The Indians’ magico-religious system--The Good Spirit and the Bad
Spirit--Names of deities--Character of Good Spirit--His visit
to earth--Question of missionary influence--Lesser subordinate
spirits--Child-lifting--No prayer or supplication--Classification
of spirits--Immortality of the soul--Land of the
After-Life--Ghosts and name tabu--Temporary disembodied
spirits--Extra-mundane spirits--Spirits of particularised
evils--Spirits of inanimate objects--The jaguar and anaconda
magic beasts--Tiger folk--Fear of unknown--Suspicions about
camera--Venerated objects--Charms--Magic against magic--Omens.
Some travellers and writers have asserted that the Indian has no
religion. In the vulgarly-accepted meaning of the word he may have none.
There is great variation among the groups, the tribes even--I venture
to say--among the individuals. So far as they believe in anything they
believe in the existence of supreme good and bad spirits; but their
beliefs are always indefinite, only half understood even by themselves.
To a certain extent it is open to the medicine-man, the chief priest of
their magico-religious system, to vary, or even to disregard any current
belief. Among individuals are to be found sceptics of every grade. On
the whole their religion is a theism, inasmuch as their God has a vague,
personal, anthropomorphic existence. His habitat is above the skies,
the blue dome of heaven, which they look upon as the roof of the world
that descends on all sides in contact with the earth. Yet again it is a
pantheism, this God being represented in all beneficent nature; for every
good thing is imbued with his spirit, or with individual spirits subject
to him.
In essence the idea of God is not that of a Supreme Being, and not
entirely that of a Creator, but rather that of a Superior Being,
possessed by an indulgent tolerance for all mankind. But he suggests only
the negative idea. He is a spirit of benevolent passivity. He is good
for no other reason than that he is not evil. There is no particularised
sanctity in his name, no adoration of his nebulous personality, only
an unquestioning acquiescence in his benignity. True, he is held in
high esteem, but that is because he permeates all in nature that is not
inimical, and thus demonstrates his kindly disposition. If the harvest
fails it is due to the malevolence of their _Diabolus_, or some of his
agents, yet if it be a good one the credit is due not to the Good Spirit,
but rather to the medicine-man for having with his magic frustrated the
machinations of the Bad Spirit.
This Devil, or Bad Spirit, is affirmative in character, and is always
active. He must not be invoked, but he is to be prevented by charms and
magic from wreaking his vengeance on mankind, and must be placated at
all costs as the supreme author of sickness and misfortunes, and the
controlling power of malevolent nature.
Both the Good and the Bad Spirit are attended by lesser spirits with
similar characteristics. So far as I could ascertain, there is no
suggestion that any of these supernatural beings ever lived in this
world, though they influence it so entirely, and can visit it at will.
The Good Spirit may be more potent, but he is certainly more remote than
the Bad Spirit--too remote for ordinary people to be brought into any
degree of contact with him whatsoever. His influence, his benefits, are,
as he is, passive. The Bad Spirit, on the contrary, is of a ceaseless
energy. His active influence is invariably present. He is always exerting
his power in some definite, some concrete form. Poison, for example,
is an active agent. The devil in it works vigorously to the undoing of
his victim, definitely exercises a deleterious effect upon his enemy,
man. So, too, the rocks that bar the way upstream are more active than
passive. They repel, they may defeat the traveller, and, therefore, are
to be regarded also as the active agents of a hostile power.
It is noteworthy in this connection that the Bad Spirit may be
materialised sufficiently to be able to carry a child bodily away, or to
steal a woman, should she stray out into the forest by herself.[343] For
this reason usually no woman will go alone into the bush, she will take
a companion with her, especially at night, for the demon is popularly
supposed to be unable to tackle more than one at a time, even if the
second be only a young child.[344] Women who run away from their husbands
are consequently said by them to have been taken by the devil. This is a
favourite theory, as the man may thereby avoid the censure or hostility
of the tribe. The men also do not care to be far in the bush alone, and
after dark nothing will induce an Indian voluntarily to embark on the
risk of adventuring into the forest by himself.
