SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL
THE SOUL
The doctrine of the survival of the soul or spirit after the death of the
body, forms an integral part of Lenape belief. The spirit is supposed to
leave the body at the moment of dissolution, but remains in the vicinity
eleven days, during which time it subsists on food found in the houses
of the living, if none has been placed at the grave. Some say that the
actual food is not consumed but that the ghost extracts some essence or
nourishment from it.
THE LAND OF SPIRITS
On the twelfth day the spirit leaves the earth and makes its way to the
twelfth or highest heaven, the home of the Creator, where it lives
indefinitely in a veritable “Happy Hunting Ground,” a beautiful country
where life goes on much as it does on earth, except that pain, sickness,
and sorrow are unknown, and distasteful work and worry have no place;
where children shall meet their parents who have gone before, and parents
their children; where everything always looks new and bright. There is no
sun in the Land of Spirits, but a brighter light which the Creator has
provided. All people who die here, be they young or old, will look the
same age there, and the blind, cripples,—anyone who has been maimed or
injured,—will be perfect and as good as any there. This is because the
flesh only was injured, not the spirit.
This paradise, however, is only for the good, for those who have been
kind to their fellows and have done their duty by their people. Little
is said of those who have done evil in this world, except that they are
excluded from the happy Land of Spirits. Some Unami say that the blood in
a dead body draws up into globular form and floats about in the air as a
luminous ball, but this is not the true spirit.
The Minsi seem to have retained a more archaic belief, for they say that
the Land of Spirits lies to the southwest, in a country of good hunting.
Here they say, the wigwams of the spirits are always neat and clean, and
happiness prevails. But between our world and the spirit country flows a
river which the spirit must cross on a slender foot-log or in a canoe.
GHOSTS AND MEDIUMSHIP
Ghosts do not seem always to have left the earth at the expiration of the
twelve days, or else they have the power of returning, for the Lenape
claim that boys, dreaming for power, have sometimes been pitied and given
some blessing by the ghosts, who remained their guardian spirits through
life. Such people were considered to have the power of talking with the
departed and sometimes made a practice of it, but mediumship was by no
means confined to them. Among the Minsi formerly they were accustomed to
hold meetings in the burial grounds at certain times, when some medium,
it is said, would communicate with the spirits.
The late James Wolf, one of the principal Minsi informants, was said to
have this power. One time a man was drowned in the Thames river near
Munceytown in Ontario, and the body could not be located. Wolf, it is
said, walked up and down the river-banks, with a companion, talking to
the water. At last a strange sound was heard, and Wolf stopped. “That was
the dead man’s spirit,” he said; “the body lies right over in that hole.”
Surely enough, when they procured a boat, they found the body in the
hole, wedged beneath a sunken log.
Certain regular ceremonies were held by both the Unami and the Minsi in
honor of the dead, and will be discussed in a later paper.
EARLY ACCOUNTS
_Penn._—In William Penn’s letter,[34] dated August 16, 1683, is the first
mention of any details of Lenape beliefs regarding the soul that has been
found. He says:
“They say there is a King that made them, who dwells in a
glorious Country to the Southward of them, and that the Souls
of the Good shall go thither, where they shall live again.”
_Brainerd._—The same Indian whom Brainerd saw in 1745 dressed in a
bearskin costume and with a wooden mask, told him[35] that—
“departed souls all went _southward_, and that the difference
between good and bad was this: that the _former_ were admitted
into a beautiful town with _spiritual_ walls, and that the
_latter_ would forever hover around these walls, in vain
attempts to get in.”
Later,[36] Brainerd speaks of the Spirit Land of the Lenape to the
southward as being “an unknown and curious place” in which the shadows of
the dead “will enjoy some kind of happiness, such as hunting, feasting,
dancing, and the like.” One of his Indian informants defined the kind
of “bad folks” who would be unhappy in the hereafter as “those who lie,
steal, quarrel with their neighbors, are unkind to their friends, and
especially to aged parents, and, in a word, such as are a plague to
mankind.” These would be excluded from the “Happy Hunting Ground,” not
so much as a punishment to themselves, as to keep them from rendering
unhappy the spirits of the good inhabiting the “beautiful town.”
_Zeisberger._—About 1748, according to Zeisberger,[37] a number of
preachers appeared among the Indians, who claimed to have traveled in
Heaven and conversed with God. Some exhibited charts of deerskin upon
which were drawn maps of the Land of Spirits and figures representing
other subjects used in their preaching. Some of their ideas concerning
the Son of God, the Devil, and Hell, are evidently derived from the
whites; others seem more aboriginal in character, such as purification by
emetics, twelve different kinds being used. He wrote:
“Other teachers pretended that stripes were the most effectual
means to purge away sin. They advised their hearers to suffer
themselves to be beaten with twelve different sticks from the
soles of their feet to their necks, that their sins might pass
from them through their throats. They preached a system of
morals, very severe for the savages, insisting that the Indians
abstain from fornication, adultery, murder, theft, and practise
virtuous living as the condition to their attaining after death
the place of good spirits, which they call Tschipeghacki, the
‘land of spirits,’ where the life is happy, and deer, bear and
all manner of game are abundant and the water is like crystal.
There nought was to be heard save singing, dancing and merry
making.... The passage thither is the Milky Way.... Whoever
reaches that place will find a city of beautiful houses and
clean streets. Entering a house he will see no one, but have
good things to eat placed before him, a fire made and a bed
prepared—all of which is done by spirits invisible to him.
Others assert that such an one will see the women coming with
baskets on their backs full of strawberries and bilberries,
large as apples, and will observe the inhabitants daily
appear in fine raiment and live a life of rejoicing.—The bad
Indians ... will not reach the place, Tschipeghacki, but must
remain some distance away, able to see those within dwelling
happily, but not able to enter. They would receive nothing but
poisonous wood and poisonous roots to eat, holding them ever
near the brink of a bitter death, but not suffering them to
die.”
Zeisberger usually specifies when his information is derived from tribes
other than the Lenape, from whom most of his data were procured; so it is
probable that the following quotation applies to them, although in part
somewhat at variance with our other knowledge. He says:[38]
“They believe in the immortality of the soul. Some liken
themselves to corn which, when thrown out and buried in the
soil, comes up and grows. Some believe their souls to be in the
sun, and only their bodies here. Others say that when they die
their souls will go to God, and suppose that when they have
been some time with God they will be at liberty to return to
the world and be born again. Hence many believe ... that they
may have been in the world before.
“They believe also in the transmigration of the soul. Wandering
spirits and ghosts, they claim, sometimes throw something into
a public path and whoever goes over it is bewitched and becomes
lame or ill.”
Such was the Lenape belief with regard to the powers that control the
world, and such were his notions concerning the souls of men. The main
channel of communication between this great supernatural realm and
mankind was, to the Lenape as to so many other tribes of Indians, the
dream or vision, experienced either while fasting or in natural sleep.
This subject will be considered in the next chapter.