Lucien Lévy-Bruhl · 1923 · Authorized translation by Lilian A. Clare, first published 1923; Archive.org DjVu text layer of the University of Toronto Library copy (identifier primitivementali00lvuoft) · Public Domain · uncorrected OCR — being verified against the scan
French original La mentalité primitive published 1922; Lilian A. Clare's authorized English translation first published 1923 (London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company).
Served verbatim, era-bound vocabulary and all — the house frames, it never
paraphrases; what a passage does and does not show rides its receipt.
Introduction
I
Among the differences which distinguish the mentality of
primitive communities from our own, there is one which
has attracted the attention of many of those who have
observed such peoples under the most favourable con-
ditions— that is, before their ideas have been modified by
prolonged association with white races. These observers
have maintained that primitives manifest a decided distaste
for reasoning, for what logicians call the " discursive opera-
tions of thought " ; at the same time they have remarked
that this distaste did not arise out of any radical incapability
or any inherent defect in their understanding, but was
rather to be accounted for by their general methods of
thought.
The Jesuit missionaries, for instance, who were the first
to see the Indians dwelling in the eastern parts of North
America, could not help speaking of this. " We are forced
to the conclusion that the Iroquois are incapable of reasoning
like the Chinese and other civilized races to whom we set
forth the belief in God and His truth. . . . The Iroquois
is not influenced by reason. His direct perception of things
is the only light which guides him. The incentives to
belief which theology is accustomed to use in order to
convince the most hardened free-thinkers are not listened
to here, where our most profound truths are declared to
be lies. They usually believe only what they see." x A
little further on the same priest adds : " The truths of the
Gospel would not have seemed admissible to them had they
been founded on reason and good sense alone. Since these
people are wanting in culture and breeding, something
1 Relations des Jisuites (edit. Thwaites), lvii. p. 126 (1672-3)
plainer and more tangible was required to make an im-
pression on their minds. Although there are minds among
them quite as capable of scientific thought as those of
Europeans, yet their up-bringing and their need to hunt
for a living has reduced them to a state in which their
reasoning power does not go beyond what pertains to their
bodily health, their success in hunting and fishing, their
trading and their warfare ; and all these things are like so
many principles from which they draw all their conclusions,
not only as regards their homes, their occupations, and
their way of life, but also their superstitions and their
deities."
Comparing this passage with the previous one, we obtain
the elements of a fairly precise description of the mentality
of the Iroquois as it relates to the point we are considering.
The essential difference between these " savages " and
unbelievers who are more civilized than they, is not the
result of an intellectual inferiority peculiar to them ; it
is an actual state which, according to the Jesuit fathers,
is explained by their social condition and their customs.
The missionary Crantz says the same of the Greenlanders :
" Their whole stock of ingenuity is exerted in the employ-
ments necessary to their existence, and whatever is not
inseparably connected with those employments, forms no
subject of their reflection. We may therefore describe
their character as consisting of simplicity without stupidity,
and good sense uncultivated by the exercise of reason/' *
Let us rather put it thus — " uncultivated in following a
chain of reasoning which is in the slightest degree abstract. "
For it is not to be doubted that the Greenlanders, when
following the avocations necessary to their existence, do
reason, and that they employ means which are sometimes
complicated, in order to arrive at the ends they are seeking.
But these mental processes are not independent of the
material objects which induce them, and they come to an
end as soon as their aim has been attained. They are
never exercised on their own account, and that is why
they do not seem to us to rise to the level of what we properly
1 D. Crantz: The History of Greenland, i. p. 135 (1767)-
term " thought." A modern observer who has lived among
the Esquimaux of the North, has drawn attention to this
fact. " All their ideas," says he, " centre round the whale
fishery, hunting, and eating. For anything beyond that,
thought, to them, is generally a synonym for boredom or
annoyance. ' What are you thinking about ? ' I said one
day, when out hunting with an Esquimau who appeared
to be deep in thought. My question made him laugh.
% Oh, you white people, you are always thinking so much !
We Esquimaux think only of our stores of food ; shall we
have enough meat for the long winter or not ? If the meat
is enough, we have no need to think about anything else.
As for me, I have more food than I really need ! • I realized
that I had offended him in attributing any ' thoughts ' to
him." »
The first people to study the natives of South Africa
have made statements fully bearing out the opinions of
the writer just quoted. Here again the missionaries testify
that " they only believe what they see." " In the midst
of the laughter and applause of the populace, the heathen
inquirer is heard saying : ' Can the God of the white men
be seen by our eyes ? . . . and if Morimo (God) is absolutely
invisible, how can a reasonable being worship a hidden
thing ? ' " 2 It is the same among the Basutos too. " I
will go up to the sky first and see if there really is a God,"
said a poor Mosuto proudly, " and when I have seen him,
I'll believe in him." 3 Another missionary lays stress on
the lack of serious thought and the absence of reflection
generally noticed among these people (the Bechuanas).
f To them thought is dead, so to speak, or at any rate they
cannot raise it above the things of sense ; . . . they are
boors whose god is their belly." 4 Burchell writes in the
same way about the Bushmen : " Those whose minds have
been expanded by a European education, cannot readily
conceive the stupidity, as they would call it, of savages
in everything beyond the most simple ideas and the most
1 Kn Rasmussen, Neue Menschen, pp. 140-1.
3 Missions evangeliques, xxiii. p. 82 (1848). (Schrumpf.)
3 Ibid., xiv. p. 57 (1839). (Arbousset.)
4 Ibid., xxvii. p. 250 (1852). (Fr6doux.)
uncofhpounded notions, either in moral or in physical
knowledge. But the fact is, their life embraces so few
incidents, their occupations, their thoughts, and their cares
are confined to so few objects, that their ideas must neces-
sarily be equally few, and equally confined. I have some-
times been obliged to allow Machunka to leave off the
task, when he had scarcely given me a dozen words, as it
was evident that exertion of mind, or continued employ-
ment, of the faculty of thinking, soon wore out his powers
of reflection and rendered him really incapable of paying
any longer attention to the subject. On such occasions,
he would betray by his listlessness and the vacancy of his
countenance that abstract questions of the plainest kind
soon exhausted all mental strength and reduced him to
the state of a child whose reason was yet dormant. He
would then complain that his head began to ache." * . . .
But the same traveller, speaking of these Bushmen in another
passage, says : " Their character possessed nothing of dull-
ness or stupidity ; but, on the contrary ; they were lively
enough ; and on those topics which their peculiar mode
of life brings within their observation and comprehension,
they often showed themselves both shrewd and quick." 2
In them, therefore, as in the Iroquois, the distaste for
the discursive processes of thought did not proceed from
constitutional inability, but from the general customs which
governed the form and object of their mental activity.
Dr. Moffat, a missionary who spent many years in South
Africa and spoke the native language fluently, tells us the
same thing about the Hottentots. "It is extremely diffi-
cult, adequately to conceive of the extent of the ignorance
even of their wise men, on subjects with which infants are
conversant in this country. Yet it cannot be denied, in
spite of general appearances, that they are acute reasoners,
and observers of men and manners." 3
1 W. J. Burchell : Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, ii. p. 295
1822). Also : " No sooner have we begun to ask him questions about his
language than he becomes impatient, complains of headache, and shows that
he finds sustained effort of such a kind impossible." — Spix und Martius,
in Reise in Brasilien, i. p. 384.
• Ibid., ii. pp. 54-5.
3 R. Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, p. 237 (1842)
Another missionary says of these same Hottentots :
" Our friends in Europe would certainly regard the examples
we could give of the mental sluggishness of these people
in thinking, grasping, and retaining, as absolutely incredible.
Even I, who have known them for so long, cannot help
being surprised when I see how tremendously difficult it
is for them to lay hold of the simplest truths, and above
all, to reason anything out for themselves — and also how
quickly they forget what they have taken in." "
What they are lacking in is the power of applying their
minds generally to other things than those which appeal
to their senses, or pursuing other ends than those whose
immediate and practical utility they perceive. " Campbell,
in his little tract on the Life of Africaner, says : ' Being
asked what his views of God were before he enjoyed the
benefit of Christian instruction, his reply was that he never
thought anything at all on these subjects ; that he thought
of nothing but his cattle/ " J Africaner, who was a powerful
chief and a very intelligent man, admitted the same to
Dr. Moffat.
When intercourse with Europeans had obliged the South-
African natives to make some attempt to analyse their
thoughts (which was quite a new thing to them), it was
natural that they should instinctively have tried to reduce
such efforts to a minimum. In every case in which their
memorizing power, which is really excellent, could relieve
them of the effort of thinking and reasoning, they did not
fail to make use of it. Here is an instructive example.
" The missionary Nezel said to Upungwane : ' You heard
the sermon last Sunday, tell me what you remember of
it. Upungwane hesitated at first, as Kafirs always do,
but later on he reproduced all the principal ideas, word for
word. Some weeks after, the missionary, looking at him
during the sermon, saw that he was apparently not listening,
but was busy cutting a piece of wood. When the sermon
was over, he asked him, ' Well, what did you remember
to-day ? ' The native took up his piece of wood, and working
from his notches, reproduced one idea after another." 3
1 Berichte der rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, p. 363 (1865).
1 R. Moffat: vide supra, p. 124.
3 Dr. Wangemann : Die Berliner Mission im Zululande, p. 272.
This tendency to substitute recollection for reasoning
wherever possible, is seen even in the children, whose mental
habits are naturally modelled on those of their parents.
We know that native children, especially where missionaries
have succeeded in establishing schools, learn almost as
quickly and well as our own, at least up to a certain age,
when their development proceeds more slowly, and then
stops short. Pastor Junod has noted the following points
about the Thonga of South Africa. " The children succeed
better when the effort is one of memory, and this explains
why they are much more at their ease when learning the
English weights and measures, those complicated systems
of reductions, than when put to the metric system, which
seems so much more simple and rational. The English system
requires a perfect committal to memory of the relation
between the various measures — yards, feet, and inches ;
gallons, pints, and gills ; pounds, ounces, and grains — and
these being once mastered, all work becomes purely mechani-
cal. This is what natives like, whilst in the metric system
there is one idea pervading the whole, and a minimum of
reasoning is necessary for its use ; the necessity for this
very minimum explains the unpopularity of the metric
system amongst the native pupils ; and the difficulty in-
creases ten times when they come to problems and have
to solve them without having been told whether addition
or subtraction is necessary. So arithmetic, when workable
by the agency of memory, seems to them an easy and
agreeable study. When requiring reasoning it is a painful
occupation." » Exactly the same thing has been noticed
in the Barotse. " Our Zambesi boys, like the Basutos
and South Africans in general, are very fond of arithmetic.
They know of nothing superior to figures ; arithmetic is
the science of sciences, the incontestable criterion of a good
education. Do you know the mazes of English arithmetic
with its old-fashioned but none the less revered system
of weights and measures ? Our Zambesians delight in it.
Talk to them about pounds, farthings, pence, ounces, drams,
etc., and their faces light up and their eyes shine, and in
a moment the calculation is performed, if it is a question
1 H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. p. 152.
of calculation. ... It is strange how the most exact of
sciences may become an admirable piece of machinery.
But give them a problem of the very simplest kind, yet one
which requires a little reasoning out, and they are up
against a stone wall. ' I am beaten,' they say, and they
think that they are thereby relieved of any mental effort.
I notice this fact as by no means peculiar to the Zambesi
boys/' « " Among the Namaquas, if it is a question of
thinking, it is extremely difficult to get the children to
understand anything, whilst they show themselves past
masters in anything which can be learnt mechanically,
and which does not require either thought or reflection." 2
Similarly, on the Niger, " the Mossi does not know how to
get at the reason of things, and though our own little ones
reason things out and sometimes embarrass us by their
questions, a Mossi never asks himself, ' How does that happen ?
Why is it that way and not any other ? ' The first explana-
tion is enough for him. This want of reflection is the reason
why his civilization is so retarded . . . and that accounts,
too, for his lack of ideas. Conversation with them turns
only upon women, food, and (in the rainy season) the
crops. Their circle of ideas is very restricted but is
capable of growth, for the Mossi may be considered
intelligent." 3
To come to a conclusion as far as the African races
are concerned, we quote the actual words of the missionary
W. H. Bentley, who was a keen observer, and who summed
up his experience as follows : " An African, whether negro
01 Bantu, does not think, reflect, or reason if he can help
it. He has a wonderful memory, has great powers of
observation and imitation, much freedom in speech, and
very many good qualities ; he can be kind, generous, affec-
tionate, unselfish, devoted, faithful, brave, patient, and
persevering ; but the reasoning and inventive faculties
remain dormant. He readily grasps the present circum-
stances, adapts himself to them and provides for them ;
1 Missions ivangeliques, lxxvi. pp. 402-3 (1901) ; cf. ibid., lxxvii. p. 346
(1897). (B6guin.)
» Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 230 (1880) ; (Missionar
Schrdder : Reise nach dem Ngami-See.)
3 P. Eug6ne Mangin, P,B. : *' Les Mossi." Anthropos, x-xi. p. 325.
but a carefully thought out plan, or a clever piece of in-
duction is beyond him." «
Perhaps it will not be superfluous to illustrate this
incapability of reflection by a concrete example. I borrow
it from Bentley's own narrative. " It was a very long
while before we found out the reason for this keen desire
to learn to read and write. The natives, when they carried
produce to sell on the coast, took it to the buying store of
the factory. When it was weighed or measured, the agent
made a few marks on a piece of paper. They then took
the ' book ' to the agent in charge of the barter store, and
he handed out the payment. . . . They concluded that if
they could write, they need not trouble to take produce
to the factories, but they had only to make a few marks
on a piece of paper (as the first agent did), and on presenta-
tion of it at the " fetish " — as the barter store of a factory
is called — they would obtain all they wanted. Hence,
the desire to know how to read and write in San Salvador.
" There was no idea of theft in the case. An African
never thinks a matter out if he can help it ; this is his weak
point, it is characteristic. They never recognized any
similarity between their own trading and the coast factory.
They considered that when the white man wanted cloth,
he opened a bale and got it. Whence the bales came, and
why and how — that they never thought of. Everyone
said that the cloth was made by dead men under the sea.
The whole thing was so hopelessly mixed with the magic
and occult, that their ideas only went as far as they could
see. The presentation of the marked paper, without a
syllable spoken, caused the cloth to be handed over, so
they said, ' Let us learn to mark paper like that.' " *
Quite recently Wollaston remarked on the same naive
behaviour in New Guinea. " Before starting they (the
porters) were shown the knife or axe or whatever it was
that they would receive for their labour, and at the end
they raced back to Parimau. . . . Some of the less energetic
people in the village, when they saw that their friends
received a knife or an axe by merely presenting a small
* Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 256 (1900).
» Ibid., i. p. 159-90-
piece of paper to the man in charge of the camp at Parimau,
thought that they might easily earn the same reward, and
they were rather astonished to find that the small scrap
of paper which they handed in, produced nothing at all
or only a serious physical rebuff. But they were so childlike
in their misdemeanours that we could not be seriously
angry with them." z
There was not the least idea of trickery in this. Bentley,
who had had more experience than Wollaston, realized
this clearly and explained it well. It is but one sign among
a large number, and a more striking one than many others,
of that habit of mind which makes the primitive " stop
short at his earliest perception of things and never reason
if he can anyhow avoid it."
It would be easy to quote numerous observations of the
same kind, referring to other uncivilized peoples, in South
America, Australia, and so on. "To follow the course
of a Melanesian's thought," says Parkinson, "is no easy
task. Intellectually, he stands very low in the scale.
Logical thought, in nearly every case, is an impossibility
to him. What he does not directly grasp through his
senses, is witchcraft or magic agency ; to reflect upon it
would be only labour lost." *
In short, the entire mental habit which rules out abstract
thought and reasoning, properly so-called, seems to be met
with in a large number of uncivilized communities, and
constitutes a characteristic and essential trait of primitive,
mentality.
II
Why is it that primitive mentality shows such indiffer-
ence to, one might almost say such dislike of, the discursive
operations of thought, of reasoning, and reflection, when to
us they are the natural and almost continuous occupation
of the human mind ?
It is due neither to incapacity nor inaptitude, since
1 A. R. Wollaston: Pygmies and Papuans, p. 164 (1912) ; cf. C. G.
Rawling : The Land of the New Guinea Pygmies, pp. 166-7.
* R. Parkinson : Dreissig Jahre in der Siidsee, p. 567.
those who have drawn our attention to this feature of
primitive mentality expressly state that among them are
" minds quite as capable of scientific thought as those of
Europeans,' ' and we have seen that Australian and Melane-
sian children learn what the missionary teaches them quite
as readily as French or English children would do. Neither
is it the result of profound intellectual torpor, of enervation
and unconquerable weariness, for these same natives who
find an insuperable difficulty in the very slightest abstract
thought, and who never seem to take the trouble to reason,
show themselves on the contrary, observant, wise, skilful,
clever, even subtle, when an object interests them, especially
when it is a case of obtaining something they very much
desire.1
The observer who recently remarked on their " stupidity "
goes into ecstasies over their ingenuity and their taste.
We must therefore not take the word " stupidity " literally.
Or rather, we must ask ourselves whence this apparent
stupidity arises, and what are its determining features.
As we have seen above, it has been explained by the
very missionaries who have testified to the primitives'
dislike of the very simplest logical process. The explana-
tion they give has been derived from the fact that the
primitives whom they have studied never thought, and
never wanted to think, of more than a very few things —
those necessary to their subsistence, their flocks and herds,
their game, fish, etc. The mental habits they would thus
acquire would become so pronounced that all other things,
especially if abstract in their nature, would be powerless
to arrest their attention. " They only believe what they
see ; their ideas go no further than the regions of sense ;
what is not directly perceived is not thought," and
so on.
But this statement does not settle the question. If
the observations reported are correct, as they seem to be,
it tends rather to complicate it. Firstly, we do not see why
the pursuit of interests which are entirely material, or even
1 " You can always trust a New Guinea man to make rapid deductions
from what he sees, and there is very little that concerns himself that his
eye misses. ... It sometimes seems uncanny how they know things."
H. Newton : In Far New Guinea, p. 202 (1914)-
why the limited number of the ordinary objects of thought,
should necessarily result in the incapability of reflection
and the distaste for reasoning. On the contrary, such
specialization, and the concentration of the mental powers
and the attention on a small number of things to the ex-
clusion of others, ought rather to bring about a kind of
definite and precise adaptation, mental as well as physical,
to the pursuit of them ; and this adaptation, being
partly intellectual, would involve a certain development
of ingenuity, reflection, and skill in arriving at the means
best calculated to attain the desired end. This is in fact
what often happens.
That, side by side with this adaptation, primitives manifest
an almost insuperable indifference with regard to matters
bearing no visible relation to those which interest them,
is frequently matter of painful experience to the missionary.
But the incapability of understanding the Gospel message,
and even the refusal to listen to it, are not of themselves
sufficient proof of the primitives' distaste for logical thought,
especially when we remember that these same primitives
exhibit considerable mental activity when the subject of
thought interests them, when it deals with their cattle or
their wives, for instance.
Moreover, is it not rash to account for this dislike by
their exclusive attachment to the objects of sense, since
the missionaries show us that, in other respects, primitives
are the most fervent believers one can find ? We cannot
rid their minds of the belief that an infinite number of
invisible beings and actions are actually real. Livingstone
tells us that he often found matter for wonder in the in-
:ontrovertible faith of the negroes of South Africa in beings
whom they had never seen. Wherever observation has
been sufficiently careful and prolonged, wherever it has
:ome to an end by reason of the natives' excessive reticence
vith respect to sacred things, it has revealed the existence
>f an almost illimitable field of group ideas relating to things
lot perceptible to sense, such as invisible powers, spirits,
ouls, rnana, and so on. Most frequently, too, it is not
j m intermittent faith, like that of so many devout Europeans,
rtio have certain days and special places for their religious
exercises. The primitive makes no distinction between
this world and the other, between what is actually present
to sense, and what is beyond. He actually dwells with
invisible spirits and intangible forces. To him it is these
that are the real and actual. His faith is expressed in his
most insignificant as well as in his most important acts.
It impregnates his whole life and conduct.
If then, primitive mentality avoids and ignores logical
thought, if it refrains from reasoning and reflecting, it is
not from incapacity to surmount what is evident to sense,
nor is it because such mentality is exclusively attached
to a very small number of objects, and these of a material
kind only. The very witnesses who insist upon this trait
of the primitive mind also authorize and even oblige us
to reject such explanations. We must therefore look else-
where. And if our search is to meet with any success,
we must present the problem in terms which render an
exact solution possible.
Instead of imagining the primitives whom we are study-
ing to be like ourselves and making them think as we should
do in their places — a proceeding which can only lead to
hypotheses, at most merely probable, and nearly always
false — let us on the contrary endeavour to guard against
our own mental habits, and try to discover, by analysing
their collective representations and the connections between
these, what the primitives' way of thinking would be.
As long as we assume that their minds are orientated
like our own, that they react as ours do to the impressions
made upon them, we assume, by implication, that they
should reason and reflect as ours do with regard to the
phenomena and entities of the known world. But we agree
that as a matter of fact they neither reason nor reflect
thus, and to explain this apparent anomaly we make use
of a number of different hypotheses, such as the feebleness
and torpidity of their minds, their perplexity, childlike
ignorance, stupidity, etc., none of which take the facts
sufficiently into account.
Let us abandon this position and rid our minds of all
preconceived ideas in entering upon an objective study oi
primitive mentality, in the way in which it manifests itseli
in the institutions of uncivilized races or in the collective
ideas from which these institutions are derived. Then
we shall no longer define the mental activity of primitives
beforehand as a rudimentary form of our own, and consider
it childish and almost pathological. On the contrary, it
will appear to be normal under the conditions in which
it is employed, to be both complex and developed in its
own way. By ceasing to connect it with a type which is
not its own, and trying to determine its functioning solely
according to the manifestations peculiar to it, we may hope
that our description and analysis of it will not misrepresent
its nature.
Chapter I
THE PRIMITIVE'S INDIFFERENCE TO
SECONDARY CAUSES
I
When confronted by something that interests, disturbs,
or frightens it, the primitive's mind does not follow the same
course as ours would do. It at once embarks upon a different
channel.
The uninterrupted feeling of intellectual security is
so thoroughly established in our minds that we do not see
how it can be disturbed, for even supposing we were
suddenly brought face to face with an altogether mysterious
phenomenon, the causes of which might entirely escape us at
first, we should be convinced that our ignorance was merely
temporary ; we should know that such causes did exist,
and that sooner or later they would declare themselves.
Thus the world in which we live is, as it were, intel-
lectualized beforehand. It, like the mind which devises and
sets it in motion, is order and reason. Our daily activities,
even in their minutest details, imply calm and complete
confidence in the immutability of natural laws.
The attitude of the primitive's mind is very different.
The natural world he lives in presents itself in quite another
aspect to him. All its objects and all its entities are involved
in a system of mystic participations and exclusions ; it is
these which constitute its cohesion and its order. They
therefore will attract his attention first of all, and they alone
will retain it. If a phenomenon interests him, and he does
not confine himself to a merely passive perception of it
without reaction of any kind, he will immediately conjure
up, as by a kind of mental reflex, an occult and invisible
power of which this phenomenon is a manifestation.
" The view-point of the native African mind," says Nassau,
" in all unusual, occurrences, is that of witchcraft. Without
looking for an explanation in what civilization would call
natural causes, his thought turns at once to the super-
natural. Indeed, the supernatural is so constant a factor
in his life, that to him it furnishes explanation of events
as prompt and reasonable as our reference to the recognized
forces of Nature."1 John Philip, the missionary, speaking
of " Bechuana superstitions," says: " Everything in a state
of ignorance " (i.e. before the instruction given by the
missionaries) " which is not known, and which is involved
in mystery " (that which cannot be accounted for merely
by perception), "is the object of superstitious veneration,
where second causes are unknown, and invisible agency is
substituted in their places."2
The mentality of the natives of the Solomon Isles suggests
the same reflection to Thurnwald. " In considering any
inatter, they never go beyond simply registering the facts.
/ The profound causal connection is, in theory, entirely
lacking. The non-comprehension of the connection between
phenomena is the source of their fears and of their
superstitions." 3
Here, as so frequently happens, we must distinguish
between the fact reported and the interpretation given to
it. The fact is that the primitive, whether he be an. African
or any other, never troubles to inquire intoxauoalconnections
- which are not self-evident, but straightway refers them to
a mystic power. At the same time observers, whether
missionaries or others, give their explanation of this fact,
and in their opinion, if the primitive immediately has recourse
to mystic powers, it is because he does not trouble to inquire
into causes. But why does he not trouble to do this ?
It really is the other way about. If primitives do not think
* Rev. R. H. Nassau : Fetichism in West Africa, p. 277 (1904).
1 Rev. John Philip: Researches in South Africa, ii. pp. 1 16-17 (1828).
3 R. Thurnwald : " Im Bismarck Archipel und auf den Salomo Inseln.V
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, xlii. p. 145.
of seeking causal connections, if, when they do perceive
them or have them pointed out, they consider them as of
slight importance, it is the natural consequence of the well- .
established fact that their collective representations im-
mediately evoke the instrumentality of mystic powers.
It follows that the causal connections which, to us, are the
very framework of Nature, the basis of its. reality and stability,
are of very little interest in their eyes. " One day/' said
Bentley, " Whitehead saw one of his men sitting in the
cold wind on a rainy day. He advised his going home and
changing his wet cloth for a dry one, but he said : ' It does
not matter. People do not die of a cold wind ; people .
only get ill and die by means of witchcraft.' " «
From New Zealand, too, a missionary writes in an almost
identical strain. " A native came to me, apparently in a
deep decline. He also had caught cold and had not taken
care of himself. The natives are not in the least aware of
the causes of their diseases. They ascribe to Atua every-
thing that gives them pain. The deluded man said Atua
was within him, eating his vitals." 2
To a mind thus orientated, and wholly absorbed in
preconceptions of a mystic nature, what we call a cause,
that which we consider accountable for what occurs, could
not at most be more than an opportunity or, rather, an
instrument which serves the occult powers. The oppor-
tunity might have been afforded by something else, and
the instrument have been a different one, but the event
would have taken place just the same, for all that was
necessary was for the occult power to come into play without
being prevented by a superior force of the same nature.
II
From among the many examples that occur to us, let
us take one of the most familiar ones. In all uncivilized
races everywhere, death requires to be explained by other
than natural causes. It has frequently been remarked that
when they see a man die, it would seem as if it might be the
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, ii. p. 247 (1900).
a Missionary Register, August 191 7. (Ramsden.)
very first time such a thing had happened, and that they
could never before have been witnesses of such an occurrence.
"Is it possible/* says the European to himself, " that these
people do not know that everybody must die sooner or later ? "
But the primitive has never considered things in this light.
In his eyes, the causes which inevitably bring about the
death of a man in a certain (fairly definite) number of years
— causes such as failure of the bodily organs, senile decay,
diminution of functioning power — are not necessarily con-
nected with death. Does he not see decrepit old men still
alive ? If, therefore, at a given moment death supervenes, it
must be because a mystic force has come into play. Moreover,
senile weakness itself, like any other malady, is not due to
what we call natural causes ; it, too, must be explained by
the agency of a mystic force. In short, if the primitive
pays no attention to the causes of death, it is because he
knows already how death is brought about, and since he
knows why it happens, how it occurs matters very little.
Here we have a kind of a priori reasoning upon which
experience has no hold.
Thus, to borrow examples from inferior races in parts
where the influence of the white man had not yet been
felt, in Australia (in Victoria) " death is at all times by them
attributed to human agency. When any black, whether
old or young, dies, an enemy is supposed, during the night,
to have made an incision in his side and removed his kidney
fat. Even the most intelligent natives cannot be convinced
that any death proceeds from natural causes." '
Neither the body of the sick man, nor his corpse after
death, bears the slightest trace of the incision, but the
Australian aborigine does not consider that any reason for
doubting that it took place. What other proof of it than
death itself is necessary ? Would death have occurred if
someone had not taken away the fat from the kidneys ?
Moreover, this belief does not involve any idea of a physio-
logical role attributed to the fat ; it is simply a question of
a mystic act brought into operation by the mere presence
of the organ which is its agent.
According to the notes furnished by Thomas Petrie ;
1 Hugh Jamieson : Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 247.
Dr. W. E. Roth says : M During the first years of European
colonization, in the Brisbane district . . . nearly all aches,
pains and diseases were ascribed to the quartz crystal in
the possession of some medicine-man (turrwan). This
crystal gave its owner supernatural powers. The spirit
of the turrwan used to put the crystal into the victim, who
could only be cured by getting a medicine-man to suck it
out again ; thus a medicine-man could make an individual
sick even when he was miles away, and ■ doom ' him, so to
speak." * "At Princess Charlotte Bay, all complaints of
a serious nature, from malaria to syphilis, are ascribed to
the action of a particular charm . . . formed of a pointed piece
of human fibula stuck with wax on to a reed spear. It is
believed that when the spear is thrown in the direction
of the intended victim, the shaft remains in the hands of
the thrower, while the bone splinter travels across the inter-
vening space, becomes lodged in the victim's body — the
wound immediately closing without leaving a scar — and so
causes sickness or disease." 2
Generally speaking, when a man dies, it is because he has
been " doomed " by a sorcerer. " The predestined victim
may depart as usual on some hunting expedition . . . when
he suddenly feels something at his leg or foot, and sees a
snake just in the act of biting him. Strange to say, this
particular kind of snake will now immediately disappear. . . .
By this very process of invisibility the person bitten recognizes
that some enemy has been pointing the mangani at him,
and that through this form of it he is sure to die ; nothing
can possibly save him. He makes no effort to apply a remedy,
loses heart, gives way, and lies down to die." 3
Spencer and Gillen say, too : " All ailments of every kind,
from the simplest to the most serious, are without exception
attributed to the malign influence of an enemy in either
human or spirit shape." 4 " Death by accident," says Howitt,
" they can imagine, although the results of what we should
call accident they mostly attribute to the effects of some
■ Dr. W. E. Roth : " Superstition, Magic, and Medicine." North Queens-
land Ethnology, Bulletin 5, nr. 121, p. 30 (1907).
a Ibid., nr. 138.
3 Ibid., nr. 147.
4 Spencer and Gillen : The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 530 (1899).
evil magic. They are well acquainted with death by violence,
but even in this they believe, as among the tribes about
Maryborough (Queensland) that a warrior who happens
to be speared in one of the ceremonial fights has lost his
skill in warding off or evading a spear, through the evil
magic of someone belonging to his own tribe. But I doubt
if anywhere in Australia, the aborigines, in their pristine
condition, conceived the possibility of death merely from
disease. Such was certainly not the case with the Kurnai." 1
" If a man is killed in battle, or dies in consequence
of a wound, he is supposed to have been ' charmed/ " 2
"Although the Narrinyeri are so often exposed to the bite
of poisonous snakes, they have no remedy for an accident of
this kind. Their superstition induces them to believe that
it is the result of being bewitched." 3
This attitude of mind is not peculiar to Australian tribes
only. It is to be found occurring almost uniformly among
uncivilized peoples who are widely removed from each other.
That which does vary in their collective representations is
the occult power to which they ascribe the disease or death
which has supervened. Sometimes a wizard is the guilty
person, sometimes it is the spirit of a dead man, sometimes
powers which are more or less definite or individualized,
ranging from the vaguest representation to the definite
deification of a disease like smallpox. That which is similar,
we might almost say identical, in these representations,
is the preconnection between the illness and death on the
one hand, and the invisible power on the other, which results
in the comparative disregard of what we call natural causes,
even when these are self-evident.
I shall give a few significant examples of this unanimity
of idea. " Natives," says Dr. Chalmers, •' never believe in
being sick from anything but spiritual causes, and think
that death, unless by murder, can take place from nothing but
the wrath of the spirits. When there is sickness in a family,
all the relatives begin to wonder what it means. The sick
1 Rev. A. W .Howitt : The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 357
(1904).
2 A. Meyer : " Encounter Bay Tribe," in Woods' The Native Races of
South Australia, p. 199 (1879).
3 Rev. G. Taplin : Manners, Customs, etc., of the South Australian
Aborigines, p. 49 (1879).
person getting no better, they conclude something must
be done. A present is given ; perhaps food is taken and
placed on the sacred place, then removed and divided amongst
friends. The invalid still being no better, a pig is taken
on to the sacred place and there speared and presented to
the spirits." l It is the same in (German) New Guinea.
" According to the Kai, nobody dies a natural death." 2
Among the Araucans, " all deaths save those caused by
battle or combat, were supposed to be the effects of super-
natural causes or sorcery. If a person died from the results
of a violent accident it was supposed that the huecuvus
or evil spirits had occasioned it, frightening the horse to
make it throw its rider, loosening a stone so that it might
fall and crush the unwary, temporarily blinding a person
to cause him to fall over a precipice, or some other expedient
equally fatal. In the case of death from disease, it was
supposed that witchcraft had been practised and the victim
poisoned." 3 Grubb says the same thing about the Chaco
Indians. " Death is invariably supposed by the Indian to
result from the direct influence of the kilyikhama, (spirits)
either proceeding from their own desire to injure, or induced
through the medium of a witch doctor." 4 Dobrizhoffer
gives the same testimony as far as the Abipones are
concerned. 5
Similar beliefs, too, may be found to exist in nearly
all the primitive peoples of the two Americas.
In South Africa we find the exact equivalent of what
has been noted in Australia. " It is held to be possible for
a man to give over a certain man, who has gone to hunt,
to a buffalo, or elephant, or other animal. The wizard is
believed to be able to ' charge ' the animal to put the man
to death ! . . . And so when it is announced that a certain
person has been killed in the hunting-field, some of his friends
will remark : ' It is the work of enemies ; he was given over
to the wild beast.' " 6
1 Rev. J. Chalmers : Pioneering in New Guinea, pp. 329-30 (1902).
2 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu-Gainea, iii. p. 140 ; cf. ibid., iii. pp. 466 et seq.
3 R. E. Latcham : " Ethnology of the Auracatios," Journal of the
Anthropological Institute (henceforward referred to as J.A.I.), xxxix. p. 364.
4 W. B. Grubb : An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, p. 161 (191 1).
5 M. Dobrizhoffer : An Account of the Abipones, ii. pp. 83-4 (1822).
6 J. Mackenzie : Ten Years North of Orange River, pp. 390-1 (1871).
Bentley expresses the same idea in very definite fashion.
" Sickness and death are considered by a Congo to be quite
abnormal ; they are in no way to be traced to natural causes,
but always regarded as due to sorcery. Even such cases
as death by drowning or in war, by a fall from a tree, or
by some beast of prey or wild creature, or by lightning —
these are all in a most obstinate and unreasoning manner
attributed to the black art. Somebody has bewitched the
sufferer, and he or she who has caused it is a witch." >
As far back as the seventeenth century Dapper had
testified to the same beliefs in Loango. " These poor be-
nighted creatures imagine that no accident ever happens to
a man which is not caused by the moquisies, that is, his
enemy's gods. For instance, if somebody falls into the
water and is drowned, they will tell you that he has been
bewitched ; if he is devoured by a wolf or a tiger, it is because
his enemy, by virtue of his magical powers, has been trans-
formed into a wild beast ; if he falls from a tree, if his house
is burnt down, if the rainy season lasts longer than usual,
it is all due to the magic powers of some bad man's moquisies.
It is only waste of time to try and drive this foolish idea out
of their heads ; it is simply exposing oneself to their contempt
and ridicule." 2
In Sierra Leone, " no death is natural or accidental,
but the disease or the accident by which it is immediately
caused is the effect of supernatural agency. In some cases
it is imagined that death is brought about by the malign
influence of some individual who employs witchcraft for
that purpose ; in other cases it is supposed that death is
inflicted by the tutelar demon of someone on whom the
deceased . . . was practising incantations. It is most usual
to assign the former cause for the sickness and death of
chiefs, and other people of consequence and their connec-
tions ; and the latter for those of any of the lower
class." 3
Finally, in (German) East Africa, "to the Dschagga there
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 263 (1900).
* O. Dapper: Description de VAfrique, p. 325 (1686).
3 Th. Winterbottom : An Account of the Native Africans in the Neigh-
bourhood of Sierra Leone, i. pp. 235-6 (1803).
is no such thing as a natural death. Disease and death are
always the result of witchcraft." »
Here we will conclude the enumeration of corroborative
testimonies, for these might be prolonged indefinitely.3
Ill
From disease and death to mere accidents is an almost
imperceptible transition. The foregoing facts show that
primitives, as a rule, do not perceive any difference between
a death which is the result of old age or of disease, and a
violent death. They are not so M unreasoning " (to borrow
Bentley's expression) as not to notice that in the one case
the sufferer dies more or less gradually, surrounded by his
own folks, while in the other he perishes suddenly, devoured
by a lion, for instance, or struck down by an enemy spear.
This difference, however, is of no interest to them, for from
their point of view neither the illness on the one hand, nor
the wild beast or spear on the other, is the actual cause of
death ; these are merely the agents of the occult power
which willed the death, and which might equally well have
chosen any other instrument to bring it about. Therefore
every death is an accidental one, even death from illness.
Or to put it more precisely, no death is, since to the
primitive mind nothing ever happens by accident, properly
speaking. What appears accidental to us Europeans is, in
reality, always the manifestation of a mystic power which
makes itself felt in this way by the individual or by the
social group.
;In a general way there is no such thing as chance to a
mind like this, nor can there be! Not because it is convinced
of the rigid determinism of phenomena ; on the contrary,
indeed, since it has not the most remote idea of such deter-
minism, it remains indifferent to. the relation of cause and
effect, and attributes a mystic origin to every event which
makes an impression on it. Since occult forces are always
felt to be present, the more accidental an occurrence seems
1 A. Widenmann : " Die Kilimandscharo-Bevolkerung," in Petermann's
Mitteilungen Erganzungsheft, 129, p. 40 (1889).
* Cf. Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societis Inferieures, pp. 314-28.
to us, the more significant it will appear to the primitive
mind. There is no necessity to explain it ; it explains itself,
it is a revelation. Most frequently, indeed, it serves to
explain something else— at least in the form in which this
type of mind troubles about an explanation. But it may
become necessary to interpret it, if no definite preconception
has provided for this.
Dr. Roth tells us that the natives of the Tully River
had resolved to kill a certain man from Clump Point for
the following reasons. " On the previous Sunday's prun
(meeting) he had thrown a spear high up against a tree, whence
it had glanced sharply downwards, imbedding itself in the
neck of an old man with fatal results. The unfortunate
thrower of the spear happened to be a ' doctor/ and nothing
would satisfy the deceased's tribesmen but that it was
some of his witchcraft which was responsible for the death.
Mr. E. Brooke, who was with me at the time, did his best to
explain that it was a pure accident, but it was no good.
After taking sides, the fight commenced amongst these
excited savages, with the result that the ' doctor ' was ulti-
mately speared (non-fatally) in the knee/' * In this typical
case it was difficult, and indeed practically impossible, for
the natives to listen to reason. First of all they had to
satisfy the dead man, whom there would have been good
reason to fear had he not been avenged ; in any case,
therefore, they were obliged to put someone to death, and
nobody could be more suitable than the one who (whether
voluntarily or involuntarily mattered little) had been the
cause of the misfortune. Moreover, the missionary would
never have succeeded in making them understand that it
was simply a case of 'accident. They would inevitably
have asked, why, when the spear rebounded, did it fall
exactly on the old man's neck, and not just in front or just
behind him ? Why should it happen to belong to a medicine-
man ? And as for the absence of any deadly intention
on the part of the culprit, how was that to be proved ?
It could only be presumed, and a presumption cannot
weigh against the fact. Besides, it might have been inten-
tional on his part without his even knowing it. Wizards
J W. E. Roth : North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin 4, nr. 15.
are not necessarily aware of the baleful influence they exert.
This one might, indeed, in all good faith deny his, but to
the natives' minds his denial would be worthless.
In New Guinea, when hunting one day, a man was
wounded by one of his comrades' spears. " His friends
came and asked him who it was that had bewitched him ;
for there is no room for ' accidents ' in the Papuan scheme
of things. . . . They all pestered him to tell them the name
of the man who had thrown the spell upon him, for they were
sure that the spear wound was not enough to cause death,
and they had quite made up their minds that he was going
to die, and kept telling him so. . . . Although he was con-
scious almost to the last, he had made no answer to the
questions of his friends, nor told who had bewitched him,
and now their anger was diverted to the people of Oreresan,
and the man who had thrown the spear." 1 Thus, they
laid the blame on this man only as a last resort, and in
default of ascertaining the cause of death, they used him
as a makeshift, as it were. If the wounded man had given
the least indication respecting the perpetrator of the witch-
craft, the man who had injured him would have remained
immune from punishment ; he would be regarded merely
as the agent of the wizard, and as little responsible for the
injury as the spear itself.
On the other hand, the slight nature of the wound does
not prevent them from declaring it to be mortal. What
actually kills the wounded man is not the destruction of
the tissues by the spear, but witchcraft ; he dies because
he has been condemned, or as the Australian natives
say, " doomed." There we have a life-like presentment
of the preconception which makes the very idea of accident
inconceivable to the primitive mind.
In New Guinea, again, " a tree falls ; it is a witch who
caused it to do so, although the tree may be quite rotten,
or a gust of wind may break it off. A man meets with an
accident ; it is the ( action of) werabana." *
Very similar cases have been noted in other undeveloped
races ; in Central Africa, for instance. " In 1876 an Akele
1 Rev. A. K. Chignell : An Outpost in Papua, pp. 343-5.
a Rev. Bromilow in G. Brown : Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 235 (1910).
chief, Kasa, was charged by an elephant he had wounded,
and was pierced by its tusks. His attendants drove off the
beast ; the fearfully lacerated man survived long enough
to accuse twelve of his women and other slaves of having
bewitched his gun, thus causing it only to wound instead
of killing the elephant." r
" During a hunting expedition, a somewhat influential
chief named Nkoba was overtaken by a wounded female
elephant who, lifting him from the ground with her trunk,
impaled him on one of her tusks. . . . Terrible was the
wailing of his adherents. . . . The whole district was assembled
before the nganga nkissi, who was to pronounce whether the
elephant was possessed of the devil or had been bewitched
by some enemy of the dead chief, or whether it was a case
of Diambudi nzatnbi, the will of the Great Spirit." 2
In both these cases the rank of the victim demands that
his death shall be avenged, and anyhow there is a very
strong presumption in favour of the idea of witchcraft.
Why should the chief's gun have missed fire ? Assuredly
a malevolent influence must have been exerted upon it.
In the same way, too, the wounded elephant would not have
killed the other chief if someone had not " delivered him
over." The greater the misfortune and the more exalted
the person subjected to it, the more inadmissible is the
possibility of an accident.
Most frequently it does not even occur to the native mind.
Thus, " a canoe from Vivi, with six people in it, was des-
cending the river (Congo). ... As they rounded the point
upon which afterwards our Underhill station was built, the
canoe was caught in a cauldron, filled, and sank. . . . The
natives . . . decided that the witchcraft, which caused so
terrible an accident was no ordinary witchcraft, and must
be met accordingly. Three witches must die for each man
drowned, so that eighteen more must be put to death because
of the accident which hatl caused the drowning of six men !
In that district deaths of important men, or under extra-
ordinary circumstances, were so met." 3
* Rev. R. H. Nassau : Fetichism in West Africa, p. 86 (edit, of 1904).
* H. Ward : Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 43 (1890).
3 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 411.
" A man enters a village, puts down his gun, which goes
off and kills a person. The gun is claimed by the friends
of the deceased. It is worth several slaves, and the owner
may be as anxious to redeem it as he would have been to
redeem his brother. When there is no gun to pledge, the
lomicide is put in a slave-stick and retained just as in murder.
Some native authorities take a more lenient view of homicide.
nstead of seizing the party or his gun, they pronounce
him quite blameless, and go to the sorcerer to discover the
Dewitcher who has been the real cause of the death. They
hold that it is this being that must bear the whole of the
responsibility. They use a simile here that is borrowed
:rom hunting customs. The hunter that first wounds a
Duck claims it, even though it be ultimately brought down
oy another man. The man that brings the buck down is
Dnly the finder, as it were, of another man's game ; so the
lomicide only found or brought down the victim that the
witch had already destroyed ; he is not the cause, but the
occasion of the death. Some insist that although the homicide
may protest his innocence and affirm that he is the victim
oi some witch, he must pay damages all the same. I once
saw two men tried for a disturbance committed while they
were drunk. The person that had supplied them with beer
was also brought up, and was afraid that he should be
supposed to have bewitched the beer. A still deeper terror
lovered over his speech. ' Perhaps he himself and his
oeer were both bewitched, and used as a cat's paw by some
other person.' " "
It is evident that to minds so constituted the theory
of an accident would be the last that would present itself,
or rather that it would never present itself. If it is suggested
to them, they will reject it, because they are certain that
what we call " accidental," has a mystic cause, and that
they must fathom it unless it is at once revealed.
" A short time ago, chief Kanime of the Ovambi tribe
[ (German) West Africa) was having an ox prepared for work.
Just as they were about to pierce its nostrils, the animal
tossed its horns and put out a native's eye. They said at
once that the man who had lost his eye had been bewitched.
1 Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, i. pp. 172-3.
They consulted the wizard, and as he had to discover who
had woven the spell, he indicated one of Kanime's servants
as the guilty party. When condemned to death, this man
ran away, but. Kanime pursued him on horseback, overtook
him and killed him." «
The following year " one of my neighbours, in good
health and cheerful mood, went off to hunt for frogs, of
which they are very fond. When throwing his spear, he
gave himself a deep wound in the arm, lost a great deal of
blood, and finally died of hemorrhage. . . . Three days
later the wizards began to inquire who had bewitched this
man. I objected to this, but they told me : 'If we don't
find the omulodi and put him to death, perhaps we shall
all die.' By request of the missionaries, the chief intervened,
but shortly afterwards he took advantage of their absence
to have the culprit put to death." 2
This explanation of most accidents is so natural to these
African tribes that even in places where the missionaries
have been endeavouring to combat it for a long time, they
are unable to convince the natives. Observe the com-
plaints made by Dieterlen in 1908 about the Basutos. " Last
month lightning struck the house of a man I know ; it killed
his wife, injured his children, and burned all his belongings.
He knows quite well that lightning comes from the clouds,
and that no man's hand can reach the clouds. But he was
told that the flash of lightning was sent him by a neigh-
bour who bears him a grudge ; he believed it, he does so
still, and will continue to believe it. Last year locusts
descended in swarms on the fields of the young chief Mathe-
a-lira, a man who has been fairly well educated in the school,
and has often frequented the religious services in our churches.
What does that matter ? He ascribed this plague of locusts
to the enchantments of his brother Tesu, who is disputing
the rights of seniority and the succession to the throne of
the Leribe district with him."
" About a fortnight ago a young widow, living about a
kilometre away, died of an internal complaint, probably
due to her own loose conduct. This disease was given her
1 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 242 (1895).
* Ibid., p. 213 (1896).
by a man whom she had refused to marry, when giving her
a handful of hemp to smoke. Her mother is a Christian,
and I explained to her that such a thing was not possible.
She did not believe me, and she cherished a feeling of hatred
for the man whom she regarded as the murderer of her
child." «
Even if the accident should be a fortunate instead of a
fatal one, the primitive's reaction to it will be the same.
He will see in it the instrumentality of mystic forces, and
generally he will be frightened by it. Any unusual joy or
success is suspicious. M It often happens," says Major
Leonard, " that two friends go out fishing together, and one
of them, either by accident or, it may be, better management,
secures a much greater haul of fish than the other. Unfortu-
nately, however, it is an act by which he unconsciously lays
up for himself a store of evil that is fraught with danger
to his life ; for on their return to the town the unlucky one
immediately goes and consults . . . the witch doctor, as to
the reason of his friend's having obtained a larger haul
than himself. The " doctor " at once attributes the cause
to magic. So the seed of strife and death is sown, and the
warm-hearted friend is suddenly changed into an active
enemy who strives his utmost to procure the death of one
that until so recently was to him as of his own flesh and
blood." ^
" I was at Ambrizette," says Monteiro, " when three
Cabinda women had been to the river with their pots for
water ; all three were filling them from the stream together,
when the middle one was snapped up by an alligator, and
instantly carried away under the surface of the water, and
of course drowned. The relatives of the poor woman at
once accused the other two of bewitching her, and causing
the alligator to take her out of their midst ! When I remon-
strated with them, and attempted to show them the utter
1 absurdity of the charge, their answer was : ' Why did not
the alligator take one of the end ones then, and not the
one in the middle ? ' And out of this idea it was impossible
to move them, and the poor women were both obliged to
1 Missions evangeliques, Ixxxiii. p. 311.
* Major A. G. Leonard : The Lower Niger and its Tribes, p. 485 (1906).
take casca " (i.e. ordeal poison). " I never heard the result,
but most likely one or both were either killed or passed
into slavery." «
Monteiro does not realize that to the native mind what
has occurred cannot be accidental. First of all, alligators
would not have attacked these women of their own accord.
Therefore, someone must have incited this one to do it.
Then, too, it knew exactly which woman to drag under the
water. She was " delivered over " to him. The only thing
to find out was who had done it. . . . But the fact speaks
for itself. The alligator did not touch the women on each
side, he took the middle one, therefore the two others must
have delivered her over. The ordeal they had to undergo was
not so much for the purpose of clearing up a doubt which
scarcely exists, as of revealing the actual origin of the witch-
craft within them, and exerting upon it a mystic influence
which would henceforward render it incapable of injuring
others.2
Here is a similar fact reported from the same locality.
" The same evening, on an up-river voyage, Ewangi was
snatched from his canoe by a crocodile, and seen no more.
Word of the tragedy was brought to Dido's town. War
canoes were despatched. One of the men who were with
Ewangi in the canoe at the time of his death, and the man off
whose beach the crocodile lay, were arrested, charged with
witchcraft, and doomed to death." 3 In fact, there is no
such thing as chance. The idea of accident does not even
occur to a native's mind, while on the contrary the idea of
witchcraft is always present. Ewangi then was " delivered
over." There is no need to inquire who did it ; those who
1 J. J. Monteiro : Angola and the River Congo, i. pp. 65-6 (1875).
1 Vide infra, chap. viii. pp. 235-6.
3 G. Hawker : The Life of George Grenfell, p. 58 (1909). The same re-
action is to be noted at Nias, where the missionaries whose boat caused it
are held responsible for an accident. In the natives' eyes, the victims have
been " delivered over," and satisfaction must be made. Two of them had
been drowned in the night when returning to land, after a visit to the
Denninger, the Mission boat. " At first it seemed as if the people had taken
the matter quietly, but they came back again afterwards making the most
impossible demands. They required that the captain and the cook of the
boat should be handed over to them so that, in their persons, they might
avenge the deaths of the two men drowned, and they had already threatened
to take reprisals on the Sisters at Telok Dalam, if the sailors were not given
up to them." — Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 153 (1885).
accompanied him, and whom the devourer spared, or else
the man on whose beach it lived, were assuredly the guilty
parties.
IV
To be able thoroughly to understand the natives' mind
in this matter, we ought to remember that, according to their
account,, crocodiles and alligators are harmless by nature.
Man has nothing to fear from them. It is true that in certain
places where they abound, and where accidents very fre-
quently occur, the natives are gradually abandoning this
idea, and precautions are taken. In (German) East Africa,
for instance, " since there are an incredible number of croco-
diles, it is not safe to draw water from the river Ruhudge
direct, but a kind of palisade is erected, and the water is
drawn up to the top of the very precipitous bank, by means
of vessels hung on to long bamboo poles." x The same
method is pursued on the upper Shire, on the Quanza River.2
But this is an exceptional case. As a rule, the natives do
not hesitate to approach the river banks, or even to bathe
in the neighbourhood of the crocodiles. Moreover this
feeling is shared by a certain number of Europeans. Bosman
had already written: "The whole time I have been here,
I have never heard of a crocodile devouring either man
or beast. . . . There are a terrible number of these animals
in all the rivers of the country ... I would not venture
into the water, although I have never heard of any accident
of this kind." 3 During a two years' stay in the Cameroons,
Von Hagen knew of only three cases in which men had been
attacked by crocodiles, although the natives bathe and
swim in the river, and during the dry season they splash
about in the lagoons. 4 The same belief obtains on the west
coast of Africa. "It is said that in the river Gallenhas
(between Sherbro and Cape Mount) where alligators are
in great abundance, there was not an instance on record of
t Fr. Fiilleborn : Das deutsche Njassa und Ruwumagebiet, Deutsch
Ost Africa, ix. pp. 185, 541.
> J. J. Monteiro : Angola and the River Congo, ii. p. 123.
3 W. Bosman : Voyage de Guinee, 1^ lettre, pp. 250-1.
* G. von Ha^en : De Bona, Bassler-Archiv, ii. p. 93 (191 1).
any person being hurt by them, although the natives were
much in the river until a few years ago, when a slave ship
blew up opposite its entrance." »
Bentley was of opinion that if the necessary precautions
were taken there was not much risk of danger from this
source. '* Crocodiles are very timid creatures and will not
venture easily into danger. The shouting and splashing
and frolicking of some dozen or more African boys bathing
is quite enough to keep the crocodiles at bay. But if one
of them should venture into the water alone, an accident
is possible/'2 Should such an accident happen, how will
the native explain it ? Will he place it to the score of his
own imprudence, or will he change his opinion of the habits
of the crocodile ? Will he think that it is an accident ?
He certainly would do so, if he reasoned as we do. As a
matter of fact, he does not even imagine such a thing. He
has his explanation all ready, and it is something altogether
different. " In districts where crocodiles are common,"
says Bentley , " the witches are believed sometimes to
turn into crocodiles, or to enter and actuate them, and so
cause their victim's death by catching him. Where leopards
are common, the witches may become leopards. The natives
often positively affirm that a crocodile, of itself, is a harmless
r creature. So thoroughly do they believe this, that in some
places they go into the river ... to attend to their fish-traps
without hesitation. If one of them is eaten by a crocodile,
they hold their witch palavers, find and kill the witch, and
go on as before.
y "At Lukunga, one of the stations of the American
Baptist Mission, a great crocodile came up out of the river to
attack the Mission pigsty in the night. The pig smelt the
reptile and began to make such a noise that Mr. Ingham,
the missionary, got up ; when he found the cause he shot the
crocodile. In the morning he skinned it, and found in the
stomach the anklets of two women. They were at once
recognized as belonging to women who had disappeared at
different times, when fetching water. I was at the station
1 T. H. Winterbottom : An Account of the Native Africans in . . . Sierra
Leone, i. p. 256 (1803).
1 Mrs, EL ML Bentley : The Life and Labours of a Congo Pioneer, p. 34
(1900).
a few days after, and one of my Congo workmen, who was
with me, warmly denied that the crocodile ate the women.
He maintained that they never did so. ' But what about the
anklets ? Were they not proof positive that in this case
the crocodiles had eaten the two women ? ' ' No, he caught
the women and handed them over to the witch, who worked
through him ; as for the anklets, it must have been his
fashion to take them as his perquisites ! ' What can be done,"
adds Bentley, " with such a devil-possessed brain as this ? " l
Bentley is shocked at what he considers unheard-of
obstinacy in denying the evidence. But it is something
quite different. It is simply one individual case of that
" impermeability to experience " which is a characteristic
of the native mind, when preoccupied with collective repre-
sentations. According to these representations, in which
second causes are negligible (the real cause being of a mystic
nature), the crocodile, which acts in such an unusual way
and devours a man, cannot be an animal like others ; he must
be the agent of a wizard, or the wizard himself.
" Great numbers of alligators are bred in the creeks and
rivers, which frequently carry off . . . the persons of the
natives, yet such is their superstition, that when a circum-
stance of that kind happens, they attribute it to witch-
craft ; and are so infatuated that they will not be at the
pains to enclose those parts of the rivers where their women
and children are continually washing, and from whence
they are frequently taken." *
On the upper Zambesi "it is said that there are doctors
who give crocodile-medicine. If anybody steals the cattle
of one of these medicine-men, the doctor goes to the river.
When he gets there he says : ' Crocodile come here ; go and
catch the man who has killed my cattle/ The crocodile
understands. When morning comes the doctor hears that
a crocodile has killed someone in the river. He says : ' It
was the robber.' " 3
Thenceforward, every fresh accident, instead of shaking
1 Rev. W. H. -Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. pp. 275-6 ; cf.
ibid., i. p. 317.
1 John Matthews : A Voyage to the Sierra Leone River, p. 50 (1788).
3 E. Jacotet : Etudes sur les langues du Haut Zamb&ze, III, Textes Louyi
p. 170, Publications de T6cole des Lettres d'Alger, xvi. (1901).
the native's conviction, will only serve as a fresh proof of
it. He will seek out and punish the witch, and the European's
reprimands will seem more than ever absurd to him. " Two
men had been taken by crocodiles. Now, they maintain
that it is not the custom of the crocodiles to take men.
Therefore they were witch-crocodiles, and the chief, the owner
of the district, had witched the men away. ... Of course
he declared his innocence, but was compelled to drink the
ordeal poison to prove it ; and the scoundrel of a doctor
had arranged a fatal dose. . . . We could do nothing." »
Collective representations exactly like these have been
verified in New Guinea (Woodlark Island). tl Maudega,
a woman of Avetan, in Murua, had been on a visit to the
neighbouring village of Nabudau, and on her return had
brought back with her the daughter of Boiamai, the Nabudau
chief. The child was unfortunately taken by a crocodile,
and in revenge Boiamai, with his son and some other men
of his village, killed Maudega and three of her relations. . . .
On the trial, the son made the following statement. ' It
is true we killed those people. . . . Maudega took my sister
away to her village, and while she was there she bewitched
an alligator and made it come out of the water, and take
away my sister and eat her.' " 2 The idea of an accident
did not even occur to the minds of the victim's family. The
crocodile could only be an agent. A little further on, Murray
relates that " crocodiles are a great danger to the runaway,
and a belief is gaining ground in a part of the Papuan Gulf
that the crocodiles are in league with the Government,
based upon the fact that a prisoner escaping from gaol was
severely lacerated by one of these creatures while crossing
a river. . . . Still the crocodiles are by no means all under
Government control ; the great mass of them remain faith-
ful to the sorcerers and will not attack a man unless bidden
by a sorcerer to do so. I had to cross a river once which
was reputed to be full of crocodiles, and I asked an old man
with me if he was not afraid. He said that he was not.
" A crocodile won't touch you," he explained, " unless some-
one has made puri puri against you, and if someone has
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 317.
> J. H. P. Murray, Papua, pp. 128-9 (1912).
made pari puri against you, you are a lost man in any case —
he will get you somehow — if not with a crocodile, then in
some other way. So the crocodiles do not really matter."1
Thus the danger lies elsewhere, and from the reptile himself
there is nothing to fear. If he should attack the traveller,
it is because the latter has been " delivered over " to him.
If we try to determine how the native mind represents
the relations between the witch and the reptile to itself,
we come up against an almost insurmountable difficulty.
His thought is not subject to the same logical exigencies as
our own. It is governed, in this case as in many others, by
the law of participation. Between the wizard and the croco-
dile the relation is such that the wizard becomes the
crocodile, without, however, being actually fused with him.
Considered from the stand-point of the law of contradic-
tion, it must be either one of two things : either the wizard
and the crocodile make but one, or they are two distinct
entities. But prelogical mentality is able to adapt itself
to two distinct affirmations at once. Observers do indeed
sense this quality of participation, but they have no means
of expressing it. Sometimes they insist on identity, some-
times on the distinction between the two beings ; the very
confusion in their language is significant. Thus "the
balogi (wizards) are credited with the power of transforming
the dead into snakes, crocodiles, etc. This transformation
is usually effected with the crocodile, therefore this monster,
though not a god, nor even a spirit, is respected and feared.
He is at one with the person who effects the change ; between
them there is, as it were, a secret pact, a complete under-
standing. The person will order the reptile to go and seize
a certain individual, and it will go, and make no mistake. . . .
What we have just said explains why, when anyone has been
carried off by a crocodile, the first thing to do is to find the
mulogi who despatched the monster, and there is always
a guilty person to be found. His fate is quickly decided."3
Among the Bangala, " no crocodile would have done it unless
it had been instructed to do it by a moloki (witch) or unless
1 J. P. H. Murray, Papua, pp. 237-8.
» P. Eugene Hurel : " Religion et vie domestique des Bakerewe."
Anthropos, vi. p. 88 (1911).
the moloki had gone into the animal and made it commit
the outrage." I Thus the missionary considers the two
hypotheses separately, while to the native mind, in a way
that is incomprehensible to us, they are but one.
In Gaboon (French Congo) " the superstition about the
man-tiger," says M. le Testu, an excellent observer, " is
no less obscure than that of the magic charm involved.
It appears in two different forms. In the one case the tiger
(a leopard or panther, be it understood) who is the author
of the crime, is a real animal belonging to a person, obedient
to him, in carrying out his orders ; such a tiger is passed
on to his heirs like any other piece of personal property.
So-and-so, they say, has a tiger. In the other case, the
animal is but an incarnation of some sort ; they do not even
know whether it is a man who has taken the form of a beast,
the beast being merely a sign, or whether there really has
been an incarnation, properly so called, of a man in an
actual animal. . . . The idea these natives have of a man-
tiger is extremely vague." 2
Major Leonard presents the matter rather differently.
" The old woman of Utshi was accused of the death of
Oru, by projecting her spirit-soul into the crocodile that
devoured him, and not, as might be supposed, by converting
herself, body and all. For the impossibility of this, in
this particular instance, at all events, was clearly demon-
strated by the fact that five other women were similarly
accused. From the native stand-point it is possible for a
number of spirits to be attached to one object, or to project
themselves into the body of one animal, although it is, as
a rule, unusual for them to do so." 3
But here is the story of a native from his own lips :
" Perhaps when the sun is overhead to-day, you may be
drinking palm wine with a man, unconscious that he is
possessed of an evil spirit, in the evening you hear the cry
of ' Nkole ! Nkole ! ' (crocodile) and you know that one of
these monsters, lurking in the muddy waters near the river
1 Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the
Upper Congo River," J. A. I., xxxix. pp. 449-50.
a G. Le Testu : Notes sur les coutumes Bapounou dans la Conscription
de Ja Nyanga, pp. 196-7.
3 Major Leonard : The Lower Niger and Its Tribes, p. 194 (1906).
bank, has grabbed a poor victim who had come to fill a water
jar. At night you are awakened from your sleep by the
alarmed cackling in your hen-house, and you will find that
your stock of poultry has been sadly decreased by a visit
from a muntula (bush cat). Now . . . the man with whom
you drank palm wine, the crocodile who snatched an unwary
villager from the river bank, and the stealthy little robber
of your hens are one and the same individual, possessed of
an evil spirit." ' Participation is very clearly suggested
here. To the native it is quite enough that he feels it to
be real, he does not ask himself how it comes to pass.
As there is no such thing as chance, and as primitives
moreover do not trouble to examine the conditions which
bring about or do not bring about a phenomenon, it follows
that whatever is unusual or unexpected is received by
them with more emotion than surprise. The idea of the
unusual or extraordinary, though not defined in the same
way as it is with us, is nevertheless very familiar to the primi-
tive mind ; it is one of those notions which are both general
and concrete, such as mana, orenda, psila, and so forth,
v/hich I have defined elsewhere. 2
The unusual may occur with comparative frequency,
and the primitive's disregard of second causes is, as it were,
compensated by an ever alert attention to the mystic mean-
ing of everything that strikes him. Therefore observers
have frequently remarked that the primitive, who properly
speaking, is astonished at nothing, is nevertheless very
emotional. His absence of intellectual curiosity is accom-
panied by extreme sensibility to the appearance of anything
which takes him by surprise.
Again, among unusual phenomena, we must distinguish
those which occur but rarely, but yet already have a place
in the collective representations, from those which make their
appearance without any prevision whatever. The birth of
1 E. J: Glave : Six Years of Adventure in Congo Land, p. 92 (1893).
* Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures, pp. 147-8.
twins, for instance, is a comparatively rare phenomenon but
at any rate it is known to occur. In nearly all uncivilized
peoples it gives rise to a series of rites and ceremonies ; an
authoritative preconception decides how it is necessary
to act in such a case, so as to avert the dangers of which
this phenomenon may be the sign or the cause. It is the
same thing with solar or lunar eclipses. But when the
native is faced by phenomena which are entirely unexpected,
the demeanour to be maintained is not thus decreed before-
hand. When this happens, (and it occurs fairly often),
how is primitive mentality affected by it ? It is not taken
unawares. It immediately recognizes in such phenomena
the manifestation of occult powers (spirits, souls of the dead,
magic influences, and so on), and it explains them, as a rule, as
the presage of great misfortune.
Chapter II
MYSTIC AND INVISIBLE FORCES
From what has been set forth in the preceding chapter we
seem better able to understand why primitive mentality
fails to seek for what we call the causes of phenomena. This
lack of curiosity does not arise from intellectual torpor or
from mental weakness either. Strictly speaking, it is no
lack ; in the language of the Schools, it has not a " deficient "
or ' negative " reason ; it has an actual and positive one.
It is the direct and necessary consequence of the fact that
primitives live, think, feel, move and act in a world which,
in a great many ways, does not coincide with ours. There-
fore many of the questions raised by our experience of life
do not exist as far as they are concerned, since these are
answered beforehand, or rather, because their system of
representations is such that these questions possess no
interest for them.
I have explained elsewhere our reasons for considering
this type of mind as " mystic " and " prelogical." It is
difficult to give an exact definition of it. The European
mind — even when most imaginative, as in the case of poets
and metaphysicians — is profoundly positive, when compared
with the primitive mind. To adapt ourselves to an attitude
so opposed to that which is natural to us, we should have
to do violence to our most ingrained mental habits, without
which, as it seems to us, we could not think at all.
To the primitive mind his preconnections, which are no
less imperative than our need to trace every phenomenon
back to its causes, establish without any possibility of doubt,
the direct transition from such-and-such a sense-impression
to such-and-such an invisible force. Or rather, it is not
even a transition, for that term, though suited to our dis-
cursive operations, does not exactly express the primitive's
mental functioning, which seems more like direct appre-
hension or intuition. At the very moment when he perceives
what is presented to his senses, the primitive represents
to himself the mystic force which is manifesting itself thus.
He does not " infer " the one from the other, any more than
we " infer " the meaning of a word from its sound in our
ears. According to Berkeley's shrewd observation, we
really do understand the meaning at the time we hear the
word, just as we read sympathy or anger in a person's face
without first needing to see the signs of such emotions in
order to interpret them. It is not a process accomplished
in two succeeding moments, it takes place all at once. In
this sense, then, preconnections amount to intuitions.
Undoubtedly this kind of intuition does not make it
possible to perceive the invisible or touch the intangible ;
it cannot have the effect of giving sense-perception of what
is outside the realm of sense. But it does give implicit faith
in the presence and agency of powers which are invisible and
inaccessible to the senses, and this certainty equals, if it
does not surpass, that afforded by the senses themselves.
To the prelogical mind these elements of reality — much the
most important in his eyes — are no less matters of fact than
the others. It is these which give the reason for what
occurs. Strictly speaking, it is even better not to say that
what happens needs explanation, for at the very moment
when it happens prelogical mentality immediately forms
an idea of the invisible influence which is being manifested
thus. It is, indeed, when this is in question that we may say
that to the primitive the surrounding world is the language
of spirits speaking to a spirit. It is a language which his
mind does not remember ever having learnt, but which the
preconnections of its collective representations make quite
a natural one.
From this point of view, the primitives' experience must
appear more complex and richer in content than our own.
At first this idea seems almost absurd when we compare
the apparent poverty of their mental life with the activity
of ours ; have we not ourselves said that as often as they
can they avoid thinking, and is not the simplest act of
reflection an almost intolerable effort to them ? The paradox,
however, may be justified, and it becomes permissible when
we add that their " direct " experience is in question. Our
experience is the sum-total of a comparatively small number
of data and an infinitude of inferences. That of the primitive
mind on the other hand contains but a small proportion
of inferences ; but it contains many direct data to which
j we deny objective value, although in the primitive's eyes
they are as real as, even more real than, those afforded by^
the senses.
It is indeed the superabundance of these mystic data,
and the existence of dominating preconnections between
the data afforded by the senses and the invisible influences,
which make the inferences that serve to develop our experi-
ence, needless in his case. They, too, prevent the primitive
mind from adding to its mental stores by means of its experi-
ences. When anything new presents itself to us we realize
that we have to seek for an explanation of it, and that the
number of our problems is going to increase at the same
time as our knowledge is enlarged. The primitive, on the
other hand, in the presence of anything new, knows already
everything he needs to know. In any unusual event he im-
mediately perceives the manifestation of an invisible force.
Moreover, the primitive's mind is not, like our own, orientated
to cognition, properly so called. It knows nothing of the
joys and advantages of knowledge. Its collective represen-
tations are always largely emotional. The primitive's
thought and his language are but slightly conceptual, and
it is in this respect that the distance which separates his
mind from ours may perhaps most easily be estimated.
'In other words, the mental life of primitives (and conse-
quently their institutions), depend, upon this essential
primary fact that in their representations the world of
sense and the other make but one. To them the things
which are unseen cannot be distinguished from the things
which are seen. The beings of the unseen world are no
less directly present than those of the other ; they are
more active and more formidable. Consequently that
world occupies their minds more entirely than this one,
and it diverts their minds from reflecting, even to a slight
extent, upon the data which we call objective. What is
the good of fathoming these, since life, success, health,
the order of Nature, everything in fact depends upon mystic
forces at all times ? If human effort can accomplish anything,
must it not first of all endeavour to interpret, settle, and,
if possible, even induce the manifestations of these forces ?
That is in reality the course pursued by the primitive in
attempting to develop his experience.
II
The invisible forces which persistently preoccupy the
primitive's mind may be briefly arranged in three categories,
which, however, frequently overlap. These are, firstly, the
spirits of the dead ; secondly, the spirits (taking the word
in its widest sense) which animate natural objects (of the
animal and vegetable worlds), inanimate objects (such as
streams, rocks, sea, mountains, manufactured things, etc.),
and lastly, charms or spells due to the agency of sorcerers.
Sometimes the line of demarcation between these categories
is very finely drawn. Thus in Loango, according to Pechuel-
Loesche, the* medicine-men co-operate with the spirits ani-
mating fetish objects, but on no account would they have
anything to do with the" spirits of the dead, whom they
greatly fear. Elsewhere the distinction is less definite (or the
investigations less exact), and the transition from the spirits
of the dead to other invisible beings seems scarcely per-
ceptible. Everywhere, or nearly everywhere, however, among
inferior races, these mystic influences are direct data, and
the preconnections in which they occur as the predominating
factor, impose themselves on the collective representations.
The fact is well known, and I shall confine myself to a few
examples only.
In the Papuan tribes of (German) New Guinea, which have
just been so carefully studied in the book published by
Dr. Neuhauss, " witchcraft plays a more important part
than the fear of ghosts. If it does not rain, or rains too
much, if the crops are not good, if the coco-nut trees do
not yield, if the pigs die, if hunting and fishing bring no
results, if the earth trembles, if a high tide sweeps through
the coastal village, if disease or death supervene — natural
causes are never enough to account for these things ; there
is always witchcraft at work somewhere." l According to
the Kai, nobody ever dies a natural death. Even in the case
of old people they maintain that death is wizardry, and it
is the same thing in all misfortunes that may occur. Has
a man had a fatal fall ? A wizard made him fall. Has
another been wounded by a wild boar, or bitten by a snake ?
It was a wizard again. He, too, working from a distance,
can make a woman die in childbed, and so on.2
In a similar way, in most primitive communities witch-
craft is ever lying in wait, as it were, to work ill and inflict
injury. There is a " perpetual possibility " of sorcery which
seizes every opportunity to manifest its power. The number
of such opportunities is an indefinite one, and it is impossible
for thought to imagine them all beforehand. It is at the
very moment of action that the witchcraft shows itself ;
when it is perceived, the mischief is already done. Therefore
the perpetual uneasiness in which the primitive lives hardly
allows him to forecast, and try to prevent, the misfortune
which is about to happen to him. His apprehension of witch-
craft never leaves him, but he is no less assuredly its victim.
This is one of the reasons, and by no means the least im-
portant, which explains the rage felt by primitives for the
wizard, when he is unearthed. It is not merely a question
of reprisals for the past enchantments these people have
suffered from, the number and extent of which they do not
even know. They desire further, and above all, to destroy
beforehand those which the wizard might use against them
in future. The only means of doing this which is within
their power is to kill the sorcerer — generally by throwing
him into the water or by burning him — a proceeding which at
one stroke annihilates the evil spirit dwelling in and operating
through him. 3
Innumerable are the enchantments which the wizard
may employ. If he has " doomed " an individual, he will
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, i. pp. 445-6.
1 Ibid., iii. p. 140.
J Vide infra., chap. viii. p. 236.
sometimes take possession of something belonging to him
which, through participation, is himself (for instance, his
hair or his nail-parings, his excreta or urine, his footprints,
shadow, likeness, name, and so forth), and by certain magic
arts practised upon this part of him, the wizard will compass
his death. Sometimes he will sink his canoe or make his
gun misfire, or at night, during his slumber, he will cut
him open and rob him of his vital principle by taking away
the fat of his kidneys. Sometimes he will " deliver him over "
to a wild beast, a snake, or an enemy. Or again, he will
cause him to be crushed by a falling tree or by a rock which
breaks away when he is passing — and so on ad infinitum.
If necessary, the wizard will change himself into an animal.
We have seen that in Central Africa the crocodiles which
carry off human victims are not ordinary reptiles, but the
docile agents of witches, or even witch-crocodiles. In British
Guiana, " a jaguar which displays unusual audacity in
approaching men will often unnerve even a brave hunter
by the fear that it may be a Kanaima tiger. ' This/ reasons
the Indian, ' if it be but an ordinary wild beast, I may kill
with bullet or arrow ; but what will be my fate if I assail
the man-destroyer — the terrible Kanaima ? ' Many of
the Indians believe that those Kanaima animals are possessed
by the spirits of men who have devoted themselves to deeds
of blood and cannibalism " x — (a belief similar to that which
we have had attested in Central Africa, where the sorcerer
is dreaded as a cannibal also). According to Dobrizhoffer,
the Abipones used exactly the same expressions as these
Indians of British Guiana. The Araucans, " if they notice
any unusual act of bird or beast, immediately conclude
that it is possessed. A fox or puma that prowls round their
hut by night, is a witch who has come to see what she can
steal. On driving it away they take care to do it no bodily
harm for fear of reprisals. . . . Everything not immediately
explicable by natural and visible agency is put down either
to evil spirits or to witchcraft." *
According to Guevara, the Araucan " attributes every-
thing out of the common which he sees, or which happens
1 Brett : The Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 374 (1868).
» R. E. Latcham : " Ethnology of the Araucanos," J. A. J., xxxix. pp. 350*1*
to him, to the intervention of malevolent spirits or super-
natural causes. Whether it be an unsatisfactory harvest,
an epidemic among his cattle, a fall from his horse, illness
or death ... it is always caused by wizards. The length
of a man's life, and the misfortunes which overtake him during
its course, rest with them." " The number and variety of
amulets, talismans, formulae, and practices of every kind
by which, making use of a little everywhere, they try to
protect themselves as far as they can from all possible forms
of witchcraft, show how much this idea of sorcery obsesses
the minds of uncivilized races, and it is even found among
peoples who are more highly developed.
When loss or misfortune does occur, one thing is certain,
and this is that some occult influence has been at work.
But it is often difficult to discover what it is. Considering
the actual event in itself, the fruitless chase, the illness that
has occurred, the drought that has stripped the fields, etc,
there is nothing in it to indicate whether it is the work of
a wizard, or the dead who are displeased, or malevolent
spirits who are enraged. In most of the observations we
have just quoted, as in many others, the expression used is
" wizards or malevolent spirits." In fact, malevolent spirits
may be in the employ of sorcerers, or vice versa ; sometimes
the sorcerer himself, without being aware of it, is animated
by an evil spirit. Then the two representations overlap
each other. But there is this difference between them,
that the wizard is necessarily an individual, a member of
the social group or of a neighbouring one, the representation
of whom is therefore clear and distinct, while that of the
spirits, so long as they are not the spirits of the dead (ghosts),
is always more or less vague and elusive, varying with the
communities in which they are observed. The representation
varies, too, within these communities according to individual
imaginings, and the classes to which the individuals belong.
Between the clear conception of spirits who are, as it
were, real daimones or divinities, each of whom has his
name, attributes, and frequently his religious following,
and the representation, both general and concrete, of an in-
dwelling power in objects and beings, such as the mana (unlesi
1 T. Guevara : Folklore araucano, p. 22.
this force is individualized), there is room for an infinitude
of intermediate forms, some fairly definite, others more
fleeting and vague, with outlines that are less distinct, though
none the less real to a mentality which is but slightly con-
ceptual, in which the law of participation still predominates.
Most of the mystic forces manifesting themselves in
Nature are both diffuse and individualized. The necessity
of choosing between the two forms of representation is never
imposed on these primitives ; it does not even occur to them.
How can they define their answer to questions which they
never think of asking themselves ? The word " spirit,"
although too precise a term, is the least cumbersome that
we have to denote those influences and agencies which con-
tinually surround primitives.
As time passes and the missionaries penetrate further
into the mystery of the ordinary thoughts of those among
whom they live, the more clearly does this mystic orientation
reveal itself. We notice it in their descriptions, even when
the terms used suggest the idea of more clearly defined
representations. For example, " with these undesirable
denizens of the spirit- world," says Father Jett6, " the
Ten'a may be said to have an almost continual intercourse.
They hold themselves liable to see or hear them at any time.
Any unusual noise, any fancy of their imagination, quickly
assumes the shape of a devil manifestation. If a black,
water-soaked log, under the action of the current, bobs
up within their view, and disappears, they have seen a
nekedzaltura. If they hear a whistling in the woods, some-
what unlike the cries of birds that are familiar to them,
a nekedzaltura is calling them. No day passes in an Indian
camp without someone reporting that he or she has heard
or seen something of the kind. . . . " The manifestations of
the devil's presence are as familiar to the Ten'a as the blowing
of the wind or the singing of the birds." J In another passage
this same missionary had already remarked : " The inten-
sity as well as the extent of their devil-belief is beyond our
conceptions. Their imagination is always on the alert to
descry some devil moving about in the dark or in the broad
* Fr. Jette : " On the Superstitions of the Ten'a Indians," Antkropos, vi.
pp. 721-2.
daylight, as the case may be, and no caprice of the unruly
fancy is too strange for them to believe. Hence, to hear
them talk, one would think that they are constantly in touch
with the devil, and that they have seen it hundreds of times.' ' *
For the word " devil " substitute those vaguely defined
spirits we have just been considering, and Father Jette's
description fully agrees with the many others which insist
upon the presence of more or less diffuse mystic forces every-
where in the primitive's world.
Ill
Speaking of a Bantu tribe, a careful observer tells us
" It is of the utmost importance for students of the sociology
of these people to try and realize the reality and closeness
of the influence of the ancestral spirits upon the daily life of
the native, and unless an ethnologist has been in daily
contact with the people, and striven to understand their
point of view, it is difficult for the weight of this to be felt
to a full extent." *
We might say the same about most inferior races. The
Jesuit Fathers of New France often laid stress upon the
position which the dead occupied in the minds of the Indians.
And Codrington, when remarking on the Melanesian languages,
expresses the same idea in a striking way. " When a
native says that he is a man, he means that he is a man and
not a beast. The intelligent agents in this world are to his
mind the men who are alive, and the ghosts, the men who
are dead, the ta-maur and the ta-mate of Motu. . . . When
white men first appear to Melanesians they are taken for
ghosts, dead men come back ; when white men ask the
natives what they are, they proclaim themselves to be men,
not ghosts." 3
In the same way, among the Chiriguanos of South America,
when two men meet, they exchange the following greeting :
" Are you alive ? " " Yes, I am alive." And the author
* Fr. Jett6 : " On the Medicine-men of the Tena," J. A. I., xxxvii. p. 159.
2 C. W. Hobley : " Further Researches into Kikuya and Kamba
Religious Beliefs and Customs," J. A. I., xli. p. 432.
3 R.H. Codrington : Melanesian Languages, pp. 82-8 (1891) : cf. R. H;
Codrington : The Melanesians, p. 21 ;
adds : " Other South American tribes have the same way
of addressing each other, e.g. the Caingua, who are also
Guaranis. " » *
In short, as I have shown in another place, the dead are
alive, at least for a certain time ; they are living beings of
a different kind from ourselves, beings in whom certain
participations are ruptured or at least impaired, but who
only by slow degrees cease to belong to their social group.
To understand the primitives' mentality, we must first of
all rid our minds of our own idea of death and the dead,
and try to replace it by that which dominates their collective
representations.
In the first place, the moment of death is not the same
to them as it is to us. We believe that death takes place
when the heart ceases to beat and the breathing stops entirely.
Most inferior races, however, hold that death takes place
at the moment when the tenant of the body, which has certain
traits in common with what we call the soul, definitely leaves
it, even if the physical life has not yet become extinct.
That is one of the reasons which explain the hasty burials
which are so common. In the Fiji Islands, " the process
of laying out is often commenced several hours before the
person is actually dead. I have known one take food
afterwards ; and a second who lived for another eighteen
hours. All this time, in the opinion of a Fijian, the man
was dead. Eating, drinking, and talking, he says, are the
involuntary actions of the body — of the empty shell as
he calls it, the soul having taken its departure." 2
Nassau has heard the negroes of West Africa talk in a
similar fashion. " It has frequently occurred that even
intelligent natives, standing by me at the side of a dying
person, have said to me : ' He is dead.' The patient was
indeed unconscious, lying stiff, not seeing, speaking, eating
or apparently feeling ; yet there was a slight heartbeat.
I would point out to the relatives these evidences of life.
But they said : ' No, he is dead. His spirit is gone, he does
1 " Domenico del Campana. Notizie intorno ad Ciriguani." Archivio
per V antropologia, xxxii. p. ioo (1902).
3 Th. Williams : Fiji and the Fijians, p. 161 (1858) ; cf. p. 195. The
wives of a chief are strangled whilst he is still alive, in order that they may
follow him to death.
not see, nor hear, nor feel ; that slight movement is only
the spirit of the body shaking itself. It is not a person, it
is not our relative ; he is dead/ And they began to prepare
the body for burial. A man actually came to me on Corisco
Island in 1863 asking me for medicine with which to kill or
quiet the body-spirit of his mother, whose motions were
troubling him by preventing the funeral arrangements.' ' x
In any case, if the soul has definitely left the body and
death has taken place, the dead man is not separated from
his relatives on that account. On the contrary, he remains
near his body, and the care which they bestow upon his
mortal remains is inspired by the feeling of his presence,
and the risk that would be run if he were not treated accord-
ing to the customary rites.
With certain primitive peoples, it is not permissible to
bury dead persons not belonging to the social group, in the
I soil which it owns. "Their creed forbids," says Pechuel-
iLoesche, " that the stranger should be buried in the locality,
I for by doing this they would be giving his soul a home, and
I who knows what it might not do ? " 2 And he tells the story
of a Portuguese, who, by way of exception, had been buried
in Loango ; whereupon there had been a period of drought,
and the body was exhumed and thrown into the sea. In
the story told by Cavazzi, the veracity of which has so often
been questioned, we find a similar feature. " The faithful
were desirous of interring a missionary within the church
itself, but certain heathens who up to that moment had
concealed their lack of faith, opposed this so strongly that
the king himself, fearing the defection of the others, con-
sidered it wiser to dissimulate . . . and the body was thrown
into the sea." 3 In the Ashanti country, the king conceals
the death of the child of a missionary whom he has im-
prisoned. " In order to prevent disaster in his .country,
this superstitious king, not desiring to have a white person
buried near his dwelling, had the child embalmed, so that
he could restore it to its parents when he set them free." 4 A
Kafir chief, desiring to express his attachment to a missionary
! Rev. R. H. Nassau : Fetichism in West Africa, pp. 53-4 (edit, of 1904).
* Dr. Pechuel-Loesche : Die Loango Expedition, iii. 2, pp. 210-1 x.
3 Cavazzi : Istoria descrizione de'tre regni di Congo, Matamba ed Angola,
p. 569- « Missions evangeliques, xlv. p. 280 (1870).
who refused to leave the country, and to thank him for
this, said to him : " You must die here ; and if your bones
whiten here, you will be asked for — a man never dies without
being inquired for." » That means, you belong to us, you
are part of our social group, which needs you, and naturally
after your death you will form a part of it as you do now.
It is so much the more necessary to render the customary
dues to those just dead because they are, as a rule, evil-
disposed and ready to do harm to the survivors. It matters
little that they have been kindly and amiable when alive.
In their new state their disposition is quite otherwise ; they
are irritable and vindictive, perhaps because they are un-
happy, weak, and suffering, while their bodies are decomposing.
Thus, " Ouasinpareo was one of those men who have such a
happy disposition that they live peaceably with everybody.
According to the natives, he had never killed anyone, and
if he had eaten human flesh, his spear had never dealt the
victim his death-blow. What conclusion did the savages
draw from that ? Exactly the opposite of what would have
occurred to our minds. They thought that Ouasinpareo,
having been kindly during his life, would necessarily be
malicious after death. Events confirmed this superstition
of theirs, for two or three natives, overcome by age and
disease, died shortly after him. ' You see/ said the natives
to us, ' how bad Ouasinpareo has become ?' And immediately
the two priests in the district made it their duty to chase to
the open sea the ataro, phantom, soul, spirit of Ouasinpareo,
which, they said, was prowling about the shore." 2 In
the same island, the Pia would never consent to the burial, in
their midst, of a missionary who had died of illness. The reason
they adduced was that his ataro, never having killed anybody
during his lifetime, would be certain to slay several people
after death ! 3 In British New Guinea, " the intentions of
the ghost towards living humanity are always evil, and his
visits are feared by the people." 4
1 Letter from Rev. Gladwin Butterworth, Kaffraria, Wesleyan Missionary
Notices, ix. p. 192 (1851).
a L. Verguet : Histoire de la premiire mission catholique au vicariat de
Melanisit (San Christobal), p. 154.
3 Ibid., p. 281 (note).
4 R. W. Williamson : The Mafulu Mountain People of British New
Guinea, p. 269 (1912).
The same belief obtains in West Africa. " No matter
how well-disposed a person has been in this existence, and in
spite of the fact that he is regarded as a good spirit, it is
recognized that unless, on the one hand, he is propitiated by
his people, and on the other, pleased with the behaviour
or attitude of his people towards himself, he is quite capable,
not only of neglecting, but of injuring their interests." »
And among the Bana of the Cameroons, " however good the
dead man had been whilst alive, as soon as he is dead his
soul thinks of nothing but doing harm/' *
The malevolent influence of the ghost may be exercised
in a hundred different ways. The survivors have a special
dread that he will try to carry off one or more of them with
him ; he feels lonely and forsaken ; he misses his own friends,
and therefore wants to have them near him. Should one
of them just at this time fall ill and die, all know whence
this fresh blow comes. Moreover, those recently dead have?
a mystic influence on all natural phenomena, and especially
on those which are the chief concern of the social group.
u Physical phenomena (as heavy storms), when taking place
about the time when a person dies, or is being buried, are
regarded as being caused by the deceased person ; hence,
when a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities
of a man, the people present will call the beloved child of
the deceased ... to stop the rain. The lad steps forward
towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says :
' Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral cere-
monies.' "3 "A few hours after the death of a young
man whom I knew, a furious storm broke on the town, blow-
ing down plaintain trees and working great havoc in the
farms. It was stated in all seriousness by the old folk
that the storm had been sent by the spirit of Mopembe —
— the lad's name." 4
Therefore, when the funeral rites are not performed as they
ought to be for the one who has just died, he is able to punish
the whole tribe. He can prevent the rain from falling, and
» Major A. G. Leonard : The Lower Niger and Its Tribes, p. 187 (1906).
* G. von Hagen : "Die Bana," Bassler-Archiv, ii. p. 109 (1911).
3 Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the Upper
Congo River," J. A. I., xl. p. 383.
« Ibid., p. 373.
reduce the survivors to a state of despair. This results in
inevitable conflicts with the missionaries, who are anxious
to put a stop to these pagan practices. Here is a character-
istic example. " A female member of our society, on em-
bracing Christianity, had been put away by her heathen
husband, and for some years they lived in a state of separa-
tion from each other, he having another wife, with whom
he lived till his death. . . . No sooner had this event occurred,
than the master of the kraal to which the man belonged laid
hold of the woman, and compelled her, in common with the
other wife, to undergo a heathenish process, which is deemed
necessary to appease the wrath of some imaginary being who,
if not thus propitiated, would be sure to revenge himself by
withholding the necessary supplies of corn next season."
The missionary intervened. u The old persecutor, ... so
far from making any concession, persisted in asserting that
he was only doing what he considered necessary to conserve
the interests of the Baralong nation." l
IV
At all costs, therefore, the ghost must be placated. His
demands vary according to the race to which he belongs,
and his place in the social group. In the case of a child
of tender years, a slave, a woman of the people, a poor devil
of no consequence, a young man not yet initiated, the ghost
remains after death much what the living being was, and
nobody troubles much about it. Those who cared for the
living mourn the dead, but nobody is afraid of such as these.
The medicine-men, chiefs, fathers of families, old men who
are still active and revered, however — in short, all important
people, are far from ceasing to be important when they die.
To the influence which the dead man exercised by virtue
of his own power, his personal mana, must be added the
mysterious and tremendous effect produced by his condition
as a ghost. He can do much to harm the living, but they
can do nothing, or next to nothing, to him. There is no
doubt that in certain communities they do sometimes try
1 Letter from Rev. James Cameron : Wesley an Missionary Notices, vi,
January 1848.
to render him inocuous by mutilating his body, reducing
it to a liquid state, chasing away or mislaying his spirit.
But, as a general rule, it is considered wiser to act in such a
way as to secure his favour, that is, to satisfy his requirements.
" The chief reason why the native tries to acquit himself
creditably in his funeral obligations often is his fear of
provoking the malevolence of the dead, whose vengeance
seems more formidable to him than that of a living
enemy."1
Among the Australian aborigines, for example, and in a
good many other uncivilized races, the relatives of the dead
man, either to secure his favour, or merely to avert his wrath,
have to find the man who " doomed " him, and put him
to death also. If this rule were strictly followed, it would
soon lead to the total extinction of the peoples in question.
Considering their low birth-rate, and the great mortality
among children, if every adult death were necessarily fol-
lowed by one or more others, the social groups would soon
be reduced to nothing. In reality, it is only the deaths of
really important persons which are thus avenged, and in
certain cases this vengeance is a mere formality. Spencer
and Gillen have described in great detail the Arunta punitive
expeditions called kurdaitcha.2 Very similar ones are to
be found elsewhere. But the men who have taken part
in them often return to camp without having killed anyone.
No formal explanation of this is either asked or vouchsafed.
The women and the other members of the group are con-
vinced that the requisite satisfaction has been obtained, and
probably even those who have taken part in the expedition
end by believing it also.
" Tradition," says Eylmann, " demands that every
murder shall be avenged. I am convinced that this venge-
ance is but rarely effected, since as a rule there is a dread of
arousing the hostility of the alleged murderer. Appearances
must be saved, however. . . .When the warriors return without
having touched a hair of the criminal's head, the dead man
is obliged to consider himself appeased since, according to
1 E. Eylmann : Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Sud Australien, p. 227.
* Spencer and Gillen : The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 476
et seq. (edit, of 1899).
all appearances, his relatives have done all that they could
to avenge his death." x
Is it certain, we may ask, that the dead man does allow
himself to be thus duped, and may not this fraud have
disastrous consequences to those taking part in it ? As
a matter of fact, the primitive mind does not perceive any
real fraud in it. In certain cases, of course, it is the death
of the guilty man alone that can completely satisfy his
victim. Most frequently, however, the punitive expedition
itself possesses a value and an effect that suffices, whether
the criminal be put to death or not. It acts as a placatory
rite, appeasing the dead man's resentment and consequently
allaying the survivors' anxiety. This is what Taplin recog-
nized. "Generally they cannot catch him" (the author of
the crime) " and often they do not wish it. Arrangements
are forthwith made for a pitched battle, and the two tribes
meet in company with their respective allies. ... If there
is any other cause of animosity between the tribes . . . there
will be a pretty severe fight with spears. If, however,
the tribes have nothing but the dead man to fight about,
they will probably throw a few spears, indulge in consider-
able abuse of each other, and then some of the old men
will declare that enough has been done. The dead man is
considered to have been appeased by the efforts of his
friends to avenge his death by fighting, and the two
tribes are friendly again. In such a case the fight is a mere
ceremony." 2
Missionaries in (German} New Guinea have clearly demon-
strated the close relation subsisting between the ghost and
his group, and the care taken by the survivors to satisfy him.
" The neighbouring groups consider it their duty to visit
the grave, and this visit serves at the same time as an assertion
of their innocence. If the men of any village hold aloof, it
is because their consciences are not clear." 3 As a matter
of fact, witchcraft loses its power as soon as the wizard touches
his victim ; he is therefore obliged to avoid the sick man's
presence, and consequently he dare not show his sympathy
1 Eylmann : Die Eingeborenen, etc., p. 242.
a Rev. G. Taplin : The Narrinyeri Tribe, p. 21 (edit, of 1879).
3 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea (The Neighbourhood of King William
Cape), hi. pp. 258-9.
by visiting him. " When death has taken place, he cannot
witness the funeral ceremonies because he would run the
risk of being unmasked as the wizard. The Kai believe
that as soon as his mortal enemy draws near, the corpse on
his bier spits out the betel-nut placed between his lips, or
gives some other sign of a similar nature. This explains
the suspicions felt by the relatives of a dying or dead person,
with regard to those who do not visit him when sick, or attend
his funeral." l
" In any case, the survivors must at least let the wizard
feel the weight of their anger. . . . Relatives who fail in this
duty are punished by all kinds of misfortune. Their crops
fail, their pigs and their dogs die, their teeth begin to decay.
That is the vengeance of the departed spirit. The " little "
spirit (for the Tami distinguish between a great and a little
spirit) remains near the grave until worms have begun to
destroy the body." 2 The native therefore has the most
urgent reasons for placating the ghost, but it is only in the
days which immediately succeed death that this fear is
really active. By degrees, as time passes, he becomes
reassured, and finally " it depends upon the dead man him-
self, whether the funeral ceremonies are prolonged or not.
If he gets abundance of game from the hunters belonging to
his village, the obsequies will last a long time. If he does
not get any, or but a small amount, his memory is soon
effaced. The bereaved partner can marry again : the funeral
rites would not prevent that." 3 The essential thing is to
avenge the death immediately it has taken place. " It
is nearly always a death which causes wars among the Kai.
To be able to live in peace, the wizard or wizards must be
put to death, and all their relatives exterminated. The
dead man's ghost demands vengeance ; if it is not forth-
coming, his relatives will suffer for it. Not only will he
deny them any success in the chase ; he will send wild boars
to lay waste their fields, and will cause all kinds of misfortunes.
If any troubles arise in the interval, if the rain fails, if sickness
supervenes on account of chills, or if men should cut them-
selves, they recognize that the ghost is taking vengeance.