One of the first difficulties met with when dealing in detail with the
religion of these peoples is their refusal to use the true name of any
spirit or deity. This has root in the same reason that ordains they shall
never disclose their own names, nor voluntarily except on rare occasions,
that is without questioning, the name of their tribe.
In the Boro language we have the word _Neva_ as an equivalent for God,
the good or sympathetic deity, and the word _Navena_ for the Devil,
the great evil or antipathetic spirit, in fact the negative of all
represented by _Neva_. But inasmuch as _neva_ stands also for the sun,
the dawn, and the morning, while _navena_ is used for any spirit however
humble--whether the soul-part of a thing, animate or inanimate, or the
ghost or disembodied soul of the dead--we have a right to postulate
that such are not the true, or supposed self-appellated names of these
deities, but those that may be used without offence, and therefore free
of the consequent evils that the mention of the true name would entail on
the users.
To give another example: In Witoto _Usiyamoi_ has the same meaning as God
in ordinary parlance; _Taife_ is the Devil, whereas _Taifeno_ is any bad
spirit whatever. But, again, the _Taife_, the dread of these people, the
all-pervading evil genius, is named _Apuehana_, a word never pronounced
above a whisper. Here then we may have reached a true secret name.
The Boro _Neva_ and the Witoto _Usiyamoi_ are the _Tupano_ of the
Tupi-Guarani tribes of the east and the Negro River. This we find is the
_Apunchi-Yaya_ of the Guichua of the west, the Cachimana of the Orinoco.
_Navena_ and _Taife_ or _Apuehana_ are the same as the _Jurupari_ of
the north, the _Iolokiamo_ of the Orinoco, and the _Locazy_ of the
Ticuna.[345]
To return to the personal characteristics of the two regnant powers,
the Good and the Bad Spirit, the former, though vague, is yet an
omnipotent tempestipresent deity, and, although passive, something more
than sympathetic and benevolent. He made the world, or it might be more
correct to put it that he permitted it to be created, for his amusement
and pleasure. When not otherwise engaged in his mysterious happy
hunting-grounds he keeps a watch over earth and over mankind. But so
great is he that no prayer or invocation is offered to him, nor, were it
offered, could he be thereby influenced.[346] It is because he is so big
a Chief that his attitude is entirely passive. Once Neva had forgotten
the puny human factor, so he took the guise of a man and came to earth.
The open spaces--the natural savannahs or geological outcrops--are where
he spoke to the Indians, and it is a sign of his speaking and of his
erstwhile presence that these are now open to the sun and the sky. But
one Indian vexed Neva, the Good Spirit, and he was wrath with all men,
so he went again to sit on the roof of the world. But before he departed
he whispered into the ears of all the tigers that they were to kill the
Indians and their children, and that is why the tigers to-day are wicked
and sometimes are the habitations of the most evil spirits. Before this
time the tigers were good to men, and they hunted together like brothers;
they lived together in the houses; they ate and drank and licked tobacco
in amity round the fire.[347]
Such, so far as I could gather, is the Indian’s belief. The tale was
told me by a Boro, but the belief is approximately the same with all
these tribes. On the occasion of hearing this story of the visit of the
Good Spirit to earth I related, to the best of my ability, the Christian
story. The result may be of value in determining the possession of logic
by the Indian. After they had listened to my story the tribesmen held
a tobacco palavar, which lasted some six hours. Then the chief--the
medicine-man was surly and remote--appeared, and this was the burden
of his wisdom. His own people were greater than the people from the
clouds--the white people--for the Good Spirit, Neva himself, came to the
Indians, whereas only the Young Chief visited the clouds. And the Indians
were better than the white people, for the white people killed the Young
Chief, but the Indians listened to Neva, and only one among them vexed
him.
I had heard the story of the Good Spirit’s manifestation before, but
doubted its genuineness, until one day when I inquired of a Boro what a
savannah was he answered me that it was where Neva spoke to the Indians.
When I questioned him further he told me the above. It is impossible
to say how far this story may be a genuine folk-tale, how far it is a
perverted version of the Biblical account. Tales travel far. They are
adopted from one people to another, with resultant variations. We know
that the Jesuits penetrated to the Rio Negro as early as 1668-69. There
have been missionaries of that Society on the Napo. But I met with
no traces of them on the upper waters, nor have any of these peoples
anything in the least resembling the Christian symbol in their designs.
