land of the Kai. Their mode of cultivation. Their villages.]
The Bukaua and the Yabim, the two tribes with which I have been dealing
in this and the last lecture, inhabit, as I have said, the coast about
Finsch Harbour and speak a Melanesian language. We now pass from them to
the consideration of another people, belonging to a different stock and
speaking a different language, who inhabit the rugged and densely wooded
mountains inland from Finsch Harbour. Their neighbours on the coast call
these mountaineers by the name of Kai, a word which signifies forest or
inland in opposition to the seashore; and this name of the tribe we may
adopt, following the example of a German missionary, Mr. Ch. Keysser,
who has laboured among them for more than eleven years and has given us
an excellent description of their customs and beliefs. His account
applies particularly to the natives of what is called Saddle Mountain,
the part of the range which advances nearest to the coast and rises to
the height of about three thousand feet. It is a rough, broken country,
cleft by many ravines and covered with forest, bush, or bamboo thickets;
though here and there at rare intervals some brown patches mark the
clearings which the sparse inhabitants have made for the purpose of
cultivation. Water is plentiful. Springs gush forth everywhere in the
glens and valleys, and rushing streams of crystal-clear water pour down
the mountain sides, and in the clefts of the hills are lonely tarns, the
undisturbed haunts of wild ducks and other water fowl. During the wet
season, which extends from June to August, the rain descends in sheets
and the mountains are sometimes covered for weeks together with so thick
a mist that all prospect is cut off at the distance of a hundred yards.
The natives are then loth to leave their huts and will spend the day
crouching over a fire. They are a shorter and sturdier race than the
tribes on the coast; the expression of their face is less frank and
agreeable, and their persons are very much dirtier. They belong to the
aboriginal Papuan stock, whereas the Yabim and Bukaua on the coast are
probably immigrants from beyond the sea, who have driven the indigenous
population back into the mountains.[430] Their staple foods are taro and
yams, which they grow in their fields. A field is cultivated for only
one year at a time; it is then allowed to lie fallow and is soon
overgrown with rank underwood. Six or eight years may elapse before it
is again cleared and brought under cultivation. Game and fish abound in
the woods and waters, and the Kai make free use of these natural
resources. They keep pigs and dogs, and eat the flesh of both. Pork is
indeed a favourite viand, figuring largely in the banquets which are
held at the circumcision festivals.[431] The people live in small
villages, each village comprising from two to six houses. The houses are
raised on piles and the walls are usually constructed of pandanus
leaves, though many natives now make them of boards. After eighteen
months or two years the houses are so rotten and tumble-down that the
village is deserted and a new one built on another site. Assembly-houses
are erected only for the circumcision ceremonies, and the bull-roarers
used on these occasions are kept in them. Husband and wife live
together, often two couples in one hut; but each family has its own side
of the house and its own fireplace. In times of insecurity the Kai used
to build their huts for safety among the spreading boughs of great
trees. A whole village, consisting of three or four huts, might thus be
quartered on a single tree. Of late years, with the peace and protection
for life introduced by German rule, these tree-houses have gone out of
fashion.[432]
[Sidenote: Observations of a German missionary on the animistic beliefs
of the Kai.]
After describing the manners and customs of the Kai people at some
length, the German missionary, who knows them intimately, proceeds to
give us a very valuable account of their old native religion or
superstition. He prefaces his account with some observations, the fruit
of long experience, which deserve to be laid to heart by all who attempt
to penetrate into the inner life, the thoughts, the feelings, the
motives of savages. As his remarks are very germane to the subject of
these lectures, I will translate them. He says: "In the preceding
chapters I have sketched the daily life of the Kai people. But I have
not attempted to set forth the reasons for their conduct, which is often
very peculiar and unintelligible. The explanation of that conduct lies
in the animistic view which the Papuan takes of the world. It must be
most emphatically affirmed that nobody can judge the native aright who
has not gained an insight into what we may call his religious opinions.