1 R. Nonhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea {Kai), iii. p. 134.
* Ibid. iii. p. 519. 3 Ibid. {Kai), iii. p. 83.
Thus the native finds himself in a most embarrassing dilemma.
If the fear inspired by the vengeance of formidable spirits
were not stronger than his dread of man, if, moreover, he
were not attached to his most prized possessions and to his
pigs, the Papuan, at any rate the Kai, would never under-
take a campaign." «
If he discovers, in a neighbouring tribe, the wizard who
has compassed the death, and kills him, a war will be the
result. He weighs very carefully beforehand the exact
amount of harm this can do him, and he makes his arrange-
ments in full cognizance of the matter. If the dead man
should be incensed against him, however, everything is to
be feared ; whatever misfortunes the Papuan may have
anticipated, yet others may overwhelm him at the moment
when he least expects them. Evil for evil, he prefers the
one which is both known and definite, and all the more
because, if his plans are to succeed, the active assistance of
the ghost is indispensable.
Similarly, at Bougainville, "it is above all the spirits
of the dead who intervene in men's lives to help or injure
them. Therefore men appeal to their ancestors for support . . .
they present them with offerings, sacrifice to them, and so
on." *
Perham, a careful investigator of the Dyaks of Borneo,
has shown how close is the brotherhood uniting the living
and the dead, and the mutual services they render each
other. " The dead are believed to build houses, make paddy
farms, and go through all the drudgery of a labouring life,
and to be subject to the same inequalities of condition and
of fortune as the living are here. And as men help each
other in life, so death, they think, need not cut asunder th<
bond of mutual interchange of kindly service ; they can
assist the dead with food and other necessaries ; and the
dead can be equally generous in bestowing upon them
medicines of magical virtue, amulets, and talismans of a
kind to help them in the work of life." 3
In this passage, Perham notes that the dead form a
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea {Kai), pp. 62-3.
" R. Thurnwald : " Im Bismarck Archipel und auf den Salomo Inseln,"
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, xlii. pp. 132-3.
? H. Ling Roth : Natives of Sarawak, i. p. 213.
community just like the living, and that between them there
is an interchange of mutual service, each having need of the
other. But then it is a case of the dead who are thoroughly
established in their new state, all the funeral rites having
been duly carried out. In the transition period which
the dead man goes through, starting from the moment
when life ceases, he makes special demands, among the
Dyaks as well as in other races. To these the living cannot
turn a deaf ear, for fear of inciting his anger and drawing
down great misfortunes upon themselves.
That is, as we know, one of the reasons for the head-
hunting which is so common in Borneo and the adjacent
regions. Like the Kai of New Guinea, the native is faced
by a dilemma. He must either bring back, from an expedition
undertaken for the purpose, one or more heads, or he must
submit to the dead man's vengeance, which will fall, not
on himself alone, but upon his relatives and all the members
of his group, and like the Kai, he will choose the lesser of
two evils. Here is a characteristic example. " On one
occasion Lingir, a chief of one of the Sareta tribes, appeared
at Sarawak with his head shaved, and in his most desolate
and ragged attire, but attended by thirty-three boats, to
request permission of the Rajah to attack the Dyaks of
Lundu or Samarhand ; he gave as his reason for the strange
request that his brother had died, and that he could not
celebrate his funeral until he had somehow obtained a
head. . . . Lingir, of course, was unsuccessful in his applica-
tion to vSarawak, and being desired to return immediately
with his fleet, he captured the heads of four unfortunate
fishermen, with whom he fell in, on his return.' ' l This
chief was not unaware that if the Rajah were informed of this
fact — which was more than probable — he would have to
answer for his deed, and that things might turn out very
uncomfortably for him, but he preferred to run the risk
of this rather than go back home without having procured
what was absolutely necessary to satisfy his dead brother's
ghost.
A similar custom seems to have existed in the Cameroons.
"The death of chiefs," says Mansfeld, "seems formerly
1 Hugh Low: Sarawak, pp. 215-16 (edit, of 1896).
to have given rise to a kind of guerilla warfare. When
an old chief died in a village which we will call A, two
or three men went to a village, B, about three leagues
away, and lying in ambush, killed (without any provoca-
tion whatever) two men of the village, returning home
with their skulls. Naturally the people of B took their
revenge." x
In communities which are rather more civilized than
the preceding, such as the Bantus and other South African
tribes, for instance, the relations between the living and
the dead are no less close, but they appear to be better
organized, and they tend to create a kind of ancestor-worship,
although, strictly speaking, its practice differs in some
important points from what we know as such.
The dead are alive, there is no doubt of that. " Wha
are you doing here ? " asks Hahn of a Namaqua woma
he meets on the veld. — '* My friend," she replies, ' do not
laugh at me. I am in distress ; through the drought and
the Bushmen we have lost a large number of sheep and
cattle, and I am going to the grave of my father who died
out hunting. I am going to weep and pray there ; he will
hear my voice and see my tears, and then he will assist my
husband, who has gone to hunt ostriches. Then we shall
be able to buy goats and cows again, and give our children
something to eat/
" ' But your father is dead/ said I, ' how can he hear you ? '
' It is true that he is dead/ she answered, * but he is only
sleeping. When we Hottentots are in distress we always
go and pray at the graves of our relatives and ancestors ;
that is one of our most ancient customs/ " *
Who are these living dead ? It is extremely difficult,
almost impossible, for us to form any satisfactory idea of
them. The representations vary in different communities,
according to their constitution and the degree of civilization
they have attained. Moreover, almost everywhere we find
that the person who has just died passes more or less rapidly
through a series of transitory states before he arrives at a
« A. Mansfeld : Urwald Dokimiente. Vier Jahre unter den Crossflussne*
gem Kameruns, p. 158.
• Th. Hahn; Tsuni Goam, pp. 1 12-13.
comparatively definite condition, whence he will emerge,
either by a fresh death, or by a return to the land of the
living. These representations will very often prove irre-
concilable ; we know that the emotions enter very largely
into them, that primitive mentality troubles very little about
logical coherence, and finally, nowhere do we find any
collections of representations which are coeval and constitute
a system. On the contrary, everything leads us to think
that some of them are extremely ancient, and others, more or
less compatible with these, have been built up on these
foundations in the course of the centuries. Those which
we ascertain as existing to-day are a kind of amalgam, a
residue, as difficult for us to analyse as is the stratification
of a terrain of which we know the surface only.
The profound obscurity thus surrounding the very nature
of these representations is increased by the action of the
investigators who make these observations. They collect
them with preconceived ideas about the after-life and the
immortality of the soul. They do not suspect the difference
between our conceptual thought and the thought of primitives,
which is but slightly so ; and their observations, thus per-
verted, remain in any case incomplete, and often worthless.
The word " soul " and the current ideas about " the rela-
tion between the soul and the body " cause inextricable
confusion.
Since the law of participation governs the representa-
tions relating to the intercourse between the living and the
dead, the latter are present as well as absent in, and solidary
with, though independent of, the decaying body ; the ghost,
a few days after death, is to be found both in his grave in
the neighbourhood of the house he died in, as well as on the
way to the place of shadows, if he has not already arrived
there.
Those who, when living, held high rank, and carried out
important functions continue to do so after their death,
although they may have been succeeded in office. In many
Bantu tribes, for instance, dead chiefs still protect their
group when necessity arises ; they secure for it, as they
formerly did, the required rain and the regular change
of seasons. Frequently they remain the owners of their
cattle, which cannot be taken away from them, and
special guards are assigned to the flocks and herds. They
are followed into the other world by a certain number of
their wives and their slaves, by objects stamped with their
personality, and so forth. In a general way the dead,
in varying degrees, form an integral part of the social group,
and the individual member does not feel himself entirely
separated from them. He has duties with respect to them,
and in these he finds as little to wonder about as in those
that bind him to the living.
The Mossi of the Niger have symbolized in a very striking
way this continual presence of the dead man in his social
group. From the moment of death until the final obsequies,
someone has to represent the dead man, and to undertake
the part he played when in the flesh. " Every Mossi who
dies a natural death, whether it be man, woman, child,
or chief, survives in the person of the kourita. In the case
of a married man, the kourita or koutoarsa (who imitates
the deceased) is a woman belonging to his family, usually the
wife of one of his younger brothers, who bears a certain
resemblance to the dead man. She is selected by the family,
sometimes even by the dying man. She takes the dead man's
clothes, his blanket, his hat, his old shoes, his bangles and
his rings ; she wears his belt and his hunting-knives, bears
about his staff, his pick-axe, and his dord ; she carries his
assegai, point downwards. She walks like the man she
is representing, and tries to imitate him in everything ; she
continues his life in the midst of his family. If the dead
man was usually accompanied by a child carrying his saddle-
bag, the kourita will have her child following her, and carry-
ing the same saddlebag, but turned inside out. If the de-
ceased was leprous, and had lost his fingers, she will behave
as if she had none ; if he loved laughter, she will laugh ;
if he was a grumbler and always wrangling, she will not
change his disposition. The dead man's children will call
her father, the wives will claim her as their husband and
prepare the mealie-bowl for her. If the deceased was a
naba (chief) they will call her naba ; if not, they will give
her the name that belonged to him.
" She will continue to act thus until the day of the kouri
(the second part of the funeral ceremonies). On that day
she shaves her head like the other members of the family,
and her part is over. She retains the name of kourita,
however, and when the dead man's things are divided she
receives a garment in exchange for his clothes, which she
returns ; if the heir is generous and the inheritance allows
of it, she may receive some cattle, sometimes a child.
The kourita will now die sooner than if she had not carried
out this role, they say, because the shades of dead ancestors
will come and fetch her ; therefore the performance of this
part is seldom sought after." * Thus, as long as the Mossi
is not definitely separated from his group by the performance
of the final obsequies, the survivors see him, and he finds
himself in ordinary intercourse with them in the person of
the kourita. It is the real presence of the invisible made
visible.
Callaway, who has left us such valuable documents
respecting the Zulu beliefs, admits that " their theory is not
very consistent with itself nor very intelligible. . . . They
say the shadow — that evidently cast by the body — is that
which will ultimately become the itongo or spirit when the
body dies. In order to ascertain that this was really the
meaning, I asked, ' Is the shadow which my body casts when
I am walking, my spirit ? ' The reply was ' No, it is not
your itongo or spirit ' (evidently understanding me to mean
by " my spirit " an ancestral guardian spirit watching
over me and not my own spirit), * but it will be the itongo
or ancestral spirit for your children when you are dead/
They say that the long shadow shortens as a man approaches
his end, and contracts into a very little one. When they see
the shadow of a man thus contracting, they know he will
die. The long shadow goes away when the man is dead ;
and it is that which is meant when it is said ' The shadow
has departed.' There is a short shadow which remains
with the corpse and is buried with it. The long shadow
becomes an itongo or a spirit." 2
It is of the first importance to know how the itongo is
1 P. Eugene Mangin, P. B. " Les Mossi," Anthropos, xi. pp. 732-3 (1914).
3 Rev. C. H. Callaway : The Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 126 (note)
(1868). Cf. The long and the short spirits of the New Guinea Papuans, in
Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, iii. p. 518.
disposed towards the survivors. The ordinary honours have
been paid to the dead, his obsequies have been conducted
in accordance with the customary rites — if the itongo gives
no sign of life, the survivors are uneasy and try to find the
reason for this silence. Most frequently, however, the
itongo does give some sign of satisfaction to his relatives,
either by dreams in which they behold him, or by showing
himself to them in the form of a snake creeping into the
house. These itongo snakes are very different from others.
" Those which are men are known by their frequenting
huts, and by their not eating mice, and by their not being
frightened at the noise of men ; they are always observed
not to be afraid of the shadow of a man ; neither does the
snake that is an itongo excite fear in men, and there is no
feeling of alarm as though there was a wild beast in the
house ; but there is a happy feeling, and it is felt that the
chief of the village has come." *
" They wait impatiently for the presence of these reassur-
ing snakes. If a snake is observed on the grave, the man
who went to look at the grave says on his return : 'Oh, I
have seen him to-day basking in the sun on the top of the
grave.' So then if the snake does not come home, or if they
do not dream of the dead, they sacrifice an ox or a goat,
and it is said he is brought back . . . home. And if they
do not dream of him, though the snake has come home, they
are troubled and ask ' How did this man die ? We do
not see him, his itongo is dark/ " (There is a suspicion of
witchcraft). " They go to a ' doctor,' if he is the chief man
of a large village, but nothing is done for the poor." 2
The trouble taken to retain connection with the itongo
is thus clearly shown, and thio trouble is prompted by the
feeling of power possessed by the spirit — a power upon
which the health, prosperity, and the very life of the inhabitants
of the village depend. As we have just seen, every ghost
is not an itongo. The amahlosi do not all of them become
amatongo, but only those who are dead chiefs ; in the world
of spirits the itongo occupies a rank which is superior to
1 Rev. C. H. Callaway: The Religious System of the Amazulu, pp. 198-9.
2 Ibid., pp. 141-3 ; cf. Dr. Wangemann : Die Berliner Mission im Zulu-
lande, p. 17.
ordinary ihlosi. In addition to the amatongo, who are common
to the tribe, each family has its special itongo. " Our father,
whom we know," say they, " is our whole life." He is regarded
as a kind of tutelary genius of the family.1 If it migrates,
and the itongo does not show himself in the new home, they
have to go and look for him. They break off a branch of
the wild mulberry-tree, and carry it to the old home. There
they offer a sacrifice, and sing the itongo's favourite song,
that he may say to himself : ' Of a truth my children feel
themselves forsaken, because I do not go with them ! '
Then they drag the mulberry-branch along the ground to
the new home, hoping that the itongo may follow its track,
or else explain in a dream why he does not come." 2
Whatever the honour and consideration which the living
may lavish on their twngo, he must remain worthy of it,
however. If he neglects to secure their prosperity, and
misfortune overtakes them, they will first of all redouble
their appeals for help ; but later on their tone changes,
and they tell the itongo the naked truth. " Their father
is a great treasure to them even when he is dead. Those
of his children who are already grown up know him thoroughly,
his gentleness and his bravery. And if there is illness in
the village, the eldest son lauds him with the laud-giving
names he gained when fighting with the enemy, and at the
same time lauds all the other amatongo. . . . The son reproves
the father, saying : * We for our parts may just die. Who
are you looking after ? Let us die, all of us, that we may
see into whose house you will enter. You will eat grass-
hoppers, you will no longer be invited to come anywhere,
if you destroy your own village.' " 3
In the Kafir's eyes nothing is more precious than his
cattle. He retains possession of them after his death, and
if he thinks that folks are not giving him all the honour due
to him, he can take his revenge by inflicting all sorts of
misfortunes on the cattle, and even on men themselves. . . .
" Thus, to the Zulu, side by side with the world of sense, there
exists a world of spirits, which he imagines as continuing
1 Dr. Wangeniann : Die Berliner Mission im Zululande, p. 16.
* Ibid., pp. 17-18.
3 Rev. C. H. Callaway: The Religions System of the Amazulu, p. 145.
to live in close connection with the former, and which
he fears all the more because these spirits, though unassail-
able by men, have the power of doing them harm at all
times. For the world of spirits, therefore, the Zulu has
the feelings which a superior force inspires, and he serves
them because he fears them, although his language about
them, even the way he addresses them, is not always very
respectful/' l
Similar ideas and beliefs are found in Central and
Western Africa. I will give a few examples only. Among
the Adio of the Upper Congo, the dead man makes his wishes
known by means of a dream. " From the moment the
sleeper awakes, the claims of the departed must be satisfied,
everything else being postponed, otherwise all sorts of acci-
dents and mischance will occur. People will break all the
vessels or utensils they want to make use of ; if they desire
to make beer, for instance, it will go bad ; if they are trying
to cook something, their pots will break, and so on."
" Some ghosts, in order to show themselves to their living
relatives, will take on the form of a large, but harmless snake
called rumbo. This snake is visible only to the relative to
whom the deceased wishes to appear, and this appearance
always occurs near the grave." 2 In Dahomey, " the son
is constantly united in thought with his deceased parents.
He speaks to them every day and asks their protection. Should
any misfortune befall him, he hastens to them and tries to
enlist them on his side by the offerings he brings to their
tombs. They will listen favourably to his entreaties and
will intervene for him with the Great Master common to them
all." 3
Here is a circumstance noted in a Bantu tribe in East
Africa, which shows how closely the interests of the living
are intermingled with those of the dead, and their effect
upon each other. "If a young unmarried man is killed
away from his village, his muimu or spirit will return there
and speak to the people through the medium of an old
1 Dr. Wangemann: op. cit., pp. 14-15.
J A. Hutereau : " Notes sur la;vie familiale et juridique de quelques popu-
lations du Congo beige," Annates du Musee du Congo beige, Serie III.
Documents ethnographiques, i. p. 50.
3 A. Lc Hfcriss6 : L'ancien royautne du Dahomey, pp. 99-100.
woman in a dance and say : ' I am So-and-so speaking, and
I want a wife.' The youth's father will then make arrange-
ments to buy a girl from another village, and bring her to
his, and she will be mentioned as the wife of the deceased. . . .
She will presently be married to the brother of the deceased,
but she must continue to live in the village where the de-
ceased had his home.
" If at any time the corporeal husband beats or ill-treats
her, and she in consequence runs away to her father, the
muimu of the deceased will come and pester the people of
the village and they will have bad luck ; it will probably
ask, through the usual medium, why his wife has been ill-
treated and driven away. The head of the family will
then take steps to induce the wife to return for fear of the
wrath of the spirit of the deceased son." ■ The latter,
therefore, present though invisible, takes part in all that
occurs among the living. When his wife is ill-treated by the
corporeal husband who has been given her, it is not upon him
alone that the ghost will take vengeance. The consequences
of such a misdeed threaten to react upon the entire social
group, and its chief hastens to avert them by endeavouring
to satisfy the dead man. The solidarity of the group is
such that at any moment its prosperity may depend upon
the conduct of one or another of its members with respect
to the dead.
It may happen that a ghost's wishes are unreasonable. In
such a case the survivors do not consider themselves bound
to defer to them. " If a spirit were to come saying: 'I
want calico,' his friends would just say that he was mad, and
would not give it. ' Why should he want calico ? What would
he do with it ? There was calico buried with him when he
died, and he cannot need more again.' But if the request
is at all reasonable (as when an old hunter asks animal food)
it will be quickly attended to, and personal taste carefully
consulted. ... If a spirit asks a house, they will build him
one." 2
1 C. W. Hobley : " Further Researches into Kikuyu and Kamba Belief*
id Customs," J. A. I., xli. p. 422 (1911).
3 Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, i. p. 94.
V
Besides those who have recently died and the dead whose
memory is still green, whose features, disposition, and
habits the survivors recall, with whom they converse in
dreams, and even (if Miss Kings! ey is to be believed) when
wide awake, we have to take into account those more distant
dead who disappeared long ago from among the living, but
who nevertheless exercise considerable influence upon their
fate. Meinhof has rightly laid stress upon the gradual trans-
formation of ghosts into ancestors. " After a certain time
the soul loses its human characteristics more and more, and
becomes a spirit. Then these spirits become the object of
actual adoration, and are represented as friendly or inimical
according to their disposition. To the native of Eastern
Africa this fusion of spirits in mass becomes a terrible force
which inspires him with surpassing dread. The Schambala
call it muzimu. This muzimu does not possess a personality
like a man, nor is it the spirit of any particular man ; it is
the power which is the source of all misfortunes, a power
which it is imperative to placate." J
The Wachaga tribe define this distinction very explicitly.
In their kirengo (a kind of catechism taught to the young
men who have recently been circumcized), the eighth
chapter treats of " unknown " dead chiefs, and the tenth
refers to those who are known. " When Kizaro is no longer
known to anyone, the circle containing his name is deleted
from chapter ten, and inserted in the chapter which relates
to the unknown chiefs. This custom has a bearing on the
religious beliefs of the Wachagas. The souls of the dead, say
they, remain in the land as long as there are any persons
who have known them and who, on that account, offer
sacrifices to their manes ; but when the manes no longer
have any friend on earth who sacrifices to them, they with-
draw from the district, and go and inhabit a strange and
unknown country." a
It would be difficult to over-estimate the importance
of these ancestors to the daily life of many of the Bantu
tribes. " Our ancestors see us/' say the natives. " They
1 C. Meinhof : Afrikanische Religionen, pp. 39-40.
a P. E. Meyer, C.S. Sp. : " Le Kirengo des Wachaga, peuplade bantoua du
Kilimandjaro," Anthropos, xii-xiii, pp. 190-1.
behold all that we do ; if we are bad, and do not faithfully
observe the traditions they bequeathed us, they send us the
kombo. Kombo means famine, warfare, any unforeseen
misfortune whatever." »
Of the complex feelings which ancestors inspire, fear
is the predominating one. They are exacting, and one
can never be sure of having satisfied them. In order that
the prayers addressed to them may be heard, they must be
supplemented by liberal offerings. Everything is done as
if their good- will were purchasable. " The maritno," says
another missionary, M are fairly often incensed against the
living, and send disease, drought, famine and death to man
and beast. Therefore they must be pacified, and their favour
purchased by offerings. . . . Here is the prayer addressed
by the Ba-Nkouma to their suikwembo (ancestral spirits)
when presenting an offering — ' O you, our former fathers
and mothers, why do you say that we deprive you of food ?
Here is the ox you want ; eat it, sharing it with our ancestors
who died both before and after you ; with those whom we
know and the others who are unknown to us.' (This is, in
fact, the collective mass of ancestry, the nameless and
impersonal spirit-fusion of which Meinhof speaks.) ' Give
us life, give good things to us and our children, for you have
left us on earth, and it is clear that we shall leave our children
too. Why are you angry with us ? Why do you despise
this village which is your own ? It was you who gave it
us. Send away, we entreat you, all the evil spirits who cause
us sufferings, all the bad colds, and all the illnesses. Here
is the offering we bring you, and by means of it we present
our supplication to you.' " 2
Junod has clearly set forth the nature of the unvarying
relations subsisting between the tribe and its ancestors
These rest upon the principle of do ut des, allied with the
feeling that a higher power dwells in the ancestors. They
may be entreated, supplicated, cajoled, but they cannot
effectively be compelled.
I" Their goodwill secured by this offering, the gods (that
N
1 P. Jeanneret : " Les Ma-Kha9a," Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie de
Neuchdtel, viii. p. 138 (1895).
a E. Thomas : " Le Bokaha." (N.E. Transvaal). Bulletin de la Sociite
le GSographie de Neuchdtel, viii. pp. 161 -2 (1895).
is, the ancestors) will vouchsafe their descendants an abun-
dant harvest (for it is they who cause the products, of Nature
to mature and ripen) ; they will authorize them to fell the
trees, and then, when they fall, the mighty trunks will do no
harm to anybody. ... (If on the other hand they were to
be cut down without the gods' permission, accidents would be
sure to happen.) These sacrifices therefore are essentially
preventive in their nature. By giving the manes something
to eat, and overwhelming them with presents, it is possible to
secure that events shall follow their customary course with
success, and that no misfortune shall disturb established
prosperity. . . . There are, too, expiatory sacrifices destined
to appease the angry manes . . . sacrifices which aim at ending
quarrels by reconciliation, etc." x
The prayers addressed to ancestors are often mingled
with reproaches. These are given what they appear to
demand, but they are made to feel that they ask too much
and that, according to the familiar saying, folks get nothing
for their money. This, for instance, is a prayer for a sick
child. " You, our gods," (ancestors in general) " and you,
So-and-So, (one particular ghost) " here is our inhamba
(offering). Bless this child and make him live and grow ;
make him rich, so that when we visit him, he may be able to
kill an ox for us. . . . You are useless, you gods, you only
give us trouble. For although we give you offerings, you
do not listen to us ! We are deprived of everything ! You,
So-and-so " (naming the god to whom the offering must
be addressed, according to the order given by the astragali,
that is, the god who is angry and has induced the other
gods to do harm to the village by making the child ill), " you
are full of hatred! You do not enrich us. All those who
succeed, do so by the help of other gods ! Now we have
made you this gift. . . . Call your ancestors, So-and-so, call
also the gods of this sick boy's father, because his father's
people did not steal his mother ; these people of such-and
such a clan came in the daylight " (to pay the fair price
for the wife). " So come here to the altar. Eat and dis-
tribute amongst yourselves our ox ! " (usually a hen).*
1 H. A. Junod : Les Ba-Ronga, pp. 394-5.
* Ibid. : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. p. 368.
The tone of this prayer is scarcely polite. Junod draws
attention to the fact that as a rule these prayers do not
show any very deep religious feeling, and that in any case
they are absolutely lacking in respect. During the sacrifice
" the natives laugh, speak in a loud voice, dance, sing
obscene songs, even interrupt the priest with their remarks,
and insult each other about family matters. The officiant
himself sits on the seat designated by the bones, and speaks
in a monotonous way, looking straight in front of him in
utter indifference. There is nothing in his demeanour which
denotes fear or even respect. If the gods were indeed real
old people, still living, he could not address them with more
familiarity." x But let misfortune come, let drought and
famine afflict the country, and the supplications will become
devout and humble. The familiarity with which ancestors
are often treated, arises in part out of the constant com-
munication the people have with them. They still form a part
of the social group, whose prosperity and very life depend
upon their good pleasure, and from whom they themselves
receive food and presents. In this sense, then, they may
be regarded as habitual visitants from another world. But
to the Bantu, that other world cannot be distinguished from
this one. The living appeal to their dead, and the dead
need the living. In every individual consciousness the
collective representations concerning the vicinity of these
dead, their power, their influence on others, or on natural
phenomena, are so constantly remembered and hold so
important a place that, they form a part of his very life.
VI
The all-pervading presence of spirits, witchcrafts, and
enchantments ever threatening in the background, the dead
so closely connected with the life of the living — this ensemble
of representations is an inexhaustible source of emotion to
the primitive, and it is to this that his mental activity owes
its characteristic features. It is not only mystic, that is,
at all times orientated to occult forces : it is not only pre-
x H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. p. 385.
logical, that is, indifferent as a rule to the law of contradic-
tion : it is more than this ; the causality it pictures to j
itself is of a type differing from that familiar to us, and this j
third characteristic is indissolubly bound up with the other
two.
As we understand it, the connection between cause
and effect necessarily unites phenomena in time, and con-
ditions them in such a way that they are arranged in a series
which cannot be reversed. Moreover, the series of causes
and effects are prolonged and intermingled to infinity. All
the phenomena of the universe, as Kant says, have univer-
sally reciprocal influence ; but however complex the system
may be, the certainty we have that these phenomena are
always arranged in causal series, is the very foundation,
to our minds, of the order of the universe, and, in short,
of experience.
The primitive's mind views the matter very differently,
however. All, or nearly all that happens, is referred by him,
as we have just seen, to the influence of mystic or occult
powers, such as wizards, ghosts, spirits, etc. In acting thus, his
mind doubtless obeys the same mental instinct as that which
guides us. But instead of both cause and effect being
perceptible in time and nearly always in space, as in our
case, primitive mentality admits only one of the two condi-
tions to be perceptible at one time ; the other belongs to
the sum-total of those entities which are invisible and
imperceptible to sense.
It is true that to the primitive's mind the latter are no
less real and no less directly perceptible than the former,
and this very fact is one of the characteristics peculiar to
his mentality ; but the causal connection between these
two heterogeneous conditions will differ profoundly from
that which we should imagine it to be. One of these condi-
tions— that which we call cause — has no visible link with
the beings and the circumstances of the world perceived by
sense. It is extra-spatial, and consequently, in one aspect
at least, extra-temporal. It does undoubtedly precede
its effect ; it will be the resentment felt by a dead man, for
instance, that will cause him to inflict such-and-such a
disaster upon the survivors. But, nevertheless, the fact that
the mystic forces which are "causes," remain invisible and
imperceptible to ordinary observation, makes it impossible
to fix them in time and in space, and often does not allow of
their being individualized. As visitants from an inaccessible
region they float around, they radiate, so to speak ; they
surround on all sides the primitive, who finds nothing extra-
ordinary in feeling them to be present in several places at
the same time. The world of experience thus formed in
the primitive mind may appear richer than ours, as I have
already remarked, not only because this experience com-
prises elements which ours does not contain, but also because
its constitution is diffeient. To primitive mentality these
mystic elements seern to involve a supplementary dimension
unknown to us, not exactly a spatial dimension, but rather
a dimension of the sum-total of experience. It is this peculiar
quality of experience which allows primitives to regard as
quite simple and natural, forms of causation which we cannot
imagine.
To prelogical mentality, cause and effect present them-
selves in two forms, not essentially different from one another.
Sometimes the collective representations impose a definite
preconnection ; for example, if a certain taboo is infringed,
a certain misfortune will be the result, or inversely, if such-
and-such a misfortune supervenes, it is because such-and-
such a taboo has been violated. Or again, the fact which
is apparent may be related to a mystic cause in a general
way ; an epidemic is raging, and it may be due to the wrath
of ancestors, or the evil work of a wizard ; this can be ascer-
tained, either by divination, or by making the persons
suspected of witchcraft submit to trial by ordeal. In either
case there is a direct relation between cause and effect.
It admits of no intermediate links, or at any rate, if it does
recognize them, it regards them as negligible, and pays no
heed to them.
When we say that a death has been caused by poisoning,
we imagine a number of phenomena which have followed
in definite order upon the introduction of poison into the
system. In the body it will have acted, for example, on
a certain tissue, certain digestive organs ; this action will
have reacted on the nerve-centres ; then the respiratory
organs will have become involved, etc., until finally the
whole of the physiological functioning will be found to have
ceased. To the primitive mind, if the poison proves effective,
it is solely because the victim has been " doomed.' ' It is
between death on the one hand and the fatal influence of
witchcraft on the other that the connection is established, and
all the intermediary phenomena are quite unimportant. They
are only produced by the will and, above all, by the power
of the magician. Had he desired it, they might have been
quite different. It is not even a process that he sets in
motion. The idea of such a process, which would necessarily
develop from a given moment, involves a clear conception
of the determinism of certain phenomena, and primitive
mentality has no such conception. Its place is supplied by
the representation of obedient and docile agents, such as the
crocodile which carries off the victim pointed out by
the witch. It is certain that the crocodile is going to
carry him off, but this is not because the man has exposed
himself imprudently to the animal's attack. On the con-
trary, according to the primitive, if the crocodile were
not acting as the witch's agent, it would do the man no
harm.
In the same way paralysis, acute pain, and even death
produced by poisoning, are by no means the necessary effect
of the poison in the body, but the means chosen by mystic
powers to slay their victim.
We now perceive the fundamental reason which accounts
for the primitive's indifference towards the search for secon-
dary causes. His mind is accustomed to a type of causality
which obscures, as it were, the network of such causes.
While these constitute the links and chains which stretch
throughout time and space, the mystic causes to which
primitive mentality nearly always turns, being extra-spatial
and even at times extra-temporal, exclude the very idea of
such links and chains. Their influence can only be direct.
Even if it be produced at a distance (as so often happens
in cases of witchcraft), and if its effect is not perceived till
after a certain lapse of time, it nevertheless does not fail
to be represented — or, to put it more accurately, to be felt —
as producing itself without any intermediary.
The connection (which is altogether mystic) and most
frequently we must add, the preconnection, links the occult
power to the effect produced, however distant this may be.
The question how it does this, hardly ever presents itself to
a mind of this kind. At the same time, the direct nature of
mystic causality equals, and even goes beyond, what we
call evidence, whether it be of the senses, or rational or
intuitive. The very essence of a preconnection is to be
unquestioned and incontestable. When natives find Euro-
peans refusing to believe in it, they pity them, or else they
recognize that what means a good deal to themselves means
nothing to white people. A very sound conclusion, but not
in the sense in which they mean it.
The predominance of this kind of mystic and direct
causality in their minds helps to give their mentality as a
whole, the characteristics which make it so difficult for us
to enter into their thought. For evidently time and space are
not exactly the same to them as they are to us — I mean to
us in daily life, and not in philosophic or scientific thought.
Can we imagine what our familiar idea of time would be
if we were not accustomed to consider phenomena as bound
together in the relation of cause and effect ?
" It is because to us these phenomena are arranged, without
our having to think about them at all, in series Which cannot
be reversed, with definite and measurable intervals between
them ; it is because effects and causes appear to us as if
arranged in order in surrounding space, that time, too, seems
to us to be a homogeneous quantum, divisible into parts
which are identical with each other, and which succeed each
other with perfect regularity. But how is time represented
in minds which disregard these regular series of phenomena
in space, and which pay no attention, at least deliberate
attention, to the unalterable succession of cause and effect ?
Having no support, it can but be indistinct and ill-defined.
It rather resembles a subjective feeling of duration, not
wholly unlike the duree described by Bergson. It is scarcely
a representation.
Our idea of time seems to us to be a natural attribute I
of the human mind. But that is a delusion. Such an
idea scarcely exists where primitive mentality is concerned,
for that sees the direct causal relation between the given
phenomenon and the extra-spatial occult power.
As Hubert has shown,1 primitive mentality is much more
conscious of time according to its qualities than it conceives
of it by its objective characteristics. " The negroes who
live more in the interior of the country/' writes Bosman,
" distinguish time in a curious way, namely as happy and
unhappy. There are some districts where the long happy
time lasts for nineteen days, and the little one " (for you must
know that they differentiate them thus) " seven days ; between
these two periods they reckon seven days that are unlucky,
and these really are their holidays, for then they do not
travel, nor begin a campaign, nor undertake anything im-
portant, but remain quietly at home doing nothing." 2
In this we recognize the classical distinction between the
fasti and nefasti. Periods and salient points of time are
characterized by the manifestations of the mystic powers
which occur in them ; it is to them, and almost entirely to
them, that primitive mentality clings. Certain investigators
have expressly noticed this. Thus, " what we Europeans
call the past, is linked to the present, and this in its turn is
connected with the future. For, believing as these people
do in a life of two existences which are continuous, merging
one into the other as the human does into the spiritual, and
back again as the latter does in the former, time for them has
in reality no divisions as it has for us. Equally so, it has
neither value nor object, and for this reason is treated with
an indifference and a contempt that is altogether inexplicable
to the European." 3 This remarkable passage of Major
Leonard's is somewhat obscure, probably like the very
representations which he desires to give an idea of. But
they are the representations of minds which live as much in
the world of invisible realities as in that which we call objec-
tive reality.
What has just been said of time applies equally well to
space, and for the same reasons. Space which we think of
as absolutely homogeneous — not the space of the geometri-
1 Hubert et Mauss : Melanges d'histoire des religions, pp. 197 ct. s< q.
2 Bosman : Voyage de Guinee, p. 164 (edit. 1705).
3 Major A. G. Leonard : The Lower Niger and Its Tribes, p. 181.
cians alone, but the space implied in our current ideas, appears
to us like a background of canvas, unconcerned with the
objects which are traced upon it. Whether phenomena are
produced in this or that region of space, in the north or
south, above or below, on our right or on our left, makes, we
think, absolutely no difference to the phenomena themselves ;
it merely allows us to place, and often to measure, them.
But such an idea of space is possible only to minds
accustomed to the consideration of a series of secondary
causes, which in fact do not vary, whatever the region in
space wherein they appear. Let us imagine minds quite
differently orientated, engaged primarily and almost entirely
with occult forces and mystic powers whose agency is
manifested in a direct way. These minds will not picture
space as a uniform and immaterial quantum. On the con-
trary, to them it will appear burdened with qualities ; its
regions will have virtues peculiar to themselves ; they will
share in the mystic powers which are revealed therein.
Space will not be so much imagined, as felt, and its various
directions and positions will be qualitatively differentiated
from one another.
In spite of appearances, homogeneous space is no more
a natural datum of the . human mind than homogeneous
time. Undoubtedly the primitive moves in space exactly
as we do ; undoubtedly when he desires to throw his projec-
tiles or to reach a distant goal, he knows as we do, and some-
times better than we do, how to calculate distances rapidly,
to retrace a path, and so on. But action in space is one
thing, and the idea of space quite another. It is the same
thing here as in causation. Primitives constantly make
use of the actual relation of cause to effect. In their con-
struction of implements, for instance, or of traps, they often
make proof of an ingenuity which implies a very careful
observance of this relation. Does it follow that their idea
of causation is like ours ? To arrive at such a conclusion
we should have to admit that- the possession of a means of
activity is the same as being able to analyse it, and as a
reasoned knowledge of the mental or physiological processes
which accompany it. We have but to formulate such an
assumption to see that it is untenable.
When we describe the experience of primitive mentality
as being different from our own, it is a question of the world
formed for them by their collective representations. From
the point of view of action, they move in space as we, and as
the animals, do ; they attain their ends by means of instru-
ments, the use of which involves the actual connection between
cause and effect, and if they did not conform to this objective
connection, they, like ourselves (and like the animals),
would immediately perish. But what actually makes them
human beings is that the social group does not rest satisfied
to act in order to live. Every individual member has a
representation of the reality in which he is living and acting,
absolutely in accordance with the constitution of this
group. In fact, their minds cling to it above all for other
reasons than the objective relations upon which practical
activity and industry are established.
Thus it is that in primitive mentality, which is wholly
mystic and prelogical, not only the data, but even the limits
of experience fail to coincide with our own. Bergson's
well-known theory which requires us to conceive of time as
a homogeneous quantum by fusing living duration and
space, which is such a quantum, does not seem applicable to
primitive mentality. > It is only in races which are already
somewhat developed, when the mystic preconnections become
weak and tend to be dissociated, when the habit of paying
attention to second causes and their effects is growing
stronger, that space becomes homogeneous in the representa-
tions, and time tends to become so too. Thus the limits
of our experience are sketched little by little, are strengthened
and become fixed. Much later, when reflection leads us to
make these ideas our own, we are tempted to believe that
they are its constituent elements — innate, as the philosophers
used to say. The observation and analysis of the collec-
tive representations of inferior races are far from confirming
this hypothesis.
Chapter III
DREAMS
The world of experience, as a whole, does not present itself
to the primitive mind as it does to us. It is not only that its
framework differs somewhat, since time, space, and causation
are imagined, and above all felt, in a different way ; its
data also, are more complex, and in a certain sense more
copious. The world we see provides primitives, as it does
us, with a collection of realities perceptible to sense, but
in their minds others are added, or rather intermingled,
with these — data arising out of the mystic forces always
and everywhere present, and these are by far the most
important. How are these to be collected, how can they
be induced if they are long in coming, how should they
be interpreted, and classified ? These are functions which
the primitive mind must perform, and their collective
representation? show us how very complex they are. We
perceive, then, that the intellectual torpor, lack of curiosity,
and indifference which so many investigators have declared
as existing in primitive communities are nearly always
more apparent than real. As soon as the agency of mystic
powers is involved, these dormant minds awake. They
are then no longer indifferent or apathetic ; you find them
alert, patient, and even ingenious and subtle.
Undoubtedly the course they pursue does not lead, as
ours does, to the formation of concepts and to scientific
knowledge, with an illimitable field before it in which to
advance. It very quickly attains its end, or it comes to
nothing. Moreover, most of the collective representations
which engage its attention are of a markedly emotional
character, and the preconnections established between them
are often prelogical in their nature and impervious to ex-
perience.
7 97
What it behoves the primitive to understand above all
is the agency of the mystic forces by which he feels himself
surrounded. These forces, from their very nature, are
invisible and imperceptible. They only reveal themselves
by more or less explicit manifestations, and these vary
both in their significance and in their frequency. It will
be necessary, therefore, to learn to discern, collect, and under-
stand them. We have already seen that all which appears
unusual, fortuitous, extraordinary, striking, or unforeseen
is interpreted as a manifestation of occult powers. But
there are other means, more direct, and certainly more
regular, by which these powers make known what is going
to happen, and, as it were, warn the individual or the social
group. Of such a nature are dreams and good and bad
omens. When these manifestations are not forthcoming
of themselves, the primitive mind exercises its ingenuity
to induce them ; it invents methods of procuring them
(such as dreams which are instigated, processes of divina-
tion, ordeals, etc.), and thus it arrives at various data
which find a place in the scheme of primitive experience,
and contribute, in no small degree, to making this puzzling
to us.
To the primitive mind, as we know, the seen and the
unseen worlds form but one, and there is therefore un-
interrupted communication between what we call obvious
reality and the mystic powers. Nowhere perhaps is this
more directly and completely brought about than in dreams,
in which man passes from the one world to the other without
being aware of it. Such is in fact the ordinary idea of the
dream to primitive peoples. The " soul " * leaves its
tenement for the time being. It frequently goes very far
away ; it communes with spirits or with ghosts. At the
moment of awakening it returns to take its place in the body
once more. If witchcraft or accident of any kind hinders
its return, illness and speedy death are to be feared. At
* I use this expression in default of another, better adapted to the repre-
sentations of primitive mentality.
other times, it is the spirits of the dead, or even other powers,
which come and visit the soul in sleep.
Thus the dream brings to primitives data which in
their eyes are equal to, perhaps even more valuable than,
the perceptions of the preceding day. To accept these
data as authoritatively as they do others, they have no
need of the " natural philosophy " with which Tylor and
his school endow them. Neither are they the dupes of
a gross psychological fallacy. They are quite well able
to differentiate between their dream and the perceptions
of the previous day, and they dream only when they slumber.
But they are not in the least astonished that their dreams
should bring them into direct relation with forces which
can neither be seen nor touched. They are no more surprised
at possessing such a faculty than they are at being endowed
with sight and hearing. It is undeniable that this faculty
cannot be exercised at will, nor is it permanent, like the
senses. But is it not quite natural that mystic forces should
themselves decide whether to grant or to refuse intercourse ?
Moreover, a dream is not so rare a circumstance as to conflict
with everyday experience. Among many inferior races,
where all pay great attention to dreams, people ask each
other about their dreams every morning, exchange their
experiences, and interpret the dreams ; there is always
somebody or other who has had a dream.
The Homeric idea that " Sleep is the twin-brother of
Death " doubtless has a very far-off origin. To primitives,
it is literally true. According to them, as we know, the
man who has just died continues to live, but under new
conditions. He does not take himself off at once, but remains
in the neighbourhood, and continues to influence his social
group, which is conscious of his presence and cannot be
indifferent to him. His " soul u has left his body, but the
body has remained, and as long as it is not entirely decom-
posed, the relations between the dead man and his group
are only partially ruptured. In the same way, when a
sleeping man dreams, his soul leaves his body, and until
it returns he is in a state which is exactly like that of a
man recently dead. Sometimes primitives express this
1 Vide E. B. Tylor : Primitive Culture, 4th edit., 1903.
idea in a striking way. Thus, in (German) West Africa,
" to dream " (drokuku) means "to be half dead." " In
the dream, the soul leaves the body and goes away to the
land of phantasy where, in a moment, it seems to see and
to possess things ; but these do not allow themselves to be
retained. . . . Nevertheless, these spirits are regarded as
real. For instance, if one has seen in a dream anyone who
has been dead a long time, he really has been in communica-
tion with him. In a dream we see real objects, happenings
which ' pass for real,' and the soul which is for the time
being freed from the body speaks and acts as it does in
the daytime when it is in the body. The sole difference
lies in this ; in the dream it has its being, not in the seen
but in the unseen world."1 We could not better express
the idea that both worlds equally form part of his experience.
The Maoris of New Zealand have no other conception
of the dream than this. " This old lady," writes Elsdon
Best, " once said to me, ' I am inclined to believe that old
persons who die regain their youth in the reinga. Because
I went to the reinga last night (i.e. she had had a dream,
and I saw Kiriwera (an old woman recently dead), and she
appeared quite young and nice-looking.' " When a native
says that he has been to the reinga, he means that he has
been dreaming. " An old man said to me : 'I was at the
reinga last night and saw my old friend — who has long been
dead. I could tell from his appearance . . . that it will
be a fine day/ "*
Colenso had already noticed the same thing. " They
believed in the truth of dreams, of which they had many
kinds, both bad and good. . . . All were firmly believed
to be remembrances of what they had seen in the reinga or
unseen world (or place of the departed), whither the spirit
was supposed to have been during the sleep of the body." 3
Lastly, not to multiply evidence, similar beliefs are to be
found in North America. " They are also guided to a
great extent by their dreams, for they imagine that in the
night they are in direct communication with the spirits
1 J. Spieth : Die Ewestamme, p. 564.
» Elsdon Best : " Maori Eschatology," Transactions of the N.Z. Institute,
xxxviii. p. 236 (1905).
5 W. Colenso : On the Maori Races of New Zealand, p. 60 (1865).
which watch over their daily occupations." J The Indians
of New France, who always attached so much importance
to dreams, thought of them in exactly the same way.
" Being unable to conceive how the soul functions during
sleep, when it brings things that are far off or altogether
absent, before it, they are persuaded that the soul leaves
the body when it is asleep, and itself goes and finds the
objects in the dream in the places where it sees them, and
that it returns to the body towards the end of the night,
when all the dreams are scattered." 2
What is seen in dreams is, theoretically, true. To minds
which have but slight perception of the law of contradiction,
and which the presence of the same thing in various places
at one and the same time does not perturb in the least,
what reason is there for doubting these data more than any
others ? Once having admitted the idea which primitive
mentality forms of sleep and of dreams, since nothing seems
more natural to him than the communication between the
seen and the unseen worlds, why should he mistrust what
he sees in dreams any more than what he sees with his eyes
wide open ? He would be even more inclined to believe
in the former because of the mystic origin of these data,
which makes them all the more valuable and reliable. There
is nothing about which one can feel more sure than about
things revealed in dreams. 3 In Gaboon, " a dream is more
conclusive than a witness." 4
But are there no dreams which are incoherent, ridiculous,
and manifestly impossible ? To primitive mentality the
law of contradiction does not exercise the same influence
on the connection of ideas as it does on ours. Moreover,
primitives do not accord belief to all dreams indiscriminately.
Certain dreams are worthy of credence, others not. Thus, the
Dieri " distinguish between what they consider a vision and
a mere dream. The latter is called apitcha, and is thought
to be a mere fancy of the head." 5 Among the Indians of
1 L. M. Turner : The Hudson Bay Eskimo, Report of Bureau of American
Ethnology (Smithsonian Institute), xi. p. 272.
1 Relations des Jesuites, liv. p. 66 (1669-70).
3 A. C. Haddon : Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, p. 57 (1901).
4 G. Le Testu : Notes sur les coutumes Bapounou, dans la Cir conscript ion
de la Nyanga, p. 200.
s Rev. A. W. Howitt : The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 358.
New France " those who have the gift of dreaming a good
deal do not pay attention to all their dreams indiscriminately ;
they distinguish between the false and the true, and the
latter, they say, are rather rare." *
With this reservation, the primitive has no doubt of the
truth of the dream. That which dreams announce will
take place, what they reveal has already happened. To
quote but one or two examples taken from some of the
Australian peoples. " If a man dreams that he will find
a swan's nest in some particular spot, he visits the place
with the expectation of finding it. If he dreams that some-
thing serious happens to him, as, for example, that he is
mortally wounded in battle, and if, afterwards, he is
wounded, he says : ' I knew that this would take place,
for I dreamt it/ ... If a man is told by a friend that he
had a bad dream about him, this will make him very
miserable and ill for a long time. If a dog shows agitation
while asleep, that is a sign that he dreams of hunting
kangaroos, and that he will kill one the next day ; and so
confident is his master in the dog's dream, that he will go
out with him the next day to help him." *
Whether it be a question of a past event, or of an occur-
rence some long way off, the primitive is no less certain. " One
day I heard a great cry at the wurleys (huts). I went up
and found the women wailing with their faces blackened
and hair shorn off. An old man sat in the midst, with
a despairing look on his face. I inquired the reason for
all this, and learned that the old man had dreamt that
someone at Tipping had put a ngadhungi to the fire to
work his death. . . . Some of the young men assured me
that he would die unless someone went to Tipping to stop
the sorcery, so I sent off a party in the boat in compliance
with their wishes. Next day they returned and said that
they could find no sorcery, and so it was concluded that
there must be a mistake somehow, and the old man got
well." 3
Facts like this have frequently been noted in inferior
1 Relations des Jesuites, x. p. 170 (1636). (Le Jeune.)
2 J. Dawson: Australian Aborigines, p. 52. (Melbourne, 1881.)
3 Rev. G. Taplin : The Narrinyeri Tribe, p. 135.
peoples widely separated from each other. In Sumatra,
a Battak, from the vicinity of Lake Toba, not being able
to understand how it was that white people could predict
the solar and lunar eclipses, opined that they were revealed
to them in dreams.1 In New Zealand, in 1830, a missionary
relates that " a man and woman have just been murdered
under the pretext that they had bewitched several persons
who have died lately. Some other woman dreamt that
such was the case, and this dream was sufficient in the
eyes of a native.' ' 2 In Central Africa, a voyage undertaken
in a dream is reckoned as an actual voyage. " I visited
the chief again, and was surprised to find him sitting outside
dressed in European clothes. He explained that during
the night he had dreamed he was in Portugal, England,
and a few other places, so on rising he had dressed up in
European fashion, and told his people he had just returned
from the white man's country. All who went to see him,
young and old, had to come and shake hands, and bid him
welcome back again." 3
In French Congo, a man against whom trial by ordeal
has been pronounced, and who does not imagine that it
can fail in its finding, admits that he may have committed
the act imputed to him in a dream. " I heard a man who
was thus accused reply : ' I will pay, because as a matter
of fact, I might have killed him when I was asleep ; but
I have no conscious knowledge of it." 4
II
Just as objects seen in dreams are real, so actions com-
mitted in dreams entail responsibility, and their authors
may be taken to task about them. In New Guinea, for
instance, " the man who dreams that a woman is declaring
her love for him, believes that she really has a penchant
for him. . . . Among the Kai, if a man dreams that he
commits himself with his friend's wife, he is punishable.
1 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 231 (191 1).
* Missionary Register, Williams, p. 467 (October 1830).
3 Rev. F. S. Arnot : Bihe and Garenganze, p. 67.
* G. Le Testu : Notes sur les coutumes Bapounou, dans la Cir conscription de
la Nyanga, p. 201.
If his dream should be made known, he has to pay a fine,
or at any rate he will be violently vituperated." 1
A man is even responsible for what another has seen him
do in a dream. One can imagine what complications this
may lead to. Here are some of the quaintest. " At Mukah
(Borneo) I met Janela. ... He said the reason of his
coming here was that his daughter was about to be fined
in Luai, because her husband had dreamt she had been
unfaithful to him. Janela brought away his daughter." *
At Borneo again, " a man " says Grant, " came to me officially
and asked for protection. The case was this. Another
man of the same village dreamed that the complainant
had stabbed his father-in-law, who lay ill in the house.
The defendant believing this, threatened the complainant
with vengeance, should the sick man die. The plaintiff
therefore appealed for protection, stating that he had not
struck the sick man, and that if his ghost had done so
during his sleep he knew nothing about it, and was not
therefore responsible for the deed. It so happened that
I was attending the sick man." 3
From this story it appears that the accused man does
not absolutely deny the deed imputed to him ; he does
not even seem to doubt the accuracy of his accuser's dream.
He grants that in sleep he may have done that of which
they are accusing him, and maintains that his " soul "
is alone responsible. Both accuser and accused may be
acting in good faith. They admit as a self-evident fact
that what appears in dreams is real, difficult as it
seems to us to reconcile it with the rest of their
experience.
On this point nothing is more instructive than the facts
collected by the missionary Grubb from the Lenguas of
Grand Chaco. " An Indian," says he, " dreamt that he
was eating a kala (water-fowl) and said that on waking
he had heard the screeching of these birds in the swamp
near by. In the morning he informed his neighbours that
his young child, who was with his mother at another village,
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea (Kai), iii. p. 113.
2 H. Ling Roth: Natives of Sarawak, i. p. 232 (1896).
3 Ibid., i. p. 232.
had been awake most of the night. A superstition prevails
that a man who has a young child should not eat this bird
because, if he does, his child will be sleepless during the
succeeding night. In this case it is evident that the cry
of this water-fowl in the night had given rise to his dream,
and holding this superstition, he concluded that, as in
spirit he had eaten of it, so his child that night had suffered
for his rash act." l Thus the Indian does not differentiate
between an action taking place in a dream and an action
which had occurred in daylight on the previous day. Both
forms of experience were equally valid to him.
It may happen that the primitive sees in dreams circum-
stances which are to occur later ; these circumstances are
both prospective, because he foresees their happening,
and they are also retrospective, because he has seen them
in a dream, and having seen them thus, to his mind they
have already taken place. Such a thing is an impossibility
to minds governed, as ours are, by the law of contradiction,
for they have a clear representation of time unfolding in
a unilinear series of successive moments. How can the
same event occupy two different places in this series, at a
distance from each other, and thus belong both to the past
and the future ? Such an impossibility, however, puts
no strain upon prelogical mentality. Not that it accommo-
dates itself to gross mental disorder, as people so frequently
maintain, but because the world of its experience, more
complex than our own, admits the simultaneity of data
which cannot be coexistent either in time or space with
us. It is only in this way that we can understand facts
of the kind related by Grubb. " The Indian," says he,
" has implicit faith in dreams and allows them to control
his actions. . . . Poit . . . had been greatly impressed by
a dream which he had related to some Indians many weeks
before he attempted my life, the gist of which was that I
met him in an open space in a forest, accused him of mis-
appropriating my property, and with a gun shot him. This
dream he took as a secure warning of what would happen,
and from the Indian point of view, if he could not otherwise
avoid the catastrophe he had perforce to endeavour to
Rev. W. B. Grubb : An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, p. 132.
turn the tables on me, and as far as possible deal with me
as he dreamt I dealt with him/' l
In committing his attempt at assassination, the Indian
does not consider himself the aggressor. That is the part
he attributes to Mr. Grubb. What he has seen in the dream
is real ; therefore it is Mr. Grubb who has attacked him,
and the Indian's attempt is merely legitimate defence.
Does he regard the event he has seen in his dream as past
or future ? Evidently he considers it a future occurrence,
since he has not yet sustained Grubb's shot and been
wounded by him. But it has happened nevertheless, and
therefore his reprisals are justified.2
The event I am about to relate involves yet greater
difficulty, unless we admit that the experience of these
Indians is arranged in a setting more elastic than our own,
and allowing, at one and the same moment, of data which
to our minds would be mutually exclusive " This man
arrived at my village from a place about a hundred and
fifty miles off. He asked me for compensation for some
pumpkins which I had recently stolen from his garden.
I was thoroughly surprised, and told him I had not been
near his village for a very long time, and so could not
possibly have stolen his pumpkins. At first I thought he
was joking, but I soon perceived that he was quite serious.
It was a novel experience for me to be accused by an Indian
of theft. On my expostulating with him, he admitted
quite frankly that I had not taken the pumpkins. When
he said this I was more bewildered still. I should have
lost patience with him, had he not been evidently in real
earnest, and I became deeply interested instead. Eventually
I discovered that he had dreamed he was out in his garden
one night, and saw me, from behind some tall plants, break
1 Rev. W. B. Grubb : An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, p. 275.
2 The Island of Flores has recently furnished a similar case. " Every-
thing the mind takes cognizance of in a dream is regarded as absolutely real,
even if facts manifestly contradict it. One man has been assassinated by
another, because the latter had seen him kill his sister in a dream. On
awaking, he could easily have assured himself that his sister was alive, but
that did not seem to be necessary. He took his vengeance first. When
brought before the judge and informed that his sister was still living, he did
not hesitate to maintain in all good faith that he was within his rights." —
Van Sachtelen : Endeh (Flores), p. 129. Mededeelingen van het bureau voor
de bestuurszaken der buitengewesten, bewerkt door het Encyclopcsdisch Bureau,
Aflevering xiv. (1921).
off and carry away three pumpkins, and it was payment
for these that he wanted. ' Yes/ I said, ' but you have
just admitted that I had not taken them/ He again
assented, but replied immediately : ' If you had been there,
you would have taken them/ thus showing he regarded
the act of my soul, which he supposed had met his in the
garden, to be really my will, and what I should actually
have done had I been there." «
This conversation throws a ray of light on the mental
functioning of the Indian. Grubb thinks that he has proved
to him the impossibility of regarding his dream as real,
and he explains the Indian's persistency by attributing
to him the belief that the mind's intentions are the same
as its deeds. But at the same time he recognizes that
the Indian maintains that he has met Mr. Grubb's soul
in his garden. The latter does not in fact doubt that he
has seen the missionary himself. When Grubb asserts
that he was a hundred and fifty miles off at the time, the
Indian concurs in the statement. Yet the logical incongruity
between the two is not enough to make him abandon the
statement based on his dream, and he maintains both
facts, particularly the one which rests upon what he saw
with his own eyes while dreaming. He prefers admitting
implicitly what the Schoolmen call the ' multipresence
of the same person, to doubting what seems a certainty
to him. That is the necessary result of his experience
which, beyond and above the realities which we term
objective, contains an infinity of others belonging to the
unseen world. Neither time, nor space, nor logical theory,
is of use to us here, and this is one of the reasons which
cause us to regard the primitive's mind as " prelogical."
The multipresence implicitly admitted by the Indian
just cited is not an isolated case. In a great many primitive
peoples the natives thus picture to themselves the multi-
presence of the man who has just died, who, to the European's
great perplexity, inhabits the tomb where his body lies,
and at the same time is haunting the neighbourhood where
he passed his life. The contradiction in this is not perceived,
and as a rule, calling attention to it does not suffice to bring
it to an end.
xRev. W. B. Grubb : An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, pp. 129-30.
III
Among the South African races which are somewhat
more developed, there is perpetual obsession on the subject
of witchcraft. On the other hand, they maintain continual
intercourse with the dead, not only with those whose memory
is still vivid, but also with the accumulated mass of
" ancestors." It is quite natural, therefore, that dreams
should assist this intercourse, and be also of use in unmasking
wizards. This fact is confirmed by many investigators.
The dream reveals the enemy's secret plots. Among the
Kafirs, " a short time previous to the death of Gaika, that
chief sent a messenger to an old woman, formerly one of
his concubines, but who was then living at the (Mission)
station, informing her that he had dreamt about her on
the preceding night, and that he wished to see her at his
kraal. She declined the invitation. ... On the following
day, three chiefs waited on Mr. Chalmers, and soliciting
a private interview, informed him in a low tone, that the
woman whom they had come to demand had bewitched
the chief with the hair of a goat, together with some old
rags. . . ." «
" A man dreams that an attempt has been made to take
his life by one whom he has always regarded as his true
friend. On awaking he says : " This is strange ; a man
who never stoops to meanness wishes to destroy me. I
cannot understand it, but it must be true, for ' dreams never
lie.' Although the suspected friend protests his innocence,
he immediately cuts his acquaintance.' ' *
Callaway relates a very similar characteristic, giving it
very nearly in the native's language. " Sometimes there
is a man who is acting with the secret intention of injuring
another without his suspecting it, and without his knowing
anything about him, he being his friend. But if he hears
in a dream a voice saying to him, ' So-and-so is pretending
merely to be your friend. Do you not see that he will
kill you ? What do you think he means by saying such-
and-such a thing?' (alluding to something he has said)
1 A. Steedman : Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of South
Africa, i. pp. 229-30 (1835).
» Rev. J. Tyler : Forty Years Among the Zulus, p. 108 (edit, of 1891).
DREAMS 0 109
he remembers it and exclaims, ' Yes, surely, So-and-so
may hate me on that account.' And he begins to separate
from him, and to be on his guard. . . . And if he says to
him : ' So-and-so, now you keep at a distance from me.
What is it ? What difficulty has arisen between us ? ' the
other puts him off." ■
The native does not hesitate between his friendship and
his dream. Surprised he may be, but he does not doubt.
The dream is a revelation coming from the unseen world,
and to disregard it would be folly. The petty African
potentates turn these warnings to account. " If Casembe
dreams of any man twice or thrice he puts the man to
death, as one who is practising secret arts against his life." *
The wizard who is unmasked in a dream is killed immediately.
From various passages in Callaway's work, we find
that the dreams which reveal danger proceed from the dead.
" If in your sleep you dream of a beast pursuing you, trying
to kill you, when you wake you wonder and say : * How is
this that I should dream of a wild beast pursuing me ? '
And if in the morning they are going to hunt . . . you go
knowing that you are in jeopardy ; you know that the
itongo brought the beast to you, that you might know that
if you do not take care, you may die. If you go to the hunt
you are on your guard. Perhaps you do not go. . . ."3
And again, yet more explicitly: " Black men steadily affirm
that the amatongo (plural form of itongo) help them ; they
do not say so from what diviners have said, but from what
they have themselves seen. For instance, when they are
asleep, a dead man appears, and talks to one of them, and
says : ' So-and-so, it is well that such-and-such be done in
this village,' telling them that something will happen." 4
It is evident that all dreams are not equally easy to
interpret, and also that the Kafirs, like all races who regulate
their actions by dreams, have been led to distinguish between
good and bad dreams ; between those which are reliable
and those which are untrue. " People say summer dreams
1 Rev: C. H. Callaway : The Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 164 ; cf. p.
3 Rev. D. Livingstone : Last Journals, i. p. 277 (1874).
3 Rev. C. H. Callaway : The Religious System of the Amazulu, pp. 228
et seq. * Ibid., pp. 178-9.
are true, but they do not say they are always true ; they
say that summer dreams do not usually miss the mark.
But they say the winter is bad, and produces confused
imaginations, that is, very many unintelligible dreams. . . .
A dream that is said to be sent by the itongo, is one which
comes with a message from the dead, inquiring why such-
and-such a thing is not done. For example, among black
men, if one has an abundant harvest, sometimes the head
of the village dreams that it said to him : ' How is it, when
you have been given so much food, that you do not give
thanks ? . . . . And he immediately commands his people
to make beer, for he is about to sacrifice." *
Here we have the type of dream which is reliable ; it is
a demand made by the dead, who desire to be rewarded
for the services they have rendered. Their claim seems
just as natural as the form in which it is presented.
It is an incident of everyday life, like the reminder of a
creditor that payment of a debt is due. The only difference
is that the creditor presents himself during the day, and
the itongo speaks at night, either in his own or in his ancestors'
name, through the medium of the dream.
It frequently happens that when all the missionary's
efforts to induce a native to change his faith have proved
ineffectual, a dream suddenly determines him to take the
step, especially if the dream is repeated several times.
For example, among the Basutos, " what plays the chief
part in the conversion of the Mosuto ? . . . The paramount
role is played by the dream. ... To make him definitely
decide, there must be something out of the common, a
Divine intervention {as he regards it) which strikes his
imagination. ... If you ask a heathen who has heard
the Gospel, when he will be converted, he will answer in
the most matter-of-course way : ' When God speaks to me.' " 2
"It is very remarkable to find how many people here |
attribute their conversion to a dream. . . . This would be
confirmed by most, if not all, of our missionaries. The
dream plays a great part in the early religious life of the
blacks. M. Mondain recently told me of a kind of vision
1 Rev. C. H. Callaway : The Religious System of the Amazulu, pp. 238 ct seq.
* Missions evangeliques, lxx. pp. 341-2. (Marzolff.)
which led to the conversion of a Malagasy wizard. At
Lessouto, occurrences of this kind are frequent, and hundreds
of Christians in these parts heard the first appeal of their
conscience in the form of a dream." *
" Augustus, a Mashona boy here, told me that the Lord
had called him to be converted four years ago, but that
he would not listen to his voice. I thought that by the
voice of the Lord he meant the Gospel message, but he
meant a dream in which he had seen a dazzling light and
heard a voice saying : ' You must become a Christian/ A
few days after our conversation the native had another
dream of the kind, and he became converted." 2 Similarly,
the chief Sekoate told a missionary : " I have been dreaming
for a long time that I always see missionaries. Let them
come, and I shall treat them as I treated the Boers." 3
Merensky, like Wangemann, states that it is often dreams
alone which can overcome the natives' hesitation. " Very
frequently to heathens who were wavering, the dream was
the deciding factor. . . . Among those who are inquiring
and yet hesitating, these dreams occur so regularly that
one day, at the end of the lesson, Podumo asked us in the
presence of the other catechumens how we could explain
the fact that he had not yet had any dreams, although he
had been anxiously inquiring, and praying a good deal.
The content of these dreams often seemed to our minds
to have no significance whatever, but the natives thought
differently, and their dreams frequently made a lasting
impression upon them." 4 Podumo's argument and his
anxiety are significant. If God desires his conversion,
why does He not say so ? And if He wanted to tell him
anything, would He not speak to him in a dream, as the
amatongo do ?
In Central Africa, dreams have similar meanings. To
give but one example : " The Azande of the Upper Congo
believe that during the night the dead make their wishes
known to the living. Dreams are quite authentic to them,
1 Missions evangeliques, lxviii. i. pp. 1 14-15. (Rambaud.)
1 Dr. Wangemann : Die Berliner Mission in Koranna Lande, p. 207.
3 A. Merensky : Erinnerungen aus dem Missionsleben im SUd Ost Afrika,
p. 94-
* Ibid., pp. 152-3.
and they are convinced that wjien they see a dead relative
in a dream they really have a conversation with his ghost,
and in its course he gives advice, expresses satisfaction or
displeasure, and states his aspirations and desires. It
may happen that in this way the dead man expresses his
need of a slave to look after him. Then the natives consult
the benget and if the oracle predicts misfortune should
the dead man's wishes not be acceded to, they break the
arms and legs of a slave and lay him on the grave, where
he succumbs to his injuries and starves to death. If it
be impossible to sacrifice a slave, one of the dead man's
widows is thus immolated." l
IV
The influence of the dream in the daily life of primitive
peoples has nowhere been more fully set forth than in the
Relations des Jesuit es of New France. Not that they have
set themselves the task of studying or describing dreams.
If the missionaries do speak about them, it is because they
force themselves upon their attention ; they are to be met
with everywhere, and these dreams of the Indians prove
either the most invincible obstacle to the success of the
mission, or its most valuable resource ; finally, the Jesuits
cannot sufficiently express 1heir astonishment at all that
their dreams make the Indians do. " The dream is the
oracle that all these people consult and defer to, the prophet
who predicts their future, the Cassandra who warns them
of the dangers that threaten, the physician-in-ordinary of
their illnesses, the Esculapius and the Galen of the whole
country ; in short, their most absolute ruler. If a chief
pronounces one thing, and the dream another, the chief
may shout himself hoarse ; it is the dream that will be obeyed.
It is their Mercury in travels, their steward at home ; it
often presides over their councils ; their trading, fishing,
and hunting are usually undertaken by its consent, and
apparently only to afford it satisfaction ; they negotiate
nothing so important but that it will be willingly renounced
* A. Hutereau : " Notes sur la vie familiale et juridique de quelques
populations du Congo beige," Annates du Musee du Congo beige, Serie III.
Documents ethnographiques, i. p. 93.
at the instance of some dream. . . . The dream is, in fact,
the chief God of the Hurons." x
" The Iroquois," says another Jesuit priest, " have,
strictly speaking, but one divinity, which is the dream ;
they submit to it and follow all its orders most implicitly.
The Tsonnontouens are much more attached to it than the
others ; their religion respecting it is most precise ; whatever
it may be that they believe they have done in a dream they
feel absolutely obliged to carry out immediately. The
other tribes are content to pay attention to their most
important dreams, but this one, which is said to live more
circumspectly than its neighbours, would consider it was
guilty of a great crime if it did not heed every one of them.
That is all the people think of ; they never talk about any-
thing else, and their huts are all peopled with their dreams. " *
It seems impossible to express more strongly and im-
pressively the unvarying influence of invisible powers in
the life and conduct of the Indians, and the predominance
of mystic elements in their experience. The dream is the
medium by which these mystic elements manifest themselves,
and its revelations are not only accepted by the Indians
as unhesitatingly as are the data afforded by sense, but
they are moreover the object of religious devotion. The
terms divinity, god, oracle, religion, flow unceasingly from
the Jesuits' pens when they are writing of dreams. It is
not simply a question of advice, hints, friendly suggestions,
official warnings conveyed by dreams ; it is nearly always
definite orders, and nothing can prevent the Indian from
obeying them. " If overnight they have dreamt that they
must kill a Frenchman, woe to the man whom they meet
in a secluded spot next day." 3 "If our dreams were not
true, theirs were, and they would die if they did not carry
them out. According to this, our very lives depend upon
the dreams of a savage, for if any of them dreamt that
they had to kill us, they would infallibly do so if they could.
One of them told me that once upon a time he had dreamt
that a certain Frenchman had to be killed before the speaker
1 Relations des Jesuites, x. p. 170 (1636). (P. Le Jeune.)
» Ibid., liv. p. 96 (1669-70).
3 Ibid., iv. p. 216 (1626). (P. Lalemant.)
could be cured of a disease that was threatening him, and
he had sent for him." 1
Why is it so absolutely necessary that the Indian should
obey the orders given him in a dream, or, to put it more
precisely, why, when once awake, must he carry out what he
has seen done in a dream ? This question has been put
to the Jesuit fathers many times. They always give the
same answer. It is a question of life or death to the Indian.
If what he has seen in a dream is not realized, he will die ;
not only when the dream has suggested some action of his
own, but also if he has been merely a spectator, and others
have done the deed, for then these must carry it through.
However extraordinary or exacting the demand of the dream
may be, they have no choice but to submit to it. "It would
be cruelty and a kind of crime not to grant a man what he
has dreamed of. For such a refusal might cause his death ;
hence it comes about that some find themselves despoiled
of everything, without hope of its return, for whatever
they may give, nothing will be given to them unless they
themselves dream, or pretend to dream, of it. Usually
however, they are too conscientious to make use of pretence,
for that, in their opinion, would be inviting all sorts of mis-
fortune. There are, however, some who throw overboard
their scruples, and enrich themselves by means of fabricated
tales."*
If the Indians really had the feelings the fathers describe,
such a piece of trickery would be extremely rare. " The
dream is a divinity to savages, and their respect for it is
not less than ours for the most sacred things. Everything
that they dream must be accomplished unless they are to
incur the hatred of all the dreamer's relatives, and expose
themselves to the consequences of their rancour." 3
We might imagine that this pressing need to bring about
what has been seen in dreams is peculiar to the Indians
of New France. It is, however, to be found in other com-
munities which are widely separated from each other, and
its existence must rest upon a fundamental idea in the
1 Relations des Jesuites, v. p. 160 (1633). (P. Le Jeune„)
2 Ibid., xlii. pp. 164-6 (1655-6).
3 Ibid., li. p. 124 (1666-8). (P. Bruyas.)
mentality of such peoples. The Barotse of South Africa
" believe in dreams ; a woman often comes asking for a
handful of millet, because she has dreamt that she is going
to have some sickness if a certain person does not give
her a handful of grain." "
In Kamchatka, " if a man desires the good graces of
a young girl, it is quite enough to say that he has dreamed
she looked favourably on his suit ; she then considers it
a mortal sin to deny him, for if she did, it might cost her
her life. If somebody wants a kuklanda or a barka, or
any other object that he is too poor to acquire for himself,
he has only to say : ' I had a dream last night ; I was sleeping
in So-and-so's kuklanda, and immediately the other says:
' Take it, it is mine no longer/ because he is firmly persuaded
that if he does not give it his life will be forfeit." %
In this case it is not the dreamer himself who will die
if the dream is not " fulfilled," as it is with the North-
American Indians, but the one whom the dreamer has seen ;
but however important this difference may be from other
points of view, it does not prevent the necessity in both
cases of " fulfilling the dream " from appearing absolutely
imperative. Something similar is to be found at the present
day in the Kurds of Asia Minor. " They are convinced
that if their conscience is clear (that is, if they have offered
up the evening prayer and performed the ablutions ordered
in the Koran before lying down to rest) their soul enters
into such an intimate relation with the angels of Paradise
that it is in a kind of celestial beatitude, and then knows
all that it needs to know by means of the dreams which
Allah vouchsafes them as a token of his goodwill, or (if
their soul is in a state of sin) of his vengeance. When they
awake, they have not the slightest doubt but that their
soul has really seen what was presented to it in the dream.
Consequently, thus firmly and blindly persuaded, they
act with a kind of fatalism which makes them veritable
scoundrels, and real scourges to their country. If they
have dreamt of something that they covet and are trying
to obtain, they do not rest till it has been given up to them,
1 L. Decle : Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 75.
2 G. W. Steller : Beschreibung von dent Lande Kamtschatha, p. 279 (1774).
nolens volens ; if they have seen in their dream some animate
being, object, or benefit belonging to others (especially to
Christians) they give themselves no rest till they have
become the masters of it, even if to satisfy their fatal ambition
they are obliged to have recourse to armed force, murder,
or pillage ; should they dream of an enemy or of a Christian
(always regarded as an enemy to their religion) they must
seize the first occasion that offers to put him to death or
plunder his estate. Thus to these madmen dreams nearly
always form the dominating motive of their crimes and
their impostures." l
The difference of social conditions between Indians
and Kurds suffices to explain why what the former do from
friendly motives often becomes an occasion for crime and
murder in the Kurds. But, even with this difference,
we see the similarity in the obligation to act thus, and still
more clearly when we remember the cause which the Jesuits
attribute to this imperative need. Why must dreams be
" fulfilled " at all costs ? " Because/' says Charlevoix,
" according to the Iroquois, every illness is a desire of the
soul, and people only die when their desire is not fulfilled." 2
The Jesuits of the seventeenth century expressed themselves
very definitely on this point. " Now they believe that
the soul makes known these natural desires by dreams
as well as by words, so that when these desires are satisfied
it is pleased, but if its desires are not granted it grows angry,
not only because its body has not obtained the benefit
and prosperity it desired to procure for it, but often because
it actually revolts against it, causing it to suffer from diverse
maladies, and even death. ... In consequence of these
erroneous opinions, most Hurons take great pains to note
their dreams ^and to provide their souls with what they have
revealed to them during sleep." 3
Similarly, " they have a sure and infallible belief that if
they have dreamed of something and have failed to carry
it out, some misfortune which was mysteriously expressed
* Abb6 Jos. Tfinkdji : " Essai sur les songes et l'art de les interpreter en
M6sopotamie," Anthropos, viii. pp. 506-7 (191 3).
* P. F. X. de Charlevoix : Journal d'un voyage dans I'Amdrique
septentrionale, iii. pp. 369-70 (1744).
3 Relations des Jisuites, xxxiii. pp. 188-90 (1648-9).
in the dream will befall them. I have even noticed that
when these savages were in good health, the majority of
them took very little trouble about obeying the directions
given in dreams, but the moment they became ill they
were convinced that there was no more potent remedy
to cure them and save their lives than the carrying out
of all that they had dreamed." l At least, however,
when their illness had not been the work of a wizard.2
The Jesuit father's last remark leads us to infer that
those dreams which must inevitably be " fulfilled " were,
as a rule, the dreams of sick people or dreams which caused
illness to be dreaded. The examples reported are usually
of this nature. " A woman who was very ill in Onnontaghe
had dreamt that a black robe was necessary in order that
her recovery might be brought about, but the recent cruel
massacre of our fathers by these savages having deprived
them of any hope of procuring one from us, they had recourse
to the Dutch, who made them pay a heavy price for the
worn-out habit of Father Poncet, who had been robbed of
it some time before by the Annienhronnons. The woman,
who attributed her recovery to the possession of this, would
not part with it for the rest of her life. . . . Last summer,
when a woman was unable to procure in Quebec a French
dog of the kind of which one of her nephews had dreamed,
she undertook a second journey of more than four hundred
miles, in spite of snow, ice, and very rough roads, to go
and find the animal so ardently desired, in the place to
which it had been taken." 3
But it sometimes happens that a dream must be " ful-
filled " without there being any question of illness involved.
The Jesuits themselves give many instances of this. " Not
long ago a man in the city of Oiogen in his sleep one night
saw ten men plunging into a frozen river, entering it by one
hole made in the ice, and coming out by another. On
awaking, the first thing that he did was to prepare a great
feast and invite ten of his friends. They all accepted,
and soon began to make very merry. . . . Thereupon he
1 Relations des Jdsuites, liv. p. ioo (1669-70).
» Ibid., xxxiii. p. 198 (1647-8).
3 Ibid., xliii, p. 272 (1656-7).
related his dream, which did not surprise them in the least,
for they all prepared to put it into execution immediately.
They therefore went to the river, broke the ice, and made
two holes, about fifteen feet from each other. The divers
removed their garments, and the first led the way ; jumping
into one of the. holes, he had the good luck to come out by
the other ; the second did the same, and all the others
with the exception of the tenth, were equally fortunate ; he,
however, paid the penalty for all, since he could not manage
to emerge, and perished miserably under the ice/' x To
determine the Indian's ten friends to risk their lives thus,
the dream must have been an expression of " the soul's
desire," which it was impossible to disobey for fear of dire
penalties ; yet we are not told that there was any question
of the Indian's being ill at the time.
The same remark applies to the dreams which were
of special interest to the proselytizing missionaries. Like
the Bantus of whom we have spoken, the Indians seldom
decided to change their faith until they had dreamed that
they did so, or at any rate, until a dream had required
them to do so. " M am quite ready to adopt your faith
and become a Christian, although I do not want to/ said
one of these poor heathen to us, ' if my dream tells me to
do it.' As a matter of fact, nothing seems difficult to them,
when it is a question of obeying a dream." 3
Then there is a final difficulty, and it is one which
the Jesuit fathers do not seem to have troubled about.
What, exactly, is this soul which makes known to them
in dreams what it desires, and whose wishes are orders
which must be carried at all costs ? The term " soul "
is very vague. Can it bear the same meaning to the Jesuits'
minds as it does to the collective representations of the
Indians ? The latter, they tell us, admit the existence of
at least two souls in every man. One of them is something
like a vital principle, and its fate follows that of the body ;
the other has its dwelling in the body during life, but leaves
it at the moment of death. It was pre-exist ent to it, and
survives it. Between this second soul, the inhabitant of
1 Relations des Jesuites, xlii, pp. 150-2 (1655-6).
» Ibid., xxiii (1642) ; cf. xli, p. 142 (1653-4) ; lvii, pp. 194-5 (l672~3)-
the body, upon which the well-being and the very life of
a man during his existence on earth depend, and his tutelary
genius, his guardian angel, his " personal god " (as Powell
expresses it), his protector, or his particular totem, there is
a connection which investigators have never been able to
make clear, and which doubtless is not intended to become
so. This close connection or participation probably does
not go so far as fusion or identity of the two entities.1 It
is such, however, that the Indian feels himself to be entirely
dependent upon this " spirit " (genius) which at all times
can make him happy or unhappy. There is no greater
misfortune for him than to incur its displeasure. If the
Indian alienates it, he will certainly perish.
Let us admit that the dream is the expression of this
" spirit's " will, and at once the respect, fear, and the need
of rendering immediate obedience so frequently and so
strikingly shown by Indians, find a simple explanation
It would be a kind of crime to refuse to give, or to do for
any one of them what his tutelary genius requires.
Now as a matter of fact, the terminology of the Jesuit
fathers is somewhat vague, and it may happen that in
their reports the personal totem of the Indian is not differ-
entiated from his soul. Charlevoix expressly declares :
" In Acadia, nothing that a sick man asks for is denied him,
because the desires he expresses while in this state are
orders given by his tutelary genius.' ' 2
In a great many cases, illness is a sign to the Indian
that his tutelary genius is offended, or displeased because
something he desires is not being done, and he is therefore
threatening to abandon him, a proceeding which would
infallibly cause his death. How is he to know what the
1 Durkheim, who has made a prolonged study of the idea of the soul
held by Australian races, regards it both as a personal principle and as the
totem of the whole clan. He arrives at the conclusion that " the soul,
generally speaking, is only the totemistic principle embodied in each indi-
idual. ... It is necessary to share it and divide it among them, and each
these fragments is a soul." On the other hand " the ideas of totem and
ancestor are so near to one another that they are sometimes confused.
. And if the ancestor is thus confused with the totemistic spirit, it must
the same with the individual soul which is so closely connected with the
icestral soul " — Les formes dlementaires de la vie religieuse, pp. 355-67.
* P. F. X. de Charlevoix : Journal d'un voyage dans I'Amerique septen-
ionale, iii. p. 367.
desire is, and how he can appease the ■ genius ' ? The latter
alone can indicate it, and he makes it known in a dream,
which it is imperative to obey faithfully. This hypothesis
is all the more tenable because it is always in a vision or
dream — whether this be spontaneous, or whether it be
solicited or induced in any way — that the Indian has first
perceived his guardian spirit. He has no other means of
knowing him, and he is therefore quite ready to believe
that dreams, or at any rate, some dreams, are communications
from his tutelary genius, whose revelations will usually be
made thus, and we know that the Indian stands in an un-
varying and permanent relation to his personal totem.
" He must respect it, follow its advice, merit its favour,
put his whole confidence in it, and dread the effects of its
wrath if he neglects to carry out his duties with regard to
it." ■
To conclude this subject, I am going to relate a circum-
stance noted in the Chippeway Indians. It is the story
of partial disobedience to a dream, and it seems absolutely
to confirm our interpretation of the matter.
" The evening previous to the departure of the band,
one of them, whose totam (totem) was a bear, dreamed
that if he would go to a piece of swampy ground, at the
foot of a high mountain, about five days' march from my
wigwam, he would see a large herd of elks, moose, and
other animals ; but that he must be accompanied by at
least ten good hunters. When he awoke, he acquainted
the band with his dream, and desired them to go with him ;
they all refused, saying it was out of their way, and that
their hunting grounds were nearer. The Indian, having a
superstitious reverence for his dream (which ignorance,
and the prevalence of example among the savages, carries
to a great height), thinking himself obliged to do so, as his
companions had refused to go with him, went alone, and
coming near the spot, saw the animals he dreamed of ; he
instantly fired, and killed a bear. Shocked at the trans-
action and dreading the displeasure of the Master of Life,
whom he conceived he had highly offended, he fell down
1 P. F. X. de Charlevoix : Journal d'un voyage dans I'Atnerique sepien-
trionale, iii. pp. 346-7.
and lay senseless for some time ; recovering from his state
of insensibility, he got up and was making the best of his
way to my house, when he was met in the road by another
large bear, who pulled him down, and scratched his face.
The Indian, relating this event at his return, added, in the
simplicity of his nature, that the bear asked him what
could induce him to kill his totam ; to which he replied that
he did not know he was among the animals when he fired
at the herd, that he was very sorry for the misfortune,
and hoped he would have pity on him ; that the bear suffered
him to depart, told him to be more cautious in future, and
acquaint all the Indians with the circumstance, that their
totams might be safe, and the Master of Life not angry with
them. As he entered my house, he looked at me very
earnestly, and pronounced these words, ' Beaver ' (the
Indian name of Long) ' my faith is lost, my totam is angry,
I shall never be able to hunt any more.' " ■
1 John Long : Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader,
pp. 86-7 (1791).
Chapter IV
OMENS
After dreams, which form one of the most important com-
ponents of the primitive's mental experience, bringing him
as they do into direct relation with the unseen world, come
omens, which also furnish him with data concerning the
influence of the mystic forces by which he feels himself
surrounded. Omens are thus revelations which are pro-
duced spontaneously, and in most cases, the preconnections
existing between his collective representations enable the
primitive to interpret them at once without needing to
reflect upon them. Such a bird is heard on the left ; such
an animal crosses his path during a march ; the lucky or
unlucky meaning of the omen is apprehended at the very
moment of its occurrence. Then, according to circumstances,
the primitive pursues the course embarked upon with re-
newed courage, or abandons his attempt. In acting thus,
he is only acting in accordance with the data afforded by
experience, among which omens hold high rank ; and his
case is somewhat akin to that of the physician who is guided
in his prescriptions by what the symptoms reveal the state
of the patient to be.
The noting of omens was a custom of ancient times, and
it was specially practised in the Roman republic, where
it was an official institution. Our reading of Latin authors
has familiarized us with the custom. We should be wrong,
however, if we were to admit, without previous examination
of the matter, that what was true of omens in classical times
is necessarily so of the omens of primitive peoples. Our
best method will be to study first of all the omens of the
primitives, as if we knew nothing of those of the ancients
or their theories about them. It may be that on the other
hand the analysis of data collected from primitive peoples
will shed fresh light on the omens of classical races, and help
us to understand them better. If the comparison has not
been anticipated in the course of this survey itself, it
will be all the more pregnant of results.
Let us leave aside for the moment the Greek and Roman
omens, and fix our attention on those which the primitives
note. In order to understand them thoroughly, and to
enter into the state of mind which induces them, it will
be necessary to make two preliminary observations.
i. Omens announce, for instance, that the enterprise
upon which a man is about to engage will succeed or fail,
or indeed they may give warning of a more or less imminent
danger which he had not suspected. In that way they
differ from other revelations constantly perceived by primitive
man. Everything at all out of the common is, as we know,
a revelation to him. Every accident is a revelation, for
there is nothing fortuitous, and the slightest departure
from ordinary occurrence shows that occult forces are at
work. But such revelations most frequently relate to
the past. They make known, for example, that magical
practices have been exercised upon a certain person, that
taboos have been infringed, that the dead are dissatisfied
because their wishes have been disregarded, etc. Such
omens are but one species of a genus that contains many
others, and these are the revelations relating to future
events. As such, they are of capital importance, since
the future is still a matter of contingency, and the knowledge
of the past is important to the primitive mainly because of
its bearing on the present moment, or on the future.
We know, however, that the primitives' minds do not
represent time exactly as ours do. Primitives do not see,
extending indefinitely in imagination, something like a
straight line, always homogeneous by nature, upon which
events fall into position, a line on which foresight can
arrange them in an unilinear and irreversible series,
and on which they must of necessity occur one after the
other. To the primitive time is not, as it is to us, a kind
of intellectualized intuition, an " order of succession."
Still less is it a homogeneous quantity. It is felt as a
quality, rather than represented. If two events are due
to succeed each other at a certain interval of time, the
primitive certainly does perceive the second as being re-
latively future to the first, but he does not clearly distinguish
the intermediary conditions which separate them, unless
indeed (which rarely happens), these points should be of
exceptional interest to him. In short, a future event, as
a rule, is not situated at any particular point on the line
of futurity ; it is vaguely represented and felt as something
to come.1
2. This mental peculiarity in primitives is, as we have
seen, connected with their habitual consideration of a
causality which is of mystic type. If to them the line of
time does not prolong itself indefinitely in the direction
of the future, as it does to us ; if on the contrary it stops
short almost at once, it is because it is not subtended by
the interlinked chain of events formed by antecedents and
consequents. Primitive mentality does not trouble to
ascend or descend the series of conditions which are them-
selves conditioned. Their mentality, like ours, starts as
a rule from the direct data afforded by the senses, but it
immediately abandons what we call objective reality, in
order to try and discover the mystic cause, the occult in-
visible power manifested by a change in the sense-impression.
Very often, indeed, this occult power is indicated to it in
advance by the preconnections between its representations.
The lack of capacity to 'conceive of a future which is regu-
larly arranged, and indifference to the search after secondary
causes, are but two aspects of the same mental condition.
Hence arise the capital importance and the peculiar
function of omens in the life of primitives. To minds
like ours, accustomed to perceive a fixed order in nature,
to reckon upon and deal with this order, to make their
hopes and fears depend on it, what can omens be ? Merely
1 This is one of the principal reasons for that " lack of foresight " so
often observed and deplored by those who study uncivilized peoples. It
is undoubtedly also due to other causes of a social and economic order ; but
it proceeds mainly from the mental habits of primitives. They have but
a confused notion of future time, as their languages show, for these are
relatively lacking in expressions relating to degrees of futurity. Hence arises
a kind of myopia which prevents them from clearly locating what is a little
way ahead, and this evidently is not conducive to foresight, even were they
otherwise inclined that way.
signs indicating beforehand what this order of Nature will
assuredly bring about by virtue of that determinism which
regulates the series of cause and effect. Supposing these
signs did not occur, or if they did occur and nobody should
see or notice them, there would be no change in the events,
the effects would be the same, provided the causes still
obtained. Omens therefore remain something outside the
series of natural phenomena. But as these series are often
very long and complicated, and our power of rational fore-
sight is very weak, we like to imagine that a friendly power
lifts the veil shrouding the future, and straightway shows
us the end of the series. It is a sort of gracious compliance
which satisfies our impatience to know, and it does not
change or modify any of the conditions.
Primitive mentality, however, is not thus equilibrated
by the conception of a fixed order of the universe. The
type of causality which it habitually conceives is quite
different. Consequently, for the primitive omens will assume
a different importance. As the manifestations of mystic
and occult powers, which alone are causes, they play an
essential part in the production of that which they announce.
It is not their only function to reveal what will happen ;
what they reveal would not take place without them. The
future which the omens predict being felt as direct and
real, they are felt to determine it at the time when they
manifest it. Here the law of participation intervenes,
and the abstract analysis of this mental process could make
it entirely intelligible only by misrepresenting it. It is
far better to let the facts speak for themselves, interpreting
them by the light of the preceding observations.
II
The custom of noting omens and regulating conduct
by them is met with in many uncivilized peoples. But
lowhere does it seem to be more fully developed than among
Le Dayaks and most other native tribes of Borneo. It
here that we shall find the most favourable conditions
>r the study of omens. The evidence at our disposal is
ibundant, and it is usually concordant, while some of it,
notably that of Perham and Nieuwenhuis, is extremely
valuable.
Perham has ably demonstrated the authority recognized
as belonging to omens, and the power attributed to them
by native tribes. " This involved system of life is thoroughly
believed in as the foundation of all success. Stories upon
stories are recounted of the sicknesses and of the deaths
that have resulted from disregard of the omens. You
may reason with them against the system, but in the co-
incidences which they can produce for them they have a
proof positive of its truth ; and to them an accidental
coincidence is more convincing than the most cogent
reasoning. ... All the cases in which the event has
apparently verified the prediction are carefully remembered,
whilst those in which the omen has been falsified are as
quickly forgotten." l
This selection of theirs, which is made quite unconsciously
and in all good faith, is facilitated by the fact that " this
system ... is most elaborate and complex, involving un-
certainties innumerable to all who are not fully experi-
enced in the science, and the younger men have constantly
to ask the older ones how to act in the unexpected coin-
cidences of various and apparently contradictory omens." a
There can be no question here of entering upon an ex-
position, however brief, of this system and the casuistry
which it induces. Suffice it to say that omens for all the
circumstances of life, whether individual or social, are
furnished by seven different birds, besides a certain number
of animals (the stag, moose-deer, gazelle, and armadillo),
three kinds of insects, the lizard, bat, pythcii, cobra, and
sometimes also the rat. " All these creatures may afford
omens in different ways, and consequently, inasmuch as
they have this power, they are called birds (burong) ;
obtaining omens from them is called beburong." Omens are
derived from the flight of birds, the cries of animals, the
direction whence they come or which they follow, and so
on. ... In this respect the similarity to the Roman
auguries is most striking.
1 Rev. J. Perham, quoted by Ling Roth : The Natives of Sarawak, i.
p. 195- J Ibid., i. p. 191.
Many witnesses affirm that in default of favourable
omens or in face of sinister ones, an enterprise will not be
undertaken, or, if already begun, will be abandoned. For
instance, " the Kenyah of Tanah Putih wished to make use
of our stay to build a boat. But on entering the forest
(to fell a tree) they met a hisit (bird) which whistled to the
left of them, and they turned right about. Half an hour
afterwards they returned and felled a tree, but at the moment
it fell they again perceived an unfavourable augury.
They left the tree lying, and gave up all idea of their boat.0 1
In the same way, from the very first moment of starting
a journey, the omens must be favourable, or else it will
be abandoned. " Their attitude seemed really inexplicable
to me, but I was immediately told that there could be no
question of our starting, seeing that one of their omen birds,
a hisit moreover, had just flown over the house and had
even entered by the roof. That was the most fatal sign
of all for the beginning of a journey ; therefore it would
be necessary to observe a melo njaho (a general taboo)
for four days, and then study the birds again. . . ." 2
The more difficult or dangerous the enterprise, the greater
the need of favourable omens. M They tell me that several
villages wished to take part in this journey, about five
hundred men in all, but it was necessary for each village
to study the birds on its own account. For an expedition
of this kind they did not think it wise to be satisfied with
less than ten different favourable auguries. Since most
of the natives found something or other unfavourable in
the series, they were obliged to retrace their steps/' 3
If the decree which the omens yield is thus supreme, it
is not only on account of their being considered infallible
predictions. The reason goes deeper yet. A favourable
omen is a positive support with which one cannot dispense.
It does not simply announce success ; it secures it. It
is an indispensable guarantee for it, a sine qua non. It is
not enough that there should be no unfavourable augury ;
it is absolutely necessary that favourable ones should
present themselves. Wanting these, nothing can be done,
1 A. W. Nieuwenhuis : Quer dutch Borneo, ii. p. 441.
1 Ibid., i. p. 417. 3 Ibid., ii. p. 425.
even should doing nothing prove disastrous. Thus, before
beginning to sow the seed, it is absolutely essential to have
heard one particular bird on the right, or to have seen
another on the left, etc. If it were only a question of being
informed whether the harvest would be good, one might
resign oneself, faute de mieux, to work on in uncertainty,
especially when time is pressing, and the season for sowing
will soon be over. Nevertheless, the natives will not begin
as long as the necessary auguries are not forthcoming, and
this is because the bird omens of themselves have a magic
virtue which assures a good harvest at the same time as
they predict it. If these omens have not made their appear-
ance, neither will the good crop.
Perham's evidence on this point is very explicit. " It
may possibly require a month to obtain all those augural
predictions which are to give them confidence in the result
of their labours. The augur has now the same number
of twigs or sticks as birds he has heard, and he takes these
to the land selected for farming, and puts them in the ground,
says a short form of address to the birds and Pulang-gana,
cuts a little grass with his parang, and returns. The magic
virtue of the birds has been transferred to the land." «
It is because the magic virtue of the birds is indispensable
to the fertility of the soil that the natives are obliged to
await their good pleasure before beginning to cultivate.
The following fact is no less significant : " When visiting
the sick, birds on the road are desired, as possessing some
power for health. And here I may mention another way
of communicating the virtue of the good omen to the object.
When a Dayak hears a good bird on his way to a sick friend,
he will sit down and chew some betel-nut, sirih leaf, lime,
tobacco and gambier for his own refreshment, and then
chew a little more and wrap it in a leaf and take it to his
friend ; and if the sick man can only eat, it will materially
help the cure, for does it not contain the voice of the bird,
a mystic elixir of life from the unseen world ? " 2
The Dayak therefore not only brings the sick man the
assurance that he will recover, but at the same time he
1 H. Ling Roth : Natives of Sarawak, i. p. 192.
* Ibid., i. pp. 194-5-
provides him with a valuable remedy, carefully procured,
and derived from the magic virtue of the bird. " The
burong malam is an insect, so called because it is generally
heard at night ; it is specially sought after on the warpath
as the god of safety and victory. It is altogether a good
genius as the nendak is among the birds. And in farming
it is equally valued. A man heard it on one occasion in
a tree on his farmland, late in the morning, and dedicated
an offering to it at the foot of the tree, which was afterwards
regarded as sacred and was not felled with the rest. And
he had his reward in an abundant harvest." l
It is evident that the insect is not treated like a messenger
bringing good news, but like a power, almost a divinity,
whose continuance of favour is sought. The tree is spared,
because by a sort of participation the good influence of
the insect which rested upon it has passed into it. The
tree is now impregnated with this virtue, and it, in its
turn, impregnates the Dayak's land.
