The Samojedes are the immediate neighbours of the Lapps. Like them, they are nomads; but they are even less civilized, and have profited less by the arduous and enthusiastic labours of the Christian missionaries. They range over the forests and stony tundras of Northern Russia and Western Siberia; driving their reindeer herds from the banks of the Chatanga to the icy shores of the White Sea, or hunting the wild beasts in the dense woods which extend between the Obi and the Yenisei.
They are sunk far deeper than the Lapps in a coarse and debasing superstition. It is true that they believe in a supreme deity—Num, or Jilibeambaertje, who resides in the air, and, like the Greek Zeus, sends down thunder and lightning, rain and snow; and they evince that latent capacity for poetical feeling which is indicated even by the most barbarous tribes in their description of the rainbow as “the hem of his garment.” They regard him, however, as so elevated above the world of man, and so coldly indifferent to humanity, that it is useless to seek to propitiate him either by prayer or sacrifice; and they have recourse, accordingly, to the inferior gods,—who, as they believe, have the direction of human affairs, and are influenced by incantations, vows, or special homage.
The chief of all the Samojede idols is still supposed to consecrate with its presence, as in the days of the adventurous Barentz, the bleak and ice-bound island of Waigatz. It is a block of stone, pointed at the summit, and bearing some rude resemblance to a human head, having been fashioned after this likeness by a freak of nature. This has formed the model for the Samojede sculptors, who have multiplied its effigy in wood and stone; and the idols thus easily created they call sjadæi, because they wear a human (or semi-human) countenance (sja). They attire them in reindeer-skins, and embellish them with innumerable coloured rags. In addition to the sjadæi, they adopt as idols any curiously contorted tree or irregularly shaped stone; and the household idol (Hahe) they carry about with them, carefully wrapped up, in a sledge reserved for the purpose, the hahengan. One of the said penates is supposed to be the guardian of wedded happiness, another of the fishery, a third of the health of his worshippers, a fourth of their herds of reindeer. When his services are required, the Hahe is removed from his resting-place, and erected in the tent or on the pasture-ground, in the wood or on the river’s bank. Then his mouth is smeared with oil or blood, and before him is set a dish of flesh or fish, in return for which repast it is expected that he will use his power on behalf of his entertainers. His aid being no longer needed, he is returned to the hahengan.
Besides these obliging deities, the Samojede believes in the existence of an order of invisible spirits which he calls Tadebtsios. These are ever and everywhere around him, and bent rather upon his injury than his welfare. It becomes important, therefore, to propitiate them; but this can be done only through the interposition of a Tadibe, or sorcerer; who, on occasion, stimulates himself into a state of wild excitement, like the frenzy of the Pythian or Delphic priestess. When his aid is invoked by the credulous Samojede, his first care is to attire himself in full magician’s costume—a kind of shirt, made of reindeer leather, and hemmed with red cloth. Its seams are trimmed in like manner; and the shoulders are also decorated with red cloth tags, or epaulettes. A piece of red cloth is worn over the face as a mask, and a plate of polished metal gleams upon his breast.
SAMOJEDE HUTS ON WAIGATZ ISLAND.
Thus costumed, the Tadibe takes his drum of reindeer-skin, ornamented with brass rings, and, attended by a neophyte, walks round and round with great stateliness, while invoking the presence of the spirits by a discordant rattle. This gradually increases in violence, and is accompanied by the droning intonation of the words of enchantment. The spirits in due time appear, and the Tadibe proceeds to consult them; beating his drum more gently, and occasionally pausing in his doleful chant,—which, however, the novice is careful not to interrupt,—to listen, as is supposed, to the answers of the aerial divinities. At length the conversation ceases; the chant breaks into a fierce howl; the drum rattles more and more loudly; the Tadibe seems under a supernatural influence; his body quivers, and foam gathers on his lips. Then suddenly the frenzy ceases, and the Tadibe utters the will of the Tadebtsios, and gives advice how a straying reindeer may be recovered, or the disease of the Samojede worshipper relieved, or the fisherman’s labour rewarded with an abundant “harvest of the sea.”
The office of the Tadibe is usually transmitted from father to son; but occasionally some individual, predisposed by nature to fits of excitement, and endowed with a vivid imagination, is initiated into its mysteries. His morbid fancy is worked upon by long solitary self-communings and protracted fasts and vigils, and his frame by the use of pernicious narcotics and stimulants, until he persuades himself that he has been visited by the spirits. He is then received as a Tadibe with many ceremonies, which take place at midnight, and he is invested with the magic drum. It will be seen, therefore, that the Tadibe, if he deceives others, partly deceives himself. But he does not disdain to have recourse to the commonest tricks of the conjuror, with the view of imposing upon his ignorant countrymen. Among these is the famous rope-trick, introduced into England by the Davenport Brothers, and since repeated by so many professional necromancers. With his hands and feet fastened, he sits down on a carpet of reindeer-skin, and, the lights being put out, invokes the spirits to come to his assistance. Soon their presence is made known by strange noises; squirrels seem to rustle, snakes to hiss, and bears to growl. At length the disturbance ceases, the lights are rekindled, and the Tadibe steps forward unbound; the spectators, of course, believing that he has been assisted by the Tadebtsios.
As barbarous, says Dr. Hartwig—to whose pages we are here indebted—as barbarous as the poor wretches who submit to his guidance, the Tadibe is incapable of improving their moral condition, and has no wish to do so. Under various names,—Schamans among the Tungusi, Angekoks among the Eskimos, Medicine-men among the Crees and Chepewyans,—we find similar magicians or impostors assuming a spiritual dictatorship over all the Arctic nations of the Old and the New World, wherever their authority has not been broken by Christianity or Buddhism; and this dreary faith still extends its influence over at least half a million of souls, from the White Sea to the extremity of Asia, and from the Pacific to Hudson Bay.