Apache are paid at the time they are consulted, the priest
beforehand among the Eskimo. Ethn. Rep. 1889-90, p. 187: “The
magnitude of the disease is generally measured by the amount
of the patient’s worldly wealth.” Page 416:—Sioux sorcerers
prepared love-potions for those who bought them. Ethn. Rep.
1901-2, p. 568:—“The shaman, like the theurgist is usually
paid after each visit with calico, cotton, or food, according
to the wealth of the family, since it is always understood
that these doctors expect proper compensation for their
services.” Page 387:—“The Zuñi doctor is paid according to his
reputation.” Grinnell, Blackfoot lodge tales, p. 284: “In early
days if a man remained sick for three or four weeks, all his
possessions went to pay doctors’ fees.”
Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 462 fol.—The American Indian’s theory
of disease is the theory of the Chaldean, the Assyrian,
the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman—all bodily disorders are
attributed to the maleficence of spirits (that is of animal
spirits, ghosts or witches), who must be expelled or placated.
Gibberish was believed to be more potential in magic than was
language which the practitioner or his dupes could comprehend.
Page 468:—The medicine-men are accused of administering
poisons to their enemies. Ethn. Rep. 1889-90, p. 416:—Sioux
sorcerers were thought to cause the death of those persons
who had incurred their displeasure. Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p.
581:—“When an Apache or other medicine-man is in full regalia
he ceases to be a man, but becomes, or tries to make his
followers believe that he has become, the power he represents.”
The Mexican priests masked and disguised, and dressed in the
skins of the women offered up in sacrifice.
So the shaman practiced sorcery, medicine and was a priest.
Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 594:—The Indian doctor relied far more
on magic than on natural remedies. Dreams, beating of the
drum, songs, magic feasts and dances, and howling were his
ordinary methods of cure. Grinnell, Story of the indian, p. 210
fol.:—They have “firm confidence in dreams.” “Their belief in
a future life is in part founded on dreams,” etc.
(8) Finally dreams[68] and exaggerated reports gave rise to fabulous
stories.[69]
[68] Note 67, close.
[69] An example of fabulous invention for pure personal gain
occurs Andree, p. 77: If the Greenlanders catch too many seal
at one place, the latter will take a terrible revenge. Assuming
human form, they attack their enemy in the _night_ at his
home. This is the transformation of an animal into a man, but
the inventor of the story was no doubt looking towards his
own gain. It is the same old fight for seal protection which
in another form is still going on to-day. Andree, p. 72. In
Siam stories are told of people who by magic formulae become
tigers and roam about at _night_ in search of booty. One of the
man-tigers was actually a priest.
We have discussed (1), (2), and (3);[70] for an example under (4) we
have cited the practices of American Indians.[71] It is probable that
about now (at the stage indicated in (4) above), what is known as the
real werewolf superstition (that of a frenzied, rabid manwolf) began
to fully develop. The man in wolf-skin was already a lurking thief
or enemy, or a destroyer of human life. To advance from this stage
to the werewolf frenzy, our primitive man must have seen about him
some exhibition of such a frenzy, and some reason for connecting this
frenzy particularly with, say the wolf. He did see insane persons,
and the connecting link would be the crazy or mad wolf (or dog, as
the transformation was usually into a wolf or dog,[72]) for persons
bitten by it usually went mad too.[73] The ensuing frenzy, with the
consternation it occasioned, soon appealed to certain primitive minds
as a good means of terrorizing others. Of these mad ones some no doubt
actually had the malady; others honestly believed they had it and got
into a frenzy accordingly; others purposely worked themselves up into a
frenzy in order to impose on the uninitiated.[74] Later, in the Middle
Ages, when the nature of the real disease came to be better understood,
the werewolf superstition had become too firmly fixed to be easily
uprooted.
[70] Ante pp. 7, 8, 9.
[71] Ante p. 12 fol.
[72] See notes 19 and 74.
[73] Grinnell, Blackfoot lodge tales, p. 283: “It is said that
wolves, which in former days were extremely numerous, sometimes
went crazy, and bit every animal they met with, sometimes even
coming into camps and biting dogs, horses and people. Persons
bitten by a mad wolf generally went mad, too. They trembled and
their limbs jerked, they made their jaws work and foamed at the
mouth, often trying to bite other people. When any one acted in
this way, his relatives tied him hand and foot with ropes, and,
having killed a buffalo, they rolled him up in the green hide,
built a fire on and around him, leaving him in the fire until
the hide began to dry and burn. Then they pulled him out and
removed the buffalo hide, and he was cured. This was the cure
for a mad wolf’s bite.”
