiri
or Woibu. The first man to go thither and to open up a road for others
to follow him, was Sido, a popular hero about whom the people tell many
tales. But whereas in his lifetime Sido was an admired and beneficent
being, in his ghostly character he became a mischievous elf who played
pranks on such as he fell in with. His adventures after death furnish
the theme of many stories. However, it is much to his credit that,
finding the land of the dead a barren region without vegetation of any
sort, he, by an act of generation, converted it into a garden, where
bananas, yams, taro, coco-nuts and other fruits and vegetables grew and
ripened in a single night. Having thus fertilised the lower region, he
announced to Adiri, the lord of the subterranean realm, that he was the
precursor of many more men and women who would descend thereafter into
the spirit world. His prediction has been amply fulfilled; for ever
since then everybody has gone by the same road to the same place.[352]
However, when a person dies, his or her spirit may linger for a few days
in the neighbourhood of its old home before setting out for the far
country. During that time the spirit may occasionally be seen by
ordinary people, and accordingly the natives are careful not to go out
in the dark for fear of coming bolt on the ghost; and they sometimes
adopt other precautions against the prowling spectre, who might
otherwise haunt them and carry them off with him to deadland. Some
classes of ghosts are particularly dreaded on account of their
malignity; such, for example, are the spirits of women who have died in
childbed, and of people who have hanged themselves or been devoured by
crocodiles. Such ghosts loiter for a long time about the places where
they died, and they are very dangerous, because they are for ever luring
other people to die the same death which they died themselves. Yet
another troop of evil ghosts are the souls of those who were beheaded in
battle; for they kill and devour people, and at night you may see the
blood shining like fire as it gushes from the gaping gashes in their
throats.[353]
[Sidenote: The path of the ghosts to Adiri. Adiri, the land of the
dead.]
The road to Adiri or deadland is fairly well known, and the people can
point to many landmarks on it. For example, in the island of Paho there
is a tree called _dani_, under which the departing spirits sit down and
weep. When they have cried their fill and rubbed their poor
tear-bedraggled faces with mud, they make little pellets of clay and
throw them at the tree, and anybody can see for himself the pellets
sticking to the branches. It is true that the pellets resemble the nests
of insects, but this resemblance is only fortuitous. Near the tree is a
rocking stone, which the ghosts set in motion, and the sound that they
make in so doing is like the muffled roll of a drum. And while the stone
rocks to and fro with a hollow murmur, the ghosts dance, the men on one
side of the stone and the women on the other. Again at Mabudavane, where
the Mawata people have gardens, you may sometimes hear, in the stillness
of night, the same weird murmur, which indicates the presence of a
ghost. Then everybody keeps quiet, the children are hushed to silence,
and all listen intently. The murmur continues for a time and then ends
abruptly in a splash, which tells the listeners that the ghost has
leaped over the muddy creek. Further on, the spirits come to Boigu,
where they swim in the waterhole and often appear to people in their
real shape. But after Boigu the track of the ghosts is lost, or at least
has not been clearly ascertained. The spirit world lies somewhere away
in the far west, but the living are not quite sure of the way to it, and
they are somewhat vague in their accounts of it. There is no difference
between the fate of the good and the fate of the bad in the far country;
the dead meet the friends who died before them; and people who come from
the same village probably live together in the same rooms of the long
house of the ghosts. However, some native sceptics even doubt whether
there is such a place as Adiri at all, and whether death may not be the
end of consciousness to the individual.[354]
[Sidenote: Appearance of the dead to the living in dreams.]
The dead often appear to the living in dreams, warning them of danger or
furnishing them with useful information with regard to the cultivation
of their gardens, the practice of witchcraft, and so on. In order to
obtain advice from his dead parents a man will sometimes dig up their
skulls from the grave and sleep beside them; and to make sure of
receiving their prompt attention he will not infrequently provide
himself with a cudgel, with which he threatens to smash their skulls if
they do not answer his questions. Some persons possess a special faculty
of communicating with the departing spirit of a person who has just
died. Should they desire to question it they will lurk beside the road
which ghosts are known to take; and in order not to be betrayed by their
smell, which is very perceptible to a ghost, they will chew the leaf or
bark of a certain tree and spit the juice over their bodies. Then the
ghost cannot detect them, or rather he takes them to be ghosts like
himself, and accordingly he may in confidence impart to them most
valuable information, such for example as full particulars with regard
to the real cause of his death. This priceless intelligence the
ghost-seer hastens to communicate to his fellow tribesmen.[355]
[Sidenote: Offerings to the dead.]