One might expect to find so simple a figure as a cross reproduced in
native art if once known, but it certainly is not. On the face of it
we may here be dealing with a variant that has passed from tribe to
tribe, that has trickled through centuries, to reappear now as a tribal
tradition among peoples who have never been in any direct contact with
Christian influences.[348]
As regards the rule of these supreme spirits over the lesser spirits of
good and evil they stand in the relation of great chief. The good spirits
are the spirits of trees that bear edible fruits, of the trees from which
arrows are made, of the _Coca erythroxylon_, of the astringent properties
of various herbs, of the medicine-man’s magic stones that may be used
as a prophylactic. These are not only the subjects of the Good Spirit,
they were made by him. He made all the good things of the forest; and
he also made the rivers and the skies. The Bad Spirit placed the rocks
in the rivers, the poison in the mandiocca and in all noxious growths
of the bush. He made the liana to trip the unwary walker, in short all
things hurtful. These malevolent elements are the bad spirits which, as
the name in Witoto appears to imply--the _Taifeno_,--are all subject to
the _Taife_. As the Good Spirit lives above the world so the Bad Spirit
inhabits the nether regions. The lesser spirits of evil go to him by
way of the earth holes,[349] for these are the passages to his kingdom.
The visit of the Good Spirit to earth as a corporate being was a unique
event never repeated, but the Bad Spirit wanders with his myrmidons in
the forest every night. Sometimes he takes the form of a tiger, or other
fierce animal; sometimes, as alternative to the tiger-lifting theory,
he resembles a man who can disappear at will. He imitates the call of
the hunter who has found game, or the call of an animal to be hunted. He
entices his victim by these and similar contrivances to venture deeper
and deeper into the bush, until the wretched wanderer is utterly lost.
According to tribal belief he is then destroyed, or spirited bodily
away. As has been said, the Bad Spirit never appears to more than one at
a time, and that one is usually spirited away, so can give no account
of the appearance, but as confirmation of his real presence an Indian
will sometimes whisper the evil name as he points out the track of an
abnormal-sized tapir, which is curiously reminiscent to the European of
the cloven hoof of his own Devil.
The child-lifting story is a favourite one, and some amount of
corroborative evidence is forthcoming, for in the awful loneliness of
the bush a child naturally would become half demented with fear and
apprehension, and if ever found again would be only too honestly willing
to believe he had been in the very real clutches of a very real devil.
The juvenile adventurer, answering in this way to leading questions,
gives to these simple people all the proof they look for, and adds an
immediate and local authenticity to the accepted myth.
As there is no prayer to the Good Spirit, so there is no supplication to
the Bad. The medicine-man, as I have said, invokes neither; he appeals
to neither; but he attempts by magic to force the Bad Spirit into
quiescence, to discover some more potent influence that shall make him
powerless to hurt, for unless coerced he is all-powerful.
Indefinite as these beliefs in a deity, good or evil, may be, faith as
to the after-life of the soul is possibly still vaguer. Yet faith there
certainly is, for the existence of the spirits of the dead is an accepted
fact, acknowledged in the Indian ritual of burial.
Of spirits there are four kinds:
Permanent disembodied spirits, or the souls of the dead, their ghosts.
Temporarily disembodied spirits, that is to say the souls of living men,
with power to send them forth out of their material bodies.
Extra-mundane spirits, or those from other worlds.
Spirits of, or in, all natural objects, animate and inanimate.
Any of these four classes of spirits are good or bad, according as they
are benevolently or malevolently inclined.
These Indians all believe in the temporary transmission of the
disembodied soul into the form of an animal, bird, or reptile, not
a regular and enforced series of such transmissions. This temporary
transmission is for the pursuance of a certain aim, perhaps for some
indefinite length of time. It appears that the spirit has the power
of transmigration into other animal bodies, or back again to its
extra-mundane form at will. Whether the animal is human, whether, when so
invaded, it incorporates two spirits and becomes dual-souled, the Indian
does not relate.
