From the very fact that so little attention has been given to the
primitive rite of blood-covenanting, in the studies of modern scholars,
there is reason for supposing that the rite itself has very often
been unnoticed by travelers and missionaries in regions where it was
practiced almost under their eyes. Indeed, there is proof of this to
be obtained, by comparing the facts recorded in this volume with the
writings of visitors to the lands here reported from. Hence, it is
fair to infer, that more or less of the brotherhoods or friendships
noted among primitive peoples, without any description of the methods
of their consummating, are either directly based on the rite of
blood-covenanting, or are outgrowths and variations of that rite; as,
for example, in Borneo, blood-tasting is sometimes deemed essential
to the rite, and again it is omitted. It may be well, therefore, to
look at some of the hints of blood-union among primitive peoples, in
relationships and in customs where not all the facts and processes
involved, are known to us.
Peculiarly is it true, that wherever we find the idea of an absolute
merging of two natures into one, or of an inter-union or an
inter-changing of two personalities in loving relation, there is reason
for suspecting a connection with the primitive rite of inter-union
through a common blood flow. And there are illustrations of this idea
in the Old World and in the New, all along the ages.
It has already been mentioned (page 109, _supra_) that, in India,
the possibility of an inter-union of two natures, and of their
inter-merging into one, is recognized in the statement that “the
heart of Vishnu is Sivâ, and the heart of Sivâ is Vishnu”; and it is
a well-known philosophical fact that man must have an actual basis of
human experience for the symbolic language with which he illustrates
the nature and characteristics of Deity.
In the most ancient portion of the ancient Egyptian Book of the
Dead,[741] there is a description of the inter-union of Osiris and Rā,
not unlike that above quoted concerning Sivâ and Vishnoo. It says,
that “Osiris came to Tattu (Mendes) and found the soul of Rā there;
each embraced the other, and become as one soul in two souls”[742]--as
one life in two lives; or, as it would be phrased concerning two human
beings united in blood-friendship, “one soul in two bodies”; a common
life in two personalities. Again it is said in an Egyptian sacred text,
“Rā is the soul of Osiris, and Osiris is the soul of Rā.”[743]
An exchange of names, as if in exchange of personalities, in connection
with a covenant of friendship, is a custom in widely diverse countries;
and this custom seems to have grown out of the idea of an inter-union
of natures by an inter-union of blood; even if it be not actually an
accompaniment of that rite in every instance. It is common in the
Society Islands,[744] as an element in the adoption of a “tayo,” or a
personal friend and companion (See page 56, _supra_). It is to be found
in various South Sea islands, and on the American continent.
Among the Araucanians, of South America, the custom of making brothers,
or brother-friends, is called _Lacu_. It includes the killing of a lamb
and dividing it--“cutting” it--between the two covenanting parties;
and each party must eat his half of the lamb--either by himself or
by such assistance as he chooses to call in. None of it must be left
uneaten. Gifts also pass between the parties; and the two friends
exchange names. “The giving [the exchanging] of a name [with this
people] establishes between the namesakes a species of relationship
which is considered almost as sacred as that of blood, and obliges them
to render to each other certain services, and that consideration which
naturally belongs to relatives.”[745]
It is related of Tolo, a chief of the Shastika Indians, on the Pacific
coast, that when he made a treaty with Col. McKee, an American soldier,
in 1852, for the cession of certain tribal rights, he was anxious for
some ceremony of brotherhood, that should give binding sacredness to
the mutual covenant. After some parleying, he proposed the formal
exchange of names, and this was agreed to. Thenceforward he desired to
be known as “McKee.” The American colonel was now “Tolo.” But after a
while the Indian found that, as in too many other instances, the terms
of the treaty were not adhered to by the authorities making it. Then he
discarded his new name, “McKee,” and refused to resume his former name,
“Tolo.” He would not answer to either, and to the day of his death he
insisted that his name, his identity, was “lost.”[746]--There is a
profound sentiment underneath such a course, and such a custom, as that.
So fully is the identity of one’s name and one’s life recognized
by primitive peoples, that to call on the name of a dead person is
generally supposed to summon the spirit of that person to the caller’s
service. Hence, among the American Indians, if one calls the dead by
name, he must answer to the dead man’s goel. He must surrender his
own blood, or pay blood-money, in restitution of the life--of the
dead--taken by him. (_First An. Rep. of Bureau of Ethnol._, p. 200.)
