THE NATIVE SURGEON
One of the principal offices of the native conjuror is to find out the
reason of sickness and death, or of any misfortune or disaster
happening to the tribesfolk. But in this matter of primitive medicine,
the Eskimo are probably far behind the untutored folk of other
uncivilised peoples, for the simple reason that, unlike the dwellers in
temperate or tropical and therefore vegetated regions of the world,
they have nothing with which to experiment, in sickness, by way of
herbs and simples. An absolutely barren land, covered for the most part
of the year with snow, provides no material for the empirical
pharmacist. Eskimo medical practice consists entirely in incantation,
in dealings with the spirit world, and in the exercise of an amazing
and complicated system of fetish and taboo, i.e., the doing or
refraining from doing all sorts of unreasonable things to attain or
produce some desired end. In surgery, the conjuror is no less intrepid,
if considerably more lucky (thanks to an air so pure as to be almost
sterile) than the ghastly practitioners of West Africa, whose appalling
anatomical ventures are described in Mary Kingsley’s unrivalled book of
travel in the Cameroons.
The arctic folk seem to have no glimmering of an idea as to natural
cause and effect in sickness. Bodily ills and death, to them, admit of
only one explanation. The sufferer has in some way or other in some
particular transgressed the communal law. The disorders of women are
considered as a punishment for the infringement of some of the
meticulous regulations laid down for their observance at certain times.
Hence the first business of the conjuror on being summoned to a sick
bed, is to scare or worry the invalid into the remembrance and
acknowledgment of whatever he or she may have done contrary to the
general well-being of the village. He does this after his usual
fashion, by crawling into the igloo in some particularly horrid guise,
and sitting down in the darkened place with his face to the wall and
his features well concealed by his hood, giving vent to the most
horrific howls, mutterings, ventriloquisms and unhuman-sounding noises,
at his ingenious command. Then he proceeds to interrogate the sick
person, and of course wrings some acknowledgment from him or her.
Treatment—of sorts—may ensue; but as a rule the issue of commands as to
atonement or compensation is the wind-up of what the Americans would
aptly describe as the whole “stunt.” Occasionally a piece of flaming
moss wick from one of the lamps is laid upon the painful part of the
sufferer’s body and fanned with the conjuror’s breath, or merely blown
up into the air. All real attempt at cure is left to nature, and it
must be added that the recuperative powers of a hearty-eating, hardy,
healthy-blooded people like the tribes of Eskimo, are quite remarkable.
Eskimo flesh has wonderful healing power. The writer has seen the most
fearful gashes quickly close and heal up without any precautions or
dressing whatever. One case he certainly thought would have a fatal
termination. A hunter was repairing his implements, a small box of
tools lying on the ground beside him. A large file without a handle
happened to be sticking straight up out of the box. The man’s foot
slipped on the ice and he fell, in a sitting posture, straight upon the
file. He sustained a deep punctured wound. It was merely bandaged with
some very dirty strips of soiled skin underclothing, and inflammation
and intense suppuration presently set in. At no time did the wound
receive any further attention, but in due course the hunter was about
again, as though nothing had happened.
Something, however, must be said for the conjuror as an anatomist. By
virtue of his calling and of his continual dealing with animals of all
kinds, he knows the positions of joints, muscles, ligaments, veins and
arteries, and can find any one of them. Some men have more aptitude in
this respect than others, and these occasionally act as surgeons. A
young woman, who may be called Omanetok, the daughter of one of the
minor conjurors, developed a large mysterious swelling in the groin.
There was acute inflammation, pointing to deep-seated pus in
accumulation. A native surgeon was called in, and after examination he
pronounced for an immediate operation. He decided to lance the
swelling. A time was arranged, and by special request the writer was
allowed to be present.
The surgeon arrived, accompanied by two hefty fellows as assistants
(his “dressers,” probably, in an enhanced state of things!) His lancet
consisted of a rough piece of all-round, useful steel, inserted into a
piece of ivory by way of a handle. The blade was about two inches long
and had a rounded end instead of anything so convenient as a sharp
point. This blade had, however, been filed, in an attempt at an edge.
In addition, there was a small oilstone. Both stone and instrument were
very dirty. The operator began by spitting on the oilstone and
sharpening the lancet upon it, afterwards wiping the latter with a
soiled piece of birdskin previously used for scouring out the cooking
pots.