[74] Sometimes the professionals even became possessed of a
monomania themselves, as in witchcraft. Andree goes into this
widespread disease or delusion (of the first century till
late in the middle ages), p. 76 fol.: “The sick” ones would
prowl about burial places _at night_, imagining themselves
to be _wolves_ or _dogs_, and go about barking and howling.
In the middle ages such people would even kill children and
grown people. When they came to themselves again, or were
cured, they claimed to know nothing of what had happened.
Ethn. Rep. 1888-89, p. 491: Amongst the Shamans feats of
jugglery or pretended magic rivaling or surpassing the best
of spiritualistic seances are recounted. Page 207: The use of
robes made of the hides of buffalo and other large animals,
painted with shamanistic devices, is mentioned. Page 235: The
speaker terms himself a wolf spirit, possessing peculiar power.
We have discussed (5), (6), (7), and (8) in the notes.[75] As further
examples of the development into fabulous story,[76] we may cite any of
those stories in which the wild werewolf, or animal-man is represented
as roaming the land, howling, robbing, and tearing to pieces men
and beasts, until he resumes his human form. Thus an early scout in
animal garb would be obliged to live on food he found on his way, and
later fabulous report would represent him as himself when in disguise
possessing the attributes of the animal he represented, and tearing to
pieces man and beast. For such an account see Andree,[77] concerning
what eyewitnesses reported of the wild reveling over corpses of the
hyena-men of Africa. Naturally the uninitiated savage who witnessed
such a sight would become insane, or at least would spread abroad
such a report as would enhance the influence of the hyena-men far and
wide. Some savages, as in Africa,[78] came to regard any animal that
robbed them of children, goats or other animals, as a witch in animal
form;[79] just as the American Indians ascribe to evil spirits death,
sickness and other misfortunes.
[75] Notes 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69.
[76] See (8) above.
[77] Page 71.
[78] Andree, p. 69.
[79] Ethn. Rep. 1889-90, p. 263. gives the following story of
the origin of the wolf: “_The wolf_ was a poor woman, who had
so many children that she could not find enough for them to
eat. They became so gaunt and hungry that they were changed
into wolves, constantly roaming over the land seeking food.”
We can see how at first the man in animal disguise or an animal robe
would go quietly to work, like the Pawnee scout;[80] how though, as
soon as the element of magic enters in, he would try to keep up the
illusion. At this stage, when the original defensive measure had become
tainted with superstition, men would go about in the night time howling
and holding their vile revels.[81] Andree,[82] narrates how a soldier
in Northeast Africa shot at a hyena, followed the traces of blood and
came to the straw hut of a man who was widely famed as a magician. No
hyena was to be seen, only the man himself with a fresh wound. Soon
he died, however the soldier did not survive him long. Doubtless one
of the magician class was responsible for the death of the soldier,
just as we to-day put to death the man who so violates our laws, as to
become a menace to our society, or as formerly kings killed those who
stood in their way; or as religious sects murder those who dissent
from their faith. These magicians, supposed to be men who could assume
animal form, as a matter of fact do often form a class, are greatly
feared by other natives, often dwell with their disciples in caves and
at _night_ come forth to plunder and kill.[83] It is to their interest
to counterfeit well, for if suspected of being malevolent, they were
put to death or outlawed, like criminals to-day.[84] Their frenzies
were, as said above, in some cases genuine delusions; in other cases
they offered, as one may readily imagine, excellent opportunities for
personal gain or vengeance.[85]
[80] Ante p. 12 fol.
[81] Ethn. Rep. 1885-86, p. 152: It is impossible to imagine
the horrible howlings, and strange contortions that these
jugglers (shamans) or conjurers make of their bodies, when they
are disposing themselves to conjure.
[82] Page 71.
