THE KORAK TONGUE--RELIGION OF TERROR--INCANTATIONS OF SHAMANS--KILLING
OF OLD AND SICK--REINDEER SUPERSTITION--KORAK CHARACTER
Our long intercourse with the Wandering Koraks gave us an opportunity
of observing many of their peculiarities, which would very likely
escape the notice of a transient visitor; and as our journey until we
reached the head of Penzhinsk Gulf was barren of incident, I shall
give in this chapter all the information I could gather relative to
the language, religion, superstitions, customs, and mode of life of
the Kamchatkan Koraks.
There can be no doubt whatever that the Koraks and the powerful
Siberian tribe known as Chukchis (or Tchucktchis, according to
Wrangell) descended originally from the same stock, and migrated
together from their ancient locations to the places where they now
live. Even after several centuries of separation, they resemble each
other so closely that they can hardly be distinguished, and their
languages differ less one from the other than the Portuguese differs
from the Spanish. Our Korak interpreters found very little difficulty
in conversing with Chukchis; and a comparison of vocabularies which we
afterward made showed only a slight dialectical variation, which could
be easily accounted for by a few centuries of separation. None of
the Siberian languages with which I am acquainted are written,
and, lacking a fixed standard of reference, they change with great
rapidity. This is shown by a comparison of a modern Chukchi vocabulary
with the one compiled by M. de Lesseps in 1788. Many words have
altered so materially as to be hardly recognisable. Others, on the
contrary, such as "tin tin," ice, "oottoot," wood, "weeñgay," no,
"ay," yes, and most of the numerals up to ten, have undergone no
change whatever. Both Koraks and Chukchis count by fives instead of
tens, a peculiarity which is also noticeable in the language of the
Co-Yukons in Alaska. The Korak numerals are:--
Innín, One.
Née-ak°h, Two.
Nee-ók°h, Three.
Née-ák°h, Four.
Míl-li-gen, Five.
In-nín míl-li-gen, Five-one.
Née-ak°h " Five-two.
Nee-ók°h " Five-three.
Née-ák°h " Five-four.
Meen-ye-geet-k°hin, Ten.
After ten they count ten-one, ten-two, etc., up to fifteen, and then
ten-five-one; but their numerals become so hopelessly complicated when
they get above twenty, that is would be easier to carry a pocketful of
stones and count with them, than to pronounce the corresponding words.
Fifty-six, for instance, is
"Nee-akh-khleep-kin-meen-ye-geet-khin-par-ol-in-nín-míl-li-gen," and
it is only fifty-six after it is all pronounced! It ought to be at
least two hundred and sixty-three millions nine hundred and fourteen
thousand seven hundred and one--and then it would be long. But the
Koraks rarely have occasion to use high numbers; and when they do,
they have an abundance of time. It would be a hard day's work for a
boy to explain in Korak one of the miscellaneous problems in Ray's
Higher Arithmetic. To say 324 × 5260 = 1,704,240 would certainly
entitle him to a recess of an hour and a reward of merit. We
were never able to trace any resemblance whatever between the
Koraki-Chukchi language and the languages spoken by the natives on the
eastern side of Bering Strait. If there be any resemblance, it must be
in grammar rather than in vocabulary.
[Illustration: A KORAK GIRL]
The religion of all the natives of north-eastern Siberia, wandering
and settled, including six or seven widely different tribes, is that
corrupted form of Buddhism known as Shamanism. It is a religion which
varies considerably in different places and among different people;
but with the Koraks and Chukchis it may be briefly defined as the
worship of the evil spirits who are supposed to be embodied in all the
mysterious powers and manifestations of Nature, such as epidemic and
contagious diseases, severe storms, famines, eclipses, and brilliant
auroras. It takes its name from the shamáns or priests, who act as
interpreters of the evil spirits' wishes and as mediators between them
and man. All unnatural phenomena, and especially those of a disastrous
and terrible nature, are attributed to the direct action of these
evil spirits, and are considered as plain manifestations of their
displeasure. It is claimed by many that the whole system of Shamanism
is a gigantic imposture practised by a few cunning priests upon
the easy credulity of superstitious natives. This I am sure is a
prejudiced view. No one who has ever lived with the Siberian natives,
studied their character, subjected himself to the same influences that
surround them, and put himself as far as possible in their places,
will ever doubt the sincerity of either priests or followers, or
wonder that the worship of evil spirits should be their only religion.