The patient was then “prepared” by her mother. She was laid flat upon
the bed bench, and the part to be operated upon was exposed. The
surgeon, wetting his fingers in his mouth, proceeded to moisten and
slightly cleanse (!) the skin. Then the two assistants grasped Omanetok
by the legs, her mother held her head, and two more helpers held her
well down by the shoulders. The conjuror inserted the lancet simply by
pressing on it and sawing it in, backwards and forwards, until it had
gone deep enough to reach the pus. Omanetok squirmed considerably, but
her nurses had her well in hand. The contents of the swelling were
expelled by repeated pressure, and wiped away from time to time with a
little bit of dirty mouse or lemming skin. When this was finished, the
wound was covered by a piece of lemming skin, licked by the operator’s
tongue and stuck on over the place.
Two days afterwards the patient was walking about, well and jolly as
ever she had been in her life.
Apropos of the extraordinary command the conjurors universally exercise
over the people, and of the paramount psychic influence they establish
in the community, it is not too much to say that they hold every man’s
life in their hands. We know how the fatalistic-minded Asiatic can die
by auto-suggestion. The Eskimo, too, dies by suggestion, even when
strongly against his will.
A fully qualified practitioner, well known for a sensual and
self-indulgent man, was particularly tenacious of his purposes and able
to bide him time. He had long desired the good-looking half-breed wife
of a certain hunter, and had frequently approached the man on the
question. Contrary to the general rule, in this instance he was
consistently refused. Now, Moneapik, the hunter, was a skilful fellow,
well able to provide himself and his wife with food and clothing. He
was careful, too, and rather exclusive, not liking to squander his
gains upon the lazy folk of the village, after the generally accepted
fashion. For this reason he was unpopular. He had his own circle of
friends, however, and was content not to enlarge it. The conjuror had
nothing to work upon so far as Moneapik was concerned, except the
latter’s superstition. The man was neither poor, nor feckless, nor
friendless.
At length a long spell of bad weather set it, bringing in its train a
season of sickness and semi-starvation. The conjuror was expected to
set matters right by his arts and incantations; but on this occasion he
had only a signal failure to register. He loudly excused himself for it
on the ground that the spirits were profoundly offended by the
unsociable practices of Moneapik. He had committed the heinous offence
of keeping largely to himself; he had not given freely to the
tribesfolk. Only by his death could the powers be propitiated and the
famine ended. The majority of the villagers were prone enough to agree
with this, for over and over again the hunter had set their greed at
nought. Whereupon the conjuror boldly faced the man, stated the
incontrovertible facts, pronounced his death sentence, and departed
saying: “I command you to die!”
Moneapik was a strong, healthy man, in the prime of life and the pink
of condition. Normally, he should have lived to a ripe old age. But so
ingrained was his belief in the conjuror, in his power to get into
communication with the spirit world, that this command was virtually
fatal. He said: “I am commanded to die!” He gave up his active
occupations, withdrew into his tent, ate and drank very sparingly, and
within four days was dead. They sewed up the body in skin blankets and
left it on the rocks of a neighbouring island, to be devoured by foxes.
The writer visited the spot a few days later—but only bones remained.
Friends had indeed visited Moneapik in his tent before the end, and
argued with him, laughed at him, tried by every possible means to
disabuse the man’s mind of its obsession. But all in vain. The victim’s
sole response was, “I am commanded to die!” And die he did, although it
was by no means a death from starvation. It was death by suggestion.
The conjuror, of course, obtained his own ends.
An account has already been given of the conjuror spearing himself in
the breast during the Sedna ceremony, and appearing no whit the worse
for it shortly afterwards. Although this extraordinary action may often
perhaps be simulated by a trick, (the performer concealing a bladder of
blood under his tunic and merely stabbing that), there seems to be
sufficient evidence that such feats are within the compass of the
genuine practitioner. No less authority than Dr. Boas gives an instance
of an Angatok, on the island of Utussivik, who thrust a harpoon through
his body and was led through the village by twenty-five men. Another
conjuror, at a place called Umanaqtuaq, on finishing his incantations,
“jumped up and rushed out of the hut, to where a mounted harpoon was
standing. He threw himself upon the harpoon, which penetrated his
breast and came out at the back. Three men followed him, and holding
the harpoon line led the Angatok, bleeding profusely, to all the huts
in the village. When they arrived again at the first hut, he pulled out
the harpoon, lay down on the bed, and was put to sleep by the song of
another Angatok. When he awoke after a while he showed the people he
was not hurt, although his clothes were torn and they had seen him
bleeding.” (Monograph on the Central Eskimo, by Dr. Boas.)
