CHAPTER IV. TABOOED PERSONS.

§ 1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed.

(M84) We have seen that the Mikado’s food was cooked every day in new pots

and served up in new dishes; both pots and dishes were of common clay, in

order that they might be broken or laid aside after they had been once

used. They were generally broken, for it was believed that if any one else

ate his food out of these sacred dishes, his mouth and throat would become

swollen and inflamed. The same ill effect was thought to be experienced by

any one who should wear the Mikado’s clothes without his leave; he would

have swellings and pains all over his body.(483) In Fiji there is a

special name (_kana lama_) for the disease supposed to be caused by eating

out of a chief’s dishes or wearing his clothes. “The throat and body

swell, and the impious person dies. I had a fine mat given to me by a man

who durst not use it because Thakambau’s eldest son had sat upon it. There

was always a family or clan of commoners who were exempt from this danger.

I was talking about this once to Thakambau. ‘Oh yes,’ said he. ‘Here,

So-and-so! come and scratch my back.’ The man scratched; he was one of

those who could do it with impunity.” The name of the men thus highly

privileged was _Na nduka ni_, or the dirt of the chief.(484)

(M85) In the evil effects thus supposed to follow upon the use of the

vessels or clothes of the Mikado and a Fijian chief we see that other side

of the god-man’s character to which attention has been already called. The

divine person is a source of danger as well as of blessing; he must not

only be guarded, he must also be guarded against. His sacred organism, so

delicate that a touch may disorder it, is also, as it were, electrically

charged with a powerful magical or spiritual force which may discharge

itself with fatal effect on whatever comes in contact with it. Accordingly

the isolation of the man-god is quite as necessary for the safety of

others as for his own. His magical virtue is in the strictest sense of the

word contagious: his divinity is a fire, which, under proper restraints,

confers endless blessings, but, if rashly touched or allowed to break

bounds, burns and destroys what it touches. Hence the disastrous effects

supposed to attend a breach of taboo; the offender has thrust his hand

into the divine fire, which shrivels up and consumes him on the spot. The

Nubas, for example, who inhabit the wooded and fertile range of Jebel Nuba

in eastern Africa, believe that they would die if they entered the house

of their priestly king; however they can evade the penalty of their

intrusion by baring the left shoulder and getting the king to lay his hand

on it. And were any man to sit on a stone which the king has consecrated

to his own use, the transgressor would die within the year.(485) The

Cazembes, in the interior of Angola, regard their king (the _Muata_ or

_Mambo_) as so holy that no one can touch him without being killed by the

magical power which pervades his sacred person. But since contact with him

is sometimes unavoidable, they have devised a means whereby the sinner can

escape with his life. Kneeling down before the king he touches the back of

the royal hand with the back of his own, then snaps his fingers;

afterwards he lays the palm of his hand on the palm of the king’s hand,

then snaps his fingers again. This ceremony is repeated four or five

times, and averts the imminent danger of death.(486) In Tonga it was

believed that if any one fed himself with his own hands after touching the

sacred person of a superior chief or anything that belonged to him, he

would swell up and die; the sanctity of the chief, like a virulent poison,

infected the hands of his inferior, and, being communicated through them

to the food, proved fatal to the eater. A commoner who had incurred this

danger could disinfect himself by performing a certain ceremony, which

consisted in touching the sole of a chief’s foot with the palm and back of

each of his hands, and afterwards rinsing his hands in water. If there was

no water near, he rubbed his hands with the juicy stem of a plantain or

banana. After that he was free to feed himself with his own hands without

danger of being attacked by the malady which would otherwise follow from

eating with tabooed or sanctified hands. But until the ceremony of

expiation or disinfection had been performed, if he wished to eat, he had

either to get some one to feed him, or else to go down on his knees and

pick up the food from the ground with his mouth like a beast. He might not

even use a toothpick himself, but might guide the hand of another person

holding the toothpick. The Tongans were subject to induration of the liver

and certain forms of scrofula, which they often attributed to a failure to

perform the requisite expiation after having inadvertently touched a chief

or his belongings. Hence they often went through the ceremony as a

precaution, without knowing that they had done anything to call for it.

The king of Tonga could not refuse to play his part in the rite by

presenting his foot to such as desired to touch it, even when they applied

to him at an inconvenient time. A fat unwieldy king, who perceived his

subjects approaching with this intention, while he chanced to be taking

his walks abroad, has been sometimes seen to waddle as fast as his legs

could carry him out of their way, in order to escape the importunate and

not wholly disinterested expression of their homage. If any one fancied he

might have already unwittingly eaten with tabooed hands, he sat down

before the chief, and, taking the chief’s foot, pressed it against his own

stomach, that the food in his belly might not injure him, and that he

might not swell up and die.(487) Since scrofula was regarded by the

Tongans as a result of eating with tabooed hands, we may conjecture that

persons who suffered from it among them often resorted to the touch or

pressure of the king’s foot as a cure for their malady. The analogy of the

custom with the old English practice of bringing scrofulous patients to

the king to be healed by his touch is sufficiently obvious, and suggests,

as I have already pointed out elsewhere, that among our own remote

ancestors scrofula may have obtained its name of the King’s Evil, from a

belief, like that of the Tongans, that it was caused as well as cured by

contact with the divine majesty of kings.(488)

(M86) In New Zealand the dread of the sanctity of chiefs was at least as

great as in Tonga. Their ghostly power, derived from an ancestral spirit

or _atua_, diffused itself by contagion over everything they touched, and

could strike dead all who rashly or unwittingly meddled with it.(489) For

instance, it once happened that a New Zealand chief of high rank and great

sanctity had left the remains of his dinner by the wayside. A slave, a

stout, hungry fellow, coming up after the chief had gone, saw the

unfinished dinner, and ate it up without asking questions. Hardly had he

finished when he was informed by a horror-stricken spectator that the food

of which he had eaten was the chief’s. “I knew the unfortunate delinquent

well. He was remarkable for courage, and had signalised himself in the

wars of the tribe,” but “no sooner did he hear the fatal news than he was

seized by the most extraordinary convulsions and cramp in the stomach,

which never ceased till he died, about sundown the same day. He was a

strong man, in the prime of life, and if any pakeha [European] freethinker

should have said he was not killed by the _tapu_ of the chief, which had

been communicated to the food by contact, he would have been listened to

with feelings of contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand

plain and direct evidence.”(490) This is not a solitary case. A Maori

woman having eaten of some fruit, and being afterwards told that the fruit

had been taken from a tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the

chief, whose sanctity had been thus profaned, would kill her. This was in

the afternoon, and next day by twelve o’clock she was dead.(491) An

observer who knows the Maoris well, says, “Tapu [taboo] is an awful

weapon. I have seen a strong young man die the same day he was tapued; the

victims die under it as though their strength ran out as water.”(492) A

Maori chief’s tinder-box was once the means of killing several persons;

for, having been lost by him, and found by some men who used it to light

their pipes, they died of fright on learning to whom it had belonged. So,

too, the garments of a high New Zealand chief will kill any one else who

wears them. A chief was observed by a missionary to throw down a precipice

a blanket which he found too heavy to carry. Being asked by the missionary

why he did not leave it on a tree for the use of a future traveller, the

chief replied that “it was the fear of its being taken by another which

caused him to throw it where he did, for if it were worn, his tapu” (that

is, his spiritual power communicated by contact to the blanket and through

the blanket to the man) “would kill the person.”(493) For a similar reason

a Maori chief would not blow a fire with his mouth; for his sacred breath

would communicate its sanctity to the fire, which would pass it on to the

pot on the fire, which would pass it on to the meat in the pot, which

would pass it on to the man who ate the meat, which was in the pot, which

stood on the fire, which was breathed on by the chief; so that the eater,

infected by the chief’s breath conveyed through these intermediaries,

would surely die.(494)

(M87) Thus in the Polynesian race, to which the Maoris belong,

superstition erected round the persons of sacred chiefs a real, though at

the same time purely imaginary barrier, to transgress which actually

entailed the death of the transgressor whenever he became aware of what he

had done. This fatal power of the imagination working through

superstitious terrors is by no means confined to one race; it appears to

be common among savages. For example, among the aborigines of Australia a

native will die after the infliction of even the most superficial wound if

only he believes that the weapon which inflicted the wound had been sung

over and thus endowed with magical virtue. He simply lies down, refuses

food, and pines away.(495) Similarly among some of the Indian tribes of

Brazil, if the medicine-man predicted the death of any one who had

offended him, “the wretch took to his hammock instantly in such full

expectation of dying, that he would neither eat nor drink, and the

prediction was a sentence which faith effectually executed.”(496) Speaking

of certain African races Major Leonard observes: “I have seen more than

one hardened old Haussa soldier dying steadily and by inches, because he

believed himself to be bewitched; so that no nourishment or medicines that

were given to him had the slightest effect either to check the mischief or

to improve his condition in any way, and nothing was able to divert him

from a fate which he considered inevitable. In the same way, and under

very similar conditions, I have seen Kru-men and others die, in spite of

every effort that was made to save them, simply because they had made up

their minds, not (as we thought at the time) to die, but that being in the

clutch of malignant demons they were bound to die.”(497) The Capuchin

missionary Merolla da Sorrento, who travelled in the West African kingdom

of Congo in the latter part of the seventeenth century, has described a

remarkable case of death wrought purely by superstitious fear. He says:

“It is a custom that either the parents or the wizards give certain rules

to be inviolably observed by the young people, and which they call

_chegilla_: these are to abstain from eating either some sorts of poultry,

the flesh of some kinds of wild beasts, such and such fruits, roots either

raw or boiled after this or another manner, with several other ridiculous

injunctions of the like nature, too many to be enumerated here. You would

wonder with what religious observance these commands are obeyed. These

young people would sooner chuse to fast several days together, than to

taste the least bit of what has been forbidden them; and if it sometimes

happen that the _chegilla_ has been neglected to have been given them by

their parents, they think they shall presently die unless they go

immediately to receive it from the wizards. A certain young negro, being

upon a journey, lodged in a friend’s house by the way: his friend, before

he went out the next morning, had got a wild hen ready for his breakfast,

they being much better than the tame ones. The negro hereupon demanded,

‘If it were a wild hen?’ His host answered, ‘No’: then he fell on

heartily, and afterwards proceeded on his journey. About four years after

these two met together again, and the aforesaid negro being not yet

married, his old friend asked him, ‘If he would eat a wild hen?’ To which

he answered, ‘That he had received the _chegilla_, and therefore could

not.’ Hereat the host began immediately to laugh, enquiring of him, ‘What

made him refuse it now, when he had eaten one at his table about four

years ago?’ At the hearing of this the negro immediately fell a trembling,

and suffered himself to be so far possessed with the effects of

imagination, that he died in less than twenty-four hours after.”(498)

§ 2. Mourners tabooed.

(M88) Thus regarding his sacred chiefs and kings as charged with a

mysterious spiritual force which so to say explodes at contact, the savage

naturally ranks them among the dangerous classes of society, and imposes

upon them the same sort of restraints that he lays on manslayers,

menstruous women, and other persons whom he looks upon with a certain fear

and horror. For example, sacred kings and priests in Polynesia were not

allowed to touch food with their hands, and had therefore to be fed by

others;(499) and as we have just seen, their vessels, garments, and other

property might not be used by others on pain of disease and death. Now

precisely the same observances are exacted by some savages from girls at

their first menstruation, women after childbirth, homicides, mourners, and

all persons who have come into contact with the dead. Thus, for example,

to begin with the last class of persons, among the Maoris any one who had

handled a corpse, helped to convey it to the grave, or touched a dead

man’s bones, was cut off from all intercourse and almost all communication

with mankind. He could not enter any house, or come into contact with any

person or thing, without utterly bedevilling them. He might not even touch

food with his hands, which had become so frightfully tabooed or unclean as

to be quite useless. Food would be set for him on the ground, and he would

then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands carefully held behind his

back, would gnaw at it as best he could. In some cases he would be fed by

another person, who with outstretched arm contrived to do it without

touching the tabooed man; but the feeder was himself subjected to many

severe restrictions, little less onerous than those which were imposed

upon the other. In almost every populous village there lived a degraded

wretch, the lowest of the low, who earned a sorry pittance by thus waiting

upon the defiled. Clad in rags, daubed from head to foot with red ochre

and stinking shark oil, always solitary and silent, generally old,

haggard, and wizened, often half crazed, he might be seen sitting

motionless all day apart from the common path or thoroughfare of the

village, gazing with lack-lustre eyes on the busy doings in which he might

never take a part. Twice a day a dole of food would be thrown on the

ground before him to munch as well as he could without the use of his

hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl

into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and

hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a

prelude to another wretched day. Such was the only human being deemed fit

to associate at arm’s length with one who had paid the last offices of

respect and friendship to the dead. And when, the dismal term of his

seclusion being over, the mourner was about to mix with his fellows once

more, all the dishes he had used in his seclusion were diligently smashed,

and all the garments he had worn were carefully thrown away, lest they

should spread the contagion of his defilement among others,(500) just as

the vessels and clothes of sacred kings and chiefs are destroyed or cast

away for a similar reason. So complete in these respects is the analogy

which the savage traces between the spiritual influences that emanate from

divinities and from the dead, between the odour of sanctity and the stench

of corruption.

(M89) The rule which forbids persons who have been in contact with the

dead to touch food with their hands would seem to have been universal in

Polynesia. Thus in Samoa “those who attended the deceased were most

careful not to handle food, and for days were fed by others as if they

were helpless infants. Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be

the punishment inflicted by the household god if they violated the

rule.”(501) Again, in Tonga, “no person can touch a dead chief without

being taboo’d for ten lunar months, except chiefs, who are only taboo’d

for three, four, or five months, according to the superiority of the dead

chief; except again it be the body of Tooitonga [the great divine chief],

and then even the greatest chief would be taboo’d ten months, as was the

case with Finow’s wife above mentioned. During the time a man is taboo’d

he must not feed himself with his own hands, but must be fed by somebody

else: he must not even use a toothpick himself, but must guide another

person’s hand holding the toothpick. If he is hungry and there is no one

to feed him, he must go down upon his hands and knees, and pick up his

victuals with his mouth: and if he infringes upon any of these rules, it

is firmly expected that he will swell up and die: and this belief is so

strong that Mr. Mariner thinks no native ever made an experiment to prove

the contrary. They often saw him feed himself with his hands after having

touched dead chiefs, and not observing his health to decline, they

attributed it to his being a foreigner, and being governed by different

gods.”(502) Again, in Wallis Island “contact with a corpse subjects the

hands to the law of taboo till they are washed, which is not done for

several weeks. Until that purification has taken place, the tabooed

persons may not themselves put food to their mouths; other people render

them that service.”(503) A rule of the same sort is or was observed in

various parts of Melanesia. Thus in Fiji the taboo for handling a dead

chief lasted from one to ten months according to his rank; for a commoner

it lasted not more than four days. It was commonly resorted to by the lazy

and idle; for during the time of their seclusion they were not only

provided with food, but were actually fed by attendants or ate their food

from the ground.(504) Similarly in the Motu tribe of New Guinea a man is

tabooed, generally for three days, after handling a corpse, and while the

taboo lasts he may not touch food with his hands. At the end of the time

he bathes and the taboo is over.(505) So in New Caledonia the two men who

are charged with the duty of burying and guarding a corpse have to remain

in seclusion and observe a number of rules of abstinence. They live apart

from their wives. They may not shave or cut their hair. Their food is laid

for them on leaves and they take it up with their mouth or a stick; but

oftener an attendant feeds them, just as he might feed a man whose limbs

were palsied.(506) So among the Nandi of British East Africa persons who

have handled a corpse bathe in a river, anoint their bodies with fat,

partially shave their heads, and live in the hut of the deceased for four

days. All these days they may not be seen by boys or women: they may not

drink milk; and they may not touch food with their hands, but must eat it

with the help of a potsherd or chip of a gourd.(507) Similarly in the

Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa men who have dug a grave may

not touch food with their fingers till the rites of their purification are

accomplished; meantime they eat with the help of special spoons. If they

broke this rule, it is thought that they would be consumptive.(508) So in

the Ngarigo tribe of New South Wales a novice who has just passed through

the ceremony of initiation has to go away to the mountains and stay there

for a while, sometimes for more than six months, under the charge of one

or more old men; and all the time of his absence among the mountains he

may not touch cooked food with his hands; the food is put into his mouth

by the man who looks after him.(509)

(M90) Among the Shuswap of British Columbia widows and widowers in

mourning are secluded and forbidden to touch their own head or body; the

cups and cooking-vessels which they use may be used by no one else. They

must build a sweat-house beside a creek, sweat there all night and bathe

regularly, after which they must rub their bodies with branches of spruce.