When a man has just died and been buried, his surviving relatives lay
some of his weapons and ornaments, together with presents of food, upon
his grave, no doubt for the use of the ghost; but some of these things
they afterwards remove and bring back to the village, probably
considering, with justice, that they will be more useful to the living
than to the dead. But offerings to the dead may be presented to them at
other places than their tombs. "The great power," says Dr. Landtman,
"which the dead represent to the living has given rise to a sort of
simple offering to them, almost the only kind of offering met with among
the Kiwai Papuans. The natives occasionally lay down presents of food at
places to which spirits come, and utter some request for assistance
which the spirits are supposed to hear."[356] In such offerings and
prayers we may detect the elements of a regular worship of the dead.
[Sidenote: Dreams as a source of the belief in immortality.]
With regard to the source of these beliefs among the Kiwai people Dr.
Landtman observes that "undoubtedly dreams have largely contributed in
supplying the natives with ideas about Adiri and life after death. A
great number of dreams collected by me among the Kiwai people tell of
wanderings to Adiri or of meetings with spirits of dead men, and as
dreams are believed to describe the real things which the soul sees
while roaming about outside the body, we understand that they must
greatly influence the imagination of the people."[357]
That concludes what I have to say as to the belief in immortality and
the worship of the dead among the natives of British New Guinea. In the
following lectures I shall deal with the same rudimentary aspect of
religion as it is reported to exist among the aborigines of the vast
regions of German and Dutch New Guinea.
[Footnote 310: C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 1 _sq._]
[Footnote 311: See below, pp. 242, 256, 261 _sq._, 291.]
[Footnote 312: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_
(London, 1901), pp. 249 _sq._ As to the Motu and their Melanesian or
Polynesian affinities, see Rev. W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the
Motu," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vii. (1878) pp. 470
_sqq._]
[Footnote 313: Rev. J. Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_ (London,
1887), pp. 168-170. Compare Rev. W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the
Motu," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vii. (1878) pp. 484
_sqq._; Rev. W. G. Lawes, "Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and
Koiari Tribes of New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, viii. (1879) pp. 370 _sq._]
[Footnote 314: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_, pp.
249 _sq._; C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp.
16, 41. As to the Koita (or Koitapu) and the Motu, see further the Rev.
W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the Motu," _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, vii. (1878) pp. 470 _sqq._; Rev. W. G.
Lawes, "Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and Koiari Tribes of New
Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, viii. (1879) pp.
369 _sq._]
[Footnote 315: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 189-191.]
[Footnote 316: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 185 _sq._]
[Footnote 317: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 192.]
[Footnote 318: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 190-192. As to the
desertion of the house after death, see _id._, pp. 89 _sq._]
[Footnote 319: The territory of the Roro-speaking tribes extends from
Kevori, east of Waimatuma (Cape Possession), to Hiziu in the
neighbourhood of Galley Reach. Inland of these tribes lies a region
called by them Mekeo, which is inhabited by two closely related tribes,
the Biofa and Vee. Off the coast lies Yule Island, which is commonly
called Roro. See C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 195.]
[Footnote 320: V. Jouet, _La Société des Missionaires du Sacré Coeur
dans les Vicariats Apostoliques de la Mélanésie et de la Micronésie_
(Issoudun, 1887), p. 30; Father Guis, "Les Canaques: Mort-deuil,"
_Missions Catholiques_, xxxiv. (1902) pp. 186, 200.]