Even Herbert Spencer sees the correspondence of the blood-covenant and
the exchange of names. He says: “By absorbing each other’s blood, men
are supposed to establish actual community of nature. Similarly with
the ceremony of exchanging names.... This, which is a widely-diffused
practice, arises from the belief that the name is vitally connected
with its owner.... To exchange names, therefore, is to establish some
participation in one another’s being.”[747] Hence, as we may suppose,
came the well-nigh universal Oriental practice of inter-weaving the
name of one’s Deity with one’s name, as a symbolic evidence of one’s
covenant-union with the Deity. The blood-covenant, or the blood-union,
idea is at the bottom of this.
Another custom, having a peculiar bearing upon this thought of a new
name, or a new identity, through new blood, is the rite of initiation
into manhood, by the native Australians. During childhood the
Australian boys are under the care of their mothers, and they bear
names which designate the place and circumstances of their birth.
But when the time comes for them to put away childish things,[748]
they are subjected to a series of severe and painful tests, to
prove their powers of physical and mental endurance, preparatory to
their reception of a new name, as indicative of a new life. A rite
resembling circumcision is one step in their progress. During these
ceremonies, there is selected for each lad a sponsor (or godfather)
who is a representative of that higher life into which the lad seeks
an entrance. One of the latest steps in the long series of ceremonies,
is the choosing and conferring, by the sponsor, of the lad’s new
name, which he is to retain thenceforward during his life. With a
stone-knife, the sponsor opens a vein in his own arm, and causes the
lad to drink his warm-flowing blood. After this, the lad drops forward
on his hands and knees, and the sponsor’s blood is permitted to form a
pool on his back, and to coagulate there. Then the sponsor cuts, with
his stone-knife, broad gashes in the lad’s back, and pulls open the
gaping wounds with the fingers. The scars of these gashes remain as
permanent signs of the covenant ceremony.[749] And encircling tokens of
the covenant[750] are bound around the neck, each arm, and the waist,
of the young man; who is now reckoned a new creature[751] in the life
represented by that godfather, who has given him his new name, and has
imparted to him of his blood.[752]
That the transfusion of blood in this ceremony is the making of a
covenant between the youth and his sponsor, and not the giving him
blood in vivification, is indicated in another form of the same rite of
manhood-initiation, as practised in New South Wales. There, the youth
is seated upon the shoulders of his sponsor; while one of his teeth
is knocked out. The blood that flows from the boy’s lacerated gum in
this ceremony is not wiped away, but is suffered to run down upon his
breast, and thence upon the head of his sponsor, whose name he takes.
This blood, which secures, by its absorption, a common life between the
two, who have now a common name, is permitted to dry upon the head of
the man and upon the breast of the boy, and to remain there untouched
for several days.
In this New South Wales ceremonial, there is another feature, which
seems to suggest that remarkable connection of life with a stone,
which has been already referred to (page 307, _supra_); and yet again
to suggest the giving of a new name as the token of a new life. A
white stone, or a quartz crystal, called _mundie_, is given to each
novitiate in manhood, at the time he receives his new name. This stone
is counted a gift from deity, and is held peculiarly sacred. A test of
the young man’s moral stamina is made by the old men’s trying, by all
sorts of persuasion, to induce him to surrender this possession, when
first he has received it. This accompaniment of a new name “is worn
concealed in the hair, tied up in a packet, and is never shown to the
women, who are forbidden to look at it under pain of death.” The youths
receiving and retaining these white stones, with their new names, are
termed “_Kebarrah_, from _keba_, a rock, or stone.” (Angas’s _Savage
Life_, II., 221.) That the idea of a sacred covenant, a covenant
of brotherhood and friendship, is underneath these ceremonies, is
indicated by the fact, that when the rites of Kebarrah are celebrated,
even “hostile tribes meet in peace; all animosity between them being
laid aside during the performance of these ceremonies.” “To him that
overcometh, [saith the Spirit,] ... I will give him a white stone, and
upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that
receiveth it” (Rev. 2 : 17). The Rabbis recommend the giving secretly
of a new name, as a means of new life, to him who is in danger of
dying. (See _Seph. Hakhkhay._, p. 37 f. and note.)