" When travelling on the river the Kenyahs hope to
see Isit (the spider-hunter) fly across from left to right as
they sit facing the bow of the canoe. When this happens
they call out loudly : ' O Isit, on the left hand ! Give us
long life, help us in our undertaking, help us to find what
we are seeking, make our enemies feeble !' They usually
stop their canoes, land on the bank, and then making a small
fire, say to it : ' Tell Isit to help us.' Each man of the party
will light a cigarette in order that he may have his own
fire, and will murmur some part at least of the usual for-
mulas." a This invocation is also a prayer, and undoubtedly
it is to the bird itself that the Kenyah addresses it.
It will not surprise us therefore to find Perham writing
of a bird cultus. " The object of the bird cultus is like
that of all other rites : to secure good crops, freedom
from accidents and violence and diseases, victory in war,
and profit in exchange and trade, skill in discourse, and
cleverness in all natural craft. I say bird cultus, for it
rises from observance of omens into invocations and worship
1 Rev. J. Perham : " Sea Dayak Religion," Journal of Straits Branch of
Asiatic Society, No. 10, p. 232 (191 1).
* Hose and MacDougall : The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, ii. pp. 58-9.
of birds. . . ." (Here follows a lengthy extract from a
Dayak hymn.) "The birds are here contemplated as in
company with the Dayak, ordering his life and giving effect
to the labour, and the invocation and the offering are to
impetrate their favour. Another function in which the
cultus of these winged creatures comes out distinctly is
the festival which is described as mri burong makai, giving
the birds to eat, that is, giving them an offering. It may
be said to be a minor festival in honour of Singalang-Burong,
and of his sons-in-law, the omen spirit birds." 1
These are not the ordinary birds we know. Even if
we conceive of them as endowed with mystic powers, our
idea of them does not in any way correspond with that
formed by the Dayaks. We cannot fail to perceive, first
and foremost, their objective characteristics in the image
our minds form of them. We visualize the characteristic
shape of their bodies, their wings, beaks, movements on
the ground and in flight, and so on ; and on these we
superimpose the idea of their mystic properties. But to
the Dayak's mind these properties, which he considers
of incomparable importance, conceal all the others. In
the omen bird he sees first of all the sacred being, the
mystic power upon which his lot depends. Here we find
that special form of abstraction which I have described
elsewhere,2 a form for which there is scarcely any analogy
in our thought, which is primarily conceptual.
" These birds," says Perham, " are forms of animal
life possessed of the spirit of certain invisible beings above
and bearing their names" (this is a significant trait, for the
name is not merely a designation ; the identity in the
name implies an actual participation, an identity of being),
" so that when a Dayak hears a beragai, for instance, it is
in reality the voice of Beragai, the son-in-law of Singalong
Burong ; nay more, the assenting nod or dissenting frown
of the great spirit himself." 3
To minds like ours it is one of two things. Either the
birds are the mouthpiece of invisible beings whose will
1 H. Ling Roth : The Natives of Sarawak, i. pp. 196-7.
2 Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures, pp. 124-8.
3 H. Ling Roth : Natives of Sarawak, i. p. 200.
they make known, and from whom they are distinct, or else
they are the incarnation of these invisible beings, who have
in this way made themselves perceptible to the senses.
These two incompatible ideas cannot both be true, and we
must choose between them ; but the Dayak does not find
any difficulty in admitting them both at once. In his
representations the one does not exclude the other. He
has a direct understanding of certain participations which
relegate logical exigencies to the second place. To him,
" to be " in this sense means " to partake of the same essence."
The birds are invisible beings from on high, just as the
Bororo of Brazil are araras (red parrots).1
Ill
Hence it is quite natural that to the Dayak idea sacred
birds should not only announce events, but should also
bring them about. As the mouthpiece of invisible beings,
they predict ; as these invisible beings themselves, they
operate. To them, therefore, prayers and invocations will
be addressed, they will be the objects of worship. This
fact, described, as we have already seen by Perham, has
also been noted in many of the tribes of Borneo by Hose
and MacDougall, but they interpret it differently. They
do not think, as Perham does, that in the natives' eyes the
omen birds really possess the mystic power which controls
events. The proper function of these birds would seem
to be to act merely as the messengers of the gods, and it
is by a kind of abuse and usurpation of the role that more
important powers are attributed to them. M The custom
of approaching and communicating with the gods through
the medium of omen birds seems to be responsible in a large
measure for the fact that the gods themselves are but dimly
conceived, and are not felt to be in intimate and simple
relations with their worshippers. The omen birds seem to
form not only a medium of communication, but also, as it
were, a screen which obscures from trie people the vision of
Ieir gods. As in many analogous instances, the intercessors
Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures, ii. p. 77.
and messengers to whose care the messages are committed
assume in the eyes of the people an undue importance ;
the god behind the omen bird is apt to be almost lost sight
of, and the bird itself tends to become an object of reverence,
and to be regarded as the recipient of the prayer and the
dispenser of the benefits which properly he only foretells
or announces/' *
Hose and MacDougall make frequent references to this
idea. " We think it probable," they say, " that in this
case the Kenyahs have carried further the tendency we
noted in the Kayans to allow the omen birds to figure so
prominently in their rites and prayers as to obscure the
gods whose messengers they are ; and the Bali Flaki (a
kind of hawk) has in this way been driven into the back-
ground, and more or less completely taken the position
of a god whose name even has been forgotten by many
of the Kenyahs, if not by all of them." 2
Elsewhere, too : " Although the Kenyahs thus look to
Bali Flaki to guide them and help them in many ways, and
express gratitude towards him, we do not think that they
conceive of him as a single great spirit as some of the other
tribes tend to do ; they rather look upon the hawks as
messengers and intermediators between themselves and
Bali Penyalong, to whom a certain undefined amount of
power is delegated. No doubt it is a vulgar error with
them, as in the case of professors of other forms of belief,
to forget in some degree the Supreme Being, and to direct
their prayers and thoughts almost exclusively to the sub-
ordinate power, which, having concrete forms, they can
more easily keep before their minds. They regard favour-
able omens as given for their encouragement, and bad omens
as friendly warnings. We were told by one very intelligent
Kenyah that he supposed that the hawks having been so
frequently sent by Bali Penyalong to give them warning,
had learnt how to do this of their own will, and that some-
times they probably did give them warning or encourage-
ment independently without being sent to them." 3
1 Hose and MacDougall : The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, ii. pp. 9-10 (191 2) ;
cf. ii. p. 75.
» Ibid., ii. p. 15. 3 Ibid., ii. pp. 57-8.
The interpretation suggested by Hose and MacDougall
for the fact that they themselves have noted makes an
ingenious hypothesis, and the analogy they bring forward
may make it appear probable. More than once, indeed,
it has happened that a divinity has paid the price of his
remoteness, and has found himself supplanted as an object
of worship by mere intermediaries who are nearer to men,
more familiar with them, and more accessible to their
imagination. But are we to conclude from this general
remark that such an evolution has taken place in the natives
of Borneo ? If the omen birds of Borneo began by being
nothing but messengers and intermediaries, Hose and
MacDougall do indeed explain how it is they have become
powers which are invoked and adored on their own account.
But the precise question to determine is whether this trans-
formation has ever taken place, and whether the functions
of omen birds have ever been other than they are to-day^
Has any other witness ever explicitly presented them as
messengers and nothing more ? Hose and MacDougall do
not maintain such to be tjie case, and nothing in Perham's
report leads us to imagine it. Neither Nieuwenhuis nor
other investigators thoroughly worthy of belief say anything
of the sort. The hypothesis seems more or less venture-
some. It appears to have been suggested by the well-known
tendency to discover in the mentality of inferior races
the processes which we observe in our own.
Finally — and this is a point which again controverts
the Hose-MacDougall hypothesis — in Hardeland's excellent
grammar of the Dayak languages, we find that omens are
considered as persons. " The Dahiang omens furnished by
birds, snakes, etc., are personalities (biti) to the Dayaks.
They have their abode in the sea of clouds." x They are
then blended with those " invisible beings from on high "
of which Perham speaks.
When an important enterprise is in question it is necessary,
as we have already seen, to obtain a great number of favour-
able omens — omens which are themselves highly important,
and which proceed from the highest of the mystic powers.
K1 A. Hardeland : Grammatik der Dayakschen Sprache, p. 368.
If there should not be a sufficient number of these, and of
the class required, must the enterprise be abandoned ?
To avoid such an extreme measure, the natives of Borneo
try to influence these powers. The means which they set
in motion are themselves naturally of a mystic character.
Frequently a whole series of rites, ceremonies and in-
hibitions will be indispensable. For instance, it may be
a question of deciding which of the Kayan fields shall be
cultivated in any particular year. " If, during three days,
no evil omens have been observed, there is sufficient en-
couragement therein to proceed to the last stage of felling
the heavy timber, and to incite the entire household to
co-operate in the search for further requisite auguries. . . .
All the families remain secluded in a long veranda, or in
their small private rooms, and sit all day long quite still,
smoking and talking ; not a soul is allowed to leave the
house, or at most to go further than the bank of the river,
excepting two men designated as the laki-niho (hawk-men),
whose duty it is to look for a hawk called niho. While
these hawk-men are engaged in this search, no one may
call them by their true names ; even an accidental infringe-
ment of this rule is punished by a fine. ... It is the custom
of some households for the laki-niho not to return to the
house during the whole three days' search for omens ;
at such times they build in the jungle, near the clearing,
a small hut which they indicate to be permantong (taboo)
by putting up outside it two poles . . . whereon the bark
is stripped ... at intervals." 1
The choice of two men specially engaged in the search
for sacred birds, the precautions of which they are the object,
the inhibitions to which they have to submit, very closely
recall the ceremonies customary in New Guinea (Wanigela
River)2 to assure success in the hunting of dugong. The
similarity of the processes employed permits us to conclude
that the ends pursued are the same. The natives of New
Guinea hope in this way to exercise a magical influence
on the dugongs, that they may make their nets safe and
1 W. H. Furness : The Home Life of the Borneo Head-hunters, pp. 161-4
(1902).
* R. E. Guise: "On the Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the Wanigela
River, New Guinea," J.A.I., xxviii. p. 218.
guide the boats from which they harpoon. The Kayans
in the same way believe that they can exercise a mystic
influence on hawks which will induce them to appear and
furnish favourable omens, that is, to give the help without
which it would be useless to try and cultivate the soil.
Should one of these omens be forthcoming, the native
immediately thanks the bird, who then becomes in his
eyes not only the herald, but also the author, of the benefit
thus announced. This is a thanksgiving which natives
never neglect. " As soon as one of these favourable omens
is seen, the hunters build a fire, a signal to the birds and
animals, conveying thanks for their services." «
"As we rounded the turn of the river we came to a
sudden pause. The advance guard of the five canoes had
hauled up to the shore. On a narrow sandy bank an excited
crowd of warriors were kindling a fire and putting up poles
and arches of sticks cut along their whole length into
curled shavings — a bird of good omen had been seen on
the right side ! ... The fire, an unfailing messenger from
men to the omniscient Omen-givers, now announced to
the birds that their favour was greatly appreciated." *
"That morning we saw on a branch projecting over
the river a beautiful bird called burong papu by the natives.
. . . It is . . . one of the birds whose appearance is con-
sidered a good omen by the Dayaks, especially if they are
starting for a . . . head-hunting expedition. But to meet
it is always a sign of good luck, and my Dayaks asked me
to allow them to stop a little while in token of respect, to
which I readily consented. They stopped rowing, and
remaining a few minutes quite still with their paddles lifted,
and then cheerfully resumed their labour." 3
Dr. Nieuwenhuis had an opportunity of observing the
same thing. " Quite close to us, on the right, they heard
the cry of the isit. The bird was thus predicting a successful
journey. In conformity with custom, Kwing Iran had
to disembark and smoke a cigarette." 4 (The smoke carries
the native's thanksgiving to the bird.)
1 W. H. Furness : Borneo Head-hunters, p. 4.
■ Ibid., p. 78.
3 O. Beccari : Wanderings in the Forests of Borneo, pp. 328-9 (1904).
« A. W. Nieuwenhuis : Quer durch Borneo, i. p. 351.
IV
The facts just recorded and examined shed a good deal
of light on the nature of omens. The signs thus given by
birds or certain animals are not only indications, warnings,
announcements of what is about to happen. They are at
the same time the causes of them. In these birds and
animals the primitive's mind perceives mystic powers upon
which the events they foretell depend. Does the power to
produce these events belong to them wholly and as of right ?
Are they alone the vehicles of it ? Are they to be considered
as transmitting agents, themselves possessing a portion of
the power while exercising the influence they represent ?
These are questions which the primitive does not ask himself
in any clear and precise fashion, and questions which, if
asked, he would not answer in any uniform way.
There is no reason to suppose that representations of
this kind are necessarily identical everywhere. In pro-
portion to the degree of development attained by a people,
the notions of religion received from neighbouring groups,
or from conquered or conquering races, the idea of individu-
alized deities will be more or less prominent, and the birds
or animals which furnish omens will appear more or less
distinctly as the ministers or messengers of these gods.
Hose and MacDougall, as well as Nieuwenhuis, have pointed
out differences in this respect between the tribes in Borneo
itself.
Without denying the variations which necessarily result
from the diversity of social structure, we may affirm that
the more we find, in any given uncivilized race, the characters
peculiar to primitive mentality, the more distinctly will
its omens present the features we have stated above. The
bird or animal furnishing them is not invoked simply as
the bearer of good tidings ; it is besought, adored, and
thanked as the dispenser of gifts which are indispensable
and which can be procured from it alone. To a mind of
this kind, therefore, the omen is not a mere sign, it is at
the same time a cause. Or, to put it more clearly, in such
circumstances the mind does not differentiate between sign
and cause. Perhaps it has no notion of a sign which is
purely a sign, at any rate when the realities of the invisible
world enter in any degree into its representation. Un-v
doubtedly, certain primitives are very well able to turn
natural signs to account. Very often, for instance, if it
is a question of recognizing the scarcely perceptible tracks
made in the ground by a special animal or person, if it is
a case of prognosticating a change of weather, and so forth,
natives have amazed Europeans by their sagacity. But
then we are dealing with connections which have been made
familiar to them through experience, education, and con-
siderations of practical utility. Then they make use of
a memory which is often " phenomenal," and apply a degree
of attention which is all the more powerful because it has
few other objects. But when it becomes a question of signs
which manifest the presence of mystic forces, their mental
orientation is absolutely different. The signs take on a
mystical significance. It is no longer possible to distinguish
between " sign " and " cause." Omens are an excellent
example of this, and unusual circumstances, such as we
have already treated of, form others.
Which of these two elements is it that predominates
in the eyes of the primitive ? The omen predicts and
produces the event of which the bird is the herald and the
author. But does it predict it because it produces it ?
Or, indeed, as is generally believed, does it seem to produce
it because it predicts it ? In such a case the illusion would
be the result of a well known psychological law ; when the
master is too far off, and cannot be readily imagined, the
ministers who interpose themselves, and who are in evi-
dence, receive the homage primarily intended for him. If
we are guided by our own experience, this latter conjecture
would seem natural enough. But it does not appear to tally
with the mental experience of the primitive, for to him
prediction is not in fact differentiated from production.
We have many proofs of this besides those we have found
in omens, properly so called. Thus, with the Indians of
New France, " from what we have told them about solar
and lunar eclipses (of which they stand very much in awe)
they imagine that we govern them ; they think we know
everything that is about to happen, and that we arrange it
With this idea in mind they apply to us to find out whether
their crops will be good, to know where their enemies are,
and in what force they will attack." 1
" In Kamchatka the natives thank the wagtails for
the spring and summer because they think these birds
bring the seasons with them/' * These wagtails are also
omen birds, and to them is attributed the power to produce
the spring they announce. All the circumstances of this
kind, of which there are a great many, are easy to interpret
when we refer them to the type of causality familiar to
primitive mentality. In default of any idea of the causal
relation of antecedent and consequent, the transition from the
invisible mystic power to its visible effects is a direct one.
The Indians have no idea of the astronomical conditions
upon which the solar or lunar eclipses depend. But they
know that white people are mighty wizards, whose power
cannot be measured ; why should not their sorceries be
exercised on the sun and moon ? In fact, the missionaries
do predict the precise day and hour of the eclipses. How
could they do this, if they did not cause them ? To com-
prehend a prediction which is merely the knowledge of
an event about to occur, it is necessary to have been able
to conceive the concatenation of secondary causes which
culminates in the event appearing at a given time and
place. But if there is no notion of this sort at all, it is
very difficult to imagine that he who can predict is not he
who produces, except in a case where the mystic powers
have confided their intentions. A similar mental process
must have been employed in the case of a woman in South
Africa, who was accused of sorcery and threatened with
death because she had nursed very carefully, and cured,
a certain disease. It had been concluded that it was she
who had caused it. How could she have known how to
make it disappear if she had not been the one to make it
come ? Directly it becomes a question of mystic agency,
knowledge is not differentiated from power, and power is
the condition of knowledge.
The Hose-MacDougall hypothesis already recorded was
* Relations des JSsuiles, xvii. p. 118 (1639-40). (Le Jeune.)
a G. W. Steller : Beschreibungen von dem Lande Kamtschatha, p. 280.
therefore not merely gratuitous ; it presented the case
as exactly contrary to its real bearing. It is not because
the sacred birds announce events that the natives end by
believing that they produce them ; on the contrary, as
Perham clearly perceived, the natives believe that the
birds make the success or failure of the undertakings, and
that is why omens are infallible signs of what will happen.
Thus omens are at once predictions, promises, and guarantees.
They may be trusted, because the birds or animals to which
they are due have shown through them their goodwill
and their favour at the same time as their prophetic power.
In the acts of thanksgiving addressed to them, the gratitude
of the natives is not given to the heralds of good tidings
merely, but first and foremost to the protecting powers who
assure the success of their undertakings.
Thus, to the primitive mind, the omen is primarily a
cause, but at the same time it is a sign because it is a cause.
As the characteristics peculiar to his mentality grow pro-
portionately weaker, the mystic type of causality ceases
to dominate it almost entirely, time and space come to be
felt less as qualities, and realized more as ideas, and finally,
the attention fastens more and more closely upon the objective
series of cause and effect. By an inevitable consequence
the omen tends to conform to these changes of idea. It
becomes more and more of a sign and less and less of a
cause, until at length the primitive no longer understands
how it could ever be a cause.
Between these two extreme positions there are many
intermediate ones. The omen will lose its power little by
little as the mind attaches itself more to the consideration
of secondary causes. It will become more and more restricted
to its function as a sign by which is revealed, not the agency
of a mystic power any longer, but the event in which a
given series of cause and effect is to culminate. Neverthe-
less, one mental habit does not disappear entirely and all
of a sudden in presence of another which tends to take
its place. On the contrary, both are in existence for some
time before their incompatibility is discovered. It may
even happen that the old custom is not entirely superseded
by the new. The French peasant, for instance, knows in
a general but superficial way what climatic, physical, and
chemical conditions are necessary to secure an abundant
harvest. He will none the less continue to believe it
to be due also and above all to the goodwill and favour
of mystic powers. He doubtless no longer imagines their
agency to be a direct one, or as independent of time or space,
nor does he consider it in any way unique. But he still
attributes to these powers ability to direct the chain of
events as they desire.
It is thus that omens continue to possess a certain value,
although they are no longer recognized as possessed of a
causality of their own. They remain signs of what will
happen. If they no longer produce it, they still announce
it; and if they announce it as accredited messengers, they
still participate in the respect inspired by powers whose
intentions and decrees they make known. At this stage
the study and the interpretations of omens still preserve
a religious character. At a subsequent period this respect
degenerates into superstition. The good man who is so
annoyed at having seen a spider this morning, because a
spider is " a sign of bad luck," does not believe that the
spider will cause the bad luck it foretells. He is merely
annoyed with it for announcing it. Into this resentment
there enters a lively residue of the old idea of the omen,
when it was both sign and cause, and " sign " because
"■ cause." Such signs as these are divested of their causality
little by little, but as long as they remain really signs, some
remnant of their earlier mystic power remains attached
to them.1
1 On this point the missionary Jett6 utters a significant statement.
" Omens," says he, " as observed by our Ten'a, imply an obscure idea of
causality, inasmuch as the omen is taken not merely as foreboding what
is going to happen, but as being in some measure instrumental in bringing
it about. The same is true, as observation shows, of the omens observed
by superstitious whites ; for in their case, as well as in that of our savages,
it is taken for granted that the avoidance of the omen averts the calamity.
A sea-captain, for instance, who takes care not to sail on Friday, a guest
who declines to sit the thirteenth at the dinner-table, implicitly assert that
by suppressing the ill-omened circumstance they will avert the forthcoming
misfortune, and evidently establish between the two a relation of cause
to effect, which it is absurd to suppose." — R. F. Jul. Jette : *' On the Super-
stitions of the Ten'a Indians," Anthropos, vi. p. 241.
Absurd, indeed, from the point of view of our mentality, which involves
I a consideration of the determinism of natural phenomena, but not absurd
from the standpoint of prelogical mentality, which is mystical by nature,
and pays no heed to anything but the direct causality of occult forces.
Chapter V
OMENS-(continued)
When the primitive observes an omen that is favourable
he is filled with gratitude. He feels encouraged to take
action, strengthened in his resolve, and sure of success.
He puts forth all his energies, and very frequently, in fact,
he does succeed.
But when he observes an unfavourable one, what will
he do ? Whenever possible, he will refrain from action.
He will not make a start, or, if already en route, he will
return home. He will abandon the enterprise he has begun.
We have seen how the native of Borneo gives up a journey
because the auguries are unfavourable, leaves the tree,
which he had selected for his canoe and felled with great
difficulty, lying on the ground, and so on.
It may happen that renunciation is not always possible.1
If the omen which predicts disaster is encountered when
the travellers are already far from home and near the meeting-
place ; if they have already joined issue with the enemy ;
if their fields are ploughed and their seed sown, what are
they to do then ? A whole system of casuistry has had to
be evolved to meet such cases, and give a favourable inter-
pretation to bad omens, or at any rate to neutralize them.
The native has been obliged to make a plan, or rather a
multiplicity of plans, to overcome them, lest they bring
about the misfortune they announce.
1 It appears as if the search for favourable omens were always obligatory
for those who take the initiative in any undertaking. But if, under the
pressure of circumstances, they have to act at once, they are forced to
abandon it. Nieuwenhuis has noticed this fact. " Before undertaking any
enterprise whatever, the Kenyah seek for good omens as conscientiously
as the Bahau do, but should this search conflict with the needs of the
moment, they venture to disregard the omens. If danger threatens, if, for
instance, the enemy is in ambush in the neighbourhood, the Kenyah no
longer pay attention to omens." — Nieuwenhuis : Quer dutch Borneo, ii. p. 487.
First of all they may consider that the decision arrived
at admits of appeal, and they may seek for a favourable
augury without being discouraged by the fact that the
one that has appeared is of the contrary kind. That is
the simplest thing, and such a plan of action is most fre-
quently adopted. When at length the good omen desired
does present itself, it nullifies those which have gone before ;
therefore they act at once, lest a fresh augury, and this time
an unfavourable one, should make its appearance and
once again enjoin withdrawal. Or again, the fatal omen
may be tested by divination. " The worst of all omens is
a dead beast of any kind, especially those included in the
omen list, found anywhere on the farm. It infuses a deadly
poison into the whole crop, and will kill someone or other
of the owner's family within the year. When this terrible
thing happens, they test the omen by killing a pig, and
examine the appearance of the liver immediately after death.
If the prediction be confirmed, all the rice grown on that
ground must be sold ; and, if necessary, other rice bought
for their own consumption. Other people may eat it, for the
omen only affects those at whom it is directly pointed." l
This last characteristic depends upon the causal relation
implied in the apprehension of the omen being qualitatively
felt in the connection between its expressions, without
at the same time being represented generally. Here we
have one of the many different forms in which the very
slightly conceptual nature of the primitive's collective
representations betrays itself, and it is to be met with in
many inferior races. Thus, in the Upper Congo, " the
landing of a hippopotamus in a town might be an omen of
war for one family, and have no significance for another ;
a flood might be a sign of famine and trouble to one family
and not affect another ; a huge tree floating freely down
river might be an augury to one town of sickness and many
deaths, and be entirely disregarded by another." »
" There is another way," adds Perham, " of escaping
the effects of omens less vicious than the foregoing. Some
1 Rev. J. Perham : " Sea Dyak Religion," Journal of the Straits Branch
of the Asiatic Society, No. 10, pp. 231-2.
* Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the
Upper Congo River," J.A.I., xl. p. 376 (*9io).
men by a peculiar magic influence, or by gift of the bird-
spirits, are credited with possessing in themselves, in their
own hearts and bodies, some occult power which can over-
come bad omens (penabar burong). These men are able, by
eating something, however small, of the produce of the farm,
to turn off the evil prognostications. Anything grown on
it which can be eaten, a bit of Indian corn, a little mustard,
or a few cucumber shoots, is taken by the wise man ; and
he quietly eats it raw for a small consideration and thereby
appropriates to himself the evil omen which in him becomes
inocuous, and thus delivers the other from the ban of the
pemali or taboo."1
This operation throws a strong light on the nature of
the omen. If it were the mere announcement of misfortune
communicated by a superior power, would not the native
first of all address himself to this power and try to induce
it to avert the calamity, or apply to its representatives
if he knew any ? The Dayak does not think of doing that.
To one mystic power he opposes another, superior to it.
The omen is not averted ; it is fought and overcome.
But the most usual method employed, when circumstances
permit of it, is the prevention of the sinister omen from
making its appearance. In order not to hear the cry of
a bird of evil omen, for instance, the natives will make such
a commotion that the bird's cry, even if uttered, will not
be heard by anyone.
" When setting up the posts of a farm or of a house,
they beat gongs and make a deafening noise to prevent
any birds from being heard." 2 Naturally this is after
they have obtained the favourable auguries without which
they would not risk beginning to build a house. " When
we were all seated, the gongs redoubled and trebled their
din, to drown all sounds of evil portent while the rites take
place." 3 Sir Spenser St. John had already noted this
custom. " To hear the cry of a deer is at all times unlucky,
and to prevent the sound reaching their ears during a marriage
1 Rev. J. Perham : "Sea Dyak Religion," Journal of the Straits Branch
of the Asiatic Society, No. io, p. 232.
a Rev. J. Perham, quoted by Ling Roth : The Natives of Sarawak,
i. p. 195.
3 Furness : The Home Life of the Borneo Head-hunters, p. 33.
procession gongs and drums are loudly beaten. On the
way to their farms, should the unlucky omen be heard,
they will return home and do no more work for a day." x
Perham regards practices of this kind as contradictory
He argues that if the Dayaks really believe that the bad
omen exerts a sinister influence on the ceremony that is
taking place, it is not averted in any way by their preventing
the portent from being noticed. The sound of their gongs
and drums cannot hinder the stag from having bayed,
or the isit from having whistled on the wrong side, etc.
To refuse to recognize a fact does not prevent its actually
happening. Although it may not be perceived it neverthe-
less exists, and it produces its usual effect none the less.
But in the first place, that which is contradictory has no
terrors for the primitive mind. We know that it readily
accommodates itself to that, especially when under the
influence of a fairly powerful emotion, and in the circum-
stances we are investigating the Dayaks have a capital interest
in evading bad omens. They have a passionate desire that
such shall not appear.
In the second place, it is not as a herald that the sinister
omen is formidable, but as a cause, a force, or at any rate
the vehicle of a force. Moreover, by virtue of the law of
participation primitives do not clearly differentiate between
a force and its expression. If therefore they succeed in
hindering the latter from conveying the malignant power
to its destined end, if they arrest its course, they also paralyse
it and prevent its efficacy. The power is nullified, just as
we have found it was when a man endowed with special
magic virtue ate a grain of rice grown on the field threatened
by an evil omen. This process therefore is not mere in-
consistency and child's play ; it is an effectual parrying
of the blow. It is a weapon which the Romans did not
fail to employ, to the great dismay of those who recount
the history of divination.2
To evade evil portents all subterfuges are allowable.
For example, " if the hawk appears on the wrong side when
1 Quoted by A. C. Haddon : Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown,
p. 3«6-
■ Bouch6-Leclercq : Histoire de la divination dans I'antiquite, iv. p. 137.
men are paddling a few days away from home and nearing
another village, they immediately turn the boat right round
and pull to the bank and light a fire. By turning round
they put the hawk on the right side, and being satisfied
in their own mind they proceed on their journey as before."1
Such conduct would be silly and childish if the hawk were
simply bringing bad news, if it were merely announcing
what was to happen, for the " trick " played by the Dayaks
would not alter anything. But if the hawk is the vehicle
of a mystic force, a good or an evil one, according to the
direction it comes from, it is not foolish to change this
direction if one can, and make it favourable instead of un-
lucky. As far as the mystic powers are concerned, it is
an operation analogous to that of the engineer who reverses
the steam valve when he desires to go in a contrary direction
to that which he has just been pursuing. The thanks-
givings addressed to the hawk show the earnestness and
the sincerity of the Dayaks, who interrupt their navigation
to be able to light the thanksgiving fire, and who would
not dare to play a prank on the sacred bird.
If at all costs the sinister portent must be prevented
from making its apearance, the natives will try to\iiscover
an infallible method of accomplishing this. Thus " to
perceive bad omens on the very first day of cultivation is
particularly unlucky, for if they are met with on the morning
of that day, rice cannot be cultivated for a whole year ;
only potatoes and maize may be planted. To avoid such
a catastrophe, the native will choose the night hours to
go first to the field which he is to cultivate/ ' *
Here, again, is it a harmless prank which should raise a
smile ? Most assuredly not, to the native's mind. It is
on the contrary a really serious plan, and one that can
entirely paralyse the baneful influences which might pro-
hibit the cultivation of rice for a whole year. It is, as it
were, putting a formidable foe out of action.
If the vexatious event has occurred and seems likely
last, the best thing is to entreat the omen birds to put
an end to it. In a variety of ways the natives try to induce
1 A. C. Haddon : Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, p. 387.
- A. W. Nieuwenhuis : Quer durch Borneo, i. p. 161 ; cf. i. p. 387.
them to pursue a more kindly course. If need be, they
threaten them.
" At the end of five days, during which the freshet
acquired daily and nightly new strength from heavy thunder-
storms, the omen birds, the guides and guardians of these
people, were harangued and alternately cajoled and
threatened. At one time a fruitless attempt was made to
deceive them. The whole party disembarked, and donning
their spears and parangs, made a wide circuit in the jungle,
so as to make the birds believe that the canoes were not
going home, but were on an ordinary hunting expedition.
" Once Tama Bulan, while sitting in our canoe, shook his
fist at a bird perched on a bough near by, and upbraided
it for not causing the rain to cease. When he observed
our interest in the proceedings, his face broke into an em-
barrassed smile, and he poked me in the ribs, and said,
chuckling : ' Tuan does not believe in the birds, does he ?
He thinks Tama Bulan is crazy.' " x
After reading this, it seems difficult to maintain that
the birds' function is merely to announce1 what will
happen. The natives act as if they were persuaded that
the cessation of the rain depends upon the birds.
If the original idea of the omen be such, and to the native
mind it really is an active agent as well as a revelation of
the future, we shall not be surprised to find that nearly
all uncivilized communities manifest a desire to rid them-
selves, whenever possible, of the creature which is the
harbinger of woe. To the Borneo Kayans " all the snake
aman are bad omens, and in the case of a Kayan seeing
batang lima (Simotes octolineatus) he will endeavour to
kill it ; should he fail to kill it, then ' look out ! ' " *
In New Zealand, too, " if a traveller should see a lizard
in the path before him, he would know the creature had
not come there of its own accord, but had been sent by
an enemy as an aitua (evil omen) to cause his death. He
therefore at once kills the reptile, and craves a woman to
step over it as it lies in the path. By this means the evil
omen is averted." 3
1 W. H. Furness : The Home Life of the Borneo Head-hunters, p. 28.
* A. C. Haddon : Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, p. 391.
3 W. H. Goldie : " Maori Medical Lore," Transactions of the New Zealand
Institute, xxxvii. p. 18 (1904).
The expressions used in this recital are very character-
istic. The evil omen is sent'not merely to announce the death
of the native who sees it, but to " cause " it. By killing
the lizard, the blow is warded off. Steller presents things
as somewhat different in Kamchatka. " The natives regard
lizards as spies and emissaries sent by the ruler of the lower
world to seek out men and tell them they are about to die.
Therefore they notice lizards carefully, and when they see
one they spring upon it with their knives and cut it in pieces
so that it may not make any report about them. If it
should escape them they are greatly concerned, and expect
death at any moment, and as this may, indeed, sometimes
happen as the result of imagination, or even as a mere
coincidence, this belief of theirs gains ground." s Here
it would seem as if the lizard were nothing but a messenger.
But if so, why should the native consider himself safe if he
has killed it ? How would the destruction of the messenger
announcing his death prevent that death from taking place ?
This action of his must be explained like that of the Dayak
who beats the drum so that the bird of evil omen may not
be heard. The lizard is no mere bearer of news, any more
than was the bird ; he is the instrument of the power which
is being exerted, and in destroying the instrument the
power is impeded. If the lizard is killed it cannot make
any report about the destined victim, who is henceforward
sheltered from the malevolent force which chose the lizard
as its agent.
In Upper Congo, " the mournful hooting of the owl,
heard at midnight by a villager, is a message that death
is stealing silently towards the huts waiting to select a victim,
and all who hear the call will hasten to the neighbouring
wood and drive the messenger of ill tidings away with sticks
and stones/' 2
The reason for such action, which is also met with
elsewhere, proceeds from what has gone before. The owl is
not merely a messenger ; it causes the death its hooting
announces. By chasing it away, therefore, death is averted.
Conversely, however, by attracting it, disaster would be
1 G. W. Steller : Beschreibung von dent Lande Kamtschatka, pp. 198-9.
2 Glave : Six Years of Adventure in Congoland, p. 91.
brought about, and he who commits a crime of this kind,
if discovered, would be severely punished. " In South
Africa," says Dr. Wangemann, " there is a bird called the
honey-bird, which, when it finds honey and cannot get at
it by itself, calls out until someone pays attention to its
cries. ... If this bird goes into a kraal, the Kafirs regard
it is a great misfortune for the owner. One day a honey-
bird flew right into Umhala's kraal and alighted on his
assegais. That was the signal for a great scare. ' Gasela
has bewitched me,' exclaimed Umhala, and he immediately
summoned all his followers to begin a war. The terrified
Gasela took refuge with the missionaries, who succeeded
in settling the matter amicably," l In spite of all appear-
ances, Umhala believed that he had been " doomed " by
Gasela. The latter might have caused him to die in a
hundred different ways ; he might have " delivered him
over " to an elephant, a lion, a crocodile, or have afflicted
him with some mortal disease, etc. He chose another
agent ; he sent Umhala a bird of evil omen which flew
right into his kraal and alighted on his assegais, and Umhala
felt himself undone. Thus in this case the evil omen,
that is to say the honey-bird, possesses the same mystic
power as the crocodile or lion, to which the victim would
have been " delivered over," would have had.
n
In nearly all uncivilized communities observers have
noted a special type of omen which proves very alarming
to primitives, and determines them to make the most desper-
ate efforts to combat the disaster its appearance seems to
threaten. Such omens are to be found in facts or events
which are unusual, or in individuals who are more or less
teratologics!, like the monstra and portenta of the Romans.
As a rule, these omens are distinguished by a special name.
In (German) East Africa, for example, wuhenu really means
something strange, unwonted, bizarre ; It is the word used
for an omen, when the spirits who desire to produce a certain
effect or kill a certain man send their messengers to announce
* Dr. Wangemann : Die Berliner Mission im Zululande, p. 86.
the fact." l What is to be done when an omen of this kind
appears ? The universal plan is to cancel it as quickly
I as possible. To guard against that which the monster
portends, it must be made to vanish. This would be a
childish absurdity, if the monster were merely announcing
disaster.
" In the Waschamba tribe, if a child presents itself
feet first in childbirth, it is killed." * If a goat is seen to
be devouring its excreta, a fact so extraordinary is the work
of a wizard (utschai), and the animal must be sacrificed. . .
" Again, if a goat in first giving birth has twins, there is
witchcraft in it, and both goat and kids must be destroyed.
. . . Should a dog devour his excreta he must be killed,
for he is the prey of a sorcerer." 3
Hobley has described in some detail how the Kikuyu
of East Africa act in many similar circumstances. I will
quote a few instances only. " If a cow, in grazing, happens
to twist her tail round a tree, she is thahu ; she must be
killed at once. Her owner offers her in sacrifice ; the
older men receive the backbone, and the young warriors the
neck."
" There is a white bird called nyangi ; ... if one is
seen to settle on a cow, and the cow is not killed, the owner
of the cow will be thahu, and will die. The cow must be
killed there and then and the meat divided up. ... no
person belonging to the village must eat of the meat. . . .
The herd of cattle also need to be purified. ... If a cow's
horn comes off in a person's hand, the animal is thahu, and
is slaughtered. ... If a bull or bullock leaves the herd
while it is grazing and comes home alone, and stands out-
side the village digging at the refuse heap with its horns, it
is seen to be thahu, and is forthwith killed by the owner. . . .
If a goat is giving birth to a kid, and the head appears first
and the body is not born quickly, it is said to be thahu and
is slaughtered by the owner. ... If a woman bears twins
the first time she has children, the twins are thahu, and an
1 J. Raum : " Die Religion dcr Landschaft Moschi," Archiv fiir Religiotts-
wissenschaft, xiv. p. 173 (191 1).
1 A. Karasek-Eichhorn : " Beilrage zur Kenntniss der Waschambaa,"
Bassler- Archiv, i. p. 118 (191 1).
3 Ibid., iii. pp. 103-6.
old woman of the village, generally the midwife, stuffs
grass in their mouths until they are suffocated, and throws
them out into the bush. ... If a cow or goat bears twins
the first time, the same practice is observed.' * I
The animal which is thahu on account of the unusual
manner of its birth, or wqich shows itself to be so by some
unwonted and extraordinary, and therefore suspicious,
circumstance ; the child who is born in an unusual posture ;
and finally twin births, are not merely sinister portents
announcing misfortune to be imminent. To the mind of
the East African Bantu, creatures who are thahu are a
menace to their owner, their family, and the whole village.
Either by their state or their actions they betray that they
are imbued with a malevolent principle, a mystic force,
whose influence will be a fatal one, unless some means be
employed to get rid of it by destroying them. " If in the
act of birth the presentation be not normal, or if there should
be a twin birth, it is a terrible misfortune. However this
calamity may happen, a veritable reign of terror ensues ;
everybody flees, for they fear that at the very sight of the
mother the body may begin to swell, and the victim may
die then and there." 2
The same customs, founded on the same beliefs, prevail
in British East Africa. " If a child is born feet foremost,
it is smothered. The reasons given for this practice are
that if the infant is permitted to live, their crops will all
wither up from drought, their cattle will die, and many
other evils befall them." 3
With the Wawangas, " if a fowl lays an egg at night, it
is killed and eaten ; otherwise it is believed that one of
the children in the hut will fall sick." 4
In an island in Lake Victoria Nyanza, " immediately
after their birth twins are placed in a vessel of clay and
exposed in a valley. . . . Children who cut their upper
teeth first must be killed as soon as the fact becomes generally
1 C. W. Hobley : " Kikuyu Customs and Beliefs," J. A. I., xl. pp. 43-5.
* Fulleborn : " Das deutsche Njassa und Ruwumagebiet," Deutsch Ost
Afrika, ix. pp. 353-4.
3 Captain Barrett : " Notes on the Customs and Beliefs of the Wa«
Girama," J. A. I., xli. pp. 22, 32.
« K. H. Dundas : " The Wawanga and Other Tribes of the Elgon
District," J. A. I., xliii. p. 47.
known, otherwise they will be the cause of great disaster
to the village. ... On the other hand, they neither expose
nor kill the aged, infirm, idiots, or even criminals/' z
Among the Hottentots in South Africa, "if hens begin
to crow like cocks, they are caught and killed, or they are
chased till they die. If this is not done, their owner will
assuredly die." 2 "If a goat," says Mackenzie, " climbs
upon the roof of a house, it is speared at once ; it has
' transgressed,' gone beyond what is proper in a goat, and
would bewitch its owner if it were not put to death. ..."
It is the same thing if a cow beats the ground with its tail
during the night. This is a very serious matter. It is
an offence which has got a special designation. The cow
is said to be tiba, and this implies that she is no longer a
mere cow ; she is bewitched, and she only waits her oppor-
tunity to bring disease or death upon her owner or his
household. A man who is rich in cattle would not hesitate
to spear such an animal at once. A poorer man will proceed
with the cow next morning to the missionary or to a trader
and offer her for sale." 3 Here we see that it is no case of
prediction nor of mere announcement of misfortune. The
animal sacrificed has committed an unusual, we might almost
say culpable, act, and by committing it has revealed that
there exists within it a malevolent principle which, for
want of a better term, is called witchcraft (sorcellerie,
Zauber). In order to escape from the fatal effect of this
principle the animal must be killed ; otherwise the village
remains exposed to the gravest dangers.
With his usual clearness and penetration, Junod has
accounted for the conduct of the Ba-ronga and their neigh-
bours in similar circumstances. " The arrival of two or
three infants at a birth is considered by the Ba-ronga a
great misfortune, a stain upon them, on account of which
they must undergo very special rites. ... It is true that
the customs relating to twin births vary in the different
clans. If they are put to death in certain tribes, in others
their arrival is regarded as a piece of good luck. . . . But
1 Franz Paulssen : Rechtsanchauungen der Eingeborenen auf Ukarra,
Bassler-Archiv, i. p. 41 (191 3).
» Th. Hahn : Tsuni Goam, p. 90.
3 J. Mackenzie : Ten Years North of the Orange River, p. 392 (1871).
there is always a certain connection between the birth of
twins and the rainfall." l
In a more recent work, Junod writes : —
M Abnormal children, such as twins, children who have
died before the boha puri rite, in some clans also children
who cut their upper teeth first, partake in this noxious
character. They are a calamity for the whole land, as
they are in connection with the mysterious power of Heaven,
and so they prevent the rain from falling. The great
remedy for the evil, the only means of counteracting its
influence, is to bury these children in wet ground. Should
this not have been done, the chief must order these little
corpses to be exhumed and buried near the river." a
Probably the most fatal sign of all is that which manifests
itself at the teething period. Livingstone has not failed
to remark this. "If a child cuts the upper front teeth
before the lower, it is killed, as unlucky ; this is a widely
spread superstition. When I was amongst the Makolo
in 1859 one °f Sekeletu's wives would not allow her servant's
child to be killed for this, but few would have the courage
to act in opposition to public opinion as she did. In
Casembe's country if a child is seen to turn from one side
to the other in sleep it is killed. They say of any child
which has these defects ' he is an Arab child,' because the
Arabs have none of this class of superstitions, and should
an Arab be near they give the child to him ; it would bring
ill-luck, misfortune (milando) ... on the family." 3 "At
Likwangwa, a royal tomb surrounded by a little village, . . .
I found a child whose upper teeth had come through before
the lower ones. Its father, anxious to save it from the
terrible fate awaiting such children, had hidden it for eight
years. But an enemy had told Kalonga of the circumstance,
maintaining that this child was the cause of all the disasters
and deaths which had occurred in the village. . . . When
I saw the father I told him to bring the child to us as
soon as possible, but alas ! he arrived a few days later in
great distress to tell us that they had strangled his son
1 H. A. Junod : Les Ba-ronga, pp. 412-20.
• Ibid., The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. pp. 296-7.
3 Rev. D. Livingstone : Last Journals, i. pp. 276-7.
and thrown him into the lake." « Another missionary
tells us : "A kinkula inspires almost as much dread in negroes
as a kiva (ghost). They call a child that cuts its upper
teeth first a kinkula, a child of woe. If he were allowed to
grow up, his inevitable destiny would be to bring ruin upon
his whole family. That is why he must be destroyed
mercilessly and immediately. Generally it is old women
who take this duty upon themselves . . . and the custom
is carried on in secret even to this day. ... In other tribes,
those on the eastern side of Lake Nyassa, for instance, twins
are dreaded as being kinkula, and they are killed/' *
On several occasions Major Delhaise observed the same
occurrences in the case of the neighbouring tribes living
in Belgian Congo, and the description he gives tallies with
the preceding ones.
" They call the children whose upper teeth are cut first
kiliba (kiliba- kitabwa), kinkula (kilemba). They are
children of woe ; they are often killed, either by throwing
them into the water, or by exposing them to wild beasts.
The mother herself, shamed at having given birth to such
a monstrosity, carries out the sentence. Sometimes she
employs some old shrew to do it, and occasionally mother-
love wins the day, and the child is kept. Later on it will
be sold into slavery. It is such a child that causes all the
misfortunes that occur in the village, for it has the evil
eye. . . . The father of a kiliba is continually twitted
with the fact, and held up to universal derision for having
begotten such a being." 3 In the immediate neighbour-
hood, among the Wahorohoro, " if the upper teeth make
their appearance first, the mother takes her child to the
bank of the river and leaves it there. In the night it will
be carried off by the wild beasts which come down to drink.
If the mother were to conceal her child, it would be chased,
not only from the village, but from the entire neighbour-
hood, and it could only live where the history of its birth
(sic) was unknown. As in the Wabemba tribe, such a
1 A. and E. Jalla : Pionniers parmi les Marotse, pp. 245-6.
« P. Alois Hamberger : " Nachtrag zu den religiosen Ueberlieferungen
und Gebrauchen der Landschaft Mkulwe," Anthropos, v. p. 803 (1910).
3 Delhaise : Notes ethnographiques sur quelques peuplades du Tanganika
(Wabemba), pp. 8-9.
reprobate is called a kiliba, and superstition attributes
all the misfortunes occurring in the village to his agency.
The natives declare that every time a kiliba loses a tooth,
one of his nearest relatives dies. The father of a kiliba
is keenly ridiculed by the members of his family for having
given them a kiliba as a relative." 1 Finally, in the Warega
people, the infant is no longer immolated, but it is treated
as a pariah. " When the upper teeth appear first, the terrified
wife informs her husband, and he announces the fact to
the whole village. It is a disaster for the village, and the
child is called a dino. The natives at once put up an isolated
hut for the reprobate, for he can no longer live with others,
and he will be solitary for the rest of his life. His food
is prepared separately, and nobody may share his meal.
When grown up he may mingle with the rest of the group,
but he is always derided and abused. It very often happens
that such treatment affects his character, and he becomes
melancholy and misanthropical. Any woman who consents
to live with him must submit to the same fate. The dino
must not touch seed that has been prepared for planting,
for if he does the harvest will be entirely ruined. Neither
can he eat bananas from a plantation in full bearing, or
all the fruit would go bad. In short, he has " the evil
eye." 2
III
A The comparison of the abnormal child with the possessor
of the " evil eye " is informative. Like the jettatore, the
child which has cut its upper teeth first has revealed in
this way that he, too, is the embodiment of a noxious
principle, the effects of which will make themselves felt
by all in his neighbourhood. To protect themselves against
this, he must be destroyed, though in certain tribes it is
sufficient to remove or isolate him. The treatment meted
out to these abnormal children, or to children that are
considered such, seems to Europeans horrible and unnatural
in its cruelty. But to the native mind there is no cruelty
1 Delhaise: Notes ethnographiques sur quelques peupiades du Tanganika
(Wabemba), p. 34.
■ Ibid., p. 154.
I in it. In their eyes it is merely a measure undertaken for
the public safety, for if the malevolent principle is not put
out of action, disease and death will be let loose. There
can be no hesitation therefore, but rather than kill the
I unfortunate infant it will be given to the Arabs. It will
be all right if the social group is no longer in contact with it.
It may happen that at first nothing reveals the presence
! of this malevolent principle in an individual. His birth
and dentition may both have been normal, and it is only
in the course of time that his true nature discloses itself.
" Among the Kitui section," writes Hobley, " certain persons
are found who are believed to be congenitally unclean and
bearers of ill-luck ; if such a person counted people or
live-stock he would by thus doing bestow ill-fortune, and
the people or stock would probably sicken and die. They
state they have no reason for suspecting a person before-
hand, but if any untoward sickness occurs they are often
apt to pitch upon someone as a scapegoat. The accused
is called up and requested to spit upon the sick person
or beast ; it is believed that this will exorcise the curse/' *
From this description it is not easy to decide whether
it is a question of an abnormality, a jettatore or a witch.
On the one hand, the malevolent principle is considered to be
congenital ; this trait is also met with in other " Jonahs/'
and in abnormal children, those who are " unclean," to
use Hobley's striking expression. But on the other hand,
in the last case quoted the abnormality is not perceptible,
nothing makes it manifest. It remains in the u chrysalis "
state, as it were, until the outbreak of disasters all around
him induce people to suspect that such an individual bears
the cause of them within his personality ; and that is
exactly how the jettatori are recognized.
Finally, when such individuals are required to spit
upon sick people in the hope of curing them, their neighbours
are following the usual course pursued by primitive peoples
to deliver a victim from the power of witchcraft, if it be
still possible. When a wizard has been unmasked and
compelled to confess, he is taken to the man whom he has
bewitched and compelled to undo his mischief. The
■ C. W. Hobley: Ethnology of the A-Kamba, p. 165.
transition from the abnormal infant to the sorcerer, as well
as from the thahu animal to the sorcerer, is an unconscious
one.
Thus a strong light is thrown upon the nature of these
monstra and also upon that of witchcraft. To understand
how the primitive's mind instantly and completely identifies
abnormality with witchcraft, we must modify our ideas of
both very considerably. This point may be regarded as
achieved, and it will further our comprehension of the
ordeal.1
Similar facts have also been noted in West Africa, among
negroes who are not Bantus. On the Upper Niger, for
instance, " a cock crowing at an unusual hour of the night
means death in the family, unless the cock be immediately
killed." 2 " If it happens," says Major Leonard, " that
during childbirth the infant comes out of the womb feet
foremost — the event which is referred to as mkoporo-oko, i.e.
bad or evil feet — it is regarded in the same light as twin-
birth, and the unfortunate mother is accorded exactly
the same treatment." 3
In Togoland, " if a child cuts its upper teeth before the
lower, it is a busu, which means that when grown up it will
see and do all sorts of alarming things." (The German word
used is hexen, which signifies to bewitch.) " That is why
children of this sort used to be sold, or even drowned.
The same course was pursued with children who were
born with teeth." 4 Here the likeness borne by these children
to witches is an explicit one. Their abnormality reveals
their future evil-doing and the power which henceforth
imbues them. In Dahomey, purifying rites were considered
to meet the case. " Similar ceremonies " (i.e. to those
carried out in the case of twins) " took place for the agosou,
infants which were born feet first, and the ouensou, infants
born head first, but with upturned faces." 5 Among the
Ashantis, the child who was suspect was he who betrayed any
« Vide infra., chap, viii., p. 249.
■ A. F. Mockler-Ferryman : Up the Niger, p. 141 (note 4) (1892).
3 Major A. G. Leonard : The Lower Niger and its Tribes, p. 461 (1906):
4 P. Franz Wolf : " Beitrag zur Ethnographie der Fo-Neger in Togo,"
Anthropos, vii, p. 86 (191 2).
s A. Le Herisse : L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, p. 235.
OMENS ■ 157
malformation in the hand. " . . . . If a child is born luckily,
that is, without any excrescence on the little finger, for this
would be considered a sixth finger, and would condemn him
to death." « In Madagascar " at this very time, January
1907, people are whispering that a monster, half ox and
half child, has been born in the Ankeramadinika forest,
and that all sorts of calamities are to be feared in consequence,
and it is hardly worth while to make any special effort or
to work hard. . . . Even last year, the Bara of the south
buried alive children who were born on Thursdays." 2
All these facts proclaim a practice which prevails through-
out the world, and not in Africa alone, of getting rid of
children who exhibit certain abnormalities. It exists even
in peoples who are highly developed. We may say in a
general way that there is a desire to eliminate at the outset
those individuals who are not likely to be as healthy and
vigorous as others, and who in their turn would not have
children capable of being defenders of the city. This was
the explanation given in Lacedemonia, and accepted by
the Spartans, whose history is known to us. But assuredly
it was not motives of this kind that gave rise to the custom.
Wherever we find children of tender years, or at birth,
being sacrificed, it is not on account of any physical blemish
which will prevent them from becoming healthy adults ;
but very frequently it is by reason of some mystic defect
which makes them a menace to the social group. The
child who was suffocated or exposed to wild beasts, because
it was born feet foremost, or because it had cut its upper
teeth first, might otherwise be perfectly sound and well-
developed. In vain might it give promise of becoming
a healthy and vigorous member of the social group ; that
would not save it from immediate death ; whilst children
who were puny, but showed no suspicious abnormalities,
were spared, and continued to struggle on as best they
might. If among the adults of an uncivilized community
we find very few, or practically no individuals exhibiting
any physical peculiarities (which is not always the case),
we must not conclude that the others were got rid of at
1 Ramseyer und Kiihne : Vier Jahre in Asanti, p. 157.
1 Missions evangiliques. lxxxii. i. p. 298. (Mondain.)
birth. In these races infant mortality is very high. It
will first of all carry off the children of weakly constitution,
and least capable of resisting disease and unhygienic con-
ditions. But these peoples do not deliberately get rid of
children as abnormalities, except those who for mystic
reasons are considered a menace to the community.
Possibly, too, if we knew exactly which were the children
condemned at birth by the Lacedemonians, we should
find that in the Greek city they were chosen on the same
principle.
The abnormalities presented by man or beast, by the
monstra or the portenta therefore, must be compared with un-
usual and isolated circumstances on the one hand, and on the
other with omens. Like the latter, they not only announce
the future, the event about to happen ; they determine it,
or to put it more precisely, they make it happen. There is
a direct connection between the appearance of the abnormal
child and the misfortunes which it will cause later on,
should it survive. It matters little that these misfortunes
are not to happen for some time ; we know that to the primi-
tive mind a future calamity is felt both prospectively and
as already present in the preconnection which refers it
to the appearance of the abnormal child. And just as the
omen bird by its mystic agency produces the benefits ex-
pected from his song or his lucky flight, so the cock which
crows at the wrong time, or the child who is born with
teeth, is a " harbinger of woe " in the full sense of the word.
His abnormality has revealed the malevolent principle
with which he is imbued. His " transgression " has betrayed
the indwelling of this principle, which is a constant menace
to his own family and to the whole social group.
Chapter VI
THE PRACTICES OF DIVINATION
Of all the direct data which their experience affords, primi-
tives are chiefly interested in those which proceed from the
unseen world, and reveal to them the orders issued by the
mystic powers dwelling therein. The prosperity of the
social group, the health and very existence of each one of
its members, depend at all times on the good or bad in-
fluences exercised upon them. As long as they are uncertain
whether one of these mystic forces may not be effectively
engaged against them, they cannot hope that any enterprise
they undertake will prosper. Hence the need of assurance
that these powers are on their side, and that their venture
will be successful.
How are they to make sure of this ? The unseen powers
do undoubtedly manifest their presence frequently, and the
primitive is given to seeing them everywhere. Many ordinary
occurrences, and nearly all unusual circumstances, bear the
import of revelations to him, and he is always ready with
an explanation of them. Nevertheless, dreams, omens, and
other indications of a like nature may be wanting at the
very moment when most needed ; when, for instance, it
is necessary to come to an important decision or make a
difficult choice. How can he overcome such an impediment ?
To calculate the chances carefully and systematically, and
try to think out what will happen, and make plans accord-
ingly, is hardly the way in which primitive mentality proceeds.
Such a course does not even occur to it. If the primitive
did think of it he would never take the trouble, for he would
consider it useless. In his view events depend upon mystic
powers, and according to their disposal matters will be
arranged. Should they be favourable, he will take action,
and should they disapprove, nothing can be done, and he
must wait, if possible, in the hope of moving them or winning
them over. Above all, it behpves him to find out what
he has to rely on, and if no revelation occurs spontaneously,
it must be induced.
With such a stimulus to urge him forward, the primitive
shows himself remarkably ingenious and fertile in expedients.
Taking the word divination in its widest sense, we may
employ it to designate the sum-total of the direct or indirect
processes which primitive mentality brings to bear on the
discovery of that which interests it so strongly. I shall
first of all examine into those forms of divination which
are interrogatory, and consist of direct questions addressed
to the powers of the invisible world.
Through the agency of the dream the living man com-
municates in the simplest and easiest way with the dead,
and with mystic powers in general. When asleep, his
condition very closely resembles that of a dead man. The
barrier which separates him from the dead in his waking
hours is lowered for a moment, and he sees and hears them,
talks with them, makes demands of them, and receives
theirs. But the dream is not produced at any given time,
nor every time that it is needed. The primitive therefore
will endeavour to induce dreams, and he will succeed in
doing this.
The greater the importance which a community attaches
to its dreams, the more will this method of divining be
employed. The Indians of New France who, according to
a Jesuit father, " make their dreams their god," made use
of this method constantly. When a dream was desired, j
fasting was the ordinary means of supplication. " They
fast in honour (of their gods) when they want to know the
issue of a certain event. I have felt compassion at seeing
some of them, who had a certain combat or hunting ex-
pedition in view, spend seven days in succession, taking
hardly any food, and resolutely continuing in this course
until they had had the vision they desired, or seen a herd
I of elk or a troop of Iroquois in flight, or something of that
kind. A dream of this nature is all the more likely to occur
when the mind is- vacant, and the body exhausted by fasting,
and there is nothing else to think about all day." «
Is it merely in order to ascertain whether they will
succeed that the Indians thus prosecute their fast until
the dream they consider necessary has made its appearance ?
We have already seen with what profound religious fervour
they carry out all that the dream demands of them. We
know, too, that the primitive believes that omens not only
announce but also cause events to happen, and the dream is an
omen. That which the Huron takes so much pains to induce
before he starts out to fight or hunt is therefore something
altogether different from a mere revelation of what will
happen. It promises and guarantees success and victory.
If the Huron does not succeed in seeing in dreams a herd
of elk or deer, it is because, in spite of his fasting, the mystic
essence of these animals remains hostile to him. And if
that be so, what is the good of hunting ? He will not
encounter the prey he desires, for it will remain invisible ;
or if it is perceived, it will not come within range. If, on
the contrary, these animals do appear to the Indian during
his sleep, such a dream is a guarantee that the animals'
mystic essence has relented, and that the hunt will be suc-
cessful. Fortified by this assent, he starts upon his quest.
The divination thus practised by these Indians, in the
form of a dream which they induce, includes both an attempt
to discover whether the success desired will be attained,
and an effort to make sure of it. We can also see in it a
prayer, for these same Indians think that when the mission-
aries pray they are pursuing exactly the same ends as
they themselves are when striving to induce dreams. In
this respect the following story is significant : "As our
little company was waiting till I had finished my office,
the native who was our guide, impatient at my being so
long on my knees in a place remote from the noise of the
hut, approached me, and, believing I had had some revela-
tion, or received the gift of prophecy, begged me in all
seriousness to tell him what was about to befall us that
1 Relations des Jesaites, 1. p. 290 (1666-7).
day. ' You speak to God, you direct the sun's path, you
are a priest, and you are clever, and we must believe that
He who has made everything has granted your prayer ;
tell me, then, whether we shall kill many elks and beavers
to feast you with to-day, after the amount of fatigue and
want you have undergone hitherto.' I was somewhat taken
aback at this speech. ..." (The priest replies by a little
disquisition on the ways of Providence.)
" Entirely taken up with the idea that God spoke
familiarly to priests, this native did not hide his chagrin,
especially when I had told him that I did not know of any
place where we might find beavers, bears, or elks, and that
we must trust ourselves entirely to the care of the Divine
providence. ' Then I,' said he, ' am something more than
a priest, for God has spoken to me in my sleep, and He
has told me that before noon to-day we shall undoubtedly
kill both elks and beavers in abundance, and be able to
feast.'
Thus we can account for the fact that even young
children are made to fast, in the hope of obtaining the
desired dream. " In order to save the trouble of making
a fire, or to husband their food, or to accustom their children
not to eat anything until evening, they make them fast
like dogs, telling them that they will dream of the manitou-
sturgeon, the bear, deer, or something of that kind, and ;
this will enable them to spear the sturgeon or shoot the j
bear ; and if they are not yet old enough to go spearing
or hunting, they (the women) do not hesitate to make them j
fast, assuring them that the hunters and fishers will be
successful if they dream. These little children have an
overwhelming desire to kill some animal or spear some j
fish, whence it follows that if a dreamer once succeeds,
they put all their confidence in the dream." 2 The Jesuit
father here tells us explicitly what it is they want to see I
in the dream induced : it is the " manitou-sturgeon, bear, I
etc." That is what I have called the mystic essence of
the creature, whose acquiescence is indispensable to the
success of the chase. It is not therefore simply a question J
1 P. Le Clerc, recollet : Nouvelle relation de la Gaspesie, p. 375 (19 10). ;
* Relations des Jdsuites, lvii. pp. 272-4 (1672-3).
of divination, as we understand the term, but also of a
request and a prayer, especially if one allows the influence
exerted on the power to which it is addressed to be an
integral element in the idea of the prayer.1
Before playing games of chance, the natives have recourse
to the same process of divination. " There are some who
always fast for some days before playing ; the previous
evening they all meet in a hut and make a feast for the
purpose of finding out what the issue of the game will be.
. . . They used to choose someone who had dreamt he
would win to pass the dish." 2 Thus they fast to try and
dream of what they will win, just as they do to try
and see in a dream their game or their foes ; and a dream
of this nature is equal to the possession of a charm which
will assure success. Listen to this again : "A group of
young men who have blackened their faces" (which is a
war measure) "enters our hut in the evening, telling us they
have come to sleep in the chapel so that God may appear
to them during the night and promise to deliver them from
their enemies." 3 These young men desire to obtain from
the God of the missionaries a favour like that they have
just been asking of the manitou-sturgeon, bear, stag, etc.
The priest does not tell us whether this night of prayer had
been preceded by ceremonies calculated to bring the desired
dreams, but judging from the custom usually followed in
such cases, we shall not be wrong in assuming this to be so.
In order to induce a dream, Indians frequently have
recourse to fasting. " They (the Hurons) believe that
fasting makes their sight extraordinarily acute, and gives
them the power of seeing things which are absent and far
away." 4 There are dreams which mean nothing, and on
the strength of which one would take no risks. The dream
following on a period of fasting has a mystic value. It is,
of necessity, reliable, it is, properly speaking, a vision. In
such a state, the Indian " sees " the people and things of
1 Compare with this a weighty observation made by Codrington. " It
is certainly very difficult, if not impossible, to find in any Melanesian language
a word which directly translates the word ' prayer,' so closely does the notion
of efficacy cling to the form employed." — The Melanesians, pp. 145-6.
J Relations des Jesuites, x. p. 188 (1636). (P. Le Jeune.)
s Ibid., lviii. p. 50 (1672-3).
4 Ibid., liv. pp. 140-2 (1669-70).
the invisible world. He hears these people speak and he
converses with them. Fasting has rendered him able to
receive these visions. It possesses purifying powers, and
(to make use of the expression given by Hubert and Mauss)
it makes him pass over from the profane to the sacred
sphere. It even exercises an influence on the beings of the
unseen world.
Supposing, for example, it is required to obtain, by means
of an induced dream, the information which the Indian
desires more than anything else in the world — the revela-
tion of what is to be his guardian spirit, his personal
totem — this, say the fathers, is the way they " create
the divinity."
" When a child has reached the age of ten or twelve,
his father teaches him, and gives him the instructions
necessary to find out who is henceforth to be his god. First
of all he makes him fast for several days, so that with his
mind free he may the more readily dream when asleep.
For it is then that this chimerical god will reveal himself,
so that all the natives' ingenuity and endeavour are
exercised in an endeavour to see during sleep something out
of the common, which will henceforward hold the place of
god to them." l The essential function of the dream is
to let the young Indian know that a certain mystic power
has consented to become his personal totem, just as it
would reveal that the manitou-elk was willing to allow the
elks to be hunted and caught. This is therefore not a
purely divining process ; it must not be differentiated from
the rites and ceremonies which precede it, and which are
destined to assure its veracity and virtue.
Even to-day, among the North American Indians who
have preserved their original traditions, facts similar to
those related by the Jesuit fathers of the seventeenth century
are to be observed. Here is one, taken from the Hidatsa:
" When my father was about thirty years of age, all the
men of the five villages went to hunt buffaloes. The young
men on this hunt killed the bear whose claws you see here.
My father then thought he had a chance to 'find his god.'
So he asked them to skin it with the paws and skull entire.
* Relations des Jesnites, x. p. 206 (1636). (P. le Jeune.)
He then took off all his clothes. He then pierced the dead
bear's nose with his knife, and put a rope through the hole.
He then had a man pierce the muscles of his back in two
places ; he thrust a stick between and fastened a rope to
the stick so that my father might drag the bear's head and
skin. All day until evening my father dragged the bear's
skin in a lonely place. At evening he came towards camp.
Something caught, as if the bear's skin had been snagged
on something. At the same time he heard a sound like
a live bear, ' sh, sh, sh.' He looked back, and the bear
skin had stretched out with its legs as it lay on the ground,
as if it were alive. He then came back to the camp, and
then the other men released him from the bear skin. That
night he dreamt the bear showed him how to cure sick
people. He was to sing a mystery song, which the bear
taught him, and to take the piece of buffalo-felt and hold
it out towards the sick man, when the sick man would
recover." l
The pain which the Indian Hidatsa voluntarily undergoes
in carrying the bear skin is equivalent to fasting, and both
have the same magical efficacy. A recent observer of the
Blackfeet describes similar occurrences. " When an Indian
desired to know the later course of his life, or to receive
knowledge that would be of value to his tribe, he went
off alone upon the plains, or to a remote region among the
Rocky Mountains to fast and pray, sometimes for many
days, that he might receive a dream or vision. If he was
worthy, a message would be transmitted from the sun,
through some animal, or supernatural being, whose com-
passion had been excited by his fasting and exhausted
condition. The revelation, and with it the gift of power,
generally came in a dream through the medium of one of
the same powerful animals, such as the buffalo, beaver,
wolf, or grizzly bear, which were believed to have super-
natural attributes, or through one of the personified natural
forces, such as the Thunder Chief, Windmaker, etc." a
1 Pepper and Wilson : " An Hidatsa Shrine and the Beliefs respecting it,"
Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, ii. p. 305.
■ W. MacClintock : The Old North Trail, pp. 352-3 ; cf. Dorsey : " Siouian
Cults," Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institute, Report XI,
PP- 392-3.
The Jesuit fathers had indeed noted that the animals
which show themselves in dreams to the Indians are not
regarded by them as the same beasts as those they meet
while hunting. The former belong to the unseen world,
and are endowed with mystic powers. The discussions
which used to take place between the fathers and the
medicine-men reveal this. " Father Mermet resolved to
put to confusion, in the presence of the natives, one of those
charlatans who worshipped the bull as his great manitou
(his tutelary genius). After having led him on unconsciously
until he owned that it was not the bull he worshipped, but
the bull-spirit below the earth, which inspires all bulls,
and restores life to his followers when sick, he asked him
whether other animals, such as the bear, for instance, which
his companions worshipped, were not also inspired by a
manitou below the earth. ' Undoubtedly they are/ replied
the charlatan. ' But if that is so/ the missionary went on,
' men, too, must have a manitou who inspires them/ ' Most
certainly they must/ replied the charlatan." l
In many other communities the natives resort to an
incited dream in order to be able to communicate with
their guardian spirits, just as the North American Indians
do. The nyarong (spirit-helpers) described by Hose and
MacDougall, as known to the Ibans in Borneo, are regarded
in the same way. " Perhaps only one in a hundred men
is fortunate enough to have a secret helper, though it is
ardently desired by many of them. Many a young man
goes to sleep on the grave of some distinguished person,
or in some wild and lonely spot, and lives for some days
on a very restricted diet, hoping that a secret helper will
come to him in his dreams." 2
These same natives of Borneo believe that the most
infallible remedies are revealed in dreams. The dream itself,
as Perham shows, has healing power through the vision
it brings. " To nampok is to sleep on the tops of mountains
with the hope of meeting with the good spirits of the unseen
world. ... A year or two ago, a Rejang Dayak, afflicted
with some disease, tried several hills to obtain a cure, and
■ Relations des Jesuites, lxvi. pp. 236-8.
* Hose and MacDougall : The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, ii. p. 92.
I at length came to Lingga, and was guided by some Dayaks
I of the neighbourhood to Lingga mountain. He offered his
sacrifice, and laid down to sleep beside it, saw an antu
(spirit) and returned perfectly cured." I
Finally, in many Australian tribes where the natives
attach the greatest importance to dreams, those which are
induced are at once methods of divination, requests for
help addressed to the powers of the unseen world, and a
guarantee that what they have desired to see in the dream
will be realized. That is what is testified by W. E. Roth,
one of the most acute investigators who has ever lived
among the Australian aborigines of North Queensland.
"On the Bloomfield River," he says, " the natives will
tell one another what they have dreamt, and either interpret
it themselves, or discuss it with others. It is here that a
native may set his mind on dreaming that his enemy will
die — and with satisfactory results. The Tully River blacks
. . . can go to sleep and make up their minds to dream
that a certain enemy is dead — and he will die ; ... if their
women dream of having children put inside them they
may beget them ; if some crime is committed, the culprit,
as in many other districts, can be discovered in a dream." 2
This custom can only be understood if the natives believe
the dream they solicit has itself an actual mystic influence.
Sleep permits them to enter the unseen world, and the dream
they obtain testifies that the forces of this world are favour-
able to them and will grant them their requests.
Thus during sleep there are established participations
which are not very comprehensible to us, and which Roth
has illustrated in some very striking passages. M On the
Tully River, whenever a man (or woman) stretches himself
for a sleep, ... or on arising in the morning, he mentions
in more or less of an undertone the name of the animal,
etc., by which he is called, or belonging to his group division
... if there is any particular noise, call or cry connected
with such name, he may mimic it. The objects aimed at
in carrying out this practice, which is taught by the elders
1 Rev. J. Perham, quoted by H. Ling Roth : The Natives of Sarawak, i.
p. 185; cf. O. Beccari : Wanderings in the Forests of Borneo, p. 158.
* W. E. Roth : " Superstition, Magic, and Medicine," North Queensland
Ethnography, Bulletin 5, No. 106 (1906).
to the youngsters as soon as they are considered old enough
to learn such things, are that they may be lucky and skilful
in hunting, and be given full warning as to any danger
which might otherwise befall them from the animal, etc.,
after which they are named. If a man, named from a fish,
thus regularly calls upon it, he will be successful in catching
plenty on some future occasion should he be hungry. If a
native neglects to call the thunder, rain, etc., provided, of
course, they are his namesakes, he will lose the power of
making them. Snakes, alligators, etc., will never interfere
with their namesakes (provided they are thus always called
upon) without giving a warning. ... If the native neglects
to do so it is his own fault if he is bitten or caught. . . .
If people were to call upon others than their namesakes
... it would bear no results either for good or ill to him.
. . . On the Proserpine River, the native, before going
to sleep, calls upon one or other of the names of the animals,
plants, or other objects connected with his particular primary
group division. ... In reply to inquiries, the reason given
me is that when called upon they warn the people, who
have summoned them, of the advent of other animals, etc.,
during sleep." *
There are, therefore, induced dreams, as well as omens,
which in the course of time have lost their early significance
as mystic causes, and merely retain their value as sign and
prediction. Before asking their dreams, whether spontaneous
or induced, simply to reveal the future, the natives have
tried to procure by their means the protection of the unseen
powers, and success in their undertakings. In the attention
paid by many communities nowadays to dreams, as omens,
there is more or less of a survival of the deeper mystic
value originally attributed to them.
Almost everywhere in early times the dream was a
guide always followed, an infallible counsellor, and often
even, as in New France, a master whose orders must not
be disputed. What could be more natural, therefore, than
to try and induce this counsellor to speak, to consult this
master and solicit his advice "in circumstances of difficulty ?
1 W. E. Roth: "Superstition, Magic, and Medicine," North Queensland
Ethnography, Bulletin 5, No. 74.
Here is a typical example of such a case quoted by Duff
Macdonald, the missionary : —
" The chief takes his departure. We pressed him to
send his boy to school* and he said : ! I will dream about
it.' He tells us that the Magololo chiefs are much guided by
dreams. After some talk on the subject, we gave him a
parting present, with the view of inducing a favourable
dream.'' «
From the missionary's satirical comment, we feel that
he regards these words of the chief as a subterfuge. Since
he has no desire to send his son to the Mission school and
does not care to say so frankly, he tries to get out of the
difficulty by promising to dream about it. It is not easy
to decide whether the idea of gaining time enters at all
into the reply given, but at any rate it is probable that
this answer expresses in all sincerity the chief's state of
mind. Should he defer to the missionaries' request and
confide his son to them, he is risking something which has
never been done before — he is breaking with tradition,
and undoubtedly his ancestors will be annoyed ; who can
tell what the consequences of their displeasure may be ?
Before exposing himself to it, he desires to talk with them
and ask their advice ; he will then know whether they
consent, or whether they disapprove of his son's entering
the white man's school.
Can there be any better way of finding out what they
think about the matter ? The European would have said :
"I will think about it." The Magololo chief replies: "I
will dream about it." The one reflects on the probable
consequences of his decision ; the other in dreams consults
his ancestors, who, although dead, still form a part of the
social group and hold its fate in their hands, and whom
he must on no account offend.
II
Even when solicited and induced, the dream may fail
to appear. The primitive will then have recourse to other
means of communicating with the powers of the unseen
1 Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, ii. p. 101.
world. The simplest and most effective of these, whenever
it is possible, is direct interrogation. It is employed in
the case of the dead whose relations with the living are not
entirely ruptured, and especially for those who have but
recently died, for these, as a rule, are not very far away.
The presence of the corpse, whether in the charnel-house,
or in the neighbourhood, or just placed in the tomb, is
considered the same as that of the deceased. If, therefore,
the native is desirous of learning anything from him, he
will ask him about it. He certainly no longer speaks, but
he still hears, and there are many ways of obtaining his reply.
The interrogation may even take place before death
(as we understand it) has occurred ; that is, in the interval
in which the " soul " inhabiting the body has already
quitted it, whilst the dying man has not stopped breathing,
nor his heart ceased to beat. To the primitive, as we know,
this dying man is already dead, and that explains why
so many poor unfortunate wretches are hastily buried while
still alive. " When a man is sick and about to die, all
the family assemble together, and no fire is allowed in the
house for fear that it might frighten the tabaran (spirit).
They believe that the sick man is ongi, that is, taken posses-
sion of by a tabaran, and they proceed to ask him all kinds
of questions. The answers are communicated by the voice
of the patient, but it is the tabaran who speaks, and not
the sick man. The questions are : ' Who are you ? Who
agagara'd you ? Speak at once, or we will burn you with
fire/ " «
This account is not very clear, but it seems to show that
the dying man's family (to whom he is already dead) ask
him questions to which the tabaran must reply. In the
province of Victoria, in Australia, the relatives notice the
limbs of the dying man, for their movements reveal the
direction in which to look for the criminal, and indicate
where vengeance is to be exercised. z Nevertheless, at such
a time the persons present are as a rule exclusively occupied
with the rites which have to be performed at the moment
* George Brown : Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 197 (edit, of 1910).
* Stanbridge : "On the Aborigines of Victoria," Transactions of the Ethno-
logical Society, i. p. 299 (1861).
of death. So far from venturing to retain the dead man,
they frequently betray a lively sense of fear, and desire
nothing so much as to be speedily relieved of his presence.
They therefore take care not to ask him anything. They
will do this later on, when the first critical hours are over.
Among primitive peoples, where death is never, or hardly
ever, " natural," the dead man's relatives are anxious to
know who really is responsible for the witchcraft of which
he has been the victim. No one knows this so well as the
victim himself, and none can more certainly reveal it.
By putting this question to him, the survivors accomplish
a twofold aim. They unmask the wizard whose murderous
activities are a constant menace to the social group, and at
the same time they show the dead man that they have not
forgotten the task of avenging him. They thus protect
themselves from the anger which would not fail to fall
upon them should he feel himself neglected.
In the Narrinyeri tribe, " the first night after a man has
died his nearest relative sleeps with his head on the corpse,
in order that he may be led to dream who is the sorcerer
that caused his death. The next day the corpse is elevated
on men's shoulders on a sort of bier called ngaratta. The
friends of the deceased then gather round, and several names
are called out, to see whether the mention of them will
produce any effect on the corpse. At last the nearest
relative calls out the name of the person of whom he has
dreamed, and then an impulse towards him on the part
of the dead body is said to be felt by the bearers, which
they pretend they cannot resist, and consequently they
walk towards him. This impulse is the sign by which it
is known that the right name has been called out." »
The same interrogation, but a still more direct one, is
addressed to the dead man in New Britain. " On the
night following his death, the friends of the deceased would
all assemble outside the house, and some sorcerer (tena
agagara) would call out and ask the spirit of the deceased
the name of the person who had bewitched him. When
no answer was received, the tena agagara would call out
1 Rev. G. Taplin : The Narrinyeri Tribe, pp. 19-20 ; cf. an identical
passage in Eylmann : Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Siid Australien, p. 229.
the name of some suspected person, and all around would
listen intently for an answer. If none came, another name
would be called, and this was repeated until a sound, like
that made by tapping the fingers on a board or mat, was
heard either in the house or on a pearl shell held in the
hand of the tena agagara, after a certain name was called
out ; this was then taken as conclusive evidence of guilt." l
Thus the corpse may of his own accord denounce the
author of his death, during the preparation of the funeral
ceremonies. " The person who sews up the apertures of the
corpse runs some risk if he does not provide himself with
good string ; for if the string should break it is attributed
to the displeasure of the deceased, who is supposed to
make known in this manner if he has been charmed by
him. ... If the . . . needle should not be sufficiently
sharp to penetrate the flesh easily, the slightest movement,
caused by pressing the blunt point into the flesh, is supposed
to be spontaneous motion of the corpse, and to indicate if
the sewer is the guilty person." 2
u When the body is removed from the heads of the
bearers and lowered into the grave," among the people
of the Dieri, " conclusions are drawn as to the locality in
which the person who has caused the death lives, from the
direction in which the body falls from the heads of the
two men who hold it. "3 In the Wurunjerri tribe, " when
there was no medicine-man there to tell them who had
killed him, it was the practice when digging the grave
to sweep it clean at the bottom and search for a small hole
going downwards. A slender stick put down it showed
by its slant the direction in which they had to search for
the malefactor." 4
In this case, as in the preceding one, the information
received is evidently the dead man's reply to the interro-
gations of the living. They are seeking a sign which shall
be a revelation, and when this sign is forthcoming it is the
dead man who has spoken. It is the same with the natives
observed by Dawson. " When the offending tribe is not
1 George Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 385-6.
a H. E. A. Meyer : " The Encounter Bay Tribe," in Taplin's South
Australia, p. 200.
3 A. W. Howitt : The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 448.
4 Ibid., p. 458.
otherwise revealed, the question is decided, after the body
has been put up into the tree, by watching the course taken
by the first maggot which drops from the body and crawls
over the clean-swept ground underneath. If the body
has been buried, the surface of the ground is swept and
smoothed carefully ; then the first ant which crosses it
indicates the direction of the tribe which caused the death
of the deceased." x Is this ant the very soul of the dead
man, or merely sent or directed , by him ? It is hard to
say, if only on account of the enormous difficulty which
always confronts us when we make use of the term " soul "
to express the collective representations of primitives. It
is just as well that the subject under consideration at the
moment does not necessitate our deciding between these
hypotheses. It is enough for our purpose that, in the
primitive's mind, the ant exercises the same function as
the maggot. The latter undoubtedly bears a very close
relation to the body whence it has just fallen. The direction
it takes answers the question which the survivors have put
to the dead man.
Sometimes this question may remain unanswered for
months. " The corpse is carried about from camp to camp
for a long period, many months maybe, indeed until such
time as the deceased tells his brother, uncle, etc., who it
was that " doomed " or put him to death. But should he
not choose to tell, his relatives will find out for themselves,
by means of hair-twine made from hair removed from the
corpse. As this is being . . . rolled and stretched along
the thigh, the names of suspected persons are called aloud ;
the name at which it breaks is that of the person who
committed the deed." z The method thus employed is as
good as an interrogation of the deceased. We know that
to the primitive mind the hair and beard, as well as the
saliva, nail-parings, excreta, undigested food, etc., all form
an integral part of the personality. The twine made from
the dead man's hair thus " participates " in his nature,
just like the worm which has issued from his corpse. In
a neighbouring tribe (in the Brisbane district), it is the
1 J. Dawson : Australian Aborigines, p. 68. (Melbourne, 1881.)
2 W. E. Roth : North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin 9, No. 4.
bones,1 and in Moreton Bay and the territory behind it,
it is his skin * which is asked to reveal the murderer. At
Cape Bedford the information is obtained in a slightly
different way. At a given moment of the funeral ceremonies
" the deceased's brother . . . ties up the corpse in the
trough quite firmly, puts it on his head and stands up.
Then he runs away from there as fast as he can, being
dragged along by the corpse's spirit, and on the very spot
where the man was originally ' doomed ' the trough falls
off." 3
The aborigines of Western Australia have not been
subjected to the same close study as the preceding, never-
theless, facts quite similar to those just quoted have been
observed there. For example, in the Watchandies, " the
space for some distance around the ground is cleared of
bushes, stones, grass, etc., and then carefully swept so as
to render the surface perfectly even and uniform. After
this it is visited every morning and narrowly examined,
to discover whether any living thing has passed over it.
In course of time the tracks of some creature are sure to
be detected (even those of a small insect, as a beetle, are
held sufficient for the purpose), and the direction taken
by this object indicates the whereabouts of the tribe to
which the enchanter belongs." 4
According to Bishop Salvado, " if they cannot discover
any family or individual whom the deceased has offended,
they pick up and throw into the air a handful of dust, or
they notice the direction taken by the smoke, and according j
to the way the wind blows either of these, they hasten to |
avenge the death of their relative or friend. . . . So, too,
if while digging the grave a little earth happens to fall to
one side, that is the side from which the boglia (witchcraft)
has come." 5 This last observation is probably somewhat
imperfect. It is assuredly not the dust or the smoke which
really gives the natives the indication they are seeking.
j W. E. Roth: North Queensland Ethnography. Bulletin 9, No. 13.
* J. D. Lang: Queensland, pp. 360-1. (Story of the Rev. K. W.
Schmidt, of the German Mission, Moreton Bay.)
3 W. E. Roth : North Queensland Ethnography, No. 5.
« A. Oldfield : " The Aborigines of Australia," Transactions of the
Ethnological Society, iii. p. 246 (1865).
s R. Salvado : Memoires historiques sur V A ustralie, pp. 332-3.
The dust and smoke must in some way "participate"
of the dead man's personality, and it is he who, by their
means, answers the question proposed.1
In most primitive peoples, where it is an imperative
duty to avenge the death of any man, we find the family
of the deceased addressing themselves to him, as they do
in Australia, in order to discover the guilty person, and
employing the same or very similar methods to obtain a
reply. We might quote innumerable instances, but I shall
relate a few only, some of which were noted in peoples
dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Australian continent,
and others in African races.
In New Mecklenburg, " if someone happens to die, and
it is suspected that he has fallen a victim to witchcraft,
the natives appeal to the dead man's spirit to tell them who
the murderer is." a The following is one of the methods
they employ. " Into the dead man's empty hut, across
the matting partition, they insert the end of a bamboo
pole, to which they have fastened a pork-bone. The group
of men called upon for this office hold the pole balanced on
their hands without pushing it in any way. Then they
call out in turn the names of all the natives. Until the
murderer's name has been pronounced, the bamboo sways
backwards and forwards each time, but at the guilty person's
name it is drawn inside the hut, and with such a violent
jerk that the men can no longer keep hold of it." 3 The
spirit of the dead man has seized upon it, and he thus gives
the indication they desire.
The natives of (German) New Guinea are no less anxious
to satisfy their dead friends by drawing down vengeance
on the guilty person. " In order to unmask him, the dead
T Such at least is the idea affirmed to exist among the Dayaks of Borneo.
" The ascent of the smoke is carefully watched by the assistant relations,
who draw from its perpendicular direction an augury favourable and satis-
factory to them. Should, however, the smoke ascend, from wind or other
causes, in a slanting manner, they depart, assured that the antu, or spirit,
is not yet satisfied ; and that soon one or other of them will become his
prey." (Hugh Low : Sarawak, pp. 262-3.) It is quite clear that, according
to their idea of the matter, it is the dead man himself who gives the smoke
its direction.
* P. G. Peekel : Religion und Zauberei bei detn mittleren Neu Mecklemburg,
p. 128.
3 Ibid., p. 131.
man's ghost comes to their aid. There are many different
methods. The first consists in making use of a trick to
make the dead man tell his friends the name of his murderer.
... Or the ghost may show his relatives the way to the
wizard's village. ... Or again, a drum and stick may
be hung on the grave, and in the night the dead man uses
it, as he goes to the village of the wizard whose whereabouts
he thus reveals." ■
In West Africa the dead man is sometimes asked a
direct question. For instance, on the Guinea coast, " some
of the men raise the corpse on their shoulders in the presence
of the priest, and then ask him : ' Did you not die from such
and such an accident ? ' If it is so, the men are obliged
by some occult force or other to make the corpse give an
inclination of the head in the direction of the man who
has asked the question, and it is exactly the same as if he
had said yes ; in the other case, they remain motionless." 2
In Togoland " they fasten a stick to the hand of the dead
man, and the priests and priestesses take him twice all
round the streets of the town. The one whom the corpse
indicates (according to them), is suspected of having caused
the death, and must submit to ordeal by poison." 3
Other tribes in Togoland employ a slightly different
method. " They have recourse to the most certain, they
ask the dead man himself. To this end, shortly after
the death, some friends of the dead man, from five to ten
in number, and all of them fellow-members of his totem,
meet together. Those who put the questions take a rod
about five feet in length and stand on one side. One of
them then goes down on his knees, and the rod is placed
on his head, one end in front and the other behind. Then
he rises, and from this moment he is no longer an ordinary
man ; he has, according to them, become the dead man
himself. One of the older men among the questioners then
makes the necessary inquiries of the dead man, who gives
an affirmative reply by raising his head and shoulders,
and a negative one by inclining backwards. They say then
* R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, iii. pp. 143-4 {Kai).
■ W. Bosman : Voyage de Guinee, 13* lettre, p. 227.
3 A. Plehn : " Beitrage zur Volkerkunde des Togogebietes, " Mitteilungen
des Seminars fur onentalische Sprachen, iii. p. 97-
that he is ' far away/ " 1 Finally, in Sierra Leone, " when
anyone dies . . . before the corpse is carried out for inter-
ment, it is generally put upon a kind of bier composed of
sticks formed like a ladder, but having two flat pieces of
board for the head and feet to rest upon. This is placed
upon the heads of two men, while a third, standing before
the body and having in his hand a kind of reed called
cattop, proceeds to interrogate it respecting the cause of
its death. He first advances a step or two towards the
corpse, shakes the reed over it, and immediately steps back.
He then asks a variety of questions, to which assent is
signified by the corpse impelling the bearers, as is supposed,
towards the man with the reed, while a negative is implied
by its producing a kind of rolling motion.' ' * Thus the
dead man undergoes a regular interrogation.
Ill
A great many primitive peoples dread contact with the
dead. They are considered dangerous and even contagious ;
it is feared that they may draw other members of the social
group after them to the place whither they have gone.
While rendering them the customary dues, and even de-
ploring their loss sincerely, the natives are anxious to drive
them away, that is, to rupture, as speedily and as thoroughly
as they can, the relations between them and the living,
at any rate during the period which follows hard upon the
death. The carrying out of the funeral rites secures the
normal decomposition of the corpse, and when that has
taken place the dead man is definitely separated from the
group of the living by the second obsequies, the existence
of which, or at least traces of it, is so frequently maintained.
Robert Hertz has fully illustrated and analysed this whole
class of facts. 3
There are other primitives who, on the contrary, maintain
constant intercourse with their dead, even those but recently
* Franz Wolf : " Beitrag zur Ethnographie der Fo-Neger in Togo,"
Anthropos, vii. p. 300.
" Th. Winterbottom : An Account of the Native Africans, Sierra Leone,
i. pp. 236-8 (1803).
3 R. Hertz : " La representation collective de la mort," Annie sociologique,
x. pp. 50 et seq.
departed. We undoubtedly find among these peoples a
good many of the collective representations and complex
sentiments which have so often been described. They do
believe, however, that they need their dead, and they hope
to be able to procure their goodwill, since they, in their
turn, cannot do without the living. Thus between the living
and the dead, duly settled in their new estate, but still
members of the social group, there is an exchange of kindly
offices, founded on the give-and-take principle.
In these communities, therefore, the living will practise
divination by means of the dead. But this will not only
be to learn from them what they could not find out other-
wise ; they will also ask them for advice, guidance, service,
and support. They will try to consult them in a dream,
and in default of a dream they will employ other methods.
" I was once present," says Perham, " at the death of an
old man, when a woman came into the room and begged
him, insensible though he was,1 to accept a brass finger-
ring, shouting out to him as she offered it, ' Here, grand-
father, take this ring, and in Hades remember I am very
poor, and send me some paddy medicine % that I may ^et
better harvests.' A Dayak acquaintance had made a good
memorial covering of an unusual pattern for the grave of
his mother, and soon fell ill, in consequence, some said,
of his ghostly work. So he slept at her grave, feeling sure
she would help him in his need ; but neither voice nor
vision nor medicine came " (through her revelation, be it
noted), " and he was thoroughly disappointed. He said to
me, ' I have made a decent resting-place for my mother,
and now I am ill and ask her assistance, she pays no atten-
tion. I think she is very ungrateful.1 This belief in re-
ciprocal good offices between the dead and the living comes
out again in those cases where the remains of the dead are
reverently preserved by the living. On every festive
occasion they are presented offerings of food, etc., in return
for which these honoured dead are expected to confer sub-
stantial favours upon their living descendants." 3
* From the natives' point of view, therefore, he was already dead.
a A charm for rice.
3 Rev. J. Perham, quoted by H. Ling Roth: The Natives of Sarawak, \
i. p. 2ii.
The natives* widespread custom of carrying about with
them the bones (particularly the skull or lower jawbone)
of those who have recently died is doubtless due to the
same idea. In certain cases, the practice ministers to their
desire to feel the actual presence of these absent members
of the social group, so that they may be able to ask their
help and advice. For instance, in the western islands of
the Torres Straits, " whenever they were in trouble they
used to take the skull of a relative, put fresh paint on it,
and cover it with scented leaves, then they would speak to
it and ask advice from it. When they went to bed they
would put the skull on their sleeping-mat beside their heads,
and if they dreamt, they thought it was the spirit of their
dead friend talking to them and advising them what they
should do. As they believed all this, it was by no means
strange that they liked to keep and preserve the skulls of
their dead relatives." x
Certain natives of Dutch New Guinea (Doreh) preserve
skulls thus, decorating them, and calling them korwars.
The spirit of the dead is believed to dwell in these, and
" a Papuan will never fail to consult the dead man's soul in
the korwar on every important occasion. He sits down
in front of it, tells it of his plan, and asks its support. If
at this time any special sign should be noted, if, for instance,
the korwar should make a movement, due to any external
circumstance, the Papuan considers that he has received
an affirmative reply, and quietly proceeds to carry out his
project. We can understand, therefore, that these korwars
are constantly being consulted, even about the most in-
significant trifles. To give an example : one day a Papuan's
hand swelled up without any apparent cause ; what could be
more natural than to ask the korwar to explain the reason ?
It seemed to reply to the inquiry by an unfavourable sign,
which clearly showed that the dead man's soul was dis-
pleased, although the native could not imagine how he
had incurred this displeasure. He examined his conscience
very carefully . . . and suddenly remembered that he had
neglected his brother's widow, so he hastened to repair this
omission. There was a fresh consultation of the korwar,
1 A. C. Haddon : Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, pp. 182-3.
and this time the Papuan received a favourable sign, and
was completely convinced that the dead man's soul no
longer bore him a grudge." J
From such consultations of the oracle, to divination by
means of it, is an easy transition. The ancestor's skull
is no longer interrogated personally, so to speak, but it
retains its mystic power, and this makes it a worthy instru-
ment for what we call divination. But in order to make
use of it thus, certain conditions are requisite. " A duly
decorated skull, when properly employed, became a divining
zogo of remarkable powers and was mainly used in dis-
covering a thief, or a stolen article, or a man who had by
means of sorcery made someone sick. But this could only
be done by bezam le, or members of the shark clan, who were
also members of the Malu fraternity. All who engaged
in this hunt went in the early evening to the zogo house,
and one of the zogole % took . . . the mask and put it on,
repeating a certain formula. After leaving the house, the
zogole carried the skull in front of them, and all marched
with a particular gait till they heard a kind of grasshopper,
called kikoto, and they rushed in the direction from which
the noise proceeded. One particular kikoto was believed to
guide the men to the house of the offender. Should the
man lose the right direction the kitoto would wait for him
to come up. . . . Ultimately they were led to the house,
and this must, of course, according to their ideas, be the
house of the malefactor." 3
As we see, the success of the operation depends upon
the use of the skull, and this is reserved for men of a certain
clan, members of a special fraternity. The skull is not
an instrument to be used by the first comer. On the other
hand, the presence within it of a powerful dead man, though
perhaps no longer explicitly represented, is yet strongly felt.
Among peoples who are rather more advanced, con-
sultation of the dead, which often takes place through the
medium of dreams, does also take on other forms, in which
the dead man, whose interest the survivor desires to secure
i O. Finsch : Neu Guinea und seine Bewohner, pp. 105-6.
a The plural form of zogo.
3 A. C. Haddon : Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, pp. 91-2.
for a certain enterprise, is directly addressed, without his
presence having to be materialized by means of his body
or skull. An offering will be brought to the dead, he will
be invoked, and the survivors will speak to him just as if
he were present. Facts of this kind are of daily occurrence.
The bystanders who witness them do not pay any particular
attention to them, so accustomed are they to resort to the
same expedient on similar occasions. The intervention of
invisible beings in the affairs of daily life seems to them the
most natural thing in the world. In the Cameroons " the
Jaunde rises from his couch in the darkness of the night,
for he has seen in a dream one of his dead relatives, who,
before returning to the kingdom of his ancestors, made a
most important communication to him. But the sound of
the drum can penetrate even to the totolan (kingdom of the
dead). The native seizes his drum, or even makes use of
the big village drum, and begins to " talk " with the dead.
His neighbours go to sleep again quietly, as soon as they
have heard that the communication is not intended for
the living." l
Thus everybody considers it indispensable, when about
to undertake anything, to assure himself first of all that
the influential dead of the social group are in favour of it.
" When a man intends to set out on some expedition, he
goes to the chief of his village and tells him. The chief
presents an offering to the spirit of his predecessor. This
offering consists of a little flour, which he puts down very
slowly at the top of his bed, or he may go to the verandah
of the house of his deceased brother. As he puts down the
offering he says the words : ' My son is come, he goes on a
journey, enlighten his eyes, preserve him on his journey,
may he return unscathed. Please, please, let him under-
take the journey, and be very successful.'