Man’s soul in Indian belief is immortal, that is to say it exists as long
as it is felt to exist, whilst it continues to appear in the dreams, in
the thoughts of the survivors--for so long, in fact, as it is remembered.
Surely this is immortality. A thing forgotten has never existed; and, per
contra, the soul of a remembered being lives for ever. The disembodied
spirit or ghost lingers near the body after death, in the woods near the
house, or may even lodge in the house itself. And then indefinitely,
indeterminately, after the body is buried the soul wanders farther
afield, and goes at length to the happy grounds of the Good Spirit. Among
some tribes this paradise is located above the skies, among others it is
away up some river, in the far and mythical distance. The latter heaven
is situated, as has already been mentioned, upstream, and that, in this
country where the trend of the land is north-west and south-east, is also
approximately towards the setting sun.[350]
This land of the After-Life is a diminutive replica of the ordinary
world, but with evil things eliminated and joyful things emphasised.
All is on a lower scale, stunted forests and pigmy game. This idea of a
world in miniature approximates to the Malay conception of a spirit, the
“diminutive but exact counterpart of its own embodiment,” appertaining
to all animal, vegetable, and mineral bodies.[351] The Indian miniature
world would thus be, it seems, constructed of the spirits of the material
world. Colour is given to this theory by the fact that individual
possessions are buried with the dead, and the Kuretu confess that this
is done to prevent the return of the soul in search of them. Were such
properties to pass into the possession of survivors the soul part of
each object, needed to represent it in the spiritual world, would be
detained in the material world. Burial sets it at liberty, presumably,
to accompany the soul part of its owner, to take in the miniature world
of the After-Life a position corresponding in every detail to that
which has been held here on earth. The soul is pictured as the body, in
miniature also, visible or invisible at will, for these people, like the
majority of many of a higher culture, are unable to imagine the soul
except in some material guise.[352] Life in this enigmatic sphere has
everything most prized in this world. Hunting is fruitful always; women
are beautiful and amenable, and the men are all the old familiar friends
of earth. The means of attainment to this desirable state are so vague as
to be unassignable. Good and evil have no part in this scheme of heavenly
philosophy. Broken tabus, crimes against tribal jurisprudence, apparently
bring only temporary evil influences into play. Their punishment is
immediate and material. The happy land is open to all the tribe with whom
the Good Spirit is not vexed. It is closed to all their enemies.
These lost souls, the spirits of those divinely damned, must still
frequent the earthly forests, or perhaps ally themselves with the spirits
of evil and wander down the holes in the earth to join the legions of the
nether world.
I have heard, but not very definitely, of the Zaparo belief that the good
and brave souls will pass into birds of beautiful plumage and feed on
the most delicate fruits, while the bad and cowardly are condemned to a
future existence in the guise of objectionable reptiles.[353]
This belief in, at least, a partial presence of the spirits of the
dead has possibly a bearing on the Indian dislike, to use no stronger
term, of mentioning his proper name. In the case of some tribes, as
has been noted, the name of a dead man is given as a special honour
to his greatest friend among the survivors. With other tribes names
of the living may, and probably have once been those of persons now
dead. To mention such a name aloud might conceivably be to attract the
attention of the defunct erstwhile owner.[354] Therefore the name is only
whispered, lest the spirit hearing it might come and bother the speaker
or the individual named.[355] There is, of course, the further reason
that the knowledge of a man’s name gives an enemy power to work him
magical evil. But that is a point already dealt with, except in so far as
it argues some identity of the name with the essential _ego_.
Not only do the Indians hold that a man’s soul leaves his body at death,
but, further, they believe that it may do so during life for a limited
period. We have examples in sleep, they argue, when the spirit is out
of the body and wanders about; for in dreams, they say, the soul passes
through the mouth and has adventures in the outer world.[356] Dreams are,
in fact, a portion of the man’s real life. His spirit has ventured forth
and actually gone through the experience his fancy paints. They realise,
therefore, that individuality is not in the body itself, but in the
spirit that inhabits the body. So if a man dreams he will not hesitate to
declare that he has done what he dreamed he was doing.