The branches may not be used more than once, and when they have served

their purpose they are stuck into the ground all round the hut. No hunter

would come near such mourners, for their presence is unlucky. If their

shadow were to fall on any one, he would be taken ill at once. They employ

thorn bushes for bed and pillow, in order to keep away the ghost of the

deceased; and thorn bushes are also laid all around their beds.(510) This

last precaution shews clearly what the spiritual danger is which leads to

the exclusion of such persons from ordinary society; it is simply a fear

of the ghost who is supposed to be hovering near them. Among the Thompson

Indians of British Columbia the persons who handled a corpse and dug the

grave were secluded for four days. They fasted until the body was buried,

after which they were given food apart from the other people. They would

not touch the food with their hands, but must put it into their mouths

with sharp-pointed sticks. They ate off a small mat, and drank out of

birch-bark cups, which, together with the mat, were thrown away at the end

of the four days. The first four mouthfuls of food, as well as of water,

had to be spit into the fire. During their seclusion they bathed in a

stream and might not sleep with their wives. Widows and widowers were

obliged to observe rules of a similar kind. Immediately after the death

they went out and passed through a patch of rose-bushes four times,

probably in order to rid themselves of the ghost, who might be supposed to

stick on a thorn. For a year they had to sleep on a bed of fir-boughs, on

which sticks of rose-bushes were laid; many wore twigs of rose-bush and

juniper in a piece of buckskin on their persons. The first four days they

might not touch their food, but ate with sharp-pointed sticks and spat out

the first four mouthfuls of each meal, and the first four of water, into

the fire. A widower might not fish at another man’s fishing-place or with

another man’s net; if he did, it would make the place and the net useless

for the season. If he transplanted a trout into another lake, before

releasing it he blew on the head of the fish, and after chewing deer-fat,

he spat some of the grease on its head in order to remove the baneful

effect of his touch. Then he let the trout go, bidding it farewell, and

asking it to propagate its kind in plenty. Any grass or branches that a

widow or widower sat or lay down on withered up. If a widow should break

sticks or boughs, her hands or arms would also break. She might not pick

berries for a year, else the whole crop of berries would fall off the

bushes or wither up. She might not cook food or fetch water for her

children, nor let them lie down on her bed, nor should she lie or sit

where they slept. Sometimes a widow would wear a breech-cloth made of dry

bunch-grass for several days to prevent her husband’s ghost from having

intercourse with her.(511) Among the Tinneh or Déné Indians of North-West

America all who have handled a corpse are subject to many restrictions and

taboos. They are debarred for a certain period from eating any fresh meat:

they may never use a knife to cut their food but must tear it with their

teeth: they may not drink out of a vessel in common use, but must employ a

gourd which they carry about for the purpose; and they wear peeled willow

wands about their arms and necks or carry them in their hands as

disinfectants to annul the evil consequences which are supposed to follow

from handling the dead.(512) Among the Indian tribes of Queen Charlotte

Sound a widow or widower goes into special mourning for a month; among the

Koskimos the period of mourning is four months. During this time he or she

lives apart in a very small hut behind the house, eating and drinking

alone, and using for that purpose dishes which are not employed by other

members of the tribe.(513)

(M91) Among the Agutainos, who inhabit Palawan, one of the Philippine

Islands, a widow may not leave her hut for seven or eight days after the

death; and even then she may only go out at an hour when she is not likely

to meet anybody, for whoever looks upon her dies a sudden death. To

prevent this fatal catastrophe, the widow knocks with a wooden peg on the

trees as she goes along, thus warning people of her dangerous proximity;

and the very trees on which she knocks soon die.(514) So poisonous is the

atmosphere of death that surrounds those to whom the ghost of the departed

may be thought to cleave. In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea a

widower loses all his civil rights and becomes a social outcast, an object

of fear and horror, shunned by all. He may not cultivate a garden, nor

shew himself in public, nor traverse the village, nor walk on the roads

and paths. Like a wild beast he must skulk in the long grass and the

bushes; and if he sees or hears any one coming, especially a woman, he

must hide behind a tree or a thicket. If he wishes to fish or hunt, he

must do it alone and at night. If he would consult any one, even the

missionary, he does so by stealth and at night; he seems to have lost his

voice and speaks only in whispers. Were he to join a party of fishers or

hunters, his presence would bring misfortune on them; the ghost of his

dead wife would frighten away the fish or the game. He goes about

everywhere and at all times armed with a tomahawk to defend himself, not

only against wild boars in the jungle, but against the dreaded spirit of

his departed spouse, who would do him an ill turn if she could; for all

the souls of the dead are malignant and their only delight is to harm the

living.(515)

§ 3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth.

(M92) In general, we may say that the prohibition to use the vessels,

garments, and so on of certain persons, and the effects supposed to follow

an infraction of the rule, are exactly the same whether the persons to

whom the things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and

polluted. As the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill

those who handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a

menstruous woman. An Australian blackfellow, who discovered that his wife

had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of

terror himself within a fortnight.(516) Hence Australian women at these

times are forbidden under pain of death to touch anything that men use, or

even to walk on a path that any man frequents. They are also secluded at

childbirth, and all vessels used by them during their seclusion are

burned.(517) In Uganda the pots which a woman touches while the impurity

of childbirth or of menstruation is on her should be destroyed; spears and

shields defiled by her touch are not destroyed but only purified.(518) No

Esquimaux of Alaska will willingly drink out of the same cup or eat out of

the same dish that has been used by a woman at her confinement until it

has been purified by certain incantations.(519) Amongst some of the

Indians of North America, women at menstruation are forbidden to touch

men’s utensils, which would be so defiled by their touch that their

subsequent use would be attended by certain mischief or misfortune.(520)

For instance, in some of the Tinneh or Déné tribes girls verging on

maturity take care that the dishes out of which they eat are used by no

one else. When their first periodical sickness comes on, they are fed by

their mothers or nearest kinswomen, and will on no account touch their

food with their own hands. At the same time they abstain from touching

their heads with their hands, and keep a small stick to scratch their

heads with when they itch. They remain outside the house in a hut built

for the purpose, and wear a skull-cap made of skin to fit very tight,

which they never lay aside till the first monthly infirmity is over. A

fringe of shells, bones, and so on hangs down from their forehead so as to

cover their eyes, lest any malicious sorcerer should harm them during this

critical period.(521) “Among all the Déné and most other American tribes,

hardly any other being was the object of so much dread as a menstruating

woman. As soon as signs of that condition made themselves apparent in a

young girl she was carefully segregated from all but female company, and

had to live by herself in a small hut away from the gaze of the villagers

or of the male members of the roving band. While in that awful state, she

had to abstain from touching anything belonging to man, or the spoils of

any venison or other animal, lest she would thereby pollute the same, and

condemn the hunters to failure, owing to the anger of the game thus

slighted. Dried fish formed her diet, and cold water, absorbed through a

drinking tube, was her only beverage. Moreover, as the very sight of her

was dangerous to society, a special skin bonnet, with fringes falling over

her face down to her breast, hid her from the public gaze, even some time

after she had recovered her normal state.”(522) Among the Bribri Indians

of Costa Rica a menstruous woman is regarded as unclean (_bukuru_). The

only plates she may use for her food are banana leaves, which, when she

has done with them, she throws away in some sequestered spot; for were a

cow to find them and eat them, the animal would waste away and perish. And

she drinks out of a special vessel for a like reason; because if any one

drank out of the same cup after her, he would surely die.(523) In the

islands of Mabuiag and Saibai, in Torres Straits, girls at their first

menstruation are strictly secluded from the sight of men. In Mabuiag the

seclusion lasts three months, in Saibai about a fortnight. During the time

of her separation the girl is forbidden to feed herself or to handle food,

which is put into her mouth by women or girls told off to wait on

her.(524)

(M93) Among many peoples similar restrictions are imposed on women in

childbed and apparently for similar reasons; at such periods women are

supposed to be in a dangerous condition which would infect any person or

thing they might touch; hence they are put into quarantine until, with the

recovery of their health and strength, the imaginary danger has passed

away. Thus, in Tahiti a woman after childbirth was secluded for a

fortnight or three weeks in a temporary hut erected on sacred ground;

during the time of her seclusion she was debarred from touching

provisions, and had to be fed by another. Further, if any one else touched

the child at this period, he was subjected to the same restrictions as the

mother until the ceremony of her purification had been performed.(525)

