It has already been shown, that the blood-stained record of the
covenant of blood, shielded in a leathern case, is proudly worn as
an armlet or as a necklace, by the Oriental who has been fortunate
enough to become a sharer in such a covenant; and that there is reason
for believing that there are traces of this custom, in the necklaces,
the armlets, the rings, and the frontlets, which have been worn as
the tokens of a sacred covenant, in well-nigh all lands, from the
earliest days of Chaldea and Egypt down to the present time. There
is a confirmation of this idea in the primitive customs of the North
American Indians, which ought not to be overlooked.
The distinctive method by which these Indians were accustomed to
confirm and signalize a formal covenant, or a treaty, was the exchange
of belts of wampum; and that these wampum belts were not merely
conventional gifts, but were actual records, tokens, and reminders,
of the covenant itself, there is abundant evidence. In a careful
paper on the “Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans,” in one of the
reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, of the Smithsonian Institution, the
writer[731] says: “One of the most remarkable customs practiced by
the Americans is found in the mnemonic use of wampum.... It does not
seem probable ... that a custom so unique and so widespread could have
grown up within the historic period, nor is it probable that a practice
foreign to the genius of tradition-loving races could have become so
well established and so dear to their hearts in a few generations....
The mnemonic use of wampum is one, which, I imagine, might readily
develop from the practice of gift giving and the exchange of tokens
of friendship, such mementoes being preserved for future reference
as reminders of promises of assistance or protection.... The wampum
records of the Iroquois [and the same is found to be true in many
other tribes] were generally in the form of belts [as an encircling
and binding token of a covenant], the beads being strung or woven
into patterns formed by the use of different colors.” Illustrations,
by the score, of this mnemonic use of the covenant-confirming belts,
or “necklaces,”[732] as they are sometimes called, are given, or are
referred to, in this interesting article.
In the narrative of a council held by the “Five Nations,” at Onondaga,
nearly two hundred years ago, a Seneca sachem is said to have presented
a proposed treaty between the Wagunhas and the Senecas, with the words:
“We come to join the two bodies into one”; and he evidenced his good
faith in this endeavor, by the presentation of the mnemonic belts
of wampum. “The belts were accepted by the Five Nations, and their
acceptance was a ratification of the treaty.”[733] Lafitau, writing of
the Canadian Indians, in the early years of the eighteenth century,
says: “They do not believe that any transaction can be concluded
without these belts;” and he mentions, that according to Indian
custom these belts were to be exchanged in covenant making; “that is
to say, for one belt [received] one must give another [belt].”[734]
And a historian of the Moravian Missions says: “Everything of moment
transacted at solemn councils, either between the Indians themselves,
or with Europeans, is ratified and made valid by strings and belts
of wampum.”[735] “The strings,” according to Lafitau, “are used for
affairs of little consequence, or as a preparation for other more
considerable presents”; but the binding “belts” were as the bond of
the covenant itself.
These covenant belts often bore, interwoven with different colored
wampum beads, symbolic figures, such as two hands clasped in
friendship, or two figures with hands joined. As the belts commonly
signalized tribal covenants, they were not worn by a single individual;
but were sacredly guarded in some tribal depository; yet their form and
their designation indicate the origin of their idea.
There is still preserved, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
the wampum belt which is supposed to have sealed the treaty of peace
and friendship between William Penn and the Indians. It contains
two figures, wrought in dark colored beads, representing “an Indian
grasping with the hand of friendship the hand of a man evidently
intended to be represented in the European costume, wearing a hat.”[736]
Still more explicit in its symbolism, is the royal belt of the
primitive kings of Tahiti. Throughout Polynesia, red feathers, which
had been inclosed in a hollow image of a god, were considered not only
as emblematic of the deities, but as actually representing them in
their personality (Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, I., 79, 211, 314, 316; II.,
204; _Tour thro’ Hawaii_, p. 121). “The inauguration ceremony [of the
Tahitian king], answering to coronation among other nations, consisted
in girding the king with the _maro ura_, or sacred girdle of red
feathers; which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but
_identified him with their gods_ [as by oneness of blood]. The _maro_,
or girdle, was made with the beaten fibres of the ava; with these a
number of _ura_, red feathers, taken from the images of their deities
[where they had, seemingly, represented the blood, or the life, of the
image], were interwoven; ... the feathers [as the blood] being supposed
to retain all the dreadful attributes of vengeance which the idols
possessed, and with which it was designed to endow the king.” In lieu
of the king’s own blood, in this symbolic ceremony of inter-union, a
human victim was sacrificed, for the “fastening on of the sacred maro.”
“Sometimes a human victim was offered for every fresh piece added to
the girdle [blood for blood, between the king and the god]; ... and the
girdle was considered as consecrated by the blood of those victims.”
The chief priest of the god Oro formally invested the king with this
“sacred girdle, which, the [blood-representing] feathers from the idol
being interwoven in it, was supposed to impart to the king a power
equal to that possessed by Oro.” After this, the king was supposed to
be a sharer of the divine nature of Oro, with whom he had entered into
a covenant of blood-union (Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, II., 354-360).
Thus it seems that a band, as a bond, of a sacred covenant is treasured
reverently in the New World; as a similar token, of one kind, or
another, was treasured, for the same reason, in the Old World. Yet,
in the face of such facts as these, one of the notable rationalistic
theological writers on Old Testament manners and customs, in the
latest edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, coolly ascribes the
idea of the Jewish phylacteries to the superstitious idea of a pagan
“amulet.” He might indeed, with good reason, have ascribed the idea of
the pagan amulet itself to a perversion of that common primitive idea
of the binding bond of a sacred covenant, which shows itself in the
blood-friendship record of Syria, in the red covenant-cord of China
and India, in the divine-human covenant token of ancient Egypt, in
the red-feather belt of divine-royal union, in the Pacific Islands,
in the wampum belt of America, and in the evolved wedding-covenant
ring, or amulet, of a large portion of the civilized world. But that
would hardly have been in accordance with the fashionable method of
the modern rationalistic theologian; which is, to fix on some later
heathenish perversion of a primitive sacred rite, and then to ascribe
the origin of all the normal uses of that primitive rite, to its own
later perversions.