This is an example of involuntary disembodiment, differing only from
actual death in that it is of temporary duration. The soul has gone
quietly, and will return. But if the soul make a violent effort to escape
that apparently entails fatal consequences, for the Indians declare when
anybody sneezes it is the soul attempting to leave the body and so cause
death.
Voluntary disembodiment is believed to be possible in certain favoured
cases.[357] This power is said to be possessed by the medicine-man. He
may free his spirit for magical purposes, to fight unseen enemies on
better terms, or for the pursuit of some nefarious end. He may either
remain disembodied and invisible, or lurk for a time in the form of some
animal or object, a tree, a stone--where stones exist--or even in the
wind, the rain, or the river. The layman Indian, though perfectly aware
that he cannot of his own accord and free-will loose his own soul from
its fleshy trappings to adventure in some foreign sort, is quite willing
to believe that other more fortunate mortals can accomplish a feat to
him so impossible.[358] No alternative explanation offers to his mind to
elucidate sundry mysterious happenings.
Quite distinct from these disembodied spirits are the extra-mundane
spirits, good and bad, that visit this world and benefit or plague its
inhabitants. These may invade all natural objects, and, especially those
evilly disposed, will work unceasingly as agents for the supreme powers
to whom they owe allegiance. The bad spirits haunt the darkness, they
lurk in the recesses of the woods, find a habitation in deep waters,
and ride to destruction on the floods. Danger from them threatens the
Indian at every turn. He can only be protected by the counter-magic
of his medicine-man. For fear of possible mischief at their malicious
hands no Indian will bathe at night unless supported by the presence
of companions. If he lose his way in the forest it is due to their
machinations;[359] and all that goes amiss in this by no means
best-of-all-possible worlds is at least in part engineered by them,
either at the suggestion of an enemy, or from their own innate badness of
heart.
Sickness again is a concrete entity. The Indian knows not the microbe
of science, but he recognises the existence of a definitely hostile and
active enemy in the presence of disease. It is a spirit that wanders
about, and at the instigation of an enemy attacks individuals or tribes.
The attack is an actual invasion. Illness is due to the presence in the
flesh of the sick person of a foreign and inimical body.[360]
Before a thunderstorm the Indian believes that the air is full of
spirits, and the medicine-man is requisitioned literally “to clear the
atmosphere.” Thunder is the noise of evil spirits making a turmoil and
fuss; whilst, according to Bates, any inexplicable noises are made by
another of this destructive band, Curupira, the wild spirit of the
woods.[361] Thunder probably means that an enemy is sending sickness to
destroy the tribe. Therefore if a man is ill a flash of lightning is
quite sufficient to kill him through sheer fright and shock.
These extra-mundane spirits may be said to be the spirits of
particularised evils, just as the _Taife_, the _Navena_, the _Jurupari_,
is the supreme spirit of all evil.[362]
With the final division of the spirit world is enwrapped the total
philosophy, the innermost meanings, in fact both the whole and the origin
of the Indian magico-religious system. As men have souls--so truly felt
in all--what is more natural than that animals who move and breathe, who
live and die, who in many respects are more powerful, more clever than
men, should be assigned souls also by the Indian’s primitive reasoning.
I say soul deliberately, for Indian metaphysicians do not differentiate
between soul and spirit--they are one and indivisible, the miniature self
that may be seen in the pupil of a living eye but has vanished from the
eye of the dead. The question of souls other than human is to the Indian
too obvious to need elucidation; it admits, indeed, of no argument. There
is a degree of belief in a spirit, “a transcendental _x_,”[363] in all
objects, even those that are inanimate. What lives and grows must have a
spirit. What can interfere with, or affect man in any way must possess
some occult influence, some mysterious personality, that works for or
against him, especially if that object be in any degree unfamiliar or
abnormal in appearance. All these things, vegetable growths, rocks, are
to the Indian as we have repeatedly seen, active agents in the scheme
of things, and as such must also possess the intangible _ego_, the
spiritual essence, that is the soul of all earthly forms. Evidence as
to animistic beliefs among the Indians is universal and overwhelming. A
point of interest to the psychologist comes in with the problem whether
the belief that undoubtedly exists is a belief in a duality of spirits in
one envelop, or whether, when the supernatural spirit, or the disembodied
spirit of a man, is transmitted into extra-human forms, it being the
stronger can oust the natural spirit of the animal or object which is
entered, and if so what becomes of the finally evicted spirit. On this
point I have unfortunately no information to adduce.