It is the only religion possible for such men in such circumstances.
A recent writer [Footnote: W.E.H. Lecky, _History of Rationalism
in Europe_.] of great fairness and impartiality has described so
admirably the character of the Siberian Koraks, and the origin and
nature of their religious belief, that I cannot do better than quote
his words:--
"Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion. The phenomena which
impress themselves most forcibly on the mind of the savage are not
those which enter manifestly into the sequence of natural laws, and
which are productive of most beneficial effects; but those which are
disastrous and apparently abnormal. Gratitude is less vivid than
fear, and the smallest infraction of a natural law produces a deeper
impression than the most sublime of its ordinary operations. When,
therefore, the most startling and terrible aspects of Nature are
presented to his mind--when the more deadly forms of disease or
natural convulsion desolate his land, the savage derives from them an
intensely realised perception of diabolical presence. In the darkness
of the night; amid the yawning chasms and the wild echoes of the
mountain gorge; under the blaze of the comet or the solemn gloom of
the eclipse; when famine has blasted the land; when the earthquake
and the pestilence have slaughtered their thousands; in every form
of disease which refracts and distorts the reason, in all that is
strange, portentous, and deadly, he feels and cowers before the
supernatural. Completely exposed to all the influences of Nature, and
completely ignorant of the chain of sequence that unites its various
parts, he lives in continual dread of what he deems the direct and
isolated acts of evil spirits. Feeling them continually near him, he
will naturally endeavour to enter into communion with them. He will
strive to propitiate them with gifts. If some great calamity has
fallen upon him, or if some vengeful passion has mastered his reason,
he will attempt to invest himself with their authority, and his
excited imagination will soon persuade him that he has succeeded in
his desire."
These pregnant words are the key to the religion of the Siberian
natives, and afford the only intelligible explanation of the origin of
shamans. If any proof were needed that this system of religion is the
natural outgrowth of human nature in certain conditions of barbarism,
it would be furnished by the universal prevalence of Shamanism in
north-eastern Siberia among so many diverse tribes of different
character and different origin. The tribe of Tunguses for instance,
is certainly of Chinese descent, and the tribe of Yakuts is certainly
Turkish. Both came from different regions, bringing different beliefs,
superstitions, and modes of thought; but, when both were removed from
all disturbing agencies and subjected to the same external influences,
both developed precisely the same system of religious belief. If
a band of ignorant, barbarous Mahometans were transported to
north-eastern Siberia, and compelled to live alone in tents, century
after century, amid the wild, gloomy scenery of the Stanavoi
Mountains, to suffer terrific storms whose causes they could not
explain, to lose their reindeer suddenly by an epidemic disease which
defied human remedies, to be frightened by magnificent auroras that
set the whole universe in a blaze, and decimated by pestilences whose
nature they could not understand and whose disastrous effects they
were powerless to avert--they would almost inevitably lose by degrees
their faith in Allah and Mahomet, and become precisely such Shamanists
as the Siberian Koraks and Chukchis are today. Even a whole century of
partial civilisation and Christian training cannot wholly counteract
the irresistible Shamanistic influence which is exerted upon the mind
by the wilder, more terrible manifestations of Nature in these lonely
and inhospitable regions. The Kamchadals who accompanied me to the
Samanka Mountains were the sons of Christian parents, and had been
brought up from infancy in the Greek Church; they were firm believers
in the Divine atonement and in Divine providence, and prayed always
night and morning for safety and preservation; yet, when overtaken
by a storm in that gloomy range of mountains, the sense of the
supernatural overcame their religious convictions, God seemed far away
while evil spirits were near and active, and they sacrificed a dog,
like very pagans, to propitiate the diabolical wrath of which the
storm was an evidence. I could cite many similar instances, where the
strongest and apparently most sincere convictions of the reality
of Divine government and superintendence have been overcome by
the influence upon the imagination of some startling and unusual
phenomenon of Nature. Man's actions are governed not so much by what
he intellectually believes as by what he vividly realises; and it is
this vivid realisation of diabolical presence which has given rise to
the religion of Shamanism.