[Footnote 321: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 274 _sq._]
[Footnote 322: Father Guis, "Les Canaques: Mort-deuil," _Missions
Catholiques_, xxxiv. (1902) pp. 208 _sq._ See _Psyche's Task_, pp. 75
_sq._]
[Footnote 323: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 310.]
[Footnote 324: R. W. Williamson, _The Mafulu Mountain People of British
New Guinea_ (London, 1912), pp. 2 _sq._, 297 _sqq._]
[Footnote 325: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 243 _sq._, 246,
266-269.]
[Footnote 326: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 245-250.]
[Footnote 327: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 256-258, 261-263.]
[Footnote 328: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 125-152.]
[Footnote 329: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 270 _sq._]
[Footnote 330: J. Chalmers and W. Wyatt Gill, _Work and Adventure in New
Guinea_ (London, 1885), pp. 84-86.]
[Footnote 331: R. E. Guise, "On the Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the
Wanigela River, New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
xxviii. (1899) p. 205.]
[Footnote 332: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_, p.
213.]
[Footnote 333: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ pp. 216 _sq._]
[Footnote 334: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ pp. 210 _sq._]
[Footnote 335: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ p. 211.]
[Footnote 336: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ pp. 213 _sq._]
[Footnote 337: _Psyche's Task_, pp. 52 _sqq._; _Taboo and the Perils of
the Soul_, pp. 167 _sqq._]
[Footnote 338: C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_,
p. 607.]
[Footnote 339: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 655.]
[Footnote 340: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 655 _sq._]
[Footnote 341: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 610.]
[Footnote 342: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 611.]
[Footnote 343: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 616 _sq._]
[Footnote 344: C. G. Seligmann. _op. cit._ p. 611.]
[Footnote 345: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 618 _sq._]
[Footnote 346: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 613 _sq._]
[Footnote 347: The Rev. J. T. Field of Tubetube (Slade Island), quoted
by George Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London, 1910), pp.
442 _sq._]
[Footnote 348: Rev. J. T. Field, _op. cit._ pp. 443 _sq._]
[Footnote 349: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 629-631. Dr. Seligmann
seems to think that the custom is at present dictated by courtesy and a
reluctance to grieve the relatives of the deceased; but the original
motive can hardly have been any other than a fear of the ghost.]
[Footnote 350: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 631 _sq._]
[Footnote 351: Rev. J. Chalmers, "Notes on the Natives of Kiwai Island,
Fly River, British New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xxxiii. (1903) pp. 119, 120.]
[Footnote 352: G. Landtman, "Wanderings of the Dead in the Folk-lore of
the Kiwai-speaking Papuans," _Festskrift tillägnad Edvard Westermarck_
(Helsingfors, 1912), pp. 59-66.]
[Footnote 353: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 67 _sq._]
[Footnote 354: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 68-71.]
[Footnote 355: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 77 _sq._]
[Footnote 356: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 78 _sq._]
[Footnote 357: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ p. 71.]
LECTURE X
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF GERMAN NEW GUINEA
[Sidenote: Andrew Lang.]
I feel that I cannot begin my second course of lectures without
referring to the loss which the study of primitive religion has lately
sustained by the death of one of my predecessors in this chair, one who
was a familiar and an honoured figure in this place, Mr. Andrew Lang.
Whatever may be the judgment of posterity on his theories--and all our
theories on these subjects are as yet more or less tentative and
provisional--there can be no question but that by the charm of his
writings, the wide range of his knowledge, the freshness and vigour of
his mind, and the contagious enthusiasm which he brought to bear on
whatever he touched, he was a great power in promoting the study of
primitive man not in this country only, but wherever the English
language is spoken, and that he won for himself a permanent place in the
history of the science to which he devoted so much of his remarkable
gifts and abilities. As he spent a part of every winter in St. Andrews,
I had thought that in the course on which I enter to-day I might perhaps
be honoured by his presence at some of my lectures. But it was not to
be. Yet a fancy strikes me to which I will venture to give utterance.