The native must be described as very religious, although his ideas do
not coincide with ours. His feelings, thoughts, and will are most
intimately connected with his belief in souls. With that belief he is
born, he has sucked it in with his mother's milk, and from the
standpoint of that belief he regards the things and occurrences that
meet him in life; by that belief he regulates his behaviour. An
objective way of looking at events is unknown to him; everything is
brought by him into relation to his belief, and by it he seeks to
explain everything that to him seems strange and rare."[433] "The
labyrinth of animistic customs at first sight presents an appearance of
wild confusion to him who seeks to penetrate into them and reduce them
to order; but on closer inspection he will soon recognise certain
guiding lines. These guiding lines are the laws of animism, which have
passed into the flesh and blood of the Papuan and influence his thought
and speech, his acts and his omissions, his love and hate, in short his
whole life and death. When once we have discovered these laws, the whole
of the superstitious nonsense falls into an orderly system which compels
us to regard it with a certain respect that increases in proportion to
the contempt in which we had previously held the people. We need not
wonder, moreover, that the laws of animism partially correspond to
general laws of nature."[434]
[Sidenote: The essential rationality of the savage.]
Thus according to Mr. Keysser, who has no theory to maintain and merely
gives us in this passage the result of long personal observation, the
Kai savages are thinking, reasoning men, whose conduct, however strange
and at first sight unintelligible it may appear to us, is really based
on a definite religious or if you please superstitious view of the
world. It is true that their theory as well as their practice differs
widely from ours; but it would be false and unjust to deny that they
have a theory and that on the whole their practice squares with it.
Similar testimony is borne to other savage races by men who have lived
long among them and observed them closely;[435] and on the strength of
such testimony I think we may lay it down as a well-established truth
that savages in general, so far as they are known to us, have certain
more or less definite theories, whether we call them religious or
philosophical, by which they regulate their conduct, and judged by which
their acts, however absurd they may seem to the civilised man, are
really both rational and intelligible. Hence it is, in my opinion, a
profound mistake hastily to conclude that because the behaviour of the
savage does not agree with our notions of what is reasonable, natural,
and proper, it must therefore necessarily be illogical, the result of
blind impulse rather than of deliberate thought and calculation. No
doubt the savage like the civilised man does often act purely on
impulse; his passions overmaster his reason, and sweep it away before
them. He is probably indeed much more impulsive, much more liable to be
whirled about by gusts of emotion than we are; yet it would be unfair to
judge his life as a whole by these occasional outbursts rather than by
its general tenour, which to those who know him from long observation
reveals a groundwork of logic and reason resembling our own in its
operations, though differing from ours in the premises from which it
sets out. I think it desirable to emphasise the rational basis of savage
life because it has been the fashion of late years with some writers to
question or rather deny it. According to them, if I understand them
aright, the savage acts first and invents his reasons, generally very
absurd reasons, for so doing afterwards. Significantly enough, the
writers who argue in favour of the essential irrationality of savage
conduct have none of them, I believe, any personal acquaintance with
savages. Their conclusions are based not on observation but on purely
theoretical deductions, a most precarious foundation on which to erect a
science of man or indeed of anything. As such, they cannot be weighed in
the balance against the positive testimony of many witnesses who have
lived for years with the savage and affirm emphatically the logical
basis which underlies and explains his seeming vagaries. At all events I
for one have no hesitation in accepting the evidence of such men to
matters of fact with which they are acquainted, and I unhesitatingly
reject all theories which directly contradict that evidence. If there
ever has been any race of men who invariably acted first and thought
afterwards, I can only say that in the course of my reading and
observation I have never met with any trace of them, and I am apt to
suppose that, if they ever existed anywhere but in the imagination of
bookish dreamers, their career must have been an exceedingly short one,
since in the struggle for existence they would surely succumb to
adversaries who tempered and directed the blind fury of combat with at
least a modicum of reason and sense. The myth of the illogical or
prelogical savage may safely be relegated to that museum of learned
absurdities and abortions which speculative anthropology is constantly
enriching with fresh specimens of misapplied ingenuity and wasted
industry. But enough of these fantasies. Let us return to facts.