" If the flour do not fall so as to form a cone with a fine
point, there is a bad omen, and the journey is deferred.
The remedy for this state of matters is to resort to the
oracle , . . who will explain what is the cause of the bad
omen. Probably the man will be told to ' try again/ If
1 Nekes : " Trommelsprache und Fernruf bei den Jaunde und Duala,"
Mitteilungen des Seminars fur orienlalische Sprachen, xi. Abt. iii. p. 78.
the cone form beautifully on this occasion, then it will be
clear that the god (the dead man) wanted him merely to
delay for a day or two, and for some good reason ; but if
the cone still refuse to form, resort is again had to the
oracle. The omen sets to work and finds that some deceased
relative has a hand in this obstruction. . . ." 1
But everything is not in order even when the flour
has formed a cone with a good point. This first sign is
not sufficient. " After the flour is put down, and has
formed a shapely cone, the chief carefully covers it with
a pot and leaves it all night. During the night he may
have a dream about the journey, and this will decide his
course. But if it is still undecided, he visits his offering
early in the morning. Should he find that the cone of flour
is broken down on one side, if it has not its proper point,
the omen is bad. The flour is thrown away into the bush,
the journey is forbidden by the spirit and cannot be thought
of, and the result is an appeal to the oracle. But if the
flour has preserved its conical form the omen is good, the
divinity has accepted the present and granted the request.
The village chief tells the man to go forth with confidence." 2
A little further on Macdonald tells us that beer may
be used instead of flour, and this serves both as offering
and as oracle. " If when poured on the ground it sinks
into one spot as it does in sandy soil, then the divinity
receives it; but if it spread through the ground" (instead
of being absorbed in one place only) "the omen is bad." 3
Thus what happens to the offering, at the same time indicates
the dead chief's answer to the request made to him.
In this particular case the native desiring to undertake
the journey does not consult one of his own forebears. He
tells the village chief of his project, and the latter addresses
himself to his dead predecessor. This is not merely because
the dead chief is a powerful protector of whom the traveller
may have need. By virtue of the close solidarity of the
social group, nothing that one man risks is without interest
to the rest. The one who has started on his journey may
1 Rev. Duff Macdonald: Africana, ,i. pp. 76-7.
1 Ibid., pp. 79-80.
3 Ibid., p. 93-
have some adventure or other which will involve heavy
responsibility for his family, clan, or tribe, and the group
will have no right to shelve it. Therefore an individual
is not allowed to depart without informing the chief, or
rather, without the chief's being assured that the traveller
may proceed on his way without mischance.
How can this assurance be obtained ? By a process
which we might equally well describe as an offering, con-
sultation, or divination. It is an offering, since the chief
presents food to one of the powers of the unseen world,
to a dead man (whom the missionary speaks of as a god).
It is also a consultation, for the dead man is asked to say
whether he approves of the projected enterprise. Finally,
it is just as much a method of divination, since the form
taken by the cone of flour (whether it is truncated or not)
will inform the traveller whether his journey will be suc-
cessful or not, and he will either set out or abandon his
intention of doing so. We may even add that it is a prayer,
in the ordinary sense of the word when used about primitives ;
that is to say, a request for protection and assistance, paid
for by an offering, with the more or less obscure notion of
exercising influence on the power which is being entreated.
Elsewhere — among the Kavirondo of British East Africa,
for instance — the offering is presented first, and then the
divining process takes place, although this operation may
actually be performed on the offering itself. " Another
remedy for sickness is to catch alive a small animal called
ifukho. The sick person and relatives assemble before the
door of the hut. The person who caught the mole holds
it up by one leg, and first the sick person, and then he
himself, and then the others, each in turn spit upon it, saying :
' O our ancestors, help us and cause this mole to take away
this sickness ; we have not got a sheep to give you, but
accept this mole, which is as a sheep from the jungle.'"
(The Kavirondo call the ifukho the wild sheep, although the
animal bears not the slightest resemblence to a sheep.)
"The live mole is then put into a hole in the ground, and
an inverted pot is placed over it. If it now burrows its
way out in the direction away from the house, the patient
will recover ; but if in the contrary direction, he will die,
since the ancestors have not heard the prayer." l This last
word is significant, for they are asking the ancestors, not
merely to inform them what the '* coming event " will
be, but to grant its appearance, and assure its successful
issue.
• K. H. Dundas :
(British East Africa),
The Wawanga and Other Tribes of the Elgon District
' J. A. I., xliii. p. 45.
Chapter VII
THE PRACTICES OF DIVINATION (continued)
Direct communication with the forces of the unseen world
is not always possible. The primitive has it in his power
to find the most favourable conditions for such intercourse,
and to solicit a dream or vision by appropriate rites and
practices. But even with these, he is by no means sure
of obtaining a dream, nor, even should he dream, that
his dream will be the one desired. In the case of direct
interrogation and intercourse, the unseen powers involved
are of necessity represented as personages. But in a large
number of cases the occult powers by whom the primitive
feels himself surrounded, and whose views he desires to
ascertain, cannot be invoked or interrogated, and he will
then have recourse to other methods'.
One of the forms of divination best known to us consists
in examining the entrails, and especially the liver, of the
victims sacrificed.
In Borneo, " divination by means of a pig's liver is
resorted to on most important occasions. If anything special
is wanted, they inquire of the pig. If they fear any enemies
are coming, or ill luck or sickness, they ask the pig whether
it is a fact that this will happen. They tell the pig not
to mislead them, and to convey their message to the Supreme
Being. The pig may even be told they are not going to
kill it or eat it ; but the pig is killed the instant they have
finished talking, lest the message should be altered by the
pig if it knew it was to be killed.' ' 1
The plan of operation, which is a very simple one, is
thus clearly sketched out. It is a case of consulting what
Haddon calls here the Supreme Being, thereby meaning
1 A. C. Haddon ; Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, p. 337.
what I have more vaguely designated as the " mystic or
occult powers," by addressing a definite question to them.
The function of the pig sacrificed is to convey this message
to them. Since they do not communicate directly with
these powers, the victim is perforce the intermediary. The
pig receives the quLstion, transmits it, and the answer is
inscribed on his liver. Haddon describes in detail how the
Dayaks proceed. " A living pig with its legs tied was
brought to the verandah. Aban Abit took a lighted brand
and slightly scorched it, at the same time praying to the
Supreme God, and the pig was asked to give the message
to the god, who was requested to make his will known by
means of the liver of the pig. When the scorching was
over the suppliant kept the fingers of his right hand on the
flanks of the pig so that he was in touch with the animal
by this means, at the same time slightly prodding it with
his fingers to make the pig aware of what he was saying.
Finally, a spear was thrust into the neck of the pig, and
as soon as all the kicking was over the side of the pig was
ripped open, and the liver rapidly and dexterously extracted
and placed on a dish. The old men crowded round and
discussed the augury. The size and character of the various
lobes of the liver, the appearance of the gall bladder, and
the amount of fat and tendon, are objects of the closest
scrutiny, and these all have a definite signification/' «
This operation, as we see, is exactly like that recently
described, in which the native of British East Africa asks
counsel and protection of a dead chief, and reads his reply
in the shape taken by a cone of flour. Here the pig's liver
takes the place of the cone. But the care displayed that
the pig's ill-will shall not falsify either question or answer,
the precautions taken to secure his attention during the
prayer, and the request that " God " will make known
his will by means of the animal's liver, do not leave us
in any doubt of the nature of the operation. It is a solicited
omen. It asks for a revelation, and at the same time for
a favourable one. Far from being a mechanical process,
it comprises both a question and a prayer addressed to the
powers upon whom the issue depends.
* A. C, Haddon ; Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, p. 336.
Should the reply not be the one hoped for, it may happen
hat the question is propounded once more, and the prayer
epeated, just as the appeal is made from an unfavourable
men to a fresh test. In Borneo, again, " priestesses cut
he chicken's throat and at once looked for omens. Then
he cockerel was sacrificed to provide food for gods and men.
f the omens afforded by the first chicken were unfavourable,
>thers would be killed until, by their means, success had
>een assured/' «
Among the Polynesian peoples, who were more civilized
:han those of Borneo, the practices of divination were,
properly speaking, indispensable. The success of their
jndertakings would depend entirely upon the powers of
the unseen world. Should these not have revealed their
intentions in any way, it was essential to be assured of them
at all costs, before taking any risks, and also to try and
conciliate them. To give only one example of these well-
known facts, in Tahiti " the greatest importance was attached
to the will of the gods ; if they were favourable, conquest
was regarded as sure ; but if they were unfavourable, defeat,
if not death, was as certain. Divination or enchantment
was employed for the purpose of knowing their ultimate
decision, and at these times they always pretended to follow
implicitly supernatural intimation. . . . The success or
failure was often chiefly augured from the muscular action
of the heart or liver of the animal offered, or the involuntary
acts and writhing contortions of the limbs of the human
sacrifices in the agonies of death." 2 Here, again, the divina-
tion consists both of inducing a revelation and at the same
time of appealing for support. The victim transmits the
question and brings back the answer.
Father Alexis Arnoux has given in Anthropos a detailed
description of the practices of divination prevailing in
Ruanda ((German) East Africa). It helps us to understand
the collective representations implied in divination. For in-
stance, the victim whose entrails are examined is not merely
an intermediary ; it serves at the same time as a cause,
and this affords valuable confirmation of the interpretation
1 A. W. Nieuwenhuis : Quer dutch Borneo, ii. p. 179.
3 Rev. W. Ellis : Polynesian Researches, ii. p. 502.
we gave of the omens furnished by birds.1 " The words
addressed in many cases/ ' says Father Arnoux, " to the
object furnishing the augury should be noted. As the
perusal of these ' prayers ' will show, the natives suppose
that the bull, sheep, etc., can modify at will their internal
structure, or their mode of existence, upon the request of
the diviner. They are persuaded that Interna (God) allows
this transformation if He thinks fit. They are therefore
equally sure that the victim which is being sacrificed is
able to produce, as a really efficient cause, the happiness
of an individual which would indicate in what sense the
appellations which one hears should be understood. ' Ub
Imana, ub Imana.' * Thou art God, then be the God who
cures.' " 2 (Imana represents what I have called the occult
powers.) Subsequently a special prayer is addressed to
the animal about to be sacrificed, and upon which it depends,
at least partially, whether the answer requested will be a
favourable one. " The diviner then takes a chicken in
his right hand. He takes a mouthful of water, then pours
this right into the chicken's beak ; this water, mingled with
his saliva, actually furnishes the imbuto." (In most methods
of divining it is necessary that the inanimate object destined
to furnish the reply should be brought into contact with
saliva from the client's mouth.) " Then, to make sure of
an auspicious augury, he speaks in a low voice in the chicken's
right ear, so that, if necessary, he may modify his entrails,
and make them ' white,' i.e. of happy omen." Father
Arnoux then gives the text of the prayer, which is a very
long one, specifying the appearance which the entrails
must bear to satisfy the consultant. 3 The proceeding is
the same when divining from the entrails of a ram. 4 When
a special divination is taking place for the king's benefit,
and a bull is being sacrificed, the animal, " standing up, is
admonished by a mukongori (a special kind of diviner),
who whispers into its ear, whilst other bakongori caress it
to make it more attentive, and yet another holds it by
the horns. They address a lengthy prayer to it, and tell
1 Vide supra., chap. iv. pp. 126-38.
2 P. Alexis Arnoux : '* La divination au Ruanda," Anthropos, xii-xiii, p. 10.
3 Ibid., pp. 30-3.
4 Ibid., p. 36.
it exactly how its entrails should appear. * Put the gall
bladder on the right, etc.* Then, when they have thus
spoken to the bull, the order is given, ' Knock the victim
down and slay it.' " '
If divination is practised by means of the knucklebones,
the natives attribute precisely the same role to them as
to the animals sacrificed. They not only announce the
ultimate result ; they also cause it to come about. " At
the end of the third stage the wizard, scattering the ossicles
(nzuzi), says : ' They are all listening attentively, they will
answer like men ;'" and in a note Father Arnoux says :
I The nzuzi listen attentively and answer well. They hear
our inquiries, and as far as I can judge by my powers of
intuition " (it is the diviner speaking) " they answer cor-
rectly. They are yielding, like men." The part played by
the diviner, therefore, is that of interpreter, since his expert
knowledge enables him to make known the views of the
nzuzi.2
Even when balls or pellets of butter are used for the
divining process, similar prayers are addressed to them.
The wizard, taking in his hand four butter-balls made the
previous day or, at most, the day before, addresses the
following brief exhortation to them. " Listen, butter, thou
who art beautiful : do thou whiten, become yet whiter,
grow absolutely white " (which means, be favourable to
us). . . . "I will not let the ants have thee, and thou wilt
refuse to let the enemy take me. . . ." Father Arnoux's
note states : ' It is always supposed that the butter listens
to the supplications of its clients, and changes accordingly." 3
Should the method of divination practised have yielded
a favourable result, the object which has " cast the lot "
is used for making amulets, which are considered specially
efficacious, and this is another proof of the effective causality
attributed to it. The primitives admit that this object
retains its beneficent influence, and seek to acquire its good-
will for themselves. " They are glad to make amulets,"
says Father Arnoux, " from butter, from which an auspicious
1 P. Alexis Arnoux : " La divination au Ruanda," Anthropos, xii-xiii.
PP- 39-43-
• Ibid., p. 18. 3 Ibid., p. 51.
augury has been obtained. . . . Small pellets made from
the fat of animals which have returned a favourable answer
are placed under their pillows ... or in a little vessel.
These will secure peace for the dwelling possessed of such
treasures. Amulets for use when they are about to sacrifice
to the spirits (of the dead) are also made of such material.
... A chicken which has yielded an auspicious augury is
made into amulets held in high esteem.' ' Finally, " amulets
are made from sheep which are auspicious" (the parts used
being chiefly the bones of their forefeet). " All these amulets
are worn hung round the neck." J In the case of the bull
which has been sacrificed for the king's special divination,
they collect the bones from all parts, except ihe ankle-bones,
which will be used, in part, for making amulets. . . .
Sometimes they even burn the skin of the bull, but more
often it is tanned and used on the royal bed, or even given
to one of the court ladies, from whom a liberal recompense
is expected in return. Whatever may be done with it, it
is essential that the pieces shall be preserved, whether it
be a drum skin, or part of a woman's clothing, since these
pieces have been taken from a lucky bull, and form the
very best amulets known." %
All these practices help us to understand how primitive
mentality represents to itself the causative influence in-
volved, as it believes, in divination. It finds no difficulty
in the spontaneous constitutional change in the cockerel,
sheep, bull, or even in such a substance as butter. How
does this happen ? How is it con eivable or possible ?
The primitive does not ask himself these questions, therefore
he has no need to find or imagine an answer. The deter-
minism of physical and physiological phenomena is abso-
lutely unknown to him, and he is altogether indifferent to
the relation of consequent to antecedent in the series of
secondary causes. In his view the mystic cause, unless
it runs counter to any other mystic power, disposes in a
lordly fashion of what we call the facts of the case. It can
transform these, if it desires to do so, to suit the purpose
of the interrogator.
In South Africa, among the Bantus, " the knucklebones
1 P. Alexis Arnoux, pp. 28, 35, 37. a Ibid., p. 45.
play an enormous part. When an important decision is
in question, natives will not resolve on any course without
having consulted the magic bones, which will be certain to
tell them which path to pursue. The chiefs resort to them
in all misfortunes. If there is no rain, or some disaster
is threatening, should strangers arrive in the country, or
a warlike expedition be contemplated, they will call for
their bone-thrower, who is always close at hand, and as
a matter of fact the bones form their chief counsellor.1
The German missionaries bear witness to the same fact.
" The bones," says Merensky, " are indispensable to the
Basuto wizard. . . . Frequently, when the chiefs seem to
change their views or their course of action all of a sudden,
without any apparent reason, or when in wartime they risk
something which cannot succeed, or again, when they let
slip a chance of injuring the enemy without profiting by
it, the only explanation of these things is the reliance they
place on this oracle of the bones. If it is a question whether
a chief will welcome or dismiss a missionary, whether he
will allow a stranger to cross his territory, or make him
retrace his steps, the bones again play an enormous part." *
Private individuals, as well as chiefs, have recourse to them.
" If a man wishes to undertake a journey, or wants to know
what to do in a case of illness, or should he be tormented
by a desire to find out what has caused the death of a
relative, he immediately consults the bones." 3
Junod has clearly set forth the rules and principles of
this method of divination, which allows of answers to all
kinds of questions, and appears very amusing to him. " The
diviner, or the consultant, will take twenty-five or thirty
small bones in his hand, shuffle them well, rub them against
one another, and then suddenly throw them down in front
of him. Each of them possesses its own inherent signifi-
cance, but this will be modified or intensified according to
the way they scatter themselves on the ground. They
therefore have to note the side on which the astragali fall,
1 H. A. Junod: " L'art divinatoire chez les Ronga de la baie de
Delagoa," Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie de Neuchdtel, ix. p. 57 (1897).
* H. A. Merensky : Erinnerungen cms dem Missxonsleben in Siid Ost
Afrika, pp 42-3.
3 H. A. Junod : ibid., p. 57.
the direction in which they are pointing, and finally the
position they occupy with regard to each other." 1 We can
easily see how many possible combinations there will be
when all these things are taken into account.
Moreover, if the answer desired is not obtained at the
first throw, they go on until it does come. " Possibly there
will be a ' correspondence ' between the way the bones fall
and the case for which the consultation is made. For
instance, if it is on account of a sick person, the astragalus
representing that person has fallen in the negative position.
Then the ' Word ' has spoken. If there is no correspond-
ence whatever, the bones are thrown again, one, two, or
ten times ! If they refuse to speak in the hut, the diviner
will perhaps remove to the square, or to the bush, or behind
the hut, until a clear answer is given." *
This persistence would be difficult to account for, if
nothing but the desire to know what will happen were in
question. But the bones do not reveal the future alone.
" It is by means of the bones the Thongs believe they know
what their gods think and wish." (" Gods " here signify
" ancestors.") ..." It is of the utmost importance to
know what their gods think and do, as the very existence
of the village, of the clan, and the welfare of every mem-
ber of the clan depends on them. . . . They are the
masters of everything : earth, fields, trees, rain, men, children,
even of baloyi (wizards) ! They have a full control over all
these objects or persons. The gods can bless . . . they can
also curse, and bring any amount of mischief on their descend-
ants "... (this last word proves that it is ancestors who
are in question) " drought, disease, sterility, and so on." 3
We can now readily understand the natives' constant
recourse to the bones. Consulting them is as good as having
a dream in which the ancestors make known their opinions
and their desires. This method of divination is easier than
dreams, for the bones are always at hand, and if one does
not know how to interrogate them oneself, there is always
an experienced diviner not far off who can do it. Should
* H. A. Junod : "L'art divinatoire chez les Ronga de la baie de Delagoa,"
P- 69.
3 Ibid. : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. p. 502.
3 Ibid., pp. 360-1.
a difficulty confront the native, therefore, he need not say
(as the chief did to the missionary Macdonald) : " I will
dream about it." He has only to send for a bone-thrower,
to learn from the astragali what his ancestors advise.
The revelations furnished by the bones and by divining
practices in general thus procure for primitives the only
extension of their experience which they are capable of
appreciating or even imagining. It is a necessary one,
for without it they would very often be at a loss. It is
adequate, since it brings them a sure revelation of what
the invisible powers have determined on, or what these
wish them to do. The astragali " speak," and the native
has but to receive their word, and this is their constant
concern. " These practices," says Junod, " kill in ovo
any serious attempt to use reason or experience in the
practical life. Native tribes might have arrived at a useful
and beneficial knowledge of the medical virtues of plants,
if they had studied them properly. But what is the use
of troubling themselves to study, when a single cast of the
bones tells them what root must be taken to cure the
disease ? " »
It is useless for the natives to know experimentally the
properties of any particular plant, for this knowledge does
not give them the idea of trying to find out what those of
another well-known plant may be. These properties never
seem to them sufficiently constant for the effects produced
to depend upon them. Their effects are due rather to the
invisible powers, and therefore the natives always come
back again to the bones, since these furnish them with the
surest information. " One day," says a Transvaal missionary,
" I came across some men in a village who were engaged
in throwing the bones on a mat spread out on the ground
before them. I reminded them that it was a game of chance,
and that they would do better to give up the custom. One
of them said to me : ' But that is our book ; we have no
other. You read in your book every day because you
believe in it ; we do just the same, for we believe our book.' " 2
1 H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. p. 522.
2 E. Thomas : " Lc Bokaha," Bulletin dc la Societe de Geographic de
Ncuchdtel, viii. p. 162 (1895).
The reply is a striking one, and recalls the saying of the
Jesuit missionary in New France, who declared that dreams
were the Indian's Bible. The primitive mind knows no
such thing as chance. What we speak of as accidental
is to them fraught with mystic meaning. Throwing the
bones, then, could not be blameworthy, or even a matter
of indifference ; no other occupation could employ the time
so well, or be more worthy of serious attention. Can the
missionary do better than have intercourse with his God —
the God who speaks to him in the Bible ? (To natives, a
printed book is of a distinctly magical nature.) Well, then,
their ancestors " speak " to the natives by the bones. Or
rather, the Bible speaks, and the bones speak too. To
consult them, therefore, is not doing anything that is absurd,
or amusing oneself with childish games — not to risk any-
thing without the approbation of the ancestors is being wise
II
It is not always as easy, as it is in South Africa, to dis-
cover to whom the natives are addressing their questions,
and what is the nature of the assistance entreated. Never-
theless, the meaning of the divining practices remains the
same, and those which are not difficult to explain give us
enlightenment with regard to others which would prove
enigmatical, if we could not perceive the transition , from
the one to the other.
Let us consider, for example, the methods of divination
which are in daily use among the Papuans of New Guinea.
" Before entering enemy territory, the Kai consults the
oracle. He has recourse to it in the presence of any danger
whatever, and according to the result of the consultation,
he finds his fears confirmed, or he is at ease again. When
the Kai warriors want to know whether they are threatened
with an unexpected attack, a man will take a certain root,
pronounce a magical formula over it, and bend it. If it
should break, there is no danger ; but if it remains whole,
the necessary precautions must be taken. Some vegetable
produce must be boiled in a vessel over which certain
incantations have been uttered ; and the side on which
the water first begins to boil will be the direction whence
danger may be apprehended. Or again, before beginning
a campaign, all the weapons which are to be used are piled
up on a hastily erected scaffolding, and on the top a war
shell and an amulet are placed. Then the scaffolding is
shaken until the shell falls down. Should it fall on the side
nearest the enemy's village, it is an auspicious sign for the
result of the expedition about to take place. Before the
warriors start out, they use their united efforts to pull up
a bush from the ground. If they have the good luck to
free it from the soil with its roots unbroken, their attack
will be successful. The following method of divination is
one used in the most diverse circumstances. A staff to
which a handful of grass is fastened is held by two men,
who shake it violently backwards and forwards. If the
grass falls off, the issue will be favourable ; but if it resists,
it is a bad omen. To find out whether a sick man may
hope for recovery or not, . . . they utter an incantation
over a piece of the bark of a tree, and then pass this bark
down the sick man's back. If it slips down with diinculty,
as if it were fastened to the body, the worst must be ex-
pected." 1
In a neighbouring tribe, the Jabim, " before undertaking
an expedition, they try by means of an oracle to obtain
some certainty as to its issue. They pronounce a magic
formula over a certain onion, and then put it, with some
leaves from a tree, over the fire in a vessel full of water.
Men stand round to notice when the water bubbles. Before
it begins to boil, they take some red paint and make a
mark across the opening of the vessel. Half is then con-
sidered as belonging to the enemy, and the other half as
belonging to their own tribe. The contents of the vessel
begin to froth, and soon they are boiling. If it is their
side which rises while bubbling, so that the liquid on the
enemy's side overflows, and theirs, as it were, covers his,
the omen is a favourable one. But should it happen the
other way about, or should the contents of the vessel boil
on both sides equally, then they stay at home." 2 Similarly,
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, iii. pp. 132-3.
■ Ibid., p. 317.
in the same district, of (German) New Guinea, with the
Bukaua, " before setting out, the expeditionary force tries
to find out whether it is a favourable time to risk an attack.
A vessel filled with plants of a pungent and bitter kind is
placed on the fire in the middle of the village square. When
the water begins to boil, the band of warriors takes up its
position on one side to wait till the froth overflows. Should
it overflow on their side, it is a sign that the enemy is on
his guard, and the expedition is given up. . . . If the con-
trary is the case, the warriors drink of the liquid, which
will give them courage and hardihood. " ■
Missionaries have observed a large number of other
practices of divination. All are of a magic kind. Whatever
may be the creature or the object made use of, the diviners
always begin by uttering some magical formula over it.
That is a preliminary condition without which no valid
result can be expected from the method employed. The
first step, then, consists in establishing contact with the
world of unseen powers, upon whom depends the success
of the divination, as well as that of the undertaking to
which it refers, and so the native does not differentiate
between them. Thus he enters into the realm of what is
" sacred." Then, and then only, may he put the question
which is occupying his mind, and hope for an answer.
In the second place, the answer, as a rule, is given by
a "yes" or "no," by a choice between two alternatives.
Either the root bent over will break or it will remain whole ;
either the water which boils over will be spilt on this side
or on the opposite one ; either the handful of grass will
fall off or it will remain fastened to the stick, and so on.
Methods of this kind have the advantage of avoiding all
ambiguity. It is certain that the unseen power interrogated
will reply, and that its reply will be clear, since it is, so to
speak, confined to two courses, one of which it is bound
to choose. May not one fear to offend it by thus constrain-
ing it ? Neither the natives of New Guinea nor any other
primitives appear to have the slightest scruple of this kind.
Very often the powers in question are not possessed of a
definite personality in their collective representations ;
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, iii. p. 447.
the natives have both the idea and the vivid sentiment
of a power, without any precise imagination where this
is to be found. Moreover, even when it is a case of persons,
properly so called, of the dead, for instance (with whom
the Papuans of New Guinea maintain a constant inter-
course without, however, as the missionaries tell us, ad-
dressing the questions put during the divining rites to them),
the magic ceremony which began the operation has made
communication with these dread powers both lawful and
harmless. It has done more ; it has doubtless exercised
such influence upon them that they cannot avoid the in-
terrogation, and the issue of the event is indeed their
answer.
Even the most complete description possible of the
divining process does not disclose all its meaning. It neces-
sarily leaves aside some of the essential features, which are
the result of the peculiar nature of primitive mentality.
Where we find symbolic relations merely, it feels a close
participation. This cannot be expressed in our thought,
nor even in our languages, which are much more conceptual
than those of primitives. The term which would express
it best in this connection would be the V momentary identity
of substance." To take an example, a proceeding common
to many of the tribes of (German) New Guinea consists in
observing on which side the water begins to boil in a vessel
containing certain magic herbs. It is not enough to say
that the right side of the vessel " represents " the enemy,
and the left the natives who are making the test. In a
way which cannot be made objective to the understanding,
nor expressed in language, but which is none the less real,
the Papuans identify themselves and identify the enemy,
with the respective sides. This side, says the missionary,
" belongs " to them ; that is to say, it is theirs, just as
their hands, limbs, head, and name are theirs, and " belong "
to them. It is not simply theirs, it is they themselves.
Whilst the test is being accomplished and they are following
its progress with eager eyes, in passionate and often anguished
ardour, they feel themselves to be personally engaged. It
is something quite different from a symbolic representation,
showing beforehand what is about to happen. It is the
warriors themselves in the presence of their enemies.
They are actual witnesses of their own victory or defeat.
This participation will lose some of its surprising and
mysterious features when we compare with it the charac-
teristics peculiar to primitive mentality which we have
already indicated — the particular form which its experience
takes, and especially the way in which it represents time
and causality. We remember that, far from imagining
events as linked together by a determinism which definitely
binds antecedents to consequents, and shows them unfolding
in an irreversible order, primitives do not see time as we do,
stretching out like a straight line indefinitely before us.
They therefore cannot give an exact location to future
events on this line of time ; they simply feel them to be
prospective, without seeing them arranged in immutable
order, separated by intervals which must succeed each
other. Their representation of the future consequently
remains a vague one. On the other hand, the mystic powers
who are constantly intervening in the visible world — them-
selves invisible — always exercise their influence in direct
fashion. They are the only and the real causes of all things ;
those perceived in the visible world being but instruments
or opportunities. Consequently, as soon as the primitives
form an idea of any action of the mystic powers, it is, in
their eyes, from that very moment a real thing, even if it
is not to manifest itself until later. Occurrences may
therefore be both future and present at the same time.
This simultaneity is not formulated in exact terms in the
mind of the primitive ; it is simply felt. When the native
who is noting, with an emotion which almost amounts to
paroxysm, the movements of the boiling water, sees it
overflowing on his side, he is at the same time present at
his own victory. From this moment it is a reality to him,
although it cannot take place until he has encountered the
enemy. He is not only sure of conquering ; he has indeed ,
already conquered.1
1 At Ruanda, in the course of a divining operation, " the bones say ' For
the present, the inquirer may be reassured, but his good fortune will any-
how be but fleeting, for the bazimu are ready to begin the campaign. What
am I saying ? They have already struck the first blow.' " — P. Alexis Arnoux :
" La divination au Ruanda," Antkropos, xii-xiii. p. 13.
Commenting on this passage, Fr. Arnoux adds : " Here, the past appears
In this case, again, divination implies a prayer, in the
sense in which the primitives pray ; that is to say, it makes
an appeal to the unseen powers which is designed to have
effective influence upon them. Undoubtedly, divination
does first of all inform them of the chances of success. If/
for example, the water boils over on the side which " belongs "
to the enemy, they know that at this moment the invisible
powers are favouring him. It may be that his wise men
have more effective enchantments, that they are acquainted
with more powerful incantations than theirs. In any case,
they must pause, postpone the attack, try new charms,
and begin the divining tests again, not risking anything
until the answer vouchsafed is such as they wish it to be.
When at length it is so, the successful issue of the test not
only informs them that they may now proceed to action
(just as the weathercock's new position announces that the
wind has changed, and it is now safe to put out to sea).
It certainly does that, but at the same time it does a good
deal more : it promises a success which is already a reality.
This is what gives divination its inestimable value in the
eyes of the primitive. In the test which predicts his suc-
cess he sees himself actually victorious. He must procure
such a vision at all costs. Whether he receives it in a dream
or obtains it from a divining process matters little. In
both cases it is equally valid to him, and it responds to his
ardent desire, not only to know whether he will conquer,
but also to do so.
Similar proceedings may be noted in peoples who are
further advanced in civilization than the tribes of New
Guinea, but the mystic meaning of the divination has not
entirely disappeared. Major Ellis, writing of the negroes
on the west coast of Africa, says : "All seem to believe
firmly in divination as a means of trying inferences concern-
ing the course of future events. Without reasoning how
it is done, they think that coming events are somehow
foreshadowed by it." * These are remarkable words. The
observer seems really to have recognized that the future
also to have the sense of the immediate future. ' You are so near to receiving
the blow that you can regard it as already delivered.' "
1 A. B. Ellis : The Ewe-speaking Peoples, pp. 151-2.
occurrence announced is immediately felt as actually present,
because to those interested, the test is already the event
itself.
The same interpretation should doubtless be accorded
to the following test, which is practised by the Bangala of
the Upper Congo. " A saucepan of marsh or forest water
is procured, and some medicine put into it. It is placed
on the fire, to which none but the operators have access,
and then after due time they say to the likato : " Will they
kill us in the fight ? " If the water boils up and fills the
saucepan, some of them will be killed, so they abandon the
war ; but if the water keeps low, they ask : " Shall we kill
some of them in the fight ? ■' Then if the water rises in
the saucepan some of the enemy will be killed, and the
war is prosecuted ; but if the water does not boil over, it
shows that they will kill none of the enemy, consequently
the fight is dropped. The test is put several times before
they consider it satisfactory." 1
Among the Zulus, certain practices of divination recall
what we have noticed in the Papuans of New Guinea.
" This custom," says Callaway, " is that of churning medicine
in a pot of water. Two medicines are chosen, one to repre-
sent the chief, the other the enemy. These medicines are
placed in different vessels ; if that representing the enemy
froths up suddenly whilst that representing the chief does
not froth, they regard it as a sign that the enemy will prove
too strong for them if they attack him at that time, and
the army is not allowed to go out to battle. The same trial
is represented again and again, it may be for months, or
even years ; and the army is allowed to go out to battle
only when the sign is reversed, and the chief's vessel froths
up, and that of the enemy does not froth." 2
As in New Guinea, the consultant here identifies himself
with the object which represents him, and the future is
felt to be actually real. At the very moment when victory
is promised it is obtained. The battle is won ; it is a settled
thing, and when, some weeks or even months later, it really
1 Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the
Upper Congo River," J. A. I., xl. p. 391.
* Rev. C. H. Callaway : The Religious System of the Amazuhi, p. 441
(note 25) (1870),
does take place, it will be a mere formality, so to speak.
Callaway expresses it exactly : "A chief does thus with
his vessel, and he generally mentions what he is about to
do before it is done, saying : ' Such-and-such will happen,
and you will do so-and-so/ And so it is when the army is
led out, the men look for a word to come from the chief
to give them courage, that they may know what kind of
people it is to whom they are going . . . (whether they
are to be feared or no). . . . The chief is accustomed to
say : ' You will not see any army. I say I have already
killed So-and-so. . . . You will only take the cattle. There
are no men, but some women.' The word of the chief
gives confidence to his troops ; they say : • We are
going only ; the chief has already seen all that will
happen/ " x
It is quite allowable to imagine that there may be some
boasting in the words of the chief and his troops. But there
is assuredly something else. The proof of it is that they
never begin a campaign until the auspicious sign has made
its appearance. It may have to be long waited for, but as
soon as it is seen, all is won. The enemy is not going to
be beaten ; he is already beaten. The chief has already
slain such-and-such an enemy chief. The spear-thrust which
will lay the enemy low is but the finishing-stroke of an
event which from this very moment has actually occurred.
The words which Callaway puts into the mouth of the
Zulu chief exactly express what divination means to him
and his people.
Ill
Divination " by alternative " takes various forms. Its
object is nearly always the same, that of satisfying the need
for the direction and protection of the invisible powers,
to whom the questions and prayers are addressed. Thus,
in the island of Mangaia, in Polynesia : " On the morning
of the fatal day, the chief selected two beautiful ariri shells,
one for himself and one for his adversary Koteateoru.
Secret instructions were given for his forces to hide themselves
1 Rev. C. H. Callaway: The Religious System of the Amazulu, pp. 342-3.
in a certain place. The narrow pathways between the
deep taro swamps were obliterated. This done, the chief
returned to look at his shells ; to his joy, the one representing
his foes was turned upside down. He interpreted this as
a sure omen of their destruction." « In the same way, in
New Zealand, ."in order to find out what the issue of a
campaign will be, a young man takes a number of small
sticks, one for each of the belligerent tribes. He levels a
certain piece of land, and then sets up the sticks like nine-
pins in two parallel rows to represent the two armies facing
each other, and goes a little way off to see what the wind
will do with them. If the sticks representing the enemy
fall backwards, the enemy will be overthrown ; if they fall
forward, he will conquer ; but should they fall to one side,
the issue will be uncertain." 2 Sometimes the question is
put directly in definite terms. In Motu Island, at the moment
of fighting, M the chief catches his middle finger (natugu)
and holding it says: 'Natugu, natugu, shall I go or shall
I stay ? Just speak, natugu/ He pulls the finger, and if
it cracks he stays at home or returns. If there is no crack,
he goes on." 3 Facts of this kind are extremely common
in all latitudes.
Divination bears upon future occurrences of every kind.
It will reveal whether a sick person will recover, what the
sex of an unborn child will be, whether the haivest will
be good, or the rain will fall. But it is often used for the
mere discovery of something that is hidden, or the obtaining
of important information about an event which has already
occurred. For instance, someone wants to know whether
a traveller, from whom there has been no news for a long
time, is in good health, where something that is lost may
be found, whether it has been mislaid or stolen, who has
done a deed for which the social group is suffering, in which
direction a beast which has wandered away from the herd
is to be sought, and so forth. Now it is noteworthy that
the processes employed in these cases, and in many other
similar ones, do not essentially differ from those used when
1 W. W. Gill: Savage Life in Polynesia, pp. 14-15 (1880).
a " Societe de Marie." Annates des Missions d'Ocianie, i. 94-5 (Lettre
du P. Servant. 1841.)
3 Rev. J. Chalmers : Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 304.
it is a question of ascertaining and securing a certain result
in the future.
This resemblance is first accounted for by what has been
said about the idea of time peculiar to primitive mentality,
when it perceives or solicits omens, and interrogates the
mystic powers upon which the future depends. To it the
influence of these powers appears to be immediate, in the
full sense of the word. It is exercised without any inter-
mediary, and consequently at once, and the future event
which will be produced by means of it is felt to be already
here. If it be so, the same processes of divination will
serve to ascertain the issue of the next campaign, as to
find the horse which has disappeared during the night.
Moreover, in the case of future events, the practices of
divination imply a request for help and support, and even
a prayer addressed to the unseen powers. These elements
of divination are equally present when it bears upon matters
that are past or objects that are hidden. Only instead of
praying for a thing to happen — that is, for the unseen
powers to make it a reality — the primitive asks that he
may be enabled to see the object lost or the event which
he did not witness, and that the power may reveal it to
him directly. It matters little whether the event belongs
to the future or to the past ; to primitive mentality it
seems as if the field of operations of the unseen powers
constitutes a comprehensive category, dominating those
of time and space in which, to our minds, events are neces-
sarily arranged in definite order. It is in this sense that
the primitive's experience is more ample, if not richer in
content than our own, for it can embrace more at one time.
Its framework is less rigid, and allows of its comprising
the seen and the unseen in the same reality, what we call
the natural and the supernatural ; in a word, this world
and the other. Hence we find characteristics which are
common to all kinds of divination. Even should it not
be a question of the future, its methods tend not only to
find out what is at present unknown, but at the same time
they endeavour to obtain the help of the powers which are
able to lift the veil.
We can make this matter clearer by some examples.
In (German) New Guinea, " the co-operation of a wizard is
of peculiar importance when the discovery of a thief is in
question. If a robbery has taken place without its being
possible to name the guilty person, the native resorts to the
man who possesses a charm which will detect him. The
wizard takes his axe and strikes at a creeper with it, pro-
nouncing a name at each blow. If the axe hits the creeper,
the name is that of an innocent man ; but if it fails to reach
it, the man just named is the culprit. Or again, he takes
a small branch with some leaves, pronounces some incanta-
tions over them, and strikes his left arm with the branch.
If a leaf falls off, the man then named is not guilty, but
if, in spite of the blow, all the leaves remain fastened to
the branch, the man named at the moment is the thief." l
Quite near this district, among the Kai, " when a robbery
has taken place, the natives consult the oracle to find out
who is the thief. There are various ways of proceeding.
For instance, they fasten a coco-nut full of water to the
end of a cord, and start a revolving movement with it,
at the same time saying over the names of the inhabitants
of the village. He at whose name the water is spilt is the
guilty person. Or again, they put a stick in the ground
and balance a pot upon it. They then call out all the names
of the people in the village. As long as the robber's name is
not uttered, the pot sways and threatens to fall off, but
when the robber's name is pronounced, it recovers its
equilibrium and remains motionless." * In the Bakaua
tribe, neighbours of the Kai, " to discover a thief, the natives
take a vessel, the bottom of which is painted with red
stripes. A rod is stuck into the ground in the middle of
the village square, and the upper surface, which is also
striped with red, is perfectly smooth. One of the village
people tries to balance the vessel on this surface, at the
same time calling out the names of all the others in turn.
The natives, who are exasperated by the theft, seat them-
selves round and watch the performance. The vessel seems
constantly about to fall, but as soon as the name of the
thief has been pronounced it stops swaying and remains
* R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, hi. pp. 251-2 (Neighbourhood of
King William Cape). 3 Ibid., p. 127.
steady. Then they search the suspect's bag, and they go
through his house from top to bottom. Whether the
object stolen be found there or not, suspicion remains
fastened on him, and the opprobrium of it is intolerable.
The man is obliged to leave the village — if not for good,
at any rate for a long time — until the matter has uncon-
sciously passed into oblivion." J
In a case in which we should hold an inquiry, the Papuan
I draws lots." But to him there is no " chance " in drawing
lots. On the contrary, he is making an appeal to mystic
powers, and the magic nature of the operation guarantees
its infallibility. It always starts with rites which put the
sorcerer, the bystanders, and all that is to be done, in
touch with the unseen world. They are thus conveyed to
the sacred realm, and as a consequence the revelation
vouchsafed to them will perforce be reliable. It matters
little whether experience confirms it or not. If the general
notions here involved are analysed, we shall find that the
methods employed are the natural result of the natives' men-
tality, and that they cannot fail to have firm faith in them.
Why are they inspired with such anger with the unknown
thief, and so anxious to discover his identity ? Are they
acting on behalf of a social law which demands that the
violation of any right shall be followed by the pronounce-
ment of a sentence ? Are they obeying an imperative
feeling which requires that private property shall be re-
spected ? But in communities like those of the Papuans,
we know that the idea of ownership is different from our
own. The number of things which may be possessed in
turn by various persons is extremely small. Within the
social group there is hardly any buying or selling, nor is
there really any economic existence. If we subtract what
is common property — the hunting grounds, for instance —
every individual does indeed possess some things which
are his ; but they " belong " to him in a mystic sense,
giving this term a more profound meaning than ours.
They participate more or less in his substance. They belong
to him as do his head and his limbs, his wife and his children,
his nail-parings, hair, skin, fat, excreta. The very clothing
1 R. Newhauss : ibid., pp. 471-2.
he wears, being moistened with his bodily perspiration, is
a very part of him.1 It is the same with the spear which
he uses in hunting and his fishing net ; whoever lays
hands on them, touches him, and he who tries to take them
from him is suspected of the most sinister designs. He
who has become possessed of them, henceforth has the
power of doing him the greatest possible harm, and his
life is held at the robber's discretion. Into whose hands
are these actual parts of his personality going to fall ?
Who knows whether the robber, or one of his accomplices,
may not already have " doomed M him ?
Among such peoples, therefore, a thief is not merely
an " undesirable " member of the group, a lazy and un-
scrupulous fellow who wants to procure, without working
for it, the fruit of others' labours. He may be that, and
still more, a sorcerer of the very worst type, a virtual assassin.
Moreover, to become possessed of things which he may put
to such dread uses, he must already be engaged in the
practice of magic. He makes himself invisible, he enters
huts while their owners are asleep, he devotes himself to
their undoing in a way they are quite unconscious of, etc.
It is therefore absolutely essential to their safety that this
dangerous malefactor shall be made known. But they
will never succeed in discovering him unless they can meet
the mystic forces he is employing with other and more
powerful ones which shall overcome his.
Thus the natives do not think of an inquiry conducted
according to the European idea of law. Such an idea
would never occur to them, and even if it were suggested,
they would not see any useful purpose to be served by
it. What matters to them is to have a mystic hold on |
the unknown thief. Now if he is a member of their group,
it will be possible to obtain such a hold. They can employ
powerful means of magic to try and discover his name.
If they are successful, they have him, and he will not
escape them, for to primitives, the name serves not only
to designate individuals ; it is an integral part of the per- I
sonality, it participates in it. If the name is disposed of,
« G. Landtman : " The Folk Tales of the Kiwai Papuans," Acta
societatis scientiarum fenniea, xlii. pp. 313-15 ; cf. ibid., p. 268.
the personality is mastered, and to deliver up the name of
a man is to deliver him over. Hence the methods in use
for the purpose of discovering the criminal. While the
mystic operation proceeds — the swaying movements of a
vessel full of liquid, over which enchantments have been
uttered, for example — a man who is qualified to do so calls
out in turn the names of all the members of the group.
By so doing he brings them directly in touch with the
mystic power which is acting, without any possibility of
escape. The moment the name of the guilty person is
pronounced, this contact with the unseen powers becomes
a revealing process. The vessel ceases its swaying move-
ment and remains still ; the thief is discovered. The
natives do not dream of doubting the result, and they need
no other test to corroborate the verdict.
Proceedings similar to these have been noted in nearly
all parts of the world, in Australia, South, Central, and West
Africa, etc. They are, as it were, a necessary consequence
of the orientation of the primitive's mind. The coincidence
of a certain name with the disclosure awaited, which they
consider to be due to the intervention of occult powers,
is as good as a revelation made by a dream, or a divination
pronounced by the choice of an alternative, examples of
which we have already given. However diverse the methods
may be, its working is, at bottom, identical.
Frequently, too, instead of revealing the name of the
guilty party, divination makes known the direction in
which he is to be sought, or the place which must be visited
if a missing object is to be found, and so on. Thus, in
North Queensland, " a medicine-man can find to a certainty
the direction whence the ti (sorcerer) came, by going out
into the bush where he will throw certain charcoal-looking
pellets into the air in the direction of the four cardinal
points. These will remain suspended in mid-air unless
thrown in the proper quarter, where only they will fall
on the ground. I was informed that these pellets had
been sucked by a medicine-man out of some other patient
on a previous occasion/' x In South Africa, " the Kafirs
■ W. E. Roth : " Superstition, Magic, and Medicine," North Queensland
Ethnography, Bulletin 5, No. 130.
1 Fr. ^Egidius Miiller : " Wahrsagerei bei den Kaffern," Anthropos, i.
P- 778.
1 L. Schultze : Aus Namaland und Kalahari, p. 226.
3 Spencer and Gillen, "The Native Tribes of Central Australia," pp. 303,
use the praying mantis for the purpose of divination. If
cattle are lost, if a doctor is needed, or anything of that
sort, they get one of these insects on a blade of grass,
and put it somewhere or other, no matter where. The
insect seeks another place for itself, and the direction in
which its head then points is the one in which the missing
cattle will be found, or the doctor who is needed, etc." x
Similarly, with their neighbours the Hottentots, a box is
the instrument used. A bit of thread is soaked in grease
and the end lighted ; it is placed in a closed box and held
against the wind. The direction in which the smoke escapes
tells the perplexed Hottentot where he must look for the
animal which has strayed, or the travelling companion
who has lost his way.2 In these happenings, which are so
common that there is no need to relate any more of them,
everything occurs exactly as if the possible directions were
enumerated in turn, just as we have seen the names of the
natives were. But in this roll-call there was, at any rate
in its inception, a mystic reason ; is there not also one
in this search for directions ?
In the native's eyes, nothing happens by chance. If
then the praying mantis or the smoke takes one direction
in preference to all others, this semblance of a choice is
a revelation ; that is to say, it supplies the answer to the
question propounded, provided this has been couched in
the proper mystic fashion. Moreover, if the name of a
man, as an integral part of his personality, gives a hold on
him, should not that region of space where he was born,
and which he inhabits, the home of a social group, play an
equal part ? Do not they, by their intimate participation,
" belong " in the same way ? Are not the social group,
the individuals composing it, and the region they occupy
in space all united in a mystic bond which, like their names,
can make them known ? 3 The primitives' representation of
space, like that of time, as far as they have any special one,
is above all " qualitative." Regions in space are not con-
ceived, nor really represented, but rather felt within complex
masses, and each region is inseparable from that which
fills it. Each participates in the real or mythical animals
which live in it, the plants which grow there, the tribes
inhabiting it, the tempests and hurricanes which visit it, and
so on. The representation of a space that is homogeneous,
to which we are accustomed, does not give the idea at all.
The following circumstance, which occurred in Western
Australia, may make this difference more perceptible.
A party of Europeans and aborigines taking part in
an expedition was tormented by thirst. They examined
all the water-holes, to see what hope there was of finding
water, and the natives dug a kind of channel in the sand,
and plunged a stick down it, lest perchance there might
be some underground source. At the first pit made they
found nothing ; at the second the end of the stick came
up damp. The natives redoubled their efforts, and soon
arrived at sand which was wet enough to stick to their
hands when pressed. " It was now no longer necessary
to carry the large pit any further down, as a much smaller
hole dug in this bottom would serve our purpose. But
now a difficulty arose in the minds of the natives, and
one not at all appreciated by us. With them the question
now was, in which corner of the larger pit the small one
should be dug, so as to be sure of finding water ? while
to us, not so influenced by imagination as they, it seemed
perfectly immaterial, for water was evidently to be had
by sinking anywhere within the above space, for the whole
of it was equally moist. But the black man never trusts
to chance ; he must have a reason, good or bad, to guide
him in every action ; and consequently they at once pro-
ceeded to discuss this knotty point in regular form. The
first proposal was to dig it in the western side of the pit,
for the sea being in that direction it was probable that
water would be found towards that quarter ; but this
plausible proposal was immediately scouted, and its author
ridiculed on the ground that though water would be found
in the direction suggested, yet coming from the sea it would
be salt, and therefore unfit for drinking. The next proposal
was that it should be in the eastern part of the pit, for the
reason that the Angaardies dwelling in that direction have
plenty of boolia (magic power), and can make it rain whenever
they please, consequently they are never short of this
element. This proposal seemed to decide the matter, for
they were on the point of digging . . . when an old man
expressed a fear lest these much-dreaded Angaardies should
turn sulky if their rights were thus infringed, and in revenge
use their terrible powers of enchantment against the
Watchandies, and thereupon this idea was at once abandoned.
One sage proposed the north-west, for all the rain came
from that quarter, and this suggestion would have been
adopted, had not another proposed the south, contending
that the whites coming from that quarter must have found
plenty of water on their journey, consequently that de-
sideratum was to be found in the specified direction. This
compliment to ourselves carried the day." 1
Primitive mentality thus attaches great importance to
relations to which we pay no attention, but which, by some
sort of participation, connect beings and things with the
direction or the point in space where they are usually or
actually to be found. The water will be found in the east,
because that is the home of the Angaardies, those mighty
magicians and rain-makers ; but the Angaardies in their turn
participate in the quality which belongs to everything in the
east. Again, water will be found in the south, because the
whites, who have much magic power at their command, have
come from the south ; thus there is a participation existing
between the southern region and the whites, and this is
represented partly by a quality peculiar to the whites,
which is extended to that region, and partly by a property
of the south which will be at the disposal of the whites.
These connections, familiar as they are to primitive men-
tality, do not afford it material for reflection. The primi-
tive mind never expresses them in a general or abstract
way ; he feels them more than he thinks them. Just because
he apprehends them directly, by a kind of intuition, he is
guided by them in action without being consciously aware of
them. His mind functions in a space which is qualitatively
1 A. Oldfield : " The Aborigines of Australia/' Transactions of the
Ethnological Society, iii. pp. 282-3 (l865)-
determined and more opulent in its properties than our
own ; for if he knows nothing of geometrical properties,
space on the other hand is endowed with qualities which
are directly perceptible, and these it shares with all that
occupies it.
Oldfield tells us again : " Every male " (of the Watchandie
tribe) " is bound to visit the place of his nativity three times
in the course of a year, but for what specific purpose I
could not learn." «
Spencer and Gillen report similar customs among the
natives of Central Australia. We know, too, that when
several tribes meet together at a certain place, each tribe
takes up its position on the spot which its mystic connec-
tions with a certain definite point in space assign to it.
This fact has been noted in other places besides Australia,
where it is very clearly evident. M I have often been struck,"
writes William Thomas, " with the exact position each
tribe takes in the general encampment, precisely in the
position from which their country lies according to the
compass (of which they have a perfect notion). I have
found this invariably the case, and latterly could form an
idea on the arrival of the blacks what part they came
from. " z
A. R. Brown, who has made a recent study of three
tribes of Western Australia, very clearly describes that
participation which Oldfield had noted, half a century
previously, in the same region. He says : "In the early
days of the settlement of the whites in the country of this
and neighbouring tribes the squatters made use of the
natives as shepherds, and I have been told on several occa-
sions that they found it at first impossible to persuade a
native to shepherd the sheep anywhere except on his own
part of the country. ... It is impossible for a man to
leave his local group and become naturalized or adopted
in another. Just as the country belonged to him, so he
belonged to it. If he left it he became a stranger, either
the guest or the enemy of the man in whose country he
1 A. Oldfield- "The Aborigines of Australia," Transactions of the
Ethnological Society, iii, p. 252.
3 William Thomas, in Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 96.
found himself. . . . The country now belongs to the white
man, and the natives have to live where they can. But
even now the attachment of a man to his own country
has not been destroyed. Natives often express a wish to
die and be buried in their own inherited hunting-ground/' l
Thus to these Australian aborigines the idea ol the social
group comprises not only the living and the dead ; it has
also other integral parts. The place the natives dwell in,
the region of space in which their ancestors have lived,
where they are living still (as the dead do live while waiting,
in those totemistic centres described by Spencer and Gillen,
until the opportunity occurs for them to be born again in
the form of actual members of their group), all these enter
into a man's representation of his social group. This in-
timate connection between the living, the dead, and the
soil, has been thoroughly grasped by a missionary in British
New Guinea. " The spirits of the dead, invoked to obtain
success in hunting or fishing, are called upon in the very
places where they have hunted and fished. And it seems
as if this were the chief reason which induces the Kuni
religiously to remember the names of their ancestors. When,
during the course of my genealogical investigations, a native
was unable to furnish me with the name of his grandfather
or great-grandfather, the bystanders at once said to him :
■ But then, what do you do when you are hunting ? '
The intimate relation between the social group and its
territory extends not only to the soil and the game which
is found there ; all the mystic powers, spirits, forces more
or less clearly conceived, that are concerned with it, have
the same symbiotic connection with the group. Each of
its members realizes what they are to him and he to them.
When there he knows the mystic dangers which threaten
him, and the supernatural support upon which he can reckon,
but away from this region there is no support of any kind
for him. Unknown, and so much the more terrifying perils
surround him on all sides. It is no longer its air that he
breathes, its water he drinks, its fruits he gathers and eats.
1 A. R. Brown : " Three Tribes of Western Australia," J. I. A., xliii. p. 146.
1 P. V. M. Egidi, M.S.C. : "La religione e le conoscenze naturali dei
Kuni (Nuova Guinea Inglese)," Anthropos, viii. p. 206.
They are not its mountains which surround him ; he does
not tread its paths ; everything here is hostile to him,
since it lacks those participations he is accustomed to feel.
Hence arises his extreme reluctance to leave his own district,
even for a short time. " It may be that the disinclination,"
says Newton, "to go away to another district for medical
treatment is due to fear of the evil spirits of another place,
who may have a special objection to intruders, and it is
better to bear the ills one has. It seems, indeed, that the
only good the spirits do to the inhabitants of a place is
the negative one of making strangers fear to intrude, and
this may also account for the objection natives in the olden
days had to travelling far from home. Was it that the
conservative instincts of the people and their objection
to and fear of strangers made them attribute the same sort
of feelings to the spirits, or was it that this fear made the
people conservative ? Which is cause and which is effect ?
These are the sort of puzzles one meets when one comes
in contact with native races, whose minds and modes of
thought no white man can understand." x
Not very far off, in (German) New Guinea, " two years
ago there came to the missionary Hanke at Bongu a man
from Bilibili, who addressed him on behalf of the people of
his village, who had fled to the district of Rai. He begged
him to intercede with the Government to allow them to
return to Bilibili. In support of his request he stated :
' The spirits of our ancestors have come to Rai seeking us ;
they were very angry, and scolded us, saying : " How could
you desert the place where all our spirits dwell ? Who
is there now to care about us ? " And then/ the man
added, ' the spirits spat with contempt upon the new vessels
which were even then not quite finished, and all these vessels
are broken. And now, therefore, we are living as strangers
among the people of Rai ; we have no fields of our own,
and what is worst of all, we cannot make any pots and
vessels for ourselves. Let us then return to our former
home, that the spirits may no longer be incensed against
1 Rev. H. Newton : In Far New Guinea, p. 86 (1914).
» Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 137 (1907).
It is difficult, therefore, for primitives to live elsewhere
than on the land which makes a part of their social group,
if we may put it thus. It is no less difficult for them to
fight well away from home. Thus in New Zealand, " what-
ever degree of courage a tribe may possess when on their
own ground, on quitting this it soon evaporates ; nor have
they the least hesitation in admitting that this is the case.
. . . They are in dread of surprises and attacks from all
sides."1 This fact is generally known, and many similar
observations have been made.
By virtue of this same participation, the man who is
exiled for all time from the place where his social group has
its home, ceases to form a part of it. As far as it is con-
cerned he is dead, more really dead than if he had simply
ceased to live, and had received the customary funeral
rites. This is the case, too, with prisoners of war who
have been spared, and are adopted by the conquering tribe.
Thus it is that permanent exile means the same thing as
death. In Vura, one of the Solomon Islands, " a Christian
had, in an outbreak of rage, so struck his wife as to break
her jaw and cause her death in a few hours. The woman
had, according to the testimony of her own people, exas-
perated him beyond endurance, and was continually making
unfounded charges against him. They wanted, however,
to take the law into their own hands and to kill him after
the old fashion, as a matter of private revenge ; but the
chiefs prevented this and ... it was decided that trans-
portation for life would be the most fitting punishment.
With this sentence native public opinion entirely agreed ;
the people considered that he would be dead to them" *
Here, again, is a symbolic African rite which allows the
relation between the soil and the dwellers on it to appear.
" When a Ronga comes back from Kimberley, having found
a wife there, both bring with them a little of the earth of
the place they are leaving, and the woman must eat a
little of it every day in her porridge, in order to accustom
herself to her new abode. This earth provides the transition
between the two domiciles/ ' 3
1 Wm. Brown : New Zealand and its Aborigines, p. 47 (1845).
1 E. S. Armstrong : The History of the Melanesian Mission, p. 308 (1900).
3 H. P. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, i. p. 47 (note).
All this illustrates how, in certain cases, divination
makes use of a location in space, as it does of the name
of a man. The location where the man may be found, the
region of space in which he dwells, are " his," in the full
sense of the word, like his limbs and his mind, since, to make
use of Brown's forcible expression, he belongs to his country
as it belongs to him. Hence, a man may be denounced by
the location in space which he occupies, as well as by the
marks left on the ground by his feet. It possesses the
characteristic quality of his personality, or at any rate, of
that of his group.
In time this process may lose its original meaning and
become mechanical, and even end by being used on occa-
sions which have nothing in common with its pristine signifi-
cation. When in searching for the cattle which have strayed
during the night the Hottentot is guided by the direction
taken by a praying mantis, we may be of opinion that in
this there is a form of divination exactly like those by
coincidence and alternative which we have already studied.
But in those, too, there was at first a mystic meaning. And
perhaps, in the mind of the Hottentot, there may exist
some obscure perception of the sense of participation, which
we have found to be such a vital part of the collective
representations of Australian aborigines.
If the object of the foregoing study were a survey of
all the divining processes in use among primitive peoples,
it would be a very incomplete one ; but I have only aimed
at showing what the practices of divination (or those known
as such) signify to primitives, what they expect from them,
and how the same general ideas have led to the most diverse
methods. For that purpose examples taken from the most
undeveloped peoples known to us sufficed.
Many processes of divination of which I have not spoken
are employed by them, and these might be analysed in
the same way. Primitives, for instance, know how to
utilize the services of mediums, for the purpose of com-
municating with the unseen world, and can hypnotize them.
There is hardly anything about the phenomena familiar
to spiritists of all ages and in all parts of the world that
primitives do not know. Myers* Phantasms of the Living
would afford them little surprise. Intercourse with spirits,
especially those of the dead, forms a part of their daily
experience. Though often in dread of it, they frequently
risk courting it, taking due precautions. They can discern
among their oWn people those " subjects " who are the most
sensitive to occult and unseen influences, and the best
fitted to receive communications from the world beyond.
These subjects become diviners, seers, and wizards in the
best sense of the word. It is to them that they turn when
in need of any special revelation. The Esquimaux reserve
all the divining processes for the medicine-man, the angekok.
To carry them out, he puts himself into a state of hypnotic
slumber, or cataleptic or ecstatic trance ; that is to say,
he transports himself to the realm of the unseen powers
and enters into communication with them. He sees and
hears the dead ; he traverses, imperceptibly and instantly,
immense distances on the wings of the wind, and so on.
His experience is like that of a dream which is induced ;
it is a privileged and infallible vision.
Primitives are also acquainted with divination, closely
allied with the preceding forms, which is practised by
means of a crystal, a mirror (when they possess one), the
surface of water, etc. To quote one among countless
examples, in Greenland, according to Crantz: " They pretend
to find out whether a man, that has not come home from
the sea in due time, is living or dead. They lift up the
head of the nearest relation of the missing man with a
stick ; a tub of water stands under, and in that mirror
they behold forsooth the absent man either overset in his
kayak, or sitting upright and rowing." J
Witch doctors and sorcerers are endowed, as a rule,
with special clairvoyant powers. Their eyes see that which
remains invisible to others. Thus they are " supermen "
during their life, and very frequently after their death.
They often have the ability to detect guilty persons by their
appearance alone, and full confidence is placed in what
they affirm. "It is interesting to note/' says Dixon,
speaking of the Shasta, " that shamans are supposed to
1 D. Crantz: History of Greenland, i. p. 214 (1767).
have the power of telling at once whether a person has been
wrong in any way. They are able to do this because,
when they look at a person who has stolen, or done anything
wrong, the person seems to the shaman to be, as it is phrased,
■ covered with darkness/ " >
The characteristic peculiar to this clairvoyance, which
plays so great a part in very many methods of divination,
is its being both direct and intuitive. The reply to the
question propounded is revealed to the diviner or the shaman
in a single and indivisible act of vision. Callaway has
discreetly laid stress on this point. " When anything
valuable is lost they look for it at once ; when they cannot
find it, each one begins to practise this inner divination,
trying to feel where the thing is, for not being able to see
it he feels internally a pointing, which tells him that he
will go down to such a place, it is there, and he will find
it. ... At length he sees it, and himself approaching it ;
before he begins to move from where he is, he sees it very
clearly indeed, and there is an end of doubt. That sight
is so clear that it is as though it was not an inner sight,
but as if he saw the very thing itself and the place where
it is ; so he quickly arises and goes to the place. If it is
a hidden place, he throws himself into it, as if there was
something that impelled him to go as swiftly as the wind.
And, in fact, he finds the thing if he has not acted by mere
head-guessing. If it has been by real inner divination,
he really sees it. But if it is done by mere head-guessing,
and only that he has not gone to such a place and such
a place, and that therefore it must be in another place, he
generally misses the mark." 2
This is a very instructive description. It demonstrates
clearly, by means of a practice with which the primitive
is familiar, his distrust with regard to discursive opera-
tions and reasoning, and his preference for intuitive and
direct apprehension. Discursive processes do not seem
merely difficult and tedious to him ; he has another reason
for avoiding them. He does not believe in them. Should
1 R. B. Dixon: "The Shasta," Bulletin of the American Museum of
Natural History, xvii. pp. 488-9.
a Rev. C. H. Callaway : The Religious System of the Amazulu, pp. 338-9.
an occasion present itself for making use of them — a thing
which rarely happens, for it does not often occur to him
even — he rejects it as likely to obscure or impede the vision
which alone can make him feel where the object sought
really is.
Between the reasoning which seems so simple and so
clear to us, and this direct vision, the primitive does not
hesitate. Herein we have one of the reasons which lead
him to resort on all occasions to divining methods of such
varied nature. To a mentality orientated to the unseen
world, and entirely engrossed in mystic participations,
divination (understood, according to the case, at once as
a vision, a solicited omen, a prayer, a revelation of the
intentions of the unseen powers, and finally as the actual
grasp of a future already present), answers the questions
urged upon his understanding, and his imperative need of
action, far better than any method of reasoning could do.
Chapter VIII
ORDEALS
The history of the Middle Ages familiarized us with those
tests, closely connected with divination, which are called
Judgments of God, or Ordeals. They were known, as
Glotz x has so clearly demonstrated, to the Ancient Greeks.
They are to be met with also among many primitive peoples.
Nevertheless, it would be wiser to refrain from admitting
prematurely that the data regarding them, furnished
by widely differing communities, are identical. I shall
not take for granted that the ordeals known to primitives
constitute a special judicial process which gives the gods
the option of saving a condemned person who may be
innocent (as in the Greek usage), or which refers the
decision of a trial to God (as in the Middle Ages). Leaving
aside for the moment any preliminary definition, I shall
confine myself first of all to analysing instances, and these
I shall take preferably from African races, where ordeals
play a considerable part in the life of the people, not pro-
hibiting myself, however, from studying comparable con-
ditions in other communities.
The feature which first of all impresses itself on the
attention of observers everywhere is the absolute and
invincible confidence, the unwavering faith of primitives
in judgment by ordeal. Even in the seventeenth century,
Italian missionaries on the Congo were already laying
stress on this point. " I was absolutely amazed, and I
could not persuade myself that any men, however great
their ignorance, could really believe in such manifest
trickery, and not admit even one of the many reasons the
missionaries daily advanced against it. . . . But instead
* G. Glotz : L'ordalie dans la Gr&ce primitive (Paris, 1909).
of being convinced, they merely shrugged their shoulders,
saying : ' It is quite impossible for our tests to fail us ; that
can never be, it is quite impossible ! ' " f
The explorers and missionaries of to-day testify to the
same firm faith in trial by ordeal. " The native thoroughly
believes in its efficacy. My own porters have constantly
offered to submit to the ordeal on the most trivial charges." 2
" All the natives," says Duff Macdonald, " believe that
mvai (ordeal by poison) is infallible, while they know
very well that the testimony of their countrymen is not
so. . . . Here we encounter the most deeply rooted faith
that these tribes have. If they believe in anything, it
is in this ordeal. I once asked Kumpana of Cherasulo,
' What would you do if a man stole ivory and vomited
the mvai, but was afterwards found selling the stolen ivory ? '
His reply was : ' If the man stole the ivory he would not
vomit the mvai, the mvai would kill him.' I have made
many similar suppositions to many natives, and though
I carefully concealed my petitio principii, they at once
pointed out that I was supposing cases that could never
occur/' 3 " The blacks are always ready to take the
poison, and it is very rarely that an accused man will
avoid, by flight, his obligation to submit to this proof.
When conscious that they are innocent, they betray no
fear of trial by poison." 4 " The blacks believe firmly that
anyone who is assured of his innocence may drink the
m'bambu in all confidence ; he will not die. For instance,
one day when we were on an expedition, we missed a knife
from our camping-place. At first we thought it had been
stolen by one of the many natives who were squatting
around our encampment, but even before we could formulate
any accusation they one and all declared themselves
willing to drink the m'bambu in order to prove their
innocence. Of course we could not consent to that, and
after a more thorough search, the knife turned up again." 5
* Cavazzi : Istorica descrizione de'tre regni di Congo, Matamba, ed Angola,
P- 97-
* L. Decle : Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 512 (1898).
3 Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, i. p. 160.
4 P. Pogge : Im Reiche des Muata Jamwo, p. 39.
5 H. von Wissmann, Wolf . . . Im innern Afrikas, p. 144. '
In a tribe of Basutos, " yesterday morning a woman from
a neighbouring village came to tell me that she was about
to undergo the ordeal of boiling water on a charge of
witchcraft. Her nearest neighbour was a very bad woman
who had made her life a burden for months, and was
always accusing her of being a witch ; so that now she
had offered to undergo the trial by water (that of soaking
her hands in boiling water). My visitor was not in the
least afraid of the test before her ; knowing herself to
be innocent, she felt sure that the water would not scald
her." *
In East Africa, it is the same thing. " The Kond
is absolutely convinced of the infallibility of this test
by ordeal," writes the missionary Schumann. " They
respect anyone who has vomited the poison, and do him
honour. Everybody drinks the muavi cup, big and little,
men and women, the sole exceptions being the chiefs, who,
if occasion requires it, do so by proxy " (not in any way
because they fear the result of the ordeal, but because oi
the sacred nature of their^ personality).. Merensky, too,
says : " The Kond is always willing to submit to the ordeal.
Drinking the muavi is such a favourite test of this kind
here that you constantly hear the expression ' I will
drink muavi (to prove the speaker to be right). They drink
muavi not only to decide between innocence and guilt,
but also because it affords an easy way of throwing light
on a question of disputed rights. What is the use of
troubling about laborious investigations when it is so easy
to find out what to rely on by getting a verdict from
the cup of muavi ! " 3 However, it is not from laziness,
as we shall soon see, that natives resort to the trial by ordeal
even when there is no question of crime.
Winterbottom relates the story of a young woman
in West Africa who, being accused of witchcraft and knowing
what awaited her if she denied it, prudently made up her
mind to acknowledge it. She was not sold into slavery
at once because she was enceinte, and she succeeded in
1 Missions evangeliques, lxxxi. p. 31. (Th. Burnier.)
* Fiilleborn : " Das deutsche Njassa und Ruwumagebeit," Deutsch Ost
Afrika, x. pp. 309-10.
escaping to the care of the white people. " Such, how-
ever, was the darkness of their minds, and so far were they
from suspecting that any deceit and villainy were practised
that the woman, though persuaded of her innocence, said
no more than that ' the grigris were bad ' and that she
wished for an opportunity of drinking * red water ' which
she was sure would cure her." l And on the Lower Niger
" the belief prevails that the innocent alone escape, and
that only the guilty die." a This accounts for the enormous
number of ordeals, and the victims, sometimes to be
reckoned by hundreds, on the death of a chief, or even
as a precautionary measure on his accession.
Whence comes this firm belief, which is so universal,
and which so shocks Europeans ? How is it that the
black man, who is often so discreet and even subtle when
it is a question of protecting his interests, can be so blind
when his life is endangered by the ordeal ? Does he not
see that in accepting these tests he is delivered over,
bound hand and foot, to the " doctor " who prepares the
poisoned cup, to the chief whose tool the doctor is, or to
his own enemies who pay the wizard for his services ?
When this very evident peril is pointed out to him, he
either shrugs his shoulders or he gets angry. If emphasis
is laid on the absurdity of such a method of procedure,
he turns a deaf ear. No argument prevails with him.
Instead of declaring this obstinacy to be ridiculous
and inconceivable, let us look back upon other courses
taken by primitive mentality which reveal faith of a
similar kind. Let us recall, for instance, the story of the
Congo native who insisted on maintaining to Bentley that
crocodiles were harmless and never attacked human beings,
at the very moment when he was shown two women's
anklets found in the stomach of one of these reptiles ;
or the Ronga who consults the astragali to find out what
medicine is to be given to a sick man. If we start from
the hypothesis that these primitives reason as we do,
represent to themselves as we do, the connection between
1 Th. Winterbottom : The Native Africans in Sierra Leone, i. pp. 142-3
(1803).
* Major A. G. Leonard : The Lower Niger and its Tribes, p. 480.
cause and effect, I venture to say that we must at once
give up the hope of understanding them. What they
think and what they do, in that case, can but appear
absurd and childish in our eyes. But if, instead of attri-
buting to them our own habits of mind, we try to adapt
ourselves to their mental attitude, indifferent as this is
to the most obvious causal relation, and solely occupied
with mystic and unseen forces, we shall find that their
way of thinking and acting is the natural and even necessary
outcome of this.
The European cannot help taking into consideration
before everything else, the physiological effect of poison.
Consequently, to his mind the effects of the test will vary
according to the strength and the amount of the poison
introduced into the system. If sufficiently strong, the
dose will always prevail, whether the one who swallows
it be guilty or innocent ; and if weak, it may do no harm
to the worst of villains. The white man is amazed that
the native should shut his eyes to such obvious truisms.
But the black man's point of view is altogether different
here. The idea of what we call poison is not clearly
defined in his mind. He doubtless knows by experience that
certain decoctions may kill those who drink them. Never-
theless he is ignorant of the mechanical action of poison,
and does not try to learn it ; he does not even suspect
its existence. According to his view, if such decoctions
prove deadly it is because they are the vehicle of mystic
powers, like medicines which are used in illness, the efficacy
of which is also to be explained thus. " Their drugs
produce their effects," writes Nassau, " not as ours do, by
virtue of their chemical properties, but through the exist-
ence of a spirit whose favoured vehicle they are." And
in her turn Miss Kingsley says : " In every influence exerted,
spirit acts upon spirit ; thus the spirit of the remedy
influences the spirit of the malady." It is just the same
in the case of the ordeal poison. Black people do not
imagine its positive properties ; they only think about its
mystic and direct quality. " They do not, however, con-
sider this as a poison," says Winterbottom very rightly,
" because they do not think it would be fatal if the person
who drinks it were innocent, " « It is a kind of mystic
reagent, and, as such, it is infallible. The native is so
convinced of this that he will frequently take no precaution
before submitting to the ordeal. He will not exercise
the right that is his, of superintending the preparation
of the poison, he will not examine the dose to see whether
it is excessive, or the liquid too thick, etc. . . . What is
the use, since the beverage does not act materially but
spiritually, so to speak ? Whether a little more or less
of it is swallowed, matters not. It is not upon that that
the success of the test depends. " The accused, it is said,
has a voice in the selection of the pounder, but so implicitly
is the ordeal believed in that the natives think it is of
little consequence who ' pounds ' it." *
II
As far as we have considered it, the ordeal seems to
be a magical process designed to reveal without any possi-
bility of doubt whether an accused person is innocent or
guilty. The constant use which is thus made of it by certain
peoples has appealed to the imagination of most observers.
It is that to which they almost exclusively allude, not
without expressing their surprise and disgust at the same
time. But the ordeal is also employed in other circum-
stances, where it no longer has anything in common with
judicial procedure. "It is no uncommon thing," says
Bentley, " for natives to use the ordeal of poison to decide
in other matters. A young woman, now living close to
our Wathen station, took nkasa some years ago, when her
uncle was ill, to find out whether he would recover or not ;
at that time she was only twelve years old." 3 In the
same neighbourhood the ordeal by boiling water was
resorted to, to obtain a medical prognostication, " The
doctor puts a vessel full of water and various ingredients
on the fire, and when it boils, he plunges his bare hand
into it, and withdraws it unhurt, to show that that is a
1 Th. Winterbottom : An Account of the Native Africans in the Neigh-
bourhood of Sierra Leone, i. p. 270 (1803).
2 Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, i. p. 204.
3 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 278-9.
privilege reserved for his profession. Then over this water
he mumbles his accursed enchantments, and as if he believed
that it must obey him, he orders it to tell him whether
the sick man will die or not ; then again plunging his
hand into the boiling water, he withdraws it, and if it
be scalded it is a sure sign of death ; if, on the other hand,
it is unhurt, he is convinced that the invalid will recover." x
In both these cases, is not the ordeal a form of divination
similar to those which we studied in the preceding chapter,
and should it not be explained in the same way ?
A test by means of the muavi may, like the practices
of divination, also serve as a method out of a difficulty
which suddenly presents itself. A man, whose like one
has never seen before, a white man, makes his appearance ;
who knows what he may be capable of, what magic powers
he possesses, which misfortunes may be in his train ?
Are they to let him set foot in their country ? " Lukengo
held a great family council, and then he ordered them to
make a cock take the poison ipotnea, a large assembly
of people being present ; if the cock vomited the poison,
it would prove that I came as a friend, but if the cock
died, I must be treated as an enemy." * " When you came
here for the first time, ten years ago," said King Lewanika
to Coillard the missionary, " the Barotse, who were suspicious
as to your intentions, hastened to consult the bones, and
to administer muati (a virulent poison) to several hens.
Some of them died, the others recovered, and that accounts
for the ambiguous messages that were sent to you. They
did not dare openly to forbid you to set foot in the country,
and yet they were afraid to receive you. Therefore they
resorted to all sorts of artifices to throw obstacles in your
way and discourage you. Neither the cloak that you
sent me then nor your subsequent presents did I ever
receive. They were declared bewitched, and were stopped
on their way to me." 3 We may place beside these
facts another of a very similar character, observed in
India among the Miris. " On the arrival of the first
1 Cavazzi : Istoria descrizione de'tre regni di Congo, Matamba, ed Angolo,
p. 82.
a H. von Wissmann, Wolf . . . Im Innern Afrikas, p. 231.
3 Missions evangeliques, lxiv. p. 447.
British officer ever seen in the hills, fowls were killed in
every village, by the augurs, with the view of ascertaining
from the appearance of their entrails if the visit boded
them good or ill." I How does this case differ in any way
from the preceding ones, except in the actual process em-
ployed ? And since the object of the divining methods
is, as we have seen, the taking counsel with the unseen
powers and the entreaty for their help and protection,
and also the attempt to perceive in the test of the present,
the success of the future which is already thought of as
real, must we not give a similar meaning to the ordeal
which fulfils the same office ?
We know, too, that the Dayaks of Borneo would never
begin to clear a piece of ground for cultivation, if their
chosen spot had not been authorized by favourable omens.
But with the Wakonde people, " when a man wants to
build a house anywhere, he makes a fowl and a dog take
mvai. If they vomit the decoction, the site is considered
propitious, and the man will set to work confidently." *
Here the missionary Schumann makes use of the word
oracle to designate an ordeal, which is, evidently, really
a solicited omen.
Here, again, is a characteristic observation on the
subject, an instance noted in India, among the Khonds.
" The oath or ordeal of the hen is a minor oath to see whether
a greater one will be necessary. For example, a person
is to be forced to take the oath of the tiger or of iron.
What is this person to do ? He will take a hen, and thrust
its claws into boiling water three times over, saying : ' Bura
from above, Bura from below, thou hast created the earth
and made foliage, trees, cows, etc. . . . To-day I take an
oath before thee ; if I am guilty, may the legs of this hen
be burnt ! ' If the legs are injured, he will believe
himself guilty, and restore the disputed object ; if not
he will take the great oath of the tiger." 3 Thus we see
that before undergoing an ordeal which may prove fatal
* Dalton : Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal {Hill Miris), p. 31.
2 Fulleborn : " Das deutsche Njassa und Ruwumagebiet," Deutsch Ost
Afrika, ix. p. 310 (note).
3 P. Rossillon : " Mceurs et coutumes du peuple Kui (Khonds), " Anihro-
pos, vii. pp. 661-2.
(that of spending the night outside the village, exposed
to the attack of the tiger) the native practises one of his
own, upon which his decision is to depend ; and this
latter undoubtedly is a mere practice of divination by
alternative. But is not " the great oath " in his eyes
exactly the same thing as the " lesser oath," except for
the element of. danger? Otherwise why should the native
unhesitatingly conjecture from the lesser operation what
the result of the greater will be ?
To conclude this part of our subject, in the dictionary
of the Congo language drawn up by Bentley we read
that the ordeal (by poison, the heated iron, the pearl
placed in the corner of the eye, etc.) is called nkasa, and
the consultation of the oracle by any process whatever,
is also called nkasa, affixing to it the name of the means
used in the consultation. Nkasa za nianga means, con-
sulting the oracle by means of the nianga plant.1 Thus
the same word is used to express the idea of divination
and also that of ordeal. The Congo native does not dis-
tinguish between the two, at any rate as to the essential
quality of the operation. Its processes may differ in their
material nature — this is, indeed, very varied in what is
properly called divination — but the end aimed at remains
the same. In any case it would be incorrect to say that
divination is the genus of which the ordeal is a species.
Such a mode of classification is ill-suited to the functionings
of primitive mentality, which is but slightly conceptual.
Divination and ordeal both belong to the same type of
thought and action, one in which this mentality gets in
touch with unseen powers from whom it entreats judgment
as well as support.
If this be so, the ordeal will serve as a means of settling
disputes of the most varied kind. For example, among
the Dayaks of Borneo, " two young men were rival aspirants
to the hand of a girl, and a challenge had in consequence
been issued. The victor would be the one who managed
to remain the longest under water. This singular kind
of duel is not peculiar to the Kantu Dayaks, but is also
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Dictionary and Grammar of the Congo Language,
PP. 505-6.
practised by the Batong Lupar, Seribas, and other tribes
in Sarawak. ... At the first sign one of the two gives
of becoming asphyxiated, the seconds, who are close by,
take both from the water. Usually neither of the two
would come to the surface of his own will, and would
drown himself rather than acknowledge his defeat ; it being
a point of honour with them not to be beaten in a proof
of this kind." They resort to it in varied circumstances, and
usually when there is no other way of settling a dispute.
" Generally, before having recourse to this proof, a cock-
fight is undertaken to settle the question ; but if no satisfac-
tory result is obtained, then the severer test of the plunge
is appealed to." x
This latter ordeal, then, in some way serves as a second
court of appeal, the decision being first demanded by the
cock-fight. Now the aim of this fight is to discover which
side is favoured by the unseen powers. The cock does
not obtain his victory except by the consent and support
of these powers, and by virtue of their steady participa-
tion, each of the adversaries is identified with his cock.
The test then is, in all points, comparable with divination
by alternative ; the ordeal of the plunge, to which they
finally appeal, is of the same type.
Here is another one, " by which . . . many disputed
matters are settled very quietly. . . . Two small wax
tapers are made, of equal length and size ; they are lighted
together, one being held by the plaintiff, and the other
by the defendant. . . . He whose taper is first extinguished
is adjudged to be in the wrong, and as far as I have seen,
he always implicitly accepts the decision. Sir Spenser
St. John also quotes this form of ordeal." a We cannot
help recalling Rabelais' Brid'oie who decides lawsuits
by throwing the dice. His plan would appear far from
ridiculous to primitives. In their eyes, on the contrary, it is
the simplest and also the surest. The magic process by
which they " consult Fate," whatever may be the chosen
instrument, whether candle, dice, astragali, cocks, etc.,
1 O. Beccari : Wanderings in the Forests of Borneo, pp. 177, 179; cf.
Sir Spenser St. John : Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. p. 191.
■ Rev. W. Chalmers in H. Ling Roth : The Natives of Sarawak, i. p. 25.
is as valid as the vision which they get in a dream, or the
answer vouchsafed by the ancestors when they are conjured
up. In the case of a struggle between two men, it declares
in a word which will triumph, and which succumb. Chal-
mers expressly states that the sentence is always unhesi-
tatingly accepted. The loser bows to the decision. He
does not protest in the name of his sacred rights. The
precise effect of the test is to make known on which side
there are sacred rights. To refuse to accept its verdict
would be to proclaim oneself rebellious to the unseen
powers whose judgment it is. The native does not enter
into any discussion about the matter, and he takes care
not to persist, for that would only draw down worse evils
upon him. To form some idea of a state of mind which
appears so curious to us, let us remind ourselves that it is
not unlike that of gamblers. They, too, solicit the verdict
of dice or cards. If the play has been fair, the loser may
be vexed, dejected, or furious, but he does not protest
against the verdict. The only way he can reopen the
question is to begin a new game if he can, and put his
fate to the touch once more. Just in the same way, in
certain cases, there is an appeal from a first ordeal to a
second.
In the case of a dispute about money, or in other litiga-
tion of minor importance, one of the following tests is
often resorted to at Sarawak in Borneo.
" i. Two coins, both of the same size and covered with
wax, but one of them scoured bright, are put into a vessel
filled with water and ashes. Then each party takes one
of the pieces out of the vessel and gives it to the mandirs
(judges), who afterwards declare the words of that party
to be true who succeeded in taking out the bright
coin.
"2. Both parties are plunged into the water by means
of a bamboo cane put horizontally over their heads. The
party emerging first is considered guilty.
"3. Both parties are placed in boxes at a distance of
seven fathoms, opposite one another, the boxes being
made of nibong laths and so high as to reach the men's
breasts. Then both receive a sharpened point of a lance's
length to throw at each other at a given signal. The
wounded person is supposed to be guilty.
"4. At a distance of two fathoms from one another
two parallel roads are made, seventy feet long, at the
extremity of which, in the middle of the intermediate
space, a lance is stuck vertically in the ground. At a
given signal, both begin to run upon the road. The person
who first attains the goal, and touches the lance, is con-
sidered the innocent party.
"5. Two hens are chosen, of the same strength and
colour, and each represents the cause of a party. These
are so laid down that their necks are parallel, and the
head of one touches the shoulder of the other. Then
their heads are cut off simultaneously at one blow, and
the cause of that party whose hen is dead first is declared
to be lost." *
It would be easy to lengthen the list of these ordeals,
but those cited doubtless suffice to show that, though
apparently diverse, they are fundamentally identical.
It is always a question of finding out which is " guilty,"
and which " innocent " — terms which are the equivalent
of " loser " or " winner." Whatever the test may be, its
mystic nature guarantees its infallibility, since, like the
practices of divination, it reveals the decision of the unseen
powers. For instance, if one of the adversaries wins the
race, it is not because he is more agile and runs better
than the other ; it is because the unseen powers which
favour him are stronger than those protecting his opponent.
Here again, if we refer the effects produced to causes which
we call " natural," we wander from the path pursued by
primitive mentality, and then its reasoning seems absurd
to us. But it is, on the contrary, quite consistent with itself,
since it adheres exclusively to the consideration of mystic
forces, disregarding secondary causes. The object of
both ordeal and divination is to induce a manifestation
of these forces.
We shall find then, in many of the primitive peoples,
tests similar to those which have been noted in Borneo.
1 C. A. L. M. Schwaner. Ethnographical notes in Ling Roth : The
Natives of Sarawak, ii. p. clxxxviii.
In the Congo, for instance, " if two men go to law with
each other, and both maintain their claim so emphatically
that it is difficult to get at the truth, the judge orders
them to appear before him. When they are present, he
puts on the head of each a turtle-shell, which has been
rubbed with certain powders, and he orders them to lower
their heads simultaneously. He who has the misfortune
to let his turtle-shell fall first, is considered to be the liar." *
III
If we now return to ordeals employed in criminal
cases, they are so similar to the rest that we can scarcely
explain them differently. Besides, the very idea of criminal
cases is a vague and elusive one. These peoples are
undoubtedly acquainted with contentions which we should
call matters of civil law. Such are usually settled in
" palavers," in which each of the interested parties defends
his own cause, setting forth his pleas at great length, and
calling his witnesses, etc., judgment being pronounced
by the chief, frequently supported by some of the older
men. But it may happen that these proceedings are cut
short and referred to the ordeal for their conclusion, and
the litigants can demand it in nearly every case. The
constant confusing of the " guilty " person with the " loser "
which I mentioned just now, sufficiently indicates that
judicial distinctions which are quite simple in our eyes
are unknown to primitive mentality.
" When a person is accused of a crime, and the accusa-
tions are not sufficiently defined, he is obliged to clear
his character by oath (that is, by an ordeal) ; and this
may be done in five different ways, the first four being
used in civil cases of little importance, and the last in
criminal matters, such as treason or Use-majesti, and other
transgressions of that sort. It is only important people
who are allowed to make use of this last oath, and then
only with the king's consent.
" I. The accused is taken to the priest, who takes a hen's
1 Merolla da Sorrento : Relazione del viaggio nel regno di Congo, pp. ioo-i
(1692).
feather, and after greasing it, pierces the tongue of the
accused ; if it goes through the flesh easily it is a sign of
innocence, and the hole formed by the feather heals up
quickly and painlessly. But if the accused is guilty the
feather cannot pass through, and he is at once condemned.
"2. The priest takes a lump of earth into which he puts
seven or eight hen's feathers, which the accused is obliged
to pull out one after another ; if they come out easily, it
is a sign that he is innocent, but if this is difficult of accom-
plishment, his guilt is thereby proved.
"3. The juice of certain herbs is put into the eyes of the
accused ; if it does him no harm, he is innocent, but if
his eyes become red and inflamed, he is obliged to pay
the fine imposed upon him.
" 4. The priest takes a copper bangle which has been
made red-hot, and rubs it three times over the tongue
of the accused ; the result of this, showing whether the
process has injured him or not, declares him either guilty
or innocent.
" I saw all these four tests performed during the time
that I was there, and in each case the accused persons
were adjudged guilty . . . but I never saw the fifth
and last test applied, for this scarcely happens once in
twenty years ; so I know nothing about it except from
hearsay." J
In these ordeals, as in the preceding ones, we immediately
recognize the type of divination by alternative. After
having accomplished the initiatory rites which prepare
the way to the realm of mystic powers, the " priest " puts
the question in such a way that it can be answered by " yes "
or " no." These ordeals, however, differ from those which
we quoted recently, because they all (with the exception
of the second) are practised upon the person of the accused.
It will be his reaction — whether he is injured or not, whether
the wound heals quickly or slowly, and so on — that shows
whether he is innocent or guilty. It is by no means an
indifferent matter whether the ordeal is practised on the
accused himself, because we see that in certain cases it
may take place by proxy, so that it is allowable for the
1 W. Bosman: Voyage de Guinie (21c lettre), pp. 478-80 (Edition of 1704).
accused to be represented by some other person. In
other cases, on the contrary, this is not allowed, and he is
obliged to undergo the test personally. What are these
cases ? Perhaps an examination of them may help us
to penetrate a little further into the real nature of these
ordeals.
" Most tribes have a milder concoction for trivial
offences," says Macdonald. " The drug may be taken
by proxy — it may be administered to a dog or a fowl or
some animal representing the accused. In these cases
the animal is tied by a string to the criminal " l (undoubtedly
so that their physical participation in each other may be
brought about).
The Wagogo, too, M in trivial cases allow the muavi
to be tested, not on the accused himself, but on a hen which
he is obliged to hold." 2 In the Upper Niger, " murder
and theft are punishable by death, adultery by a heavy
fine, confiscation of property, or slavery, whilst drinking
of sassawood water is imposed on persons accused of lying
or stealing. It is not uncommon, however, to allow sub-
stitutes to partake of this poisoned water, and persons
are procurable who are acquainted with an antidote, and
therefore take the poison with impunity. Dogs are even
allowed to be used as substitutes, but, should they die,
the owner has to pay a heavy fine, being deemed guilty." a
Among the Bangala, of the Upper Congo, three young men
accused of theft, indignantly deny the charge. " Three
young plantains are cut — one to represent each boy —
and the juice of the mokungu is pressed into the centre
of each plantain stump left in the ground. Now when a
plantain is cut it will, in a few hours, send up from this
centre the beginning of a fresh growth, but if one of the
three plantain stumps does not begin to sprout afresh by
the next morning the lad represented by that plantain is
the guilty one ; if two do not sprout then there are two
thieves, and if neither sprouts then all three lads are re-
garded as guilty. On the other hand, if all three sprout
1 Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, i. p. 204.
3 H. Claus: Die Wagogo, Bassler Archiv, 191 1, Beiheft ii. p. 56.
3 A. F. Mockler-Ferryman : Up the Niger, pp. 46-7 (1892).
they are proved to be innocent of the accusation. . . .
The mokungu juice destroys the eye, so in mercy the ' eyes '
of the plantain are used as a substitute for the eyes of the
lad."1 "In matters of theft among the Congo negroes
there is a proof by poison, and the poison is most frequently
administered to children or dogs. The disputants (the
plaintiff and the defendant and their friends) make their
appearance, and an impartial ' doctor ' gives an equal
dose of m'bambu to each of their representatives. The
interested parties divide into two camps, and the ' com-
batants ' advance to the middle, facing each other ; the
concoction is presented to them, and they are obliged to
take it, force being used if necessary. Then the two
camps begin to shout ' It is my dog living ; yours is dying ! '
or else ' Your child is dying, not mine ! ' These cries,
which create an intolerable uproar, last until the poison
begins to act. Should it not take effect, they renew the
dose once, or even twice. The first one to eject the poison
has won. If one of the combatants falls to the ground
in convulsions, he has lost. It is very seldom that a
corpse is left upon the field of combat, because the dose
of poison has been but a slight one." 1
Many similar examples, collected from the same African
races, and elsewhere, might be quoted. Saving in excep-
tional circumstances (above all in the case of chiefs), sub-
stitution is allowed in trivial cases only — petty larceny,
slander, etc., or when it is a preliminary test to find out
whether one which may terminate fatally is to be under-
taken. Among the Barotse, for example : " This is how
a wizard is discovered. Three weeks ago a man died in
a village here. Now in the way these people regard the
matter, a man can never die unless he is killed or has
been bewitched. The dead man's brother says to him-
self : ' I will find out who killed my brother ; I believe it
is my eldest brother.' He takes four or five hens, gives
them poison, saying : ' If you hens die, it will be because
my eldest brother has killed the next one. If the poison
1 Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the
Upper Congo River," J.A.I., xl. p. 364.
a P. Pogge : Im Reiche des Muata Jamwo, pp. 36-7.
does you no harm, my brother is innocent, and my other
brother just died of himself/ . . . Naturally all the fowls
died, and the accused was brought before the chiefs." 1
They made him undergo an ordeal for which he was not
allowed to find any substitute.
Nevertheless, the divining process of the ordeal, whether
practised upon the accused himself, or upon a slave, child,
dog, or fowl representing him, is equally valid, by virtue
of the close relation existing between him and his substitute.
Therefore in cases where proxy is not allowed, the ordeal
must have yet another object in addition to its divining
function, and this object cannot be attained unless the
very person of the accused be put to the proof.
As a matter of fact, those to whom ordeal by proxy
is forbidden, are almost exclusively those who are suspected
of witchcraft. They must undergo the test personally.
Now according to testimonies which are both numerous
and explicit, the object of the ordeal in these cases is not
simply to find out whether the accused person is guilty
or not. It has yet another function, no less important ;
it aims at combating and annihilating the malevolent
principle harboured by the sorcerer, which is the true source
of all his crimes. That is why it is necessary for the ordeal
to take place, even when the magician is unmasked, con-
founded, condemned, nay, even when he has confessed. If
it were designed merely to get assurance, and its operation
were purely divinatory, it would henceforward be motive-
less. However it is still considered indispensable, therefore
it cannot be enough to get rid of the sorcerer. It must
be just as necessary, if not more so, to reach and exter-
minate the noxious principle of which he is the instrument.
Miss Kingsley perceived this necessity very clearly. She
says : "It is the law that such trials should take place
before execution ; but there is also involved in it
another curious fact, and that is that the spirit of the
ordeal is held to be able to manage and suppress the
bad spirits trained by the witch to destruction. Human
beings can collar the witch and destroy him in an ex-
emplary manner, but spiritual aid is required to collar
T Missions evangeliques, lxiv. p. 179. (Louis Jalla.)
the witch's devil, or it would get adrift and carry on after
its owner's death." x
This spiritual aid is furnished by the ordeal. It is
possessed of a mystic quality which acts upon the malevolent
power lodged within the witch and will render it incapable
of working mischief. Nassau, who lived for a long time
in the Congo district studied by Miss Kingsley, also writes :
" The decoction itself is supposed to have almost sentience,
an ability to feel, in the various organs of the body, like
a policeman, and detect and destroy the witch spirit
supposed to be lurking about." * The Italian missionaries
of the seventeenth century had already remarked that
everything took place just as if the poison had a mission
expressly confided to it. " The priest, as if possessing
supernatural authority over the potion, commands it
not to remain in the stomach of the accused if he is a
virtuous man, but to come out of him without doing him
any harm ; but if he is guilty, it is to bring about the death
he deserves." 3
The presence of this evil principle within a person is
a constant and terrible menace to his relatives, and also
to the social group of which he forms a part. As soon as
anyone is suspected of being its corporeal abode, he must
drink the poison, whatever he may be, and however great
the affection which has been felt for him hitherto. It is
a question of the public welfare, which admits of no post-
ponement. Hence tragic situations may sometimes arise.