The underlying idea in the treatment of all sickness (as distinguished
from accident) being that some spirit is offended and is punishing the
delinquent, it becomes necessary to discover what custom has not been
complied with or what observance has been omitted, or what prohibition
has been neglected. The science of divining what spirit, too, is
antagonised, comprises perhaps the whole volume of Eskimo fetish and
superstition. The conjuror knows beforehand, of course, the character
and the failings of any individual he may be called upon to attend. He
makes a shrewd guess from hearsay what the man may have been doing, and
by skilful questions and half accusations, manages pretty generally to
get at the core of the matter and extort more or less genuine (if
wholly irrelevant) confession.
There are some crimes for which there is no forgiveness, such as having
communion with the dead, especially the Toopelat, i.e., the earth-bound
spirits of indifferent folk. If the sick man confesses to this, there
is no hope of cure for him. Adown the long interrogatory we come upon a
few questions which illumine the apparent nonsense of all the rest with
gleams of good human sense and logic: Have you stolen from the sick?
Have you greatly lied about your neighbours or your race? Have you been
abusive to the old folk? And—for a woman—have you concealed a
miscarriage?
Otherwise the questions turn upon whether the patient (if a woman) has
worked upon forbidden sorts of skins, i.e., heavy and arduous work
likely to upset her (if she is enceinte), at certain seasons; whether
the meat of land and sea creatures has been eaten at the same meal;
whether shell fish were gathered when seal should have been hunted;
whether lamps were cleaned during a time of taboo, etc., etc. The
underlying idea of half these prohibitions is lost in the obscurity of
time immemorial, and the Eskimo to-day can account for them no better
than by saying, “As our fathers did, so do we.”
The invalid thoroughly believes in the authority and omniscience of the
conjuror. He racks his brains for the remembrance of some breach of the
unwritten social law, and generally succeeds in the effort, and so
complies with what is required of him. Should he be so grievously ill,
however, that the conjuror can elicit no sort of response, should the
sickness be obviously leading to death, the failure of all these
proceedings is taken as proof positive that a crime has been committed
beyond the power of the witch doctor’s machinations to palliate,
because beyond the power of the spirits to forgive.
In any less serious case the practitioner has a peculiar method whereby
to determine the probable duration of the sickness, and also its
gravity. He has among his assistants minor conjurors called the head or
leg lifter, as the case may be; and an incantor whose business it now
becomes to squat upon the floor with covered head and improvise a chant
for the occasion. He is called the Kunneyo.
As soon as this wail begins the others assistants bind a piece of wood
upon the sick man’s head with a length of thong, and lift it
tentatively as if in the act of weighing it, asking the spirit
meanwhile wherein the patient has offended. If the head is inert and
heavy feeling, he is judged to be guilty; if it feels light, he is
innocent. Sometimes the wood is bound upon the leg, and this is lifted
instead of the head. When this examination is over and the patient has
promised to comply with any orders given him, the conjuror commands,
“Let the bindings be cast off.” This is done, and he pursues, “Let the
cause of guilt be cast away, and let him recover.”
The penalty imposed often takes the form of some abstinence to be
observed for a time. When the illness has been brought about by
gluttony or exposure, this injunction, joined to a period of rest and
quietness, may prove quite enough to restore the patient to his
accustomed health. Nature does her own work. Should there have been
some real fear or disquiet of mind, the whole thing simply resolves
itself into a faith cure. Incidentally, the Angatok maintains his
inflated authority, and earns a fat livelihood. He exacts payment, of
course—a dog, a sled, a skin, a length of line, and the favours of the
patient’s wife; and prescribes the use of various charms. These charms
may be a fringe of deer or bearskin, a spider or beetle sewn up in a
piece of skin, worn on boot or breast or back, as directed. Most potent
of all is a scrap of the garment worn during the first year of life,
and this is always affixed to the cap or hood. Then, of course, a
present has to be given to the spirit. Some small article is placed
among the rocks and dedicated.