[Sidenote: The Kai theory of the soul.]
The life of the Kai people, according to Mr. Keysser, is dominated by
their conception of the soul. That conception differs greatly from and
is very much more extensive than ours. The Kai regards his reflection
and his shadow as his soul or parts of it; hence you should not tread on
a man's shadow for fear of injuring his soul. The soul likewise dwells
in his heart, for he feels it beating. Hence if you give a native a
friendly poke in the ribs, he protests, saying, "Don't poke me so; you
might drive my soul out of my body, and then I should die." The soul
moreover resides in the eye, where you may see it twinkling; when it
departs, the eye grows dim and vacant. Moreover, the soul is in the foot
as much as in the head; it lurks even in the spittle and the other
bodily excretions. The soul in fact pervades the body just as warmth
does; everything that a man touches he infects, so to say, with his
soul; that mysterious entity exists in the very sound of his voice. The
sorcerer catches a man's soul by his magic, shuts it up tight, and
destroys it. Then the man dies. He dies because the sorcerer has killed
his soul. Yet the Kai believes, whether consistently or not, that the
soul of the dead man continues to live. He talks to it, he makes
offerings to it, he seeks to win its favour in order that he may have
luck in the chase; he fears its ill-will and anger; he gives it food to
eat, liquor to drink, tobacco to smoke, and betel to chew. What could a
reasonable ghost ask for more?[436]
[Sidenote: Two kinds of human souls.]
Thus, according to Mr. Keysser, whose exposition I am simply
reproducing, the Kai believes not in one nor yet in many souls belonging
to each individual; he implicitly assumes that there are two different
kinds of souls. One of these is the soul which survives the body at
death; in all respects it resembles the man himself as he lived on
earth, except that it has no body. It is not indeed absolutely
incorporeal, but it is greatly shrunken and attenuated by death. That is
why the souls of the dead are so angry with the living; they repine at
their own degraded condition; they envy the full-blooded life which the
living enjoy and which the dead have lost. The second kind of soul is
distinguished by Mr. Keysser from the former as a spiritual essence or
soul-stuff, which pervades the body as sap pervades the tree, and which
diffuses itself like corporeal warmth over everything with which the
body is brought into contact.[437] In these lectures we are concerned
chiefly with the former kind of soul, which is believed to survive the
death of the body, and which answers much more nearly than the second to
the popular European conception of the soul. Accordingly in what follows
we shall confine our attention mainly to it.
[Sidenote: Death thought by the Kai to be commonly caused by sorcery.]
Like many other savages, the Kai do not believe in the possibility of a
natural death; they think that everybody dies through the maleficent
arts of sorcerers or ghosts. Even in the case of old people, we are
told, they assume the cause of death to be sorcery, and to sorcery all
misfortunes are ascribed. If a man falls on the path and wounds himself
to death, as often happens, on the jagged stump of a bamboo, the natives
conclude that he was bewitched. The way in which the sorcerer brought
about the catastrophe was this. He obtained some object which was
infected with the soul-stuff or spiritual essence of his victim; he
stuck a pile in the ground, he spread the soul-stuff on the pile; then
he pretended to wound himself on the pile and to groan with pain.
Anybody can see for himself that by a natural and necessary
concatenation of causes this compelled the poor fellow to stumble over
that jagged bamboo stump and to perish miserably. Again, take the case
of a hunter in the forest who is charged and ripped up by a wild boar.
On a superficial view of the circumstances it might perhaps occur to you
that the cause of death was the boar. But you would assuredly be
mistaken. The real cause of death was again a sorcerer, who pounded up
the soul-stuff of his victim with a boar's tooth. Again, suppose that a
man is bitten by a serpent and dies. A shallow rationalist might say
that the man died of the bite; but the Kai knows better. He is aware
that what really killed him was the sorcerer who took a pinch of his
victim's soul and bunged it up tight in a tube along with the sting of a
snake. Similarly, if a woman dies in childbed, or if a man hangs
himself, the cause of death is still a sorcerer operating with the
appropriate means and gestures. Thus to make a man hang himself all that
the sorcerer has to do is to get a scrap of his victim's soul--and the
smallest scrap is quite enough for his purpose, it may be a mere shred
or speck of soul adhering to a hair of the man's head, to a drop of his
sweat, or to a crumb of his food,--I say that the sorcerer need only
obtain a tiny little bit of his victim's soul, clap it in a tube, set
the tube dangling at the end of a string, and go through a pantomime of
gurgling, goggling and so forth, like a man in the last stage of
strangulation, and his victim is thereby physically compelled to put his
neck in the noose and hang himself in good earnest.[438]
[Sidenote: Danger incurred by the sorcerer.]