" A chief had lost one of his wives. ... A little after, the
son of one of the other wives, having gone out at midnight,
a leopard came upon him and caught his foot fast at the
door of the house as he was running in. The lad was
badly bitten, and his mother induced Matope (the chief)
to have resort to the usual methods of detecting witch-
craft ; the result was that his own mother was pronounced
a witch. We were very sorry for the poor woman. She
lived in another village, over the stream from her son's
hamlet. . . . She was fond of joking and fun, but this
1 Mary Kingsley : West African Studies, p. 137.
» Rev. R. H. Nassau : Fetichism in West Africa, p. 244 (1904).
s Cavazzi : Istoria descrizione de'tre regni Congo, Matamba, ed Angola
p. 91.
sentence made her an object of dread and aversion. Even
the natives now shrunk from her, and her life became
a burden. We tried to do everything for her ; we gave
her presents, invited her to come to see us, and cautioned
her against drinking the poisoned cup. We made the
village chief promise that it would not be administered.
The result was that there was some delay in drinking the
ordeal. We made every use of this respite by talking on
the matter with Kapeui, the chief of the country, who
was her brother, and who promised to use every influence
on her behalf. Her son, the chief, was a very successful
hunter. During the delay he could not go to hunt. The
superstition was too strong for him. At the same time
his mother was anxious to break the spell that bound him,
she was so sure that she was innocent. She drank the
dangerous cup and died, and however dearly the liberty
was purchased, the hunter could now go forth to his usual
pursuit." x
What likelihood was there, we might ask, that this
chief's mother should have desired the death of her son's
wife, or that she should have " delivered up " her own
little grandson to a leopard ? But the native does not
imagine probabilities as we do. In his view the double
misfortune which overwhelms the chief in so short an
interval cannot be accidental. The death of the young wife
was already a suspicious circumstance. The leopard which
attacked the boy was assuredly not an ordinary animal ;
it was a leopard in the service of a witch, or inspired by
such an one, or else a witch-leopard, i.e. united to the
witch by a bond so close that it is no longer possible to
differentiate between them. By demanding that the
witch shall be sought for, the mother of the little fellow
who was wounded only voiced the general feeling of the
community. The matter is put to the proof, and the
ordeal denounces the chief's own mother ! The accusation
does not seem so improbable as we should think. In these
communities suspicions are often cast first of all upon
the immediate circle or the nearest relatives of the person
bewitched. (That was what took place in the case quoted
« Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, i. pp. 78-9 (1882).
by the missionary Jalla, related above, when the victim's
brother was accused.) However improbable it might
be, the charge would be credited. Partly because the ordeal
is infallible, and also because the presence of the evil
principle may be unknown to the person whose body it
inhabits. From this moment the unhappy woman becomes
plague-stricken, as it were. They shun her presence as
if she were spreading an infectious disease. Her son dare
no longer go out hunting, lest some misfortune perpetrated
by his mother, befall him, as it has befallen his wife and
his little son. It is essential, therefore, that the ordeal
shall be tried, and in spite of the missionary's efforts,
it takes place. If the accused had escaped with her life,
they would look for the witch elsewhere. But she succumbs,
and that is proof that the suspicions were well founded,
and also the end of anxiety for the village. The ordeal
has revealed and destroyed the evil principle, and if in
doing so it killed the woman, how could that be avoided ?
Nevertheless we can imagine that there might be other
means of dealing with this principle and making it in-
capable of doing further mischief without at the same
time causing the one in whom it dwells to perish, especially
when this person is its involuntary and even unconscious
bearer. Weeks has encountered this idea in the Bangala
people, who admit that the presence of the evil principle
in a person does not necessarily make him guilty. They will
then oblige him to undergo the ordeal, but in a way cal-
culated to get rid of the evil principle, while sparing the
life of the man. " Who benefits by the death of a father
or a brother ? Why, the son or another brother. Conse-
quently when a father is ill, the son is regarded with
suspicion, and after trying all means to drive out the sickness
the patient will, as a last resort, give his son the ordeal,
but not enough to kill. If he vomits it, he is innocent ;
that is proof beyond all doubt and no harm is done ; but
if he does not vomit, but becomes dazed and stupid, well
he is simply a medium by which the occult powers are
working on his relative, and the ordeal dose will clear such
powers out of him, and being no longer able to use him
as a medium, the father or brother will recover. The
lad is carefully tended until the effects of the ordeal have
passed away, then he is warned not to let his body be used
for such purposes again, and he is set free, and is looked
upon by his playmates in the village with as much curiosity
as a schoolboy just out of hospital with a broken leg. The
boy's excuse is, and it is readily accepted by all, that he
was full of witchcraft and did not know it." 1
Weeks goes so far as to say: " No stigma attaches to
a man who is found guilty, for ' one can have witchcraft
without knowing it.' " 2
It is difficult, however, for the horror which this evil
inspires not to extend to the one who embodies it for the
time being. In the very rare cases in which there is no
actual infamy attached to this unfortunate person, he
nevertheless becomes an object of dread, and almost in-
evitably, of hatred. Even while sparing the youth in
the case noted above, a serious warning, which is almost
a menace, is given him. Should his father fall ill again
and remedies prove unavailing, the son will have to
submit to a fresh ordeal, and this time the dose of poison
will be final.
The Bangala believe, too, that witchcraft, when driven
out of one person, can enter another, by the will of the
former, and under the influence of the ordeal. "I knew
a case," says the same missionary, "of a cheeky urchin
who received a box on the ear from his uncle, and the
youngster turned round and said : ' I will bewitch you.'
Shortly afterwards the uncle fell sick, and in spite of remedies
and nganga (the doctor) he continued ill, but at last he
made the boy drink the ordeal, and not vomiting it he was
considered guilty of bewitching his uncle, who had the
boy thrashed (the dose had been too weak to endanger
his life) and demanded two hundred brass rods of the boy's
father to pay the nganga for administering the ordeal, and
to teach the boy to let other folk alone. . . . This uncle
married a new wife, who had a young brother who was
in my school. One day the uncle came asking for this
1 Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the
Upper Congo River," J. A. I., xl. p. 396.
3 Ibid., p. 364.
lad to give him the ordeal ; I refused to give up the lad
for such a purpose ; ' and besides/ I said, ' he does not belong
to your family/ (I had not heard of the marriage.) The
man replied : ' Yes, he does ; I have married his sister,
and he is bewitching me through his sister, who is my wife,
and my nephew who took the ordeal some time ago says
that he passed on the witchery to my brother-in-law/ It
thus appears that a mischievous boy can say he has passed
on his witchcraft to another lad and so get that youngster
into trouble." »
In a neighbouring district, inhabited by the Balobo,
they perform an autopsy to assure themselves of the presence
of witchcraft in the sorcerer's body. The missionary,
Grenfell, writes : " The man killed for witchcraft we knew
very well. . . . There was a great outcry among his friends
after his death, for the accuser failed to find the witch —
some not uncommon growth in the intestines, which is
deemed incontrovertible proof. In this case no trace of it
could be found, and so by general consent the poor man
was cleared of the charge of witchcraft." 2
Bentley has even seen the natives about to dissect a
corpse to look for the organ which, in their opinion, is
infallible proof that the man, when alive, was a sorcerer. 3
This is a custom in many parts. Miss Kingsley had also
drawn attention to it. "In many districts of the south-west
coast and middle Congo it is customary when a person dies
in an unexplainable way, namely without shedding blood,
to hold a post-mortem. In some cases the post-mortem
discloses the path of the witch through the victim — usually
I am informed, the injected witch feeds on the victim's
lungs — in other cases the post-mortem discloses the witch-
power itself, demonstrating that the deceased was a keeper
of witch-power, or, as we should say, a witch." 4
Doubtless these are not cases of post-mortem following
an ordeal. Death, however, has taken place under
circumstances that are suspicious, and the post-mortem,
1 Rev. J. H. Weeks : ibid., p. 396.
» Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, ii. pp. 230-1 (Grenfell's
letter).
3 Ibid., ii. p. 233
4 Mary Kingsley : West African Studies, p. 179 (1901).
in the cases last mentioned, reveals precisely what the natives
observed by Bentley were looking for. Again, " the
Pangwe," says Tessmann, " cannot imagine a principle except
in bodily form, and even as a person ; the evil principle they
call ewu takes the form of an animal. Hence they have
a ' scientific ' method of proving whether a person has been
a wizard or not ; if he has, the ewu is there ; if not,
there is no trace of it. They obtain this proof by a regular
post-mortem." ■ " The Bangala" (the very people among
whom the Rev. Mr. Weeks lived), " find the word ikoundou
difficult to define. It represents a sort of occult power
which is at the command of a person, but curiously enough
it is possible to find material traces of it after his death.
Never having been present at any operation of this kind,
I asked the natives to describe the material nature of the
ikoundou, and it seemed to me that it must be represented
by what the renal and biliary ducts yielded." *
Finally, in the Belgian Congo among the Azande people,
Hutereau discovered what may be called the theory of
witchcraft and the physical sign which represents it, and
from which it is very difficult to distinguish it.
" Every native who possesses a mango is an elamango.
Any deformity in an organ is called a mango, and any mal-
formation in the stomach is a very special sign of the existence
of the mango. Therefore the natives use that term for
the paunch, rennetbag and manyplies of the stomach of
a ruminant. They say that the mango is usually found
near the stomach, at the beginning of the intestine, and is
a fleshy excrescence ; some persons possessing two of these.
The mango gives its possessor the power of employing witch-
craft, and therefore the elamango is regarded as a wizard.
According to the Azande, he enjoys supernatural gifts ;
he has the power of casting lots, causing death, creating
accidents. . . . Such individuals can see clearly on the
very darkest nights, they can enter the kraals silently,
and cause their occupants to fall into the most profound
slumber. . . . They also have the power of removing their
witchcraft, and thus curing those whose death they have
J G. Tessmann : Die Pangwe, ii. pp. 128-9.
1 C. Coquilhat : Sur le Haul Congo, p. 293.
desired. To oblige them to make use of this power, the
elamango are threatened with execution as soon as their
invalid victim shall have passed away/' x In a word, they
are sorcerers. The powers which have just been enumerated
are precisely those which are attributed to these people
in the natives' collective representations of them.
" Every individual who is suspected of being an elamango
must submit to the trial by benget. Benget is a poison ex-
tracted from the root of a toxic tree. . . . The solution
thus obtained is an ingredient in a poison administered
to fowls or to human beings. It is the oracle, the test
without which the chief will not undertake anything in
his own name, either for his family or for his people. We
might say that the benget regulates all the public and private
affairs of the Azande — the declaration of war, arrange-
ment of expeditions, conclusion of peace, establishment
of villages and plantations, the relations between villages,
as well as voyages and removals. It is consulted alike for
marriages, births, deaths, the sale and purchase of slaves,
fishing, hunting, etc. The benget removes every obstacle,
and all readily submit to its decisions, convinced of its
infallibility as an oracle on all subjects."
Thus the benget can discover the invisible mango present
in the body of the elamango, and it, too, has the power of
subduing it. Hutereau continues : "In most cases it is
considered enough to administer the test to fowls, but when
a native is accused of being elamango, he is obliged to drink
the poison himself to prove his innocence. The efhcacy
of the poison is first tried upon a fowl or a dog, and the
animal is bound to succumb. Then the accused person
must drink the dose that is* decreed, and very often his
accuser must prove the absolute veracity of his report
by doing the same. The one of the two who dies is guilty,
if it be the accused, of the crime of witchcraft ; if the
accuser, of having slandered him.
" Should the native suspected of being elamango refuse
to undergo the ordeal of the benget, he thereby confesses
1 A. Hutereau : " Notes sur la vie familiale et juridique de quelques
population du Congo beige," Annates du Musee du Congo beige, Documents
ethnographiques, Serie I. i. pp. 27-9.
himself guilty. The whole village will urge him to take
the poison, reminding him of the infallibility of the oracle.
Very often accused persons themselves offer to undergo
the test if their accuser, in spite of their protestations,
does not at once own that he is mistaken.
" The death of the person accused as the possessor of
mango is not sufficient of itself ; the post-mortem must
reveal its presence in his body. If it be not found there,
the accuser must pay his relatives an indemnity — a woman
slave and a certain number of spears." '
We might imagine that the accuser could shelter himself
behind the fact that the accused has died from the poison.
If the benget is infallible, how could it kill an innocent
person ? His innocence must be a sham, for the absence
of the mango, which is doubtless due to an unknown cause
cannot cast doubt on the benget. Now the accuser does
not defend himself thus, and he admits that he has been
wrong. This proves, therefore, that the death of the accused
is not of itself sufficient to prove his guilt, and that the
Azande do not conceive of the witchcraft without the presence
of mango in the body. Thus the mango is not only the
sign of it, but its reality and very essence.2
Lastly, with the Azande, in certain cases the ordeal
cannot be undergone by general proxy, but only by sub-
stituting a son for a father, or a daughter for a mother,
and that is precisely because the object of the test is rather
to get at the witchcraft than to kill the person who harbours
it.
" A native accused of possessing the mango is not him-
self obliged to undergo the test by benget. He may be
replaced by his son, as a mother may by her daughter, for
the mango is hereditary by sex, that is to say, it is handed
down from father to son, and from mother to daughter.
1 Hutereau : ibid., p. 29.
1 As a matter of fact, however, in tribes living near the Azande, the
Medje and the Mangbetu, "it is not necessary to verify by autopsy the
presence of the notu (which corresponds with the Azande mango). Every
native who dies as the result of the test is inevitably considered guilty. If
the notu is not found in him, it is because he must have had other witchcraft
at his command. To get assurance on this point they consult the mapingo
(divining method), and should this oracle reply in the negative, the accuser
must pay the indemnity due for a murder." — Ibid., p. 76,
It may happen, too, that natives accused of being elamango
do not wait to undergo the test ; carried away by anger
at the accusation, they kill one of their children, so that
its post-mortem may prove their innocence/' x
Quite near them, in the Ababua tribe, " the elimba of the
Ababua corresponds exactly with the mango of the Azande." *
There are the same accusations, the same proofs, the same
verification of the facts by means of the post-mortem,
and the theory of heredity is similar. " If the post-mortem
does not reveal the presence of the elimba in the body of
an accused person who has died as the result of the ordeal,
his friends take up arms, but sometimes the accuser saves
his life by paying the indemnity exacted for murder, as
well as another for the false accusation of elimba.'* The
Ababua go even further than their neighbours. With
them, " the stomach of every dead person is opened with
the view of proving to all that he does not possess the elimba,
and that consequently neither his ancestors nor his
descendants have it." 3 This precaution would make a
certain number of ordeals useless and unnecessary, at least
in cases where the post-mortem gives a negative result,
but it does induce others, and possibly a great number of
them, if the elimba is discovered in the body of the deceased.
In the Cameroons, Mansfeld witnessed similar ordeals.
He expressly states that their object was both to unmask
the wizard, and to destroy the witchcraft which actuated
him. With these natives, witchcraft is no longer an ex-
crescence in the stomach or intestine ; it is a bird. " The
poison extracted from the Calabar bean is used in making
the ordeal which is undoubtedly the most dangerous of
all. It is employed when public rumour credits anyone
with possessing the ' evil spirit ' in his body, in the shape
of a bird, and having in this form killed, or being about
to kill, his neighbour. This bird is the screech-owl which
dwells, it appears, in the cardiac region, and which is able
to leave the body during the night and go and suck a man's
blood. If, therefore, Odjonk is accused of harbouring in
his body the witch-spirit, that is, the evil bird, and he is
suspected of having caused Ajok's death, he must drink
* Hutereau : ibid., pp. 29-30. » Ibid., p. 98. 3 Ibid., p. 92.
the Calabar bean poison before the whole assembled village.
If he ejects it, he is innocent ; if he does not eject it, he
dies from the effect of the poison, which kills both the evil
spirit and the one who possesses it at one blow." x
IV
From the facts collected here it is permissible to conclude
that the ordeal by poison, practised in the trials for witch-
craft which are so common among many African peoples,
is a mystic process, similar to divination, the object of
which is to discover the wizard, kill him, and at the same
time destroy the witchcraft which imbues him. It has
therefore nothing in common with a " judgment of God."
Meinhof draws attention to this point. " Nowhere, as
far as I know, does the African refer the result of the ordeal
directly to God ; he attributes it to the magic powers of
the charm employed, to which the guilty succumbs while
the innocent escapes scot free." And in a note he adds:
" The ordeal, like everything else, is undoubtedly the out-
come of a Divine gift ; but it acts of itself in an independent
(selbststdndig) fashion, like a ' medicine/ without one's
having to think of God's intervention." * If it be permissible,
I would add, to speak of " God " in this sense, when the
tribes of the Upper Congo, or even most of the peoples of
Central and South Africa, are in question.
Thus explained, the idea of the ordeal in its turn throws
light on that of witchcraft, which holds so important a
place in the collective representations of these tribes. It
reveals the source of the evil-doing, which inspires so
much dread and horror. The violence of the feelings it
arouses is such that, at the least suspicion of witchcraft,
the very tenderest bonds uniting intimate friends, husband
and wife, brothers, parents and children, are ruptured
suddenly and completely. Sometimes the person suspected
is destroyed straight away by his own relatives, without
1 A. Mansfeld : Urwald Dokumente, Vier Jahre unter den Crossflussnegern
Kameruns, p. 178; cf. Staschewski : Die Banjangi, Bassler Archiv, vii.
pp. 47-50 ; and Rev. Flickinger : Thirty Years of Missionary Life in West
Africa, p. 70.
* C. Meinbof : Afrikanische Religionen, p. 53.
any judgment, and even without an appeal to the ordeal.
Occurrences of this kind, reported by the missionaries, are
almost incredible. To quote but one only : "A man and
his wife residing in the immediate neighbourhood of Mount
Coke (Kaffraria), were deliberately and in cold blood
murdered by the man's brother, on a charge of witchcraft.
Early in the morning one of the victims was called from his
own residence by his brother, who, with a party of five
others, was awaiting his arrival. The moment he entered the
door a thong was cast round his neck ; he was dragged for
some distance and beaten to death with sticks. The party
then proceeded to the garden of the deceased, where his wife
was found, who shared a similar fate. The house was then
burnt, the only child of the deceased (a daughter) carried
off, and the cattle driven to the kraal of the murderer." *
Frequently the reputed witches are put to the rack and
tortured in the hope of wringing an avowal from them. How
can we account for the paroxysm of hatred which drives
a brother or a friend to commit such deeds, and makes the
social group sanction them ? Whence comes it that the
terror which the V wizard " inspires has, as it were, absolutely
no limits ?
14 The word bewitcher (tnsawi)," says Macdonald, who
is so careful an observer, " carries with it two ideas. The
person so called (i) has power or knowledge sufficient for
the practice of occult arts, and (2) is addicted to cannibalism.
The second meaning is the more prominent. . . . Witches
kill the victim for the purpose of eating him." 2 Junod says
the same thing. " Witchcraft is one of the greatest crimes
which a man can commit. It is equivalent to assassination,
even worse than murder ; as a dim idea of anthropophagy
is added to the simple accusation of killing. A wizard
kills human beings to eat their flesh." 3
The cannibalism in question here is in some sense a mystic
action. The wizard's victims are devoured by him with-
out their being aware of it. Once dead, they do not furnish
him with food ; on the contrary, they die because he has
1 Wesley an Missionary Notices, iv. (1846). Letter from Rev. W. Impey,
October 13, 1845.
* Rev. Duff Macdonald, Africana, i. p. 206.
3 H. A. Junod : THe Life of a South African Tribe, i. pp. 416-17.
already " eaten " them. Junod sets forth this belief of
theirs thus. " The wizard . . . gets into the kraal, tries
to penetrate into the hut by the door, finds it closed, . .
flies to the crown of the hut and descends through it into
the hut of the enemy, calmly sleeping on his mat. Then he
proceeds to the bewitching operation, and the poor bewitched
man is condemned to die. ' His shadow only remains.*
They say also : ' The corpse only has been left, his true self
has been stolen and eaten.' They have ravished him
(like a feather taken away by the wind). He will get up
in the morning, die some days later ; but what will die is
only his shadow. He himself has been killed during that
dreadful night. He has been eaten already. Here we find
again the idea of duality of human personality. How is
it possible that a man who has still to live some days or
months may be considered as already eaten up entirely I
do not pretend to explain. Such is the native idea, at any
rate. One of my informants tried to overcome the difficulty
by saying that what the sorcerer is taking in him to eat is
the inside, the bowels ; the external frame only remains,
and the man will die soon ! Most of the natives, when
you show them the absurdity of the idea, laugh, and that
is all." *
The idea is far from being absurd to them. They do
not know the physiological processes of the internal organs ;
they pay no attention to them. In their eyes, both life
and death depend, above all, upon mystic conditions. Do
we not know, too, that in their collective representations
the dead still live ? Why should it be impossible then
for these persons, who through the magic influence of the
cannibal wizard are already half dead, to preserve for
some time yet the external appearance of living beings ?
But this is what terrifies the natives most of all. These
wizards, against whom it is so difficult to defend themselves,
and who are, as Junod tells us, " numerous in every tribe,"
who can burden themselves with crime for many years
without being discovered, may be entirely ignorant of it
themselves. They are acting, then, as the unconscious agents
of the witch-principle within them. In fact, " they lead
« H. A. Junod : ibid., i. pp. 416-17.
a double existence — one by day, when they are men like
the rest, and the other by night when they are carrying
out their task as wizards. Do they know by day what
they have done during the night ? This is a difficult question
to answer, for it seems as if the natives were not very clear
on this point. The really traditional idea, however, is that
the wizard does not know what he is doing ; he does not even
know that he is a wizard until he has been revealed as such.
... He therefore acts unconsciously. When he has re-
turned each day to his ordinary life, his nocturnal activities
are unknown to him. For instance, my informants assure
me that while a man is acting as a wizard, he may have
sent a crocodile to kill a man, and yet be the first to show
his sympathy for the poor victim, and to deplore the sad
occurrence. And when the diviner points him out as the
one whose witchcraft has caused the death, witchcraft of
which he was entirely ignorant, he will be stupefied with
astonishment. It does, however, seem that wizards who
have carried on their horrible practices for a long period
do know what they are doing, and may even be proud of
it ; therefore they must be more or less conscious of the
double life they lead in part. There are some who go still
further ; they abandon their evil deeds, and become wonder-
workers, in the good sense of the word, turning to account
the knowledge they possess in order to thwart the enchant-
ments of other wizards." J Similar ideas, as we have already
seen, are well known in Central Africa. Thus, " the Bushongo
share the belief, which is so common in Africa, that individuals
may be possessed, even without being aware of it, of an
evil spirit, and in this way cause the death of others.
Persons who die without any apparent reason have./ suc-
cumbed, it is thought, to this malignant influence which seems,
according to many accounts, to correspond with the * evil
eye.' Persons accused of witchcraft are subjected to ordeal
by poison." 3
This unconsciousness of their deeds, moreover, only
makes the wizards still more dangerous. Torday and
1 H. A. Junod : ibid. ii. pp. 464-5 ; cf. Junod : Les Ba-Ronga, p. 428.
3 Torday and Joyce : " Les Bushungo," Annates du Musie du Congo beige,
Docum$nts ethnographiques, Serie III, ii. p. 121 ; cf. ibid., p. 78.
Joyce just now compared them with the jettatori, and Junod
repeatedly says " the baloyi, or people possessed of the evil
eye." As a matter of fact, the evil principle lodged within
them, the material existence of which is often established
by the post-mortem, acts in exactly the same way as the
evil eye. It spreads disaster on all around it, throughout
the whole social group, and very often its first victims
are the nearest relatives of the sorcerer, those who should
be his most cherished and sacred care.
In these cases then, if we desire to do so, we may
continue to use the words " accusation " and " judgment,"
from which the " accused " emerge either as " innocent "
or " guilty," but only on condition that we ascribe to them a
meaning widely different from the one they bear in Europe.
Here it is not a question of justice in the slightest degree,
and the ordeal is by no means designed to find out whether
a penalty has been deserved or not. What engages the
natives' attention is a problem of quite a different order.
They are haunted, even terrorized, by the idea that among
them there exist individuals, apparently just like other
people, who possess the most formidable magic powers,
and use them for committing the worst of crimes, without
their being detected or taken red-handed, and even, some-
times, without their knowing it themselves. Against such
a scourge the ordeal is the only effective defence.
Consequently, instead of ranging the " wizards " of
primitive peoples beside the criminals prosecuted by our
own penal code, we must place them in an altogether different
category along with the jettatori. They are thus closely
akin to those abnormal beings whom the social group
gets rid of, as soon as their peculiarities are perceived,
because they are " Jonahs " and bringers of evil. To this
class belong children whose birth has presented unusual
circumstances, those born with teeth, or those who cut
the upper incisors first, and so on. The malevolent principle
they embody makes them, like sorcerers, a menace to the
social group ; they too, like sorcerers, must be exterminated,
or at least rendered powerless to injure others. It is true
that these monstra may only later become mischievous,
while the evil power harboured by the wizard has already
been the cause of many a disaster ; but primitive mentality
scarcely perceives this difference. It has no difficulty in
representing the future as already present, especially if
it seems to be certain, and incites powerful emotion. Now
it has not the slightest doubt about the malign influence
which these abnormal children will exert. They are at
this very moment " virtually " wizards. The natives actually
admit this in so many words,1 and that is the reason why
they treat them as they do.
Undoubtedly, wizards are not all abnormal from birth;
persons whose abnormality was unrevealed, and who have
grown up without their real nature having been discovered.
This is far from being the case. A man not of abnormal
birth in any way may be trained to these diabolical practices,
and become as formidable as his master. In certain districts
of West Africa, especially in Gaboon, there exist secret
societies whose members practise murder and cannibalism,
and which are, in this sense, wizard-societies ; they draw
their recruits from among adults. On the other hand, a
certain number of tribes maintain that witchcraft is most
frequently congenital and hereditary.
At any rate, while certain malformations of sinister
omen are perceptible from birth or early infancy, others
remain concealed and nothing permits of their discovery
during the lifetime of those who have them. A mother,
even if she had the courage to do it, could not conceal from
her own circle that her baby had cut its upper incisors first,
but how could one tell, except by opening a man's body,
whether the fatal excrescence would be found on his in-
testines ? Here it is that the ordeal effectively intervenes.
Someone is suspected of witchcraft, and the ordeal will
solve the doubt. It has the double virtue of making known
the presence of the malign influence and overcoming it ;
it has power to subdue and destroy it. If the '* accused "
succumbs, everybody breathes freely ; the ravages of the
plague have been arrested. If others remain, as is probably
the case, the same method will get rid of them at the
slightest suspicion.
• See chap. v. p. 156.
With reference to the natives of the Andaman Isles,
Man writes : " They are in too primitive a state to possess
any form of trial, or even to have any belief in the efficacy
of the ordeal for discovering the guilty person, nor does it
appear that any such practice existed in times past." x
In fact, in the most primitive peoples we know, in New
Guinea, Australia, South America, ordeals such as we have
recently been examining have scarcely been noted. Tests
of this kind seem to be found especially in social groups
which have reached a certain stage of political organization,
in the Bantus, for instance, the negroes of West Africa,
the Malays, etc.
Inasmuch as the ordeal is a species of divination, other
divining practices may take its place. This is the case
with the Australian aborigines, the natives of (German)
New Guinea, etc., who do not, any more than the Congo
negroes, admit death to be " natural," and who are no
less anxious to discover the wizard who has " doomed "
one of their relatives. We have already examined the
very varied processes of divination which they practise
in such circumstances ; but the ordeal is used to accomplish
other ends — to exercise a mystic influence upon a malevolent
power which it has to overcome, for example. Such a
desire doubtless exists in peoples who are in a low state
of development. Can we find among them nothing that
permits them to gratify it ?
Of the natives of South Australia, Taplin writes : " An
offender has to stand as a target for as many as like to throw
a spear at him, and if he escapes them, he has expiated his
crime." In a note, Taplin adds : " This is a true ordeal.
According to aboriginal ideas, a man may be enabled
by superior spirits to avoid spears ; or, if he be a guilty
man, be rendered unable to avoid them by the power of
some invisible spirit exerted upon him." * Taplin was
right in thinking that to the native mind it is indeed an
» E. H. Man : " On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman
Islands," J. A. I., xii. p. 160.
» Rev. G. Taplin : Manners, Customs, etc., of the Aborigines of South
Australia, p. 57 (Adelaide, 1879).
ordeal, but possibly we must not explain it as he does.
He sees in it a "judgment of God/' as it were, of the
same kind as those of Ancient Greece, or of Europe in the
Middle Ages. Doubtless, to the mind of the Tatiara, the
assistance of unseen powers alone will allow the man who
undergoes the ordeal to elude the lances thrown at him.
If these powers were unfavourable to him, all his skill could
not save him. But it is not correct to say that the object
of the ordeal is to demonstrate the innocence or the guilt
of the man who is subjected to it, for such an ordeal is
employed in many cases where there is no question about
the guilt. Frequently the perpetrator of a murder or a
rape is already known, for example. He does not deny his
deed, and his relatives do not dispute this point in any way
with the victim's next-of-kin. The ordeal is none the less
demanded, and it is therefore different from a " judgment "
designed to establish innocence or guilt.
In the documents relating to Australian tribes which
I have been able to consult, I have, as a matter of fact,
found nothing about ordeals instituted for this purpose.
We do, however, find many like those among the Tatiara
which Taplin has recorded, and it is always the known
and avowedly guilty persons who have to undergo them.
" If the murderer should escape/' says Dawson," and should
be known by the friends of the deceased, he gets notice
to appear and undergo the ordeal of spear-throwing at the
first great meeting of the tribes." x A little further on he
describes this ordeal. " When a man has been charged
with an offence, he goes to the meeting armed with two
war spears, a flat light shield, and a boomerang. If he is
found guilty of a private wrong he is painted white and —
along with his brother or near male relative, who stands
beside him as his second, with a heavy shield, a liangle,
and a boomerang — he is placed opposite to the injured person
and his friends, who sometimes number twenty warriors.
These arrange themselves at a distance of about fifty
yards from him and each individual throws four or five
gneerin spears and two boomerangs at him simultaneously,
' like a shower.' If he succeeds in warding them off,
1 J. Dawson : Australian Aborigines, p. 70 (Melbourne, 1881).
his second hands him his heavy shield, and he is attacked
singly by his enemies, who deliver each one a blow with
the liangle. As blood must be spilt to satisfy the injured
party, the trial ends on his being hit. After the wound
has been dressed all shake hands and are good friends.
If the accused person refuses to submit to be tried, he is
outlawed, and may be killed, and his brother or nearest
male relative is held responsible, and must submit to be
attacked with boomerangs. If it turns out that the man
is innocent, the relatives have a right to retaliate on the
family of the accuser on the first opportunity/' «
Dawson expressly states that the ordeal takes place
after the guilt has been established ; its object, therefore,
cannot be to prove it. Nevertheless, it is indispensable,
and so much so that in default of the guilty person, another
member of his family, preferably his brother, must undergo
it. Finally we may remark that, the trial once finished,
the enemies who have faced each other and the friends
on both sides are reconciled, and manifest the most amicable
feelings towards one another. The same peculiarities have
been noted by other observers. W. M. Thomas writes :
11 There is one particularly amiable trait in the aboriginal
character, which is that no animosity remains in their
breasts, nor does any shrink from punishment. At the
close of a fight or punishment " (evidently an ordeal such
as Dawson witnessed is in question here), " those who have
inflicted the wounds may be seen sucking them and doing
any other kind office required." *
The ordeal itself is described by Thomas in terms very
similar to those used by Dawson. " Murder is punished
by the whole of a tribe throwing a spear and a wonguim
at the murderer ; if he escapes without any material injury,
the male who is the nearest of kin to the murdered man
may, with his bludgeon or leonile, strike at the man's head
(no other part) till he is tired. During the punishment
the murderer is not allowed to throw a single weapon, but
may ward off the spears, etc., with his shield. I knew an
1 J. Dawson : ibid., p. 76.
1 W. M. Thomas: "A Brief Account of the Aborigines of Australia
Felix," in Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 68 (1854).
instance of a man having a hundred spears thrown at
him, who warded them every one off." *
Thomas speaks of " chastisement " and " punishment,"
therefore the object of the ordeal can in no sense be to
discover whether the man be guilty or not. Like other
investigators, he insists that what matters most is, not
the result of the trial, but that it should take place. Whether
the criminal succeeds in warding off all the spears or not
is a secondary consideration. The essential thing is that
he shall have been subjected to the ordeal according to
rule. It is therefore not what we should properly call a
punishment.
An ordeal similar to the preceding takes place in the
same district in certain cases of adultery. " If the wife
desert her husband for a more favoured lover, it is incumbent
on her family to chastise the guilty pair ; the wife is usually
speared to death by her father or brother, and if the punish-
ment is not attended with fatal effects, she is returned to
her lawful spouse. The man has either to submit to a
certain number of spears being thrown at him, in which
case he is allowed a small shield to protect himself, or to
fight a single combat with one of her relatives, or with a
selected member of the tribe." a Howitt says, too : "In
cases of elopement with the wife of another man, it was the
Wollaroi practice for the abductor to stand out before a
number of the woman's kindred, who were armed with
spears, he having merely a spear for his protection, to turn
them aside." 3
In Queensland, Roth observed the same custom, and he
has described it with his customary exactitude. " The
alleged culprit, notwithstanding the immense mental and
physical strain, may thus, with the help of his two friends,
succeed in escaping any serious effects from the thirty or
forty spears which have been thrown during the good hour
or more that he has exposed himself. Should he come
through the ordeal successfully, and a lot depends upon
1 W. M. Thomas : ibid., p. 67.
* W. E. Stanbridge : "On the Aborigines of Victoria," Transactions of
the Ethnological Society, i. p. 288 (1861).
3 A. W. Howitt : The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 217,
quoted by E. S. Hartland : Primitive Paternity, i. p. 295.
9"
■his previous conduct and the influence of powerful friends,
jhis accusers will ultimately run up and cling round his
Jneck, indulge in a certain amount of weeping, to make
Jfriends again, and finally fix the guilt a second time, generally
lupon the weakest tribe and its most friendless member.
Iln this district someone must be killed for the death of
j every ' important ' male aboriginal." « According to the
[expressions used by Dr. Roth, it appears, indeed, to be a
J question of an ordeal here, but these same expressions also
(show that its aim is not the establishing the fact of a certain
i person's guilt. It is designed to satisfy a dead man whose
J wrath would be a matter of dread, and who must not be
disappointed at any price. He demands a life, and if the
ordeal does not end fatally, they must go elsewhere to find
!a victim who does not cost too much.
The same ceremony takes place in the tribes of Western
.Australia observed by Bishop Salvado. "If the parties
.jare agreed that the delinquent is to be punished, then the
j chief of the aggrieved family sentences him to a penalty
'in proportion to his crime, and this sometimes consists
iof throwing ghici at his legs. He is made to stand some
j distance off as a target, and the injured man throws at
him as many ghicis as he can command ; and it is all the
better for the culprit if he is skilful enough to ward them all
off. When the supply of ghicis is exhausted, vengeance
j is satisfied, there is no question of anything else. Peace
j has been made." 2 Sometimes the ordeal is a fight in
j which the accusers and accused are accompanied by their
relatives and friends, but the contest ends when the first
blood is drawn. This is particularly the case when several
tribes are concerned. " The women begin to exchange
abusive epithets and excite the men to such a point that,
j shouting in frenzy and quite beside themselves, they rush
forward by leaps and bounds, making endless contortions
I and running hither and thither, their beards between their
teeth, and their ghici couched, now advancing and now
> retreating, till the throwing of a ghici gives place to a veritable
mSlee. On both sides the weapons are flying, and the
* W. E. Roth : North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin 9, No. 6. p. 387.
» R. Salvado : Memoir es historiques sur I'Australie, p. 324.
women, running and shouting, encourage the men, pro-
viding them with the ' enemy's ' arms, which they pick
up and collect. In the midst of this tumult, as soon as
anyone falls to the ground, wounded or dead, the fighting
ceases instantly ; all ill-feeling is at an end, and all hasten
to succour the wounded." ■
Such furious fighting is in reality only an ordeal, and
this last trait is a proof of it. If any other were needed, it
would be enough to recall that Australian aborigines,
like nearly all other primitives, are not familiar with pitched
battles, and always avoid fighting in the open. Real war
is made by surprise attacks and ambushes only, and most
frequently by assaults at daybreak against an unsuspecting
foe. The " veritable melee M which Bishop Salvado wit-
nessed was a ritual ceremony, regarded as indispensable by
both the tribes who took part therein.
Grey, one of the first and keenest observers who ever
described the South Australian tribes, says, too : " Any crime
(except incest) may be compounded for by the criminal
appearing and submitting himself to the ordeal of having
spears thrown at him by all such persons as conceive them-
selves to have been aggrieved, or by permitting spears to
be thrust through certain parts of his body ; such as through
the thigh, or the calf of the leg, or in the arm. The part
which is to be pierced by the spear is fixed for all common
crimes, and a native who has incurred this penalty, some-
times quietly holds out his leg for the injured party to
thrust his spear through. ... If the criminal is wounded
in the degree judged sufficient for the crime he has committed,
his guilt is wiped away ; or if none of the spears thrown
at him (for there is a regulated number which each may
throw) take effect, he is equally pardoned." 2
Grey's expression is the absolutely correct one ; this
ordeal is of the value of a " composition. ' ' Properly speaking,
it is not a punishment, although as a matter of fact the one
1 R. Salvado : Mimoires historiques sur VAustralie, p. 324 ; cf. W. M.
Thomas : " A Brief Account of the Aborigines of Australia Felix," pp. 04-6.
and the description of a similar fight among the Botocudos, by Maximilien of
Wied-Meuwied : Voyage au Brisil, ii. pp. 186-90 of the French translation.
• George Grey : Journal of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West
and Western Australia, ii. pp. 243-4 (1841).
who undergoes it is most frequently punished for his crime
thus. It is essentially a rite, a mystic performance, designed
to prevent or put an end to the fatal consequences which
the crime committed — whether murder, adultery, or the
like — cannot fail to entail upon the social group. It is
the application of a mystic remedy to a mystic malady ;
an expiation, in the complete and etymological sense of
the word. Eylmann, after describing in detail a similar
trial in a case of adultery, of which he was a witness, adds :
" The South Australian is not acquainted with the sort
of duel which would help towards obtaining the verdict
of a higher power in a lawsuit." » His ordeals are not
" judgments of God."
The meaning of the Australian ordeal, in so far as it is,
according to Grey, a " composition," is illustrated by the
collective representations involved in the composition itself,
among certain African peoples anyhow. A composition
offered and accepted is not only the price of blood ; it has,
too, a mystic effect which is no less important. " Although
they " (the Bechuanas) " are revengeful to the last degree,"
says Dr. Moffat, "if an offender profit the injured party by
a gift, at the same time confessing his error, or, as is common,
put the blame on his heart, the most perfect unanimity
and cordiality succeed." * With regard to the A-Kamba
of British East Africa, Hobley has well described the mystic
effect of the ceremony which re-establishes harmony between
two families, after that of the criminal has satisfied the
claims of that of the victim. " Until the ceremony has
all been properly carried out, no member of the family of
the murdered man can eat food out of the same dish or
drink beer with any member of the family of the murderer,
and in Ukamba, it is believed that unless the matter is
properly adjusted according to the law, the members of
the family of the murderer will continue to be involved
in quarrels and be liable to be killed as their relative had been.
If one tries to look at the matter from their point of view,
it appears to be this — there is a bad spirit or muimu about,
belonging to an ancestor ; it enters into a man and the result
1 E. Eylmann : Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Siid Australien. p. 177.
* Robert Moifat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, p. 255.
of this is that the next time he quarrels with a neighbour he
kills him. This spirit may continue to possess that person,
or it may go on to another member of that family and the
same result occurs. In the same way the muimu of the
deceased, the murdered man, influences the aiimu ^spirits)
in the bodies of his family and makes them afraid. They
know that this death-dealing spirit is abroad, and the
members of the family are more likely to be killed if they
become entangled in a broil. Thus both families are anxious
that this state of affairs should cease, and that the trouble-
some spirit should be appeased and laid to rest." *
This view of the general ideas of the A-Kamba is very
instructive. When one of them kills another in a quarrel,
the one who commits the crime is not the real cause of it ;
he is but the agent of a malign influence which has taken
possession of him. Nothing is more in accordance with
the orientation of primitive mentality, which at once traces
every effect in the visible world back to a mystic cause in
the invisible one. What is to be done, therefore, when
a man has killed another who does not belong to his family ?
Inflict a penalty on him ? As a matter of fact, he will
have to pay a " composition/' and perhaps he will be ruined
or sold as a slave ; but the punishment which overtakes
him is not enough to restore peace of mind to the two
families, unless the " composition M has at the same time
served to appease the spirit of the offended ancestor who
was the cause of the crime, and who wanders about the
group, to the terror of all concerned, for he is certain
to induce other crimes if the rites necessary to secure
his pacification and removal have not been performed.
Hobley says again : " The payment of the cow, bull, or goat
... is of ritual importance, and is called etumo. They
are necessary to protect both the family of the murderer
and the murdered one from the powers of the unappeased
death-dealing spirit which is abroad. Even if the killing
was accidental, the etumo payments and ritual must be
observed, because it shows that there is some bad influence
about or the accident would never have occurred." (As
1 C. W. Hobley : " Further Researches into Kikuyu and Kamba Religious
Beliefs and Customs," J. A. I., lxi. pp. 422-3.
a matter of fact, we know that primitive mentality does
not recognize such a thing as '' accident.")
" In former times, when a man of one clan killed another
in some inter-tribal fight, the custom was for a father or
brother to waylay and kill a man of the clan who had killed
his brother ; these two deaths cancelled each other, and
there was no more question of compensation, but it was
considered essential that the etumo fees should be paid and
the proper ceremonial observed/' 1
Thus the satisfaction afforded to the dead man, even
though fully carried out, does not suffice, and the survivors
cannot feel at ease until a mystic operation has taken place
to appease the spirit whose anger has been revealed through
the occurrence of the disaster. The weapon which has
struck the blow also remains deadly in its effect. " Among
many tribes it is purified in some way ; among the Akikuyu
it is blunted, and I believe some such observance is almost
universal among African tribes. The performance of such
acts originates in the idea that the weapon carries with it
misfortune or fatality, and so it is with the Akamba. The
weapon once used in murder continues to be a means of
further destruction, but here there is no ceremony, no
medicine or magic which can abate its fatal spirit. Since
there is no way of ridding oneself of this curse, the Mkamba
has recourse to craft and cunning ; he will lay the weapon
on a path or place where a passer-by is likely to see it.
Once the other has picked it up its bane falls on him and the
the first owner is free from it. This belief is, I think, of
special interest, because it speaks of the manner in which
murder is regarded. We have seen how necessary to the
murderer is the etumo ; it takes the curse of murder off the
aggrieved party as well as off the murderer, but the last
has still the fatality of the weapon upon him, a fatality
which neither time nor art can erase." 2
1 C. W. Hobley : ibid., p. 426. In the same way, in the Solomon Isles
(at Buin, Vellalavella, etc.) to re-establish the peace disturbed by the death
of a man, there must be (1) an avenging, i.e. the death of a man belonging
to the murderer's group ; (2) a compensation, or payment in cowrie-shells.
Unless this payment is made, the murderer is still a danger. — R. Thurnwald :
Forschungen aufdem Bismarck Archipel und den Salomon Inseln, iii. Tafel 29,
note 18.
> Hon. Ch. Dundas : "History of Kitui (A-Kamba)," J.A.I. , xliii.
pp. 526-7 ; cf. C. W. Hobley, loc. cit., pp. 426-7.
Australian natives know very little about property that
can be transmitted, and they have no standard measure
of value for the few objects which are interchangeable,
therefore with them there could be no question of " com-
pounding," in the ordinary sense of the word. The ordeal
we have been examining takes the place of it. But like
the A-Kamba composition, its object is not solely to pacify !
the injured party, the outraged husband, or the family !
who has lost a member. Murder and adultery have a mystic
influence upon the entire social group ; they reveal a power
which is being exerted to its detriment, a power which is j
a perpetual menace to it. It must be fought and conquered. |
That is the purpose of the A-Kamba etumo, and that, too, I
is an essential feature of the Australian ordeal. Thus its
function, at least in part, is to exercise against certain
forces of the unseen world a defensive action necessary J
to the well-being of the social group. In virtue of this
feature then, it resembles the African ordeals directed against
witchcraft, and we may therefore maintain, with Taplin
and other investigators, but for different reasons, that it
is indeed an ordeal.
Chapter IX
THE MYSTIC MEANING OF ACCIDENTS AND
MISFORTUNES
Should an individual, family, or social group meet with
misfortune, or experience a series of mishaps and defeats,
such occurrences will never be attributed to chance. In
most African races, as we have seen, a suspicion of witch-
craft will at once be aroused, and it is the same with many
of the Australian aborigines, Papuans, etc. In other places,
among the Esquimaux, and in most of the races inhabiting
the northern districts of America for instance, the first
thought will be that a sacred precept or a taboo has been
violated. In the latter case, as in the former, primitive
mentality immediately passes from the event that has affected
it to a mystic cause which appears imaginary to us, but
which actually forms a part of his experience, made up as
it is from the sum-total of the collective representations
of the social group.
For example, on the coast of British Columbia, " at
the trading-station of Tschilkut, in the autumn of 1881,
the missionary had persuaded the Indians to bury the body
of a child (instead of burning it in the ordinary way). But
during the following winter, especially in February and
March, there was incessant bad weather ; the high winds
and the snowstorms made fishing and hunting so difficult
that the people found themselves in distress. They all
thought, then, that this unfavourable weather must have
been caused by their not having cremated the child, and
they hastened to repair their error as soon as possible." l
A. Krause : Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 231.
This is not an isolated fact, for in many circumstances the
Tlinkit argue in the same way. " Every abrogation of
customary usages, everything out of the common " (we see
at once how large an area this would embrace) "is known
by the name of chlakass and considered the universal cause
of whatever misfortune may arise — bad weather, sickness,
defeat in war, unsuccessful hunting, and the like. . . .
Thus bad weather will not be the result alone of the fact
that a corpse has not been cremated ; it will also be caused
by the natives having neglected to isolate a young girl
during the period of puberty. Here are other causes which
induced bad weather. A young girl had been combing
her hair outside the hut ; the missionary had put on his
snowboots before he left the house ; the school children
in their play had imitated the cries of wild birds ; and we
ourselves had cleaned the skin of a mountain goat with
salt water ; moreover, we had dragged a dead hedgehog
across the snow. This last is what one of our Indian com-
panions, on another hunting expedition, resolutely refused
to do, alleging that if he did so a violent wind would
spring up. He preferred to carry the beast on his back,
heavy as it was, all the way back to the camp/' »
Every time that a traditional custom is thus infringed,
especially if there is any prohibition attached to it, there
will be some trouble or accident. As a rule, a certain
misfortune corresponds with a certain infringement. For
instance, among the Esquimaux " alternating prohibitions "
are known. " They cannot go out to take walrus until
they have done working upon tuktoo clothing ; and after
beginning the walrus hunt, no one is allowed to work on
reindeer skins. One day, in March, I wanted Tookoolito
and Koodloo's wife to make me a sleeping-bag of tuktoo
skin, but nothing could persuade them to do it, as it was
the walrus season. ' They would both die, and no more
walruses could be caught.' " a On the coast of Alaska,
" where the observance of totemistic exogamy was no
longer strictly practised, and where it was now permissible
to take a wife from one's own clan, the older people used
» A. Krause : Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 300.
2 C. F. Hall: Life with the Esquimaux, ii. p. 321.
to consider this promiscuity responsible for the great mortality
of the Kenayer tribe." *
Even to-day, in the same districts, similar facts may be
collected. Here is a characteristic one. " For a long
time our hunting yielded very little result ; the animals
used to disappear before our eyes. Kridtlarssuark entreated
the spirits to reveal the reason why we could get no game.
When the invocation ceremony was over he said that his
daughter-in-law Ivalork had had a miscarriage, and that
she had concealed it in order to escape the punishment
(for women in such cases are subjected to a certain number
of deprivations). He then ordered his son to punish the
guilty woman by shutting her up in a snow hut after having
taken away her fur clothing. There she would die of cold
or hunger, and only on this condition would the animals
allow the hunters to trap them. They at once made a
snow hut, and shut up Ivalork in it. That is how Krid-
tlarssuark treated his daughter-in-law, of whom he was very
fond, and he did it so that innocent people should not suffer
for her fault. " *
1 Von Wrangell : " Einige Bemerkungen liber die Wilden an der N.W.
Kiiste von Amerika." Beitr&ge zur Kenntniss des russischen Reichs (Von Baer
und Helmersen), i. p. 104.
a Kn. Rasmussen : Neue Menschen, pp. 35-6. Similar instances have
been noted in South Africa. " Let me quote," says Junod (The Life of
a South African Tribe, ii. p. 294), " the ipsissima verba of Mankhelu, the
great medicine-man of the Nkuna court. I have never forgotten the earnest
tone of his voice, his deep conviction when he was speaking to me in the
following words, as a kind of revelation. ' When a woman has had a mis-
carriage, when she has let her blood flow secretly and has burnt the abortive
child in an unknown place, it is enough to make the burning winds blow,
and dry up all the land ; the rain can no longer fall, because the country
is no longer right. Rain fears that spot. It must stop at that very place
and can go no further. This woman has been very guilty. She has spoilt
the country of the chief, because she has hidden blood which had not yet
properly united to make a human being. That blood is taboo. What she
has done is taboo. It causes starvation.' " For the rain to reappear in
that place, purifying rites are indispensable. In the same way with the
Barotse, " as the moon was in her first quarter, the woman and her husband
did not like the idea of such a long quarantine ; they therefore concealed
the occurrence (a miscarriage) . Now this man . . . was one of the principal
officers of the king's guard ; a sekomboa, a man of between forty-five and
fifty, a favourite with his master and generally respected. The miscarriage
being noised abroad within less than twenty-four hours, his peers, the other
sekomboas, fell upon him, dragged him, heavily bound, to the river, tearing
out his hair with their long nails. . . . They kept him under the water until
he was nearly dead, then beat him with rods till he came to himself, and
finally left him on the bank in torrents of rain." — Missions dvangeliques,
lxvii. p. 380. (Coillard.)
In the east of Greenland, " if a tent is not provided with
a new skin covering in spring, crested seals and Greenland
seals must not be taken into it till after a lapse of some
days. Early in the spring a man obtained a share of a
crested seal. He took it into his tent to cut it up and re-
move the tendons. The tent covering was in good con-
dition, but had been used the previous autumn. It happened
that crested seals afterwards became very rare, and so this
man was looked askance at by the others, because ' his
conduct had made the seals angry, and caused them to
leave the coast.' " l
" One day," says Boas, " a large whale to which we
were fast went under a body of ice ; and after it had taken
five hundred fathoms of line, we had to let it go, and lost
the whale. That night, after we had gone ashore, my
natives wanted to go to the tent of a woman who was
reputed to be a great angakok. The woman, in her trance,
said that I had offended the goddess in the sea by cutting
up caribou-meat on the sea-ice, and by breaking the bones
there." »
Among the Esquimaux nearer the north, whom Rasmussen
visited, if a man witnesses the violation of a taboo, he
immediately expects some misfortune. People who are
in mourning, for instance, must refrain from doing many
things. " One day, when he had to go and find ice to
break, our companion, Jorgen Bronlund, a Greenlander,
unknown to us, ordered a young fellow who had just lost
his parents to fetch it. He thought he might just as well
disregard the prohibition for once in a way, and so Agpa-
linguark (that was the young fellow's name) went to get
the ice. But he was seen by two old women who were
very much disturbed about this violation of custom.
Something bad would be sure to happen ! And in fact,
two days later, a fierce storm from the south-west broke
over us. There was such a tremendous swell that the waves
came sweeping up over the land and destroyed all the huts
in the village. One of the chiefs then came to see us
■ G. Holm : "Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo," pub. by
W. Thalbitzer. Meddelelser om Groenland, xxix. p. 49.
» Franz Boas : "The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay," Bulletin
of the American Museum of Natural History, xv. p. 478 (1870).
begging us in future not to allow such infringements of
their customary rules. ' We observe these regulations so
that the world may go on peaceably, for the powers must
not be offended. ... In this country, when a rule has
been broken, men do penance, because the dead . . . have
unlimited power.' " l
These words are very characteristic. If we compare
what we have just learned from the reports of Junod and
Rasmussen, these expressions throw light upon one of the
aspects under which Nature appears to the primitive's mind.
By virtue of the mystic relation between the social group
(composed of both living and dead), the portion of land
it occupies, the beings, both visible and mythical, who live
and have lived there, the order of the universe (as we call
it), can only exist as long as the customary conditions are
maintained, and (in many peoples) if the personal influence
of the chief is exercised as it should be. Respect for pro-
hibitions and taboos is one of the essential conditions.
One of the chief's duties is to see that they are not violated,
and if there should have been any infringement, to make
the offenders expiate their fault by appropriate rites. As
the " medicine-man " explained to Junod, a secret mis-
carriage which would allow the woman and her husband
to escape the expiatory rites, would entail danger of death
on the whole social group. The rain " can no longer fall."
The harvest will be dried up, the cattle will perish for
want of water, and the whole tribe will be reduced to a
state of despair. The woman is " very guilty," and nothing
can screen her from the punishment which alone can re-
establish normal conditions, and thus save the tribe. When
the social solidarity is such that by inducing a disorder
of this kind one member of the group can imperil the
lives of all the rest, no crime can be more serious than the
violation of taboos, for it ruptures the relations upon which
the welfare of all depends.
* Kn. Rasmussen : Neue Menschen, pp. 149-50.
II
We should be inclined to think that infringements are
classed in order of importance, according to whether the con-
sequences are near or far-reaching. That is to say, that from
the collective representations of a social group, one might
discover why the violation of such-and-such a custom reacts
on the whole group, while another, on the contrary, only
affects the individual who has committed it, or at most,
his relatives. As a matter of fact we always meet with
preconceived ideas such as the following: " If such a taboo
is violated, such a consequence — more or less general,
according to the case — is sure to ensue." Or again: "If
such a thing happens, if that disaster occurs, it is because
this rule has been infringed," or, in a more indefinite fashion,
"an infringement (unspecified) must have taken place,"
(without the speaker's knowing which). How does the con-
cealment of stillbirth involve the disappearance of the rain ?
Arbitrary as connections of this kind appear to us, to
primitive mentality they are so familiar that they seem
quite natural. The native observes the traditional regula-
tions just as he obeys the rules (pretty frequently complicated
enough), of the language he speaks, without any difficulty,
and without reflection. He does not imagine them to be
other than they are. He will never ask himself why a
certain infringement should bring about the ruin of the
entire group, whilst another entails fatal consequences
upon its author alone, or on a part of the group merely.
If he is interrogated on this point, he will reply that his
ancestors always thought thus, and he will wonder, not
at the fact, but at the question.
We can, however, distinguish two principal forms of this
connection in any given race. Sometimes a definite conse-
quence is bound up with a definite infringement, and the
one is directly inferred from the other — whether the conse-
quence extends to one or more people, or even to the
entire group, matters little. Hobley has given a great
many instances of this kind in his " Further Researches
into Kikuyu and Kamba Religious Beliefs and Customs."
Here is a characteristic example reported by Junod. Among
the Ba-Thonga, a woman who is enceinte by any other
than her husband will have a difficult labour. There does
not seem to be any relation between these facts, but " for
the Thonga, ... a protracted and difficult birth proves
that the child is not legitimate. This conviction is so
strong that when a woman knows that the child she is
going to bear is not her husband's, she will admit this secretly
to the principal midwife in order to spare herself the pains
of a difficult birth, as it is taboo to bear a ' child of adultery '
hiding the fact ; it would cause the mother untold suffering." *
This is the reason why the midwife, in the case of a very
prolonged labour, begins to have doubts about the legitimacy
of the child. Among the Washamba, another Bantu tribe,
when the pains of labour are very protracted it is a proof
that the woman has had criminal relations with several
men." * That belief is fairly common. In Uganda, again,
" women may not eat salt during their pregnancy ; if they
do so, it is believed that the child will die. When, there-
fore, a newborn child falls ill, the husband blames his
wife for the fact, saying : ■ This child is dying of an illness
caused by your having eaten salt.' " 3
Preconceived ideas of this kind are very numerous,
an£ vary according to the community in which they are
noted. Sometimes they are so strong that those who violate
the taboo despair of escaping consequences which have
not yet shown themselves, and anticipate them. Here is
a remarkable case which was observed in the island of Nias.
A native who has been converted to Christianity is speaking.
" I was my parents' eldest son, and I had a little sister.
One day the priest (the medicine-man) came to our house.
He looked at my father, then cast a furtive glance at my
sister, and said : ' Do you know that your daughter must
die ? ' ' Why ? ' asked my father. The priest answered :
' Before her birth you knocked down pigs, you killed a
snake, you carried loads ; that is the reason why you will
lose your daughter. Why do you give yourself the trouble
of feeding her ? Nothing that you can do will help matters ;
1 H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, i. p. 39.
1 A. Karasek-Eichhorn : Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Waschamba, Bassler
Archiv, iii. p. 188.
3 Fr. M. A. Condon : " Contribution to the Ethnography of the Basoga-
Batamba (Uganda Protectorate)," Anthropos, v. p. 946.
she will have to die.' My father, in despair, went to my
mother, and told her what the priest had said. Both of
them were terribly dejected, but what was to be done ?
Finally my father said to his wife : ' Let us kill the child,
why should she eat our rice any longer ? ' and as I was
a strong lad, he made me get a sack and stuff my little sister
in and carry her away to the woods. . . ." s It does not
occur to the parents that the child may be saved. The
father's violation of certain taboos relating to the period
of gestation makes the child's death a necessity. The
language of the " priest " seems to us pitiless in its severity,
but possibly, if the infringement of rule were not expiated
by the death of the child, the entire social group might
, have to suffer the consequences.
At other times the preconnection is simply between
the violation and a misfortune which will assuredly follow,
the nature of which is not determined beforehand. It
merely implies the certainty that the custom or taboo will
not be violated without " something happening." There
is a very strong feeling that the unseen powers, incensed
by the violation, will demand punishment ; primitive
mentality believes as firmly in the inevitability of this
as we do in the persistence of natural laws. What will
the sentence be ? The event alone will make it known,
unless indeed, as soon as the violation has become known,
the offender proceeds to undergo purification and expiatory
rites which afford satisfaction to the offended powers or,
in a general way, have the virtue of preventing misfortune.
When the preconnection is thus indefinite, it is most
frequently the appearance of the result which leads back
to the cause. " Something " has happened — persistent
bad weather, prolonged drought, a sudden death, a severe
illness, unsuccessful hunting or fishing, and so on. It is
clear that there has been some infringement of law, but
of what rule, what custom ? Is it even certain that the
misfortune proceeds from the violation of a custom or taboo ?
Sudden death, lack of success in hunting, etc., may be due
to other causes also ; to the evil practices of a witch, the
anger of an ancestor, for instance. How is the primitive
1 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 61 (1909).
to find out what has actually been the cause ? He knows
but one method of obtaining assurance, but it is an infallible
one : he will ask the unseen powers, whose decrees must
be ascertained and made favourable to him, above all,
in circumstances of great difficulty.
Therefore if the accident in itself is not a sufficiently clear
revelation, i.e. if the native does not know beforehand
that when a certain accident happens a certain violation
has been committed, he will have recourse, according to
the circumstances, to dreams, ordeals, invocation of spirits
— in short, to one form or other of divination, and he will
be guided by what this teaches him. " Should someone
meet with misfortune, or fall ill, or no longer trap any furred
animals, he immediately thinks that he must have committed
some sin. Then he repairs to the augur, or ' shaman,'
and makes him continue his operations until the cause
of the disaster has been revealed, and finally does what
he can to expiate his fault." ■ (He carves a little wooden
image of a man and hangs it on a tree in the wood.) " The
Indian . . . without knowing why, believes that bad luck
or misfortune, such as accident and loss of property, sickness
or death, is inflicted upon him as a punishment by the
Evil Power, because of his violation of one of the ' medicines.'
... It is impossible for the Christian races to understand,
or estimate the powerful influence which the ' medicine '
beliefs have for ages exerted upon the Indian character
and tribal life. . . . ' Supernatural power ' is probably the
nearest equivalent to the word ' medicine ' in its com-
mon Indian use." *
This belief is to be met with in many races. To give
but one more example, taken from the Fan people of French
Congo : " Every time that our negro has any accident, mis-
fortune, disaster, nay, even a simple failure, he will attribute
it to his totem who has been angered by some nsem or
ritual defilement, by the violation of an eki, or something
of that sort. Therefore it is essential to appease him.
The greater the disaster, the greater must have been the
cause or fault which induced it, and the more necessary
1 G. W. Steller : Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, p. 276.
» W. McClintock: The Old North Trail, p. 181. (Blackfeet, 1910.)
it is to expiate it (even though it may have been quite
involuntary), by considerable sacrifice.' ' *
The man who has been overtaken by misfortune or
sustained a defeat will therefore nearly always ask himself
(unless he thinks that an enemy's hand has dealt the blow) :
" What have I done ? Wherein am I guilty ? What rule
have I infringed ?" His conscience, or a scrupulous self-
examination will reveal that he has failed to fulfil such-
and-such an obligation, and he will repair his fault. It
may happen that a man, knowing he has violated some
taboo, and seeing that a disaster is spreading throughout
his social group, feels himself responsible for it, and makes
up his mind to confess, so that by expiation he may appease
the offended powers. Wangemann, the missionary, tells
the story of a scruple of this kind in a Koranna native
who had become a Christian. " Drought and famine having
supervened, Richard Miles felt his conscience reproach
him so that he looked upon this disaster as a punishment
for the sin that he had committed. One night he and his
wife rose from their beds, and he fell on his knees, entreating
the Lord not to punish the whole Mission for his sin. That
very night rain fell, and the next morning Richard Miles
went to the missionary and confessed that he had been
guilty of adultery." * An absolutely similar need of expiation
will make itself felt in a pagan's conscience when mis-
fortune suggests to him that his relatives are undergoing
punishment inflicted by the unseen powers because of his
having violated some taboo. " A canoe with half a dozen
men on board, sailed from Aitutaki to Manuae (Hervey's
Island), a distance of fifty- five miles, in order to collect
red parrakeets' feathers. Having succeeded in their object,
. . . they started on their return voyage, but were driven
out of their course by strong contrary winds. After a
few days, food and water began to fail, and a miserable
death stared them in the face. Routu, the commander
of the canoe, now addressed his companions : ' I see why
we are thus driven about over the ocean by unfavourable
winds. We have sinned in taking away the sacred red
1 P. H. Trilles : Le totemisme des Fdn, p. 507.
* Dr. Wangemann: Die Berliner Mission im Koranna Lande, p. 156.
parrakeets' feathers. A costly sacrifice is demanded by
the angry gods. Throw me into the sea, and you will yet
safely reach home.' . . . The voyagers . . . complied with
this request." «
Whether the violation has been involuntaiy, and its
author did not even know that he was committing it,
matters nothing ; the wrong has been done, and its conse-
quences cannot fail to appear. It is these same consequences
which awaken a suspicion of it, and divination then makes
the fault known, and at the same time reveals a way of
repairing it if possible.
In Dahomey, M the cleansing of the ' doctor ' (fdticheur) ,
followed by his visit to the market, is a ieal purification
ceremony both for him and for the people, a purification
which is entirely a religious rite, for it only concerns
faults committed voluntarily or involuntarily against fetish-
worship. It is to be noted, too, that the natives never
tell us of any cases but those of involuntary errors. One
may, without knowing it, have eaten a food which is forbid-
den to his family, or have bought in the market flour-balls
cooked in utensils or wrapped in leaves which he may not
use. It may even happen that a prince has taken his usual
bath when he should not have done, one of his dead brothers
not having received burial rites. In all these things, an
individual is guilty through ignorance only ; but is not this
ignorance due to some evil genius which thus involves the
people of Dahomey for the purpose of exciting the anger of
their own fetishes against them ? " 2 Observations of this
sort have been frequently made in both hemispheres. To give
but one more only : "When a person falls sick (in New Zealand)
and cannot remember that he has broken any law of iafiu him-
self, he endeavours to discover who has got him into the
scrape, for it is not an uncommon practice to make a person
offend against some law of tapu, without his being aware
of it, with the express object of causing the anger of Atua
to fall upon him. This practice is a secret art called makutu.
And it has often happened that an innocent person has
been sacrificed to the rage of the relatives of a sick man,
1 W. W. Gill : Savage Life in Polynesia, p. 172.
* A. Le Herisse : L'ancien royaume de Dahomey, pp. 125-6.
under the belief that he had caused the disease by such
unlawful means." 1
According to our view of the matter, if it appears that
a man has infringed some rule without knowing it, and
above all without any means of knowing it, his unavoidable
ignorance is nearly always accepted as an excuse. The
rule has not been broken in reality, because it did not rest
with the man whether it should be observed or not. The
attitude taken by primitive mentality with regard to this
same fact is widely different. First of all, infringement
of the rule brings about the consequences independently
of the doer's intentions, and as it were automatically. The
rain can no longer fall, a tempest rages, the game disappears,
not because a woman who was enceinte desired to be rid
of her offspring, but because she did not observe the necessary
rites when the miscarriage had taken place. It matters
little whether her action was intentional or not. If the
miscarriage were accidental, matters would have turned
out just the same. But there is more in it than that. The
absence of intention, in anyone who has been guilty of
infringing a regulation, rather aggravates than excuses the
fault. As a matter of fact, nothing happens by chance.
How then can a man have been induced to commit a crime
without wishing to do so, or knowing that he was doing it ?
He must already be the victim of an occult power, or the
object of anger which must be appeased — at least (and
this is a still more serious supposition), unless he has within
himself, unknown to him, some power for evil. Instead,
therefore, of feeling reassured by the fact that he could not
know his wrongdoing when committing it, and that it was
consequently inevitable, his anxiety is all the greater. It
becomes henceforth indispensable to find out (by divination,
as a rule), how it happens that he has been placed in so
parlous a state.
Even when it is simply a question of what we call a
" crime passionnel," which, strictly speaking, is neither !
involuntary nor unknown to him who commits it, primitive |
mentality interprets it in a fashion which proves baffling j
to us. The motives for the crime are obvious — the man
1 Ed. Shortland : Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders,
p. 116 (1856).
has yielded to hunger, rage, jealousy, love, etc. . .
Primitives see this, for they are very frequently shrewd
observers of human nature, as their stories and their proverbs
prove. In the case of people they know well, the motives
determining their actions hardly ever escape them. But
these motives are secondary causes, and in their eyes, such
causes are never the true explanation of anything. The
tree which falls on the passer-by knocks him down and kills
him, but to their minds his fall is not the real cause of his
death. The tree crushed him because a wizard had " doomed "
him ; it was but the agent, and the one who carried out
the sentence, so to speak. So, too, a man who slays his
rival yields to his passion, but that is not the true reason
for his deed. That must be sought elsewhere ; whence
comes it that he has been inflamed by the passion to which
he yields ? Another, in a brawl, kills one of his neighbours.
He struck him in a moment of anger. But who instigated
the dispute in which the criminal engaged ? and how does
it happen that his spear should be close at hand at that
very moment ?
The real cause of occurrences, therefore, is always con-
nected with the unseen world. If it comes from without,
the man is both the guilty person and the victim (these two
conditions are not clearly distinct to the primitive's mind,
as they are to our own). If it be due to a principle which
imbues him, he is a porte-malheur, a wizard, and it will
not be long before the fatal accusation is formulated.
Ill
The same collective representations and their pre-
connections afford an explanation of facts which seem at
first sight even more mysterious than the preceding. In
many communities, those who have come to an end in
certain ways — as a rule, have suffered violent deaths —
are treated in a special manner. They do not receive the
same funeral honours as others. Their friends hasten to
get rid of the corpse, and the dead man seems to be excluded
from the social group to which he ought (in the form
suited to his present state) still to belong. They behave
towards him as they do towards those who are a reproach
and a danger to the group ; they cast him out, as they do
abnormal children, those who possess, unknown to them-
selves, a power for evil, and wizards. He has, in fact, come
to his end by a " bad death," that is, not merely a death
which is unnatural — for no death, or hardly any, is natural,
in the sense in which we use the term — but a death which
reveals the wrath of the unseen powers. He has been
struck down by them ; and for fear of having to share his
fate, he must be avoided, and all relations between him
and the social group must be severed.
In Borneo, for instance, " these tribes show no sign of
the ancestor-worship which is founded only upon fear.
The natives, however, are afraid of the cemeteries and the
corpses of those whose sudden death has terrified them ;
of those who have died of suicide, accident, or suffered a
violent death, and of women dead in childbirth. They
declare such deaths to be a punishment inflicted by the
spirits upon those who have perished for some crime they
have committed. No religious ceremony is held over them ;
their corpses are simply buried in a special way." l " Those
who violate divine or human regulations (adat) meet with
misfortune or sickness ; if the spirits are really incensed
against them, they cause these guilty ones to be killed in
combat, or by accident, or to commit suicide ; in the case
of women, they die in childbed. All those who perish
thus have died ' a bad death/ They do not receive funeral
honours/ ' 2 The circumstances of their death reveal what
Dr. Nieuwenhuis calls their guilt, and in any case they
show the anger of the unseen powers with them. This
anger pursues them beyond the tomb. " All who die from
any other cause than illness lose the privilege of honourable
burial, and also, according to the belief of the survivors,
are deprived of enjoying the future life in the Apu Kesio.
The souls of the dead who have been assassinated, or
accidentally killed, or have committed suicide, or fallen
on the field of battle, women dead in childbed, stillborn
children, all arrive by two different routes at two other
1 A. W. Nieuwenhuis : Quer durch Borneo, ii. pp. 69-70.
* Ibid., i. p. 102.
places where they must henceforth live with other poor
wretches who have shared the same fate. The corpses
of such people inspire the Kayans with special horror ;
that is why they are simply rolled up in a mat and put into
the ground." x
Such feelings with regard to " bad death " are not met
with in Borneo alone. They are common in uncivilized
communities. At Bougainville, " when a man dies by
falling from a tree, they think he has been killed by
Oromrui " (he is the spirit most dreaded). "In the Gazelle
peninsula the natives are forbidden to bury a man who
has died thus, and they leave the body lying where it
fell. At Bougainville, they carry it to the funeral pyre in
exactly the same attitude as that in which it was found." *
As the Borneo Kayans hold, " those who die of violent
deaths at Bougainville have to live apart even in the other
world. This kind of death (i.e. on the battlefield or by
accident) is considered highly ignominious/ ' 3
In Australia, says Dawson, " the deaths of adults caused
by epidemic are not avenged, nor are the natural deaths
of boys before having beards, or of girls before entering
womanhood, or of those who have lost their lives by accident,
such as drowning, falling from trees, snake-bite, etc." 4
In other words, "bad death" deprives them of funeral
honours. In German New Guinea, " the souls of those
who have suffered a violent death, by assassination or by
accident, remain in the neighbourhood of the place where
the disaster took place, dwelling on large trees, and thence
bringing trouble upon the survivors. You see," adds the
missionary, " what confusion reigns in the natives' ideas
of morals ; it is not the man's murderer who has acquired
defilement, but the soul of his victim. I am speaking of
the Bongu people only. According to them, the victim,
that is to say, the soul of the victim, is not admitted to the
village of the dead. Such souls are not allowed to rest ;
1 A. W. Nieuwenhuis : ibid., p. 91.
J R. Thurnwald : " Im Bismarck Archipel und auf den Salomon Inseln,"
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, xlii. p. 134.
3 E. Frizzi : Ein Beitrag zur Ethnologie von Bougainville und Buka,
Bassler-Archiv, Beiheft vi. pp. 11 -12.
4 J. Dawson : Australian Aborigines, p. 70.
they live on certain trees, and feed upon the most unpleasant
fruits, those which even the pigs reject. " x
In South Africa the Basutos consider that those who
die of hunger or have been struck by lightning have suc-
cumbed to a " bad death," and treat them accordingly.
" The victims of famine are left unburied," * and in
another publication Casalis says : " It is painful to me to
have to confess that the Basutos never bury persons who
have died of hunger. This is a result of their religious
system. Since every interment must be carried out with
sacrifices to the barimo (ancestors), it does not seem possible
to hold an interment when the deceased has left no cattle,
or has no friend to provide any for the sacrifice. Therefore
in times of famine and destitution, children may often be
seen dragging the corpse of their father to a gully and
leaving it there." 3 Other motives must undoubtedly be
noted in addition to the one which Casalis gives. If the
Basutos, not content with depriving these dead of the
customary sacrifices and ceremonial, even refuse to bury
them, it is because the horror which the " bad death "
inspires is too great. They dare not touch the bodies, and
besides, if they did consign them to the ground, they would
offend the members of the social group whose influence is
impressed upon it, making it fertile or barren (these are the
ancestors), therefore it is better to break off all relations
with them, and that is why they are left in the gully.
The victims of a thunderbolt have the same treatment
meted out to them. Not to exclude them, as quickly as
possible, from the social group would be to expose the
survivors to the same fate. A man has been killed by
lightning, and it is asked : " • Where is he ? ' ' Down there
in the place where he fell. We do not bring a man like that
back to the village.' I go down to the high road. Some
men are collected in a hollow. Two of them are digging
a trench. . . . They show me an old blanket, soaked with
rain and covered with mud, and when a corner of it is raised,
I see Tsai's body still warm ; he is going to be buried
1 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 239 (1899), p. 135
(1907).
* E. Casalis : Les Bassoutos, p. 213.
3 Missions evangeliques, xvi. pp. 5-6 (note).
immediately, without his grandmother having seen him
again, or his parents, who live but two hours' ride from
here, having been informed, so that they might look their
last on him/ ' Why are you burying him so quickly, even
before his body is cold, and without letting his parents
know ? ' ' We cannot bring a man like that back to the
village/ ' Why not ? ' * Because if we did, the lightning
would come back again, and kill other people in the
village/ " *
This dread goes so deep that the Basutos hardly venture
to give any help to those who are struck by lightning.
" These poor creatures think that if they approach the place
where the lightning has struck, without having previously
undergone the customary purification they would draw down
upon their own homes a similar catastrophe." a In 1912
a house, in which there were six children and two young
men, was set on fire by lightning. " They did not succeed
in opening the door. They appealed for help, and their
cries of agony were heard a long way off, and lasted for
some time, but nobody made the least effort to go to their
aid. These poor children knew that their parents were
there, only a few steps away from them. . . . Suddenly
the roof of the house fell in. A few more cries of agony
and all was over. Nobody dared go near houses that had
been burnt down. . . . The people, even the parents of
the children, dared not come to the cemetery/' 3 The
Bechuanas consider that a tree, when struck by lightning,
has also succumbed to the " bad death," and it is destroyed.
" When lightning strikes a tree in the neighbourhood of
a town, or in the plantations, the chief takes his attendants
there, and they begin to destroy the tree by fire and steel.
It is no easy task to exterminate the trunk and branches
of an ancient mimosa which was rooted there about the
time of the Flood, and is nearly as hard as marble, but they
put so much energy and perseverance into the task that
very soon not the least trace of it remains." 4 For the
1 Missions evangeliques, lxxiv. 2. pp. 172-3 (Dieterlen) ; cf. Colonel
Maclean : A Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs, p. 85.
» Ibid., xxviii. p. 304. (Maitin.)
s Ibid., lxxxvii. 1. pp. 105-6. (P. Ramseyer.)
4 Ibid. xix. p. 406. (Lemue.)
negroes to undertake such a laborious job shows that their
reasons for it are imperative.
Similar practices, inspired by similar beliefs, are to be
found in West Africa. In Dahomey, '" the death of the
canoeist who is drowned in passing the bar is considered
to be a punishment inflicted by Hou (the fetish of the
undercurrent there). Therefore the body of the victim is
buried in the sand, or, as others tell us, thrown into the
sea." « Among the Mossi, " suicides are buried as dogs
would be at home (for here all dogs are eaten) ; lepers suffer
the same fate, and are buried at night, without ceremonies
of any kind. Death from accident, whether occasioned by
a fall, snake-bite, or anything else, is held to be the work
of an evil genius who must not be offended by the rendering
of funeral honours to his victim, or he would return and
slay another member of the family. That is why those who
have died an accidental death are interred without ceremony,
not even the grave-diggers being present ; their heads
are not shaved, for (say the Mossi) God has called them
to him with their hair on. The grave is dug and they are
put in it, and that is all." 2 With the Waniaturu, " if a
man has been killed by lightning, they say that he has
met with his punishment because he was a sorcerer." 3
Lastly, in the case of the Fan of the French Congo, Father
Trilles has very carefully collected the general ideas and
customs relating to the " bad death." " No one admits
that the man who is struck by lightning has met his death
by accident. In no case — and in this least of all — is an
accident really considered such. . . . The violation of an
eki is nearly always the cause of the calamity, according
to the natives. Before the body of the man so killed can
be buried or serve as a fetish, therefore, the medicine-man
must examine into the cause of the death, and find out
which eki has been violated and brought about this man's
fall. This having been done, two sentences will be pro-
nounced, one on the individual, and the other on the tribe,
clan, and family of the dead man particularly. . . . The
1 A. Le H6riss6 : L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, p. 109.
• P. Eugene Mangin, P.B. : " Les Mossi," Anthropos, ix. p. 732.
3 Eberhard von Sick : Die Waniaturu, Bassler-Archiv, v. Heft. 1-2, p. 55.
family, as a whole, all equally concerned, and represented
by its chief, will pay ; and the tribe, all equally concerned,
and represented by the tribal chief, will pay too.
" The second penalty is imposed on the dead man.
Since he has violated an eki, he must be punished. The
spirit has already visited him with the direst penalty that
can be inflicted on the living ; it has required his death.
The tribe in its turn, responsible as a whole, will inflict
the heaviest punishment that the dead can suffer ; it will
deprive him first of the funeral sacrifices, and then of the
posthumous rites. There shall be no dance, no song for
this man ; nothing but the wailings of the women within
the hut. His body will be carried into the wood without
any funeral ceremony whatever, then it will be buried
beneath an ant-heap, so that the ants may destroy it as_
soon as possible. . . . His skull will not be preserved with
those of his ancestors, and consequently his memory will
gradually fade away. All those who die from accident,
whose skulls cannot be found, have usually suffered the
same fate." J In short, " bad death," when laying a man
low, at the same time obliges his social group to excommu-
nicate him. It hastens to remove him from their midst,
lest it draw down upon itself the anger of the unseen powers
who have struck at him. This explains why the funeral
ceremonies, which usually bring the dead again into relation
with his group, are omitted, and doubtless, too, is the reason
why the Fan bury him beneath an ant-heap. The more
quickly his flesh is separated from his bones, the faster
will the deceased arrive at his destined state.2
IV
If this be so, what will be the feeling regarding those
who have been quite close to " bad death," who have nearly
succumbed, and yet, by a stroke of luck or supreme effort,
seem to be escaping with their lives ? Will they be aided,
will there be a helping hand stretched out, will the by-
1 R. P. H. Trilles : Le totemisme des Fdn, pp. 338-40.
» Cf. R. Hertz : " La representation collective de la moit," Annee sociolo-
gique, x. pp. 66-7.
standers strive to accomplish the impossible to snatch them
from a death which appears so imminent ? It would seem
as if an irresistible instinct of human sympathy would move
them to it. Primitives, however, are nearly always driven
by an irresistible instinct of fear and horror to do exactly
the opposite.
Thus it is that in Kamschatka, " if anyone fell into the
water accidentally, it used to be considered a great sin
(Siinde) to help him out. Since he was destined to drown
it would have been wrong, in their opinion, to save him
from his fate. That is why, if he escaped, nobody would
allow him to enter his house, nobody would speak to him
again, they would not give him the smallest scrap of food ;
henceforward he would be unable to find a wife ; they
regarded him as virtually dead. He was condemned either
to seek his fortunes some way off, or to remain in his own
district and die of hunger. If a man fell into the water
in the presence of others, they would not allow him to get
out again ; on the contrary, they used force to make him
drown, to make sure of his death." l
Can one imagine conduct more atrocious and inhuman ?
Nevertheless, just a moment before the poor wretch's life
was in danger, his companions were ready to share every-
thing with him, food, weapons, shelter, etc. ; they would
defend him if he needed defence, avenge him if a member
/ of a hostile group did him a wrong — in short, they would
fulfil, towards him as towards all the rest, all the manifold
j obligations that the absolute solidarity of these commu-
i nities demands. He falls into the water accidentally
and is in danger of drowning, and immediately he becomes
an object of dread and repulsion. Not only do they refrain
from hastening to his aid, but if he appears to be saving
himself, they prevent him ; should he come to the surface,
they drive him under the water again. If, in spite of all
this, he does succeed in surviving his immersion, the social
group refuses to admit that he has escaped death. They no
i longer know him ; his membership is rescinded. The
feelings he inspires and the treatment meted out to him
recall the excommunications of the Middle Ages.
1 G. W. Steller : Beschreibung von dent Lande Kamtschatka, p. 295.
All this is because cases of this kind are exactly like
"■ bad death." It is not the death itself, nor the actual
circumstances accompanying it, that terrifies the primitive
mind ; it is the revelation of the wrath of the unseen powers
and of the sin for which these angry powers require expi-
ation. Now when a man runs the risk of accidental death,
the revelation is as clear and conclusive as if he were already
dead. He has been " doomed," and it matters little that
the sentence has not been carried out. To help him to
escape would be to become a party to his wrongdoing, and
draw down upon one's own head a like misfortune. The
primitive dare not do it. We remember the unfortunate
children burnt to death in a house that had been struck
by lightning ; the parents, who are close at hand, do not
venture to intervene. For the doomed man to wish to
escape death is to exasperate the unseen powers yet further,
and this rage may react on his relatives ; he must therefore
die. The accident — which was no accident, since nothing
happens by chance — is a kind of spontaneous ordeal. Just
as the ordeal reveals to many of the African peoples the
evil spirit imbuing such-and-such an individual, so does
the accident betray the misdeed which has led to the cul-
prit's being doomed by the unseen powers. In both cases,
this terrible revelation instantly brings about the same
revulsion of feeling. In one moment the man who was a
companion, friend, and relative has become a stranger and
an enemy, an object alike of horror and hatred.
Steller is not the only one who has observed this ; others
have borne witness to the same fact. For example, Nansen
says : " They (the Esquimaux) shrink from assisting one
who has met with an accident at sea, if he seems to be
already in the pinch of death, fearing lest they should
happen to lay hands upon him after life has departed." »
Nansen accounts for their inhuman conduct by the
fear which they have, as a rule, of coming in contact with
dead bodies. This explanation may seem likely because
it most nearly approaches our own way of thinking and
feeling. It is, however, not the correct one, and I merely
record the fact, which confirms Steller's testimony. G. Holm,
1 Fr. Nansen : Eskimo Life, p. 137 ; cf. ibid., p. 245.
speaking of the Greenlanders on the eastern coast says too :
" So great is their dread of touching a corpse, that in the
case of an accident there is no question of handling or assisting
the injured person from the moment they conclude
hope is over. Suiarkak capsized one day at the beginning
of April, when he was about to land on the ice-foot. . He
scrambled out of his kayak, but sank almost immediately.
His father and several friends who were present on the ice-
foot, and had immediately hastened in their kayaks to his
assistance, made no attempt to rescue him when he sank,
although he could be easily seen, and an oar might easily
have reached him." 1
The very details of this incident prove that what paralyses
the father of the victim and the other spectators of the
drowning is not the fear of touching a corpse, but the mystic
revelation of which the accident is a sign, for the help of
an oar would suffice to save the man who is in the water,
and then there would be no question of a corpse. But how
dare they resist the punishment inflicted by the unseen
powers ? " When a man who had been driving in a sledge
fell through the ice and we helped him out of the water,
we were received at his home as if we had done something
heroic." 3 It may possibly be done by the travellers
who do not rely on the same invisible powers as the Esqui-
maux, but for the latter the sentence admits of no appeal.
Even to save his son, a father would never dare to brave
the doom which the accident reveals, and thus endanger
the safety and possibly the very existence of the entire
social group.
Similar circumstances have been reported by those
investigators who first noted South African manners and
customs. Among the Kafirs, for instance, according to
what Van der Kemp tells us, "a dying man is sometimes
abandoned by all, and it may even happen that he reappears,
and undergoes the same treatment a second time. To
account for such cruel conduct, they allege that they believe
that an illness or other misfortune causes its victims to be
* G. Holm: "An Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo,"
edit, by W. Thalbitzer, Meddelelser om Groenland, xxxix. p. 75.
* Ibid., p. 137.
multiplied, if they do not get rid of the first one attainted.
For the same reason they never help a man who is drowning,
or is otherwise in danger of death, and if he utters cries of
distress they flee from the spot as fast as they can, unless
indeed they throw stones at him so that he may sink. Even
women in travail must not cry out, lest they should see
everyone fly from them, and be forced to remain abandoned
and unaided." ! This last feature has been observed in
a very different place, in the Tlinkit of British Columbia,
although the explorer interprets it in a slightly different
sense. " I often used to hear piteous groans in several
directions, proceeding from the hill near our house. I
asked the Tlinkits what the reason was, and they told me
that several women about to be confined were in the wood.
They added, by way of excuse, that nobody could help them
then, because in that condition they were ' unclean/
Thus they lay there in the bitter winter weather, in the cold
and rain, without their lamentable cries moving a single
soul to pity." * Finally, in the Solomon Isles, " if a sacred
shark has attempted to seize a man, but he has escaped,
they are so much afraid of his anger that they will throw
him back into the sea to be devoured." 3 There is no need
to suppose that the shark must have been a " sacred "
one to account for their terror. It was quite enough for
them, as for the Esquimaux and the Kafirs, that the man
in danger of his life had been irrevocably doomed by the
unseen powers.
Among the " accidents " and " misfortunes " which,
on overtaking a man, at the same time forbid any help
for him, and even ordain his complete ruin, shipwreck
holds the first place with certain peoples, like the Fijians,
for instance. The rule used to be that those who were
" salvaged " should be killed and eaten. " Those who
escape from shipwreck are supposed to be saved that they
1 Lichtenstein : Reisen im siidlichen Afrika, i. p. 421 (note).
» Holmberg : " Ueber die Volker des russischen Amerika," Acta societatis
scientiarum fennicce, iv. pp. 317-18.
3 Quoted by R. H. Codrington : ** Religious Beliefs and Practices in
Melanesia," J. A. I., x. p. 302.
may be eaten, and very rarely are they allowed to live.
Recently at Wakaya, fourteen or sixteen persons who lost
their canoe at sea were cooked and eaten." x A chief and
his followers were fishing on a reef near the coast when a
canoe was shipwrecked quite close to them. " ' Now we
shall have something good to eat/ said the fishermen,
approaching the wreck. ' You shall not touch a single
one of these men,' said the chief (who had been converted),
' I mean to save their lives.' ' That is impossible,' said
they ; ' they must die, they have been shipwrecked.' " *
" A canoe belonging to Ovalau set sail for Gau, but was
capsized on the voyage. The crew continued to keep hold
of the vessel, which drifted towards the island of their
destination. They even arrived there in safety ; but
unhappily, to use the nautical phrase, ' they had salt water
in their faces.' They landed at a spot where they would
have been welcomed, had not the sad accident happened
to them. As soon as they reached the beach, they were
all clubbed, cooked, and eaten." 3
Missionaries who have borne witness to so cruel and
seemingly inexplicable a method of procedure, have not
failed to inquire into the reason and origin of it. " The
murder of those who are wrecked," says Waterhouse, " is
a recognized institution, not originating in simple cruelty ;
it is rather the result of education. On the discovery of
anyone ' swimming for life,' the oven in which they are
to be cooked is forthwith prepared. It would appear from
research that the victims of this savage custom are usually
natives of the Fiji Islands, to whose misfortunes only
is this severe penalty attached. Such are looked upon
as abandoned by the gods, and the slaughter of them is
considered acceptable to the deities, and indeed necessary. . .
[On the other hand] there are many small clans now living
in various parts of the group, who are the offspring of
Friendly Islanders who were cast away on these Islands." 4
Father Joseph Chevron also writes : " People well acquainted
« Th. Williams : Fiji and the Fijians, i. p. 210 (1858).
J Wesley an Missionary Notices, March 1852. (Letter from Rev. J. Water-
house.)
3 Rev. J. Waterhouse : The King and People of Fiji, p. 201 (1853).
< Ibid., pp. 334-5.
with the matter have assured me that in their opinion it
is more than a right, it is indeed a religious duty to devour
the shipwrecked wretches who are cast on their shores
by tempest, were it even their own father or mother ; if
possible, in the case of Europeans they do not wait till the
ship has foundered before they carry out this monstrous
obligation." l
The Fijian who fell into the sea was not ignorant of
the fate which awaited him if he succeeded in swimming
ashore. The Rev. R. B. Lyth relates the story of a ship-
wrecked man who managed to conceal himself after reaching
the shore. He was at length discovered by a Fijian man.
He went boldly up to him, and would follow him into the
town, though the other very much wanted him to remain
in the path until the chief was informed of his arrival. . . .
When they came to the town the people soon gathered
round their victim, touched his eyes with their hands, and
began to say to him: " Oh yes, it is salt water," meaning,
" You have been wrecked ; we must kill you." »
The slaughter of shipwrecked persons, therefore, as the
missionaries have realized, was a sacred obligation which
no one would venture to contravene. By virtue of the
same theory, objects which were in a canoe lost at sea could
no longer be the property of their shipwrecked owner if
by some extraordinary chance he should survive. " A
native priest of Lomaloma set sail in company with some
canoes manned by Christians, and his canoe was shipwrecked.
Those on board escaped by clinging to the outrigger, which
had become detached. The Christians heard of the disaster,
and going down to the shore saw that the priest's canoe
had drifted in with the tide. They took out the mats
and other things they found, and returned them to the
owner. For some time, however, he refused to receive
them, saying that it was contrary to the Fijian custom." 3
Possibly he esteemed himself fortunate in having to deal
with Christians in the matter, and escaping from shipwreck
without expiating his disaster by death. In any case, how-
* Annates de la Propagation de la foi, xiv. p. 192 (1842).
> Wesley an Missionary Notices, vii. p. 150. (Letter from Rev. R. B.
Lyth. December 1848.)
3 Rev. J. Calvert : Missionary Labours among the Cannibals, p. 300 (1858).
ever, he was afraid that by accepting the things he had
lost with the canoe he might aggravate his misdeed, and
draw upon himself a fresh calamity.
Similar customs, as we know, are met with in many
islanders and maritime peoples. " A very barbarous custom
exists on this coast (Borneo) . . . wrecks and their crews
belong to the chief of the district, where they may suffer
severe misfortune." " The mystic nature of this custom
is specially marked in New Zealand. " A wreck of any kind,
or even a canoe of friends and relatives upsetting off the
village, and drifting on shore where the village was, became
the property of the people of that village ; although it
might be that the people in the canoe had all got safely
to land or were coming by special invitation to visit that
very village ; perhaps to lament for their dead ! Strangest
of all, the unfortunate people in the upset canoe would
be the very first to resent — even to fighting — any kind
alleviation of this strange law ! " a
Colenso cannot sufficiently express his astonishment
at this custom which, he says, consorts neither with reason
nor humanity ; but in the light of tne circumstances which
precede it, it becomes intelligible. The accident has re-
vealed that the shipwrecked persons are victims of the anger
of unseen powers, who are evidently punishing them for
some misdeed. It is not the villagers' duty to screen them
from its consequences ; to do so would be dangerous, both
for the rash folk who risked it and also for the shipwrecked
people themselves, for they would thus be in danger of a
(possibly graver) misfortune, since the one that had already
befallen them had been checked and hindered. Therefore
they simply must be despoiled of their possessions. Any
helpful intervention, however well-intentioned, would prove
fatal to them, and they would reject it by force, if need
were. The only acceptable interference is that which
secures the accomplishment of the decree that has been
made against them — a case similar to the one in which
the Esquimaux thrust back into the water the poor half-
drowned wretch who is trying to save himself.
1 Sir Spenser St. John : Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. p. 295.
• W. Colenso: "On the Maori Races of New Zealand," Transactions
of the New Zealand Institute, i. p. 25 (1868).
We are reminded of the Indian of New France who,
having seen himself in a dream at the mercy of an enemy
tribe, next day begged his friends to fasten him to the stake
and make him undergo the tortures which are inflicted
on prisoners. " His friends did not hesitate to perform
this service for him, and he was so severely burned that it
took him six months to recover. But in a dream he had
seen himself visited by calamity, and since the dream may
be believed, he considered himself doomed by the unseen
powers, and his friends helped him to undergo his sentence.
Well then, being shipwrecked is a revelation of the anger
of invisible forces, just as being taken prisoner by the enemy
is ; hence it is both the duty and the just concern of the
shipwrecked man to suffer the loss of his possessions. Those
who are his friends must help him in this. In spite of
appearances, their conduct does " consort both with reason
and humanity."
It is not only in the case of shipwreck, however, that
this custom is enjoined. Every serious accident, and a
death in particular, may give occasion for it. For example,
with the Maoris of New Zealand : " At the death of a chief,
a taua, or stripping party, came and stripped the family
of all eatables and other movables, digging up root crops,
and seizing and spearing tame pigs, and devouring and
carrying them off ; and if by any chance the family were
not so stripped, they would be sure deeply to resent the
neglect ; as much on account of their being lowered (that
is, not taken notice of) as for the violation of the tapu,
in failing to carry it out. Again, in case of any infringement
of the tapu, or in any error or wrong, real or supposed,
the taua would be sure to pay its visit ; such taua was not
unfrequently a friendly one ! at once quickly made up of
the closest relatives and neighbours to the offender ; for,
as he must be stripped and mulcted, they might as well
do it as others, and so keep his goods from wholly going
to strangers." *
1 W. Colenso: ibid., p. 41. Note a similar custom prevailing in the
Fiji Islands. " On Vanua Levu death is a signal for plunder, the nearest
relatives rushing to the house to appropriate all they could seize belonging
to those who lived there with the deceased. Valuables are therefore re-
moved and hidden in time." — Fiji and the Fijians, i. p. 187. (Thos. Williams.)
This is a most valuable piece of evidence. It not onl
confirms the preceding one, but it makes its meaning clear.
From the expressions used by Colenso, does it not appear
that the taua is considered equally necessary, that the
family which has to undergo it has been visited by mis-
fortune or death, and that a violation of taboo must have
taken place ? The reason for the custom is the same in
both cases, because both involve the same collective re-
presentations. Misfortune reveals a wrongdoing ; it is
equivalent to wrongdoing, and it, too, must be expiated.
In the early days of colonization, this custom of taua
had been applied to white men as well as to the natives,
and they naturally could not understand it at all. " This
calamity " (a fire), wrote Earle in 1827, " had made us
acquainted with another of their barbarous customs ; which
is, whenever a misfortune happens to a community, or
an individual, every person, even the friends of his own
tribe, fall upon him and strip him of all he has remaining.