Similarly in Manahiki, an island of the Southern Pacific, for ten days

after her delivery a woman was not allowed to handle food, and had to be

fed by some other person.(526) In the Sinaugolo tribe of British New

Guinea, for about a month after her confinement a woman may not prepare or

handle food; she may not even cook for herself, and when she is eating the

food made ready for her by her friends she must use a sharpened stick to

transfer it to her mouth.(527) Similarly in the Roro and Mekeo districts

of British New Guinea a woman after childbirth becomes for a time taboo

(_opu_), and any person or thing she may chance to touch becomes taboo

also. Accordingly during this time she abstains from cooking; for were she

to cook food, not only the victuals themselves but the pot and the fire

would be tabooed, so that nobody could eat the victuals, or use the pot,

or warm himself at the fire. Further at meals she may not dip her hand

into the dish and help herself, as the natives commonly do; she must use

for the purpose a long fork, with which she takes up the bananas, sweet

potatoes, yams, and so forth, in order not to contaminate the rest of the

food in the vessel by the touch of her fingers. If she wishes to drink, a

gourd is set before her, and wrapping up her hands in a cloth or coco-nut

fibre she pours the water into a small calabash for her use; or she may

pour the water directly into her mouth without letting the gourd touch her

lips. If anything has to be handed to her, it is not given from hand to

hand but reached to her at the end of a long stick.(528) Similarly in the

island of Kadiak, off Alaska, a woman about to be delivered retires to a

miserable low hovel built of reeds, where she must remain for twenty days

after the birth of her child, whatever the season may be, and she is

considered so unclean that no one will touch her, and food is reached to

her on sticks.(529) In the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa a

woman in childbed may not touch her food with her hands all the time of

her seclusion; she must eat with the help of a wooden spoon. They think

that if she touched her victuals she might infect them with her bloody

flux, and that having partaken of such tainted food she would fall into a

consumption.(530) The Bribri Indians regard the pollution of childbed as

much more dangerous even than that of menstruation. When a woman feels her

time approaching, she informs her husband, who makes haste to build a hut

for her in a lonely spot. There she must live alone, holding no converse

with anybody save her mother or another woman. After her delivery the

medicine-man purifies her by breathing on her and laying an animal, it

matters not what, upon her. But even this ceremony only mitigates her

uncleanness into a state considered to be equivalent to that of a

menstruous woman; and for a full lunar month she must live apart from her

housemates, observing the same rules with regard to eating and drinking as

at her monthly periods. The case is still worse, the pollution is still

more deadly, if she has had a miscarriage or has been delivered of a

stillborn child. In that case she may not go near a living soul: the mere

contact with things she has used is exceedingly dangerous: her food is

handed to her at the end of a long stick. This lasts generally for three

weeks, after which she may go home subject only to the restrictions

incident to an ordinary confinement.(531) Among the Adivi or forest Gollas

of Southern India, when a woman feels the first pains of labour, she is

turned clean out of the village and must take up her quarters in a little

hut made of leaves or mats about two hundred yards away. In this hut she

must bring forth her offspring unaided, unless a midwife can be fetched in

time to be with her before the child is born; if the midwife arrives after

the birth has taken place she may not go near the woman. For ninety days

the mother lives in the hut by herself. If any one touches her, he or she

becomes, like the mother herself, an outcast and is expelled from the

village for three months, The woman’s husband generally makes a little hut

about fifty yards from hers and stays in it sometimes to watch over her,

but he may not go near her on pain of being an outcast for three months.

Food is placed on the ground near the woman’s hut and she takes it. On the

fourth day after the birth a woman of the village goes to her and pours

water on her, but may not come into contact with her. On the fifth day the

villagers clear away the stones and thorny bushes from a patch of ground

about ten yards on the village side of the hut, and to this clearing the

woman removes her hut unaided; no one may help her to do so. On the ninth,

fifteenth, and thirtieth days she again shifts her hut nearer and nearer

to the village; and again once in each of the two following months she

brings her hut still nearer. On the ninetieth day of her seclusion the

woman is called out from her hut, washed, clad in clean clothes, and after

being taken to the village temple is conducted to her own house by a man

of the caste, who performs purificatory ceremonies.(532)

(M94) These customs shew that in the opinion of some primitive peoples a

woman at and after childbirth is pervaded by a certain dangerous influence

which can infect anything and anybody she touches; so that in the interest

of the community it becomes necessary to seclude her from society for a

while until the virulence of the infection has passed away, when, after

submitting to certain rites of purification, she is again free to mingle

with her fellows. This dread of lying-in women appears to be widespread,

for the practice of shutting them up at such times in lonely huts away

from the rest of the people is very common. Sometimes the nature of the

danger which is apprehended from them is explicitly stated. Thus in the

island of Tumleo, off German New Guinea, after the birth of her first

child a woman is shut up with her infant for five to eight days, during

which no man, not even her husband, may see her; for the men think that

were they to see her, their bodies would swell up and they would die.(533)

Apparently their notion is that the sight of a woman who has just been big

with child will, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, make their

bodies big also to bursting. The Sulka of New Britain imagine that, when a

woman has been delivered of a child, the men become cowardly, weapons lose

their force, and the slips which are to be planted out are deprived of

their power of germinating. Hence they perform a ceremony which is

intended to counteract this mysterious influence on men and plants. As

soon as it is known that a woman has been brought to bed, all the male

population of the village assembles in the men’s clubhouse. Branches of a

strong-smelling tree are fetched, the twigs are broken off, the leaves

stripped off and put on the fire. All the men present then seize branches

with young buds. One of them holds ginger in his hand, which, after

reciting a spell over it, he distributes to the others. They chew it and

spit it out on the twigs, and these twigs are afterwards laid on the

shields and other weapons in the house, and also on the slips which are to

be planted; moreover they are fastened on the roofs and over the doorways

of the houses. In this way they seek to annul the noxious infection of

childbirth.(534) Among the Yabim of German New Guinea, when a birth has

taken place in the village, all the inhabitants remain at home next

morning “in order that the fruits of the field may not be spoiled.”(535)

Apparently they fear that if they went out to their fields and gardens

immediately after a woman had been brought to bed, they would carry with

them a dangerous contagion which might blight the crops. When a Herero

woman has given birth to a child, her female companions hastily construct

a special hut for her to which she is transferred. Both the hut and the

woman are sacred and “for this reason, the men are not allowed to see the

lying-in woman until the navel string has separated from the child,

otherwise they would become weaklings, and when later they _yumbana_, that

is, go to war with spear and bow, they would be shot.”(536) Thus the

Herero like the Sulka appear to imagine that the weakness of a lying-in

woman can, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, infect any men who may

chance to see her.

(M95) Among the Saragacos Indians of eastern Ecuador, as soon as a woman

feels the travail-pangs beginning, she retires into the forest to a

distance of three or four leagues from her home, where she takes up her

abode in a hut of leaves which has been already prepared for her. “This

banishment,” we are told, “is the fruit of the superstition of these

Indians, who are persuaded that the spirit of evil would attach himself to

their house if the women were brought to bed in it.”(537) The Esquimaux of

Baffin Land think that the body of a lying-in woman exhales a vapour which

would adhere to the souls of seals if she ate the flesh of any seals

except such as have been caught by her husband, by a boy, or by an aged

man. “Cases of premature birth require particularly careful treatment. The

event must be announced publicly, else dire results will follow. If a

woman should conceal from the other people that she has had a premature

birth, they might come near her, or even eat in her hut of the seals

procured by her husband. The vapor arising from her would thus affect

them, and they would be avoided by the seals. The transgression would also

become attached to the soul of the seal, which would take it down to

Sedna,” the mythical mother of the sea-mammals, who lives in the lower

world and controls the destinies of mankind.(538)

(M96) Some Bantu tribes of South Africa entertain even more exaggerated

notions of the virulent infection spread by a woman who has had a

miscarriage and has concealed it. An experienced observer of these people

tells us that the blood of childbirth “appears to the eyes of the South

Africans to be tainted with a pollution still more dangerous than that of

the menstrual fluid. The husband is excluded from the hut for eight days

of the lying-in period, chiefly from fear that he might be contaminated by

this secretion. He dare not take his child in his arms for the three first

months after the birth. But the secretion of childbed is particularly

terrible when it is the product of a miscarriage, especially _a concealed

miscarriage_. In this case it is not merely the man who is threatened or

killed, it is the whole country, it is the sky itself which suffers. By a

curious association of ideas a physiological fact causes cosmic

troubles!”(539) Thus, for example, the Ba-Pedi believe that a woman who

has procured abortion can kill a man merely by lying with him; her victim

is poisoned, shrivels up, and dies within a week. As for the disastrous

effect which a miscarriage may have on the whole country I will quote the

words of a medicine-man and rain-maker of the Ba-Pedi tribe: “When a woman

has had a miscarriage, when she has allowed her blood to flow, and has

hidden the child, it is enough to cause the burning winds to blow and to

parch the country with heat. The rain no longer falls, for the country is

no longer in order. When the rain approaches the place where the blood is,

it will not dare to approach. It will fear and remain at a distance. That

woman has committed a great fault. She has spoiled the country of the

chief, for she has hidden blood which had not yet been well congealed to

fashion a man. That blood is taboo (_yila_). It should never drip on the

road! The chief will assemble his men and say to them, ‘Are you in order

in your villages?’ Some one will answer, ‘Such and such a woman was

pregnant and we have not yet seen the child which she has given birth to.’