Again, in a form of marriage ceremony in Tahiti, there is a hint of
this universal idea of inter-union by blood. An observer of this
ceremony, in describing it says: “The female relatives cut their
faces and brows[753] with the instrument set with shark’s teeth,[754]
received the flowing blood on a piece of native cloth, and deposited
the cloth, sprinkled with the mingled blood of _the mothers_ of the
married pair, at the feet of the bride. By the latter parts of the
ceremony, any inferiority of rank that might have existed was removed,
and they were [now] considered as equal. The two families, also, to
which they respectively belonged, were ever afterwards regarded as one
[through this new blood-union].”[755] Had these mothers mingled and
interchanged their own blood before the births of their children, the
children--as children of a common blood--would have been debarred from
marriage; but now that the two children were covenanting to be one,
their mothers might interchange their blood, that the young couple
might have an absolute equality of family nature.
There are frequent references by travelers to the rite of brotherhood,
or of close friendship, in one part of the world or another, with
or without a description of its methods. Thus of one of the tribes
in Central Africa it is said: “The Wanyamuezi have a way of making
brotherhood, similar to that which has already been described, except
that instead of drinking each other’s blood, the newly made brothers
mix it [their blood] with butter on a leaf, and exchange leaves. The
butter is then rubbed into the incisions, so that it acts as a healing
ointment at the same time that blood is exchanged.[756] The ceremony is
concluded by tearing the leaves to pieces and showering the fragments
on the heads of the brothers.”[757] The Australians, again, are said to
have “the custom of making ‘_Kotaiga_,’ or brotherhood, with strangers.
When Europeans visit their districts, and behave as they ought to do,
the natives generally unite themselves in bonds of fellowship with the
strangers; each selecting one of them as his Kotaiga. The new relations
are then considered as having mutual responsibilities, each being bound
to forward the welfare of the other.”[758] Once more, in Feejee, two
warriors sometimes bind themselves to each other by a formal ceremony,
and although its details are not described, a missionary writer says
of it: “The manner in which they do this is singular, and wears the
appearance of a marriage contract; and the two men entering into it are
spoken of as man and wife, to indicate the closeness of their military
union. By this mutual bond, the two men pledge themselves to oneness of
purpose and effort, to stand by each other in every danger, defending
each other to the death, and if needful to die together.”[759]
With the American Indians, there are various traces of the
blood-brotherhood idea. Says Captain Clark, in his work on the Indian
Sign Language: “Among many tribes there are brothers by adoption,
and the tie seems to be held about as sacredly as though created by
nature.”[760] Stephen Powell, writing of the Pacific Coast Indians,
gives this tie of brotherhood-adoption yet more prominence, than does
Clark. He says: “There is an interesting institution found among
the Wyandots, as among some other of our North American tribes,
namely, that of fellowship. Two young men agree to be perpetual
friends to each other, or _more than brothers_. Each reveals to the
other the secrets of his life, and counsels with him on matters of
importance, and defends him from wrong and violence, and at his death
is chief mourner.”[761] This certainly suggests the relation of
blood-brotherhood; whether blood be intermingled in the consummation of
the rite, or not.
Colonel Dodge tells of a ceremony of Indian-brotherhood, which includes
a bloody rite, worthy of notice in this connection. He says: “A strong
flavor of religious superstition attaches to a scalp, and many solemn
contracts and binding obligations can only be made over or by means of
a scalp;” for is it not the representative of a life? In illustration
of this, he gives an incident which followed an Indian battle, in which
the Pawnees had borne a part with the whites against the Northern
Cheyennes. Colonel Dodge was sitting in his tent, when “the acting
head-chief of the Pawnees stalked in gravely, and without a word.”
The Colonel continues: “We had long been friends, and had on several
occasions been in tight places together. He sat down on the side of
my bed, looked at me kindly, but solemnly, and began in a low tone to
mutter in his own language, half chant, half recitative. Knowing that
he was making ‘medicine’ [that he was engaged in a religious exercise]
of some kind, I looked on without comment. After some moments, he stood
erect, and stretched out his hand to me. I gave him my hand. He pulled
me into a standing position, embraced me, passed his hands lightly
over my head, face, arms, body, and legs to my feet, muttering all
the while; embraced me again, then turned his back upon me, and with
his face toward heaven, appeared to make adoration. He then turned
to embrace and manipulate me again. After some five minutes of this
performance, he drew from his wallet a package, and unrolling it,
disclosed a freshly taken [and therefore still bloody] scalp of an
Indian. Touching me with this [blood-vehicle] in various places and
ways, he finally drew out his knife, [and ‘cutting the covenant’ in
this way, he] divided the scalp carefully along the part [the seam]
of the hair, and handing me one half, embraced me again, kissing me
on the forehead. ‘Now,’ said he in English, ‘you are my brother.’