Where these views of sorcery prevail, it is no wonder that the sorcerer
is an unpopular character. He naturally therefore shrinks from publicity
and hides his somewhat lurid light under a bushel. Not to put too fine a
point on it, he carries his life in his hand and may be knocked on the
head at any moment without the tedious formality of a trial. Once his
professional reputation is established, all the deaths in the
neighbourhood may be set down at his door. If he gets wind of a plot to
assassinate him, he may stave off his doom for a while by soothing the
angry passions of his enemies with presents, but sooner or later his
fate is sealed.[439]
[Sidenote: Many hurts and maladies attributed by the Kai to the action
of ghosts. In other cases the sickness is traced to witchcraft.
Capturing a lost soul.]
However, the Kai savage is far from attributing all deaths without
distinction to sorcerers.[440] In many hurts and maladies he detects the
cold clammy hand of a ghost. If a man, for example, wounds himself in
the forest, perhaps in the pursuit of a wild beast, he may imagine that
he has been speared or clubbed by a malignant ghost. And when a person
falls ill, the first thing to do is naturally to ascertain the cause of
the illness in order that it may be treated properly. In all such
enquiries, Mr. Keysser tells us, suspicion first falls on the ghosts;
they are looked upon as even worse than the sorcerers.[441] So when a
doctor is called in to see a patient, the only question with him is
whether the sickness is caused by a sorcerer or a ghost. To decide this
nice point he takes a boiled taro over which he has pronounced a charm.
This he bites, and if he finds a small stone in the fruit, he decides
that ghosts are the cause of the malady; but if on the other hand he
detects a minute roll of leaves, he knows that the sufferer is
bewitched. In the latter case the obvious remedy is to discover the
sorcerer and to induce him, for an adequate consideration, to give up
the magic tube in which he has bottled up a portion of the sick man's
soul. If, however, the magician turns a deaf ear alike to the voice of
pity and the allurement of gain, the resources of the physician are not
yet exhausted. He now produces his whip or scourge for souls. This
valuable instrument consists, like a common whip, of a handle with a
lash attached to it, but what gives it the peculiar qualities which
distinguish it from all other whips is a small packet tied to the end of
the lash. The packet contains a certain herb, and the sick man and his
friends must all touch it in order to impregnate it with the volatile
essence of their souls. Armed with this potent implement the doctor goes
by night into the depth of the forest; for the darkness of night and the
solitude of the woods are necessary for the success of the delicate
operation which this good physician of souls has now to perform. Finding
himself alone he whistles for the lost soul of the sufferer, and if only
the sorcerer by his infernal craft has not yet brought it to death's
door, the soul appears at the sound of the whistle; for it is strongly
attracted by the soul-stuff of its friends in the packet. But the doctor
has still to catch it, a feat which is not so easily accomplished as
might be supposed. It is now that the whip of souls comes into play.
Suddenly the doctor heaves up his arm and lashes out at the truant soul
with all his might. If only he hits it, the business is done, the soul
is captured, the doctor carries it back to the house in triumph, and
restores it to the body of the poor sick man, who necessarily
recovers.[442]
[Sidenote: Extracting ghosts from a sick man.]