Then they go and arrest the woman. They say to her, ‘Shew us where you

have hidden it.’ They go and dig at the spot, they sprinkle the hole with

a decoction of _mbendoula_ and _nyangale_ (two sorts of roots) prepared in

a special pot. They take a little of the earth of this grave, they throw

it into the river, then they bring back water from the river and sprinkle

it where she shed her blood. She herself must wash every day with the

medicine. Then the country will be moistened again (by rain). Further, we

(medicine-men) summon the women of the country; we tell them to prepare a

ball of the earth which contains the blood. They bring it to us one

morning. If we wish to prepare medicine with which to sprinkle the whole

country, we crumble this earth to powder; at the end of five days we send

little boys and little girls, girls that yet know nothing of women’s

affairs and have not yet had relations with men. We put the medicine in

the horns of oxen, and these children go to all the fords, to all the

entrances of the country. A little girl turns up the soil with her

mattock, the others dip a branch in the horn and sprinkle the inside of

the hole saying, ‘Rain! rain!’ So we remove the misfortune which the women

have brought on the roads; the rain will be able to come. The country is

purified!”(540)

(M97) Similarly the Ba-Thonga, another Bantu tribe of South Africa in the

valley of the Limpopo river, attribute severe droughts to the concealment

of miscarriages by women, and they perform the following rites to remove

the pollution and procure rain. A small clearing is made in a thick and

thorny wood, and here a pot is buried in the ground so that its mouth is

flush with the surface. From the pot four channels run in the form of a

cross to the four cardinal points of the horizon. Then a black ox or a

black ram, without a speck of white on it, is killed and the pot is

stuffed with the half-digested grass found in the animal’s stomach. Next,

little girls, still in the age of innocence, are sent to draw water, which

they pour into the pot till it overflows into the four channels. After

that the women assemble, strip off their clothes, and covering their

nakedness only with a scanty petticoat of grass they dance, leap, and

sing, “Rain, fall!” Then they go and dig up the remains of the prematurely

born infants and of twins buried in dry ground on a hill. These they

collect in one place. No man may approach the spot. The women would beat

any male who might be so indiscreet as to intrude on their privacy, and

they would put riddles to him which he would have to answer in the most

filthy language borrowed from the circumcision ceremonies; for obscene

words, which are usually forbidden, are customary and legitimate on these

occasions. The women pour water on the graves of the infants and of twins

in order to “extinguish” (_timula_) them, as the natives phrase it; which

seems to imply that the graves are thought to be the source of the

scorching heat which is blasting the country. At the fall of evening they

bury all the remains they have discovered, poking them away in the mud

near a stream. Then the rain will be free to fall.(541) In these

ceremonies the pouring of water into channels which run in the direction

of the four quarters of the heaven is clearly a charm based on the

principles of homoeopathic magic to procure rain. The supposed influence

of twins over the waters of heaven and the use of foul language at

rain-making ceremonies have been illustrated in another part of this

work.(542)

(M98) Among the natives of the Nguôn So’n valley in Annam, during the

first month after a woman has been delivered of a child, all the persons

of the house are supposed to be affected with an evil destiny or ill luck

called _phong long_. If a member of such a household enters another house,

the inmates never fail to say to him, “You bring me the _phong long_!”

Should a member of a family in which somebody is seriously ill have to

enter a house infected by the _phong long_, on returning home he always

fumigates himself with tea leaves or some other plant in order to rid

himself of the infection which he has contracted; for they fear that the

blood of the woman who has been brought to bed may harm the patient. All

the time a house is tainted with the _phong long_, a branch of cactus

(_Euphorbia antiquorum_) or pandanus is hung at the door. The same thing

is done to a house infected by small-pox: it is a danger signal to warn

people off. The _phong long_ only disappears when the woman has gone to

market for the first time after her delivery.(543) A trace of a similar

belief in the dangerous infection of childbirth may be seen in the rule of

ancient Greek religion, which forbade persons who had handled a corpse or

been in contact with a lying-in woman to enter a temple or approach an

altar for a certain time, sometimes for two days.(544)

(M99) Restrictions and taboos like those laid on menstruous and lying-in

women are imposed by some savages on lads at the initiatory rites which

celebrate the attainment of puberty; hence we may infer that at such times

young men are supposed to be in a state like that of women at menstruation

and in childbed. Thus, among the Creek Indians a lad at initiation had to

abstain for twelve moons from picking his ears or scratching his head with

his fingers; he had to use a small stick for these purposes. For four

moons he must have a fire of his own to cook his food at; and a little

girl, a virgin, might cook for him. During the fifth moon any person might

cook for him, but he must serve himself first, and use one spoon and pan.

On the fifth day of the twelfth moon he gathered corn cobs, burned them to

ashes, and with the ashes rubbed his body all over. At the end of the

twelfth moon he sweated under blankets, and then bathed in water, which

ended the ceremony. While the ceremonies lasted, he might touch no one but

lads who were undergoing a like course of initiation.(545) Caffre boys at

circumcision live secluded in a special hut; they are smeared from head to

foot with white clay; they wear tall head-dresses with horn-like

projections and short skirts like those of ballet-dancers. When their

wounds are healed, all the vessels which they had used during their

seclusion and the boyish mantles which they had hitherto worn are burned,

together with the hut, and the boys rush away from the burning hut without

looking back, “lest a fearful curse should cling to them.” After that they

are bathed, anointed, and clad in new garments.(546)

§ 4. Warriors tabooed.

(M100) Once more, warriors are conceived by the savage to move, so to say,

in an atmosphere of spiritual danger which constrains them to practise a

variety of superstitious observances quite different in their nature from

those rational precautions which, as a matter of course, they adopt

against foes of flesh and blood. The general effect of these observances

is to place the warrior, both before and after victory, in the same state

of seclusion or spiritual quarantine in which, for his own safety,

primitive man puts his human gods and other dangerous characters. Thus

when the Maoris went out on the war-path they were sacred or taboo in the

highest degree, and they and their friends at home had to observe strictly

many curious customs over and above the numerous taboos of ordinary life.

They became, in the irreverent language of Europeans who knew them in the

old fighting days, “tabooed an inch thick”; and as for the leader of the

expedition, he was quite unapproachable.(547) Similarly, when the

Israelites marched forth to war they were bound by certain rules of

ceremonial purity identical with rules observed by Maoris and Australian

blackfellows on the war-path. The vessels they used were sacred, and they

had to practise continence and a custom of personal cleanliness of which

the original motive, if we may judge from the avowed motive of savages who

conform to the same custom, was a fear lest the enemy should obtain the

refuse of their persons, and thus be enabled to work their destruction by

magic.(548) Among some Indian tribes of North America a young warrior in

his first campaign had to conform to certain customs, of which two were

identical with the observances imposed by the same Indians on girls at

their first menstruation: the vessels he ate and drank out of might be

touched by no other person, and he was forbidden to scratch his head or

any other part of his body with his fingers; if he could not help

scratching himself, he had to do it with a stick.(549) The latter rule,

like the one which forbids a tabooed person to feed himself with his own

fingers, seems to rest on the supposed sanctity or pollution, whichever we

choose to call it, of the tabooed hands.(550) Moreover among these Indian

tribes the men on the war-path had always to sleep at night with their

faces turned towards their own country; however uneasy the posture they

might not change it. They might not sit upon the bare ground, nor wet

their feet, nor walk on a beaten path if they could help it; when they had

no choice but to walk on a path, they sought to counteract the ill effect

of doing so by doctoring their legs with certain medicines or charms which

they carried with them for the purpose. No member of the party was

permitted to step over the legs, hands, or body of any other member who

chanced to be sitting or lying on the ground; and it was equally forbidden

to step over his blanket, gun, tomahawk, or anything that belonged to him.

If this rule was inadvertently broken, it became the duty of the member

whose person or property had been stepped over to knock the other member

down, and it was similarly the duty of that other to be knocked down

peaceably and without resistance. The vessels out of which the warriors

ate their food were commonly small bowls of wood or birch bark, with marks

to distinguish the two sides; in marching from home the Indians invariably

drank out of one side of the bowl, and in returning they drank out of the

other. When on their way home they came within a day’s march of the

village, they hung up all their bowls on trees, or threw them away on the

prairie,(551) doubtless to prevent their sanctity or defilement from being

communicated with disastrous effects to their friends, just as we have

seen that the vessels and clothes of the sacred Mikado, of women at

childbirth and menstruation, of boys at circumcision, and of persons

defiled by contact with the dead are destroyed or laid aside for a similar

reason. The first four times that an Apache Indian goes out on the

war-path, he is bound to refrain from scratching his head with his fingers

and from letting water touch his lips. Hence he scratches his head with a

stick, and drinks through a hollow reed or cane. Stick and reed are

attached to the warrior’s belt and to each other by a leathern thong.(552)

The rule not to scratch their heads with their fingers, but to use a stick

for the purpose instead, was regularly observed by Ojebways on the

war-path.(553)

(M101) For three or four weeks before they went on a warlike expedition,

the Nootka Indians made it an invariable rule to go into the water five or

six times a day, when they washed and scrubbed themselves from head to

foot with bushes intermixed with briars, so that their bodies and faces

were often entirely covered with blood. During this severe exercise they

continually exclaimed, “Good or great God, let me live, not be sick, find

the enemy, not fear him, find him asleep, and kill a great many of them.”

All this time they had no intercourse with their women, and for a week

before setting out abstained from feasting and every kind of merriment.