You may condemn, but I am sure you will not smile at it. It has been
said of Macaulay that if his spirit ever revisited the earth, it might
be expected to haunt the flagged walk beside the chapel in the great
court of Trinity College, Cambridge, the walk which in his lifetime he
loved to pace book in hand. And if Andrew Lang's spirit could be seen
flitting pensively anywhere, would it not be just here, in "the college
of the scarlet gown," in the "little city worn and grey," looking out on
the cold North Sea, the city which he knew and loved so well? Be that as
it may, his memory will always be associated with St. Andrews; and if
the students who shall in future go forth from this ancient university
to carry St. Andrew's Cross, if I may say so, on their banner in the
eternal warfare with falsehood and error,--if they cannot imitate Andrew
Lang in the versatility of his genius, in the variety of his
accomplishments, in the manifold graces of his literary art, it is to be
hoped that they will strive to imitate him in qualities which are more
within the reach of us all, in his passionate devotion to knowledge, in
his ardent and unflagging pursuit of truth.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Review of preceding lectures.]
In my last course of lectures I explained that I proposed to treat of
the belief in immortality from a purely historical point of view. My
intention is not to discuss the truth of the belief or to criticise the
grounds on which it has been maintained. To do so would be to trench on
the province of the theologian and the philosopher. I limit myself to
the far humbler task of describing, first, the belief as it has been
held by some savage races, and, second, some of the practical
consequences which these primitive peoples have deduced from it for the
conduct of life, whether these consequences take the shape of religious
rites or moral precepts. Now in such a survey of savage creed and
practice it is convenient to begin with the lowest races of men about
whom we have accurate information and to pass from them gradually to
higher and higher races, because we thus start with the simplest forms
of religion and advance by regular gradations to more complex forms, and
we may hope in this way to render the course of religious evolution more
intelligible than if we were to start from the most highly developed
religions and to work our way down from them to the most embryonic. In
pursuance of this plan I commenced my survey with the aborigines of
Australia, because among the races of man about whom we are well
informed these savages are commonly and, I believe, justly supposed to
stand at the foot of the human scale. Having given you some account of
their beliefs and practices concerning the dead I attempted to do the
same for the islanders of Torres Straits and next for the natives of
British New Guinea. There I broke off, and to-day I shall resume the
thread of my discourse at the broken end by describing the beliefs and
practices concerning the dead, as these beliefs are entertained and
these practices observed by the natives of German New Guinea.
[Sidenote: German New Guinea.]
As you are aware, the German territory of New Guinea skirts the British
territory on the north throughout its entire length and comprises
roughly a quarter of the whole island, the British and German
possessions making up together the eastern half of New Guinea, while the
western half belongs to Holland.
[Sidenote: Information as to the natives of German New Guinea.]
Our information as to the natives of German New Guinea is very
fragmentary, and is confined almost entirely to the tribes of the coast.
As to the inhabitants of the interior we know as yet very little.
However, German missionaries and others have described more or less
fully the customs and beliefs of the natives at various points of this
long coast, and I shall extract from their descriptions some notices of
that particular aspect of the native religion with which in these
lectures we are specially concerned. The points on the coast as to which
a certain amount of ethnographical information is forthcoming are, to
take them in the order from west to east, Berlin Harbour, Potsdam
Harbour, Astrolabe Bay, the Maclay Coast, Cape King William, Finsch
Harbour, and the Tami Islands in Huon Gulf. I propose to say something
as to the natives at each of these points, beginning with Berlin
Harbour, the most westerly of them.
[Sidenote: The island of Tumleo.]
Berlin Harbour is formed by a group of four small islands, which here
lie off the coast. One of the islands bears the name of Tumleo or
Tamara, and we possess an excellent account of the natives of this
island from the pen of a Catholic missionary, Father Mathias Josef
Erdweg,[358] which I shall draw upon in what follows. We have also a
paper by a German ethnologist, the late Mr. R. Parkinson, on the same
subject,[359] but his information is in part derived from Father Erdweg
and he appears to have erred by applying too generally the statements
which Father Erdweg strictly limited to the inhabitants of Tumleo.[360]
[Sidenote: The natives of Tumleo, their material and artistic culture.]