As an unfortunate fish, when struck by a harpoon, is instantly
surrounded and devoured by his companions, so in New
Zealand, when a chief is killed his former friends plunder
his widow and children ; and they, in revenge, ill-use and
even murder their slaves ; thus one misfortune gives birth
to various cruelties. During the fire, our allies proved
themselves the most adroit and active thieves imaginable ;
though previously to that event we had never lost an article,
although everything we possessed was open to them." l
It is abundantly clear that it is not a case of robbery here,
any more than it was a case of pillage when the shipwrecked
persons were despoiled of their all. The New Zealand natives
are fulfilling a sacred duty towards their allies, and should
they fail therein they would believe they had deserved
reproaches, or possibly something worse, from them. The
disaster showed that the Europeans were in the dangerous
situation of persons attacked by the invisible powers on
account of some violation of taboo, and in order to extricate I
them from the difficulty, the sentence must be rigorously
carried out, and their friends could not be too zealous inj
despoiling them.
* A. Earle : A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand
p. 96. (Christchurch, N.Z., 1909O
Elsdon Best was also a witness of similar occurrences.
" The old custom of muru," says he, " is rapidly passing away,
but in former times it was strictly carried out. It was
applied in many ways. For example, should a person
meet with some accident or other trouble, a party of the
tribe would proceed to despoil him and his family of their
portable personal property. This was also done sometimes
at the death of a person ; his family would thus lose their
food, etc., which would be seized and taken by the plundering
party, who often acted in a very rough manner." »
" At this forest hamlet we weie treated to an illustration
of the ancient custom of muru or kai taionga, i.e. the taking
forcibly or demanding payment for some injury or loss
sustained by the person or persons from whom such payment
is demanded. A girl of this place had been assaulted some
time previously, hence our party demanded compensation.
Why people should pay for the privilege of being afflicted
by some trouble is a somewhat difficult problem for the
European mind to solve, though it appears to be simple
enough to the Maoris." a It is not an insoluble difficulty
however. Elsdon Best's muru is evidently nothing but
the taua described in more precise terms by Earle and
Colenso, for the custom was evidently flourishing vigorously
in their time. There is so little mystery about it that
Colenso fully recognized its significance, and himself com-
pared it, and quite rightly too, with the penalties connected
with the violation of a taboo.
Falling into the enemy's hands and being made prisoner
is a misfortune, the results of which are comparable with
being shipwrecked, struck by lightning, etc. Like these,
it reveals the anger of the unseen powers, doubtless offended
by some misdeed of the victim's. It therefore inspires
the same feelings. Thus, in New Zealand, " the slave . . .
if skilled, or if active and industrious, and willing to serve
his new masters, . . . was sure to rise and have some
influence ; which, however great his rank might have
been in his own tribe, he would never again have there
1 Elsdon Best: "Maori Eschatology," Transactions of the New Zealand
Institute, xxxviii. pp. 228-9 (1905)- * Ibid., p. 206.
even if he could return. . . . This ... is easily understood,
when it is considered that his own tribe attributed his being
enslaved to the anger of the atua (evil demon) and that
by his becoming so he had lost his tapu ; and if they were
to compassionate and restore, they, too, would incur the
anger of the atua, which they dreaded above all things." l
Earle had already remarked : " If a slave effect his escape
to his own part of the country, he is there treated with
contempt." 2 In North America, too : "If a man of any
nation, even a warrior, who is made prisoner and happens
to have been adopted or enslaved, should eventually succeed
in escaping to return to his own relatives, they will not
receive him, nor recognize him as belonging to them any
more." 3 "If any of the tribe " (the Tshimshian Indians
of British Columbia) "are captured and made slaves, they
lose the confidence of the nation " (should they ever return),
"neither will these use any influence they may have with
an adjoining tribe, to regain the liberty of their relatives." 4
We can easily see the reason of this. Colenso discerned
it in New Zealand, and it is enjoined on primitive mentality
everywhere.
In the primitive's eyes misfortune is a disqualification,
and he who has been attacked by it has at the same time
suffered moral degeneration. As an object of the wrath
of the unseen powers he becomes a danger to his friends
and to the social group, and they avoid his presence. Thus,
in the New Hebrides, missionaries had at first been made
welcome, but later on several misfortunes occurred. " The
natives had pitied them in their illness, but they were wholly
indisposed to give any further heed to their instructions,
or have anything more to do with the new religion. They
attributed the fact of the teachers having been ill, and of
two of them having died, to the displeasure of Alema, their
principal god ; and thence inferred that their god must
1 W. Colenso: "On the Maori Races of New Zealand," Transactions o
the New Zealand Institute, i. p. 22.
2 A. Earle : A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand,
p. 124.
3 J. Carver : Voyage dans VAmerique septentrionale, p. 258.
4 H. Beaver: Original Information respecting the Natives of the North'
West Coast of America. Extracts from the Papers and Proceedings of the
Aborigines Protection Society, ii. v. p. 135 (1841).
be more powerful than the god of the teachers. The
consequence was, that for several months the teachers
were entirely deserted, and were often in great straits." «
" Res est sacra miser." These words express exactly
what the primitive thinks and feels at the sight of an un-
fortunate person, that is, if we give the word " sacra "
its full meaning — not u worthy of respect and considera-
tion," but " placed in a special condition which does not
allow of its being approached or touched." The missionary,
Casalis, has found a very happy way of expressing this. " In
the native tongue," says he, -M happiness ' and ' purity '
are synonymous terms. When a Basuto says that his
heart is ' black ' or ' dirty/ it may equally mean that
his heart is ' impure ' or ' unhappy ' ; and when he says his
heart is ' white ' or ' clean/ it is only from his explanation
that one can find out whether he means that he is innocent
or joyous. Our earliest converts could not be persuaded
that there would be no profanation in approaching the Holy
Table when they were in trouble. . . . They consider the
sufferings and accidents of all kinds which may befall
humanity as an impurity, a stain, and give that name to
them." *
VI
Among primitive peoples almost everywhere illness,
when serious or prolonged, is regarded as a defilement and /
a condemnation. He who is attacked by it is looked upon v
as " res sacra " therefore. The others stop attending to
his wants ; they manifest towards him an indifference which
seems positively inhuman to us (but which in reality is
nothing but fear), and finally, they leave him to his fate.
Father Gumilla, for instance, expresses his perplexity on
this point thus : "I have never been able to understand
how the Indians (and I am speaking here of all the races
in question) can reconcile the great love which parents
manifest for their children, and the affection, whether much
or little, that married pairs feel for each other, with the
1 Rev. A. W. Murray : Missions in Western Polynesia, p. 140.
* Casalis : Les Bassoutos, p. 269.
indifference, amounting almost to total disregard, shown
for these same beings when they are ill. Yet more, how is
one to reconcile the savage and inhuman indifference one
has witnessed, with the tears, groans, and noisy demon-
strations of grief one hears from these people during the
funeral and its attendant ceremonies ? "
" This indifference is carried so far that even when the
sick or dying man is the master of the house and the father
of a large family which is dependent entirely on him, nobody
troubles about him. Nobody cares whether he eats or
drinks. From the attitude of these people, one would
imagine either that they have no feelings, or else that they
are anxious for his death. Yet neither of these is really
the case. When the hour for the repast has arrived, they
place by the hammock where the invalid is lying the same
food that they give to everybody else. If he eats it, it is
well ; but if he does not even taste it, that is also all right.
Throughout the course of his illness he never hears a word
of comfort nor is he ever encouraged to swallow a mouth-
ful. . . . You will think that I am exaggerating, but what-
ever terms I may use, they can never express the unfeeling
and pitiless severity of this attitude." l
Father Gumilla himself, however, realizes that this
indifference is only an apparent one. If from one particular
moment then, the Indians cease troubling in any way about
their sick, it must either be because it appears as if their
care were henceforward useless, or else there is something
stronger than their sympathy which is opposed to their
giving these attentions. That is exactly what happens
in a great many tribes. In Paraguay, " whether the sick
man belongs to the lowest class, or whether he is a cacique
(chief), respected and feared, the doctor can do no more,
and others take no more trouble. Whether he is able to
sleep or not, whether he takes nourishment or goes without,
matters little. They bring him a little of what the others
are having. If he puts it aside for lack of appetite, saying,
' I am not hungry/ they do not insist. . . . The very utmost
which natural compassion leads the people of the house
1 P. Gumilla : El Orinoco illustrado, pp. 235-6 ; cf. Maximilien de
Wied Neuwied : Voyage au Brisil, iii. pp. 170-1 of the French translation.
to do is to drive away the flies which settle on his face. If
he complains, uttering the usual interjection ' Ay ! ' they
answer him by a word of affection. . . ." J According
to this testimony there is a total absence of all solicitude,
as in the case of the Indians of the Orinoco, but it does not
proceed from indifference, since the affection of those around
is manifested in a slight degree towards the invalid. Spix
and Martius merely remark that they do not trouble
about nourishing food for the sick. " The most energetic
measure they employ in many illnesses is a starvation diet ;
they carry it to its extreme, often advantageously in fever
cases, but on the other hand almost to the point of death
for those who are suffering from chronic maladies." a In
another volume, however, Von Martius, after having spoken
of the " diabolical method " of treating illness, draws atten-
tion to the native attitude to sick people, and gives the
reason of it. " If the cause of the sickness is not at once
evident, the person attacked by it is henceforth considered
to be quite another being, one who no longer has the same
relations with his family as hitherto ; he is possessed,
having succumbed to the power of hostile influences. He
suffers from a malady from which his own power alone can
save him (possibly with the help of some of the forces of
Nature). His very touch has in it something disturbing
and dangerous ; therefore he is left as much as possible
to himself ; others shrink from him in fear." 3
Mr. Grubb, a recent investigator, was a witness of this
apparent indifference and this abandonment in the Lenguas
of Grand Chaco. V As long as there is hope of recovery,
the wizard and the friends show great kindness to the
sufferer, and do all that they can for him, and I have
frequently noticed instances of very careful and tender
nursing as far as their limited knowledge went. But when
once the hope of life has been extinguished, both sick,
wizard, and family give up the struggle. The patient is
then, to a great extent, regarded as already dead, and little
further attention is paid to him. When death seems
* P. Jose Sanchez, Labrador : El Paraguay cat6lico, ii. pp. 38-9-
» Spix und Martius : Reise in Brasilien, iii. p. 1281). (Rio Yapura.)
3 C. F. Ph. von Martius : Das Naturell, die Krankheiten, das Arzttum
und die Heilmittel der Urbewohner Brasiliens, pp. 132-33.
imminent, the dying person is removed from the village
and laid outside, with a mat thrown over him, although
he may be quite conscious. They think nothing of his
discomfort at this time. The hot noontide sun may be
pouring down upon him, ... or tropical rain may be falling,
or perhaps the cold south winds of winter may be chilling
him. . . . Quite close to him preparations are being made
for a hasty departure (for his interment). ... No kindly
word is spoken to him, no friendly hand holds his. . . .
Oftentimes he suffers the agonies of thirst, but no one attends
to his needs. And yet these Indians are not unkindly ;
they grieve for their dying friend ; they will miss him and
mourn his loss, but their cruel belief overcomes all natural
feelings." «
The cruel belief to which Grubb refers is the idea that
the most awful misfortunes will follow if a dead man should
remain unburied when the sun goes down. His presence
among them during the night inspires them with abject
terror, and they therefore are always in a hurry to be rid
of him. It often happens that in their eyes a dying man
is regarded as already dead. (By many primitives, life
is considered to have ceased before the respiration has quite
stopped and the heart no longer beats.) At such a moment
the Lenguas think only of getting rid of the dead, and their
fear leaves room for no other feeling. But during the period,
which is often a long one, which elapses between the time
when all hope is given up, and the period of his death agony,
if the sick man is abandoned, and all appear indifferent
to his needs and his distress, it is clear that it is a different
" cruel belief " which causes such treatment. However much
they may pity him, they dare not approach him because
it entails too much danger, since, like the Kamschatkan
who has fallen into the water, and the woman about to die
in childbirth among the Tlinkit people, like the man struck
by lightning in South Africa, and the shipwrecked native
of the Fiji Isles, he is henceforth " res sacra." In all these
cases, the apparently unfeeling attitude of the immediate
circle is accounted for in the same way.
1 W. B. Grubb : An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, pp. 161-2
(1911).
That in the opinion of certain of the South American
natives, serious and incurable illness is thus one of the forms
of that " accident," that " misfortune," which reveals
the wrath of the unseen powers against the one attainted,
we may conclude from the attitude they maintain with
regard to the care of their sick. But with respect to other
races which have progressed further, and whose ideas of
the unseen powers have assumed more or less of an anthro-
pomorphic view, such as certain Polynesian races, for instance,
the testimony on this point is more explicit. Here are some
of the most characteristic features. " As soon as an indi-
vidual was afflicted with any disorder," says Ellis, " he was
considered as under the ban of the gods ; by some crime or
the influence of some enemy, he was supposed to have
become obnoxious to their anger, of which his malady was
the result. These ideas relative to the origin of diseases,
had a powerful tendency to stifle every feeling of sympathy
and compassion, and to restrain all from the exercise of
those acts of kindness that are so acceptable to the afflicted,
and afford such alleviation to their sufferings. The attention
of the relatives and friends was directed to the gods, and
their greatest efforts were made to appease their anger by
offerings, and to remove the continuance of these effects
by prayers and incantations. The simple medicine
administered was considered more as the vehicle or medium
by which the god would act, than as possessing any power
itself to arrest the progress of disease. If their prayers,
offerings, and remedies were found unavailing, the gods
were considered implacable, and the offending person was
doomed to perish. Some heinous crime was supposed to
have been committed."1 In another passage he says:
M Every disease was supposed to be the effect of direct
supernatural agency, and to be inflicted by the gods for
some crime against the taboo, of which the sufferers had
been guilty, or in consequence of some offering made by
an enemy to procure their destruction. Hence, it is probable,
in a great measure, arises their neglect and cruel treatment
of their sick. . . . The natives acknowledged that they
possessed articles of poison which, when taken in the food,
* Rev. W. Ellis: Polynesian Researches, iii. pp. 46-8 (1829).
would produce convulsions and death, but those effects they
considered more the result of the god's displeasure, operating
by means of these substitutes, than the effects of the poisons
themselves. Those who died of eating fish, of which several
kinds found on their coast are at certain seasons unsuitable
for food, were supposed to die by the influence of the gods,
who, they imagined, had entered the fish, or rendered it
offensive. . . . Those who were killed in battle were also
supposed to die from the influence of the gods, who, they
fancied, had actually entered the weapons of their murderers.
Hence those who died suddenly were said to be seized by
the god." *
These expressions are perfectly clear. If nothing is
done for these sick people, it is because the natives believe
that their trouble would be absolutely useless. The sick
man has been smitten by the " gods " ; the only way to
save him is to persuade the gods to be appeased and pardon
him. If they tried a direct means of attacking the evil
(which they would not anyhow be able to do, seeing what their
ideas of health and disease are), by thwarting the will of
the gods, they would only exasperate them still further,
increase the sufferings of the sick man, and draw down
the divine anger upon fresh victims. Prayers, offerings,
supplications, incantations, and sacrifices can be of use,
but they are the only therapeutics possible in such a case.
Moreover, the wrath of the gods is attributable either to
the influence of an enemy who has gained them over to his
side, or else to transgression of some sort. The gravity
of the crime is commensurable with that of the illness.
If the latter proves to be mortal, it shows that the crime
was unpardonable, and in that case it is the more necessary
that fear should stifle pity.
Ellis's testimony is confirmed by that of many others.
In the Wallis Islands, for example, " these people believe
that all illness comes from the offended gods, and therefore
they hasten to placate them by offerings of cava. Some
of them take their sick to a chief, so that his authority may
render the intercession more acceptable to the divinity." *
1 Rev. W. Ellis : Polynesian Researches, i. pp. 395-6.
• Annates de la Propagation de la foi, xiii. p. 12 (1 841). (P. Bataillon.)
At Futuna : " Our islanders view disease and infirmity as
the result of divine wrath alone. As soon as anyone falls
ill, they hasten to the temple of the god who wants to eat
him. They carry to these temples, fruit, cloth, sometimes
the most cherished of all their possessions, so that they
may appease the evil genius by these offerings/' x On the
other hand, Turner speaks highly of the humanity of the
natives in Samoa. " The treatment of the sick, was as it
is now, invariably humane, and all that could be expected.
They wanted for no kind of food which they might desire,
night or day, if it was at all in the power of their friends
to procure it. In the event of the disease assuming a
dangerous form, messengers were despatched to friends
at a distance, that they might have an opportunity of
being in time to see, and say farewell to the departing
relatives." 2 If it were so, the Samoans undoubtedly were
exceptional, for missionaries and travellers nearly always
testify to the contrary. In Savage Island (Niue) for
instance, " the treatment of the sick was very barbarous.
They were removed into the bush and placed in a temporary
hut, where they were left until they might recover or die.
Their relatives took food to them, but no one remained
with them ; this practice was owing to the great horror
they had of disease." 3
It is perhaps among the Maoris of New Zealand that
one can best see how the abandonment of the sick and
the apparent lack of feeling in their relatives arose out of
the mystic idea of illness. " No remedy is known," says
Fr. Servant, " for internal maladies. A person who is
attacked by one stretches himself on the ground in despair,
and sends to consult a Maori priest to find out whether he
can reckon on any chance of recovery. ... If the auguries
are unfavourable, the priest declares that the sick man will
die. From that moment they refuse him all food, even his
family abandons him, leaving him a prey to the god who,
they believe, is devouring his flesh and intestines. Thus
the prediction of the superstitious priest never fails to be
1 Annates de la Propagation de la foi, xiii. p. 378.
2 Rev* G. Turner : Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 225.
3 A. W. Murray : Missions in Western Polynesia, p. 367.
fulfilled, because the patient always dies, if not of disease,
at any rate of hunger." 1 They no longer dare offer him
food, because the atua (god) has taken up his abode in his
stomach, and on this account, both the stomach and the
patient have become tapu (taboo). " The youngest and
favourite wife of Tipi, the principal chief of the place, fell
ill to-day. According to the universal native custom on
such occurrences, she was removed from his house to an
open shed near it, and became tapu, so that she might eat
no food." 2
The most exact description of these customs is probably
that given by J. L. Nicholas. " No sooner does a person
arrive at a certain stage of illness among them, than they
believe the unhappy creature under the wrath of the etua ;
and, incapable of accounting for the disease with which he is
afflicted, as of applying a remedy to it, they can only consider
it as a preternatural visitation of retributive justice, which
it would be impious to resist by any human expedient.
Many a poor sufferer who, with a little ordinary attention,
might soon be restored to health and vigour, is devoted by
this horrid superstition to perish in the very midst of his
kindred, without a single effort being made for his recovery." 3
Whilst the indisposition is of a nature that admits of more
or less alleviation, it is allowable to relieve the patient by
any means at command, and to help on his recovery. But
should the illness be persistent and increase in intensity, the
wrath of the unseen powers can no longer be ignored, and
the sick man becomes tapu. Nicholas was a witness of the
long-drawn-out suffering of a Maori chief who was dying
for weeks. " They insisted that no human being should
administer to his wants while he yet survived. The reason
of their laying the poor fellow under this horrible interdict
was because they now believed that the etua was fully
determined to destroy him ; and for this purpose had made
a firm lodgment in his stomach, whence no mortal power
durst venture to expel him, nor would he once quit his
position, but remain there, increasing the agonies of the
1 " Soci6te de Marie," Annates des missions d' Oceanic, i. pp. 93-4 (1841).
* E. J. Wakefield : Adventure in New Zealand, i. p. 49 (1839-44).
s J. L. Nicholas : Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand, ii. p. 303 (181 7).
sufferer till he thought proper to put an end to his existence.
. . . Though the immediate family of Duaterra still continued
to evince the same deep and tender affection as before,
still they agreed with his other dependants in excluding
him from any further assistance . . . and leaving him now
entirely at the disposal of the etua, they were studious
only about providing for his interment." x
The traveller asks for news of the sick man. They tell
him " the etua was then preying upon his entrails, and that
the chief would be killed as soon as they were all devoured.
This notion, much more than the complication under which
they labour, accelerates the death of sick people in New
Zealand. So strongly is it impressed upon men and their
friends, that when the symptoms appear at all dangerous,
they think any sort of remedy would be impious ; and how-
ever afflicted they may be at the loss of them, they never
once murmur against the mysterious vulture which gnaws
them away according to his appetite." 2 A Roman Catholic
priest says, too: " If it seems certain that a sick native can-
not hope to recover from the disease that has attacked him,
his relatives often refuse him all food whatever ; after
having arranged his bed as comfortably as they can, they
go off and leave him, pretending that ' their god is eating
him/ This expression is so common among the Polynesians
that they are constantly heard to say : ' So-and-so died in
battle ; his brother was eaten by the god,' i.e. died of illness.
In spite of this apparent hard-heartedness towards the
sick, do not imagine that our Islanders do not feel the loss
of their relatives and friends ; the old custom of lamenting
a death by tearing one's limbs and face, is by no means
given up yet." 3
What causes the etua thus to decide on the death of
a poor wretch ? We have found that the reasons for this
" dooming " may be very varied, but the violation of a
taboo holds the first place. Here is another instance
(again noted in New Zealand), which demonstrates very
clearly the preconnection between this violation and a
1 J. H. Nicholas : ibid. ii. pp. 165-7.
3 Ibid., ii. p. 170.
3 Annales de la Propagation de la fox, xiv. p. 210. (R. P. Petitjean, Wan-
garoa, N.Z.)
mortal illness. " Rangitatau, a girl of Rotorua, who for
some time lived at the Mission station of Otawhao married
and had a female child. One cold night, when on a visit
to Taramatakitaki, a great chief, she borrowed a garment
from him to wrap herself in ; during the night the insects
annoyed her so much that, according to the native custom,
she caught and ate them. Next day, the infant was taken
ill ; this she attributed to her having eaten the sacred
insects upon the tapu garment of the chief, for which the
atuas were angry, and had punished her by afflicting her
child with disease. The child grew worse, and she thereupon
strangled it, thinking it was bewitched." J Such an action
seems at first absolutely incredible, but the mother knew
that her child was doomed. As the malady became worse,
the wrath of the atua was revealed as implacable ; what
was the use of struggling against it, and what means could
the mother employ ? Was it even allowable to go on
suckling the child ? We recall the confession of the Nias
native who killed his little sister at his despairing parents'
order, because the " priest " had told them that she could
not live, on account of her father's violation of taboo before
she was born.
As long as the malady has not assumed a deadly character,
the relatives hope that the unseen powers will not prove
inexorable, and they do all that they can to persuade them
to relent. Just as a European family is ready to devote its
last penny to physicians, surgeons, and druggists, in its
desire to obtain relief for its sick relative, so do the primitives
despoil themselves of all their possessions in order to consult
the augurs, and to make sacrifices and offerings. " Should
they see their father or mother in danger of death, they
(the Fijians) would not hesitate to cut off the first joint of
the ring finger in the hope of appeasing the wrath of their
deities, and should the invalid not recover after this first
offering has been made, they will mutilate themselves afresh,
cutting off another joint at each crisis, and amputating in
turn all their fingers and even their wrist, convinced that
this final sacrifice will satisfy the vengeance of the gods and
1 G. F. Angas : Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, ii.
pp. 143-4 (1847)-
recovery will be certain. . . . Nearly all the natives I
saw at Vita Levu were one or two fingers short/'1
In South Africa, the same collective representations
give rise to a similar procedure. " When the natives (the
Basutos) are seriously ill, they are to be found lying on the
ground, barely covered with a worn-out kaross, and deprived
of all capable and affectionate ministrations. Their nearest
relatives seem to be afraid of them, or rather, I suspect
that laziness makes them afraid of the trouble the care of
the invalid may prove, and so they keep away from them." *
The truth is that these natives, like other primitives, are
afraid of touching the sick whom they consider " doomed."
Casalis clearly recognized that the Basutos place sick people
in the vast category of " res sacrae." " Death and every-
thing that directly precedes or follows it is the greatest of
all impurities. Therefore sick people, those who have touched
or buried a corpse, or dug a grave for it, the persons who
inadvertently walk over a tomb, or seat themselves on it,
the nearest relatives of a dead man, murderers, and warriors
who have slain their adversaries in combat, are all considered
unclean. Cattle taken from the enemy, the town where an
epidemic is raging, the tribes who have fallen a prey to
warfare or disaster, corn which has been blighted or ravaged
by locusts, huts or people struck by lightning, are also all
considered unclean, and treated as such."3 The last of these
categories includes the objects of the wrath of unseen powers,
and sick people who do not appear likely to recover are in
similar case.
Persons smitten with blindness are not, as a rule,
abandoned, but since misfortune is held to disqualify them,
they sink to a very low level. Among the Bechuana tribes,
" as soon as a man has the misfortune to become blind,
even if he be one of the great chiefs, he is no longer numbered
with the living, so to speak. They say of him oshule, he
is dead.
" Nevertheless, they look after their blind, that is to
say, they give them something to eat and drink, but they
1 Annales de la Propagation de la foi, xvi. p. 192. (P. Joseph Chevron.
» Missions evangSliques, xxxii. p. 322. (M. Schrumpf.)
J £. Casalis : Les Bassoutos, p. 270.
do not accord them the honour and respect they formerly
showed them. Not long ago a Mochuana said : ' With us,
it is all up with a blind man ; we make him sit with the
women ; he never takes part in our councils again. Never-
theless, we do not refuse blind people food, and in this
we behave better than the Korannas, who, when they are
going to leave a place, never let the blind follow them;
they leave them in some enclosed place, with a small supply
of milk, which will hardly last more than a meal or two.' " r
The wounded are treated like the sick, and for the same
mystic reasons. Natives wounded by wild beasts (which
in such a case are not ordinary animals, but the agents of
a wizard, or of the unseen powers), specially inspire fear,
and their friends shun them. " A custom prevails among
all the Bechuanas whom I have visited of removing to a
distance from the towns and villages, persons who have
been wounded. Two young men, who had been wounded
by the poisoned arrows of the Bushmen, were thus removed
from the Kuruman. Having visited them ... I made
inquiries but could learn no reason, except that it was a
custom. This unnatural practice exposed the often helpless
individual to great danger ; for, if not well attended during
the night, his paltry little hut, or rather shelter from the
sun and wind, would be assailed by the hyena or lion.
A catastrophe of this kind occurred a short time before my
arrival among the Baralong. The son of one of the principal
chiefs, a fine young man, had been wounded by a buffalo ;
he was, according to custom, placed on the outside of the
village till he should recover ; a portion of food was daily
sent, and a person appointed to make his fire for the evening.
The fire went out ; and the helpless man, notwithstanding
his piteous cries, was carried off by a lion, and devoured.
Some might think that this practice originated in the treat-
ment of infectious diseases, such as leprosy, but the only
individual I ever saw thus affected was not separated/' 2
Can one imagine that, this chief light-heartedly exposed
his son to such a risk ? Why was he obliged to conform
with this custom ? Dr. Moffat, without knowing it perhaps,
1 Missions ivangeliques, xxi. p. 105. (M. Lauga.)
a Robert Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, p. 465.
gave the solution of the puzzle, when he spoke of infection
For the Bechuanas, it is indeed a case of avoiding infection ;
but it is infection of a mystic character. The accident is
a revelation. If the chief's son was wounded by the buffalo,
it was in consequence of his having been " doomed," either
by a wizard or by the unseen powers — by incensed ancestors,
for instance. Perhaps, although Moffat does not say so,
and possibly may not have known it, they had had recourse
to divination to find out what the cause might be, and had
learnt that the wounded man had brought upon himself
the anger of the unseen powers by the violation of a taboo
or some other departure from established custom. In
such a case he is not only attacked by misfortune, but he
becomes " res sacra," and, as such, he is a bringer of woe.
He must therefore be isolated until his recovery shall have
proved that the wrath of the gods is appeased.
A similar case occurred among the Kafirs. " A wolf
entered the hut and carried off a fine girl who was sleeping
just within the doorway. Her cries speedily brought the
men to her help, and the wolf was compelled to abandon
his prey. The child's cheek was, however, so torn by the
teeth of the animal, and it was thought that she must be
abandoned, according to their custom, as not likely to
recover." *
In the case of the Sakalaves of Madagascar, " if an accident
happens (if a man is wounded by a crocodile), he is taken
prisoner and accused, for he must certainly have committed
some crime against the ancestors, or disregarded some
fady (taboo). It is a terrible thing to be bitten by a crocodile.
Up to now, I have seen two such instances. . . . The unhappy
wretch runs the risk of dying on the spot, for he is considered
accursed. He is obliged to hide himself ; nobody can
have anything to do with him, and once recovered, he must
never speak of his accident. The spirits had pointed
him out, and if he recalls the occurrence it will cost him
dear." 2 On account of his having been wounded, he has
been excommunicated, like the man who fell into the water
in Kamschatka. Again, in French Guinea, "if by chance
1 W. Shaw : The Story of my Mission to South Africa, p. 503 (i860).
3 Missions evangeliques, lxxxv. 2. pp. 227-8. (M. Rusillon.)
a leopard or a crocodile should have killed anyone in a
village here/' says Madrolle, " the whole village must be
entirely evacuated and destroyed, and a heavy penalty
is demanded from the family to which the victim belonged "
(here we recall the taua and the muru of New Zealand),
" ' for/ say the chiefs : ' your family must be notorious villains,
and have committed many crimes, for God to send leopards
and crocodiles to punish you.' "l A traveller of the seven-
teenth century, in a very confused report, does, however,
manage to show both the fear that wounded or very sick
people inspire in the natives of the west coast of Africa,
and the affection they feel for them. " They have no com-
passion for one another, hardly even giving water to the
wounded, whom they leave to die like dogs, most frequently
abandoned even by their wives and children. At Frederickton
we saw a sick man forsaken by all, and the Moors wondered
how we dared approach him. Our surgeon cured him, for
his malady was an overloaded stomach. Returning to
land, we saw him drinking with all the rest, who were
caressing him fondly, yet a week before that his wife and
children had abandoned him, because they did not know
what he was suffering from." 3
Everything, in fact, depends upon the course taken by
the malady, and the feelings change according to the
prognosis. If, contrary to all expectation, the sick man
recovers, he is no longer a " doomed " person to be shunned,
and left to suffer alone ; he is a friend welcomed back with
transports of joy, received without fear of incurring the
wrath of the unseen powers. Hence it is that there are
so many practices of divination among all these peoples
as soon as the state of a sick man appears to be serious.
They are desirous of finding out whether he will recover
and so it is that the divination, as often as not, is at the
same time a prayer, and that, moreover, what is predicted
as certain appears to primitive mentality to be actually
existent.
Should the reply obtained from the augur be definitely
1 Arcin : La Guinee francaise, p. 431.
* Villault-Bellefond : Relation des cdtes d'Afrique appeUes Guinee,
PP. 363-4 (1669).
unfavourable, therefore, all hope is at an end. The prayer
has not been granted, the sick person will die, and his death
is already a reality ; accordingly he will be abandoned. " I
once saw," says Rowley, speaking of British Central Africa,
" a woman anxiously watching her sick child ; greater kind-
ness no one could have shown. Two men came into the
village for the night, one of whom was a medicine-man
His skill was quickly sought by the mother. He looked at
the child, gravely throwing up his dice, in order to see what
hope there was for it. The mother watched the result
with painful eagerness, and it was not favourable to her
hopes. She entreated the man to try again, promising
him a large reward if the prognostication was favourable.
The man complied with her wishes, and this time the poor
woman saw nothing but death for her offspring. But she
had not lost hope ; she redoubled her entreaties for a
favourable cast of the dice, promising additional reward,
all of her possessions, everything she had, but the result
was the same — death. She crouched down in despair ;
her little one would die ; she lost hope ; her child was
henceforth dead to her ; and a low death-wail proceeded
from her lips. I tried to give the poor woman encourage-
ment ; told her that the medicine-man knew nothing about
it, that her child might live if she still cared for it, but
my words were as idle tales, her faith in the test was implicit.
I was travelling, and left the village immediately after, yet
I have no doubt of the result ; the child would be taken
outside the village ; the mother would leave it in agony ;
and there it would die untended and apparently uncared
for. And yet the mother had an affection for her little
one, and would feel and mourn its loss as much as mothers,
in like circumstances, would in England." «
How could she have paid heed to the missionary who
counselled her to look after her child ? For her, the only
thing was to find out whether her baby was " doomed,"
and if its fate admitted of no appeal. Three times the
answer to her prayer had been a negative one, and from
that moment her child was dead, in her eyes. She does
not strangle it, like the young Maori woman whose daughter
1 Rev. H. Rowley : The Universities' Mission to Central Africa, pp. 212-13.
was " doomed " by the etua ; but she allows it to be carried
outside the village, and exposed in the bush. If the safety
of the social group demanded such an action of her, how
could she find courage to resist, or even contemplate doing
such a thing ? Considering the collective representations
which dominate her, this poor mother could neither feel
nor act otherwise.
Chapter X
THE MYSTIC MEANING OF THE CAUSES OF
SUCCESS
Between the white men's activities and their own, and
between the things they make themselves and those which
the white men bring with them, primitives certainly do
draw a line of demarcation. Everything proceeding from
white people participates in their mysterious and superhuman
character, and is consequently ipso facto sufficiently explained.
For instance, there is no need to examine the way in which
firearms are made, since primitives know beforehand why
they have such a powerful effect. If, on the contrary, it
is a question of their own workmanship, their hunting or
fishing tackle, their weapons, the natives know how they
adapt the means at command to their destined end, and
they possess a clear and often very remarkable knowledge
of their technique. Actual, and sometimes secret, in-
struction in these matters passes the knowledge on from
generation to generation. A careful and detailed study
of these methods, their evolution, progress, and decay
in a given race or a certain geographical area, is at this
very time engrossing a large number of ethnographers,
especially in North America. It will afford a valuable
contribution to our knowledge of primitive mentality.
Up to the present, the facts that are known permit of
our saying that the part played by technique in the making
of tools is quite a subordinate one in the primitive's eyes,
however. That instruments shall be well made is not
the most important thing, but that they shall be successful.
The influence of secondary causes never appears to him
efficient enough ; the result depends, above all things,
on the assistance of the unseen powers. No human
activity, whether of native or white man, ever succeeds
without their concurrence. According to the words used
by an American investigator: "Success is never obtained
by natural means/' The primitive who has a successful
hunting expedition, or reaps an abundant harvest, or
triumphs over his enemy in war, debits this favourable
result not (as the European in a similar case would do)
to the excellence of his instruments or weapons, nor to his
own ingenuity and efforts, but to the indispensable assistance
of the unseen powers. Undoubtedly he has more than
one reason for believing that white men are powerful
magicians, but he would not be so quickly and completely
convinced of it if he did not conceive of their activity by
his own.
He himself undertakes nothing without having a " medi-
cine " to ensure success. In New France, for instance,
" the greatest opposition to the understanding of the
Faith, which we encounter in this country, is that all their
remedies for sickness and disease, their chief recreations
when they are in health, their fishing, hunting, and their
trading, are imbued, as it were, with diabolical rites" *
(that is, rites designed to obtain the favourable interven-
tion of the spiritual powers). Italian missionaries on the
Congo in the seventeenth century, say the same thing. " In
addition to the ceremonies already described, every negro
invents others, according to his fancy, for all domestic
circumstances whatsoever ; and these he strictly observes,
his fear that he will not succeed without them being insur-
mountable ; it seems as if these ceremonies were the efficient
causes of the result he desires to obtain." * These last
words are very striking, for they could not express more
clearly the fact that the collective representations of
the negro, differently orientated from our own, refer all
real causation to the unseen world.
German missionaries in New Guinea have been witnesses
of the same circumstances and express the same views.
" Nothing," say they, " is undertaken without having
• Relations des Jisuites, xxvii. p. 52 (1645-6).
a Cavazzi : Istoria descrizione de'tre regni Congo, Matamba, ed Angola,
p. 115.
recourse to enchantments (Zauber). There are charms for
hunting, warfare, birds, fish, pigs, barter, the ground,
thunder, lightning, rain, earthquake ; charms for wives,
for dancing, remedies, diagnosis, charms for use as counter-
charms, and so on." The list would be an endless one.
I shall give a few specimens merely.
" Dogs which are intended for hunting the wild boar
are made eager by magic formulae pronounced over them
alone, and in the most diversified methods. Over a certain
onion the following incantation is uttered : ' A sea-eagle
was holding a fish in his claws. The east wind was roaring,
and the sea tempestuous, but the eagle held his fish fast
and did not relax his hold/ They then burst the onion
with their teeth and make the dogs inhale its acrid juice
through their nostrils. The effect of this will be to make
the dog hold fast to the boar which he seizes."1 Again:
" If they want to entrap animals in pits, it is necessary
to pronounce a magic formula over each of these. They
carry this to such a degree that until quite recently the
people living to the north of the Sattelberg never dug pits
for wild boars because they did not know the formulae to
use ! Without them — to the Papuan mind this is quite
evident — there was no hope of catching any. They use
the greatest care in uttering these formulae over the pits ;
they fumigate them with a flaming magic staff, and they
spread a magic powder (flour of brimstone) all about.
Finally they put into the snare thus prepared a ' pit-
stone/ the ' soul ' of which is able to attract the game,
and henceforward it cannot fail to appear." %
The traffic in pigs is a considerable one, and every native
tries to secure a good bargain at the market. The seller
makes use of a charm, so that he may get the highest possible
price ; the buyer does the same, in order to make a good
impression with the things he offers in exchange, and to
get the fattest pig that he can. " Certain stones are supposed
to ensure success in barter, and these are called parnaga. . . .
These parnaga contain within them the vital principle of
pigs. In preserving these stones from noxious influences
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, i. pp. 400-12.
• Ibid., iii. p. 330. (Jabim.)
by means of a certain liquid, the pig is preserved at the
same time. ..." Is it a question of out-rivalling others
at dancing ? "It not infrequently happens that the
Papuans undertake long journeys for the purpose of learning
dances from a tribe celebrated for them. . . . Moreover,
in the ceremonial dances all possible charms are employed
in order to make the limbs supple." l
The concurrence of the unseen powers is no less essential
in agricultural pursuits. " When the Bakaua cultivates
his land there are many things which he must do, and others
which he must not do, if he is to make sure of success.
Dangers threaten him on every side, and these proceed
from the unseen powers with whom he must be on good
terms, so that they may remain favourable to him. . . .
While engaged in planting, he calls upon the dead by name,
begging them to protect his field, so that their children,
the living of the present day, may have something to eat,
and may be prosperous. . . . Then the owner of the field
buries his magic stones within it. These, inherited from
his ancestors, are imitations of taro tubers. . . . When
the harvest is over they are unearthed and taken to the
new field." *
The Jabim tribe, bordering on the Bakaua, proceed
in the same way. " The natives believe themselves to be
dependent in a very special way upon the spirits of the dead
(balum) in their agricultural pursuits. Nothing is done
without the most meticulous care and the greatest possible
precautions. . . . Before planting the first taros in the
field they have just burned and cleared, they first invoke
the dead. . . . Afterwards, when planting, they invoke
the spirits. To purchase their favour, they bring them
some of their treasures (wild boar's tusks, dogs' teeth, etc.)
so that they may adorn themselves with the soul of these
objects. . . . Later on, the fields resound with the ' bull-
roarers/ people calling on the ancestors by name, and thus
they hope to secure a specially fine crop of the fruits of
the field." 3 A little later still, " between the first-fruits
and the beginning of the harvest, dances are inaugurated,
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, i. p. 161.
* Ibid., iii. p. 434. 3 Ibid., iii. pp. 332-3.
and these generally last the whole night. For the most
part they bear the closest possible relation to the harvest,
and they are intended to make the vegetation become as
dense as may be." l
These forms of agrarian magic are well known, and fairly
common. Here are some others, which show how much
diversity there is in the mystic conditions upon which a
good harvest depends. " In the natives' opinion, the
prosperity of the vegetation in the fields is largely dependent
upon certain games which, as a consequence, may only
be played during the period following on the sowing season.
Thus swinging, practised by means of a Malacca cane fixed
to the branch of a tree, has, they believe, a good effect on
yams that have just been planted. At such a time, then,
young and old, men and women, are on their swings, and
as they go and come they sing their swing songs. These
are frequently no more than the names of yams dug up, and
a harvesters' joyous call repeated with varying refrains —
' I have found a splendid root | V , . . By thus calling out
the names of the various varieties of yam, they make their
shoots show themselves. ... So that the leafy parts of
the yam may be luxuriant, grow green, and develop in size,
the Kai play at cat's cradle. Playing at tops with the
big kernels the country produces, or even with a kind
of wild fig will, they believe, accelerate the growth of taro
which has been recently planted (for the latter will turn
round, too, and enlarge). Accordingly they must play this
game at the sowing season only. It is the same with the
game which consists in piercing the stalks of taro leaves
with the ribs of sago leaves, thus making miniature lances.
. . . There is a yet more remarkable feature than this
limiting of certain games to the special agricultural period,
and that is that the Kai do not allow any of the ' tales
of long ago/ or the popular legends to be related except
when the newly planted seed germinates and buds." 2 The
missionary adds, a little further on : " The final upshot
of the Kai legends is that they are related only to serve
a definite end — namely, to further the growth of the yams
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea (Neighbourhood of King William
Cape), iii. p. 253.
* Ibid., iii. pp. 125-6. (Kai).
planted in the fields. By recalling the memory of the early
primitives, whom they connect with the origin of the fruits of
the field, they believe that their growth will be favourably
affected. Once the sowing season has passed, and especially
when the young plants have begun to send out their tendrils,
they stop relating these legends." x
The Papuans undoubtedly know how to give the plants
they cultivate the necessary care. They clearly distinguish
the different genera, species, and varieties, each of 'which
has been given a name. But to bring these yams to maturity
is an undertaking the success of which depends, first and fore-
most, upon mystic causes. From the moment when the
Papuans select a piece of ground and clear it by burning,
to the time when they gather in their harvest, if they have
been able to protect it from wild boars, birds, and other
depredators, they have had to prepare, induce, and hasten
the growth of the vegetables by an infinite number of magical
practices. Their games, for instance, are a serious religious
performance, obligatory at one time, and forbidden on
all other occasions. So, too, the recital of legends is not
simply an evening's amusement, but it secures the presence
of those " early primitives " to whom they owe the yam, and
it will make the influence of these more direct and effective.
Among the Papuans of British New Guinea, at Kiwai,
on the mouth of the Fly River, they frequently amuse them-
selves with the game of cat's cradle, which everybody
knows. But, " in certain cases, a more particular interest
attaches to it. The game is most often played when the
stalks of the newly jplanted yams begin to shoot up from the
earth. Sticks are put in the ground to support the
winding tendrils, and the first few stems are tied to them by
means of pieces of strings which have been used for making
cat's cradles. It is sufficient, however, to hang pieces of
these strings on top of the first few sticks, without actually
tying the stalks to them, and some people merely throw
a few pieces of cat's cradle strings here and there on the
ground in their gardens. In each case the purpose is to
' help ' the stalks of the yams to grow well and wind in
the right way. Several other games of the Kiwai people
1 R. Neuhauss: Deutsch Neu Guinea, iii. p. 161.
have an analogous reference to their gardens, or to other
occupations." l
The game of cat's cradle, which is extensively used,
often possesses the same magic virtue in places outside New
Guinea. To quote but a few instances only : in the Gazelle
Peninsula of New Pomerama it is especially played when
the bread-fruit trees begin to form their fruit. * With the
Dayaks of Borneo, " certain festivals demand certain games ;
for instance, the feast of the sowing season requires different
games from the lesser and the greater harvest ones, from that
which opens the harvest season, or begins the new year.
At the sowing festival they spin tops and wear masks ;
when they begin to gather in the rice, they bombard each
other with pea-shooters, etc. It is noteworthy that these
games, which are performed by priests on ceremonial
occasions, at other times simply form the amusement of
the rest of the tribe." 3 They are games, but their signifi-
cance still exists, and is undoubtedly known to them all.
Among the Kayans, '■ men often amuse themselves by
spinning tops. These tops are oval, smooth, and glossy,
and weigh between four and five pounds. Each man tries
to get rid of his predecessor's top with his own, in such a
way that the latter will continue to revolve until it, too,
in its turn is superseded by the next one. ... In this way
each succeeding operation on the rice plantation is in-
augurated by religious and culinary ceremonies, during
which taboos lasting for some nights, and certain games
are enjoined on the whole community, as are wrestling
matches, contests in high and long jumps, races, and so
forth. ..." 4
In South America, " what surprised me most with respect
to the game of chuke 5 was that with the Choroti of
i G. Land tm an : " Cat's Cradles of the Kiwai Papuans, British New
Guinea," Anthropos, ix. p. 221.
» P. Georg. BdgershausenM.S.C. : " Fadenspiele in Matupit, Neu Pommern,
Gazelle Halbinsel," Anthropos, x-xi. p. 908.
3 A. W. Nieuwenhuis : Quer durch Borneo, ii. pp. 130-1.
* Ibid., i. pp. 167-70 ; cf. i. p. 329.
s A game, somewhat resembling the French jeu de I'oie, played with
wooden blocks or dice, flat on one side and rounded on the other. The
scoring is decided by the position taken by these in falling, and their direction
with regard to the " houses " toward which they are thrown. — Trans-
lator's Note.
Grand Chaco, at any rate, it was only played at a certain
time of the year, in the month of March, when the rainy
season ends in Chaco and the winter begins. Then they
used to start it, and in every village they would carve the
blocks for the chuke and they would play it all day for
hours together, sometimes from early morning till late at
night. That very fact seemed to indicate that there were
some mystic ideas connected with the game. Moreover,
they played it with a feverish haste, and the result of each
stroke was announced in a loud voice so that it might
be heard a long way off. The Choroti expressly declared
that they only play chuke at the beginning of winter when
the algarobe and other edible fruits are beginning to fail.
That is to the Chaco Indians the beginning of a period
when they often have a great struggle for existence.
Thus the game is then played that it may have the effect of
increasing the number of their fruits and adding to the general
prosperity of the Indians. This result is attained by the cir-
cumstance that there are always one or more players who win,
and this, in some mystic way, is an advantage to them all." x
A similar influence which is exercised by the recital
of stories has been well described by Perham. " In Dayak
life," he says, u the sense of the invisible is constantly
present and active. Spirits and goblins are to them as
real as themselves. ... In the head feast it is Singalang
Burong who is invoked to be present. He may be described
as the Mars of Sea Dayak mythology, and is put far away
above the skies. But the invocation is not made by the
human performer in the manner of a prayer directed to
this great being ; it takes the form of a story, setting forth
how the mythical hero, Kling or Klieng, made a head feast
and fetched Singalang Burong to it. This Kling, about
whom there are many fables, is a spirit, and is supposed
to live somewhere or other not far from mankind, and to
be able to confer benefits upon them. The Dayaks perform
their prayers then, as they walk up and down the long veranda
of the house . . . describe Kling's gawe pala (great feast)
and how Singalang Burong was invited and came. In
■ R. Karsten : Beitr&ge zur Sittengeschichte der siidamerikanischen Indianer,
p. I02.
thought, the Dayaks identify themselves with Kling and
the resultant signification is that the recitation of this story
is an invocation to Singalang Burong, who is supposed to
come, not into Kling's house only, but to the actual Dayak
house where the feast is celebrated ; and he is received by
a particular ceremony, and is offered food or sacrifice." >
By some mystic virtue in the story related, the Dayak
becomes the hero, the host of the god, and as a consequence
the god himself has actually come among the Dayaks, and
is really received by them. The story has proved much
more effective than an invocation or even a prayer would
be. It brings about a participation in which, as Perham
expresses it, the story-teller and the hero are identified
with one another. He very rightly accounts for this fact
by the mystic nature of Dayak mentality. The New Guinea
Papuans manifest the same characteristic. When at a
certain season of the year they recall the benefits conferred
by their heroes, in order to expedite the growth of the taro,
they, too, feel the actual presence of those whose story they
are telling, and identify themselves with them.
In the central regions of the Celebes, "it is practically
only at the time of the rice harvest, i.e. from about August
to October, that tales are told. This rule is generally observed,
and the recital of legends at any other time is considered to
be a violation which may affect the harvest, ordinarily a
very scanty one, unfavourably. In these tales (known as
' Tales of the Ancestors ') , the ancestors are yet living in the
form of spirits. ... At this time of year, more than at
any other, the natives do homage to their ancestors, either
in presenting them with offerings or in extolling their deeds." *
Although this author does not say so, it is hardly rash to
conclude that the To Radja, like the Papuans, attribute
mystic virtue to the recital of these tales.
II
In South America, among the Bantus and the people
of West Africa, in most of the Oceanic islands, and in yet
■ Rev. J. Perham, in H. Ling Roth : The Natives of Sarawak, ii. pp. 174-5.
* Dr. N. Adriani : " £tude sur la literature des To Raja," Tijdschrift
voor indische taal-land-en volkenhunde, xl. p. 341.
other places, the very unequal division of agricultural labour
between the sexes has been noted. The work of the gardens,
plantations, and fields falls, nearly everywhere, mainly upon
women, without prejudice to their other tasks, such as the
care of the children and the preparation of food, etc. Even
where the men are not entirely free from field labour they
only share in it, as a rule, for certain preliminary or final
operations. It is their task, for instance, to cut down the
trees on the land which is to be cultivated, to remove the
stumps, and clear the ground, but the real work of agriculture,
properly so called, is done by women only.
This has been considered an abuse of strength, and a
special instance of that more than debatable rule according
to which the more debased the community the more miserable
is the condition of its women, or else it has been thought
to be a necessary consequence of the circumstance that
the men are often employed elsewhere, in warfare, hunting,
travelling, at their assemblies, and so on. These diverse
explanations are possibly not entirely incorrect, but the
true reason of it lies elsewhere. Beyond the fact that the
man himself often has occupations quite as laborious as
the cultivation of the soil, he would not, if he could, change
this division of labour, the origin of which is a mystical
one. If women are almost exclusively burdened with all
that pertains to the cultivation of plants and trees, it is
because, in the social group, they represent the principle
of fertility. In order that the fields and the trees
under culture may be productive, there must be a close
relation or participation established between them and
the social group which attends to them ; the principle
of fertility must pass over to them, and consequently the
members of the group must have it within themselves.
It would be useless for men to take as much trouble in
the fields as women, useless even if they took more trouble
and expended more energy upon the ground, and sowed
and transplanted with as much or even greater care. It
would all be labour lost ! The earth's yield would be but
a reluctant and meagre one. The bananas and coco-nut
palms would be almost sterile. The work of women alone
makes fields and gardens fertile, for it is to their sex that
this power is due. Such being the reason for this division
of labour, its mystic character makes it unassailable. Even
if the men desired to take upon themselves this hard task,
they would not be able to accomplish it successfully.
Moreover, the women would not consent to give it up,
for fear of famine.
This is not a merely probable hypothesis. Not infre-
quently writers, in noting the fact, have at the same time
indicated the reason for it which the natives themselves
give, but without drawing any inference from it. In
Borneo, " women play the principal part in the rites and
active operations of the padi (rice) culture ; the men only
being called in to clear the ground and to assist in some of
the later stages. The women select and keep the seed
grain, and they are the repositories of most of the lore
connected with it. It seems to be felt that they have
a natural affinity to the fruitful ground, which they speak
of as becoming pregnant. Women sometimes sleep out
in the padi field while the crop is growing, probably for
the purpose of increasing their own fertility or that of the
padi, but they are very reticent on this matter." » In
New Caledonia, " the teeth of old women are taken to the
yam plantations as a charm for a good crop, and their
skulls are also erected over the paths for the same purpose." a
Among the Bantu tribes it often happens that a man re-
pudiates his wife because she does not bear children, and
he fears that the plantation she cultivates may become
sterile also. In Togoland, " a woman who is enceinte
always wears a little bag on her head. ... In it are to be
found little pieces of yam, cassava, maize, pisang, etc. . . .
and also a tiny fragment of the stone women use in grinding
maize. . . . All these field products are to remind her that,
just as the woman brings forth the fruit of her body, so
that which she has cultivated in her field must also produce
its own. In Togoland, in fact, the principal part of the
labour in the plantations falls upon the women." 3
In South America, evidence with regard to this matter
1 Hose and McDougall : The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, i. p. in.
" G. Turner : Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 425.
3 G. Spiess : Zum Kultus und Zauberelauben der Evheer {{Togo),
Bassler-Archiv, i. p. 225.
I
is very explicit. Fr. Gumilla tells us of a discussion which
he had with some Indians about it. " Sowing, tilling,
reaping, and storing the field products is all done by the
women. I would say to the men : ' My brothers, why do
you not help your poor wives in the labour of sowing
the fields, for they work hard in the heat of the sun, with
their infants at their breasts ? Do you not realize that
they may fall ill, and your children likewise ? Come now,
come and help them ! ' ' Father,' they would answer,
' you do not understand these things, and that is why you
are troubled about it. You must remember that our
women know how to bring forth, and we do not. If they
sow the seed, the maize stalk yields two or three corn-
cobs ; the yacca stem bears a triple yield, and thus every-
thing is increased. Why is this ? Because women are
able to bring forth, and are able to command the seed
they sow to be productive. Let them do the work of sowing
then, for we do not know so much about it.' " J The
expressions put into the mouth of the Indian by the missionary
show clearly the idea of " participation " between the woman
and the seed.
A recent observer, Dr. R. Karsten, has been investigating
similar beliefs on the part of the Jibaros. " The female
plants," says he, " must be essentially cultivated by the
women, and the male plants by the men. At any kind
of agriculture, however, the rough work, that is, the felling
of the trees and the clearing of the ground, when new
plantations are made in the forest, is done by the men.
On the other hand, although for instance the plantain is
always planted by the men, yet the women later on take
part in attending the tree and sing incantations to promote
its growth. Just as the earth-deity of the Jibaros itself
is regarded as a woman, so the women are always supposed
to exert a special, mysterious influence upon the growth of
the crops.
All agricultural practices of the Jibaros centre round the
particular deity of the women, the great Earth-Mother
Nungui. She has not only taught the women agriculture,
but also all kinds of housework . . . especially how to
1 P. Gumilla : El Orinoco illustrado (2nd edit.), ii. pp. 274-75.
feed and attend the principal domestic animals — the swine
and chickens, and the hunting dogs." » Further on he says :
f There is supposed to exist an intrinsic connection between
the woman and the field-fruits which she cultivates, just
as she is believed to exert a particular influence upon the
domestic animals that are confided to her care. This first
of all holds true of the married woman. When a Jibaro
marries and has to found a new household, to make new
plantations and breed domestic animals — swine, chickens,
and hunting dogs — his first business is to make a special
feast for his young wife, through which power and ability is
in a mysterious way imparted to her for her coming obliga-
tions. This feast — next to the head feast the greatest feast
of the Jibaros — is called noa tsangu, that is, the ' tobacco
feast of the women/ Without knowing the general signifi-
cance of this feast it is impossible fully to understand the
ideas the Jibaros connect with agriculture.' ' 2
" The most important of the domestic plants is the manioc,
and when new manioc fields are made . . . the rough
work is done by the men, who fell the trees and clear and
level the ground on the spot selected for the new plantation.
After this the work of the women begins, who further prepare
the ground for planting." 3
It is true that Nordenskiold noted the contrary custom
in Chaco, among the Ashluslays and the Chorotis. " It
is the men alone," he says, " who cultivate the fields. The
sowing and the reaping is done by men and women con-
jointly. On the other hand, it is always the women and
children who bring home the sheaves, unless they are put
on horses or asses." 4 But, apart from the fact that the
observation is very brief, it does, nevertheless, grant that
a share of the labour is left to the women, especially in
the sowing season, and in any case, were this exception
well founded, and even confirmed in yet other tribes, the
conclusions drawn from the facts already related would not
be invalidated thereby. It is still true that the collective
representations of many primitive peoples connect, in some
1 Rafael Karsten : " Contributions to the Sociology of the Indian Tribes
of Ecuador," i. p. 7, Acta Academics Aboensis. (Finland, 1921.)
» Ibid., p. 11. 3 Ibid., p. 14.
4 E. Nordenskiold : La vie des Indiens dans le Chaco, p. 48.
mystic fashion, the fertility of the fields with the fruitfulness
of women. Consequently, cultivation itself, accomplished
by women, has the sense of participation. We must not
say merely that agricultural labour is attended by magical
practices ; the work itself is a magic operation, since it
is women who perform it.
Ill
It is not the mystic influence of women alone that will
secure an abundant harvest. For that it is necessary,
as we have already found, to reckon also upon the kindly
offices of the ancestors, whose favour is sought by all kinds
of means — prayers, invocations, offerings, sacrifices, fasts,
dances, the recital of legends. With many tribes, too, the
personal influence of the chief is also requisite. There is
a sort of " contact action," as it were, comparable with that
of a catalytic agent. The chief is the necessary intermediary
between the social group and the unseen powers upon whom
the fertility of the soil and of plant life depend. Should
he fail to fulfil that office, these powers, among whom the
ancestors must be reckoned, become hostile, or even simply
indifferent, and the tribe is threatened with death by famine.
This explains, at least in part, the almost unconquerable
aversion felt by certain chiefs to the idea of conversion.
"Mafa" (a Mosuto chief), "was held back mainly by his
chieftainship. In these lands the office carries with it
many public functions which ill consort with the laws and
principles of the Word of God. In a place where the majority
of the people are still heathen, for a chief to declare himself
a Christian is almost equivalent to abdication." * " Wait
until I am dead," said one of the chiefs of the Wallis Islands.
" and you can labour unopposed at the conversion of the
island. Besides, it is our gods who make the kawa and
the coco-nut palm and the banana grow, for there are
none of these in the white man's country ; and if I renounced
my faith, I should be afraid of bringing famine upon my
land." * v " Your God,' said the king of Uvea, in the same
1 Missions evangeliques, li. p. 124. (Mabille.)
■ " Societe de Marie," Annates des missions de I'Ocianie, i. p. 422. (Fr.
Bataillon.)
archipelago, to a missionary, ' your God was able to make
the trees of your land, but it was not He who made the
kawa ! ' And not only did this king thus limit the power
of God, but he concluded that the diversity of plants was
due to a plurality of gods. Every plant, according to him,
had its own special creator, who had no power over the
other plants." l Primitive mentality is, above all, inclined
to the concrete, and has little that is conceptual about it.
Nothing astonishes it more than the idea of one universal
God. The primitive mind proceeds by means of participa-
tions and exclusions. The natives of the Wallis Islands
have their land, which in some way makes a part of their
social group, with the plants growing and the animals
living there, and the ancestors and the unseen powers
upon whom the prosperity of the group depends. The
white people's community, which they represent to them-
selves as formed on the same model, has nothing in common
with theirs ; therefore neither the white man's chiefs nor
the unseen powers which he calls God can do anything to
benefit the vegetation of the Wallis Islands. It is the native
chief alone who can secure its growth, both during his life
and after his death.
At Kiriwana, in the Trobriand Archipelago, " our big
chief, Bulitara, was asking me one day if I had these occult
powers. When I told him that I made no such claim, he
said : ' Who makes the wind and the rain and the harvest
in your land ? ' I answered, ' God.' ' Ah,' said he, ' that's
it. God does this work for your people, and I do it for
our people. God and I are equal.' He delivered this
dictum very quietly, and with the air of a man who had
given a most satisfactory explanation." a "A ruling chief,"
says Brown a little later, " was always supposed to exercise
priestly functions, i.e. he professed to be in constant com-
munication with the tebarans (spirits) and through their
influence he was enabled to bring rain or sickness, fair winds
or foul winds, sickness or health, success or disaster in war,
and generally to procure any blessing or curse for which
1 Rev. Fr. Mangaret : Mgr. Bataillon et Us missions de I'Oceanie centrale,
i. pp. 172-3.
» Rev. — . Fellows in Rev. George Brown, D.D. : Melanesians and Poly-
nesians, p. 236.
the applicant was willing to pay a sufficient price." l In
short, he directly participates in the unseen world. This
inestimable privilege accounts for the undisputed authority
he enjoys, the scrupulous respect shown him, the super
human powers recognized in him and to which he himself
lays claim. As Sir James Frazer has clearly shown, he is a
kind of " living god."
This personal mana of the chief is often communicated
to everything that comes in contact with him, and to make
sure of the favourable influence emanating from him, he
will be requested to materialize it, as it were, in such a way
that it can be transferred. Rajah Brooke, who enjoyed
unparalleled prestige among the Dayaks, has himself told
of the solicitations addressed to him.
" When I seat myself on the mat, one by one they come
forward and tie little bells on my arm ; a young coco-nut
is brought, into which I am requested to spit. The white
fowl is presented. I rise and wave it, and say : ' May good
luck attend the Dayaks ; may their crops be plentiful,
may their fruits ripen in due season ; may male children
be born ; may rice be stored in their houses/ . . . This
exhortation over, the dance begins . . . they wash my hands
and my feet, and afterwards with the water sprinkle their
houses and gardens. Then the gold dust and the white
cloth which accompanies it, both of which have been pre-
sented by me, is planted in the field." 2
A contemporary witness tells us of the same customs,
and explains why the Dayaks thought so much of them.
" When Mr. Brooke visits their residences, instead of
supplicating him, they each bring a portion of the padi
seed they intend to sow next season, and with it the necklaces
of the women, which are given to him for that purpose,
and which, having been dipped into a mixture previously
prepared, are by him shaken over the little basins, which
contain the seed, by which process he is supposed to render
them very productive." (It is interesting to note that
the mystic influence of the women is here combined with
1 Rev. George Brown : Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 429.
a Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes, ii. pp. 42-3. (Sir J as,
Brooke's Journal, 1848.)
that of the great chief.) " Other tribes, whom from their
distance he cannot visit, send down to him for a small piece
of white cloth, and a little gold or silver, which they bury
in the earth on their farms, to attain the same result. On
his entering a village, the women also wash and bathe his
feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young
coco-nut, and then once with water again ; all this water
which has touched his person, is preserved for the purpose
of being distributed on their farms, being sure to render
an abundant harvest certain. On one occasion, having
remarked that the crops of rice of the Samban tribe were
thin, the chief immediately observed that it could not be
otherwise, as they had never been visited by the Rajah,
and he begged me to try and induce Mr. Brooke to visit
them, to remove the cause which had rendered their crop
a small one." "
Near Lake Toba, in Sumatra, " the winds receive the name
of the quarter of the sky whence they come, or rather, they
are named after the chief of that region, which proves that
the Battak sees in his chief, not only the absolute lord of
people and things, but he is in a way divine, or at any rate
a representative of divinity. The people could not under-
stand our saying that we most certainly had no power over
the wind." *
Collective representations of the same kind lead to
similar customs in South African tribes. " If the king
(of the Matabeles), for example, who is regarded as the
master of the heavens as well as of the earth, does not
shower upon the latter, as regularly as the people want
it, the blessing of a fertilizing rain, they are immediately
disturbed. It is, they say, because the king's heart is
\ offended ' or ' ill/ or even ' black ' (they make use indiffer-
ently of all these terms). 3 He will not give any rain until
he is feeling better-disposed. . . . The first thing to do is
to find out the cause of this, and nearly always it is dis-
covered that in some town or district a crime of some sort
has been committed, i.e. something has been done which
1 Hugh Low : Sarawak, pp. 259-60.
■ Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 10 (1904)'
3 See chap, ix, p. 291.
is displeasing to the king. Then reparation must be made ;
in most cases that will take the form of the massacre of
chiefs, the destruction of the town or towns, the captivity
or the dispersal of the women and children. . . . The king's
wrath must be appeased ; it is the only way to put an end
to the scourge of drought." ' This remark shows that the
beneficent influence of the chief upon surrounding Nature
(in the present case, upon the rain), apparently does not
depend entirely upon his will, but on the state of his " heart."
Perhaps it is " black," because somewhere in his vicinity
or further off, an important taboo will have been violated
without his being aware of it, and this has offended the
unseen powers. It is a case, therefore, of the mystic influence
emanating from the chief, the personal mana which irradiates
those around, and is his by virtue of his participation in the
unseen world.
IV
Instead of a peaceful occupation like agriculture let
us consider warfare, which is a very common form of
activity in many primitive peoples ; we shall find that
primitive mentality interprets the facts in the same way,
and success in it is seen to be dependent upon a similar
participation.
" They (the Indians of New France) seem to recognize
that there is a destiny for war. They do not attribute
the victory to the strength or courage of their soldiers,
nor the good leadership of their captains, but to Fate
or the manitou who allows one nation to overcome
another when he pleases. That is why they fast, hoping
that this manitou will manifest himself to them during the
night, and will say : ' I am delivering your enemies to you
that you may devour them ; go and find them." 2 Among
the Creek Indians, " war parties leaving the town were
always headed by a man of proved physical prowess and
cunning. . . . Another individual, called hobaya (prophet),
accompanied such forays. He was versed in songs and
rituals with which he could weaken the enemy and blind
1 Missions evangeliques, xxxix. pp. 461-2. (Thomas.)
* Relations des Jesuites, lviii. p. 54. (Outagamis.)
the eyes of their warriors. He could also foretell events
and determine whether raids or hunting excursions would
be successful." « The following story illustrates the blind
confidence of these same Indians in the unseen powers who
are to lead them to victory. M The Creeks were meditating
the infliction of a mortal blow on the Blackfeet, and for
this purpose they had collected all the forces at their
disposal, amounting to more than eight hundred men.
Before setting out to find the enemy, they resorted to all
kinds of magic and witchcraft in order to make sure of
success in their expedition. It was decided that a young
girl should be blindfolded and placed at the head of the
troops to serve as guide to the army throughout the ex-
pedition. Should they be successful, this young heroine
was to become the wife of the most valiant of the warriors.
... This arranged, they started on their march full of
confidence and boldness, following their strange guide across
hills and valleys, ravines, and morasses. One day she would
take a northerly direction, the next she might go to the
south or east, but this diversity of direction mattered little,
for the war-manitou was reputed to be guiding her steps, and
the infatuated Creeks were content to follow their blinded
girl-leader day after day." *
' The man who is desirous of commanding," says
Charlevoix, speaking of the Canadian Indians, " never
thinks of levying troops unless he has previously fasted
for some days, during which he is daubed with black,
holds no conversation with anybody, invokes his tutelary
genius day and night, and above all, notes his dreams
very carefully. . . . Then they make some water hot,
clean the chief's face, dress his hair, and grease or paint
it. They put different colours on his face, and dress him
in his finest robes. Thus adorned, he chants his death
song in a muffled voice ; his soldiers, that is, those who
have offered to accompany him (for no one is constrained
to do so) then intone one after another their war chant (for
each has his own, which no other is allowed to use, and there
1 F. G. Speck: "The Creek Indians of Taskigitown," Memoirs of the
American Anthropological Association, ii. p. 114.
« Fr. J. de Smet, S. J. : Voyages dans I'Amerique septentrionale, pp. 150-2.
are some, too, that are appropriated by each family). . . .
Then they deliberate awhile. . . . The chants are followed
by dances . . . fairly quick, figurative movements, re-
presenting the different operations in the campaign, yet
always measured and harmonious. A feast terminates
the ceremony." x
All these preparations, which are continued on the
following days, and right up to the departure of the warriors,
are of a mystic nature, their object being to secure for the
troops the support of the unseen powers. Once started
on the campaign, they continue the same proceedings.
" They deduce omens from everything, and the wizards
whose business it is to explain these, advance or retard
their marches as they please. . . . They encamp long
before the sun goes down, and they usually leave a large
space surrounded by a palisade in front of the camp, or
they may enclose it by a kind of trellis work upon which they
place their manitous, turned to the side they wish to go
to. They invoke these for an hour, and in the morning,
before breaking camp, they do the same thing. After that
they think they have nothing to fear : they imagine that
the spirits have taken upon themselves the duties of sentinels,
and the whole army sleeps in tranquillity under their pro-
tection. ... In an enemy country they must not make
a camp fire ; there must be no sound, no hunting ; they
must not speak to each other except by signs." 2 (The
North American Indians were accustomed to converse
by means of gesture.)
In South Africa, among the Kafirs, the social structure
and economic conditions were different from those of the
Iroquois and the Hurons ; nevertheless, taking these dis-
similarities into account, we find that with them, too, warfare
is conceived and carried on in like fashion. " A chief among
the Amazulu practises magic on another chief before fighting
with him. Something belonging to the chief is taken, and
the other washes himself with intelezi (water in which various
plants have been infused) in order that he may overcome
the other when they begin to fight. And, forsooth, the one was
1 Fr. F. X. de Charlevoix : Journal d'un voyage dans I'Amdrique septen-
tfionale, iii. pp. 216-18.
• Ibid., iii. pp. 236-3. (Iroquois and Hurons.)
conquered long ago by having his things taken and practised
on by magic. And if the cattle fly from an enemy, their
dung and the earth which retains the marks of their foot-
prints are taken to the chief that he may churn them
and sit upon them. And the men say : ' The chief is now
sitting upon them ; he has already eaten them up ; we shall
find them.' And when they have found them they say :
* The doctor of the chief is a doctor indeed/ " l
Here we recognize the disposition of the primitive mind
to regard, as actual and already accomplished, a future
event which, for mystic reasons, seems to be certain. Since
magic operations which are infallible have been performed,
the enemy chief is conquered at this very moment, his
cattle are already captured. Victory has not only been
prepared and prefigured, it has literally been gained. The
fortune of war is not decided on the battlefield where the
armies encounter each other ; the decision has already been
arrived at in the realm of the invisible. This accounts
for that " curious consecration of the cattle," spoken of
by Lichtenstein, as practised by the priests when a war is
in prospect. " Its aim is to protect these animals, the
possession of which is often the sole cause of the war,
from the risk of being forcibly carried off by the enemy/ ' a
The chief prepares the way beforehand by opposing his
magic to the magic he deems his adversary to possess.
" Sekukuni set his magicians to work, and Mapoch did
the same on his side. Each hoped to be able to destroy
his enemy's power by supernatural means. One day, to
the great terror of the Matabeles, they found at their city
gate a basket containing an enormous rhinoceros gazing
at them with a threatening air. The wizards were imme-
diately obliged to put this formidable visitor out of action
and unable to injure their cause. ... In many African
tribes truly horrible magic practices, destined to annihilate
the enemy, may be noted. A prisoner may be burnt to
death, and his skin, when tanned, used in ceremonies intended
to fortify and brace the warriors/ ' 3
1 Rev. C. H. Callaway : The Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 345.
a H. Lichtenstein : Reisen im siidlichen Afrika, ii. p. 542.
3 A. Merensky : Erinnerungen aus dem Missionsleben in Stid Ost Afrika,
pp. 163-4.
In the Barotse tribe, Coillard noticed a circumstance
curiously like that of the Creek Indians which we related
recently, the direction of the march being confided to a
young girl supposed to be inspired by the unseen powers.
" The young girl ... is not the vivandiere of the regiment,
she is its prophetess. Selected by the diviner's astragali,
she is the interpreter of the gods, and nothing is done
without her direction. It is she who gives the signal for the
departure and the halt. She bears the horn which con-
tains the war medicines and charms. She is always at
the head of the vanguard, and nobody, even when the
troops are resting, is allowed to pass in front of her.
Should she get tired, or fall ill, the younger warriors must
carry her. When they encounter the enemy, she must fire
the first shot, and however long the engagement may last,
she is not allowed to sleep, or even sit down, or to
eat or drink. ... In return for her services, the young
prophetess will be made a maori, one of the wives of the
king." ■
In the wars in the Congo, diviners play the same part
as they do in North America and in South Africa. " They
are the referees in all decisions, especially when the un-
certainty of the event leads to hesitation. They bless,
they curse, they call down disaster upon the enemy, and
knowing that in his camp are other magicians, their rivals,
they try to kill these by means of their incantations. . . .
They vaunt themselves on knowing, from the special revela-
tions made to them, victories and defeats beforehand ; they
claim that they can penetrate the heart, and have complete
knowledge of all that is going on, even in the unseen world." a
" An approaching war between two villages is the signal
for great activity among the medicine-men. They must
find out by their insight into the future how the coming
fight will terminate. Charms to protect the warriors against
gunshot, spear, and arrow must be prepared." 3 The
Bangala consider that the insignia worn by white officers
* Missions ivangiliques, lxiii. pp. 377-8.
■ Cavazzi : Istoria descrizione de'tre regni Congo, Matamba, ed Angola,
p. 226.
3 E. J. Glave : Six Years of Adventure in Congoland, pp. 104-5.
on their uniform are for the purpose of protecting them
from wounds ; these too, are charms.1
Even courage is not to be accounted for without a mystic
cause. " How is it that a white man has no fear, for all
his being so weak and not nearly a match for us ? He must
possess a charm that makes him invulnerable." * The
following conversation clearly shows what the opinion of
natives is upon this point. " They thought that we
possessed a medicine which made us invincible, if not
invulnerable. To illustrate this; some time after we had
been in the land I was sitting by the side of Mankokwe ;
Mr. Dickinson, our doctor, was with me. The chief became,
all at once, very affectionate ; he put his arm round my neck
and I knew then that he was going to ask me for something.
Said he at last : • Is that your medicine-man ? ' I assented.
f Ask him to give me your war medicine.' I laughed heartily,
and told him we had no such medicine. He disbelieved
me and said : ■ That is not true, you have, you must have,
and you do not like to give it me. But do ask him for it.'
\ I speak the truth/ said I ; 'we English have no other war
medicine than a brave heart.'
" He would not believe, and thus resumed : ' No, that is
not true, it cannot be. I have a brave heart too ; but what
is the good of a brave heart ; a brave heart alone is no good
Listen. The Manganja have brave hearts ; the Ajawa
came into their country ; they could not fight the Ajawa,
but directly they saw them they ran away. Why ? Not
because they had not brave hearts ; but because the Ajawa
have stronger war medicine than they. Now you have
stronger war medicine than the Ajawa' (the English had
recently put their tribe to rout), ' so strong that if only
one Englishman went against the whole of the Ajawa, they
would all run away. Do give me your war medicine.' " 3
In the chief's eyes, there could be but one possible ex-
planation of the British victory. He would be incredulous
« Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the
Upper Congo River, " J.A.I., xl. p. 392-3.
* H. von Wissmann : My Second Journey through Equatorial Africa
(English version), p. 47.
3 Rev. J. Rowley : The Universities' Mission to Central Africa, p. 148-9
(1867).
of any other. The gallantry of the British does not account
for their superiority, nor would their guns, or their greater
experience of military tactics. War is a struggle between
wizard and wizard, between one magic spell and another ;
the victory will rest with the combatant whose " war-
medicine " is the more powerful. The event had proved
that in this case it was the British who possessed it. Mr.
Rowley had certainly denied that this was so, but it was
denying the evidence. It is natural, after all, that the British
should not want to share this wonderful medicine with any-
body else, and the native hears their decision without any
surprise.
From these ideas, which are met with almost every-
where, it follows that a war that has been well prepared
is virtually won. The conqueror (we must call him such,
since victory is already assured to him) will not encounter
any resistance. The enemy's weapons will misfire, their
eyes will be blinded, their limbs will fail them, their cattle
will be captured, and so on. As a rule, the attack is a
surprise, and takes place at dawn. That is the ordinary
method of fighting among uncivilized races ; there are
very few exceptions to it. A set battle is unknown to
primitives, and the idea of it would seem absurd to them.
" I remember one of the chiefs questioning me about our
mode of warfare, and his look of amazement when I described
the rows of men placed opposite each other and firing at
one another with guns. He eagerly inquired whether the
men were within range, and when I replied in the affirmative
he exclaimed: 'Then you are great fools.' . . . Then he
asked where the chief stood. ' Oh,' said I, ' he remains
at home and sends his men to fight.' At which there was
a burst of laughter." x
Their method of fighting is altogether different. " The
Bechuanas, for example, stealthily approach the village
which they wish to take, surround it on all sides, and about
two o'clock in the morning, when all within it are wrapped
in a most profound slumber, they hurl themselves upon
it, uttering fierce yells ; they massacre every man or
beast they encounter, and gain an easy victory over the
1 Rev. S. Macfarlane : Among the Cannibals of New Guinea, p. 115 (1888).
poor unhappy wretches who have started up out of their
sleep, petrified with fear, and having no alternative but
to be burnt alive in their huts, or feel the enemy's assegai
at their throats/' ' Very often the assailants wait until
the night is at an end. With the Bangala tribes, M the
attack commences at cockcrow, between five and half-
past five in the morning. Men hurl themselves in masses
on the quarters occupied by the sleeping enemy, each
hut being surrounded by from ten to thirty warriors, its
single low door being closely guarded. There is a heavy
burst of firing, and the huts are set on fire. The unfortunate
creatures thus taken unawares hasten to the outlet from
the kraal, where death awaits them. The women alone
are spared, and these are led away into captivity." 2 In
other parts, the fighting men will be fewer in number, will
be armed, not with guns, but with spears and bows, and
they will massacre the women instead of making them
captives. But the time and the arrangement of the attack
will vary but little, whether it be in Borneo, Polynesia,
North or South America, or elsewhere.
The primitives have undoubtedly taken into account
the fact that this kind of attack is the safest, and that the
enemy who is surprised in sleep will be able to ofter but a
feeble resistance. Nevertheless, this utilitarian motive cannot
be the only, nor indeed the principal, reason for a custom
which is so common. It must be a surprise attack, therefore
it cannot take place in the daylight. The people would
not be within their huts, possibly not even in the village.
They would have time to seize their weapons, and it would
be difficult, perhaps impossible, to surround them. But
neither can a surprise attack take place in the darkness
of night. Natives do not like to be out of doors in the
shadows, even on moonlight nights. They are afraid of
unlucky encounters, of meeting spirits wandering abroad,
especially the spirits of the dead. There remains, therefore,
only the dawn, the break of day. " The Kai (of German
New Guinea) always accomplishes his warlike exploits early
in the morning. In that way, he has the whole long day
1 Missions evangeliques, xi. pp. 21-2. (Casalis.)
3 C. Coquilhat : Sur le Haul Congo, p. 297.
before him, for the satisfaction of his vengeance, and it
gives him time enough to get home again in safety before
nightfall. In the dark he is afraid of the spirits of those
who have been killed ; in the daytime, these can do him
no harm." l Similarly, in a region widely removed from
this (in Central Chaco) the same reason obtains. " Warfare
consists of surprise attacks. But as the people have a
great dread of evil spirits, the attacks never take place by
night ; they are timed for a short time before sunrise.
Even if the Indians are in the enemy's vicinity, they will
always await that hour." * In the equatorial regions and
in the tropics, where there is an extremely brief period of
dusk, the assailants take a very short time only, and the
attack must be carried out with lightning speed.
We should be inclined to believe that such an attack
will always succeed, since it is in reality, not a fight, but
a massacre of people taken unawares in sleep. However,
it does sometimes fail. " It may happen," says Coquilhat,
" that the tribe attacked awakens in time, and is able to
inflict a crushing defeat on the assailant." Possibly one
of the natives was awake, and gave the alarm. Besides —
and on this point the witnesses are precise and fully agreed —
in spite of the advantage which the attack secures by being
unexpected, it is never completely carried through. If
it does not succeed immediately and entirely, if the assailants
suffer the slightest loss, they do not persevere, but at once
sound the retreat. Neuhauss has very plainly shown the
reason for this. " The consciousness of not having the
luck on their side robs them of all their confidence. Their
war medicine is not operating, therefore all their efforts
will be in vain." 3
At the moment of their rush upon the sleeping village
they are certain of victory. Not only so because the enemy
is defenceless, and cannot leave his huts without being
struck down, but also and above all because their " medicine "
is acting. The enemy is in their power, he is " doomed,"
just as the man who has been bewitched is " doomed "
1 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, (Kai) iii. p. 62.
» Vojtech Fric : " Eine Pilcomayo Reise in dem Chaco central," Globus,
lxxxix. p. 233.
3 R. Neuhauss : Deutsch Neu Guinea, iii. p. 65.
to be the prey of tiger or crocodile. He is unable to defend
himself. It most frequently happens that the event con-
firms the attempt and the massacre is carried through without
let or hindrance. But if there should be unexpected re-
sistance, if several of the assailants, indeed if only one of
them is killed or seriously wounded, the attack ceases
immediately and the enemy retires, for it has been proved
that the " medicines " are not operating as they should be.
Perhaps their effect is paralysed by other and stronger
measures which the enemy has brought to bear. Persistence
would then be folly.
Dr. Nieuwenhuis has noted this characteristic in Borneo.
" The fact that the death or even wounding of a single man,
in the fights which these tribes undertake, is sufficient
to put the whole tribe to flight is also a very significant
one. They see in it, in fact, a sure sign of the wrath of the
spirits, and at the same time it proves what a powerful im-
pression such a circumstance makes upon them." x But
this powerful impression is caused mainly by their fear that
the unseen powers are hostile. As soon as there is a sign
of such disfavour, the native bows before it, just as he
accepts without cavilling the result of a trial by ordeal.
In the Fiji Isles, " if intended mischief is once frustrated,
he (the native) will cease to entertain the idea of repeating
the attempt. A house is set on fire ; but the flames are
extinguished in time. The incendiary submits to his defeat,
and makes no further effort of that description. A murder
is prevented ; the agents consider it to have been so decreed.
An unfortunate captive is taken ; he makes no attempt
to save himself. His only wish is to secure a speedy termina-
tion of his sufferings." *
Waterhouse says again : " A most striking feature in the
arrangements for attack is the primary preparation for
defeat. Many days are sometimes spent in preparing the
orna (bypaths by which to run away easily in case of defeat)
while the subsequent attack may not last very many hours." 3
The Fijians were not wanting in courage, but they could
1 A. W. Nieuwenhuis : Quer durch Borneo, ii. p. 167. (Bahau.)
a J. Waterhouse : The King and People of Fiji, p. 307.
J Ibid., p. 317.
not contravene the decisions of the unseen powers, and they
judged it wise to provide for their being hostile.
In Central Africa, " when two chiefs meet in war, for
instance, victory does not depend merely on strength and
courage, as we might suppose, but on fetish medicines. If
some men on the side of the more powerful chief fall, they
at once retire and acknowledge that their ' medicines '
have failed, and they cannot be induced to renew the con-
flict on any consideration." 1 Lastly, the same conviction
accounts for a similar action on the part of the Creek Indians
who were confidently following the leadership of a young
girl whom they had taken as their guide. They ended by
encountering a detachment of the enemy and they massacred
them. " This first engagement " says Fr. de Smet, " struck
dismay into the conquerors, for they, too, had seven men
killed and fifteen wounded. They uncovered the young
heroine's eyes, and the manitous whom they had considered
so propitious to them being now reported unfavourable
to their designs, the combatants dispersed in haste, taking
the very shortest route to their homes." *
The weapons used in warfare are manufactured with all
the care the natives can bestow on them ; they often bear
witness to an ingenuity which renders them dangerous and
deadly. But their efficacy does not depend entirely, or even
chiefly, upon their visible and material qualities. It
depends essentially upon the mystic virtue which the
" medicines " or the magic operations have conferred upon
them. A warrior's weapons are therefore sacred, and often
no one but himself must touch them. In peace time, they
are surrounded by infinite safeguards, to concentrate and
maintain within them the magic influence which will assure
their success.
Thus in New Pomerania (the Gazelle Peninsula), " they
used at one time to keep all the clubs in the malira house.
This was a hut expressly built to keep the ' medicines '
1 Rev. F. S. Arnot : Garenganze, p. 237 (2nd edit. 1889).
* Fr. J. de Smet, S.J.: Voyages dans VAmerique septcntrionale, pp. 150-2.
and all the objects relating to them. ... In time of war
they would bring these clubs out, after having pronounced
magic incantations over them in the hut. They had pre-
viously been rubbed with malira (this is the leaf of a tree
endowed with magic virtues), or some of it was attached
to each of them . . . each kind of club having its own special
malira. . . . All these enchantments were designed to
make the clubs so deadly that a single blow would be enough
to kill the enemy on the spot. They state that these opera-
tions, like the clubs themselves, have come to them from
afar." l Quite near there, at Bougainville, similar methods
are in use. " In order that the spears may not fail to hit
their mark, they are consecrated — particularly during a
certain dance in honour of the dead — by being struck against
the ground, which breaks their point. Or again, they
may be consecrated by being aimed at a target made of
the corpse of a man who has died a violent death (while
constructing a chief's house, for example.) They then
collect the spears which have hit the mark, sharpen the
points afresh, and provide them with hooks/' * The natives
are not content, therefore, with subjecting their weapons
to a magical process ; they desire to discover in which of
them the desired effect has been produced, and they will
make use of these only. Before they are employed, they
must have undergone some test. We do the same with
our guns. But with the Melanesians, the test is a mystic
one, even as is the efficacy of the weapons tested.
Codrington has clearly shown that theirs are poisoned
arrows, though not in the sense in which Europeans would
use the term. " What is sought " (by the Melanesians)
I and as they firmly believe obtained, is an arrow which
shall have supernatural power (mana) to hurt, in the material
of which it is made, and in the qualities added by charms
and magical preparations. ... The point is of a dead
man's bone, and has therefore mana ; it has been tied on
with powerful magic charms, and has been smeared with
stuff hot and burning, as the wound is meant to be, prepared
1 R. Parkinson: Dreissig Jahre in der Siidsee, p. 13 1-2. m
1 R. Thurnwald : "Im Bismarck Archipel und auf den Salomon Inseln,"
Zeitschrift filr Ethnologie, xlii. p. 128.
and applied with charms ; that is what they mean by what
we, not they, call poisoned arrows. And when the wound
has been given, its fatal effect is to be aided and carried
on by the same magic which has given superior power to
the weapon." ... As a means of combating this influence
on the part of the victim's friends, " if the arrow, or a part
of it, has been retained, or has been extracted with leaf
poultices, it is kept in a damp place or in cool leaves ; then
the influence will be little and will soon subside. ... In
the same way, the man who has influenced the wound . . .
and his friends will bring hot and burning juices and chew
irritating leaves ; pungent and bitter herbs will be burnt
to make an irritating smoke . . . the bow will be kept
near the fire to make the wound it has inflicted hot, or as
in Lepers' Island, will be put into a cave haunted by a ghost ;
the bowstring will be kept taut and occasionally pulled,
to bring on tension of the nerves and the spasms of tetanus
to the wounded man." x Thus everything happens in
the region of the mystic ; both the friends and the enemies
of the wounded man operate therein. What we call the
physical effects are, to the Melanesians, supernatural ones,
or rather, we distinguish between the two, which they do
not. According to our view of it, if the arrow is a poisoned
one, it is because its head has been smeared over with some
toxic product, but according to the natives, it is only charged
with mana, the influence of which is such that it continues
to operate upon the wounded man at a distance.
I shall not lay stress upon these customs, which are almost
universally practised. Natives feel confidence in weapons
which have undergone a magic preparation only. In
South Africa, for instance, among the Makololo, they make
use of a " gun medicine," without which, according to the
popular belief, they could not aim correctly. *
What is true of weapons used in warfare applies equally
to those which serve for hunting and fishing, and in a general
way, to tools and instruments. Their effectiveness depends
above all on their mana, and most frequently it is the result
1 R. H. Codrington : The Melanesians, pp. 308-10.
» D. Livingstone : Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa,
P- 175.
alone which reveals whether a certain implement is suffi-
ciently endowed with it, or exceptionally so. " For in-
stance, the Dene mind sees mystery everywhere, irrespective
of its intrinsic value or peculiar make ; the native attaches
more or less unaccountable qualities to some mechanical
device, weapon of the chase, or fishing implement on its
proving successful (probably accidentally). ' Post hoc, ergo
propter hoc ' seems to be the basis of all his judgments.
An old net, for instance, which by a stroke of good luck
has been set for a shoal of fish, will be infinitely more esteemed,
even though it may be in locks (sic) than a new one which
has been used but once, probably in the wrong place. Here
it is a question of personal supernatural powers extended
to things inanimate." x This last remark of Fr. Morice's
is a very true one. At the same time, it would probably
be better not to say that the Dene reasons according to
the ' post hoc, ergo propter hoc ' theory. To the primitive
there is no such thing as chance. If an old and worn-out
fishing-net obtains an abundant catch, it is because the fish
were ready to enter it. If they thus obeyed the influence
which drew them thither, it was because the net possessed
a mysterious and profound virtue which they found irre-
sistible. Therefore other nets, even in good condition,
if they have caught but few fishes, will be set aside in favour
of this one, since its power has been proved. Hearne had
already remarked, speaking of the Indians in the same district :
' They frequently sell new nets, which have not been
wet more than once or twice, because they have not been
successful." 2 It is useless for these snares to be new and
well made ; what good is there in keeping them if they lack
the essential thing, the magic power of influencing the fish ?
In Borneo, too, among the Kayans, weapons of the
chase are esteemed according to the success they attain.
" A hunter who has shot down a pig or a doe with a single
bullet will cut out the ball to melt it down with other lead,
and will make a fresh batch of bullets or slugs from the
mixture, believing that the lucky bullet will leaven the
■ Fr. A. G. Morice : "The Great Den6 Race," Anthropos, v. p. 141 (1910).
* S. Hearne : A Journey from the Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson Bay
to the Northern Ocean, p. 239 (note) (1795).
whole lump, and impart to all of it something of that to
which its success was due. Compare also a similar practice
in regard to the seed grain/' l On the other hand, " if
a house has been partially destroyed by fire, nothing of
what is left will be used in the building of the new one.
They have an indefinable feeling that the use of material
taken from a house which has been burnt down would
expose the new building to the same fate, as if this material
might infect it with its own misfortune/'
In Samoa, " qualities of good or bad fortune were con-
stantly attributed to neuter objects. Fish-hooks, for instance,
were considered to be lucky or unlucky. Some canoes
or boats were considered to be much more fortunate in
attracting sharks or other fish than other canoes were.
Weapons were also considered as being courageous or
cowardly." 2
Primitive African races afford many examples of the
same kind. Here are some of them. " Bushmen despise
the arrow which has failed of its mark, were it but once only.
The one which has struck home, on the contrary, is of two-
fold value in their eyes. Consequently, however much
time and trouble it entails, they would rather make new
ones altogether than pick up and use again those which have
been unsuccessful." 3 Should it happen that a weapon
which is usually lucky fails to bring down the quarry,
it is because a more powerful charm than its own is acting
upon it and paralysing its effort. Its want of success can
have no other cause. "As a rule, after a day's hunting
among the buffaloes or hippopotami, I returned home with
at least one of these animals. But during one season it
happened that for two consecutive days I failed to kill
anything, although I saw plenty of game. . . . The men
who accompanied me were thoroughly disheartened at
my want of success, and were convinced of the interference
of some spirit who had bewitched my gun, and would earnestly
ask my permission to expel the objectionable evil-doer.
1 Let us have your rifle and we will remove the Moloki,'
1 Hose and MacDougall : The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, i. p. 204 (note).
- Rev. George Brown : Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 249.
3 H. Lichtenstein : Reisen im siidlichen Afrika, ii. p. 442.
said they ; and upon my inquiring the mode of ejectment
they proposed trying, they answered : ' Simply put the barrel
in the fire till it is red hot, and burn out the evil spirit/ " *
In Loango, • ■ the natives often venture out fishing, even
when the bar is dangerous, if there is promise of a rich haul.
In such a case the banganga (sorcerers) hasten to arrange
sticks, rags, fragments of cloth, bundles of linen, all forming
a most curious chain, upon the shore. These are charms
designed to promote the capture of the fish and to prevent
the nets from breaking and the boats from upsetting with
their human freight. When they have been used for any
occasion, once the fishing is over, they are usually left to
the mercy of the wind and waves, but if in spite of unfavour-
able circumstances, there should have been a good haul
without any untoward incident, then the second-hand fetishes
acquire extraordinary value from the fact that they have
been unusually lucky. They are picked up and carefully
arranged so that they may be used another time." 2 As
a matter of fact, to primitive mentality any experience
ever so little out of the common, whether for good or evil,
has the value of revelation, like the revelations obtained
by means of omens and divination. It therefore requires
just as much consideration, and the native must be guided
by what he has thus learnt with regard to the views of
the unseen powers. In the present case, it is worth knowing
that he may fish without danger, even when the bar is
rough, if protected by these charms
We may compare with these facts Thalbitzer's acute
observations respecting certain amulets in use among the
Esquimaux.
" The amulet does more than merely represent the
animal or human being which it imitates or by which it
is made. The amulet is alive, because it has been made v
during the recitation of a charm or spell, when the dominating
qualities of the animal or the part of the body have been
invoked ; the power of these qualities is at any rate potentially
present in the animal. It evidently makes no great differ- ,■
ence whether it is the thing (animal) itself or an imitation
1 E. J. Glave : Six Years of Adventure in Congoland, pp. 1 17-18.
a Dr. PechuSl-Loesche : Die Loango Expedition, iii. 2. p. 402.
which is used as an amulet ; it has the same power. But
there may be a shade of difference in the conception of the
inherited amulets, which consist of discarded implements
or utensils — often only the fragmentary remnants. Here
it is not the original qualities of the things which are of
importance ; as was the case of the animal amulets . . . but
rather its inherited qualities, good luck in hunting, for
example, which once followed the weapon when used by
the original owner, and which is now the dominating power
of the amulet." i
Finally, since the material and visible qualities of an
implement or trap of any kind, are subordinate to its value
in respect of its invisible and mystic qualities, which use
alone reveals, the most valuable assistance may be given
by any object whatever (even if apparently irrelevant to
the end in view), provided that experience has once shown
it to be powerful. Among the Maidu people of North
America, therefore, "any strangely shaped or coloured
stone or object found was picked up, and its powers tested.
If on finding and carrying it a man had good luck in anything,
the stone or object would then be preserved carefully as
a charm for that purpose." * This charm, as we see, closely
resembles what gamblers call a " mascot." When the
Maidu sets out to hunt, this stone will be as necessary to
him as his weapons.
Sometimes the unfamiliar object met with gives its
possessors valuable influence over certain beings, and natives
are therefore very desirous of securing it for themselves.
Fr. de Smet relates a very characteristic story with regard
to this. " They (the Cceurs-d'Alene) told me that the first
white man they ever saw was wearing a cotton shirt, with
a black and white pattern all over it, which seemed like
small-pox to them ; and he was also carrying a white wrapper.
The natives imagined that the spotted shirt was the Great
Manitou which possesses mastery over the terrible disease
called small-pox, and that the white wrapper was the Great
Manitou of snow. They thought therefore that if they
1 W. Thalbitzer : " Ethnographical Collections from East Greenland,"
Meddelelser om Groenland, xxxix. p. 630.
> R. B. Dixon : " The Northern Maidu." Bulletin of the American Museum
of Natural History, xvii. p. 267.
could obtain possession of these divinities their nation would
be for ever freed from the deadly scourge, and their winter
hunting expeditions would be facilitated by the vast amount
of snow which would fall. In exchange for these two
articles, then, they offered several of their finest horses.
The bargain was readily agreed to by the white man,
and from that time onward, for many years, the spotted shirt
and the white wrapper were the objects of the most profound
veneration. On solemn occasions they were carried in
procession and placed on a very high elevation, which was
the consecrated place devoted to their superstitious rites.
There they were solemnly spread on the ground, and the
great ' pipe of peace ' offered them with as much veneration
as they used in offering it to the sun, fire, earth, or water.
Then the whole company of magicians and medicine-men
intoned canticles in their honour." I To be able to account
satisfactorily for the powers attributed by these natives
to the two strange objects, and the intense respect they
showed them, we must not forget that the man of whom
they had purchased them was the first white man they had
ever seen. He must undoubtedly have appeared an extra-
ordinary being to them, and a very powerful magician at
any rate, and therefore the strange things he brought with
him must be endowed with marvellous virtue, and exercise
absolute sway over both small-pox and snow (which they
resembled), and these objects would bring good luck to their
tribe if they became possessed of them.