The duties of the shamans or priests among the Koraks are, to make
incantations over the sick, to hold communication with the evil
spirits, and to interpret their wishes and decrees to man. Whenever
any calamity, such as disease, storm, or famine, comes upon a band, it
is of course attributed to some spirit's displeasure, and the shaman
is consulted as to the best method of appeasing his wrath. The priest
to whom application is made assembles the people in one of the largest
tents of the encampment, puts on a long robe marked with fantastic
figures of birds and beasts and curious hieroglyphic emblems, unbinds
his long black hair, and taking up a large native drum, begins to sing
in a subdued voice to the accompaniment of slow, steady drum-beats. As
the song progresses it increases in energy and rapidity, the priest's
eyes seem to become fixed, he contorts his body as if in spasms, and
increases the vehemence of his wild chant until the drum-beats make
one continuous roll. Then, springing to his feet and jerking his head
convulsively until his long hair fairly snaps, he begins a frantic
dance about the tent, and finally sinks apparently exhausted into his
seat. In a few moments he delivers to the awe-stricken natives the
message which he has received from the evil spirits, and which
consists generally of an order to sacrifice to them a certain number
of dogs or reindeer, or perhaps a man.
[Illustration: KORAK DOGS SACRIFICED TO PROPITIATE THE SPIRITS OF
EVIL]
In these wild incantations the priests sometimes practise all sorts of
frauds upon their credulous followers, by pretending to swallow live
coals and to pierce their bodies with knives; but, in a majority of
instances, the shaman seems actually to believe that he is under
the control and guidance of diabolical intelligence. The natives
themselves, however, seem to doubt occasionally the priest's pretended
inspiration, and whip him severely to test the sincerity of his
professions and the genuineness of his revelations. If his fortitude
sustains him under the infliction without any exhibition of human
weakness or suffering, his authority as a minister of the evil spirits
is vindicated, and his commands obeyed. Aside from the sacrifices
which are ordered by the shamans, the Koraks offer general oblations
at least twice a year, to assure a good catch of fish and seal and a
prosperous season. We frequently saw twenty or thirty dogs suspended
by the necks on long poles over a single encampment. Quantities of
green grass are collected during the, summer and twisted into wreaths,
to be hung around the necks of the slaughtered animals; and offerings
of tobacco are always thrown to the evil spirits when the Koraks
cross the summit of a mountain. The bodies of the dead, among all the
wandering tribes, are burned, together with all their effects, in the
hope of a final resurrection of both spirit and matter; and the sick,
as soon as their recovery becomes hopeless, are either stoned to
death or speared. We found it to be true, as we had been told by the
Russians and the Kamchadals, that the Koraks murdered all their old
people as soon as sickness or the infirmities of age unfitted them
for the hardships of a nomadic life. Long experience has given them
a terrible familiarity with the best and quickest methods of taking
life; and they often explained to us with the most sickening
minuteness, as we sat at night in their smoky _pologs_, the different
ways in which a man could be killed, and pointed out the vital parts
of the body where a spear or knife thrust would prove most instantly
fatal. I thought of De Quincey's celebrated Essay upon "Murder
Considered as One of the Fine Arts," and of the field which a Korak
encampment would afford to his "Society of Connoisseurs in Murder."