[83] Andree, p. 70, gives an account of the chief magician
(Abyssinia), who demands as yearly tribute of his subordinate
animal-men the teeth of the persons whom they have killed
during the year, with which he decorates his palace. See also
pp. 72, 75, etc.: Ethn. Rep. 1885-86, p. 151, about sorcery
among American Indians: Societies existed. The purposes of
the society are twofold; 1. To preserve the traditions of
Indian genesis and cosmogony, etc. 2. To give a certain class
of ambitious men and women sufficient influence through
their acknowledged power of exorcism and necromancy to lead
a comfortable life at the expense of the credulous. Page
162: “Each tribe has its medicine men and women, an order of
priesthood consulted and employed in all times of sickness. It
is to their interest to lead these credulous people to believe
that they can at pleasure hold intercourse with the munedoos,”
etc. Sometimes one family constitutes the class. See note 65;
Andree, p. 69.
[84] Grimm, Teut. Myth. III. 1104: To higher antiquity witches
were priestesses, physicians, fabulous _night_-wives, never
as yet persecuted. Maidens might turn into swans, heroes into
werewolves, and lose nothing in popular estimation. The abuse
of a spell was punished. A wise woman, healing sickness and
charming wounds, begins to pass for a witch only when with
her art she does evil. In course of time, when the Devil’s
complicity with every kind of sorcery came to be assumed, the
guilt of criminality fell upon all personal relations with him.
Ethn. Rep. 1901-2, p. 393: “Though the witch may be regarded as
all powerful, none but the poor and unfortunate are condemned.
Few others are even brought to trial—their prominence prevents
public accusation.” This again reminds us some of our customs;
namely, that of overlooking the transgressions of the rich and
powerful. See note 91, and for outlaws note 112.
[85] Such artificial frenzies had a serious effect upon the
body, and more particularly the eyes, so that many shamans
(Siberia, America, etc.) become blind.
Only by instilling in their fellows a firm belief in this superstition
and maintaining the sham, could the perpetrators of the outrages hope
to escape punishment for their depredations, could they hope to plunder
and steal with impunity.[86] So they prowled usually under the cloak
of _night_ or of the dark of the forest,[87] howled and acted like
the animals they represented, hid the animal skin or blanket, if they
used one,[88] in the daytime where they thought no one could find
it, whereas the animal skin which was worn for defence, was put on
either by day or night,[89] and one story recounts the swallowing of
a whole goat, the man bellowing fearfully like a tiger while he did
it.[90] Some of the transformed men claimed they could regain human
form only by means of a certain medicine or by rubbing. The imposters
were the criminal class of society that is still with us to-day,[91]
no longer in werewolf form, but after all wolves in human dress, each
maintaining his trade by deception and countless artifices, just as did
the werewolf of old. Not unlike these shams are those of the American
negro, who in church, when “shouting,” that is, when stirred up by
religious fervor, inflicts blows on his enemy who happens to be in the
church, of course with impunity; for he is supposed to be under some
outside control, and when the spell has passed off, like some of the
delusionists mentioned,[92] claims not to know what he (or generally
she) has done. Similar also are the negro voudoo ceremonies, those of
the fire-eaters, or any other sham.
[86] Encyc. Brit., XV. under Lycanthropy: In Prussia, Livonia
and Lithuania, according to two bishops, werewolves were in
the 16th century far more destructive than “true and natural
wolves.” They were asserted to have formed “an accursed
college” of those “desirous of innovations contrary to the
divine law.” Also see note 90.
[87] See ante p. 13, and notes 64, 65, 66, 69, 84, 102, 110.
[88] Note 22 close, and note 102.
[89] See ante p. 13.
[90] Andree, p. 72. This same tiger-man in Asia killed a
woman, whose husband set out in pursuit, followed him to his
house, got hold of him later in his man shape and killed him.
Feats similar to some performed by him are cited in Ethn. Rep.
1887-88, p. 470: The medicine-men of the Pawnee swallowed
arrows and knives, and also performed the trick of apparently
killing a man and bringing him back to life, like the Zuñi.
[91] Grimm, Rechtsalterthümer, II. 566: Hexen waren fast alle
aus der ärmsten und niedrigsten Volksklasse (see note 84).
Literary Digest, March 9, 1907, p. 378, article on Spiritualism
and Spirituality: “Many, very many, spiritualists seem to care
for communion with spirits only that they may more surely keep
physically well, and earn their bread and butter and clothing
the easier.” Encyc. Brit. under Lycanthropy: The absurdity of
the superstition would have much sooner appeared, but for the
theory that a werewolf when wounded resumed human shape; in
every case where one accused of being a werewolf was taken, he
was certain to be wounded, and thus the difficulty of his not
being found in beast form was satisfactorily disposed of.
