Religions of Primitive Peoples

by Daniel G. Brinton

This personal deity reveals himself at birth, or may await some later year or incident of life to manifest his name and nature. He may be the spirit of some ancestor or great chieftain or mighty shaman; or he may belong to those deities who never assume mortal habiliments. The teachers of early faiths differed on these points; but nearly all agreed that to each person some such guardian angel or genius was assigned. From these spirits the personal names were frequently received, and, lest these should be misused, they were usually kept secret.

These beliefs are too wide-spread to require support from examples. Probably every American tribe shared them. They are familiar in classic Greece and Rome. The Finns and the ancient Celtic peoples possessed them in marked forms; and they survive in the tutelary Saints of the Roman Church.

Principally to these the adults paid their devotions and offered their vows for what concerned their personal welfare; and many of the rites which I am about to describe, derive their meaning from their connection with this belief. I shall classify them as relating: 1, to birth; 2, to naming; 3, to puberty; 4, to marriage; and 5, to death and the disposal of the corpse.

1. Rites Relating to Birth.—Although the immediate act of childbirth may not cause the savage mother severe suffering, the appearance of a new human being in the world is not considered of light importance. In her description of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, Mrs. Stevenson remarks that some “of their most sacred and exclusive rites are connected with childbirth,” and her full and accurate account of them reveals in a strong light how solemn the event was considered.[234]

In many tribes the child was considered bound to its father by some mysterious tie closer than connected it with its mother. Among the Northern Indians, the father will not bridle a horse or perform sundry other acts for a fixed period after the birth of his child, for if he did it would die![235] In the rites of Mexico and South America, this refraining from certain labours passed into the strange custom of the couvade. This was, that upon the birth of the child, the father took to his bed and remained there for a number of days. Did he neglect this, it was believed that the child would die or have bad luck. For the same reason he had to be extremely careful of his own health and guarded in his actions during his wife’s pregnancy, or otherwise the unborn babe would suffer.[236]

Not less strange are the wide-spread rites and opinions connected with the umbilical cord. As it united the unborn infant to the life of the mother, it was generally held to retain that power in a mystical sense. Among the American Indians, it was a frequent custom to carry it to a distance and bury it, and it became the duty of the individual, in his later life, to visit alone from time to time that spot, and perform certain ceremonies.[237]

Thus the religious life of a person began with his birth. Not infrequently at that time his tutelary divinity was ascertained by the priests and assigned him, as among the Mayas, and the Africans of the Congo River. With the latter, it was also customary to lay upon the new-born babe a series of “vows,” or resolutions touching his conduct in life. These were impressed on the mother, who adopted it as a sacred duty to bring up her child in obedience to them. A similar habit prevailed in the Andaman Islands and elsewhere.[238]

With these vows was often associated the rite of baptism, by sprinkling or by immersion in water. Even among the rude Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego we find that the child, when born, was promptly dipped in water, not for sanitary but for religious reasons.

The ancient inhabitants of Teneriffe considered it necessary to have a child formally asperged by a priestess before acknowledging it as a member of the family,[239] and some such rite was prevalent in many tribes. It was in one sense an initiation, as it was with the neophytes of the mysteries of Mithras, who, according to Tertullian, were baptised upon entering the novitiate. In another, it would seem to have been a purification from inherited sin, in which sense it was practised by the Nahuas of Mexico and the Quichuas of Peru. With the Mayas of Yucatan, it was in common usage and was known by the significant name, “the second birth.”[240]