All Koraks are taught to look upon such a death as the natural end of
their existence, and they meet it generally with perfect composure.
Instances are rare where a man desires to outlive the period of
his physical activity and usefulness. They are put to death in
the presence of the whole band, with elaborate but unintelligible
ceremonies; their bodies are then burned, and the ashes suffered to be
scattered and blown away by the wind.
These customs of murdering the old and sick, and burning the bodies of
the dead, grow naturally out of the wandering life which the Koraks
have adopted, and are only illustrations of the powerful influence
which physical laws exert everywhere upon the actions and moral
feelings of men. They both follow logically and almost inevitably from
the very nature of the country and climate. The barrenness of the soil
in north-eastern Siberia, and the severity of the long winter, led
man to domesticate the reindeer as the only means of obtaining
a subsistence; the domestication of the reindeer necessitated a
wandering life; a wandering life made sickness and infirmity unusually
burdensome to both sufferers and supporters; and this finally led to
the murder of the old and sick, as a measure both of policy and mercy.
The same causes gave rise to the custom of burning the dead. Their
nomadic life made it impossible for them to have any one place of
common sepulture, and only with the greatest difficulty could they dig
graves at all in the perpetually frozen ground. Bodies could not be
left to be torn by wolves, and burning them was the only practicable
alternative. Neither of these customs presupposes any original and
innate savageness or barbarity on the part of the Koraks themselves.
They are the natural development of certain circumstances, and only
prove that the strongest emotions of human nature, such as filial
reverence, fraternal affection, selfish love of life, and respect for
the remains of friends, all are powerless to oppose the operation of
great natural laws. The Russian Church is endeavouring by missionary
enterprise to convert all the Siberian tribes to Christianity; and
although they have met with a certain degree of apparent success among
the settled tribes of Yukagirs (yoo-kag'-eers), Chuances (choo-an'-ces),
and Kamchadals, the wandering natives still cling to Shamanism, and
there are more than 70,000 followers of that religion in the scanty
population of north-eastern Siberia. Any permanent and genuine
conversion of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis must be preceded by
some educational enlightenment and an entire change in their mode of
life.
Among the many superstitions of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis,
one of the most noticeable is their reluctance to part with a living
reindeer. You may purchase as many dead deer as you choose, up to five
hundred, for about seventy cents apiece; but a living deer they will
not give to you for love nor money. You may offer them what they
consider a fortune in tobacco, copper kettles, beads, and scarlet
cloth, for a single live reindeer, but they will persistently refuse
to sell him; yet, if you will allow them to kill the very same animal,
you can have his carcass for one small string of common glass beads.
It is useless to argue with them about this absurd superstition. You
can get no reason for it or explanation of it, except that "to sell a
live reindeer would be _atkin_ [bad]." As it was very necessary in the
construction of our proposed telegraph line to have trained reindeer
of our own, we offered every conceivable inducement to the Koraks to
part with one single deer; but all our efforts were in vain. They
could sell us a hundred dead deer for a hundred pounds of tobacco; but
five hundred pounds would not tempt them to part with a single animal
as long as the breath of life was in his body. During the two years
and a half which we spent in Siberia, no one of our parties, so far as
I know, ever succeeded in buying from the Koraks or Chukchis a single
living reindeer. All the deer which we eventually owned--some eight
hundred--we obtained from the Wandering Tunguses. [Footnote: This
feeling or superstition eventually disappeared or was overcome. Many
years later, living reindeer were bought in north-eastern Siberia for
transportation to Alaska.]