For the last three days they were almost constantly in the water,

scrubbing and lacerating themselves in a terrible manner. They believed

that this hardened their skin, so that the weapons of the enemy could not

pierce them.(554) Before they went out on the war-path the Arikaras and

the Big Belly Indians (“_Gros Ventres_”) “observe a rigorous fast, or

rather abstain from every kind of food for four days. In this interval

their imagination is exalted to delirium; whether it be through bodily

weakness or the natural effect of the warlike plans they cherish, they

pretend to have strange visions. The elders and sages of the tribe, being

called upon to interpret these dreams, draw from them omens more or less

favourable to the success of the enterprise; and their explanations are

received as oracles by which the expedition will be faithfully regulated.

So long as the preparatory fast continues, the warriors make incisions in

their bodies, insert pieces of wood in the flesh, and having fastened

leather thongs to them cause themselves to be hung from a beam which is

fixed horizontally above an abyss a hundred and fifty feet deep. Often

indeed they cut off one or two fingers which they offer in sacrifice to

the Great Spirit in order that they may come back laden with scalps.”(555)

It is hard to conceive any course of training which could more effectually

incapacitate men for the business of war than that which these foolish

Indians actually adopted. With regard to the Creek Indians and kindred

tribes we are told they “will not cohabit with women while they are out at

war; they religiously abstain from every kind of intercourse even with

their own wives, for the space of three days and nights before they go to

war, and so after they return home, because they are to sanctify

themselves.”(556) And as a preparation for attacking the enemy they “go to

the aforesaid winter house, and there drink a warm decoction of their

supposed holy consecrated herbs and roots for three days and nights,

sometimes without any other refreshment. This is to induce the deity to

guard and prosper them, amidst their impending dangers. In the most

promising appearance of things, they are not to take the least nourishment

of food, nor so much as to sit down, during that time of sanctifying

themselves, till after sunset. While on their expedition, they are not

allowed to lean themselves against a tree, though they may be exceedingly

fatigued, after a sharp day’s march; nor must they lie by, a whole day to

refresh themselves, or kill and barbicue deer and bear for their war

journey. The more virtuous they are, they reckon the greater will be their

success against the enemy, by the bountiful smiles of the deity. To gain

that favourite point, some of the aged warriors narrowly watch the young

men who are newly initiated, lest they should prove irreligious, and

prophane the holy fast, and bring misfortunes on the out-standing camp. A

gentleman of my acquaintance, in his youthful days observed one of their

religious fasts, but under the greatest suspicion of his virtue in this

respect, though he had often headed them against the common enemy: during

their three days’ purification, he was not allowed to go out of the

sanctified ground, without a trusty guard, lest hunger should have tempted

him to violate their old martial law, and by that means have raised the

burning wrath of the holy fire against the whole camp.” “Every war captain

chuses a noted warrior, to attend on him and the company. He is called

_Etissû_, or ‘the waiter.’ Everything they eat or drink during their

journey, he gives them out of his hand, by a rigid abstemious rule,—though

each carries on his back all his travelling conveniencies, wrapt in a deer

skin, yet they are so bigoted in their religious customs in war that none,

though prompted by sharp hunger or burning thirst, dares relieve himself.

They are contented with such trifling allowance as the religious waiter

distributes to them, even with a scanty hand. Such a regimen would be too

mortifying to any of the white people, let their opinion of its violation

be ever so dangerous. When I roved the woods in a war party with the

Indians, though I carried no scrip, nor bottle, nor staff, I kept a large

hollow cane well corked at each end, and used to sheer off now and then to

drink, while they suffered greatly by thirst. The constancy of the savages

in mortifying their bodies, to gain the divine favour, is astonishing,

from the very time they beat to arms, till they return from their

campaign. All the while they are out, they are prohibited by ancient

custom, the leaning against a tree, either sitting or standing; nor are

they allowed to sit in the day-time, under the shade of trees, if it can

be avoided; nor on the ground, during the whole journey, but on such

rocks, stones, or fallen wood, as their ark of war rests upon. By the

attention they invariably pay to those severe rules of living, they weaken

themselves much more than by the unavoidable fatigues of war; but it is

fruitless to endeavour to dissuade them from those things which they have

by tradition, as the appointed means to move the deity, to grant them

success against the enemy, and a safe return home.”(557) “An Indian,

intending to go to war, will commence by blacking his face, permitting his

hair to grow long, and neglecting his personal appearance, and also will

frequently fast, sometimes for two or three days together, and refrain

from all intercourse with the other sex. If his dreams are favorable, he

thinks that the Great Spirit will give him success.”(558) Among the

Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of south Africa not only have the warriors to

abstain from women, but the people left behind in the villages are also

bound to continence; they think that any incontinence on their part would

cause thorns to grow on the ground traversed by the warriors, and that

success would not attend the expedition.(559)

(M102) When we observe what pains these misguided savages took to unfit

themselves for the business of war by abstaining from food, denying

themselves rest, and lacerating their bodies, we shall probably not be

disposed to attribute their practice of continence in war to a rational

fear of dissipating their bodily energies by indulgence in the lusts of

the flesh. On the contrary, we can scarcely doubt that the motive which

impelled them to observe chastity on a campaign was just as frivolous as

the motive which led them simultaneously to fritter away their strength by

severe fasts, gratuitous fatigue, and voluntary wounds at the very moment

when prudence called most loudly for a precisely opposite regimen. Why

exactly so many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in time

of war,(560) we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their

motive was a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic

magic, close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness

and cowardice. Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in

childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons.(561) Indeed the

Kayans of central Borneo go so far as to hold that to touch a loom or

women’s clothes would so weaken a man that he would have no success in

hunting, fishing, and war.(562) Hence it is not merely sexual intercourse

with women that the savage warrior sometimes shuns; he is careful to avoid

the sex altogether. Thus among the hill tribes of Assam, not only are men

forbidden to cohabit with their wives during or after a raid, but they may

not eat food cooked by a woman; nay they should not address a word even to

their own wives. Once a woman, who unwittingly broke the rule by speaking

to her husband while he was under the war taboo, sickened and died when

she learned the awful crime she had committed.(563)

§ 5. Manslayers tabooed.

(M103) If the reader still doubts whether the rules of conduct which we

have just been considering are based on superstitious fears or dictated by

a rational prudence, his doubts will probably be dissipated when he learns

that rules of the same sort are often imposed even more stringently on

warriors after the victory has been won and when all fear of the living

corporeal foe is at an end. In such cases one motive for the inconvenient

restrictions laid on the victors in their hour of triumph is probably a

dread of the angry ghosts of the slain; and that the fear of the vengeful

ghosts does influence the behaviour of the slayers is often expressly

affirmed. The general effect of the taboos laid on sacred chiefs,

mourners, women at childbirth, men on the war-path, and so on, is to

seclude or isolate the tabooed persons from ordinary society, this effect

being attained by a variety of rules, which oblige the men or women to

live in separate huts or in the open air, to shun the commerce of the

sexes, to avoid the use of vessels employed by others, and so forth. Now

the same effect is produced by similar means in the case of victorious

warriors, particularly such as have actually shed the blood of their

enemies. In the island of Timor, when a warlike expedition has returned in

triumph bringing the heads of the vanquished foe, the leader of the

expedition is forbidden by religion and custom to return at once to his

own house. A special hut is prepared for him, in which he has to reside

for two months, undergoing bodily and spiritual purification. During this

time he may not go to his wife nor feed himself; the food must be put into

his mouth by another person.(564) That these observances are dictated by

fear of the ghosts of the slain seems certain; for from another account of

the ceremonies performed on the return of a successful head-hunter in the

same island we learn that sacrifices are offered on this occasion to

appease the soul of the man whose head has been taken; the people think

that some misfortune would befall the victor were such offerings omitted.

Moreover, a part of the ceremony consists of a dance accompanied by a

song, in which the death of the slain man is lamented and his forgiveness

is entreated. “Be not angry,” they say, “because your head is here with

us; had we been less lucky, our heads might now have been exposed in your

village. We have offered the sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now

rest and leave us at peace. Why were you our enemy? Would it not have been

better that we should remain friends? Then your blood would not have been

spilt and your head would not have been cut off.”(565) The people of

Paloo, in central Celebes, take the heads of their enemies in war and

afterwards propitiate the souls of the slain in the temple.(566) In some

Dyak tribes men on returning from an expedition in which they have taken

human heads are obliged to keep by themselves and abstain from a variety

of things for several days; they may not touch iron nor eat salt or fish

with bones, and they may have no intercourse with women.(567)

(M104) In Logea, an island off the south-eastern extremity of New Guinea,

men who have killed or assisted in killing enemies shut themselves up for

about a week in their houses. They must avoid all intercourse with their

wives and friends, and they may not touch food with their hands. They may

eat vegetable food only, which is brought to them cooked in special pots.