[92] Notes 57 and 67.
The wolf disguise, or transformation into a werewolf was that most
often assumed for example in Germanic lands.[93] The term _wolf_
became synonymous with _robber_, and later (when the robber became an
outlaw,[94]) with _outlaw_, the robber and outlaw alike being called
wolf and not some other animal (i. e., only the wolf-man surviving to
any extent) firstly, because the wolf was plentiful; and secondly,
because as civilization advanced, there came a time when the wolf was
practically the only one of the larger undomesticated animals that
survived.[95] We can notice this in our own United States, for example
in eastern Kansas, where at night coyotes and even wolves are sometimes
heard howling out on the prairie near woodlands, or in the pastures
adjoining farms, where they not infrequently kill smaller animals, and
dig up buried ones.[96] In Prussia also it is the wolf that survives
to-day. American Indians, and other savages however do not restrict the
transformations to the wolf,[97] because other wild animals, are, or
were till recently, abundant amongst them. As civilization advances,
one by one the animal myths disappear with the animals that gave rise
to them (like that connected with the mastodon);[98] or else stories of
such domestic animals as the pig, white bull, dog superseded them.[99]
When this stage was reached, as time went on and means of successfully
coping with the brute creation became perfected, the animals were shorn
of many of their terrors, and finally such stories as Aesop’s fables
would arise.[100] This however was psychologically a long step in
advance of our were-wolf believing peoples of an earlier period.
[93] Notes 9 and 19.
[94] Note 112.
[95] See note 11, also Ethn. Rep. 1897-98, I. 263: “The deer,
which is still common in the mountains, was the principal
dependence of the Cherokee hunter, and is consequently
prominent in myth, folklore, and ceremonial.” see note 42.
Page 264: “The largest gens (clan) in the tribe bears the name
of ‘wolf people.’” Page 420: The Cherokee have always been an
agricultural people, and their old country has a luxuriant
flora, therefore the vegetable kingdom holds a far more
important place in the mythology and ceremonial of the tribe
than it does among the Indians of the treeless plains and arid
sage deserts of the West.
[96] The St. Louis “Westliche Post” for January 9, 1908,
furnishes another example: A tame wolf which for the past
two years has been a pet in a farmer’s family at Marshfield,
Wisconsin, escaped and attacked a chicken. The farmer’s
daughter called to the wolf, but it had become wild from the
taste of blood, attacked her, and bit her on both arms and one
leg. It held so fast that the young lady could not be released
until she had nearly choked the wolf with its collar.
Also the following clipping from the same paper, January 13,
1908, shows the prevalence of wolves to-day in even quite
populous districts: “Wolf-Plage. Aus dem nördlichen Wisconsin
wird gemeldet, dass Wölfe in diesem Jahre zahlreicher sind
denn je, und dass sie, durch Hunger getrieben, sich nahe
an die Ortschaften wagen, und Hausthiere und auch Menschen
angreifen. Zwei grosse Wölfe griffen in dieser Woche das Pferd
der Frau Branchard an; das Pferd scheute und jagte in den Wald,
wo es durch Arbeiter angehalten wurde, welche die Bestien
verscheuchten.”
[97] Note 11.
[98] Note 20.
[99] Note 109.
[100] Note 24.
Up to this point the illustrations have shown that the werewolf
superstition went through various stages of development. The motives
for assuming wolf’s dress (or animal skins or robes), at first were
purely peaceful, for protection against cold, and to secure food by
acting as decoys; then it was used for personal advantage or gain by
foragers (or robbers) and spies; then for purposes of vengeance;[101]
later from a desire for power over others; and finally men (the
professional and the superstitious) began to concoct fabulous stories
which were handed down as tradition or myth, according to the psychic
level of the narrator and hearer.[102]
[101] Close of note 102.