[Illustration: A RACE OF WANDERING KORAK REINDEER TEAMS]
The Koraks are probably the wealthiest deer-owners in Siberia, and
consequently in the world. Many of the herds which we saw in northern
Kamchatka numbered from eight to twelve thousand; and we were told
that a certain rich Korak, who lived in the middle of the great
tundra, had three immense herds in different places, numbering in
the aggregate thirty thousand head. The care of these great herds is
almost the only occupation of the Koraks' lives. They are obliged to
travel constantly from place to place to find them food, and to watch
them night and day to protect them from wolves. Every day eight or ten
Koraks, armed with spears and knives, leave the encampment just before
dark, walk a mile or two to the place where the deer happen to be
pastured, build themselves little huts of trailing pine branches,
about three feet in height and two in diameter, and squat in them
throughout the long, cold hours of an arctic night, watching for
wolves. The worse the weather is, the greater the necessity for
vigilance. Sometimes, in the middle of a dark winter's night, when a
terrible north-easterly storm is howling across the steppe in clouds
of flying snow, a band of wolves will make a fierce, sudden attack
upon a herd of deer, and scatter it to the four winds. This it is
the business of the Korak sentinels to prevent. Alone and almost
unsheltered on a great ocean of snow, each man squats down in his
frail beehive of a hut, and spends the long winter nights in watching
the magnificent auroras, which seem to fill the blue vault of heaven
with blood and dye the earth in crimson, listening to the pulsating of
the blood in his ears and the faint distant howls of his enemies the
wolves. Patiently he endures cold which freezes mercury and storms
which sweep away his frail shelter like chaff in a mist of flying
snow. Nothing discourages him; nothing frightens him into seeking the
shelter of the tents. I have seen him watching deer at night, with
nose and cheeks frozen so that they had turned black; and have come
upon him early cold winter mornings, squatting under three or four
bushes, with his face buried in his fur coat, as if he were dead. I
could never pass one of those little bush huts on a great desolate
tundra without thinking of the man who had once squatted in it alone,
and trying to imagine what had been his thoughts while watching
through long dreary nights for the first faint flush of dawn. Had he
never wondered, as the fiery arms of the aurora waved over his head,
what caused these mysterious streamers? Had the solemn far-away stars
which circled ceaselessly above the snowy plain never suggested to him
the possibility of other brighter, happier worlds than this? Had not
some
"--revealings faint and far,
Stealing down from moon and star,
Kindled in that human clod
Thought of Destiny and God?"
Alas for poor unaided human nature! Supernatural influences he could
and did feel; but the drum and wild shrieks of the shamán showed how
utterly he failed to understand their nature and teachings.
The natural disposition of the Wandering Koraks is thoroughly good.
They treat their women and children with great kindness; and during
all my intercourse with them, extending over two years, I never saw a
woman or a child struck. Their honesty is remarkable. Frequently they
would harness up a team of reindeer after we had left their tents in
the morning, and overtake us at a distance of five or ten miles, with
a knife, a pipe, or some such trifle which we had overlooked and
forgotten in the hurry of departure. Our sledges, loaded with tobacco,
beads, and trading goods of all kinds, were left unguarded outside
their tents; but never, so far as we knew, was a single article
stolen. We were treated by many bands with as much kindness and
generous hospitality as I ever experienced in a civilised country and
among Christian people; and if I had no money or friends, I would
appeal to a band of Wandering Koraks for help with much more
confidence than I should ask the same favour of many an American
family. Cruel and barbarous they may be, according to our ideas of
cruelty and barbarity; but they have never been known to commit an act
of treachery, and I would trust my life as unreservedly in their hands
as I would in the hands of any other uncivilised people whom I have
ever known.
Night after night, as we journeyed northward, the polar star
approached nearer and nearer to the zenith, until finally, at the
sixty-second parallel of latitude, we caught sight of the white peaks
of the Stanavoi Mountains, at the head of Penzhinsk Gulf, which marked
the northern boundary of Kamchatka. Under the shelter of their
snowy slopes we camped for the last time in the smoky tents of the
Kamchatkan Koraks, ate for the last time from their wooden troughs,
and bade good-by with little regret to the desolate steppes of the
peninsula and to tent life with its wandering people.
[Illustration: Women's Knives used in making clothing]