It was a primeval idea, of universal sway, that the taking in of
another’s blood was the acquiring of another’s life, with all that was
best in that other’s nature. It was not merely that the taking away of
blood was the taking away of life; but that the taking in of blood was
the taking in of life, and of all that that life represented. Here,
again, the heart, as the fountain of blood, and so, as the centre
and source of life, was preeminently the agency of transfer, in the
acquiring of a new nature.
Herodotus tells us of this idea in the far East, twenty-four centuries
ago. When a Scythian, he said, killed his first man in open warfare, he
drank in his blood, as a means of absorbing his fairly acquired life;
and the heads of as many as he slew, the Scythian carried in triumph
to the king;[256] as the American Indian bears away the scalps of his
slain, to-day. Modern historians, indeed, show us other resemblances
than this, between the aboriginal American and the ancient Scythian.
The Jesuit founder of the Huron Mission to the American Indians, “its
truest hero, and its greatest martyr,” was Jean de Brébeuf. After
a heroic life among a savage people, he was subjected to frightful
torture, and to the crudest death. His character had won the admiration
of those who felt that duty to their gods demanded his martyrdom; and
his bearing under torture exalted him in their esteem, as heroic beyond
compare. “He came of a noble race,” says Parkman,[257]--“the same
[race], it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but
never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling,
with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and
‘his death was an astonishment to his murderers.’” “We saw no part of
his body,” wrote an eye witness,[258] “from head to foot, which was
not burned [while he was yet living], even to his eyes, in the sockets
of which these wretches had placed live coals.” Such manhood as he
displayed under these tortures, the Indians could appreciate. Such
courage and constancy as his, they longed to possess for themselves.
When, therefore, they perceived that the brave and faithful man of
God was finally sinking into death, they sprang toward him, scalped
him, “laid open his breast, and came in a crowd to drink the blood of
so valiant an enemy; thinking to imbibe with it some portion of his
courage. A chief then tore out his heart, and devoured it.”
Not unlike this has been a common practice among the American Indians,
in the treatment of prisoners of war. “If the victim had shown
courage,” again says Parkman, concerning the Hurons, “the heart was
first roasted, cut into small pieces, and given to the young men
and boys, who devoured it, to increase their own courage.”[259] So,
similarly, with the Iroquois.[260] And Burton says of the Dakotas:[261]
“They are not cannibals, except when a warrior, after slaying a foe,
eats, porcupine-like, the heart or liver, with the idea of increasing
his own courage.” Schomburgk, writing concerning the natives of British
Guiana, says: “In order to increase their courage, and [so their]
contempt of death, the Caribs were wont to cut out the heart of a slain
enemy, dry it on the fire, powder it, and mix the powder in their
drink.”[262]
The native Australians find, it is said, an inducement to bloodshed,
in their belief--like that of the ancient Scythians--that the life,
or the spirit, of the first man whom one slays, enters into the life
of the slayer, and remains as his helpful possession thereafter.[263]
The Ashantee fetishmen, of West Africa, apparently acting on a kindred
thought, make a mixture of the hearts of enemies, mingled with blood
and consecrated herbs, for the vivifying of the conquerors. “All who
have never before killed an enemy eat of the preparation; it being
believed that if they did not, their energy would be secretly wasted
by the haunting spirits of their deceased foes.”[264] The underlying
motive of the bloody “head-hunting” in Borneo, is the Dayak belief,
that the spirits of those whose heads are taken are to be subject to
him, who does the decapitating. The heads are primarily simply the
proof--like the Indian’s scalps--that their owner has so many lives
absorbed in his own.[265]
A keen observer of Fellâheen life in Palestine has reported:[266]
“There is an ugly expression used among the fellâheen of South
Palestine, in speaking of an enemy slain in war--‘_Dhabbahhtho
bisnâny_’ (‘I slew him with my teeth’)[267]; and it is said that there
have been instances of killing in battle in this fashion by biting at
the throat. In the Nablous district (Samaria), where the people are
much more ferocious, the expression is, ‘I have drunk his blood’; but
that is understood figuratively.”