While these beliefs are in the main general among all the language-groups
of the Issa-Japura regions, those of the Boro-speaking tribes are the
most intricate. They have more definite notions of the spirit-world, a
greater range of theories as to the powers and extent of supernatural
phenomena. They fear the local devils more, take greater care to appease
them and to avoid rousing their hostility. This is the natural result
of the increased isolation secured by the Boro tribes. They have been
influenced less by the outer world than the Witoto, for example. Both
Boro and Andoke tribes invariably keep aloof so far as may be from any
stranger.
Two of the forest denizens, the jaguar and the anaconda, occupy
outstanding positions in this connection with spirits and magic to all
the other beasts of the wild. Any animal may be utilised by a spirit as
a temporary abiding-place, but the “tiger” and the great water-snake
independently of such spiritual possession are magical beasts. Tales
gather round them; differential treatment is their portion. As regards
the jaguar this may be due to the fact that it is seldom seen, and
therefore the more mysterious in its evil doings. It is also a dangerous
beast, bold and fearless, and to be dreaded for this if for no other
reason. But the anaconda is no such aggressive enemy of man. Yet, though
the Indian is an omnivorous eater, he will never kill either the tiger or
the anaconda for food.[364]
The anaconda is looked upon as an evil spirit. It is the embodiment of
the water spirit, the _Yacu-mama_,[365] whose coils may bar the passage
of the streams, and the Indian goes in terror of it, nor would he bathe
in its vicinity, though, so far as my experience went, the gigantic
reptile will not attack human beings unprovoked.[366] The _Yacu-mama_, as
the name signifies, is the mother, the spirit of the streams. Among some
tribes, though not in my field of exploration, a relationship is held to
exist between this water-spirit and _Jurupari_, so it is said.[367] It
occupies the place in Amazonian folk-tales filled by the sea-serpent of
Europe; while the manatee and the dolphin are the Amazonian mermaids. The
cow-fish, or manatee,[368] is an object of wonder on the main stream,
but is unknown on the upper rivers. I have never seen one nearer than
the mouth of the Issa river. The dolphin also is not found in the higher
waters. On the lower rivers it abounds, but, according to Bates, no
Indian willingly kills one; and though dolphin fat makes good oil the
belief is current that when burnt in lamps it causes blindness.[369]
Tigers are not killed unless they be the aggressors, that is to say
they are never killed wantonly. The reason for this is not cowardice,
but fear of further aggression on the part of the tiger family, or from
the family of the medicine-man who has assumed tiger form. Indians look
upon animals as having the same instincts as themselves, and therefore
capable of a prolonged blood-feud with humans who may have wronged
them. The tribesman is accordingly anxious not to provoke war with the
tiger tribe, but if Indians are challenged by the death of one of their
number the case is altered, and they will immediately accept combat. To
hunt a jaguar without provocation merely for food or for sport would be
foolishly to kindle the animosity of the whole tiger family, to rouse
the violent enmity of the wandering spirit domiciled for a time in the
body of the hunted beast. But when an Indian is killed, or a child
lost--and tigers are usually credited with the destruction of any child
missing from its home--the medicine-man is called upon, and he proceeds
to discover that it was a tribal enemy working in disguise, probably
the spirit of a hostile medicine-man, intent to destroy the tribe by
thus slaying potential warriors or mothers of warriors. The tiger is in
these circumstances to be treated as a human enemy. A big tribal hunt is
organised, and if the quarry be secured a feast of tiger-flesh follows,
a feast of revenge, very similar in detail to the anthropophagous orgies
already described.[370] At no other time does the Indian eat jaguar meat.
The tiger-skin becomes the property of the medicine-man, whose magic has
thus triumphed over the magic of a rival.