VI
Without proceeding further in our inquiry with regard
to the primitive's mystic orientation of the causes of
success, I shall dwell upon a final point, which supports
the conclusions already reached. Whatever the instru-
ments, weapons, tools, or processes employed, primitives,
as we have seen, never consider success certain or even
possible if these alone are used, without the concurrence
of the unseen powers having been secured. Material aids,
although indispensable, play but a subordinate part. It
1 Fr. J. de Smet, S.J. : Voyages dans I'Amdrique septentrionale, pp. 223-4.
is in accordance with this conviction that primitives act,
both in war and in peace. In certain cases which I shall
rapidly indicate, they even go beyond this. Material means
are no longer necessary, and the primitive, without using
any instrument whatever, can attain his end simply by
the mystic virtue of his desire.
In North Queensland, on the Tully River, " a black
will earnestly yearn for some particular fruit, etc., to come
into season, and will send one of the larger species of spiders
to bring it — and it will come. The coastal aboriginals
especially and firmly believe in this method of satisfying
any particular craving." 1 "If the members of one tribe
wished to work harm on one of another tribe, the men would
leave their camp, and select a secluded sandy spot ; they
would then make a depression in the sand in the centre of
which a rude figure of a man is moulded. By concentrating
their thoughts on the one they desire to harm, and by singing
a weird song, the mischief is wrought. The subject of their
animosity will develop a high fever and will probably die
within a day or two." 2
This is a case of witchcraft by effigy. The man " doomed "
is undoubtedly represented by a rudimentary type of human
figure, but no physical influence or actual violence of any
kind is exercised upon the symbol. Their thoughts firmly
fixed upon the victim to his undoing will suffice, and their
own inherent desire to kill him must bring about his death.
Sometimes, when the wish is uttered, its effect is believed
to be deadly. " A certain white settler, being very much
annoyed with a native, told him in as powerful language
as he could muster, that he wished he might die, and that
he had no doubt he would die within a twelvemonth. The
native professed to treat this prognostication with derision ;
nevertheless, on calling about a year afterwards, the settler
was informed that the native had fretted so much about
it that he died." 3 Evidently this native believed that he
had been " doomed." The wish expressed by the white
1 W. E. Roth : " Superstition, Magic, and Medicine," North Queensland
Ethnography, Bulletin 5, No. 107.
• W. H. Bird : " Ethnographical Notes about the Buccaneer Islanders,
N.W. Australia," Anthropos, vi. p. 177.
3 B. Seemann : A Mission to Viti, p. 190 (1862).
man was equal to casting a spell upon him, as he thought,
and the same fatal effect was bound to follow.
Campbell has borne witness to the same belief in South
Africa. " Pelangye, on the death of his father, inherited
all his cattle, which were very numerous. When Mateebe's
brother was murdered by Bushmen, Mateebe accused Pelangye
of ' wishing ' that the murder might take place ; on which
ground he seized al] his cattle, and ordered his houses to
be burnt. . . . The fact was that from the large, round,
and singular eyes of Pelangye, Mateebe either believed,
or pretended to believe, that he possessed the power of
witchcraft, and that through the exertion of this power
his brother had been murdered by the Bushmen." « In
this example we have no difficulty in recognizing a likeness,
already previously noted,2 to the evil eye, and the malevolent
principle informing the wizard, and we observe, too, that
the latter is accused of having exercised his influence merely
by wishing that something should happen. The same idea
is common in the Congo district, and in West Africa. " The
Warega search for the supernatural in everything. They
believe that everybody has the power of affecting Fate and
making a wish come true. They do not explain exactly
how it can be done, but they clearly attach an idea of witch-
craft by effigy to this belief/' 3 In other words, they
think that anybody can cast a spell on another and bewitch
him merely by virtue of wishing to do it. On the Niger,
" yesterday there was a procession of the wives of the late
son of the king . . . whose death I have already alluded
to. The women came down to the waterside to wash. . . .
They proceeded to drink poison, from a belief that they
had wished their husband's death. . . . Out of sixty of
these poor, infatuated wretches, thirty-one of them died ;
while others, who vomited immediately, escaped death. . . ."4
In Calabar, again, " I heard some mournful cries in the
bush . . . and approached the place from whence the cries
proceeded, which was about twenty yards from the
1 Rev. J. Campbell : Travels in South Africa ; Second Journey, ii. p. 184.
• See chap. viii. p. 249.
3 Commandant Delhaise : Les Warega, p. 213.
4 M. Laird and R. A. K. Oldfield : An Expedition into the Interior of
Africa, ii. pp. 277-8 (1837).
waterside, on the coast, and I saw there a woman lying
chained by a leg to wood, with the arms and legs pinioned,
awaiting the period of high water, to be launched into the
sea, there to become the unhappy prey of voracious sharks.
On inquiring ... I found that she was one of the wives
of a chief who had died a few days before, and the brother
had selected her to suffer for having wished his deceased
brother's death ! " "
These facts would be incomprehensible if we were ignorant
of the collective representations which cause primitives to
act thus. In the first place, the desire in question is not
necessarily a conscious wish, definitely formulated. In a
moment of anger and impatience when tortured by jealousy,
the wife may have wished that her husband were dead,
without even owning the wish to herself, or taking it into
account. She may deny this in all good faith — but the
poison, in killing her, will prove the contrary. If the desire
did exist, were it but for an instant, its fatal effect was made
possible, especially in a case where a woman revealed within
herself the evil principle of which sorcerers are made. It
is this which the ordeal by poison can ascertain. But even
the existence of this principle is not necessary ; desire
alone has the power to kill, just as witchcraft may. The
natives in this part of Africa are fully persuaded of this,
and hence arise the complications of which Dr. Pechuel-
Loesche gives us some idea. " We can scarcely question
the fact that there really are persons who consider them-
selves wizards in the worst sense of the word, and even avow
this publicly. Is not a spiteful feeling with regard to another
sufficient to injure, even to kill him ? Ill will has the same
effect as ill doing. Its influence acts like that of the sun
in warming, and the cool wind in refreshing, us. Its poison is
like the poison of noxious plants, or the venom of the asp.
This idea endues chance with very great force. Evil thoughts
may meet with a successful issue, and then the consequence
is a guilty conscience. He who has indulged in them accuses
himself, or at any rate he acts in such a way as to awaken
suspicions in others, and incites them to accuse him, all
1 M. Laird and R. A. K. Oldfield : An Expedition into the Interior of
Africa, i. pp. 349~5°-
the more so because natives are extremely clearsighted
in everything which concerns personal relations." x If,
then, the desire for a person's death is actually equivalent
to killing him, it is because, like the evil eye, and the bad
spirit imbuing abnormal persons and sorcerers, its mystic
power alone suffices to attain its end.
In New France, " they " (the Indians) M imagine that
anyone who wishes or desires the death of another, especially
if he be a sorcerer, often obtains the realization of his desire ;
but the sorcerer who has felt the wish will himself die after
his victim." a Among the Ten'a " the wishes of the shaman,
when proffered with a special intense act of the will, all
have this efficacy, through, of course, the intervention of
his familiar demon. An instance of this kind may be seen
in the Ten'a version of the Flood, where, to cause the re-
appearance of the land, the raven wishes with such energy
that he faints from the effort." 3 y
With the Shasta tribe, " in cases of murder, the friends
and relatives of the murdered man went about praying
that the murderer might die, or be injured in some accident ;
if this happened to him, or to any of his family (who were
generally included in these prayers), it was regarded as
due to the latter that the accident or death took place,
and the relatives of the murdered man were then held just
as much responsible for the blood money as if they had
killed or injured the individual by bodily violence." 4
Sapir, too, tells us : "A powerful shaman might also reach
his victim by merely ' wishing ' him or (mentally) ' poisoning '
him, as my informant put it ; this method was frequently
employed by mythological characters such as Coyote, and
was indicated in the language by a special verb. ... It
not infrequently happened that when someone fell ill, that
a particular shaman was accused by another of being the
responsible party ; in such cases the accused shaman was
compelled to cure the sick person or else suffer death as
1 Dr. Pechuel-Loesche : Die Loango Expedition, iii. 2. pp. 335-6.
1 Relations des Jesuites, xii. p. 12. (Fr. Le Jeune.)
3 Fr. Jul. Jette : " On the Superstitions of the Ten'a Indians,"
Anthropos, vi. p. 250.
4 R. C. Dixon: "The Shasta," Bulletin of the American Museum of
Natural History, xvii. p. 453.
a penalty. " « This last feature is another proof that the
desire to injure is akin to enchantment. Nearly everywhere,
in fact, the wizard convicted of having caused the illness of a
person is himself obliged to undo the evil he has brought
about ; that is an invariable consequence, and the wizard's
punishment is not inflicted until afterwards. Should he
refuse to revoke the enchantment, he is put to the torture
and then killed. Thus it very frequently happens that the
man accused of such a crime, even though he knows himself
to be innocent, has no other chance of safety than to confess,
and to pretend to revoke the magic spell cast upon his
reputed victim.
In a story related by an Indian Hidatsa there appears a
medicine-man who has lived with bears. They taught him,
and it was from them that he obtained his magic power.
" He helped his people in many ways. When they were
hungry, he thought in his mind thus : ' There should be
buffaloes near the village ' ; and when he would thus think
it, it was so."2 In British Columbia " if one Indian is vexed
with another, the most effectual way of showing his dis-
pleasure, next to killing him, is to say to him : ' By-and-by
you will be dead.' Not infrequently the poor victim thus
marked becomes so terrified that the prediction is verified.
When this is the case the friends of the deceased say that
they have no doubt about the cause, and therefore (if they
are not able to meet the contest which may ensue) the
prognosticator, on the first opportunity, is shot for his
passionate language." 3 $
Quite recently, too, Preuss noted similar facts in the
Indians among whom he lived. " They attribute quite
extraordinary power to words and thoughts. . . . Every-
thing that is done is referred not merely to external activity,
but considered as the result of reflection also. The very
fact of the action is quite insignificant in comparison, and
in a sense it is not differentiated from reflection. . . . Words
1 E. Sapir : " The Religious Ideas of the Takelma Indians of South-
West Oregon," Journal of American Folk Lore, xx. p. 41 (1907).
3 Pepper and Wilson : " An Hidatsa Shrine and the Beliefs respecting it/'
Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, ii. pp, 309-10.
3 R. C. Mayne : Four Years in British Columbia, p. 292. (Letter from
Duncan, the missionary.)
are not regarded merely as a means of expression, but as
a method of influencing the gods, i.e. Nature, just like
entreaties and music. . . . What the words mean is already
realized from the mere fact of their being uttered, supposing,
of course, that the necessary magic force resides in the
person speaking. ... In various ways we may see that
when man acts, thoughts take first rank as a means of
action, and that they can even produce their effect inde-
pendent of the words or the material act." * What Preuss
calls reflection (Nachdenken) or thought (Gedanke) does
not in fact differ from what English and American investiga-
tors designate " wish." With these primitives it is scarcely
a question of theoretical conceptions, but of complex psycho-
logical states in which the emotional element most frequently
predominates.
In South America, among the Lenguas of Grand Chaco,
" when a man expresses a desire for rain or for a cool south
wind, his neighbours, if they do not share the desire, protest
strongly and implore him not to persist in his wish. They
always considered that I had particular power in influencing
the south wind, and believed that by whistling or hissing
I could bring it up at will. This probably was owing to
the fact that Europeans welcome this wind as a pleasant
change from the exhausting heat." 2 This may be quite
possible, but we must also take into account the virtue
inherent in the desire, especially in the case of a magician
as powerful as these natives believed Mr. Grubb to be.
With the Araucans, " the concerted lamentations of women
around the body are more than a mere funeral custom ;
they are a series of curses pronounced upon his murderer,
and in certain cases they are of magic efficacy. In default
of any more positive form of vengeance, this is a way of
exercising it." 3
Lastly, with respect to the Todas of India, Rivers says :
I I was told by two men that they believed that a sorcerer,
by merely thinking of the effect he wished to produce, could
produce the effect, and that it was not necessary for him
1 K. Th. Preuss : Die N ay arit-Exp edition, i. pp. xcvi-xcvii.
• W. B. Grubb: An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, p. 138.
3 T. Guevara : Psicologia del pueblo Araucano, pp. 271-2.
to use any magical formula or practise any special
rites. " *
This very common belief helps to explain other be-
liefs founded on it, and the customs referring to it. In
many places, for example — in South Africa, India, and
elsewhere — when after a prolonged drought rain does fall,
working in the fields is forbidden, even if the rain be but
a slight shower, and apparently about to stop. "If it
has rained throughout the night, no one may go to cultivate
the fields next day, for fear of worrying the rain and causing
it to stop." 2 As a matter of fact, the man or woman
who wanted to work out of doors could not help wishing
the rain to stop, and that desire would influence it. In
Northern India, " when rain is wanted, if anyone runs I
out of a house bareheaded while it is raining, he is ordered
in at once, or he is told to put on his cap or turban, for
a bareheaded man is apt to wish involuntarily that the
rain might cease, and thus injure his neighbour." 3 It
sometimes happens that this same power is attributed to i
the wishes of animals. In the Malay Peninsula, " it is j
supposed to be lucky to keep cats because they long for
a soft cushion to lie upon, and so (indirectly) wish for the
prosperity of their masters . . . but it is considered un-
lucky to keep dogs. . . . The dog longs for the death of
his master, an event which would involve the slaying of
animals at the funeral feast, when the bones would fall to
the dogs." 4 Involuntary wishes these, but none the
less productive of effect.
From this belief of theirs, we can more readily under-
stand the special nature of the terror inspired by the magician
in certain social groups, the exasperation which finds its
expression in the tortures inflicted on him, and the suddenness
of the aggression when, after long hesitation, the natives
finally decide to get rid of him. He can work so much
evil, and at such a trifling cost ! For him, more than
for any other, it is enough to think intensely and desire
earnestly that something shall happen, and the wish meets
■ W. H. R. Rivers : The Todas, p. 255.
* E. Holub: Sieben Jahre in Siid Afrika, i. p. 431.
3 W. Crooke : The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, i.
p. 78 (1896). 4 W. W. Skeat : Malay Magic, pp. 182-3, 190-1.
with fatal fulfilment. Therefore, when he pleases, without
doing anything to attract attention, without even lifting
his little finger, he can bring ruin, disease, and death upon
his neighbour. There are but two courses open to one in
dealing with such a man — either to purchase his goodwill
or to destroy him. Hence, on the one hand, the privileges
he enjoys, the advantages of all kinds which he procures
for himself, and which no other can either refuse or dispute,
and on the other, only too frequently his most tragic end.
This power to injure by the intensity of the thought
alone is very closely connected with what is commonly
called the evil eye or jettatura. Hobley gives the reason
for this. He says : " A few people here and there throughout
the country are believed to possess this gift, women as
well as men possess it . . . the possessor is born with it.
It will gradually dawn upon the people that So-and-so
possesses the power, owing to the fact that if that person
audibly admires a beast belonging to a neighbour, the
animal shortly after that becomes sick. ... It would
therefore seem that the idea is not based on an evil chance,
but upon an envious thought. ... If a cattle owner hears
that a man who has this power . . . has been admiring
one of his cows, he will send for him and insist on his re-
moving the evil ; this is done by the man wetting his finger
with saliva, and touching the beast on the mouth, or on
various parts of the body with his wetted finger ; this is
believed to neutralize the enchantment." « The proprietor
of the sick animal, therefore, thinks that his beast is the
victim of enchantment, worked on it by the man who,
in looking at and praising it, has felt a desire for it. This
desire, whether expressed or not, acts upon it, and there
is but one remedy — the one which is always used in cases
of witchcraft. The one who has worked the spell must
himself destroy its power. The man whose desire is pro-
ductive of harm is regarded as a wizard.
" Presently a small herd of fine animals came into view.
As we were intently observing them, and someone pointed
in the direction in which they were, Aba Ganda said : ' Be
1 C. W. Hobley : " Further Researches into Kikuyu and Kamba Religious
Beliefs and Customs," J. A. I., xli. p. 433.
sure not to do that before the Gallas. Don't look much
at their cattle, and certainly avoid praising them. The
Cxallas are very jealous of their livestock ; a stranger's
admiration of it would be attributed by them to a covetous
heart and would instantly excite their ire. Take no notice
of their cattle, and if you say anything let your remarks
be of a depreciatory character rather than otherwise.'"1
In Arabia Petraea, " if anyone looks upon an animal with
a covetous eye, as if he desired to possess it, the country-
folk believe that his soul enters into direct relationship
with the animal, and that the latter will die if his owner
keeps him. In the same way, if a man covets a woman,
child, article of clothing, or anything else, his soul has the
power to injure the object coveted, and it will suffer thereby.
If the author of the evil is known, he will be robbed of a
piece of his clothing, and this will be used in fumigating
the sick man's quarters. That occasionally succeeds, but
it is not invariably the case. If the offender is not known,
recourse must be had to a ' seer,' who will find out who
it is that has affected So-and-so's animal, or So-and-so
himself thus." a
Covetousness, then, is of itself not merely a feeling or
desire, but a positive and effectual action of the soul of him
who covets upon the thing coveted. According to Preuss'
expression thought, in this case, really has the same effect
as action. Casalis had noted this too. He says : " Covet-
ousness has its own proper meaning. These people realize
only too well its dread power, and seem to regard it as an
axiom that it is impossible to impose silence on the un-
governed desires of the heart. I remember how, shortly
after my arrival in Lessuto, a chief trying to repeat the
ten commandments, could find but nine. We reminded
him of the tenth — ' Thou shalt not covet.' ' But that is
not a separate commandment,' he replied ; ' I have said
that already, when I said " Thou shalt not steal," " Thou
shalt not commit adultery." ' Thus the conscience of a
heathen revealed to him what Our Lord was obliged to
explain to those who had received the law." 3
1 Ch. New : Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 249 (1874).
3 A. Musil : Arabia Petrcsa, iii. p. 314.
s Casalis : Les Bassoutos, pp. 322-3.
This remark leaves us no doubt about the matter. In
the collective representations of the Basutos, coveting is
an act of the same kind as stealing. (Among the Bantus,
adultery is of the nature of an attack upon property.)
What we call a provision of morality is to them the working
of a mystic force exerted upon the object coveted to its
detriment. Casalis and Musil attribute this force to the
soul." The term is a convenient one, yet it corresponds
but ill with that which primitives have in mind. The close
relation established by them between desire, covetous-
ness, the evil eye, and the malignant principle which con-
stitutes witchcraft would lead us to think that there is no
question here of the " soul," such as we understand it.
Perhaps we should rather see in it the manifestation of
the mana emanating from all things, animate or inanimate,
every living being, an influence which is particularly strong
in the case of persons who are chiefs, ancestors, sorcerers,
and so on. In certain of its properties this mana
participates in the spiritual principle called the " soul,"
but in others it is widely different.
Whatever it may be, it is at least certain that according
to the collective representations of primitives, desire of
itself possesses the mystic virtue of influencing its object,
without any magic formula or definite rite. In this there
is nothing strange to a mentality which is accustomed to
consider secondary causes and means of every kind as
negligible, and to fix its attention on the unseen causes
which it regards as the only effective ones
Chapter XI
THE MYSTIC MEANING OF THE WHITE MAN'S
APPEARANCE AND OF THE THINGS HE
BRINGS WITH HIM
The sudden appearance of white people among primitives
who had previously never seen any, and in some cases had
not even imagined them to exist, and the establishment of
the early relations between the two peoples, are events of
a kind likely to throw light upon important characteristics
peculiar to the mentality of undeveloped races. How I
does such a mentality react when first brought into contact |
with white people, and all the strange and extraordinary
things they bring with them ? If we were in possession
of accurate and detailed information about this first meeting,
it would be a kind of natural experiment in which primitive
mentality, brought suddenly face to face with unforeseen
circumstances, is thrown entirely out of gear with its customs
and traditions.
Unfortunately the witnesses of events so interesting to
the science of anthropology, explorers, missionaries, and
naturalists — are not always careful to observe them with
the necessary caution. Surprised at what they see, and un-
able to make a study of people whose language is unknown
to them, and who moreover are both distrustful and timid,
they merely pay attention to whatever seems unusual, strange,
and improbable in the external appearance of the " savages "
and their ways, or else they confine themselves to describing
how relations with them, friendly or otherwise, have been
brought about. On the other hand, it is self-evident that it
is but very rarely that the natives themselves offer any testi-
mony of the impression made upon them by their first
experience of white men.
The shock of the encounter must have been all the more
violent since, as a rule, they were living in a " closed world,"
without any idea that its walls might be scaled. Their
cosmography, as far as we know anything about it, was
practically of one type up till the time of the white man's
arrival upon the scene. That of the Borneo Dayaks may
furnish us with some idea of it. " They . . . consider the
earth to be a flat surface, whilst the heavens are a dome,
a kind of glass shade which covers the earth, and comes in
contact with it at the horizon. They therefore believe
that, travelling straight on, always in the same direction,
one comes at last, without any metaphor, to touch the sky
with one's fingers. Now, as they know that Europeans
come from far away over the sea, the supposition that we
are nearer heaven comes naturally to them. It seems
to them, therefore, clearly impossible that I have not been
in the moon, and they wanted to know if in my country we
had one or several moons, and if we also had only one sun.
It was most amusing to see the signs of incredulity which
my negative answers elicited amongst my audience. ... It
was with real sorrow that they heard me assert that in
Europe the sky was quite as far from the earth as in Borneo/' l
•The Polynesians, too, " imagined that the sea which
surrounds their islands was a level plain, and that at the
visible horizon, or some distance beyond it, the sky or
rai joined the ocean, enclosing as with an arch, or hollow
cone, the islands in the immediate vicinity. They were
acquainted with other islands, as Nuuhiva, or the Marquesas,
Vaihi, or the Sandwich Islands, Tongataboo, or the Friendly
Isles. The names of these occurred in their traditions or
songs. Subsequently, too, they had heard of Beritani or
Britain, and Paniola or Spain, but they imagined that
each of these had a distinct atmosphere, and was enclosed
in the same manner as they thought the heavens surrounded
their own islands. Hence they spoke of foreigners as those
who came from behind the sky, or from the other side
1 Od. Beccari : Wanderings in the Forests of Borneo, pp. 337-8 (edit, of
1904).
of what they considered the sky of their part of the
world." "
It is the same thing in the Mortlock Islands. " The
natives drew with chalk actual maps of the whole of the
Caroline Archipelago, and also of the neighbouring Mariana
Islands. . . . One of them told us all sorts of things about
the Palaos Islands, to the west of the Caroline Isles, and
it seemed that, according to their geography, these islands
were regarded as the ultima Thule, for in reply to our question
as to what land lay beyond these isles, the native drew
a line to the west of them and explained in a very clear
and simple way that yonder, beyond the Palaos Islands,
the dome of the sky was too close to the earth to permit of
navigation ; the utmost that could be done was to crawl
along the ground or swim in the sea." 2 In the Gambier
Islands, " we were asked many questions about our country ;
and when we said that it was very far away, they asked
whether it touched the sky." 3 In Samoa, " of old, the
Samoans thought the heavens ended at the horizon and
hence the name which they gave, it is said, to the white men,
viz. papalangi or ' heaven-bursters/ " 4 Among the Melane-
sians of the Loyalty Group, " to the mind of the Lifuan,
the horizon was a tangible object at no great distance.
Many of the natives thought that if they could only reach
it they would be able to climb up to the sky." 5
Such an impression is not peculiar to the races of the
Southern Pacific. It is to be met with in South Africa.
" Heaven is for them (the Thonga) an immense solid vault
which rests upon the earth. The point where heaven
touches the earth is called bugimamusi , a curious word
of the bu-ma class, the prefix bu meaning ' place/ viz. the place
where the women can lean their pestles against the vault
(whilst everywhere else pestles must be leant against a wall
or tree)." 6 In North America, " in Indian belief, the earth
1 Rev. W. Ellis : Polynesian Researches, iii. pp. 168-9 (1829}.
a Von Kittlitz : Denkwiirdigkeiten einer Reise nach dem russischen Amerika,
Mikronesien, and dutch Kamtschatka, ii. pp. 87-8.
3 Annates de la Propagation de la foi, ix. p. 50. (Lettre du missionnaire
Caret.)
4 G. Turner: Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 103 (1861).
s E. Hadneld : Among the Natives of the Loyalty Group, p. 106 (edit. 1920).
6 H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. pp. 280-1 (191 2).
is a circular disk, usually surrounded on all sides by water,
and the sky is a solid concave hemisphere coming down at
the horizon to the level of the earth. In Cherokee and other
Indian myths the sky is continually lifting up and coming
down again to the earth like the upper blade of a pair of
scissors." l The sun, which lives outside this hemisphere,
slips between the earth and the sky-line in the morning when
there is a momentary slit, and it returns from the western
side in the evening in the same fashion.*
In a world thus enclosed on all sides, and in which each
tribe knows but itself and its nearest neighbours — above
all in the case of island dwellers — what will be the effect
produced by the sudden appearance of beings such as they
never yet have seen, beings like men, and yet differing from
them in colour, using unknown weapons, speaking in a
strange language, and manifesting many other peculiarities ?
The natives will be excited and terrified, rather than merely
astonished. That such beings may exist, their legends and
myths have already prepared them to admit. The unseen
world, which is but one with the visible world, is peopled
by beings more or less clearly defined, more or less like men,
and more particularly is it peopled by the ghosts and ancestors
who still remain men, though now in a different state. What
is really unheard-of is that the beings belonging to the unseen
world should show themselves in the full light of day, should
arrive on strange vessels, disembark, talk, and so forth.
Everything they do, and everything they bring with them
gives rise to a kind of religious dread such as travellers have
frequently described.
I should like to relate the story told by an aged native
of British Columbia. It is somewhat long, but it gives a
1 J. Mooney : " The Ghost-dance Religion," Reports of the Bureau of
American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institute, xiv. p. 971 (1881).
* This idea of the heavens resting on the earth at the horizon makes
primitives, as a rule, interpret quite literally what the missionaries tell them
about heaven, and they manifest no surprise thereat. The missionaries are
bound to know all that is going on in heaven, for does not their country lie
quite close to it ? "Not long ago, during Divine service (at Bongu, (German)
New Guinea), a native said to us : ' Of course you white men know all about
heaven and about God, for you are quite close to it. See how near the sky
is to the earth there, where you come from, and look what a long way off
it is here, where we are. We have our gods, and you have yours.' " — Berichte
der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 120 (1903)
vivid impression of the natives' first encounter with white
men. " A large canoe of Indians were busy catching halibut
in one of these channels. A thick mist enveloped them.
Suddenly they heard a sound as if a large animal was striking
through the water. Immediately they concluded a monster
from the deep was in pursuit of them. With all speed they
hauled up their fishing lines, seized the paddles, and strained
every nerve to reach the shore. Still the plunging noise came
nearer. Every minute they expected to be engulfed within
the jaws of some huge creature. However, they reached
the land, jumped on shore, and turned round in breathless
anxiety to watch the approach of the monster. Soon a
boat, filled with striking-looking men, emerged from the
mist. Though somewhat relieved of fear, the Indians stood
spell-bound with astonishment. The strangers landed, and
beckoned the Indians to come to them and bring them some
fish. One of them had over his shoulder what was supposed
to be only a stick ; presently he pointed it at a bird that
was flying past ; a violent ' poo ' went forth ; down came the
bird to the ground. The Indians ' died/ As they revived
again, they questioned each other as to their state, whether
any were dead, and what each had felt. The whites then
made signs for a fire to be lighted. The Indians proceeded
at once, according to their usual tedious fashion of rubbing
two sticks together. The strangers laughed, and one of them
snatching up a handful of dried grass, struck a spark into a
little powder placed in it. Instantly flashed another ' poo '
and a blaze. The Indians ' died.' After this, the newcomers
wanted some fish boiled. The Indians therefore put a fish and
water into one of their square wooden buckets, and set some
stones on the fire, intending, when they were hot, to cast
them into the vessel, and thus boil the fish. The whites were
not satisfied with this way. One of them fetched a tin
kettle out of the boat, put the fish and the water into it,
and then strange to say, set it on the fire. The Indians
looked on with astonishment. However, the kettle did
not consume ; the water did not run into the fire. Then
again the Indians ' died.' When the fish was done, the
strangers put on a kettle of rice on the fire. The Indians
looked at each other and whispered akshahn, akshahn
(maggots, maggots). The rice being cooked, some molasses
were produced and mixed with it. The Indians stared
and said : ' The grease of dead people.' The whites then
tendered the rice and molasses to the Indians, but they only
shrank away in disgust. Seeing this, to prove their
integrity, they sat down and enjoyed it themselves. The
sight stunned the Indians, and again they all . died . . . .
The Indians' turn had now come to make the white strangers
die. They dressed their heads and painted their faces.
A nok-nok, or wonder-working spirit, possessed them. They
came slowly and solemnly, seated themselves before the
whites, then suddenly lifted up their heads and stared.
Their reddened eyes had the desired effect. The whites
' died.' " *
The Indians had " saved their face," and the successive
" deaths " occasioned by the display of the weapons, utensils,
and food of the white men, did not last long. All these new
experiences, all these astonishing persons and things are
almost immediately classified in their minds, accustomed
as they are to imagine the occult powers. The gun at the
sound of which the bird is killed, the pot which rests on the
fire without being burnt up, etc., are so many unheard-of
marvels ; but then there is no necessity to look for an explana-
tion of them, because those who accomplish these wonders
come from the world of occult powers, or else they are very
closely connected with it. The Indian is taking part in
a dream with his eyes open. But he knows that what he
sees in the dream is at any rate quite as real as anything he
perceives in his waking state.
The Esquimaux of the eastern coast of Greenland were
not unaware that white men existed, but they had never seen
any. '* Our first meeting with the people of Angmagsalik,"
says Holm, writing in 1884, " was most curious. . . . They
had imagined us as supernatural beings like the ' inland-
dwellers' and the ' dog-men,' which are pure products of
the imagination." *
The people just referred to had heard of Europeans, but
1 Metlahkatlah ; Ten Years' Work among the Tsimsheean Indians, pp. 67-8
(C.M.S., 1869).
• G. Holm : " Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo," edit, by
Thalbitzer, Meddelelser om Groenland, xxxix. pp. 7-8.
in the Pacific, for instance, they came absolutely as a surprise.
Nearly everywhere the white people who disembarked were
taken for ghosts. In the Wallis Islands, " several natives
still have a vivid recollection of that event, and an old man
whom I always enjoy questioning tells me that at the first
appearance of the European vessel, they did not doubt but
that it was a dominion of the gods floating on the waves.
The people were confirmed in this impression on seeing the
masts, which they took for coco-nut palms." x (Missionaries
very frequently use the term " gods " for the word which
means ghosts or ancestors.) In New Caledonia, " they
think white men are the spirits of the dead, and bring sickness ;
— this is the reason why they want to kill white men." 2
In the Gambier Islands, " they asked us if we were born of
men, and without waiting for our reply the old man added :
1 Are you gods ' ? (that is, ghosts)." 3 In the same archi-
pelago " the first appearance of Europeans on their shores,"
writes another missionary, " threw the natives into a state
of extreme astonishment, immediately succeeded by fear
and terror. At first, when distance prevented them from
distinguishing the people on the strange ship clearly, our good
natives, in their simplicity, took the small vessels which
left the ship for coco-nuts floating on the sea, but when
the ship's boats came nearer and seemed to be full of unknown
beings whose very existence they had never imagined,
their consternation was extreme. The clothing with which
they perceived the Europeans to be covered made them
first of all believe that their visitors were a tattooed race.
Those whose garments covered them almost entirely passed
for marape (men tattooed right up to the face, of whom
our islanders stand in considerable awe). Finally they
decided that they were malevolent gods, come to work
their ruin." 4 In Australia this same belief is found in
many tribes which live at a great distance from each other.
" They (the natives) gave me the name of a chief who had
fallen in battle, and affirmed that I had again come among
.
1 Annates de la Propagation de la fox, xiii. p. 21. (Fr. Bataillon.)
a Rev. Geo. Turner : Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 424.
3 Annales de la Propagation de la foi, ix. p. 50. (Lettre du missionnaire
Caret.)
4 Ibid., x. p. 202 (1837). (Lettre du P. Laval.)
them as a white fellow." * "At Darnley Island, the Prince
of Wales Islands, and Cape York, the word used at each
place to signify a white man also means a ghost. Frequently
when the children were teasing Gi'om " (a white woman who
lived for several years with the natives) " they would be
gravely reproved by some elderly person telling them to
leave her, as ' poor thing ! she is nothing, only a ghost/
The Cape York people even went so far as to recognize in
several of our officers and others on shore, the ghosts of
departed friends to whom they might have borne some
fancied resemblance, and in consequence, under the new names
of Tamu, Tarka, etc., they were claimed as relatives, and
entitled to all the privileges of such." 2 I do not lay any
stress upon these well-known facts.
It is not the colour of Europeans alone which gives rise
to the idea that they are ghosts. In the Andaman Isles,
previous to any acquaintance with white races, which is
a comparatively recent occurrence, " the natives had not
the faintest knowledge of even the neighbouring coast of
Burmah, much less of the world at large. . . . The few voyagers
who from time to time ventured near their shores were
regarded as deceased ancestors who, by some dispensation,
had been permitted to revisit the earth. ... In confirmation
of this may be cited the name by which the natives of India
are to this day called, viz. ch&wgala (literally, departed
spirits)." 3 Now the natives of India are coloured men.
In the Congo territory, when white men came to a
district where none had ever been seen before, " the people
were much afraid that the presence of the white men would
stop the rain and bring on a drought. When they passed
people on the road, even, they were heard to say : ' O mother,
there will be no more rain V They had constantly to tell
the people that the rain was in God's hands, not theirs." 4
In a general way, the presence of white men was a cause of
anxiety. The natives nearly everywhere seemed to be
1 E. P. S. Sturt : Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 248 (1853).
* J. Macgillivray : Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. " Rattlesnake**
(1852).
3 E. H. Man : " On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman
Islands," J.A.I., xii. p. 100.
4 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 166. (R.T.S., 1900.)
somewhat afraid that it would be followed by catastrophe
and death. Bentley says : " There was much anxiety as to
the effect of our presence in the country. There was a
pretty general fear that disease and death would follow. . . .
In the country round, wise men shook their heads, and were
sure that the San Salvador people would die very fast ; there
would be no rain ; pest and disease of all kinds would surely
follow. Everyone was on the alert and anxious and appre-
hensive, even in San Salvador." J
In many places in the same district, white men were first
of all taken for black people who had risen from the dead.
" During the earlier part of my residence at Lukolela, I
had heard the word barimu mentioned several times in con-
nection with myself. I afterwards discovered that it meant
a ghost ; it was suggested that I was originally an African,
and had died and returned to earth with a white skin." 2
" He (the chief) sat down very near us at the invitation, and
even shook hands with us, examining curiously the hand he
had just taken." (He was convinced that they were spirits,
not human beings.) " We suggested that we were very
warm, substantial ones, and that we were in the habit of
sleeping and eating as other mortals ; indeed, we had just
accepted a goat for our dinner from our friend beside him :
did spirits eat and sleep ? * But you are spirits, not men,'
he insisted. I showed him my wife and baby on the steamer.
Had spirits wives and babies ? The chief laughed at the
idea, but then thinking, perhaps : ' Why should not spirits
have wives and babies ? ' he continued. ' No, you are spirits,
you are not good ; why do you always bring trouble ?
Our people die, our farms do not produce as they should,
our goats and fowls die, sickness and trouble comes, and
you are the cause. Why do you not let us alone ? ' " 3
Whether they be ghosts or spirits, white men belong to
the world of unseen powers, or at least are in very close
relations with it. The mere appearance of them, as we have
just seen, may be a portent — and consequently a cause — of
misfortune. Therefore when accidents, above all sudden
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley: Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 137.
1 E. J. Glave : Six Years of Adventure in Congoland, p. 95 (1893).
3 Mrs. H. M. Bentley : The Life and Labours of a Congo Pioneer t
deaths or epidemics, have occurred shortly after their arrival,
the natives have held them responsible. In Polynesia, for
instance, missionaries have very often had to suffer on
account of this coincidence. As a matter of fact their first
intercourse with Europeans was nearly always fatal to natives,
and later experience proved a strange confirmation of their
fears. " Most of the diseases which have raged in our islands
during my sojourn there," writes Williams, M have been
introduced by ships. . . . First intercourse between Europeans
and natives is, I think, invariably attended with the intro-
duction of fever, dysentery, or some other disease which
carries off numbers of people. At the island of Rapa,
nearly half the whole population were thus swept away." «
At Tanna, in the New Hebrides, " the priests wanted to kill
us . . . because our presence there was certain to make their
coughs worse. . . . There was a firm belief among all, that
of late years, since they had visits from white men, their
influenza epidemics were far more frequent and more fatal
than they used to be. This impression is not confined to
Tanna ; it is, if I mistake not, universal throughout the
Pacific." z
The natives' dread of disease (that is, of the fatal and
mystic influence exercised by disease) was so great that if
one of them left the island and returned after a period of ab-
sence, they considered him quite as dangerous as a foreigner.
Murray once saw one who had made a stay in Samoa dis-
embark at Savage Island (Niue). Here is his account of it.
" The first day crowds assembled — armed, and wishing to
kill him. The Samoan canoe given to him, together with his
chest and property, they wanted to send back to the
vessel as soon as they were landed, saying that the foreign
wood would cause disease among them. He reasoned with
them, told them to examine the wood ; it was the very same
as grew in their own island. And as to himself, he said :
' You know it is my country ; I am not a god ' " (that is, a
dead man or a ghost), " ' I am just like yourselves, I have no
control over disease.' . . . Night came on and he had no place
1 Rev. J. Williams : A Narrative of Missionary Enterprise in the South
Sea Islands, pp. 281-2 (1837).
• Rev. G. Turner : Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 28 (1861).
to lay his head. The people, fearing pollution, were afraid
to let him sleep in their houses." 1 " For years, too, after they
began to venture out on ships, they would not immediately
use anything they obtained, but hung it up in the bush in
quarantine for weeks." * " The dysentery which ravaged
in 1842 in other parts of the group . . . raged fearfully in
Eromanga. They (the natives) traced it to some hatchets
taken on shore from a sandal-wooding vessel, and threw
them all away. It is supposed that a third of the popula-
tion of the island died at this time." 3
Thus not only white men themselves, but everything
which comes from them or with them, everything that they
have touched, has the power of causing infection and death.
Not on account of actual contagion in the way familiar to
us — for the primitive has no idea of anything of that sort —
but because white people, whether they will or no, exercise
a fatal influence due to their relationship with the unseen
world. " The most marvellous powers have been attributed
to me," says Grubb. (He was the first white man to dwell
among the Lenguas of Grand Chaco.) " I have been sup-
posed to be able to hypnotize men and animals, to bring up
the storms and the south winds at will, to drive off sickness
when I felt so inclined. . . . They believed that I had the
power of the evil eye, and knowledge of the future, that I
was able to discover all secrets and to know the movements
of people in different parts of the country ... to drive off
the game from any particular part of the country, and to
speak with the dead." 4 In short, the people feared Mr.
Grubb as a wizard, with the added circumstance that as
he came from so far off his witchcraft would be all the
more dangerous.
Long after the first shock of surprise ceased to be felt,
after the native had seen white men living in his vicinity,
eating, drinking, sleeping, and even dying as he did, he yet
retained the impression that the European enjoyed some
indefinite and mysterious power. In South Africa the
early missionaries were invariably taken for wizards. " The
1 A. W. Murray : Missions in Western Polynesia, pp. 360-3 (1863).
> Ibid., p. 388.
3 Ibid., p. 178.
4 W. B. Grubb : An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, p. 47 (191 1).
missionaries who have come among them (i.e. the Kafirs
of Xosa) have up to now been unable to avoid being regarded
as wizards, and that is the chief reason why Van der Kemp
was obliged to leave the country. In fact, on one occasion
when there was a prolonged drought, the queen-mother sent
a messenger to him, ordering him to make rain. ... If at the
end of three days there was still no rain, he would be treated
as an enemy and a traitor. . . .It chanced that rain happened
to fall during the specified period, and Van der Kemp was
saved for the time being. But they were only the more
insistent on requiring the same service of him again, and
since on two successive occasions his prayers were unsuccessful
he was obliged to leave the country for the sake of his own
personal safety." x Among the Zulus also, who lived near
the Xosa, " in former years, when the real object and character
of the missionary were not understood as well as now, the
people used to apply to him to bring on a shower in time of
special need ; and even now they seem to think, oft-times,
that he has some peculiar, magical kind of control over the
clouds. . . . Moreover, as the missionary was naturally wont
to put on dark-coloured thick clothes when a raw, rainy
wind began to blow, many of the natives used to conclude
there was some mysterious connection between the black
coats and a plentiful shower."*
Moselekatze did not fail to ask Moffat if he " could make
rain." 3 Among the Bechuanas, during a prolonged drought,
the missionaries were frequently accused of having been
the cause of it. " Some weeks after my return from a
visit to Griqua Town," says Moffat, " a great discovery was
made, that the rain had been prevented by my bringing a
bag of salt from that place in my waggon. . . . The people at
last became impatient, and poured forth their curses against
Brother Hamilton and myself, as the cause of all their
sorrow. Our bell, which was rung for public worship, they
said, frightened the clouds ; our prayers came in also for a
share of the blame. ' Don't you,' said the chief rather
fiercely to me, ' bow down in your houses and pray and
J H. Lichtenstein : Reisen im siidlichen Afrika, i. pp. 410-11.
* Rev. L. Grout: Zululand, pp. 132-3.
3 R. Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, p. 550
(1842).
talk to something bad in the ground ? ' . . . and then the
rain-maker proclaimed that he had discovered the cause of
the drought. . . ' Do you not see, when clouds come over,
that Hamilton and Moffat look at them ? ' This question,
receiving a hearty and unanimous affirmation, he added,
that our white faces frightened away the clouds, and they
need not expect rain so long as we were in the country." x
The same circumstances have been noted elsewhere —
in Sumatra, Borneo, South America, etc. The first mission-
aries everywhere were looked upon as mighty wizards, not
in their character of missionaries, for that was not under-
stood at all, but merely because they were white men and,
as such, endowed with redoubtable magic powers. " When
we began to talk about the removal of the station " (on
account of the lack of water in the place), Faku said : ' Why
don't you make rain ? I know the Dangwana (the Mission
station) is a dry place, and I put you there thinking you
would make rain for yourselves, and then we would get
some at the same time/ It was in vain to contend. He
said further : ' Why do you talk to me about God ? You
yourself are God : do give us rain/ " 2 The same request'
may be made to another white man who happens to reside
in the district. In the Bangala country, for example, the
European administrator finds himself the object of their
solicitations. " Last night a deputation waited upon me
to try and get me to exercise my magic powers to stop the
rain. My confession of incompetence not being taken
seriously by them, I set myself up for a meteorological
expert at their service/' 3
II
If white men are wizards and can dispose at will of the
forces of the unseen world, their weapons and instruments
also must possess magic properties. Instead of noting
their construction and mechanism, primitives attribute the
effects they produce to these same magic properties. Here
1 R. Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes ifl South Africa, pp. 319-25.
2 A. Steedman : Wanderings and Adventure in the Interior of South Africa,
ii. p. 282 (1835).
3 C. Coquilhat : Sur le Haut Congo, pp. 214-15.
we have an opportunity, which occurs but rarely, of seeing
primitive mentality brought face to face with objects that
are altogether new to it. We can get a life-like picture of
the attitude it at once adopts. Suppose it is a question of
the effect of firearms, for instance, Dalton says : " The
most sensible of the Dayaks have a superstitious dread of
firearms ; each man, on hearing the report, fancies the ball
is making directly towards himself, he therefore runs, never
finding himself safe unless he hears the explosion of gun-
powder ; thus a man hearing the report of a swivel five miles
off, still continues at full speed, with the same trepidation as
at first, having not the least conception of the range of gun-
barrels. I have frequently been out with Selgie and other
chiefs, shooting monkeys, birds, etc., and offended them in
refusing to fire on large birds at a distance of a mile or more ;
they invariably put such refusal down to ill-nature on my
part. Again, firing at an object, they cannot credit it is
missed, although they see the bird fly away, but consider
that the shot is still pursuing, and it must fall at last " «
(on account of the magic power possessed by the weapon).
These Dayaks, therefore, when they see Europeans using
their guns, do not think of noticing what really happens,
nor what the conditions are. The deadly effect of the
bullet, in their opinion, is entirely due to the mystic power
with which the whites have endowed their weapons. The
projectile must therefore reach its goal, however distant
this may be. Should it fail to do so, it must be because
the European was not in earnest about it, or else that a yet
more powerful influence has intervened. The native never
analyses anything. He does not reason about what he
sees, since he finds no subject for reasoned thought in it.
There is no new problem facing him, and therefore there is
nothing which requires explanation. " My Kayans," says
Beccari, " had great faith in my rifle, believing that the bullet,
once fired, will follow the person aimed at until it has over-
taken and killed him." * " This barbarian," says Andersson,
speaking of an Ovambo chief, " not only believed that white
men's guns were invincible, but also entertained the notion
x E. T. Dalton in H. Ling Roth : The Natives of Sarawak, ii. p. 127.
2 Od. Beccari : Wanderings in the Forests of Borneo, p. 297.
that, without any weapons, by merely looking at a person,
a white man could cause his death. ' If not,' the brave
chief was heard to exclaim, ' how was it that Nongoro was
killed by the mere report of firearms ? ' The Ovambo never
seemed thoroughly to understand the dreadful efficiency
of these weapons, until their disastrous defeat by Green and
his party. It would appear that their previous fearlessness
arose in a great measure from merely seeing, when fired,
the flash of the discharge, and not the missile. ' When we
throw an assegai, or shoot an arrow we see it going through
the air/ said they, ' but with your rifles nothing but a harmless
fire is perceived/ From a supreme contempt of our arms,
they had now, however, gone to the other extreme, and
had the most exaggerated notion of their fearful destruc-
tiveness." 1
Like the Dayaks and the Kayans they doubtless believed
that the missile pursued the victim in flight, and thus it
was the detonation which killed. The idea of the Indians
of Queen Charlotte Island (British Columbia) with regard
to this, is very characteristic. " What most of all puzzled
the Indians was to see how on earth ' the same gun could
fire two shots at once/ by which they meant the report on
the shell being discharged, and the bursting of the shell
a few moments after on the ground/' * In this two-fold
act — the detonation at the start, which kills and the explosion
afterwards, which also kills — there was a magical process
which astounded the Indians.
Finally, it frequently happens that natives when first
making use of a gun, do not think of taking aim, and this
naturally accords with their idea of firearms. " With
practice and instruction the Papuan policeman can be trained
to be a fairly good shot, more especially as he has naturally
very keen sight . . . but considerable difficulty is always
experienced with the native police in drilling into him the
necessity of • sighting/ his natural impulse being to point
his rifle at the target and blaze away, without ever a thought
of sighting/' 3 ... It is reported that the Papuans are ex-
* C. J. Andersson : The Okawango River, p. 140.
2 F. Poole : Queen Charlotte Islands, p. 154 (1872).
3 "Papua," Annual Report, p. 85 (1908).
ceedingly keen on shooting . . . but though there are good shots
among them, most of them seem to be quite as satisfied with
the sound of the detonation as if they had hit the mark." x
"It is really a miracle that there are neither dead nor
wounded ! " (The writer is referring to a fight between
two parties of Battaks in Sumatra.) "It is really a piece
of good luck, too, that the Battaks do not know enough to
take aim ! For their success they rely entirely on Debatta
(a higher power). If anyone is hit, everybody thinks it is
because this power has directed the blow.'' 2 In this, they
imagine the efficiency of European weapons to be exactly
like their own. In Ruanda, in East Africa, " the natives
have no hesitation in saying that arrows, spears, swords
have no power but that received from the bazimu (the
ancestors and the forces of the unseen world), and that
these same bazimu can make even the finest weapons ineffec-
tual." 3
However formidable the white man's weapons may be,
the effect of them may be contraverted, and even nullified,
if a power of magic charm superior to their own be brought
to bear upon them. The Kafir, with a blind confidence
in the power possessed by the wizard of his tribe, will fear-
lessly expose himself to the white man's bombs and bullets.
Even the most disastrous experience fails to convince him
of his error. The sole conclusion he draws from it is that
the white man's magic has once more proved stronger than
that of the Kafir sorcerer, but when the latter has once
discovered the charm which ensures victory, the white man's
rifles and guns in their turn will prove ineffectual. " After
this " (a certain magical operation) " every warrior was
fully persuaded that he was invulnerable, that the bullets
would be deflected on either side of him, that, even should
they hit him, they would flatten against his body and fall
harmless to the ground." 4
1 " Papua," Annual Report, p. ioo.
2 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 137 (1900) ; cf. Brenner :
Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 338.
3 Fr. A. Arnoux : " Le culte de la soci£te secrete des Imandwa au
Ruanda," Anthropos, vii. p. 288.
4 H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, i. pp. 439-40.
III
Printed books and writing are no less astonishing to
primitives than are firearms, but they find no hesitation in
accounting for them. They immediately perceive them to
be divining instruments. "My books puzzled them,"
says Moffat, in reference to certain Bechuanas; " they asked
me if they were my bola (prognosticating dice)." 1 Living-
stone, too, says : " The idea that enters their minds is that
books are our instruments of divination/' 2 We remember
the reply made by a Transvaal native to the missionary
who was reproving him for consulting the dice : " That is
our book ; you read your Bible every day, and you believe |
it, and we read ours/'3 The book, like the astragali, predicts
the future, reveals what is hidden, is both guide and coun-
sellor ; in short, it is a mystic power. Of the Barotse Arnot
says : M The only difference, they think, between our lequalo
and theirs is that ours is a confused mass of little black
marks on paper, and theirs is surely much more sensible, as it
consists of substantial things ! " 4 Livingstone says again :
M To all who have not acquired it, a knowledge of letters is
quite unfathomable ; there is nought like it within the com-
pass of their observation ; and we have no comparison
with anything except pictures to aid them in comprehending
the idea of signs of words. It seems to them supernatural
that we see in a book things taking place, or having occurred
at a distance. No amount of explanation conveys the idea
unless they learn to read/' 5 " Sekhome . . . asked me one
day whether Mr. Price had started on his return journey to
the Mission. I told him I did not know. ' Well then/
he said, ' ask your books ; they will tell you/ " "In the
Matebele country ' the books ' were regarded at the time
of my visit, and by almost all with whom I came in contact,
as the ' sacred things ' or the ' divining things ' of the white
man's religion. ' To learn the books ' was therefore regarded
1 Robert Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, p. 384.
8 David Livingstone : The Zambesi and its Tributaries, p. 557 (1865).
3 Vide supra, chap. vii. p. 194.
4 F. S. Arnot : Garenganze, p. 75.
s D. Livingstone : Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa,
p. 189.
las a formal entrance upon the practice of the white man's
mode of worship. It occupied an initial position in their
minds similar to that our baptism really occupies. They
had no idea that a man might learn to read and yet choose
to remain a heathen.'' x
This last remark throws a strong light upon the idea
which reading presents to the primitive mind. It is a magic
process designed to secure for the white man all that negroes
ask of their dreams, their visions, and their astragali. We
should say that he who is converted to Christianity learns to
read (so that he may follow the service and become acquainted
with the Scriptures). The native, on the other hand, says:
He who learns to read is being converted. As a matter of
fact, when he abandons his astragali for books, he no longer
addresses himself to those unseen powers, those ancestors,
to whom he has been accustomed to pray, and whom he has
consulted up to now. But he reckons that reading will
provide him with the same kind of revelation, proceeding
from yet higher powers, and that the protection afforded
him will therefore be all the more effective. " He was
learning to read, absolutely convinced that such marvellous
knowledge was a panacea for all ills and a sure road to good
fortune ; but one fine day, after an accident had occurred
to him, he began to have doubts about the efficacy of the
acquirement, and he threw his primer into the waste-paper
basket." z Learning to read, therefore, in the native's eyes
is equivalent to changing his religion.
How can these printed characters reveal so much to the
one who deciphers them ? The primitive no more tries
to explain this than he does to find out why the rifle and
jcannon carry death to so great a distance. Books are mirrors.
I When the Xosa Kafirs first saw Europeans reading, they
jcalled the book nadi, adding ot heeta (a mirror for speaking).
jEver since then, they called a mirror nadi ok hangeela (a
mirror for looking into)." 3 In the Congo, too, " my reading
a book puzzled them greatly," says Glave ; " they thought
it an instrument of magic with which I could see far into the
1 Rev. J. Mackenzie : Ten Years North of the Orange River, p. 336.
2 Missions dvangeliques, xl. p. 170 (1865).
3 H. Liechtenstein : Reiscn im siidlichen Afrika, i. p. 165.
future, and even asked me to look in my talla talla (mirror)
to inform them whether a sick child would recover." l But
as a rule, natives prefer to say that the book " speaks." " A
Bechuana one day asked what the square objects on the]
table were, and was told that they were books, and
that the books gave information. He immediately put
one to his ear, but hearing no sound, said : ' This book
tells me nothing/ He then shook it and tried it again
and finally laid it down, saying, ' Perhaps it is asleep' ?
Another time a native brought me a parcel which my
wife had sent me. I took a letter from this parcel
and read it aloud to a chief who was with me, a man
who knew what writing was, whereupon the messenger who
had brought the parcel said, in a very frightened voice :
' I shan't carry any more letters. If that one had spoken
to me on the way, I should have been afraid ! ' Another
messenger refused to carry a letter until he had put his
spear through it, so that it might not speak to him on the
way." * " Recently, our young brethren were in a village
proclaiming the Gospel, and one of them, taking the New
Testament in his hand, said that he was only repeating
what the Word of God said, when Sechachi seized the book,!
put it to his ear, and exclaimed : ' It is a lie ; I am listening
carefully, and the book is not saying anything at all,' and|
then there were roars of laughter and mocking gibes." 3
Since reading is a purely magical process which consists :
in seeing or hearing, it ought not to have to be learnt, butj
should be acquired, and that not in a series of laborious
efforts, but all at once. " They (the Bechuanas) thought
that it would be a fine thing indeed to be able to read books |
in common with myself, and supposing that there was some
royal road to learning, they very simply imagined the art
could be acquired by a single exertion of the mental energies,
1 E. J. Glave : Six Years of Adventure in Congoiand, p. 74.
3 R. Moffat in Missions evangeliques, xvi. p. 207 ; cf. D. Crantz : History
of Greenland. " In the beginning of their acquaintance with the Europeans,
they were so frightened at the speaking paper that they did not dare to carry
a letter from one to another, or to touch a book, because they believed it
must be conjuration, that one man could tell the thoughts of another, by
a few black scrawls on a white paper. They also seriously thought that
when a minister read God's commandments to them he surely must have
heard the voice first out of the book."
3 Missions evangdliques, xxxvi. p. 96 (1856). (Martin.)
or by some secret charm that they thought I might possess.
I had administered medicine to some few sick, and one who
was seriously ill had derived much benefit from having
a quantity of blood taken from his arm ; and as the doctors
among the Bechuanas generally unite physic and charms,
they very naturally thought that I might be able to charm
a knowledge of reading into their heads." x " It was the
same thing with the Ashantis. Among other things Opoku
said to us : ' Give me some of your medicine so that I may
rub my eyes and be able to read what is printed/ We told
him he was too old, but we would teach his children to read.
Whereupon he began to laugh, and went off." 2
In default of a charm which would instantaneously furnish
them with the power to read, however, some negroes decided
to acquire the art by the ordinary methods, but without any
great faith in them. " At first these good people set to work
very reluctantly, protesting that it was absurd to expect
a negro to be clever enough to make paper speak. But our
persuasions having prevailed, they decided to try. In spite
of all their forebodings some slight progress was made, and
at each lesson the chances of ultimate success seemed to be
on the increase. Finally the great problem was really
solved ; one fine morning about ten or twelve of our pupils
discovered that they were able to find, unaided, the actual
meaning of several sentences they had never yet attempted.
World-wide publicity was accorded to this fact, and the wise
men of the district declared that we must have changed the
hearts of their compatriots by means of some very powerful
charm." 3
This last is a very significant circumstance. To the minds
of the Basuto " soothsayers," the natives who have learned
to read have been converted, that is, they have renounced
what we may call ancestor-worship. Now the missionaries,
powerful magicians as they undoubtedly were, would never
have obtained such a result if they had not made use of
magic weapons. " The notion that external and material
methods can act upon the soul and change its nature, is so
1 R. Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, p. 599.
• Ramseyer und Kiihne : Vier Jahre in Asanti, p. 123.
3 E. Casalis : Les Bassoutos, pp. 86-7.
deeply rooted in them that the first conversions to Chris-
tianity which they witnessed were all attributed to the effect
of some mysterious specific which the missionaries had made
their pupils take, unknown to themselves." « By virtue
of a similar belief, " Faku will not listen when the subject of
his children's learning to read is introduced ; he is pained
at knowing it is possible to express the sound of his name
upon paper, being probably influenced by a superstitious
idea of our having it in our power, by this means, to bewitch
him/' 2 With the Bangala of the Upper Congo, " what end-
less exclamations and discussions there were when they
came to be paid ! I had previously taken down the names
of those who had been engaged, and they were immensely
astonished at hearing me repeat them some hours later. It j
was the first time that they clearly understood the object
of writing, although I had often told them that writing was
the custodian of words. They nevertheless continued to |
attribute extraordinary powers to it, such as my instantaneous
communication, when separated by an immense distance
from them, with N'sassi (Captain Hanssens) and Boula
Matari (Stanley), the arrival of materials, etc." 3
Even when the native has apparently understood what
writing is, even when he can read and write himself, he
never entirely loses his feeling that there is some mystic
power connected with it. Dr. Pechuel-Loesche noticed this
iact in Loango. " Whilst the astonishment produced by
this wonderful accomplishment is slightly lessened, because
some of them have learnt to read and write, their respect
for it remains. ... To see a negro very gravely powdering
with sand or dust what he has just written in pencil, is very
comical. But this action is not merely an amusing imitation
of the white man. It has a more profound significance ;
for earth strengthens and sanctifies." 4
As to the practical utility of reading and writing, that is
only appreciated after a long time. " When Moshesh the
chief wants to send orders to subjects at a distance, he
1 E. Cassalis : Les Bassoutos, pp. 86-7
* A. Steedman : Wanderings and Adventures yn the Interior of South
Africa, ii. p. 273 (1835).
3 C. Coquilhat : Sur le Haut Congo, p. 216.
4 Dr. PechuSl-Loesche : Die Loango Expedition, iii. 2. pp. 58-9.
I calls one of his special messengers and tells him all that he
J wants them to know, down to the very smallest detail.
The messenger retains all his master's words very faithfully
in his memory, and repeats them exactly as they were given.
Experience has shown that this method of communication
is a better one than letters for natives, because in writing
one sums up a long argument in a very few words, while
the Mosuto, in order to understand thoroughly what he is
being told, must have it set out at length and in all its
details/' *
The foregoing instances have nearly all been taken from
Bantu tribes. A few examples will doubtless suffice to
show that primitive mentality everywhere visualizes reading
and writing in much the same way as in Africa. Thus,
in speaking of Western Australia, Bishop Salvado says : " I
am naturally led to refer to the kind of veneration felt by
savages for the books and written papers which they call
' talking papers.' They attribute magic power to them,
believing they are able to reveal secret things, and they
are so persuaded of this that when they want to clear them-
selves of some charge made against them, they say : ' Here
is the talking book or the paper ; now you can see who is
! right.'" ^
In North Australia, " the natives have also, as it were,
extended this feeling of sacredness of the persons of their
[own messengers to those of aboriginals who are carrying
messages for white men. A letter is always . . . carried in a
cleft stick so that it can be seen easily . . . the cleft stick acting
as a special passport. They look upon the paper y abler (letter)
as a mysterious thing which is endowed with the capacity
of seeing. . . . An aboriginal who abstracted a stalk of tobacco
from a parcel he was carrying . . . was highly indignant with
the paper yabber for telling the white man what he had
done, because he had hidden it in a hollow log while commit-
ting the theft, so that it should not be able to see what he
was doing." 3
On Easter Island, " one day," says a missionary, " while
1 Missions ivangiliques, xxxi. p. 210 (1856). (Maeder.)
» Bishop Salvado : Mimoires historiques sur VAustralie, p. 182.
3 B. Spencer: Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, p. 36.
(C.M.S., 1914.)
I was taking my class, I perceived a ship. Hoping it might
possibly touch our coast, I went to my hut to write a few
lines. From a distance my pupils watched me very care-
fully ; they imagined I was endowed with the faculty of
speaking to those who were absent, and that I was now
making use of this power. As soon as I returned to them i
they asked me what I had been saying to the ship." x These
little Polynesians were themselves learning to write, but
that did not prevent their believing that their master, the
white man, was able, by means of signs which he traced on
paper, to communicate from a distance with people whom
he could not see, and to hear their words in reply. At
Raro tonga the natives, when they saw the missionary reading,
said that he and his God were talking to each other. " They
thought that the paper which has been written upon talked,
and they were surprised at hearing no sound." * In New
Caledonia, " we have already said more than once," writes
Pastor Leenhardt, " that ' receiving the Gospel ' means,
in the Caledonian tongue, ' learning to write/ " 3 In the
school at Nias, " when we had ordered some coco-nuts
to be brought, and were resting in the shade near the house,
a man called out, ' Don't let the children go near ! These
foreigners have books ! ' The poor fellow took us for magi-
cians." 4 " In Borneo, the Kayans begged Dr. Nieuwenhuis
to protect their hut by hanging up some pieces of news-
paper, which always makes a great impression on the people
of the interior, on account of its mysterious signs. . . . The
Dayaks' idea that if men can read it is because the printed
letters whisper something to them, accounts for the respect
they show for everything written or printed." 5 Lastly,
not to make our list too long, the Bannars of Laos have the
very same notions about writing. " ' What ! ' they say
to the missionary, ' how is it that you hear it speaking,
while we cannot hear a single sound of its voice ! ' Then
they ask us about the future, convinced that nothing is
1 Annates de la Propagation de la fox, xxxviii. p. 125. (Fr. Eugfene
Eyraud.)
a Rev. J. Williams : A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South
Sea Islands, p. T75 (1837) » cf- PP- iT8-20.
3 Missions ivangeliques, lxxxii. i. p. 276.
4 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 210 (1891).
* A. W. ISieuwenhuis : Quer durch Borneo, ii. p. 337.
J hidden from those who possess a knowledge of laboor (paper).
I . . . Some wanted to know how a war would turn out ; others
I desired to hear how long they might expect to live. We could
I have made a livelihood by telling fortunes ; it was no use
our telling them that the paper could not make known
things of that kind, we always heard our questioners saying
to each other : ' They know it very well, but they don't want
to tell us.' " *
IV
Other things introduced by Europeans, and the results
of their work, however surprising these may be, are never-
theless at once accounted for, just as weapons, writing, and
books have been, in the primitive's mind. White people
are certainly mighty wizards ; and if they obtain the results
they aim at, is there anything surprising in it ? These
results, as far as the primitive judges of them, do not depend
upon what we should call their essential and adequate
conditions, or, at any rate, to a very secondary degree only.
Their really " efficient cause " always is the magic power
possessed by the white man. Even when they do not under-
stand anything at all about the matter in question, they
nevertheless account for it in this way. Thus " the Ang-
magsalik attached supernatural power to our anthropological
measurements, although I myself did nothing which could
give occasion to such a belief. Those who were most addicted
to this superstition were old people or people suffering from
some bodily defect. One man, when I had finished measur-
ing him, exclaimed : ' Well now, let us hope the hand will
get better ! ' His hand had been stiff for a very long time
and he was suffering from pain in its joints." 2
They give the same explanation, and with better reason,
when it is a case of results which the natives desire for
themselves. " The goats belonging to the Mission seemed
to get on very well, and Mr. Buchanan was beset with many
entreaties for a medicine to increase the goats of the neigh-
* Annates de la Propagation de la foi, xxvii. pp. 412-13. (Lettre du
missionnaire Combes.)
1 G. Holm : " An Ethnological Sketch of the Anmagsalik Eskimo," edit,
by W. Thalbitzer, Meddelelser om Groenland, xxxix. p. 86.
bouring chiefs." * Not far away, in another district of
Central Africa, " I was more than once asked for medicine I
to make dogs fierce. It was obvious that European dogs
were more powerful and better barkers than the miserable
curs which haunt native villages." a These people do not
notice that the European dogs are better fed, or at any rate
if they do see it, which is quite possible, they do not think
of connecting this fact, as the cause, with the vigour of
the dogs, as the effect. They are already persuaded that the
good health of the dogs is due to a " charm " which the
white man possesses. " In Teso," says the same missionary,
" we were also credited with the possession of medicine for
making babies white. This came out when one day the chief's
wife expressed great astonishment at our little son having
a white skin at so youthful a period of his existence as six
months old. She had always thought that Europeans were
born black like all the babies she had ever seen, and turned
white later by the assiduous application of some potent
medicine."
This quaint idea is not unique. In Togoland, " when
a European child is born, most of the people cannot under-
stand how it is he is not a negro, seeing he was born in Africa.
They admit a priori that the influence of locality is stronger
than that of heredity." 3 Of the Basutos Casalis writes : '
took the first little white boy ever born in the country to the
chief town. . . . The mothers were eager to bring their own
babies to compare with ours, and to ask us how we managed
to keep him as healthy as he appeared." 4 How they
" managed " meant, " what charm was used," for un~
doubtedly there would be some magic charm or process
involved. As a rule, the lowest grades of natives, seeing
that the white men themselves are not like other men, do
not know what to think their children are likely to be ;
indeed, they hardly expect them to have any. In Nias
Island, " up to that time they had never conceived it possible
that the children of a tuan (white lord) could die. . . . They
thought that the tuan's children at any rate would escape
1 Rev. Duff Macdonald : Africana, i. p. 46 (1882).
■ Rev. A. L. Kitching : On the Backwaters of the Nile, p. 266 (i9I2)«
3 C. Meinhof : Afrikanische Religionen, pp. 67-8,
E. Casalis : Les Bassoutos, p. 84,
death, because he had so many ' charms ' he could use to
prevent it." l In (German) New Guinea, " of all the many
things which the native has become acquainted with through
his intercourse with white people, up to now nothing has
astonished him so much as the little white babies. Possibly
the reason is because for a long time the Papuan believed
that the white strangers were not really men, but some
kind of spirits who had fallen from the sky behind the
horizon yonder, or had come out of the earth, without being
born." 2
According to the Bangala of the Upper Congo, white men
come out of the water, and that is where they get their
materials from. " Some of the natives assert that I get
cowries, pearls, and mitakou from the depths of the earth.
Others say that these fine things come from the bottom of
the sea ; to them the white man is an aquatic being, and I
myself sleep beneath the waves. But they are all agreed
in considering me related to Ibanza, a god or a devil of whom
they often talk. The more I deny my supernatural ancestry,
the more firmly do they believe in it." 3 Here we can
readily recognize the traces of a belief which is widespread
throughout the Bantu districts of Africa and even beyond,
and that is that the Europeans come from the depths of the
sea. " When the Landrost asked Gika (a Kafir chief) why
the people had murdered those who were driven ashore upon
his coast, he said they had no business in his country, but
should have kept in their own, meaning the sea, for the
Kafirs thought they had risen up from the bottom of the sea,
having seen the top mast first, then gradually more and more
till they beheld the hull, which made them conclude they
were natives of the water."4 " He (a Barotse chief) often
asked me why, since we come from the north, we should
have appeared in the south, and how we travelled here.
Textile materials are a source of great astonishment to them,
they cannot believe that they are made by human beings ;
no, say they, these materials come from the bottom of the
ia, and the people who travel in ships go there to get them
1 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 38 (1906).
* Ibid., p. 74 (1902).
3 C. Coquilhat : Sur le Haut Congo, p. 215.
1 Rev. J. Campbell : Travels in South Africa, p. 526.
Everything which seems strange to them is done by the men
in the water. I believe that to their way of thinking there
are some kinds of magicians or deities who inhabit the depths
of the sea." ■ " It seems," says Junod, too, " that in former
times the Thonga believed that the white people, not onty
Portuguese, dwelt in water." 2
It is possibly in the Lower Congo that this belief is most
fully developed. " Nearer the coast, the people believe
that the dead are bought by the white men, and that the
spirits go to work for the white men under the sea ; there
they weave cloth, and make the various things sold for
native prodnce.3 . . . Matiko and several others accompanied
a missionary to Banana ; they prosecuted an awed search
for their dead relatives among the population there, expecting
to find some. On their return to San Salvador, the people
asked after their dead friends, and were disappointed that
none of them had been seen at Banana ! And this at San
Salvador, four hundred years after the first white men went
to live there ! The natives also believed . . . that tinned
meat . . . was human flesh. They had always heard that
white men bought the spirits of men, and now the mystery
was solved, as to what they did with them. The home of
the white men, they were sure, was under the sea, for on the
coast they saw the ships slowly rise far out from the land ;
first the mast, then the hull." 4
One can readily imagine that things like the compass,
telescope, opera-glasses, mirrors, etc., when seen for the first
1 Missions dvangeliques, lxi. p. 480.
a H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. p. 332.
3 A curiously similar belief prevails in New Guinea. The white men,
it is believed, have not themselves manufactured the things they possess,
steamers, tomahawks, calico, etc, . . . but have obtained them from the
spirits of the dead. This is evident from the fact that if, for instance, a
tomahawk is broken, a white man cannot make it intact. The spirits bring
the various things from their land on steamers, and when they arrive the
white men go out to meet them and seize all the things, steamers and all,
carrying them off. The natives at first connected my constant inquiries as
to their ideas about the dead with this belief. They thought that I wanted,
through their help, to get into contact with the spirits in order to obtain
some boatload or other of beautiful things. . . . The first white men who
arrived in the country were thought to be returning spirits of the dead.
The word used for a white man is manakai or markai, which, like oboro,
means " spirit of a dead person." Clothes are called oboro-tama, or skin of
a spirit. — Landtman : *' The Folk -tales of the Kiwai Papuans," Acta
societatis scientiarum fennic<z, xlvii. p. 181.
♦ Revf W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. pp. 252-3.
time, surprise and terrify the natives. Seeing that they
have already concluded without further thought that
white men are very powerful magicians, they naturally
think that the most ordinary things they use must possess
magical properties. " Soap," says Macdonald, " was a
great novelty to the natives ; they were much amused with
the peculiar ' feel ' it gave to clothes. They thought it
was a kind of clothes ' medicine,' and trusted more to its
magic than to their own rubbing." J
As we have already seen, the native doctor's remedies,
and still more those of the white man, produce their effect,
not by virtue of their natural properties, but because of the
mystic influence they exercise. According to native ideas,
the conversions which a missionary is able to effect are
due to a similar influence. " Many of them," says Moffat,
" alarmed at the progress made by the ' medicine of God's
word ' as they term it, were loud in their complaints of the
new order of things which was introduced, and some were
so determinately opposed to this new order or doctrine,
that they removed to districts beyond the reach of the
Christian atmosphere. Some were concerned lest the water
in the river which passed our houses might receive an infusion,
and being drunk, transform them too." * The following
circumstance clearly shows how natives represent to their
own minds the magic operations which can bring about
conversion. " In 1856 a young man was being instructed,
with a view to baptism. . . . His relatives were terrified,
and believed they were about to lose him. On the pretext
that his father was ill and wanted to see him, they took
him away from the Mission station and back to his birth-
place, where they first of all endeavoured by all kinds of
arguments and entreaties to convert him to paganism
once more. As his absence was prolonged, some of the
missionaries came to inquire after him. They were told
that he was dead and buried, but as a matter of fact his
relatives had imprisoned and concealed him. Finally they
had made him swallow a remedy calculated to cure his
abominable ' conversion-disease,' and they had washed all
* Rev. D. Macdonald : Africana, ii. p. 96.
* R. Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Ajrica, p. 576.
his clothing so that the poison of the new faith might be
completely expelled." 1
In East Africa, " the Baluba ... at once pronounce the
things they have never seen before, and which they fear will
bring trouble upon them, to be ' witchcraft ' (Zaubermittel).
... In their eyes I, with everything belonging to me, was
considered a most mighty wizard, whose presence in their
country could portend no good. Whenever I looked at my
watch, or consulted the compass, there was a general panic." *
These unknown objects might indeed be possessed of extra-
ordinarily harmful qualities, and they could not escape
from them too quickly. Almost everywhere, a photographic
apparatus seemed a peculiarly dangerous object.
" Ignorant natives," says Junod, " instinctively object
to being photographed. They say : ' These white people
want to steal us and take us with them, far away into the
lands which we do not know, and we shall remain only an
incomplete being/ When shown a magic lantern, you hear
them pitying the men *shown on the pictures, and saying :
1 This is the way they are ill-treating us when they take our
photographs ! ' Before the 1894 war broke out, I had gone
to show the magic lantern in remote heathen villages, and
people accused me of having caused the disturbance through
having brought to life again men who had died long ago." 3
Even when natives have had years of intercourse with
white people, the slightest change in what they are accustomed
to see is quite enough to excite their fears afresh. For
instance, a four-masted schooner appeared in Ambriz.
" Such a thing as a ' ship with four sticks ' had never been
seen before, and without waiting to inquire, every black
ran away from Ambriz ; and the same thing happened on
her return from Loanda. It was only after repeated voyages
that the natives lost their fear of her ; they could give no
other reason than that it had never been seen before and
that therefore it must be a signal for the white men to do
something which they could not understand." 4
1 Dr. Wangemann : Die Berliner Mission in Zululande, p. 197. (Lettre
du missionnaire Posselt.)
2 H. von Wissmann, Wolf . . . Im Innern Afrikas, p. 229.
3 H. A. Junod : The Life of a South African Tribe, ii. p. 340.
* J. J. Monteiro : Angola and the River Congo, i. p. 125.
Occurrences of this sort have constantly been noted.
I shall quote but a few such cases, taken from the primitive
peoples of the South Pacific, and these show clearly how the
feeling of fear excited by the appearance of something hitherto
unknown predominates over every other, and at first excludes
all else. For example, with the Narrinyeri, Taplin says :
" 1 remember well the first time some of the women heard
our clock strike. They listened with astonishment ; then
inquired hurriedly in a whisper : ' What him say ? ' and
rushed out of the house in terror without waiting for an
answer." »
Until the Europeans came, Australian aborigines had
never seen boiling water. " When Pamphlet arrived among
them, they had no more idea that water could be made
hot than that it could be made solid ; and on his heating
some in a tin pot which he had saved from the wreck, the
whole tribe gathered round us and watched the pot till it
began to boil, when they all took to their heels, shouting
and screaming; nor could they be persuaded to return till
they saw him pour the water out and clean the pot, when
they slowly ventured back, and carefully covered the place
where the water had been spilt, with sand. During the whole
of our countrymen's stay among them, they were never
reconciled to this operation of boiling." 2
Their first experience of steel (about which they after-
wards became so eager) seems to have been very similar
to that of the boiling water. Macgillivray relates : " While
getting words from a very intelligent native whose attention
I secured by giving him various little presents from time
to time, I had occasion to point to a bamboo scoop lying in
the canoe in order to get its name. The man, to my surprise
. . . taking up a bit of stick, showed me that this scoop was
used as a knife. Not to be outdone, I took one of our common
knives and cut away vigorously at a piece of wood, to show
the superiority of our knives over this one ; he appeared
suddenly to become terrified, talked vehemently to the others,
drew their attention to me, and repeated my motions of
1 Rev. G. Taplin : The Narrinyeri Tribe, p. 68.
1 Narrative of M. Oxley's expedition to survey Port Curtis and Moreton
Bay, in Field's Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales, pp. 59-60 (1825);
cf. G. Taplin : The Narrinyeri Tribe, p. 42.
cutting the wood, after which his canoe pushed off from the
steamer's side. My friend refused to accept of the knife — as
I afterwards found the natives had also done to other people
when iron implements were offered them — nor would he
pay any further attention to my attempts to effect a recon-
ciliation." x
At Ualan, in the Caroline Islands, to natives who are
already somewhat accustomed to the presence of white
men, a knife is the object of unbounded admiration, and
many of them want to try it. " I did not wish to appear
disobliging, although I was afraid they might not be able
to use it unaided without danger. As a matter of fact,
one of them did cut his finger. The wound was a trifling
one ; nevertheless, the whole party betrayed immense terror.
The injured man fell into a condition of stupor, and sat
there motionless, with his eyes closed, just like a man
expecting an immediate death." * It was only with difficulty
that Von Kittlitz could reassure him by showing him the
scars of old cuts on his own fingers. This incident shows
that the natives looked upon the knife with very different
eyes from those of Europeans. To them the fragment of
refined steel was endowed with wonderful occult power, and
consequently the very slightest wound it inflicted might
prove fatal.
Similarly " the most astonishing thing was the small
box, explained by a Port Moresby native to those around, as
containing things that told roads, heights, and weather. I
opened it and showed them my barometer, thermometer,
and compass, and tried to explain to them their uses. ' Shut
it, shut it, put it away, now put it away ; we shall be all
sick.' " 3
In short, under whatever form the white man's activity
attracts the attention of the native, until custom has rendered
it familiar it is at once and unhesitatingly interpreted in
the same sort of way. The doctor who treats their maladies,
1 J. Macgillivray : Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. " Rattlesnake," ii.
pp. 29-30 (1852).
« Von Kittlitz : Denkwiirdigkeiten einer Reise nach dent russischen
Amerika, Mikronesien, and durch Kamischatka, ii. pp. 27-S-
I J. Chalmers and W. W. Gill : Work and Adventure in New Guinea
(Kabadi District), p. 159. (R.T.S., 1885.)
I the explorer or trader who crosses their territory, the
I missionary who establishes himself among them and explains
I the Gospel to them — if these succeed in their undertakings,
I they do so only by virtue of the magic power of which their
I " medicines " are the vehicle. It is therefore according to
their success that these same " medicines " are estimated,
and upon their worth that the white man's prestige in its
turn depends.
It therefore seems incorrect to state, as has so frequently
I been done, that primitives fear and respect nothing but force.
On the contrary, what Europeans understand by this term
I is not even known to them, and they consequently appear
• quite indifferent to it. If they do yield to brute force, it
i is without having understood its nature. That which in-
spires fear and respect in them is mystic force, that of the
I unseen powers whose co-operation the white man knows how
to secure, and this alone it is which makes his implements
and weapons effective and irresistible.
Chapter XII
THE PRIMITIVE'S DISLIKE OF THE UNKNOWN
After having attempted to analyse primitive mentality,
at least as far as the essential characteristics of its being
and its functioning are concerned, it will be interesting to
see how it develops and the laws which govern this develop-
ment. Unfortunately, the preliminaries necessary to a
study of this kind are still unavailable. With very few
exceptions, primitive peoples have no history. Their myths,
which in other respects prove so instructive, do not take its
place. The little that we do know with any certainty about
their institutions and their languages allows only of hypo-
theses that are but arbitrary.
Up to the present, however, it is possible to formulate
one general law, founded upon the testimony of many
investigators. Primitive peoples, as a rule, show themselves
hostile to everything coming from without, at least unless
it be from neighbouring tribes like their own, people of
the same race, customs, and institutions, with whom they
could live on friendly terms. From the real " stranger "
they neither borrow nor accept anything. Any changes,
even if they are undoubted improvements, must be forced
upon them. If they are free to accept or to reject them,
their choice is not a matter of doubt. They form, as it
were, sealed systems in which every entrant runs the risk
of setting up a process of decomposition. They are like
organisms capable of living for a very long time whilst
the general environment changes but slightly, but which
very rapidly degenerate and die when invaded by new
elements.
From the physiological point of view, as we know,
intercourse with white people nearly everywhere (North
and South America, Polynesia, Melanesia, etc.) has proved
| fatal to native races. Most of them, decimated by the
diseases the whites bring with them, have disappeared,
and many of those now remaining are becoming extinct.
From the social point of view we note just the same pheno-
mena. The primitives' institutions, like their languages,
quickly disappear, as soon as they have to submit to the
| presence and influence of white races.
That primitive societies should be unable to withstand
[ the shock of this encounter, might have been foreseen from
[ their constitution, which makes their communities so
f different from those in which we live, and so easily vulner-
I able. Their ancestors, both recent and remote, the unseen
spirits and forces of all kinds, the species which people
the air, water and soil, the very earth, and even its rocks
and incidental configurations, everything within the limits
\ of the locality occupied by the social group " belongs "
| to it, as we have seen, in the mystic sense of the word.
It is reciprocally bound, by a complex network of partici-
! pations, to the place itself and the unseen powers which
s people it and make their influence felt in it. Hence relations
| that appear to us perfectly natural and harmless, run the
risk of exposing the group to dangers which are ill-defined
and therefore all the more to be dreaded. The slightest
1 intercourse with foreigners, the simple fact of receiving
food or implements from them, may lead to catastrophe.
Who knows how this may affect such-and-such an occult
power, and what may be the result ? Hence arise those
signs of dread and distrust among primitives which the
white races often interpret as expressing hostility ; then
there is bloodshed, reprisals follow, and sometimes the
extermination of the group is the result. If, on the other
hand, friendly relations are established, if a regular trading
takes place between the white men and the natives, especially
if several of them come to live and work among the white
people, as a consequence of a more or less voluntary " en-
gagement," the consequences are often no less disastrous.
In a very short time the native, abruptly exposed to fresh
influences, comes to despise and forget his own traditions.
His own code of morality tends to disappear. He begins
to speak a kind of patois or pidgin-English, the sense of
solidarity of the group is weakened and with it its desire
to exist.
In any case, as long as it lasts, as long as the social
group feels itself a living force and does not abandon the
struggle, it repels instinctively, as it were, the new elements
imported by the foreigner. It is in this way, as we shall
presently see, that we must understand what is generally
called the misoneism of primitive peoples. Left to them-
selves they are naturally conservative, but it is by no means
sure that they would be more hostile than any others to
certain innovations. Their institutions do change, though
very slowly, and it seems as if they accept the changes
when they are proposed by an authority which they respect,
and in a form which does not make them uneasy. Spencer
and Gillen state this explicitly with regard to the Arunta
tribe.1 In all other cases, resolute and insurmountable
mistrust is awakened and remains persistent.
»
In the first place, primitives will hardly ever accept
without hesitation food, even if of a known variety, offered
by foreigners. In British New Guinea, for example, where
the Administrators frequently come in contact with natives
who have not yet seen Europeans, " while the many tribes
of natives we met on our expedition showed no suspicion
and absolute confidence in us, after we had succeeded in
establishing friendly relations, frequently coming to our
camp and sitting round the fire at night, and bringing their
women and children to see the ' pale-faces ' during the
day-time, they all, without exception, refused even to
taste any food we offered them, although they would wrap
it up in leaves, probably as a curiosity/' 2 " The Arabi
River natives are now friendly. . . . They were given
presents by the manager of the store, and were also given
food, but they would not touch it." 3
1 Spencer and Gillen : The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 324 (1899).
* "Papua," Annual Report, p. 170 (1911).
3 Ibid., p. 89 (1914).
The fact that the food is not prepared in the usual
#ay is quite sufficient to account for this repugnance.
' The Managulasi natives are unacquainted with the use
3f the earthenware pot, and do all their cooking with stones ;
n fact, they refuse to eat food cooked otherwise. I saw
two natives from very close to the district nearly starve,
oecause they had not the necessary stones to prepare their
food." *
In the myths collected by Landtman among the Kiwai
Papuans of New Guinea, we see expressed in various forms
the fear which foods they are not acquainted with inspires
in the natives. " Sepuse left a ripe banana close to Sido
who, after eating it, ' fell down dead ' (which means * fainted ')
not being used to that kind of food." 2 " Bidja was the
first man to touch fish, for up to that time the Mawata
people only collected shell-fish. They called ordinary fish
ebihare. (mysterious beings) and ran away from them.
Bidja (who had been instructed to do so by a spirit in his
dream), shot a stingray, cooked . . . and ate it. . .
Contrary to their expectation the people found in the
morning that Bidja was no worse for eating . . . ebihare.
. . . Thenceforward the people discontinued their work
(in the gardens and went fishing." 3 In another legend a
[mythical person saw a coco-nut for the first time. M He
[husked one of the nuts, broke it open, and by way of trial
gave a piece of the kernel to one dog, which he did not
I care about. But the good dogs all sprang up, bit the other
[and snatched away the coco-nut which they devoured.
They licked their lips and whined for more. The man
; waited a little, but as nothing happened, he thought, ' Oh,
I that good kaikai,' and ... tasted it himself." 4 He believed
Ithat the dogs would fall victims to their imprudence.
This distrust and these precautions can be accounted
for in many ways, and especially in the two following.
Everything yet unknown is suspicious ; who knows what
fatal power may possibly be concealed in the apparently
1 " Papua," Annual Report, p. 128 (191 2).
» G. Landtman : " The Folk-tales of the Kiwai Papuans." Acta societatis
scientiarum fennicce, xlvii. p. 95.
3 Ibid., p. 212.
4 Ibid., p. 318.
harmless food offered to the native ? On seeing fruit with
which he is unacquainted in a country he has not explored,
a white man will avoid tasting it until he has ascertained
that it is not poisonous. In the same way, new food
inspires the primitive with a fear that it may be the vehicle
of a deadly witchcraft, and nothing will persuade him to
taste it. In the second place, eating, to him, is not merely
the satisfaction of an elemental need. It is an act the
significance and mystic effects of which may be of para-
mount importance. The food-substance is incorporated with
the very being of the man who eats it, the participation
between them is so close that the two form but one, and
what the primitive eats becomes a part of his ego. Among
many uncivilized races, as we know, everyone religiously
gathers up the tiniest fragment of food remaining, and
carries it away to throw it into the water, or burn it, or
destroy it in some other way, for if these fragments fell
into the hands of an enemy, he would henceforth control
the existence of this careless person. Still stronger would
be the reasons, therefore, for not taking into one's own
body and assimilating an unknown substance which might
prove fatal. Hence primitives will only eat food which
past experience has shown to be harmless, the beneficial
effect of which is accounted for by the mystic relations
established between the social group and certain animal
and vegetable substances. Very frequently special cere-
monies at certain times of the year dramatically express,
renew, and strengthen these relations, upon which the;
very life of the social group depends.
A superstitious belief related by Spencer clearly shows
what, according to the natives, the consequence of partaking
of a food unknown to their dietary may be.
In many tribes of Northern Australia, " the existence
of half-castes, given unwillingly by their mothers, speaking
in pidgin-English is ' Too much me been eat em white
man's flour/ The chief difference that they acknowledge
between their life before and after they came into contact
with white men was, not the fact that they had intercourse
with white men, instead of, or side by side with, blacks,
but that they ate white flour and that this naturally affected
.
the colour of their offspring." * The negroes were not long
lin finding this explanation insufficient, but at first they
Jaccepted it as their wives did, and it was the first that
|occurred to their minds.
In the same way, if the white man's cooking inspires
the native with invincible repugnance, it is, too, on account
of the malign influences which their utensils might engender.
In the eyes of the New Zealand Maoris, no impurity could
exceed that of the cooking utensils. In the case of the
Tarahumares of Mexico, " some of them, after eating from
my plates and cups, went to the river to rinse their mouths
and wash their hands carefully, to get rid of any evil that
might lurk in the white man's vessels." a
For the same reason, similar suspicions extend to all
the objects from which a malign influence is to be feared,
because their origin is doubtful. Thus it has been noted
that the natives of the New Hebrides refused to accept
things brought by one of their own race who had lived
among white people ; they watched these closely, or rather
they put them in quarantine. When once thoroughly at
home with the missionaries, the Bechuanas of South Africa
owned that the presents they had sent to the king on their
first arrival in the country, had not been delivered to him,
lest the acceptance of them might be followed by some
disaster. There are innumerable instances of this kind.
Without laying any further stress upon them, I shall merely
remark that the term " misoneism " but ill describes them.
It is not solely, nor indeed actually because they are new
that these things are rejected ; it is also, and even more,
because they are potential bearers of fatal influences.
II
When it is a case of discontinuing a traditional custom
or deliberately adopting a practice hitherto unknown, re-
sistance is as energetic as it is obstinate. Investigators,
especially missionaries, have clearly realized the reason
* B. Spencer: The Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia,
pp. 25-6.
1 Carl Lumholtz : Unknown Mexico, i. p. 224. (MacmiUans, 1903.)
I
for this. " The New Guinea man is intensely conservative,
and he does what his father and grandfather and great-
grandfather did ; what was good enough for them was
quite good enough for him, as the man who was building!
a canoe in Wadau said when he rejected with scorn the
suggestion to build a big, comfortable platform in the canoe
as the Boianai people do, instead of the little skimpy one:
at each end the Wadau people affect. ' No, it is not ou
way ' (and perhaps the Boianai people might object to the
infringement of their patent rights)." ■
The same missionary relates that at a certain great
festival the natives sacrificed pigs by the most deliberate
and cruel methods, and that they had been ordered hence-
forth to despatch their victims as quickly and humanely
as possible. " Very early in the morning the killing of
the pigs began, and towards the end some of the old people
got anxious at the awful breach of custom in the way the
butchering was being done, and a deputation came to tell
us that they must kill one pig in their own way so that the
mango trees might hear the squeals, otherwise they would
not bear fruit." 2
In (German) New Guinea " the natives burn the fine
1 tortoise-shell with the rest of the tortoise. It is their custom
and they do not depart from it. We have often pointed
out that this tortoise-shell is very valuable and they could
get a good deal of money for it, but up to now our sug-
gestions have been in vain. They always used to promise
to change their custom ' next time ' in order to satisfy us,
but when the next occasion occurred they did just the
same as before. They have not courage enough to abandon
old customs . . . they lack the necessary energy." 3
In New Pomerania, " when a boat is under way, the
outrigger is on the left. If the waves come from this side,
it serves effectually to break their force. As these boats
are alike fore and aft, you would think that when the
waves are on the right the natives would navigate in
1 Rev. H. Newton : In Far New Guinea, pp. 125-6.
3 Ibid., p. 154.
3 P. Fritz Vorman, S.V.D. : " Das tagliche Leben der Papua (unter
besonderer Beriicksichtigung des Valman Stammes auf Deutsch Neue
Guinea) " Anthropos, xii-xiii. p. 901 (1907).
such a way that the outrigger can be on the right.
Nothing of the sort. The Kanuck has so great a dislike of
any innovation that he persists in going on with this to
larboard even when the waves are on the starboard side
and filling his bark with water. When I argued with them
on this point, the natives granted that a change in their
customs would only be advantageous, and I always wondered
whether it was from lack of ability to make up their minds
that they were unable to adopt a change which they yet
recognized as an improvement." «
In short, as the Nias missionaries state, " the natives
do not know and will not have anything different from
what they already have, and it satisfies them entirely.
They want nothing better." * This is a fact ; and we can
easily perceive the reason of it, which is almost the same
everywhere. By abandoning or in any way modifying
their traditional customs and adopting new ways, they
would expose themselves to incalculable risks, and above
all, to the anger of their ancestors, those powerful members
of the social group, and this for some advantage which,
even if certain, is in any case not indispensable. Such
a fear is openly expressed by the natives of Kiwai in New
Guinea. " My friends had been describing to me certain
ceremonies they employ for the purpose of making the
crops grow, and they were really anxious about the wisdom
of adopting the new religion, which they fully realized
would require them to give up these practices, for if they
did not do as their fathers had done, how could the yams
and sago grow ? * It's all very fine,' they urged, ' for
Tamate (Chalmers, the missionary), as everything he eats
comes out of tins, which he gets from the store on Thursday
Island, but how about us ? ' " 3
In South Africa, a European was endeavouring to
domesticate the Bushmen. " He tried to persuade them
to purchase goats with ostrich feathers, or skins of game
procured in the chase. At this proposal they laughed
inordinately, asking him if their forefathers ever kept cattle ;
* Pfeil (Graf J.) : Studien und Beobachtungen aus der Siidsee, p. 92.
a Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 217 (1895).
3 A. C. Haddon : Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown, p. 98.
intimating, that they were not intended to keep, but to
eat, as their progenitors had always done." 1 A similar
suggestion, made by a German missionary, was received
in exactly the same way. " I entreated them," says he,
" to remain here, to make gardens and plant corn. I
offered to give them the seeds ; but they burst out laughing,
and said it would kill them to do so." 2
In the Bantu tribes, whose organization is already fairly
complicated, the conservative spirit is no less strong.
For instance, it was hopeless to try and dissuade Kafirs
from their horrible methods of dealing with sorcerers. It
was the custom, and against this magic word no argument
can avail. " What would the spirits of our ancestors say
if we were to change our customs ? To punish us they
would make our wives and our fields barren, and at length
the white man would ' eat up our land.' " 3 " Formerly,"
says the Rev. John Philip, " it was against their practice
to deviate from the customs of their ancestors. When
urged to plant corn, etc., they used to reply that their
fathers were wiser than themselves, and yet were content
to do as they did ; they also regarded every innovation
as an insult to the memory of their ancestors." 4 The
first French missionaries in this district bore witness to
the same fact. " According to native ideas," says Casalis,
" there could be no more direct provocation of the anger
of the ancestors they worshipped than by departing from
the precepts and examples they left behind them." 5 " Ask
the Basutos the reason for these customs, and they will
not be able to tell you. They do not reflect, and they have
neither guiding principles nor doctrines. The only thing
that is of importance in their eyes is the accomplishment
of certain traditional acts, and the preservation of the
connection with the past and those who lived in it." 6
The supreme conduct of life, therefore, is to do what
ancestors have done, and to do that only. The earliest
1 R. Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, p. 63.
3 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 49 (1897).
3 Fr. iEgidius Miiller : " Wahrsagerei bei den Kaffern," Anthropos, iL
pp. 48-9.
* Rev. J. Philip : Researches in South Africa, ii. p. I J 8 (1828),
s Missions evangdliques, xv. p. 122 (1840).
* Ibid., lxxxii. 2. p, 336 (1907). (Dieterjen.)
investigators quoted several examples of this. " The Mat-
chappees," says Campbell, " though very fond of potatoes,
have never been prevailed upon to plant any, because they
resemble nothing which has been handed down to them
from their forefathers." l With reference to the same
tribe, a contemporary of Campbell's writes as follows :
I That their horticulture does not include the tobacco plant,
is a circumstance to be wondered at, when it is considered
how excessively fond they are of smoking, and that the
nations beyond them, as well as the Hottentots at Klaar-
water, cultivate it with success ; and where they have
therefore seen, and become well acquainted with the plant.
But this is again proof of the force of custom, and of the
slowness with which uncivilized men admit improvement,
when it contradicts ancient habits or prejudices / for on
being asked why they did not themselves grow tobacco
instead of begging it from every stranger, who visited them,
they replied that they did not know the reason, but believed
it was because it had never been their practice to plant it.
Yet the cultivation of this, and of various other vegetables
which I mentioned to them, was confessed to be a desirable
object ; and it appeared from this acknowledgment that
they were not absolutely averse to making the attempt."2
It may be so, but this latter point remains doubtful. The
natives' assent apparently signifies, first and foremost,
that they do not want to contradict the white man. It
says nothing about what they will really do.