But suppose that the result of the diagnosis is different, and that on
mature consideration the doctor should decide that a ghost and not a
sorcerer is at the bottom of the mischief. The question then naturally
arises whether the sick man has not of late been straying on haunted
ground and infected himself with the very dangerous soul-stuff or
spiritual essence of the dead. If he remembers to have done so, some
leaves are fetched from the place in the forest where the mishap
occurred, and with them the whole body of the sufferer or the wound, as
the case may be, is stroked or brushed down. The healing virtue of this
procedure is obvious. The ghosts who are vexing the patient are
attracted by the familiar smell of the leaves which come from their old
home; and yielding in a moment of weakness to the soft emotions excited
by the perfume they creep out of the body of the sick man and into the
leaves. Quick as thought the doctor now whisks the leaves away with the
ghosts in them; he belabours them with a cudgel, he hangs them up in the
smoke, or he throws them into the fire. Such powerful disinfectants have
their natural results; if the ghosts are not absolutely destroyed they
are at least disarmed, and the sick is made whole.
[Sidenote: Scraping ghosts from the patient's body.]
Another equally effective cure for sickness caused by ghosts is this.
You take a stout stick, cleave it down the middle so that the two ends
remain entire, and give it to two men to hold. Then the sick man pokes
his head through the cleft; after that you rub him with the stick from
the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. In this way you
obviously scrape off the bloodsucking ghosts who are clinging like flies
or mosquitoes to his person, and having thus transferred them to the
cleft stick you throw it away or otherwise destroy it. The cure is now
complete, and if the patient does not recover, he cannot reasonably
blame the doctor, who has done all that humanly speaking could be done
to bring back the bloom of health to the poor sick man.[443]
[Sidenote: Extravagant demonstrations of grief at the death of a sick
man.]
If, however, the sick man obstinately persists in dying, there is a
great uproar in the village. For the fear of his ghost has now fallen
like a thunderclap on all the people. His disembodied spirit is believed
to be hovering in the air, seeing everything that is done, hearing every
word that is spoken, and woe to the unlucky wight who does not display a
proper degree of sorrow for the irreparable loss that has just befallen
the community. Accordingly shrieks of despair begin to resound, and
crocodile tears to flow in cataracts. The whole population assemble and
give themselves up to the most frantic demonstrations of grief. Cries
are raised on all sides, "Why must he die?" "Wherefore did they bewitch
him?" "Those wicked, wicked men!" "I'll do for them!" "I'll hew them in
pieces!" "I'll destroy their crops!" "I'll fell all their palm-trees!"
"I'll stick all their pigs!" "O brother, why did you leave me?" "O
friend, how can I live without you?" To make good these threats one man
will be seen prancing wildly about and stabbing with a spear at the
invisible sorcerers; another catches up a cudgel and at one blow shivers
a water-pot of the deceased into atoms, or rushes out like one demented
and lays a palm-tree level with the ground. Some fling themselves
prostrate beside the corpse and sob as if their very hearts would break.
They take the dead man by the hand, they stroke him, they straighten out
the poor feet which are already growing cold. They coo to him softly,
they lift up the languid head, and then lay it gently down. Then in a
frenzy of grief one of them will leap to his feet, shriek, bellow, stamp
on the floor, grapple with the roof beams, shake the walls, as if he
would pull the house down, and finally hurl himself on the ground and
roll over and over howling as if his distress was more than he could
endure. Another looks wildly about him. He sees a knife. He grasps it.
His teeth are set, his mind is made up. "Why need he die?" he cries,
"he, my friend, with whom I had all things in common, with whom I ate
out of the same dish?" Then there is a quick movement of the knife, and
down he falls. But he is not dead. He has only slit the flap of one of
his ears, and the trickling blood bedabbles his body. Meantime with the
hoarse cries of the men are mingled the weeping and wailing, the shrill
screams and lamentations of the women; while above all the din and
uproar rises the booming sound of the shell trumpets blown to carry the
tidings of death to all the villages in the neighbourhood. But gradually
the wild tumult dies away into silence. Grief or the simulation of it
has exhausted itself: the people grow calm; they sit down, they smoke or
chew betel, while some engage in the last offices of attention to the
dead.[444]
[Sidenote: Hypocritical character of these demonstrations, which are
intended to deceive the ghost.]