[102] John Fiske, Myths and myth-makers, p. 78, fol., gives
the origin and development of the werewolf as follows: From
the conception of wolf-like ghosts it was but a short step to
the conception of corporeal werewolves.... Christianity did
not fail to impart a new and fearful character to the belief
in werewolves. Lycanthropy became regarded as a species of
witchcraft, the werewolf as obtaining his powers from the
Devil. It was often necessary to kill one’s enemies, and at
that time some even killed for love of it (like the Berserker);
often a sort of homicidal madness, during which they would
array themselves in the skins of wolves or bears and sally
forth by _night_ to crack the backbones, smash the skulls and
sometimes to drink with fiendish glee the blood of unwary
travelers or loiterers.... Possibly often the wolves were an
invention of excited imagination. So people attributed a wolf’s
nature to the maniac or idiot with cannibal appetites, then
the myth-forming process assigned to the unfortunate wretch
a tangible lupine body. The causes were three: 1. Worship
of dead ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion of
transformation of men into divine or superhuman wolves. 2. The
storm-wind was explained as the rushing of a troop of dead
men’s souls or as the howling of wolf-like monsters (called by
Christianity demons). 3. Berserker madness and cannibalism,
accompanied by lycanthropic hallucinations, interpreted as due
to such demoniacal metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf
superstition of the Middle Ages. The theory that if one put on
a wolf’s skin he became a werewolf, is perhaps a reminiscence
of the fact alleged of Berserkers haunting the woods by
_night_, clothed in hides of wolves or bears. A permanent cure
was effected by burning the werewolf’s sack, unless the Devil
furnished him with a new wolfskin. Primitively, to become
incarnated into any creature, the soul had only to put on the
outward integument of the creature. The original werewolf is
the night-wind—a kind of leader of departed souls, howling
in the wintry blasts. Encyc. Brit, under Lycanthropy:—The
Berserkir of Iceland dressed in the skins of bears and wolves,
and further on: “Beastform is in mythology proper far oftener
assumed for malignant than for benignant ends.”
The starting point of the whole superstition of the harmful werewolf
is the disguising as some common animal by members of savage races
when abroad as foragers or scouts, in order to escape detection by the
enemy. Like wolves they roamed the land in search of food. As stated
above,[103] later fabulous report would represent them as possessing
in their disguise the attributes of the animal they impersonated,[104]
and finally even of actually taking on animal form, either wholly or
in part,[105] for longer or shorter periods of time. Some of the North
American Indian transformation stories represent men as having only
the head, hands and feet of a wolf.[106] The transformation into a
werewolf in Germanic lands is caused merely by a shirt or girdle made
of wolf-skin.[107] This shirt or girdle of wolf-skin of the Germanic
werewolf is the survival of the robe or mantle originally disguising
the entire body. It would be but a step further to represent a person
as rendering himself invisible by putting on any other article of
apparel, such as the Tarnkappe.[108] The stories especially in Europe
were of the _were-wolf_ rather than _were-bear_ or other animal,
because the wolf was the commonest of the larger wild animals.[109] It
was the stories of the commonest animal, the wolf, which crystallized
into the household werewolf or transformation tales.[110]
[103] Ante p. 22.
[104] Note 57.
[105] Close note 65.
[106] Grinnell; and Ethn. Rep. 1888-89, p. 737.
[107] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, III. 1094, fol. says: Our
oldest native notions make the assumption of wolf-shape
depend on arraying oneself in a wolf-belt or wolf-shirt, as
transformation into a swan does on putting on the swan-shirt
or swan-ring. Page 1095: “The transformation need not be for a
magical purpose at all: any one that puts on, or is conjured
into, a wolf-shirt, will undergo metamorphosis.... With the
appearance, he acquires also the fierceness and howling of the
wolf; roaming the _woods_, he rends to pieces everything that
comes in his way.” This is like the belief of the American
Indian that the wearer of a mask becomes imbued with the spirit
of the being which his mask represents (note 57); or that the
shaman in full regalia becomes, or tries to make his followers
believe that he has become, the power he represents (note 67).
[108] Thus some American Indian stories represent men
transformed into wolf, turkey or owl turning into stone or
piece of decayed wood when pursued. And mantles of invisibility
are mentioned in note 60.
[109] See Hirt, Die Indogermanen, I. 187: “Unter den grossen
Raubtieren treten uns Bär und Wolf mit alten Namen entgegen.
Der Wolf ist freilich überall in Europa verbreitet gewesen, der
Bär ist aber ganz sicher ein Waldtier,” etc. Encyc. Brit, under
Lycanthropy: “In England by the 17th century the werewolf had
long been extinct. Only small creatures, the cat, hare, weasel,
etc., remained for the malignant sorcerer to transform himself
into.” See note 11.