An ancient Greek version of the story of Jason, telling of that hero’s
treatment of the body of Apsyrtos--whom he had slain--says: “Thrice
he tasted the blood, thrice [he] spat it out between his teeth;” and
a modern collator informs us, that the scholiast here finds “the
description of an archaic custom, popular among murderers.”[268] This
certainly corresponds with the Semitic phrases lingering among the
Fellâheen of Palestine.
In the old German epic, the Nibelungen Lied, it is told of the brave
Burgundians, when they were fighting desperately in the burning hall of
the Huns, that they were given new courage for the hopeless conflict,
by drinking the blood of their fallen comrades; which “quenched their
thirst, and made them fierce.”[269] With their added life, from the
added blood of heroes, they battled as never before.
“It strung again their sinews, and failing strength renewed.
This, in her lover’s person, many a fair lady rued.”[270]
Is there not, indeed, a trace of the primitive custom--thus recognized
in all quarters of the globe--of absorbing the life of a slain one by
drinking in his blood, in our common phrase, “blood-thirstiness,” as
descriptive of a life-seeker? That phrase certainly gains added force
and appropriateness, in the light of this universal idea.
It is evident that the wide-spread popular belief in nature-absorption
through blood-appropriation, has included the idea of a _tribal_
absorption of new life in _vicarious_ blood. Alcedo, a Spanish-American
writer, has illustrated this in his description of the native
Araucanians of South America. When they have triumphed in war, they
select a representative prisoner for official and vicarious execution.
After due preparation, they “give him a handful of small sticks and a
sharp stake, with which they oblige him to dig a hole in the ground;
and in this they order him to cast the sticks one by one, repeating the
names of the principal warriors of his country, while at the same time
the surrounding soldiers load these abhorred names with the bitterest
execrations. He is then ordered to cover the hole, as if to bury
therein the reputation and valor of their enemies, whom he has named.
After this ceremony, the toqui, or one of his bravest companions to
whom he relinquishes the honor of the execution, dashes out the brains
of the prisoner with a club. The _heart_ is immediately taken out,
and presented palpitating to the general, who sucks a little of the
_blood_, and passes it to his officers, who repeat in succession the
same ceremony.”[271] And in this way the life of the conquered tribe
passes, symbolically, into the tribal life of the conquerors.
Burckhardt was so surprised at a trace of this idea in Nubia, that he
could hardly credit the information concerning it; “although several
persons asserted it to be a fact,” he says; “and he heard no one
contradict it.”[272] As he learned it: “Among the Hallenga, who draw
their origin from Abyssinia, a horrible custom is said to attend the
revenge of blood. When the slayer has been seized by the relatives of
the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is
brought into the midst of them, bound upon an angareyg; and while his
throat is slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl, and
handed round amongst the guests; every one of whom is bound to drink of
it, at the moment the victim breathes his last.” The forfeited life of
the murderer here seems to be surrendered to, and formally appropriated
by, the family, or clan, which he had, to the same extent, depleted of
character and life.
A practice not unlike this is reported of the Australians, in their
avenging the blood of a murdered person. They devour their victims;
who are selected from the tribe of the murderer, although they may be
personally, innocent of the murder. The tribe depleted by the murder,
replaces its loss by blood--which is life--from the tribe of the
murderer. Indeed, “when any one of a tribe [in New South Wales] dies
a natural death, it is usual to avenge [or to cancel] the loss of the
deceased by taking blood from one or other of his friends.”[273] In
this way, the very life and being of those whose blood is taken, go to
restore to the bereaved ones the loss that death has brought to them.
Strange as this idea may seem to us, its root-thought, as a fact, is
still an open question in the realm of physiological science. The
claim is positive, in medical works, that insanity has been cured by
the transfusion of a sane man’s blood;[274] that a normal mind has
been restored, through a normal life gained in new blood. Moreover,
the question, how far the nature, or the characteristics, of an
organism, are affected, in blood transfusion, by the nature, or the
characteristics, of the donor of the transfused blood, is by no means
a settled one among scientists. Referring to a series of questions in
this line, propounded by Robert Boyle, more than two centuries ago,
Roussel has said, within the past decade: “No one has been able to give
any positive answers to them, based upon well-conducted operations”;
and, “they still await solution in 1877, as in 1667.”[275]