" The chiefs who have died," says Junod, " become
the country's gods. What they have done is what must
yet be done, the way in which they lived is the supreme
model ; the traditions bequeathed by ancestors to their
descendants most clearly demonstrate the religion and moral
code of these people. Custom, handed down from pre-
historic times, makes their law. Nobody dreams of evading
it. To do differently from others, psa yila, it is forbidden.
It would be an attack on the divine authority of the an-
cestors, and an act of sacrilege. The more free of foreign
1 Rev. J. Campbell: Travels in South Africa {Second Journey), i. p. 191.
(1823).
2 Rev. Wm. J. Burchell : Truveh in the Interior of Southern Africa, it
p. 588,
elements the tribe is, and the less it is subjected to
extraneous influences, the more firmly is this principle
maintained." x
This feature of inviolability extends to every sort of
custom, to the division of labour between the sexes, for
instance, which besides depends sometimes upon reasons
of a mystic nature.1 One day Moffat saw among the
Bechuanas the wife of an exalted personage who, helped
by others, was building a hut, preparing to climb on to its
roof by the aid of a branch of a tree. He remarked that
women ought to leave that sort of work to their husbands.
There was a general outburst of laughter. " Mahuto, the
queen, and several of the men drawing near to ascertain
the cause of the merriment, the women repeated my strange
and, to them, ludicrous proposal, when another peal of
mirth ensued. Mahuto, who was a sensible and shrewd
woman, stated that the plan, though hopeless, was a good
one, as they often thought our custom was much better
than theirs." 3 A polite, and possibly sincere, remark ;
yet this queen would never deliberately have changed any
custom respected from time immemorial. Since they know
the missionary well, and he speaks their language, they
do not hide from him what they think. Let women's
work be done by men ! Such a ridiculous idea could only
occur to a white man !
The regulations thus imposed by tradition form a very
complicated system, yet everyone thinks it quite natural
to conform to them in all points and at all times. " Super-
stition," says Mauch, " plays an enormous part in the life
and conduct of the Makalolo, and their most trifling actions
are regulated by it. Such for instance, as the way in which
wood is put on the fire, the method of seating oneself in
a hut, of holding the broom or the spoon, of satisfying the
demands of nature, etc. The bellows will have no power
unless they are made of the skin of a goat which has been
skinned while still alive ; the furnace will not burn properly
unless a certain charm has been mixed with the clay, and
1 H. A. Junod : Les Ba-Ronga, pp. 226-7.
a Cf. supra, chap. x. pp. 316-20.
3 R. Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, pp. 252-3.
I during its making it has received a present of beef, tea and
[ beer, etc." l
Even when once established, an innovation for a long
I time remains doubtful. It is a well-known fact that the
I old custom, for mystic reasons, is always ready to regain
I the supremacy, and in certain circumstances it actually
I does so. I shall quote but one example. " To the Bushongo,
I raffia cloth, introduced more than three hundred years
I ago, is still considered an innovation. On all ceremonial
occasions, the high dignitaries dress themselves in dried
skins, as their ancestors did. Or again, when a woman
goes into mourning she puts on a garment made of skin ;
she abstains from eating cassava, which was introduced
but fairly recently, as if by obeying ancient customs she
could appease the powers which are the source of her grief." 3
However great may be the force of habit, however
apparently instinctive the respect it inspires, some clever
and inventive persons, in these communities as in our
own, are always attracted by novelty. What will happen
if a man tries to modify any existing habit ? Unless he
acts with extreme caution, and takes pains to secure the
consent, I might almost say the complicity, of the influ-
ential persons of the group, the consequences may prove
very disastrous to him. In most primitive communities,
and especially in those of South or Central Africa of which
we have been speaking, he runs a risk of losing his life.
' The whole existence of the native," says Fr. iEgidius
Muller," is a system of customs to which he must conform ;
if he discards them he falls under a suspicion of witchcraft." 3
There are abundant examples of this ; here are a few of
them. In the Congo region " the most progressive men,"
says Bentley, " are the first to be destroyed. When the
india-rubber trade commenced, the first to sell it were
killed as witches ; so, too, with every innovation." 4 There
is nothing more dangerous than not to do as others do,
* Carl Mauch : " Reisen im Innern von Sud Afrika (1865-72)." Peter-
mann's Mitteilungen. Erg&nzungsheft, n. 87, p. 43.
2 Torday and Joyce : " Les Bushongo," Annates du Musde du Congo
beige, S6rie III, t. ii. p. 13.
3 Fr. ^Egidius Muller : " Wahrsagerei bei den Kaffern," Anthropos, ii.
P- 55-
4 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 278 (1900).
to do better, or above all, to do something which has never
been done before. " Some twenty-five years ago," writes
Weeks, " I knew a blacksmith who made a very good imi-
tation, from old hoop-iron, of a trade knife, and when the
king heard of it he thought it was too clever and threatened
him with a charge of witchcraft if he made any more like
it. . . . Some years ago I knew a native medicine-woman
who was successful in treating certain native diseases, and
as she became wealthy, the natives accused her of giving
the sickness by witchcraft in order to cure and to be paid
for it ; for they said : ' How can she cure it so easily unless
she first gave it ? ' She had to abandon her practice or
she would have been killed as a witch. The introduction
of a new article of trade has always brought to the introducer
a charge of witchcraft, and there is a legend that the man
who discovered the way to tap palm trees for palm wine
was charged as a witch and paid the penalty with his life." l
Why should the idea of sorcery immediately present
itself to the native in these cases, and many like them ?
It doubtless arises out of the constant orientation of primitive
mentality which immediately refers all it sees or ascertains
to a mystic cause, without paying the slightest attention
to what we call the series of objective and visible causes
and effects. The Congoland smith succeeds in making a
European knife out of a piece of iron which is part
of a barrel-hoop, and we admire his initiative, and the
skill and perseverance of the artisan who has been able
to do so much with such poor material and such inferior
tools. Primitive mentality remains quite indifferent to
these good qualities ; it does not even notice them. What
strikes the primitive mind, and the point it alone fastens
upon, is the disquieting novelty of the result obtained.
How could a knife like the white man's have been produced
in the smithy, if the maker had not had a magic influence
to aid him ? He therefore becomes a suspicious character.
Anyone who, like him, obtains a success nobody had imagined
before, will expose himself to the same accusation. It
matters little if he makes no mystery of the operations he
* Rev. J. H. Weeks : " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the
Upper Congo River," J. A I., xxxix. p. 108.
has thought out or carried into effect. According to native
ideas, his success is not due to them, but to an occult power
which alone has made the means employed effective. Im-
mediately the troublesome question arises : how was he
able to secure the co-operation of this occult power ? Is
he not a wizard ?
By virtue of this same decree, " no man can be richer
than his neighbour, nor must he acquire his riches by any
other than the usual or established means of barter or
trade of the native products of the country, or his planta-
tions. Should a native return to his town, after no matter
how long an absence, with more than a moderate amoun
of cloth, beads, etc. ... he is immediately accused o
witchcraft . . . and his property distributed among all,
and he is often fined as well." * To the primitive mind,
to succeed too well and obtain an unusually happy result
is equivalent to being the only one to escape from a danger
which has overwhelmed all the rest, and this they think
is invariably due to witchcraft, since there is no such thing
as chance. We have already had examples of this,* and
here are a few more. A Kafir who was the sole member
of his social group to recover from smallpox, was killed
during the night by other members of the tribe, and to
justify this act of murder they alleged that it was he who
by his witchcraft had brought the plague into the kraal. 3
11 During an epidemic which raged here (Fiji Isles) for some
months, as we alone were exempt from the malady, our
islanders imagined us to be the cause of the scourge, and
invented a story to this effect. I had, they said, a mysterious
box, and when I opened it, fevers spread about the country." 4
Thus, even when a native knows the way to avoid
approaching disaster, he would rather suffer with the rest
than be the only one to escape, and he will make no effort
to withdraw. As regards the Waschamba, " a native knows
1 J. J. Monteiro : Angola and the River Congo, i. pp. 280-1.
3 Cf. supra, chap. i. pp. 47-50.
3 The South African Commercial Advertiser (April 17, 1841). Extract
from the Papers and Proceedings of the Aborigines Protection Society, ii.
5, pp. 158-0.
4 Annates de la Propagation de la foi, xxviii. p. 387 (1856). (Lettre du
R. P. Mathieu.)
quite well that he could drive away a swarm of locusts by
shouts, beating of drums, the smoke of a fire if he made
one, but he does not make use of any of these methods,
for if his land were thus to be the only part spared, his
less fortunate neighbours might accuse him of witchcraft,
the very fact of his plantation not having suffered being
brought forward as proof. More certainly still would they
impute to him the sending of the swarm of locusts on to
their land. That is why, as a defence against this pest,
they make use of magic means only." " Why should locusts
come and devour the Waschamba crops ? It is assuredly
some malign influence which has attracted them hither,
and the fact that one individual's land alone escapes will
indicate him as the guilty person. To the primitive mind,
such an evidence is actual proof.
The man, too, who lives to a great age and is the sole
survivor of his generation, is equally suspect. How did
he contrive to lengthen out his life thus, while all his con-
temporaries have disappeared ? Should some misfortune
occur, suspicion will immediately fall on him. " Kiala,
the chief of the town," says Bentley, " had relatives in
Mpete, a town two hours distant ; one of them died, and
the accusation of the cause of the death by witchcraft was
fastened on an old man of Mpete. Kiala and his party
urged that he should take nkasa. There had been no
intervention of a witch-doctor, but the old man had outlived
all his generation and the people said that he survived
because he was the cause of the death of all of them ; he
was the witch, so of course he survived. We cautioned
Kiala, and he was afraid to let things take their usual
course for fear of the State ; he therefore determined to
put him to death without actually killing him ! He took
a party up to Mpete one moonlight night, caught the old
man in his house, and bound him. They dug a hole in
front of the house, put the old man in, and buried him
alive. If he died it was his business ; nobody had killed
him ! " *
» A. Karasek-Eichhorn : Beitr&ge zur Kenntniss der Waschamba^
B&ssler Archiv. i. p. 182 (1911)-
> Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, ii. pp. 335-6.
The " misoneism " which we find among these peoples,
then, is the direct consequence of the conformity which,
for reasons peculiar to primitive mentality, is strictly
binding on all individuals. To be singular in any way
whatever, is to lay oneself open to suspicion. Among
certain Bantus, for instance, "the son must not aspire to
anything better than his father has had before him. If
a man desires to improve the style of his hut, to make a
larger dwelling than is customary ; if he should wear a
fine or different style of dress to that of his fellows, he is
instantly fined ; and he becomes, too, the object of such
scathing ridicule, that he were a bold man indeed who would
venture to excite it against himself." J Among the Kafirs,
I the rites and ceremonies . . . are not matters of indiffer-
ence, which may be performed or neglected at the will of
the native, but they are the trust and confidence of the Kafir ;
and in his estimation, his life and well-being depend on
their due performance, and were he to despise and neglect
them, he would . . . lose caste, and be avoided by his
friends and neighbours as a suspicious character, who must
be trusting to the arts and powers of witchcraft or he would
never be guilty of such a heinous crime. And should any
misfortune befall the kraal, and a priest be applied to, to
perform the umhlahlo, or ' smelling out/ such suspicious
person would, no doubt, be pointed out by the priest as
the cause thereof, and punished as a wizard. Another
thing, which effectually prevents them from committing
any infractions of these rites and ceremonies, is the super-
stitious fear which they themselves have of incurring the
displeasure of the umshologu (ancestors) by so doing, and con-
sequently, that some supernatural evils should befall them." *
This arbitrary conformity does not weigh on indi-
viduals as much as one might think. They are accus-
tomed to it from infancy, and as a rule they do not
imagine that things could be different. The relations of
the individual to the social group (the family, clan, and
tribe) make it easy to bear. In short, in these communities
1 Ch. New: Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. no.
s Col. C. S. Maclean, C.B. : A Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs.
p. 1 06.
the individual is far less distinct from his group than in
our own. The social solidarity may not be closer, it assuredly
is not so complex, but its nature is more like that of
a living body. The individual is more completely a
member of the group, in the strict sense of the term. The
claims of the vendetta, for instance, are equally satisfied,
whether it be the murderer himself or any other individual
belonging to his group who suffers death at the hands of
one of the victim's relatives. All the members of a family
are equally responsible for the debt of any one of them, etc.
"As a rule, among the Basutos, the important acts of life
are not left to individual caprice, but regulated and arranged
by the entire family. In short, the individual never really
attains his majority, he must be more or less in the tutelage
of his family, clan, and tribe. He has no individuality,
he is but a member of the familial or national community." l
This attitude gives rise to one of the most frequent
and persistent misunderstandings between missionaries and
natives. The missionaries want to save souls. They use
every effort to try and induce each member of their flock,
male or female, to abandon heathen practices and become
adherents of the true faith. But natives, as a rule, have
no idea of individual salvation. They think, as the mis-
sionaries do, that death is but the portal to another existence,
but they have no idea that each one of them may be saved
or damned on his own account. Their profound and per-
petual sentiment of solidarity with the group and with
their chiefs (when the community comprises any), makes it
impossible for them to understand what the missionary
so ardently desires for them, and even what he really wants
to accomplish. There is too great a gulf between the
primitive mind and the missionary's aim. How could the
native imagine his personal destiny as dependent alone
upon his faith and his actions — to say nothing of Divine
grace — when he has never even contemplated such indi-
vidual independence in the community to which he belongs ?
Consequently, conversions to Christianity, when they
do occur, are general in their nature, especially where the
1 E. Jacottet : " Moeurs, coutumes et superstitions des Bassoutos,"
Bulletin da la SocUte de Giographie de Neuchdtel, ix. p. 123, note 2 (1897).
chief's authority is already established, or where the col-
lective existence of the group is personified in him. " The
need of support is second nature to them (the Basutos),
and we might say that from birth they bear the mark of
the collar. Their attachment to their chiefs is something
instinctive, such as that of the bees for their queen. It
would never occur to them that they might combine to
break their yoke ; at most, if it becomes too oppressive
they may try to avoid it personally by a change of masters." *
Let us suppose that these masters, as so often happens,
remain deaf to the persuasions of the missionaries. " If,
setting aside these lesser chiefs, hardened in their absurd
pride, we turn to their subjects, what will they say to us ?
' We are only our masters' dogs, children without under-
standing. How can we accept what our masters reject ? * "*
It is the same with the Barotse. M Everything must
originate with the head of the tribe ; if Lewanika orders
us to learn what you tell us, we shall learn ; if he rejects
your teaching, who will dare to act differently ? " " The
nation has but one mind, one will. The individual is an-
nihilated, we have here the centralization principle pushed
to its extreme limit, or to put it in another way, the death
of all for the sake of one/' 3 If the chief does not go to
church, the building remains empty. " What we noticed
at Seshake was that even if the village were overflowing
with people, if the chiefs did not come to our services, no
one else was present/' 4 More than once, moreover, the
missionary realizes and deplores the fact that individual
conversion is, as it were, impossible for the native ; it is
asking too much of him. " For the poor Mosuto to receive
the Gospel, means a refusal to share in a ceremonial which
is ordered by the chief and regarded as essential to the
prosperity of the tribe ; it means refusing to use his assegai
against neighbouring tribes. In a word, it means renouncing
the name and status of Mosuto, and thus exposing himself
to having the few cows he possesses carried off, and these
are the sole means of subsistence for him and his family." 5
1 Missions evangeliques, lxi. p. 447 (1886). (Duvoisin.)
1 Ibid., xxiii. p. 85 (1848). (Schrumpf.)
3 Ibid., lxii. p. 217 (1887). (Jeanmairet.)
4 Ibid., lxiii. p. 105 (1888). (Jeanmairet.) S Ibid., xiii. p. 5 (1838).
These, however, are but the material results of the rupture
of a social bond, whose nature we are very far from under-
standing. According to the words of Father Trilles : "In
the Bantu conception of the cosmos, the individual does
not exist ; organized collectivity on the other hand is,
properly speaking, the only being which has a real existence.
This is actual, the former accidental ; this persists, while
the other is transient." ■
Facts like this are constantly met with in other thai
Bantu tribes. To take but one instance only, the Germai
missionaries at Nias have frequently proved, and many
times described, the impossibility of effecting individual
conversions. " Nobody wants to make up his mind on
his own account. The counsels of the old men must decide
in cases of a change of religion, for to our Nias native such
matters are State affairs. It will be all or none. . . .
The strictness of the social bond relieves the individual
of all responsibility, but at the same time it deprives him
of his personal liberty. From his rigid social solidarity,
and the slight value accorded to individual personality
in consequence, there arise situations requiring much time
and experience before they can be estimated aright." 3
III
To these reasons, both positive and mystic, which bind
primitive peoples so closely to their customs and make
innovations unwelcome, we must add another not yet
stated and by no means the least important. Primitive
mentality, intensely mystic as it is, is but very slightly
conceptual. It feels very strongly, but it hardly ever
analyses, nor does it think in abstract terms. Consequently,
when it forms its judgment of values, in which its likes
and dislikes, its feelings in general and its passions are
expressed, it must at the same time represent to itself in
concrete fashion what the object of these is. In other
words, it does not formulate general judgments of values,
founded upon a positive comparison of things apparently
1 R. P. H. Trilles : Le totemisme des Fdn, p. 369.
* Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 274 (1907).
ery dissimilar, any more than it constructs general concepts
|)f an abstract nature. Judgments of this sort would involve
ntellectual processes which are quite simple and familiar
;o us, but for which the primitive has neither taste nor
Lptitude. He instinctively shuns them, as it were.
Moreover, he does not estimate the value of a process,
nethod, tool, utensil, in short of any means whatever of
icting so as to attain a result, as we are accustomed to do,
|:hat is, by observing the yield of the method, instrument,
jkc, and comparing it objectively with others, regarding
ipach feature of it in the abstract and apart from any other
Consideration. He can doubtless perceive the greater or
J Lesser efficiency of the methods and instruments he employs,
[but he does not make this the exclusive object of a special
I scrutiny ; he does not judge it by itself. The mystic ele-
ments upon which the success of an enterprise or action
of any sort whatever depends, must always enter into the
reckoning. Consequently, the primitive's judgment of values
will remain concrete and comparatively specialized, and
often this proves disconcerting to European investigators.
They do not understand how the natives, seeing before
them two examples of the same thing, the one native-
made, clumsy, and ill-contrived, the other of European
,make, of improved pattern and easy to handle, can continue
to prefer their own as they so often do, at any rate in the
early days.
"These" (the missionaries' houses), "the natives say,
are very excellent houses ; but ' why cannot they live in
houses such as their fathers lived in ? ' Their canoes are
the same ; our vessels and boats are here, and are better
than their own ; but still they will be contented with what
they have. Their mode of dress . . . will also do for them
... To all this they will generally yield their assent, but
make no effort to improve. They praise our superior habits,
but continue to practise their own." "
The Fijians' assent is a matter of pure politeness, it
is rarely that the native does not try to please his inter-
locutor by assenting to what he says. Moreover, the primi-
1 Wesleyan Missionary Notices, vi., p. 199 (December 1848). (Journal
of the Rev. Walter Lawry.)
tives' attitude is explained by the nature of their judgmem
of values. The European houses and ships are quite the
right thing for Europeans, and the Fijian houses and ship*
are equally convenient for themselves. It matters very
little to find out which buildings in themselves it would
be pleasanter to live in, or which vessels would prove mon
seaworthy. Such a question does not occur to the primitive
mind. If their boats allow of their going from one island
to another, and of making fairly long voyages, it is not
only nor indeed chiefly on account of their nautical
qualities, it is primarily because the occult powers favourable
to the Fijians and attentive to the prayers of their chiefs,
give these boats the power of traversing space, protect
them from storms and contrary winds, triumph victoriously
over other occult powers which are hostile, and so on. In
short, the successful use of these canoes presumes nothing
short of a complex Nensemble of definite participations
shared by the Fijian group and the invisible powers upon
which it depends. Who cannot see that it is exactly
the same with the white man's ships ? The use of these
splendid vessels, too, must be subordinated to the sum-
total of the mystic life of his social group, and everything
seems to prove that Europeans stand in relation to occult
powers of an uncommon kind. These are unknown and
hence probably hostile to the Fijians, therefore what use
could they make of such vessels ? Who knows whether
these powers, aroused to anger by seeing " their " vessels
adopted, might not cause the Fijians to perish ? The
most ordinary prudence therefore requires them to remain
faithful to traditional customs in this as in other respects.
If, to suppose an impossibility, the Fijians should become
white men, that is, if their social group should be fused
with that of the whites, and their respective ancestors
mingled together, if their guardian spirits were to fraternize
— then, and then only, could the Fijians, without risk and
with possible advantage, accept and adopt the white man's
implements and his way of life. Until that should happen,
they can but remain faithful to their own customs, the
only ones which guarantee any security. When they agree
with Europeans that their way of doing things is better,
Ihey say to themselves, " better for you ! " The idea of
Its being " better in itself " has no meaning for them.
These same Fijians, " in taking English medicine during
Jtheir illness, . . . frequently renounce heathenism, in the
lidea that this is necessary to secure the efficacy of the
fchysic." x We see how they reason the matter out. The
■idea of any physiological effect the medicine may have is
Altogether foreign to them. Its mystic influence is the
jonly one they conceive of. From this standpoint, the
j;Christians' remedies could have no virtue in themselves,
lor of an universal kind ; they are good for the Christians.
[Let us therefore become Christians, and then these wonderful
i remedies will cure us as if we were English. " One of
I King Tanoo's wives," says Waterhouse, " having embraced
J Christianity ' to give efficiency to the English medicine '
she was then taking, was compelled by Tanoo to return
to heathenism as soon as she recovered. ' You are only
a Christian to save your neck from strangling when my
father dies/ was the remark of the chief when he ordered
her to apostasize." 2
In other primitive communities, whether inferior or
superior to the Fijians of a generation ago, we should
find the same specializing of the judgment of values, the
same difficulty, not to say impossibility, of imagining that
what is good and useful to the white man may, for the same
reason, be good and useful to the native ; that he may be
cured by the same medicaments, use the same methods,
have the same education and the same religion, and find
the same destiny in the next life. " ' You are right,' say
the Papuans to the missionary. But — they add — ' the
other has always been our custom. To us the rotoi (spirit,
deity), has given the Ai ; to you, God's word and the
teachings of Christ. We are black men, and you white.'
These are arguments which are constantly advanced." 3
In British New Guinea, M I knew of an instance where the
daughter of a native missionary had died. He accused
» Rev. J. Waterhouse : The King and People of Fiji, p. 420 (1866).
■ Ibid., p. 108.
3 Berichte der rheiniscken Missionsgesellschaft, pp. 1 15-16 (1899). (German)
New Guinea'
the local sorcerer of causing her death. He was remonstrated
with for beJieving in puri-puri (witchcraft). His replj
was to the effect that ' you are white men, and do not
understand the New Guinea medicine. I am a New Guinea
native, and I know it.' " " His apparent conversion to
the white man's faith was in vain ; his solidarity with his
social group was stronger still. In the island of Nias, " the
native is extraordinarily and inveterately attached to his
immemorial customs, and he does not desire any progress,
even in external conditions, although the new things he
sees and hears may appear finer and in every way superior.
That is the reason why schools do not get on well here ;
to the Nias idea, reading and writing, and all intellectual
knowledge as a rule, is as superfluous and useless as any-
thing well can be." 2 In other words, it may be good for
the white man, because it is part of the sum-total of his
activity, and he has the guarantee of his past experience
to go upon. The Nias man has none of this, and if he
were to adopt it, he would doubtless repent it.
The Jibaros of Ecuador smoke for pleasure, but they
have learnt to do so from white men. " That this is so
we may conclude from the fact that for such a purpose
they do not smoke any tobacco but that received from
white men, never using their own. The tobacco the Jibaros
have grown themselves is used exclusively for ceremonial
purposes. On the other hand, the white man's tobacco
is never used in Jibaro ceremonial. They do not seem to
believe in it sufficiently for that." 3
IV
After prolonged intercourse with white men, native
ideas and sentiments about the whites and what they bring
with them, gradually become modified. The change comes
about in many ways, and is affected by the question whether
the white men are fairly numerous, whether they occupy
the country or merely visit it, recruit labourers among the
1 "Papua," Annual Report, p. 163 (1912).
s Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 236 (1890).
3 Rafael Karsten : Beitr&ge zur Sittengeschichte der siidamerikanischen
Indianer, p. 56 (1920).
patives or not, proceed with a greater or lesser show of
torce, and so on. It happens only too often that the native
community does not survive this irruption ; the maladies
brought in the train of the whites, and the demoralizing
that often follows their arrival, sometimes cause the blacks
to disappear in a very short time. When they do adapt
themselves to the new conditions, we find that at first it
is but slowly, though later their progress is accelerated.
In what we may call the first period, it is not the natives
who adapt themselves to the European way of life ; rather
do they adapt to their own civilization what they borrow
from the whites. "It is surprising to note," says Eyl-
mann, " how little the native has been influenced by
his relations with white people, as regards his weapons.
As far as I am able to judge, natives have everywhere pre-
served the traditional forms of these weapons, and even
manifest extreme conservatism about the materials of
which they are made. The tribes between Lake Eyre and
Tennant's Creek still make their weapons of wood and
stone, as they did when they were undisputed masters of
! their territory. The natives more to the north of Tennant's
Creek, however, use steel and glass for the points of their
long lances." 1
Steensby, in the course of a sojourn among the " Polar "
Esquimaux, paid particular attention to finding out how
the social group which had just begun to enter into permanent
relations with white men, received the " advance " these
brought with them in the way of technical knowledge. The
conclusions he arrived at are interesting. " It must not
be believed that any and every kind of European implement
finds a welcome in the eyes of the Polar Eskimos. They
have had a remarkably good understanding of how to choose
out the kinds and forms which were best suited to their
requirements. The most useful European instrument the
Polar Eskimos can obtain is still a file. . . . We see very
clearly among the Polar Eskimos, that they have chosen
the apparatus, which for them meant a reduction of labour
in their old modes of procedure. But they have still held
fast to their old methods and the old forms, in so far as
1 E. Eylmann : Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Siid Australien, p. 363.
they were not obliged to modify them in using the new-
apparatus. The Polar Eskimos are thus to a certain extent
still people of the Stone Age, who are employing the help
yielded by the modern mechanical methods, without adopt-
ing the mental accompaniments. For them, iron is a
material of similar kind to bone, and they deal with bone
and metal in quite the same manner as with the file. I
found an interesting example of this in a harpoon-point
of the Polar Eskimo Manigssok ; every part of it had been
filed out of a massive piece of iron." 1
As long as the essential institutions of the group persist,
its mentality also remains the same, however great the
external changes in the manner of life may be. Clear-
sighted missionaries have often noticed this. When converted,
natives are still unable to conceive the idea of personal
salvation clearly. Their feeling of systematized solidarity
with their group and their chief has not given way to a
more definite consciousness of their own personality, and
to them the missionary simply takes the place formerly
held by the chief. " When, after having spoken of the
destruction of the world by fire predicted by St. Peter,
I appealed to my hearers, crying, ' Where will you then
fly from the wrath of God ? ' several voices replied at once,
1 To you, moruti (missionary), our father.' " 2 To secure
God's favour for the group, and procure the benefits assured
thereby for each member of it, is now the missionary's
business, just as before their conversion took place, it was
the work of the tribal chief to guarantee the group the
support of ancestors and spirits by means of ceremonies
and traditional sacrifices. In the very moment of chang-
ing his customs the native finds the means of keeping his
respect for custom inviolable ; he behaves with regard to
the new just as he did to the old. M Our native Christians
are very conservative. Tradition, which in civil matters
is the law accepted by all, becomes, in religious matters,
the law of God. To change anything is to act contrary
to God's law." 3
1 H. P. Steensby : " Contributions to the Ethnology and Anthropology
of the Polar Eskimos, Meddelelser om Groenland, xxxiv. pp. 348-9 (1910),
3 Missions ivangeliques, lxiii. p. 19 (1888). (Coillard.)
3 Ibid., lxxvii. 2. p. 187 (1902). (Christeller.)
The difference between the mystic and prelogical mind
of the primitive and the white man's way of thinking is
so far-reaching that any abrupt transition from the one
I to the other is inconceivable. A gradual and progressive
transformation of the first into the second, if it were possible
to note it, would be of extraordinary interest to anthropology.
Unfortunately, circumstances have nowhere permitted of
this hitherto, and it is to be feared that the future will
be no more favourable in this respect. The few primitive
races which do exist to-day will doubtless share the fate
of those which are already extinct. It is therefore all the
more necessary to collect as carefully as possible all that
we can yet learn of the way in which primitive mentality
reacts at the time when its customary course is suddenly
disturbed by the irruption of new elements.
Chapter XIII
THE PRIMITIVE'S ATTITUDE TO EUROPEAN
REMEDIES
It almost invariably happens that one of the earliest re-
lations established between the primitive and the European
is that of patient to doctor. It is rarely that the explorer,
naturalist, missionary, and even the Government official,
has not at some time or other to act as doctor. How will
such ministrations be accepted and understood ? Upon
this point we have a fairly large and unvarying amount
of evidence. In examining it more minutely we shall probably
find a confirmation of the analysis of primitive mentality
we have already attempted.
" Some three hours every morning," says Bentley, " are
spent in dressing large and loathsome ulcers, which, under
the stimulating and healing influence of our lotions, rapidly
assume a healthy appearance. One would think that the
healing of these sores of five years' standing or more, in
as many weeks, would elicit some sign of surprise or wonder-
ment from onlookers. One would almost think that this
medical attention, carefully, kindly, and constantly bestowed
and combined, as it generally is, with board and lodging
and constant genial efforts to win confidence and attach-
ment would inspire here or there a little gratitude. But
neither astonishment nor gratitude are visible, although
the temperament of the people is by no means phlegmatic.
One begins to question very seriously whether gratitude
is, with these people, a natural instinct, exercised very
occasionally." l
In the following case the missionary's disappointment
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. pp. 444-5.
is still more acute. " A day or two after we reached Vana
we found one of the natives very ill with pneumonia.
Comber treated him and kept him alive on strong fowl-
soup ; a great deal of careful nursing and attention was
visited on him, for his house was beside the camp. When
we were ready to go on our way again, the man was well.
To our astonishment he came and asked us for a present,
and was as astonished and disgusted as he had made us
to be, when we declined giving it. We suggested that it
was his place to bring us a present and to show some grati-
tude. He said to us, ' Well indeed ! you white men have
no shame ! I took your medicine and drank your soup,
and did everything you told me, and now you object to
giving me a fine cloth to wear ! You have no shame.'
In spite of his protests he got nothing more out of us." *
We might be inclined to think that the missionaries
were the victims of a sorry jest, but facts of a similar kind
are by no means rare. For instance, " Nlemwo " (a native
who was accompanying Bentley), u tells us that one day
they came to a village where someone was very sick ; and
the doctor gave this man a dose of medicine. On returning
the same way and asking the man if he felt better, he replied
that he was quite well, and also requested the doctor to
pay him for having taken the medicine ! " 2 " The rapid
recovery of the Chief is the wonder and talk of the country,"
says Bentley, in another place. "I am better known as
the white man who cured Don Daniel than as • Bentele.'
When I went to see him, he was not in a grateful mood,
although he owned I had cured him. ' What a fuss you
made ! I had to eat a fowl, and feed well ; what strange
things you white men are ! Why did you not give me a
present when you left ? What a mean fellow you are ! ' "3
Is such an attitude peculiar to the natives of the Congo
district ? Far from it ; we shall find the same thing in
other regions of Africa, and even in other parts of the world.
For instance, Mackenzie had cared for and cured a native
whose face, which had been lacerated by a tiger, bore traces
* Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 414.
* Mrs. H. M. Bentley : The Life and Labours of a Congo Pioneer, p. 123.
3 Ibid., p. 317.
of a terrible wound. This native visited him one day.
He came, thought Mackenzie, " to exhibit the cure and
to make at least a touching speech expressing his indebted- I
ness to me. He sat down and narrated the whole thing
over again, mentioning the various medicines which had
been given, etc. He then said : ' My mouth is not exactly
where it used to be . . . but the wound is quite whole.
Everybody said I should die, but your herbs cured me.
You are now my white man. Please to give me a knife.'
I could not believe my own ears, and asked, ' What do you
say ? ' ■'"•'• <I haven't got a knife ; please to give me a knife.
You see,' he added, as I wondered what reply I could make,
* you are now my own white man and I shall always come
to beg of you ! ' This seemed to me a most wonderful
transposition of relationship ; and I began to think the
man's mouth was not the only oblique thing about him.
I mildly suggested that he might at least thank me for
my medicines. He interrupted me, ' Why, am I not doing
so ? Have I not said that you are now my white man
and do I not now beg a knife from you ? ' I gave the
man up as a very wonderful specimen of jumbled ideas." '
It does sometimes happen that the European receives
some manifestation of gratitude, but he is always careful
to note that it is exceptional. " On the 30th I received a
present, the first token of gratitude ever offered me for
my medical care (after many years of practice). Gratitude
is a very rare plant." » " Most people, after having been
attended to, would go away without even saying thank-
you if I did not insist upon it. On one occasion only did
I receive a dish of food as a token of gratitude, and that,
of course, was offered by a woman. On the other hand,
it is by no means a rare thing for a patient to ask for a
present, a curious way of beginning a friendship." 3 "In
a little more time," said another missionary from the same
district, " I shall become so accustomed to the habit of
begging which is so prevalent here, that I shall esteem
it quite a normal thing not only to have no acknowledg-
1 Rev. J. Mackenzie : Ten Years North of the Orange River, pp. 44-5.
2 A. et E. Jalla : Pionniers parmi les Marotse, p. 167.
3 Missions evangeliques, lxxxvi. 1. p. 22 (191 1). (Prosch.)
merit made me, but to be asked for a piece of cloth, or some
other present, by the people who have been the object of
my care. I do exact, but not without some difficulty, a
certain formality in coming in and going out, but many
seem to ask for medicine as if it were their just due. Happily
there are exceptions, and now and then I am cheered by
some sign of gratitude. Yesterday, for instance, a girl
who had been cured, brought our baby a fine mealie-cob,
and thanked me heartily." '
In New Guinea the same circumstances prevail. " In
the early days/' says Newton, " a man with awful sores
on his legs asked me to pay him for allowing me to give
him relief. It sounds a bit Gilbertian for the patient to
ask a fee from the * doctor.' " a "At all our Mission
stations people have told me stories of patients who have
been nursed and treated and discharged cured, and then
have asked if the missionaries were going to give them
(that is, in the way of tobacco) any return for their having
taken all that foreign medicine or come such a long way
to the missionary's house for so many days." 3
German missionaries in Sumatra had the same experi-
ence. " The Bataks receive medical attention . . . without
showing the slightest trace of gratitude or expressing any
thanks whatever. Max Bruch, the missionary, relates a
truly classical example of the kind. His wife had come to
the assistance of a Batak woman who was in great danger,
and had saved her life. Her relatives refused to take the
missionary's wife back home again, and when they finally
did so, they demanded tobacco from Mr. Bruch because
they were tired out." 4 In other passages the same mis-
sionaries report that " many of them are grateful for medical
attention, but others are naive enough to imagine that they
should receive a present from the missionary for having
given him the pleasure of treating them." 5 "I was treating
a young man who had been badly wounded by a fall from
a tree. . . . When he was able to ride again, I made him
* Missions evangiliques, lxxix. i. p. 404 (1904). (Reutter.)
2 Rev. H. Newton : In Far New Guinea, p. 272.
3 Rev. A. K. Chignell : An Outpost in Papua, p. 206 (191 1).
4 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 294 (1900).
5 Ibid., p. 225 (T902).
come to the Mission station to have the wound dressed.
' You must come again the day after to-morrow/ I said.
He replied that he would prefer my coming to him. * But
you have much more time to spare than I have.' He
answered naively, ' But then, Tuan (master), you must
remember, I don't get the horse for nothing ! ' The journey
cost him five cents (a few halfpence). ' And so that you,
who are by no means poor, may save your five cents, you
expect me to go on coming to you ! ' I was vexed at per-
ceiving that my services were rated so low, and that this
young man seemed to hold them in no esteem whatever." "
In Borneo, " in passing through this village (on the
river Limbang), I had given a man afflicted with sore eyes
a little sulphate of zinc ; he already had found, or fancied
he found, some benefit from the medicine, and in remem-
brance brought me a jar of arrack . . . which he insisted
I must drink. ... I mention the circumstance of the poor
fellow bringing the arrack, as however grateful soever they
may be in their hearts for such kindness, they seldom show
it. I have not known half a dozen instances during my
whole residence in the East." *
Williams, too, tells us : " Four years' experience among
the natives of Somosomo taught me that if one of them,
when sick, obtained medicine from me, he thought me bound
to give him food. The reception of food he considered
as giving him a claim on me for covering ; and, that being
secured, he deemed himself at liberty to beg anything he
wanted, and abuse me if I refused his unreasonable request.
I treated the old king of Somosomo, Tuitkatau II, for a
severe attack of sickness, which his native doctors failed
to relieve. During the two or three days on which he was
under my care, he had at his own request tea and arrowroot
from our house ; and when recovered, his daughter waited
on me to say that he could now eat well, and had sent her
to beg an iron pot in which to cook his food ! One more
example. The master of a biche-de-mar vessel took a
native under his care whose hand was shattered by the
bursting of a musket. The armourer amputated the injured
1 Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 225 (1909).
3 Sir Spenser St. John : Life in the Forests of the Far East, ii. pp. 132-3.
part, and the man was provided for on board the vessel
for nearly two months. On his recovery, he told the master
he was going on shore, but that a musket must be given
him, in consideration of his having been on board so long.
Such a request was, of course, refused ; and, after having
been reminded of the kindness shown him, to which he
probably owed his life, the unreasonable fellow was sent
ashore, where he showed his sense of obligation by burning
down one of the captain's drying-houses, containing fish
of the value of three hundred dollars." x
II
In the cases we have just quoted, the list of which might
be indefinitely prolonged, the behaviour of the natives
who have received medical attention from Europeans appears
unreasonable and even inexplicable. The latter feel more
or less surprised, angry, discouraged, or both amused and
indignant, according to their temperament. Some are
seriously annoyed, others shrug their shoulders, but it
! seems as if not one of them ever asks himself whether
there may not be some psychological problem to solve
here, and whether the lack of understanding between the
white doctor and his patient may not arise from a mis-
conception on both sides. The doctor has his own ideas
about illness and about therapeutics, and these seem so
natural to him that he imagines the native to possess them
also. As a matter of fact, the latter's ideas on the subject
are widely different. If the white doctor took the trouble
to examine minutely the way in which the native interprets
the attentions he receives, he would be less astonished at
finding them so little understood and appreciated, and
even at hearing an indemnity demanded for them.
In the first place, in the native's eyes, as we know,
the curing of a malady is the defeat of the charm which
has caused it by means of a more powerful one. " In
doctoring the simplest case, the lingaka (native doctors)
inculcate the belief that although they choose to give medi-
cines, they, and not the medicines, effect the cure. They
1 Th. Williams : Fiji and the Fijians, i. pp. 128-9.
1 charm ' the sickness by the power in them, and do not
" cure ' it by the mere action of the drugs/' 1 It is essentially,
as Miss Kingsley puts it, the influence of spirit upon spirit.
If the natives attribute any virtue to the remedies them-
selves, these possess it solely because they are the vehicle
of the occult power.
How, then, can their idea of the remedies which Euro-
peans prescribe for them be in any way different? Their-
illness is due to the presence of a noxious influence in the
body ; and the cure is effected when the " doctor " has I
succeeded in dislodging it. When the white doctor is
treating an ulcer, for instance, it is a matter of course to j
him that his patient grasps the very evident relation between
the dressings and remedies on the one hand, and the wound
to be cleansed, brought together, and cauterized on the
other. As a matter of fact, however, this relation between
them escapes the native mind altogether, at any rate until
it has been to some extent modified by its owner's prolonged
association with white men. Indifferent as the primitive
is to the connection between secondary causes and their
effects, even when but a slight effort would suffice to establish
it, he does not see this, or at any rate he does not stop to
notice it ; his attention is fixed on an entirely different
point. To him, secondary causes are not really causes ;
they are but instruments, which might be anything else.
Consequently, the natives may be quite willing to submit
to a lengthy and complicated treatment, but they will
not ask themselves why it is demanded of them. They
will not understand anything about the matter, and often
through their negligence in complying with the most neces-
sary directions they are the despair of the doctors. To
their minds, these regulations are of no importance, and
the cure ought to be effected instantaneously, even without
them. As a rule, they employ European remedies willingly
when they have confidence in those who offer them, partly
because it diverts them and they believe these medicines
to be endowed with beneficial, mystic qualities. But that
does not imply that they grasp the necessity for them,
nor even the useful end they serve. " What really is
1 Rev. J Mackenzie : Ten Years North of the Orange River, p. 389.
■ rather discouraging," writes a Barotse missionary, "is the
I impossibility of getting the natives to continue a regular
I and fairly prolonged treatment, whether it be medical or
surgical. Several who have been operated on disappear
the very day after the operation, and do not return until
four or five days later, the dressings removed and the wound
exposed. Happily their robust constitution allows of cures
which would never be effected in Europe." " "I arrested
the hemorrhage (it was the carotid artery which was cut)
and I insisted that his relatives should bring the patient
to the Mission station, but they would not consent. I
looked after the case for several days in succession. The
swelling and inflammation gradually diminished until he
was able to talk and to eat without too much difficulty.
But what must they do but take off the dressing one fine
day ! (The Zambesi believe that our remedies ought to
act like charms, instantaneously.) When I arrived, the
man was about to bleed to death." 2 " The natives will
swallow anything you like to give them," says Germond,
" but the effect of the medicine must be immediate. If
you talk to them about diet and treatment and hygienic
precautions they will not listen to you." 3
" The natives (Bechuanas) are passionately fond of
medicine," says Moffat. . . . "No matter how. nauseous
the draught may be, they will lick their lips even if it is
asafoetida. On one occasion I requested a man at a distance
to send someone for medicine. He sent his wife. Having
prepared a bitter dose, I gave it into her hand, directing
her to give it in two portions, one at sunset, the other at
midnight. She made a long face, and begged hard that
he might take it all at once, lest they should fall asleep.
I consented, when down went the potion into her stomach,
when I exclaimed, ' It is not for you ! * Licking her lips,
she asked, with perfect composure of countenance, if her
drinking it would not cure her husband." 4
Stories of this kind, incredible as they appear, are by
1 Missions evangeliques, lxxix. i. p. 404 (1904). (Reutter.)
2 A. et E. Jalla : Pionniers parmi les Marotse, p. 139.
3 Missions evangeliques, lxxi. p. 19 (1896). (Paul Germond.)
4 R, Moffat : Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, pp. 591-2
(note) .
no means rare. " The doctor . . . found great difficulty
in making them keep quiet until the ulcers healed. A
medical man, fond of his practice, is greatly discouraged by
negro patients. They will take any quantity of his ' little
bullets,' as they term pills, but they will pay no attention
to his other instructions. A native girl was once taking
down a revolver, which went off, when the bullet passed
through one leg, and lodged in the thigh of the other.
Fortunately Dr. Laws of Livingstonia was on the spot. He
dressed her wounds and told her that she must not move.
Most of us were afraid she was killed. Judge his surprise
when, on coming to her in the evening, he found her meeting
him at the door ! " * In the Ovambo territory " people
often travel some distance to ask the missionary for medicine,
and he asks them : ' What does the sick man complain of ? '
The reply invariably is ' I don't know. They simply sent
me to get some medicine.' The natives seem to think that
the missionary possesses some sort of panacea which will
suit every case." > Among the Fan, " one of the things
that sick people find most astonishing is that the white
doctor simply administers the medicine without having
recourse to any incantation or exorcism of any kind. ' It
is not to be wondered at that such a medicine does no good,'
said a worthy negro, who knew a little French, to me one
day. ' The doctor did not say a word, either before he
gave it or after. No, I am wrong,' he added, he did
say "Drink it up, nigger!" 'Thus you see it could not
have any effect.' . . . Among the people we were friendly
with was a worthy doctor who always sang some lively
refrain while he was being consulted, or during an operation.
' It amuses the negroes,' he used to say. They had an
enormous amount of confidence in him. ' That doctor
at any rate,' said one of them to me one day, ' is not like
the rest ! He sings as our own medicine-men do ! ' If
the doctor in question had only known the reason for the
popularity he enjoyed, a popularity he attributed to his
skill ! " 3
Other primitive peoples, widely removed from those
« Rev. Dufi Macdonald : Africana, ii. p. 217.
a Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 189 (1905)-
3 R. P. Trilles : Le totemisme des Fan, p 412 (note).
we have instanced, are no better able to understand what
the medical or surgical treatment of Europeans consists of.
If they agree to undergo it, it is for sundry reasons which
the doctors by no means suspect. The native has no idea
what purpose the remedies used really serve, and he does
not trouble about the matter. In the Friendly Isles, " a
man called on Mr. Thomas to mend a pair of spectacles,
supplied from the Mission store some time ago, and which,
he said, did not answer very well, though he had taken great
care of them, covering them all over with coco-nut oil " J
(as a sign of respect and veneration, no doubt).
" On the Mimika River (in Dutch New Guinea) the natives
often used to cut themselves severely with our axes and
knives before they realized their sharpness, and their wounds
healed astonishingly quickly with ordinary clean methods.
The only trouble was that they liked to take off their bandages
and use them for personal adornment."2 Speaking of the
Papuans, Chignell says : " It is hard — I sometimes find it
quite impossible — to make these people understand. A
man will come to you with a bad ulcer, and you dress and
bandage it, and tell him to be sure to come again to-morrow,
and he forgets all about it, or turns up at the end of a week
to say that he does not fancy the fio is doing much good.
. . . Perhaps they think the medicine is a sort of charm,
and ought to work instantaneously." 3
That is certainly their idea, and other investigators
have no hesitation in saying so. " The poor sufferers were
much astonished and disappointed that Mr. Patteson did
not heal them by miracle." 4 In Borneo (at Kwala Kapuas)
" the medicines used must relieve the sufferers immediately.
If they do, all is well, and they offer thanks to God ; but
if the cure is not instantaneous, they begin to doubt His
goodness." 5 In Sumatra, among the Bataks, " no sooner
did the missionary Schrey open his little medicine-chest,
than everyone declared himself ill, and wanted a remedy.
One coughed noisily, another had fever, and a third com-
1 Wesley an Missionary Notices, vi. 1848. (Journal of Rev. W. Lawry.)
2 A. R. Wollaston : Pygmies and Papuans, p. 167.
3 A. K. Chignell : An Outpost in Papua, p. 205.
4 E. G. Armstrong : The History of the Melanesian Mission, p. 4.
s Berichte der rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p. 141 (1888).
plained of pains in his limbs, etc. Every one of them
received some medicine, and went away satisfied, but they
were very much surprised if the trouble did not disappear
at once." x
Lastly, not to prolong this list of instances unduly,
facts of this kind were noted by Nordenskiold in Grand
Chaco, in South America. M I myself," he says, " have
sometimes had occasion during my stay among the Indians
to practise the profession of medicine. It is impossible to
compel an Indian to take any care of himself for a prolonge<
period. They must be cured at once, and if not they wi]
not use the medicine any more. Morphia, cocaine, am
opium are the only remedies they care about." a
When Bentley expected to find the Congolese astonishe<
at his having cured ulcers of long standing in five weeks,
he was a long way out in his reckoning. If he had cure<
them in five minutes, the natives would not have been at
all surprised. The disappearance of the ulcer is due to
the influence of a charm ; why should it not take place
in the twinkling of an eye, if the charm is strong enough ?
The white man is a mighty wizard. If he desired it the
native would be free of his trouble in a moment. What
is the good of so many medicines and prescriptions and
regulations and all the dieting, and so on ?
This goes a long way towards accounting for the reluct-
ance shown by the natives in allowing themselves to be
taken to the white men to be looked after, and the difficulty
there is in keeping them in hospital, when they have finally
decided to go there. They do not understand that time
is necessary to treatment. They have no clear idea of the
efficacy of the means prescribed for them ; moreover, they
feel dread and mistrust. On this subject, Dr. Bellamy has
aptly described the state of mind of the Papuans of British
New Guinea. He says : " The natives are somewhat reluctant
to come to the hospital for treatment and till now have
not been got to understand that the hospital is there for
their good." 3 In the Trobriand Islands, " the prospect
1 Berichte der rhcinischen Missionsgesellschaft, p.* 174 (1906).
■ Er. Nordenskiold : La vie des Indiens dans le t^haco, p. 95.
J " Papua," Annual Report, p. 35 (1906).
jof any systematic treatment which took a man or a woman
lout of his or her village away from their garden and all
Itheir friends was by no means a pleasant one. Besides,
Ithe Trobriand medicine-men, the tomegani, had treated
Ithe cases, and folks went on dying. Was it likely the
Jwhite man's medicine would cure a Papuan ailment ? So
at least they argued. The first half-year's history of the
hospital is a story of an uphill fight against native prejudice,
native superstition, and native stupidity. . . . Their lack
of faith in the Guhanuma (European) medicines was itself
a disadvantageous circumstance. Many of the first cases
were the worst that could be found, viz. the cases of longest
standing (venereal disease). The patients were inclined to
give a trial of three days, and if not better then, what was
the good of going on ? Their gardens, their fishing, their
canoes called them. And so they slipped away, under
cover of darkness, by ones and twos." 1 As time went on
matters improved, and the natives learned to appreciate
what the hospital could do for them.
In South Africa there was the same mistrust to be over-
come. " An old man, the chief of several villages, had
been struck blind, and from what he had heard of me, he
thought I might be able to restore his sight. ... He con-
sented to be operated on. . . But as soon as I told him
that it was essential for him to spend some days in Thabu
Bossiou, in some Christian household or other, it put a
different complexion on the matter. It was in vain that I
tried to explain the reason for this. ... * I am afraid to
go and live with the Christians; I fear they will practise
some witchcraft upon me.' He gave up the idea of being
operated on." 2 " They have their own medicines, the
ngake . . . and they hold that these drugs should cure
black people, while our medicines are good for us. This
belief is not peculiar to the Zambesi people, but perhaps
they are more prejudiced against scientific treatment than
other tribes. In any case, they have an instinctive dread
of amputation." Dr. Prosch added: " Hospital life is not
appreciated by our negroes. Abundant and regular meals,
1 " Papua," Annual Report, pp. 109-10 (1907) ; cf. ibid., p. 150 (1910).
2 Missions evangeliques, xxii. pp. 406-7 (1847). (Dr. Lautre.)
a clean dwelling, and the most unremitting care are not
sufficient to counterbalance the mistrust of us still felt
by all who do not know us intimately. . . . Then, too, they
cannot make up their minds to leave their pagan comfort,
if I may apply such a term to the unsavoury conditions I
which are the usual surroundings of our poor. We do not
suspect the difficulty they find in accommodating themselves
to our ways. I could tell of cases where sick people who
were dangerously ill, to whom every sort of indulgence
has been granted, whose relatives have been received with
a present of maas (curds), have effected an escape unknown
to us, and gone to hide themselves to avoid the shelter
offered by Christian charity/' J
In the same way, even long familiarity with Europeans
can scarcely succeed in reconciling natives already somewhat
civilized, like the Basutos, with the white man's remedies
and his hospitals. " The Lesuto Government has established
doctors in the administrative centres, making it a rule that
every consultation and every remedy is to be paid for by
a fee of sixpence, a fee which permits even the very poorest
negroes to avail themselves of the doctors' care. And it
has also founded two hospitals. . . . Here is the Basuto
view of the matter : " The medicines of the Government
doctors are no good at all ; they are nothing but water, for
what could they give for sixpence except water ? One
might go to a white doctor once, or even twice, but not
a third time, for then he would tell you you were wasting
his medicine, and he would make up a bottle with poison
in it, to get rid of you. In the hospital they take your
clothes away, and you won't see them again. They will
not give you any food, and when anybody dies, they put
his body into a special house to cut it up in pieces.' And
so on, and so on." 2
According to Dieterlen, these evil prognostications are
due to the fact that " the blacks think the whites wish to
injure them, or wish them no good. They do not believe
in their disinterestedness. They are distrustful, for fear of
being deceived, despoiled, injured, and led into misfortune.
1 Missions evangeliques, lxxxvi. i. pp. 20-1 (191 1).
• Ibid., lxxxiii. 1. p. 308 (1908). (Dieterlen.)
These feelings are innate and quite natural to them ; they
are irresistible and ineradicable. ..." This may be so, and
bitter experience may be thus expressed by a missionary
who is saddened but not daunted. In any case, as we have
already seen, the natives' repugnance to entering and staying
in the hospital is not due to a general and incurable feeling
of distrust alone, but also to the fact that they do not
understand anything about the care exercised upon them,
especially when they are asked to devote days, weeks, some-
times even months, to obtain a result which they consider
ought to be instantaneous. It is just this lengthy sojourn
which awakens their worst suspicions. What can be the
intention of the white doctor, the mighty wizard, in keeping
them thus ? What magic is he going to practise upon them ?
The conditions of the misunderstanding we have noted
as existing between the sick native and his European doctor
are thus denned. The more trouble the doctor takes over
his patient, the more difficult and complicated the treatment,
especially if he is obliged to have the sick man under his
own eye, to feed and look after him and see that he follows
the regulations, the more does he consider that he has
a claim on his gratitude, and the more will he expect his
thanks, at least. Now the native doubtless would be ready
to thank him if he had been cured instantly, if, as he expected,
the medicines had had the effect of a touch of the magic
wand. But all the circumstances which the doctor considers
meritorious do but alienate his patient, and render him
uneasy. The days pass by, one drug succeeds another,
and a new dressing is substituted for the old one ; the
patient submits to it all more or less readily, but he thinks
that the white man ought to be grateful to him, and that
he, the patient, is the one who is deserving of thanks. The
more prolonged the cure, the more does the doctor owe
to the sick man who lends himself to the treatment. Father
Trilles, in the passage we have already quoted, perceives
this clearly when he says : " Europeans are often both
astonished and indignant at finding that natives whom they
had thus carefully nursed, instead of being grateful to them,
should on the contrary demand to be paid. Both patient
and doctor are in the right each according to his view of
the matter : the doctor, imbued with our European and
Christian ideas, is justly annoyed at seeing his disinterested
care thus ignored ; while the sick man, on his side, is also
right, for he thinks that in the circumstances he has been
merely the subject of experiment."
III
We have still, it appears, to account for the persistence
with which the native who has been looked after by the
European doctor comes to demand a present from him,
frequently, too, announcing his intention of coming to ask
for others. If he meets with a refusal, he becomes rude
and abusive, and if he dares do so, he takes his revenge.
He adopts the attitude, and expresses the surprise and indig-
nation, of a man deprived of that which is his due. The
strength and reality of these feelings are unquestionable.
To understand how they arise, we must note that such
feelings are manifested, not only when a native has been,
for a longer or shorter period, the object of the white man's
medical care. They are shown in connection with other
services rendered, and especially when a white man has
saved the life of a native about to succumb to an accident.
In the Congo territory " a canoe was upset in the cauldron
off Underhill Point ; two men were drowned, but the canoe
which Crudgington sent there at once, managed to reach
the third man, and brought him ashore alive. Before he
was starting home next day, he asked Crudgington to ' dress '
him. When he declined, the man began to pour out his
disgust at the white man's meanness, and became too abusive
whereupon Crudgington locked him up in the store, and
would not release him until his friends brought us a couple
of goats — one for the rescuer, and one for Crudgington,
as the owner of the canoe by means of which the rescue
was effected. The goats were paid, and it is to be hoped
the man learnt a lesson." J
Nothing is less likely to have been the case, and neither
Crudgington nor Bentley seems to have grasped what was
passing in the native's mind. Here is another and very
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 476.
.
similar circumstance, again related by Bentley : " The
(paramount chief in the Ndandanga township was a certain
■Tawanlongo. A secondary chief named Matuza Mbongo
■had of late been rising in influence. Matuza's wife died
■in childbed, and a report was current that before she died
■ she saw Tawanlongo in her dream. Matuza seized the
[opportunity to clear away his last obstacle to the para-
mount position. Tawanlongo was not loved. ... It would
be great fun to see the old chief himself take the ordeal
nkasa and reel and fall, and then to throw him on the fire.
No witch doctor was necessary for such a straightforward
case ; had not the woman seen the chief in her dream ?
What could be clearer ? Tawanlongo was a wizard." The
missionaries interposed, and obtained a promise that the
ordeal should not take place, but " the natives did not
keep the letter of their promise, for they did make the chief
drink the nkasa ; but they made such a weak infusion
that the chief vomited, and his innocence was established.
The chief sent me a very grateful message, declaring that
to me alone he owed his life. ... Many others remarked
to the same effect. Nevertheless, he came empty-handed
to me a few days afterwards, and told me he expected me
to show my pleasure at his escape from the peril, by ' dressing '
him. I gave him a fathom of cloth, a knife, a cap, and a
few small sundries, though I felt that there was no such
necessity for me to give him anything. Instead of thanking
me for this further kindness, he began to abuse me for not
giving him a much larger present. He said that I was
shamelessly mean, and went away quite disgusted with
me." « It is the same in Gaboon. " You save a person's
life, and you must expect to receive a visit from him before
long ; you are now under an obligation to him, and you
will not get rid of him except by giving him presents." 2
With respect to other services rendered to them, natives
make the same demands, especially in the case of the care
and instruction bestowed upon their children. " We educate
their children, we give them food, clothing, a home, and
all the mental and moral care possible. Well ! for all
1 Rev. W. H. Bentley : Pioneering on the Congo, i. p. 475~6.
* Rev. Fr. Bulleon : Sons le del d'Afrique, p. 61 (1888).
that, they have taken it into their heads that we ought
to make a payment to each child and to its parents."1
On his side, Fr. Bulleon says : "The children are living entirely
at the expense of the Mission. We feed, clothe, educate,
and teach them a trade without payment of any sort.
We consider ourselves lucky if their parents do not come j
and ask for presents, and make us pay for the satisfaction j
of keeping their children ! Note, too, that we only take
the children of free subjects, and that most of our pupils
are the sons of kings or village chiefs/' 2 Among the
Bechuanas " the parents no longer encourage the children
to come to school, doubtless preferring to send them into
the fields to gather in the corn or tend the cattle. When
we have asked why they had stopped sending us their
children, they say that we do not pay them, or that we are
paying them too little." 3 In the island of Tahiti, also,
" some of our pupils seemed to think they were doing the
missionaries a favour by coming to be taught, and that
they ought to be paid for doing so." 4
One last fact which is very significant. Captain Lyon
tells the story of an old Esquimau woman whom he had
found abandoned, half frozen, and in a dying state. " I
shall never forget," he writes, " the piteous state and
squalid looks of this deserted woman ; but I cannot describe
my astonishment when, on producing blankets and skins to
wrap her in, for the purpose of carrying her on board to be
recovered, she turned to me and demanded that I should
pay her for her trouble ! " 5
All these facts imply the same lack of mutual compre-
hension as that noted and analysed above. The white
man considers the demand made by the native unreason-
able, absurd, and inexplicable. That he should claim
indemnity for having had his life saved, or his children
educated ! On his side, the native is shocked by the petti-
ness, meanness, and barefaced greed of the white man who
1 Missions catholiques, xv. p. 39 (1883). (Lettre du P. Angouard.)
- Rev. Fr. Bulleon: ibid., p. no.
3 Missions evangeliques, xii. p. 40 (1837). (Arbousset.)
4 Rev. W. Ellis : History of the London Missionary Society, p. 190 (1844).
s The Private Journal of Capt. G. F. Lyon, of H.M.S. " Hecla," p. 385
(1824).
is so rich, and yet is not ashamed to cheat poor folks out
of their just due ! Perhaps the reason for this mutual
misunderstanding will reveal itself if here again, instead of
taking for granted that the natives explain and regard
such occurrences just as the Europeans do, we try to see
things from their point of view, and judge the matter as
they do.
Crudgington the missionary has saved the life of a
Congolese about to drown. He expects thanks from him,
even to receive some token of his gratitude ; he attributes
to the native the sentiments he would experience under
the same circumstances, and these appear the natural thing.
As a matter of fact, the black man is strongly convinced
that, by saving his life, Mr. Crudgington is under an obli-
gation to him. At first we do not see how this can be.
From the European's point of view, the matter is quite
simple. The Congolese owes his life to Crudgington, who
owes him nothing. If there is any obligation in the matter,
\ then it is the Congo native who is the party obliged ; that
f needs no telling. The black does not deny the actual fact,
f but his mind is so orientated that, whatever happens, the
\ mystic elements are much more important in his eyes than
j the actual events. There is no chance ; what we call
| accident is a revelation, a manifestation of the unseen powers.
! What made the canoe upset in the whirlpool ? Was it the
( deed of a wizard, who had " doomed " him and his two
| luckless companions, or due to the anger of some neglected
I and outraged ancestor ? Since he was the sole survivor,
will he not be henceforth " suspect " ? Will they not accuse
him of having " delivered them over " ? It seems inevitable
that it should be so. And why should the white man's
canoe have* been ready, just at that moment, to come to
his rescue ? By what right did the white folks intervene ?
By doing so they have assumed a responsibility the conse-
quences of which he is sure to feel, both by the action of
the unseen powers and in his own social group. The least
they can do is to indemnify him for it.
Captain Lyon cannot believe his ears when the old
woman, dying of cold and hunger, whom he receives on
his ship to look after, asks him how much she is to be paid
for coming. From the white man's point of view, this
woman owes her life to the captain, who owes her nothing ;
there can be no question about that. But, in the woman's
eyes, it is a very serious thing to be wrapped up in the furs
and blankets of these strangers, who have nothing in common
with her social group, to allow herself to be carried on board
their ship, to partake of their food, and touch things
belonging to them. The European sees but the material
circumstance ; she will be warm, comfortable, and well
fed ; her life will be safe. On the other hand she at once
asks herself what magic spells all these unknown objects
may exercise upon her. What may be the mystic conse-
quences to her of the sojourn on this ship, what dangers
may she be exposing herself to, dangers so much the more
to be dreaded because she cannot even imagine them !
At least, if she is to suffer all this, let her be paid for giving
her consent !
Possibly the difficulty is not yet entirely solved. There
still remains the fact that on the one hand, whatever the
mystic dangers of the white man's intervention may be,
the native nevertheless owes him his life, that he recognizes
this, and that that seems indeed to constitute an obliga-
tion ; and on the other, that we have to account for the
vexation, sometimes even rage and fury, shown by natives
whose lives have been saved, or who have had some service
rendered them, when they find that they are refused what
they claim in return. The man whose hand was amputated,
who was tended for two months on board a fishing-boat,
demands a gun, does not get it, and in revenge sets fire to
the captain's drying-houses. The black man saved by
Crudgington, not receiving what he demands, becomes
abusive, and has to be imprisoned. In most examples of
this kind the whites remark that the native not merely
shows no gratitude, but, if his " unreasonable " demands
are refused, he becomes insolent, and even threatening.
What irresistible inner influence impels him thus to defy
the European ? We shall never understand it unless we
penetrate to the very depths of his group-ideas and senti-
ments, at the risk of being likely to distort them by ex-
pressing them in set terms, seeing that he himself feels and
translates them into acts without ever having denned them
in his thoughts or expressed them in words.
As we know, primitive mentality does not represent life
or death or the personality of the individual as we do.
To any given individual, to be alive means to be actually
forming part of a complicated system of mystic " partici-
pations " in common with other members, both living and
dead, of his social group, with the animal and vegetable
groups belonging to the same soil, with the very earth
itself, with the occult powers who protect these groups
and the other more personal ones to which he specially
pertains. At the moment when he is about to die of hunger,
cold, disease, or drowning, it may happen that the inter-
vention of the white man saves his life, in the European
and entirely objective sense of the word, and that is all
we perceive in it. The fact that escapes our notice is that
at the same time this intervention endangers his life in
the native and mystic sense of the word. Who knows
whether it may not, first of all, anger the occult powers who
arranged the " accident," and above all, whether it may
not alienate those whose continual protection safeguards
him from the dangers menacing him on every side, and
from an unlimited number of malevolent spirits ? The
white people are mighty wizards, and from them and every-
thing belonging to them there emanate mystic influences
of irresistible power. The native who is subjected to them
finds himself by this very fact separated from the powers
without which he cannot live. It is to be feared that
henceforth, therefore, the participations which are necessary
to his existence may be weakened, and possibly ruptured.
What, then, will be the condition of such a native if,
on the one hand, after he has undergone medical treatment
at the hands of the white man, after staying with one of
them, or in a hospital, or on one of their ships, or after
having been " saved " from some accident by them, he
has forfeited the goodwill of the unseen powers without
which he cannot exist, and if, on the other hand, the white
man who is the cause of this estrangement ceases to take
an interest in him ? He is threatened with an isolation
which is unbearable and, in his eyes, worse than death. It
is as if the white man, after having compromised him
hopelessly, after having endangered what we might call his
individual mystic status, were to abandon him. By looking
after him, giving him a home, feeding him, sending him to
hospital, and saving him, the white man has taken charge
of him. He has assumed a responsibility, and become
involved. He doubtless knew what he was doing. " You
are now my own white man," said the man whom Mackenzie
had cured of a horrible wound in the face, " and I shall
always come to beg of you.,, That means : " Henceforward
you are my refuge and my support, and I have the right
to reckon on you to compensate me for what your inter-
vention has cost me with the mystic powers upon whom my
social group depends, and upon whom I myself have de-
pended till now." As Elsdon Best has aptly remarked,
the native, deprived of that mystic atmosphere which is
necessary to him, tries to find its equivalent among the
Europeans.1 He who, on his own initiative, has so effectually
intervened in his life, is bound to give him all he asks ;
in the future, too, his generosity must be inexhaustible.
If he avoids his duty and refuses to give, there is more than
greed behind it. It is, as it were, a refusal to honour a
sacred pledge ; it is treachery, almost crime. The native
who believes himself thus victimized will proceed to the
direst extremes, if he is bold enough.
If this be so, the native, in such circumstances, does
not consider himself to have been obliged by the white man
in any way ; on the contrary, he has an acute sense of the
responsibility of the latter as regards himself. He is,
therefore, neither " ungrateful " nor " unreasonable," as
he is bound to appear in the eyes of anyone who has cared
for and saved him, and who is conscious of having rendered
him signal service, often from purely disinterested and
humane motives. It is to be hoped that this humanity
may not confine itself to dressing his ulcers, but that it
may strive towards sympathetic penetration of the obscure
recesses of a consciousness which cannot express itself.
1 Cf. Les Fonctions Meniales dans Us Societes Inferieures, p. 312.
Chapter XIV
CONCLUSION
IAn analysis of the preceding facts — facts which can easily
J be confirmed by many others, leads yet again to the conclu-
sion that the primitive's mentality is essentially mystic. This
fundamental characteristic permeates his whole method of
[thinking, feeling, and acting, and from this circumstance
[arises the extreme difficulty of comprehending and following
jits course. Starting from sense-impressions, which are
[alike in primitives and ourselves, it makes an abrupt turn,
[and enters on paths which are unknown to us, and we soon
I find ourselves astray. If we try to guess why primitives
[do, or refrain from doing, certain things, what prejudices
[they obey in given cases, the reasons which compel them
| with regard to any special course, we are most likely to
\ be mistaken. We may find an " explanation " which is
[more or less probable, but nine times out of ten it will be
[the wrong one.
The African " ordeals " furnish an instance of this.
[To interpret them as if their end were the discovery of
, a guilty person and see in them a kind of judicial proceeding,
• like the Divine judgments of mediaeval times, or even the
: ordeals of Ancient Greece (which, however, are not so far
; removed from them), is to condemn oneself to non-compre-
hension, and to be, as the missionaries of West and South
Africa were ages ago, overcome with astonishment at the
unfathomable folly of the poor negroes. But if we enter
into the natives' way of thinking and feeling, if we trace
their actions back to the group-ideas and sentiments upon
which these depend, we find that their behaviour is by no
means foolish ; it is, on the contrary, the legitimate con-
sequence of these. To them the ordeal is a kind of " acid
test," the only possible way of discovering an evil force
which must have become incarnate in one or more members
of the social group. This test alone has the mystic power
which is necessary to destroy such a force, or at any rati
to put its noxious influence out of action. Unless the]
wish to see misfortunes and deaths increase in numbei
indefinitely, the natives cannot renounce the ordeal undei
any consideration, and the objurgations which it calls fortl
from the white man seem as unreasonable to them as their
methods do to Europeans, until the latter have discovere(
their raison d'etre.
Less tragic, but no less characteristic, is the misunder-
standing we have been examining as existing between
primitives and Europeans with regard to the medical atten-
tion which the latter bestow upon the natives. In order
to dissipate it we must have obtained a clear idea of the
natives' conception of disease and its cure, of the remedies
and regimen which the " white doctors " prescribe for them,
and the consequences to which they are exposed in submitting
to them, etc. Moreover, we must have recognized, at the
basis of representations so different from our own, that
thoroughly mystic conception of participation and causality
which is the very foundation of primitive mentality.
If misunderstandings of this kind, which have occurred
so frequently, had been carefully noted by the white
men who were the first to live in close association with
natives, we should have lighted upon valuable data for
the study which we have essayed here. But this has not
been done, and the opportunities for it have gone by for
ever. The Europeans who first entered into continuous
relations with primitive peoples had other cares than to
notice how the latter thought and felt, and to report pre-
cisely what they noted, and even if they had undertaken
a task at once so lengthy, delicate, and complicated, few
of them would have been able to succeed in it. For such
a matter, an exact knowledge of the natives' language is
necessary to ensure success. It is not sufficient to have
acquired enough of it to be able to make oneself understood
in ordinary transactions, to communicate one's wishes or
one's orders to them, or to receive from them useful informa-
tion regarding their everyday life. Something quite different
from this is necessary. These primitive languages often
possess a grammatical complexity and a richness of vocabu-
lary which are perfectly surprising, and they are of a very
different type from the Indo-European or the Semitic, to
both of which we are accustomed. To be able to perceive
the shades of meaning in the primitives' ideas which often
prove so puzzling to us, to grasp how these are bound up
with one another in their myths, legends, rites, it would
be absolutely indispensable to master the genius and the
intricacies of their language. In how many cases would
this condition be even approximately fulfilled ?
" The longer anyone stays in the country," says an
English administrator, speaking of the New Guinea Papuans
who had never yet seen Europeans, " the more one realizes
that the great difficulty, above all others, in dealing with
natives is the difficulty of making them understand the
exact meaning of words said to them, and in understanding
the exact meaning of what is said by them." s The two
mentalities which encounter each other here are so foreign
to one another, their customs so widely divergent, their
methods of expressing themselves so different ! Almost
unconsciously, the European makes use of abstract thought,
and his language has made simple logical processes so easy
to him that they entail no effort. With primitives both
thought and language are almost exclusively concrete by
nature. " The method of reasoning of the Esquimaux,"
says a careful observer, " gives us the impression of being
very superficial, because they are not accustomed to retain
what we call a definite line of reasoning or a single, isolated
subject for any length of time ; their thoughts, namely,
do not rise to abstractions or logical formulas, but keep
to pictures of observation or situations which change
according to laws we find it difficult to follow." 2 In short,
our mentality is above all " conceptual," and theirs hardly
at all so. It is therefore extremely difficult, if not impossible,
» "Papua," Annual Report, p. 128 (191 1).
> H. P. Steensby : "Contributions to the Ethnology and Anthropology
of the Polar Eskimo," Meddelelser om Groenland, xxxiv. pp. 374-5 (191°)-
for a European, even if he tries, and even if he knows]
the natives' language, to think as they do, although he mayj
seem to speak as they do.
When investigators noted the institutions, manners, and
beliefs before them, they made use — how could they do
otherwise ? — of the concepts which seemed to them to |
correspond with the reality they had to express. But,
precisely because they were concepts, encompassed by the
logical atmosphere proper to European mentality, the
expression of them distorted what they were trying to render. 1
Translation had the effect of betrayal. Examples of this i
kind are very numerous. To express the invisible being,
or rather beings, which, together with his bodily presence,
make up the primitive's individuality, nearly all investigators
have made use of the term " soul." We know how much
confusion and error has been engendered by this use of a
concept unknown to primitives. An entire theoretical
system, once in great favour, and still counting a large
number of adherents, is founded upon the implied postulate
that a concept of " soul " or " spirit," similar to our own,
exists among primitives. It is the same with such expres-
sions as " family," " marriage," " property," etc. Investi-
gators have had to make use of them in describing
institutions which presented analogies (striking ones, as it
seemed) with our own. Nevertheless, here again careful
study shows that the group-presentations of primitives
cannot be bound by the framework of our concepts without
being warped.
Let us take a simple instance which does not demand
a lengthy analysis. Observers constantly apply the term
" money " to the shells which the natives use in their barter
in certain districts, in Melanesia among other places.
Richard Thurnwald has recently shown that this " Muschel-
geld " (shell specie) does not exactly correspond with what
we call " money." To us, it is a question of a medium
(whether of metal or paper, is immaterial) which makes it
possible to exchange something, whatever it may be, for
something else. It is a universal medium of exchange.
But the Melanesians do not view the matter in this general
kind of way. Their ideas are more concrete. The natives
p| the Solomon Isles, like their neighbours, use shells for
their purchases, but always with a very definite specification.
'This money," says Thurnwald, "serves two chief ends:
firstly, it will purchase a wife ; secondly, it will obtain
lallies in warfare, and pay the compensation due for the
idead, whether these have been simply murdered or killed
I in fight.
" Hence we understand that ' money ' is not used,
[properly speaking, for economic purposes, but is designed
'to accomplish certain social functions. The ends attributed
to it above show us why, before everything else, it is the
business of the chief to collect and keep treasure in the
form of shell specie. He keeps his ' funds ' in special huts
. . . and they are used for loans which he grants his people
when they wish to buy a wife, for instance. Shell money,
of fine cowries, is also used ' for personal adornment/
Besides this money, bangles play an important part in
Buin as a measure of value. They send to Choiseul for them.
. . . Another standard of value is the pig, which is used
for various payments, especially for the many festive re-
pasts which are de rigueur in certain circumstances."
As for commercial transactions, properly so called, it
does not seem as if any money, not even the shell specie,
is used. They are carried on by means of barter, but the
exchanges made are specialized, and even regulated. Thurn-
wald says : " In the system of barter, in particular, certain
things can only be exchanged for certain other things, a
spear for a bangle, for instance, fruit for tobacco, pigs for
[knives. They willingly exchange things which can be made
! use of in the same sort of way ; thus, taro or coco-nuts
may be bartered for tobacco, for example, or weapons for
ornaments (spears for bangles or glass beads), etc." z
We need not pursue further the interesting description
given by Thurnwald of the economic existence of the natives
of the Solomon Isles. What we have quoted suffices to
show that our concept of " money " but very imperfectly
corresponds with the " shell specie " used by the natives.
If, therefore, we persist in saying that they possess such
1 R. Thurnwald : Forschungen auf den Bismarck-Archipel and den
Salomo Inseln, iii. pp. 38-40.
" money/' we can have only a vague and incorrect idea o
the matter. But a careful and exhaustive study of the
special ends which the shell specie serves leads to a more
thorough knowledge of certain institutions and at the same
time helps to a better understanding of the mentality of
these natives, who do not proceed by general abstract ideas,
but who, lacking what we call money, organize a regular
exchange of certain objects for certain other definite
objects.
A similar critical analysis might be applied to other
abstract terms which those who have observed primitive
races have employed to express their collective representa-
tions and describe their institutions.
Thus, through a kind of necessity inherent in the nature
of things, i.e. in the profound difference in mentality and
in language, the greater number of documents at the com-
mand of science for the study of primitive mentality can
only be made use of with many precautions and after being
subjected to severe criticism. In all sincerity the earlier
observers, whether clergy or laity, nearly always distort
and pervert the institutions and beliefs they report, from
the mere fact that they unhesitatingly express them in
terms with which they themselves are familiar. Those
who follow them proceed in the same way, with the added
circumstance that the institutions and beliefs of primitives >
have already been contaminated by association with the
whites, and that their mentality as well as their language
is threatened with more or less rapid decay. On the other;
hand, where are we to find the necessary data for the study:
of this mentality, if not in the writings of those who have
observed primitives at close range, who have lived withj
and among them, who have been present at their life's j
daily round, as well as the ceremonies relating to their |
religion, if they have an organized one ? Science has at
its disposal no documents but these, and their inevitable
imperfection, the too much or too little that they com-j
municate, is almost enough to account for its slow progress j
and the oft-times uncertain nature of the results hitherto
obtained.
This difficulty, however, is not irremediable. It is found
;o a greater or lesser degree in all sciences, the materials
)f which consist of evidence, and the well-established
•ules of criticism, both external and internal, can be applied
:o ethnographical documents just as efficiently as to any
:hing else. Moreover, as the analysis of primitive mentality
makes proportionate progress and arrives at results which
may be considered definitely established, the investigator has
at command criteria, both more numerous and more stable,
from which to judge the value of evidence, remote or recent ;
he is better able to decide what must be rejected and
what can be retained in each case. Finally, a satisfactory
knowledge of the essential characteristics of the mentality
of primitives leads to a more profound and searching study
of their institutions. The first stage, once traversed, makes
all the succeeding ones easier, or at any rate, more
approachable.
The primitive mind, like our own, is anxious to find
the reasons for what happens, but it does not seek these
in the same direction as we do. It moves in a world where
innumerable occult powers are everywhere present, and
always in action or ready to act. As we have seen in the
earlier chapters of this book, any circumstance, however
slightly unusual it may be, is at once regarded as the mani-
festation of one or another of them. If the rain occurs
at a time when the fields are badly needing water, it is
because the ancestors and spirits of the neighbourhood are
content, and are thus manifesting their goodwill. If a
persistent drought parches the corn and causes the cattle
to perish, some tabu must have been violated, or possibly
an ancestor considers himself injured, and his wrath must
be appeased. In the same way, no enterprise will succeed
unless the unseen powers give it their support. No one
will start out hunting or fishing, nor begin a campaign;
he will not attempt to cultivate a field or build a house,
unless the auguries are favourable, and the mysterious
guardians of the social group have explicitly promised their
aid • it is necessary that the very animals needed should
have given their consent, and the tools required have been
consecrated and invested with magic qualities, and so forth.
In short, the visible world and the unseen world are but
one, and the events occurring in the visible world depend
at all times upon forces which are not seen. Hence the
place held in the life of primitives by dreams, omens, I
divination in its various forms, sacrifices, incantations,
ritual ceremonies and magic. A man succumbs to some
organic disease, or to snake-bite ; he is crushed to death by
the fall of a tree, or devoured by a tiger or crocodile : to
the primitive mind, his death is due neither to disease nor
to snake- venom ; it is not the tree or the wild beast
or reptile that has killed him. If he has perished, it
is undoubtedly because a wizard had " doomed " and
" delivered him over." Both tree and animal are but
instruments, and in default of the one, the other would
have carried out the sentence. They were, as one might
say, interchangeable, at the will of the unseen power
employing them.
To minds thus orientated there is no circumstance which
is purely physical. No question relating to natural pheno-
mena presents itself to primitives as it does to us. When
we want to explain any such we look for the conditions
which would be necessary and sufficient to bring it about,
in the series of similar phenomena. If we succeed in deter-
mining them, we ask no more ; knowing the general law, we
are satisfied. The primitive's attitude is entirely different.
He may have remarked the unvarying antecedents of the
phenomenon which interests him, and in acting he relies a
good deal on what he has observed. But he will always
seek the true cause in the world of unseen pov/ers, above
and beyond what we call Nature, in the "metaphysical "
realm, using the word in its literal sense. In short, our
problems are not his, and his are foreign to us. That is
why we find ourselves in a blind alley, when we ask how
he would treat one of ours, and imagine it and try to draw*
from it inferences which would explain such-and-such a
primitive institution.
Thus, Sir James Frazer thought to apply the theory
of totemism to the ignorance shown by primitives to the
physiological process of conception. Long discussions were
carried on regarding the way in which the lowest types of
primitives are accustomed to represent the reproductive
function in man, and the ideas they form of pregnancy.
But possibly it might not have been altogether unprofitable
to examine first of all the preliminary question — Can the
problem of conception be brought before the primitive mind
in terms which allow such discussions to have any deter-
mining value ?
Orientated as such a mind is, we may unhesitatingly
affirm that if its attention is directed to the phenomenon of
conception, it is not the physiological conditions thereof
which will arrest it. Whether it is aware of them, or knows
little or nothing about them, does not matter much, since
in any case it sets them aside and seeks the cause elsewhere,
in the world of unseen powers. Otherwise, among all the
phenomena that Nature presents to him this alone would
have to be considered from a point of view differing from
all the rest. In such a case, the problem being absolutely
unique, his mind would occupy an unusual position with
regard to it, and he would suddenly be engaged in the search
for secondary causes, but nothing allows us to imagine this.
If death is never " natural," to primitives it is self-evident
that birth cannot be either, and for the same reasons.
In fact, even before any intercourse with white people
had taken place, primitives — the aborigines of Australia,
for instance — had indeed noticed some of the physiological
conditions of conception, and of the sexual act in particular.
But here, as in the other cases, what we call the secondary
cause, the antecedents which according to our point of view
are necessary and sufficient, remain quite subordinate as
far as they are concerned ; the true cause is mystic in its
nature. Even when they have noticed that a child does
not come into the world unless impregnation has taken
place, they do not draw the conclusion which appears quite
natural to us. They persist in thinking that if a woman is
pregnant, it is because a " spirit " (usually that of an ancestor
awaiting reincarnation and among those ready to be born),
has entered into her, which of course implies that she belongs
to the clan, sub-clan and totem proper to that spirit. Among
the Arunta, women who are afraid of pregnancy, if they
find themselves obliged to pass the place where these spirits
waiting to enter upon a terrestrial life are to be found,
hurry by, and take all the precautions they possibly
can to prevent one or other of them from entering their
bodies.1 But Spencer and Gillen do not say that they
abstain from all sexual relations. These would not be
followed by conception, however, unless the " spirit "
entered into the woman.
With regard to San Cristoval in the Solomon Islands, Fox
asks : "Is the physical fact of fatherhood acknowledged ?
At the present day probably it is. If the reason be asked
for the custom of burying alive the first-born child, . . .
almost universally the reply is that this is because the
child is not likely to be the man's true child, but born of
the woman by some other man. But there are certainly a
number of facts on the other side ; and the embryo is said
to be put into the womb of the woman by an adaro named
Hau-di-Ewavi, which lives on a mountain in Marau Sound
in Guadalcanar (Marau Sound is the place where the
spirits of the dead go after death), or by Kauraha, a snake
spirit." 2 The two theories are not mutually exclusive.
The inhabitants of San Cristoval may have learnt from
the white men, or themselves observed, the close relation
between the sexual act and conception ; but they none the
less consider that the real cause can only be a mystic one,
the action of a spirit which decides to enter a certain woman.
With many primitive peoples, and the Bantus in par-
ticular, the wife's barrenness is a real misfortune, and it
is sufficient reason for a breach of the marriage contract.
By virtue of a well-recognized " participation," which we
have already noted, the plantation of a man with a barren
wife is also threatened with sterility, and he must therefore
divorce her. Barrenness is always considered to be the
wife's fault, yet these natives are not ignorant of the physio-
logical role played by the sexual act. But since they do
not really imagine pregnancy to depend upon it, they do
not think that a failure to conceive offspring may arise on
* Spencer and Gillen : The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 125.
" C. E. Fox : "Social Organization in San Cristoval," J.A.I., xlix. p. 119
(1919).
he man's side during copulation. It assuredly proceeds
rom a mystic cause, i.e. it is due to the fact that no spirit-
ed consents to become once more incarnate by entering
Into his wife. She, in despair at her barrenness, thinks she
|:an only be cured by supplicating the ancestors and unseen
powers to be favourable to her desires, and she redoubles
per offerings and sacrifices.
This attitude of mind of the primitive makes it difficult
Jto find out what a given tribe does really imagine with
regard to what we call the physiological conditions of con-
ception. Since the primitive does not fix his attention on
this point, because he does not consider it of any importance
he can have no clear idea of it, and he does not rightly
know what he himself thinks about it. Certain social
groups may have traditions regarding it, which are rather
more definite than their neighbours', but we cannot infer
anything from this. The testimonies afforded by different
investigators may not agree, and yet they may be veracious.
For the same reason, a mind like this which, as we know, is
indifferent to the law of contradiction, will admit both that
the sexual act is the ordinary condition of conception, and
at the same time declare that conception may occur without
it. The Lucina sine concubitu may be exceptional* but
in itself it is nothing extraordinary. If a spirit enters into
a woman during a dream, for instance, she will have con-
ceived, and her child will be born. The primitive's stories,
legends, and myths are full of tales of this sort, nor do they
occasion him any surprise. We must not, however, infer
that he does not know the part played by coition, but that,
even when he knows it, or has more or less vague ideas 1
concerning it, he yet does not believe that conception really
depends upon it.
« Of the Azanda of the Upper Congo, Harold Reynolds says : " Their
ideas about conception are — at any rate to a European — very strange. . . .
They believe that the foundations of the foetus are not laid in one impreg-
nation, but in several successive fertilizations of the ovary, extending through
a number of days." — H. Reynolds : " Notes on the Azanda Tribe of the
Congo," Journal of the African Society, xi. p. 239 (1904). The same idea is
found in the Papuans studied by Landtman. " If a child is contemplated, the
husband must cohabit with her regularly, till the making of the child is com-
pleted."—" The Folk-tales of the Kiwai Papuans," Acta societatis scientiarum
fenniccz, xlvii. p. 460 (note).
III
When faced by natural phenomena, then, the primitive
mind does riot propound the same problems to itself as ours
does, it often does not bring forward any at all. " These
uncivilized tribes/' says an explorer when speaking of the
Sakais of Sumatra, " have but very slight need of causality.
. . . They react only to impressions which are very powerful
and very direct. . . ." 1 " Need of causality " here means
" interest aroused " by the phenomena they see around
them. This semblance of apathy and mental torpor has
often been remarked upon in the most primitive com-
munities, and especially in certain South American tribes. It
soon leads to incorrect conclusions about primitive mentality
in general. If we wish to avoid error, we must not
try to find among these peoples, either the very lowest
or those who are somewhat more civilized, a " need of
causality " of the same type as our own. As we have seen
from the facts and institutions studied in this volume, they
have their own causality and it is the one suited to their
needs, though it readily escapes the notice of investigators
who are too hasty, or else prejudiced. Their mentality,
essentially mystic and prelogical as it is, proceeds to other
objects, and pursues other paths, than our minds do. The
importance which divination and magic have assumed in
their eyes is enough to show this. To follow primitive
mentality in its course, to unravel its theories, we must,
as it were, do violence to our own mental habits, and adapt
ourselves to theirs. It is an effort which it is almost
impossible to sustain, and yet without it their minds are
likely to remain unintelligible to us.
Besides the almost irrepressible tendency which leads
us, in spite of ourselves, to conceive of their minds as like
our own, another fact contributes towards concealing their
true characteristics from us. In actual practice primitives,
in order to live, must pursue ends which we can readily
comprehend, and we see that in doing so, they set to work
much as we should do in their place. From the fact that
in these circumstances they act like us, we are tempted
* Moszkowski : Auf neuen Wegen durch Sumatra, p. 90.
;:o conclude at once, without being more fully informed,
:hat their mental operations in general resemble ours. A
•nore careful observation and analysis alone enable us to
perceive the difference.
Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures
tried to show how primitive mentality, often absolutely
indifferent to the law of contradiction, is nevertheless quite
capable of avoiding it, when the necessity for action demands
it.1 In the same way, primitives who betray no apparent
interest in the most obvious causal relations are quite
able to utilize them to procure what is necessary to them, \
their food, for example, or some special tool. As a matter
of fact, there is no type of community however inferior,
in which some invention, some process of industry or art,
some manufacture may not be found to wonder at — canoes,
pots, baskets, cloth, ornaments, etc. The very men who,
devoid of almost everything, seem to be quite at the
bottom of the ladder, in the production of a special thing
will obtain results which are surprising in their delicacy and
accuracy. The Australian aborigine makes the boomerang ;
both the Bushman and the Papuan reveal themselves artistic
in their designs ; the Melanesian is very skilful in the arrange-
ment of his snares for fish, and so on.
A course of reports on the technicology of primitives
will undoubtedly be of great help in determining the stages
of their mental development. Up to the present time,
since inventive processes, not very well known when our
minds are in question, are still more unknown in their case,
we can but make a general remark. The exceptional value
attaching to certain manufactures or certain processes of
primitives, contrasting so forcibly as these do with the rough
and elementary character of the rest of their civilization,
is not the result of reflection or of reasoning either. If it
were so, there would not be so much disparity shown, and
a faculty that was universal would have been of use to them
on more than one occasion. Rather is it that their hand
has acquired its skill by a sort of intuition which is itself
directed by acute observation of objects possessing peculiar
interest for them. Such intuition would carry them far.
1 Les Fonctiovs Mentales dans les Socittes Inferieures, p. 79.
The intricate arrangement of a combination of methods
appropriate to the end pursued does not necessarily imply
deliberate activity of the understanding, nor the possession
of knowledge capable of being analysed, generalized, and
adapted to unforeseen cases. It may be merely practical
skill, formed and developed by use, and thus maintained —
a skill comparable with that of a good billiard player who,
without knowing anything either of geometry or mechanics,
has acquired a ready and accurate intuition of the movement
required in a given position, without needing to reflect
upon his stroke.
In the same way we can account for the subtlety and
sagacity shown by many primitives in varied circumstances.
According to Marthas' report, for instance, Indians of the
lowest Brazilian tribes can differentiate all the species and
even all the varieties of palms, and they have a name for
each one. Australians recognize the individual footprints
of each member of their social group, etc. We often hear of
the natural eloquence shown in ethical matters by natives
in a number of uncivilized communities, the wealth of argu-
ment displayed in their palavers, and their readiness of
attack and defence in their disputes. Their legends and
their proverbs often betray a delicate and roguish power of
observation and their myths, a ready and oft-times poetical
imagination. All these things have been noted many times
over by observers who were by no means prejudiced in
favour of " savages."
When, therefore, we see them — physiognomists, moralists,
psychologists (in the practical sense of the words) — like
ourselves, sometimes better than ourselves, it is hard for
us to believe that, frcm other points of view, they should
be almost inexplicable enigmas, and that a world of difference
lies between their mentality and our own. Let us note,
however, that the points of resemblance always refer to
mental processes in which primitives proceed, as we do,
by direct intuition, immediate apprehension, rapid and
almost instantaneous interpretation of what has been per-
ceived ; when, for instance, it is a case of reading, from a
man's facial expression, thoughts which he perhaps does
not admit even to himself ; of finding words which cause
the vibration of the hidden chords one desires to touch ;
of seeing the ridiculous side of an action or situation, and
so on. In such cases primitives are guided by a kind of
special sense, or by tact. Experience develops and refines
this, and it may become infallible, without having anything
in common with intellectual processes, properly so called.
Directly the latter come into play, the differences between
the two kinds of mentality shine out so clearly that we
are inclined in turn to exaggerate them, and the disconcerted
observer who but yesterday was estimating the intelligence
of the primitive as virtually equal to that of any other
man, to-day accuses him of incredible stupidity, when he
finds him incapable of even the simplest form of reasoning.
The solution of the engima is to be found in the mystical
and prelogical character of primitive mentality. Confronted I
by the collective representations in which it expresses itself, \
the pre-connections which link them together, the institutions
they objectify, our conceptual and logical thought moves
with difficulty, as in the presence of some mental entity
which is foreign and even hostile to it. As a matter of
fact, the world in which primitive mentality operates only
partially coincides with our own. The network of second
causes which to our way of thinking is infinite in extent,
rests unperceived and in the background in theirs, whilst
occult powers, mystic influences, participations of all kinds,
are mingled with the data directly afforded by perception,
and make up a whole in which the actual world and the*
world beyond are blended. In this sense their world is \
more complex than our universe, but on the other hand \
it is complete, and it is closed. According to the ideas of (
most primitives, the vault of heaven rests like a dome upon
the flat surface of the earth or of the ocean. Thus the world
ends on the circle of the horizon. In it space is felt rather
than imagined ; its directions are weighted with qualities,
and each of its regions, as we have already seen,1 participates
in all that is usually found there. The primitives' idea of
time, which is above all qualitative, remains vague ; and
nearly all primitive languages are as deficient in methods
of rendering the relations of time as they are copious in
* Vide supra, chap. vii. p. 208-15.
expressing spatial relations. Frequently a future event, if
considered certain to happen, and if provocative of great
emotion, is felt to be already present.
In this closed world, whose space, causation, time, are
all somewhat different from our own, communities feel them-
selves solidary with the other beings, or groups of beings,
whether seen or unseen, which inhabit it with them. Each
social group, according to whether it is nomadic or stationary,
occupies a more or less extensive territory, the limits of
which are as a rule definitely fixed for it and for its neighbours.
The group is not only the master of it, possessing the ex-
clusive right, for example, of hunting there or of garnering
its fruits. The soil " belongs " to it, in the mystic sense of
the word : a mystic relation binds its living and its dead
with the occult powers of all kinds which people this region,
which permit the group to live there, and which undoubtedly
would not tolerate the presence of any other. In the same
way, by reason of an intimate relation, whatever has been
in direct and constant contact with a man — his clothing
or ornaments, his weapons, his cattle — actually is the man
himself, and that is why, when he dies, they often cannot
belong to anyone else, but must accompany him to his
new state ; in the same way the piece of land upon which
a group of human beings lives is the group itself : it could
not exist elsewhere, and any other group which might try
to seize it and establish itself there would be exposed to
the very gravest dangers. Therefore, between neighbouring
tribes we may find conflicts and warfare on account of
incursions, raids, violation of territory, but not conquests,
properly so called. An enemy group may be destroyed,
but its territory will not be annexed. What would be the
good, since one would have to encounter the dread enmity
of the u spirits " of all kinds and species, both of animal
and plant life, which own it, and which would certainly
avenge the conquered ? The conquerors could not live
there, and they would be very certain to die there. Possibly
in these bonds of participation in essence and locality
between one human group or sub-group and a certain living
species, we see one of the root-principles of what is called
totemistic kinship.
In the midst of this confusion of mystic participations
.nd exclusions, the impressions which the individual has
>f himself whether living or dead, and of the group to which
le " belongs/' have only a far-off resemblance to ideas or
concepts. They are felt and lived, rather than thought.
Neither their content nor their connections are strictly
•ubmitted to the law of contradiction. Consequently neither
he personal ego, nor the social group, nor the surrounding
yorld, both seen and unseen, appears to be yet " definite "
'n the collective representations, as they seem to be as soon
is our conceptual thought tries to grasp them. In spite
Df the most careful effort, our thought cannot assimilate
them with what it knows as its " ordinary " objects. It
therefore despoils them of what there is in them that is
slementally concrete, emotional and vital. This it is which
renders so difficult, and so frequently uncertain, the com-
prehension of institutions wherein is expressed the mentality,
mystic rather than logical, of primitive peoples.