The intention of these restrictions is to guard the men against the smell

of the blood of the slain; for it is believed that if they smelt the

blood, they would fall ill and die.(568) In the Toaripi or Motumotu tribe

of south-eastern New Guinea a man who has killed another may not go near

his wife, and may not touch food with his fingers. He is fed by others,

and only with certain kinds of food. These observances last till the new

moon.(569) Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New

Guinea, “a man who has taken life is considered to be impure until he has

undergone certain ceremonies: as soon as possible after the deed he

cleanses himself and his weapon. This satisfactorily accomplished, he

repairs to his village and seats himself on the logs of sacrificial

staging. No one approaches him or takes any notice whatever of him. A

house is prepared for him which is put in charge of two or three small

boys as servants. He may eat only toasted bananas, and only the centre

portion of them—the ends being thrown away. On the third day of his

seclusion a small feast is prepared by his friends, who also fashion some

new perineal bands for him. This is called _ivi poro_. The next day the

man dons all his best ornaments and badges for taking life, and sallies

forth fully armed and parades the village. The next day a hunt is

organised, and a kangaroo selected from the game captured. It is cut open

and the spleen and liver rubbed over the back of the man. He then walks

solemnly down to the nearest water, and standing straddle-legs in it

washes himself. All the young untried warriors swim between his legs. This

is supposed to impart courage and strength to them. The following day, at

early dawn, he dashes out of his house, fully armed, and calls aloud the

name of his victim. Having satisfied himself that he has thoroughly scared

the ghost of the dead man, he returns to his house. The beating of

flooring-boards and the lighting of fires is also a certain method of

scaring the ghost. A day later his purification is finished. He can then

enter his wife’s house.”(570) Among the Roro-speaking tribes of British

New Guinea homicides were secluded in the warriors’ clubhouse. They had to

pass the night in the building, but during the day they might paint and

decorate themselves and dance in front of it. For some time they might not

eat much food nor touch it with their hands, but were obliged to pick it

up on a bone fork, the heft of which was wrapped in a banana leaf. After a

while they bathed in the sea and thence forward for a period of about a

month, though they had still to sleep in the warriors’ clubhouse, they

were free to eat as much food as they pleased and to pick it up with their

bare hands. Finally, those warriors who had never killed a man before

assumed a beautiful ornament made of fretted turtle shell, which none but

homicides were allowed to flaunt in their head-dresses. Then came a dance,

and that same night the men who wore the honourable badge of homicide for

the first time were chased about the village; embers were thrown at them

and firebrands waved in order, apparently, to drive away the souls of the

dead enemies, who seem to be conceived as immanent in some way in the

headgear of their slayers.(571) Again, among the Koita of British New

Guinea, when a man had killed another, whether the victim were male or

female, he did not wash the blood off the spear or club, but carefully

allowed it to dry on the weapon. On his way home he bathed in fresh or

salt water, and on reaching his village went straight to his own house,

where he remained in seclusion for about a week. He was taboo (_aina_): he

might not approach women, and he lifted his food to his mouth with a bone

fork. His women-folk were not obliged to leave the house, but they might

not come near him. At the end of a week he built a rough shelter in the

forest, where he lived for a few days. During this time he made a new

waist-band, which he wore on his return to the village. A man who has

slain another is supposed to grow thin and emaciated, because he had been

splashed with the blood of his victim, and as the corpse rotted he wasted

away.(572) Among the Southern Massim of British New Guinea a warrior who

has taken a prisoner or slain a man remains secluded in his house for six

days. During the first three days he may eat only roasted food and must

cook it for himself. Then he bathes and blackens his face for the

remaining three days.(573)

(M105) Among the Monumbos of German New Guinea any one who has slain a foe

in war becomes thereby “unclean” (_bolobolo_), and they apply the same

term “unclean” to menstruous and lying-in women and also to everything

that has come into contact with a corpse, which shews that all these

classes of persons and things are closely associated in their minds. The

“unclean” man who has killed an enemy in battle must remain a long time in

the men’s clubhouse, while the villagers gather round him and celebrate

his victory with dance and song. He may touch nobody, not even his own

wife and children; if he were to touch them it is believed that they would

be covered with sores. He becomes clean again by washing and using other

modes of purification.(574) In Windessi, Dutch New Guinea, when a party of

head-hunters has been successful, and they are nearing home, they announce

their approach and success by blowing on triton shells. Their canoes are

also decked with branches. The faces of the men who have taken a head are

blackened with charcoal. If several have taken part in killing the same

victim, his head is divided among them. They always time their arrival so

as to reach home in the early morning. They come rowing to the village

with a great noise, and the women stand ready to dance in the verandahs of

the houses. The canoes row past the _room sram_ or house where the young

men live; and as they pass, the murderers throw as many pointed sticks or

bamboos at the wall or the roof as there were enemies killed. The day is

spent very quietly. Now and then they drum or blow on the conch; at other

times they beat the walls of the houses with loud shouts to drive away the

ghosts of the slain.(575) Similarly in the Doreh district of Dutch New

Guinea, if a murder has taken place in the village, the inhabitants

assemble for several evenings in succession and utter frightful yells to

drive away the ghost of the victim in case he should be minded to hang

about the village.(576) So the Yabim of German New Guinea believe that the

spirit of a murdered man pursues his murderer and seeks to do him a

mischief. Hence they drive away the spirit with shouts and the beating of

drums.(577) When the Fijians had buried a man alive, as they often did,

they used at nightfall to make a great uproar by means of bamboos,

trumpet-shells, and so forth, for the purpose of frightening away his

ghost, lest he should attempt to return to his old home. And to render his

house unattractive to him they dismantled it and clothed it with

everything that to their ideas seemed most repulsive.(578) On the evening

of the day on which they had tortured a prisoner to death, the American

Indians were wont to run through the village with hideous yells, beating

with sticks on the furniture, the walls, and the roofs of the huts to

prevent the angry ghost of their victim from settling there and taking

vengeance for the torments that his body had endured at their hands.(579)

“Once,” says a traveller, “on approaching in the night a village of

Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion: they were all busily

engaged in raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind. Upon

inquiry, I found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas

and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent

the ghosts of the departed combatants from entering the village.”(580)

(M106) The executioner at Porto Novo, on the coast of Guinea, used to

decorate his walls with the jawbones of the persons on whom he had

operated in the course of business. But for this simple precaution their

ghosts would unquestionably have come at night to knock with sobs and

groans, in an insufferable manner, at the door of the room where he slept

the sleep of the just.(581) The temper of a man who has just been executed

is naturally somewhat short, and in a burst of vexation his ghost is apt

to fall foul of the first person he comes across, without discriminating

between the objects of his wrath with that nicety of judgment which in

calmer moments he may be expected to display. Hence in China it is, or

used to be, customary for the spectators of an execution to shew a clean

pair of heels to the ghosts as soon as the last head was off.(582) The

same fear of the spirits of his victims leads the executioner sometimes to

live in seclusion for some time after he has discharged his office. Thus

an old writer, speaking of Issini on the Gold Coast of West Africa, tells

us that the “executioners, being reckoned impure for three days, they

build them a separate hut at a distance from the village. Meantime these

fellows run like madmen through the place, seizing all they can lay hands

on; poultry, sheep, bread, and oil; everything they can touch is theirs;

being deemed so polluted that the owners willingly give it up. They

continue three days confined to their hut, their friends bringing them

victuals. This time expired, they take their hut in pieces, which they

bundle up, not leaving so much as the ashes of their fire. The first

executioner, having a pot on his head, leads them to the place where the

criminal suffered. There they all call him thrice by his name. The first

executioner breaks his pot, and leaving their old rags and bundles they

all scamper home.”(583) Here the thrice-repeated invocation of the victim

by name gives the clue to the rest of the observances; all of them are

probably intended to ward off the angry ghost of the slain man or to give

him the slip.