I have already noted that anything abnormal or unknown is regarded with
suspicious dread. My camera was naturally endowed by Indian imagination
with magical properties, the most general idea among the Boro being that
it was an infernal machine, designed to steal the souls of those who
were exposed to its baleful eye. In like manner my eyeglass was supposed
to give me power to see what was in their hearts. When I first attempted
to take photographs the natives were considerably agitated by my use of
a black cloth to envelop the evil thing; and when my own head went under
it they had but one opinion, it also was some strange magic-working
that would enable me to read their minds, their unprofessed intentions,
and steal their souls away; or rather become master of their souls, and
thus make them amenable to my will at any time or in any place. This was
undoubtedly due in part to the fact that I was able to reproduce the
photograph. The Indian was brought face to face with his naked soul,
represented by the miniature of himself in the photographic plate. One
glance, and one only, could he be induced to give. Never again would he
be privy to such magic. The Witoto women believed that I was working more
material magic, and feared should they suffer exposure to the camera
that they would bear resultant offspring to whom the camera--or the
photographer--would stand in paternal relation.
[Illustration: PLATE L.
GROUP OF WITOTO WOMEN BY DOUBLE-STEMMED PALM TREE
GROUP OF WITOTO MEN BY DOUBLE-STEMMED PALM TREE]
To cite another instance of the attitude of the Indian towards the
abnormal. A certain Witoto tribe have a tree that they regard as
an object almost of veneration. This palm, as may be seen in the
photographs, has a forked stem, the trunk dividing into two some few feet
above the ground. I met with no more formulated sign of tree-worship than
this. Unquestionably, though they did not worship--for as I have said,
these Indians worship nothing--the Witoto looked upon this tree as a
thing to be respected, prized, and if it were not meted proper treatment
perchance to be definitely feared.[371]
Finally, in addition to all these spirits good or evil, the tribes
south of the Japura are concerned with the sun and the moon. These
are venerated, the sun as a great and sympathetic spirit, but not an
incarnation of the great Good Spirit, the moon as his wife, who is sent
betimes by the sun into the heavens at night to prevent the evil spirits
from depopulating the world. Of the stars these people seem to have the
vaguest ideas, and only one Boro explained to me that they were the souls
of the chiefs and of the great men of his tribe.[372]
The Indian lives in a world of imagined dangers, over and above the real
ones that confront him at every turn. There is possible menace in any
place, dormant hostility in all surrounding nature, active menace in
the unfamiliar and unknown. One might expect to find that he decked his
person and his belongings with an unlimited number of charms, to protect
against these battalions of evil. But it is not so. The Tukano do, it
is said, place certain green, sweet-smelling herbs under the girdle as
a love charm, to attract the opposite sex, but nothing of this sort is
known south of the Japura, and charms, as the western world knows them,
hardly exist. I know of none beyond the medicine-man’s magical stones,
the iguana-skin wristlets of the men and the wooden ring placed on a
child’s arm, which appear to partake of the nature of charms. Magic
is to be met by magic, not by material properties. The hostile evils
that threaten a man are only to be turned aside by the exercise of more
powerful anti-hostility on the part of his medicine-man. But the Indian
must go warily, observe signs and portents, pay due heed to good and
evil omens. He must, for example, never shoot a poisonous snake with a
blow-pipe. Should he do so one poison will neutralise the other, and
destroy not only the poison on the arrow that wounded the snake, but also
all poison whatever that was in his possession at the time. It is magic
against magic.
As an instance of the Indian belief in omens, I remember that once a
small species of wild turkey alighted in a clearing, and kept running
round and round in circles. This was taken by the Indians to mean that
people were coming to the _maloka_ who might be either friends or
enemies. This gave rise to an excited discussion as to which would be the
more likely event of the two. It so happened that a party of friendly
Indians did arrive that same evening. Casement relates how a large wood
ibis descended among a crowd of Witoto and Muenane in the compound at
Occidente.[373] A Muenane wished to shoot the bird, and when persuaded
to leave it unmolested, expostulated that the ibis must have been sent
by their enemy the Karahone to bring disaster upon them. As a rule, it
strikes me, an enemy would appear in a less kindly guise than that of an
ibis. In my case no attempt was made by the Okaina to interfere with the
bird in any way, in fact it was looked upon as a friend who came to give
due notice of approaching visitors, and therefore was to be regarded with
gratitude.