He subsequently informed me that this ceremony could not have been
performed without this scalp.”[762]
Here seems to be an illustration of cutting the covenant of
blood-brotherhood, by sharing the life of a substitute human victim. It
is much the same in the wild West as in the primitive East.
So simple a matter as the clasping of hands in token of covenant
fidelity, is explicable, in its universality, only as a vestige of
the primitive custom of joining pierced hands in the covenant of
blood-friendship. Hand-clasping is not, by any means, a universal, nor
is it even the commonest, mode of friendly and fraternal salutation
among primitive peoples. Prostrations, embracings, kissings,
nose-rubbings, slappings of one’s own body, jumpings up and down,
the snappings of one’s fingers, the blowing of one’s breath, and
even the rolling upon one’s back, are all among the many methods of
primitive man’s salutations and obeisances (See, e. g., Spencer’s
_Principles of Sociology_, II., 16-19). But, even where hand clasping
is unknown in salutation, it is recognized as a symbol of the closest
friendship. Thus, for example, among tribes of North American Indians
where nose-rubbing is the mode of salutation, there is, in their widely
diffused sign language, the sign of clasped, or inter-locked, hands,
as indicative of friendship and union. (_First An. Rep. of Bureau of
Ethnol._, pp. 385 f., 521, 534 f.) So again, similarly, in Australia
(_Ibid._, citation from Smith’s _Aborigines of Victoria_, II., 308). In
the Society Islands, the clasping of hands marks the marriage union,
and marks a loving union between two brothers in arms; although it has
no place in ordinary greetings (Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, II., 11, 492,
569). And so, again, in other primitive lands.
There seems, indeed, to be a gleam of this thought in Job 17 : 3:
“Give now a pledge, be surety for me with thyself;
Who is there that will strike hands with me?”
The Hebrew word _taq’a_[763] (תָּקַע) here translated “strike,” has
also the meaning “to pierce” (Judg. 4 : 21) and “to blow through,” or
“to drive through” (Num. 10 : 3); and Job’s question might be freely
rendered; Who is there that will pierce [or that will clasp pierced]
hands with me, in blood-friendship? Thus, suretyship grew out of
blood-covenanting.
Again, in Zechariah 13 : 6, where the prophet foretells the moral
reformation of Judah, there is a seeming reference to the pierced hands
of blood-friendship. When one is suspected of being a professional
prophet, by certain marks of cuttings between his hands, he declares
that these are marks of his blood-covenant with his friends. “And one
shall say unto him, What are these wounds [these cuttings] between
thine hands? Then he shall answer, [They are] these [cuttings] with
which I was wounded [or stricken, or pierced] in the house of my
friends [in the covenant of friendship].” If, indeed, the translation
of the Revisers, “between thine arms,” were justified, the cuttings
would still seem to be the cuttings of the blood-covenant (See pages
13, 45, _supra_).
It is a noteworthy fact, that among the Jews in Tunis, near the old
Phœnician settlement of Carthage, the sign of a bleeding hand is
still an honored and a sacred symbol, as if in recognition of the
covenant-bond of their brotherhood and friendship. “What struck me most
in all the houses,” says a traveler (Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg) among
these Jews, “was the impression of an open bleeding hand, on every wall
of each floor. However white the walls, this repulsive [yet suggestive]
sign was to be seen everywhere.”
How many times, in the New Testament epistles, does the idea show
itself, of an inter-union of lives, between Christ and his disciples,
and between these disciples and each other. “We, who are many, are one
body in Christ, and severally members one of another” (Rom. 12 : 5).
“We are members of his body” (Eph. 5 : 30). “We are members one of
another” (Eph. 4 : 25). “Know ye not that your bodies are members of
Christ?” (1 Cor. 6 : 15). “Ye are the body of Christ, and severally
[are] members thereof” (1 Cor. 12 : 27).
It is in this truth of truths, concerning the possibility of an
inter-union of the human life with the divine, through a common
inter-bloodflow, that there is found a satisfying of the noblest heart
yearnings of primitive man everywhere, and of the uttermost spiritual
longings of the most advanced Christian believer, in the highest grade
of intellectual and moral enlightenment. No attainment of evolution,
or of development, has brought man’s latest soul-cry beyond the
intimations of his earliest soul-outreaching.
“Take, dearest Lord, this crushed and bleeding heart,
And lay it in thine hand, thy piercèd hand;
That thine atoning blood may mix with mine,
_Till I and my Beloved are all one_.”