(M107) Among the Basutos “ablution is specially performed on return from

battle. It is absolutely necessary that the warriors should rid

themselves, as soon as possible, of the blood they have shed, or the

shades of their victims would pursue them incessantly, and disturb their

slumbers. They go in a procession, and in full armour, to the nearest

stream. At the moment they enter the water a diviner, placed higher up,

throws some purifying substances into the current. This is, however, not

strictly necessary. The javelins and battle-axes also undergo the process

of washing.”(584) According to another account of the Basuto custom,

“warriors who have killed an enemy are purified. The chief has to wash

them, sacrificing an ox in presence of the whole army. They are also

anointed with the gall of the animal, which prevents the ghost of the

enemy from pursuing them any further.”(585) Among the Bechuanas a man who

has killed another, whether in war or in single combat, is not allowed to

enter the village until he has been purified. The ceremony takes place in

the evening. An ox is slaughtered, and a hole having been made through the

middle of the carcase with a spear, the manslayer has to force himself

through the animal, while two men hold its stomach open.(586) Sometimes

instead of being obliged to squeeze through the carcase of an ox the

manslayer is merely smeared with the contents of its stomach. The ceremony

has been described as follows: “In the purification of warriors, too, the

ox takes a conspicuous part. The warrior who has slain a man in the battle

is unclean, and must on no account enter his own courtyard, for it would

be a serious thing if even his shadow were to fall upon his children. He

studiously keeps himself apart from the civil life of the town until he is

purified. The purification ceremony is significant. Having bathed himself

in running water, or, if that is not convenient, in water that has been

appropriately medicated, he is smeared by the doctor with the contents of

the stomach of an ox, into which certain powdered roots have been already

mixed, and then the doctor strikes him on the back, sides, and belly with

the large bowel of an ox.... A doctor takes a piece of roasted beef and

cuts it into small lumps of about the size of a walnut, laying them

carefully on a large wooden trencher. He has already prepared charcoal, by

roasting the root of certain trees in an old cracked pot, and this he

grinds down and sprinkles on the lumps of meat on the trencher. Then the

army surrounds the trencher, and every one who has slain a foe in the

battle steps forth, kneels down before the trencher, and takes out a piece

of meat with his mouth, taking care not to touch it or the trencher with

his hands. As he takes the meat, the doctor gives him a smart cut with a

switch. And when he has eaten that lump of meat his purification is

complete. This ceremony is called _Go alafsha dintèè_, or ‘the

purification of the strikers.’ ” The writer to whom we owe this

description adds: “This taking of meat from the trencher without using the

hands is evidently a matter of ritual.”(587) The observation is correct.

Here as in so many cases persons ceremonially unclean are forbidden to

touch food with defiled hands until their uncleanness has been purged

away. The same taboo is laid on the manslayer by the Bageshu of British

East Africa. Among them a man who has killed another may not return to his

own house on the same day, though he may enter the village and spend the

night in a friend’s house. He kills a sheep and smears his chest, his

right arm, and his head with the contents of the animal’s stomach. His

children are brought to him and he smears them in like manner. Then he

smears each side of the doorway with the tripe and entrails, and finally

throws the rest of the stomach on the roof of his house. For a whole day

he may not touch food with his hands, but picks it up with two sticks and

so conveys it to his mouth. His wife is not under any such restrictions.

She may even go to mourn for the man whom her husband has killed, if she

wishes to do so.(588) In some Bechuana tribes the victorious warrior is

obliged to eat a piece of the skin of the man he killed; the skin is taken

from about the navel of his victim, and without it he may not enter the

cattle pen. Moreover, the medicine-man makes a gash with a spear in the

warrior’s thigh for every man he has killed.(589) Among the Angoni, a Zulu

tribe settled to the north of the Zambesi, warriors who have slain foes on

an expedition smear their bodies and faces with ashes, hang garments of

their victims on their persons, and tie bark ropes round their necks, so

that the ends hang down over their shoulders or breasts. This costume they

wear for three days after their return, and rising at break of day they

run through the village uttering frightful yells to drive away the ghosts

of the slain, which, if they were not thus banished from the houses, might

bring sickness and misfortune on the inmates.(590) In some Caffre tribes

of South Africa men who have been wounded or killed an enemy in fight may

not see the king nor drink milk till they have been purified. An ox is

killed, and its gall, intestines, and other parts are boiled with roots.

Of this decoction the men have to take three gulps, and the rest is

sprinkled on their bodies. The wounded man has then to take a stick, spit

on it thrice, point it thrice at the enemy, and then throw it in his

direction. After that he takes an emetic and is declared clean.(591)

(M108) In some of these accounts nothing is said of an enforced seclusion,

at least after the ceremonial cleansing, but some South African tribes

certainly require the slayer of a very gallant foe in war to keep apart

from his wife and family for ten days after he has washed his body in

running water. He also receives from the tribal doctor a medicine which he

chews with his food.(592) When a Nandi of British East Africa has killed a

member of another tribe, he paints one side of his body, spear, and sword

red, and the other side white. For four days after the slaughter he is

considered unclean and may not go home. He has to build a small shelter by

a river and live there; he may not associate with his wife or sweetheart,

and he may eat nothing but porridge, beef, and goat’s flesh. At the end of

the fourth day he must purify himself by taking a strong purge made from

the bark of the _segetet_ tree and by drinking goat’s milk mixed with

blood.(593) Among the Akikuya of British East Africa all who have shed

human blood must be purified. The elders assemble and one of them cuts a

strip of hair from above both ears of each manslayer. After that the

warriors rub themselves with the dung taken from the stomach of a sheep

which has been slaughtered for the occasion. Finally their bodies are

cleansed with water. All the hair remaining on their heads is subsequently

shaved off by their wives. For a month after the shedding of blood they

may have no contact with women.(594) On the contrary, when a Ketosh

warrior of British East Africa, who has killed a foe in battle, returns

home “it is considered essential that he should have connection with his

wife as soon as convenient; this is believed to prevent the spirit of his

dead enemy from haunting and bewitching him.”(595) An Angoni who has

killed a man in battle is obliged to perform certain purificatory

ceremonies before he may return to ordinary life. Amongst other things, he

must be sure to make an incision in the corpse of his slain foe, in order

to let the gases escape and so prevent the body from swelling. If he fails

to do so, his own body will swell in proportion as the corpse becomes

inflated.(596) Among the Ovambos of southern Africa, when the warriors

return to their villages, those who have killed an enemy pass the first

night in the open fields, and may not enter their houses until they have

been cleansed of the guilt of blood by an older man, who smears them for

this purpose with a kind of porridge.(597) Herero warriors on their return

from battle may not approach the sacred hearth until they have been

purified from the guilt of bloodshed. They crouch in a circle round the

hearth, but at some distance from it, while the chief besprinkles their

brows and temples with water in which branches of a holy bush have been

placed.(598) Again, ancient Herero custom requires that he who has killed

a man or a lion should have blood drawn from his breast and upper arm so

as to trickle on the ground: a special name (_outoni_) is given to the

cuts thus made; they must be made with a flint, not with an iron

tool.(599) Among the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, in eastern Africa, when a

man has killed an enemy in warfare he shaves his head on his return home,

and his friends rub a medicine, which generally consists of goat’s dung,

over his body to prevent the spirit of the slain man from troubling

him.(600) Exactly the same custom is practised for the same reason by the

Wageia of German East Africa.(601) With the Ja-Luo of Kavirondo the custom

is somewhat different. Three days after his return from the fight the

warrior shaves his head. But before he may enter his village he has to

hang a live fowl, head uppermost, round his neck; then the bird is

decapitated and its head left hanging round his neck. Soon after his

return a feast is made for the slain man, in order that his ghost may not

haunt his slayer.(602) After the slaughter of the Midianites the

Israelitish warriors were obliged to remain outside the camp for seven

days: whoever had killed a man or touched the slain had to purify himself

and his captive. The spoil taken from the enemy had also to be purified,

according to its nature, either by fire or water.(603) Similarly among the

Basutos cattle taken from the enemy are fumigated with bundles of lighted

branches before they are allowed to mingle with the herds of the

tribe.(604)

(M109) The Arunta of central Australia believe that when a party of men

has been out against the enemy and taken a life, the spirit of the slain

man follows the party on its return and is constantly on the watch to do a

mischief to those of the band who actually shed the blood. It takes the

form of a little bird called the _chichurkna_, and may be heard crying

like a child in the distance as it flies. If any of the slayers should

fail to hear its cry, he would become paralysed in his right arm and

shoulder. At night-time especially, when the bird is flying over the camp,

the slayers have to lie awake and keep the right arm and shoulder

carefully hidden, lest the bird should look down upon and harm them. When

once they have heard its cry their minds are at ease, because the spirit

of the dead then recognises that he has been detected, and can therefore

do no mischief. On their return to their friends, as soon as they come in

sight of the main camp, they begin to perform an excited war-dance,

approaching in the form of a square and moving their shields as if to ward

off something which was being thrown at them. This action is intended to

repel the angry spirit of the dead man, who is striving to attack them.

Next the men who did the deed of blood separate themselves from the

others, and forming a line, with spears at rest and shields held out in

front, stand silent and motionless like statues. A number of old women now

approach with a sort of exulting skip and strike the shields of the

manslayers with fighting-clubs till they ring again. They are followed by

men who smite the shields with boomerangs. This striking of the shields is

supposed to be a very effective way of frightening away the spirit of the

dead man. The natives listen anxiously to the sounds emitted by the

shields when they are struck; for if any man’s shield gives forth a hollow

sound under the blow, that man will not live long, but if it rings sharp

and clear, he is safe. For some days after their return the slayers will

not speak of what they have done, and continue to paint themselves all

over with powdered charcoal, and to decorate their foreheads and noses

with green twigs. Finally, they paint their bodies and faces with bright

colours, and become free to talk about the affair; but still of nights

they must lie awake listening for the plaintive cry of the bird in which

they fancy they hear the voice of their victim.(605)