Yet another indication that the binding circlet of the covenant-token
stands, among primitive peoples, as also among cultivated ones, as
the representative, or proof, of this very covenant itself, is found
in a method of divorce prevailing among the Balau Dayaks, of Borneo.
It has already been shown (page 73, _supra_) that a ring of blood is
a binding symbol in the marriage covenant in some parts of Borneo. It
seems, also, that when a divorce has been agreed on by a Balau couple,
“it is necessary for the offended husband to send a ring to his wife,
before the marriage can be considered as finally dissolved; without
which, should they marry again, they would be liable to be punished
for infidelity.”[737] This practice seems to have grown out of the old
custom already referred to (page 73 f.), of the bride giving to the
bridegroom a blood-representing ring in the marriage cup. Until that
symbolic ring is returned to her by the bridegroom, it remains as the
proof of her covenant with him.
This connection of the encircling ring with the heart’s blood, is of
very ancient origin, and of general, if not of universal, application.
Wilkinson (_Anc. Egypt._, III., 420) cites Macrobius as saying, that
“those Egyptian priests who were called prophets, when engaged in
the temple near the altars of the gods, moistened [anointed] the
ring-finger of the left hand (which was that next to the smallest)
with various sweet ointments, in the belief that a certain nerve
communicated with it from the heart.” He also says, that among the
Egyptian women, many finger rings were worn, and that “the left was
considered the hand peculiarly privileged to wear these ornaments; and
it is remarkable that its third finger [next to the little finger] was
considered by them, as by us, _par excellence_ the ring finger; though
there is no evidence [to his knowledge] of its having been so honored
at the marriage ceremony.” Birch adds (_Ibid._, II., 340), that “it is
very difficult to distinguish between the ring worn for mere ornament,
and the signet [standing for the wearer’s very life] employed to seal
[and to sign] epistles and other things.” The evidence is, in fact,
ample, that the ring, in ancient Egypt, as elsewhere, was not a mere
ornament, nor yet a superstitious amulet, but represented one’s heart,
or one’s life, as a symbol and pledge of personal fidelity.
In South Australia, the rite of circumcision is one of the steps by
which a lad enters into the sphere of manhood. This involves his
covenanting with his new god-father, and with his new fellows in the
sphere of his entering. In this ceremony, the very ring of flesh itself
is placed “on the third finger of the boy’s left hand” (Angas’s _Sav.
Life_, I., 99). What stronger proof than this could be given, that the
finger-ring is a vestige of the primitive blood-covenant token?
An instance of the use of a large ring, or bracelet, encircling the two
hands of persons joining in the marriage covenant, is reported to me
from the North of Ireland, in the present century. It was in the county
Donegal. The Roman Catholic priest was a French exile. In marrying the
people of the poorer class, who could not afford to purchase a ring, he
“would take the large ring from his old-fashioned double-cased watch,
and hold it on the hands, or the thumbs, of the contracting parties,
while he blessed their union.”
Yet another illustration of the universal symbolism of the ring, as a
token of sacred covenant, is its common use as a pledge of friendship,
even unto death. The ring given by Queen Elizabeth to the unfortunate
Earl of Essex, is an instance in point. Had that covenant-token reached
her, her covenant promises would have been redeemed.
There is an old Scottish ballad, “Hynd Horn,”--perhaps having a
common origin with the Bohemian lay on which Scott based The Noble
Moringer,[738]--which brings out the idea of a covenant-ring having
the power to indicate to its wearer the fidelity of its giver;
corresponding with the popular belief to that effect, suggested by
Bacon.[739] Hynd Horn has won the heart of the king’s daughter, and the
king sends him over the sea, as a means of breaking up the match. As he
sets out Hynd Horn carries with him a symbol of his lady-love’s troth.
“O his love gave him a gay gold ring,
With a hey lillelu, and a how lo lan;
With three shining diamonds set therein,
And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie.
“As long as these diamonds keep their hue,
With a hey lillelu, and a how lo lan,
Ye’ll know that I’m a lover true,
And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie.
“But when your ring turns pale and wan,
With a hey lillelu, and a how lo lan,
Then I’m in love with another man,
And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie.”[740]
Seven years went by, and then the ring-gems grew “pale and wan.” Hynd
Horn hastened back, entered the wedding-hall disguised as a beggar,
sent the covenant-ring to the bride in a glass of wine; and the sequel
was the same as in The Noble Moringer.
At a Brahman wedding, in India, described by Miss H. G. Brittan (in
“The Missionary Link,” for October, 1864; cited in _Women of the
Orient_, pp. 176-179) a silver dish, filled with water, (probably with
water colored with saffron, or with turmeric, according to the common
custom in India,) “also containing a very handsome ruby ring, and a
thin iron bracelet,” was set before the father of the bride, during the
marriage ceremony. At the covenanting of the young couple, “the ring
was given to the groom; the bracelet to the bride; then some of the
[blood-colored?] water was sprinkled on them (See page 194, _supra_),
and some flowers [were] thrown at them.” Here seem to be combined,
the symbolisms of the ring, the bracelet, and the blood, in a sacred
covenanting.