Religions of Primitive Peoples

by Daniel G. Brinton

In these funeral rites the disposal of the corpse depended upon ethnic traits, ancestral usage, or the instructions of the priests.

Perhaps the earliest was simple exposure. The body was left in the forest for the beasts and birds to consume, as among the Caddo Indians and others; or it was sunk in the waters that the fish should perform the same office; the usual object being to obtain the bones with the least trouble. The oldest of all burials yet discovered, those in the caves in the south of France, were of this character, simple “seposition” as it is called. The body was merely laid in a posture of repose on the cave floor, with the weapons and ornaments it had used during life.[259]

Next in point of time doubtless came inhumation, the interment of the body in the ground or covering it, laid on the surface, with stones and earth,—the burial mound. Homeric Greeks, American Indians, and tribes of all continents practised this method in different ages, and the barrows or tumuli thus erected remain in thousands to this day to attest the religious earnestness of those early peoples. The vast monuments which at times they constructed for their dead, the pyramids, dolmens, and teocalli, have never since been equalled in magnitude or cubical contents.

Another and significant funeral rite of high antiquity is that of cremation or incineration. It was symbolic in character, the body being given to the flames in order that the spirit, by their purifying agency, should promptly be set free and united with the gods. This method also prevailed extensively among the American race, and was quite in consonance with their opinions of the after-life. “It is the one passion of his superstition,” writes Mr. Powers of the Californian Indian, “to think of the soul of his departed friend as set free, and purified by the flames; not bound to the mouldering body, but borne up on the soft clouds of the smoke toward the beautiful sun.”[260]

Other peoples entertained the opinion that the body as it is, in all its parts, must be preserved in order that it might be again habitable for the soul, when this ethereal essence should return to earth from its celestial wanderings. Therefore, with utmost care they sought for means to preserve the fleshly tenement. In Virginia, in some parts of South America, on the Madeira Islands, the aboriginal population dried the corpse over a slow fire into a condition that resisted decay; while elsewhere, the nitrous soil of caves offered a natural means of embalming. The Alaskan and Peruvian mummies, like those of ancient Egypt, were artificially prepared and swathed in numerous cerecloths. In all, the same faith in the literal resurrection of the flesh was the prevailing motive.

More generally, the belief was held that the soul remained attached in some way to the bones. These were carefully cleaned and either preserved in the house, or stored in ossuaries. Frequently they were kept as amulets or mascots, in the notion that the friendly spirit which animated the living person would continue to hover around his skeleton or skull, and exert its amicable power. The Peruvians held that the bones of their deceased priests were oracular, speaking good counsel, and the missionaries were obliged to break them into small fragments to dispel this superstition[261]; though they themselves continued to hold it heretical to doubt the efficacy of the bones of the saints! A tribe on the Orinoco was wont to beat the bones of their dead into powder and mix it with their cassava bread, holding that thus their friends and parents lived again in the bodies of the eaters!

After cremation, the ashes were left upon the altar, and the whole covered with earth; or they were preserved in urns with the fragments of the bones; or, as with a tribe of the Amazon, they were cast upon the waters of the great river and floated down to the limitless ocean.

Thus closed the last scene in the existence of the primitive man. From birth to death he had been surrounded and governed by the ceremonies of his religion; and on his passage out of this life, he confidently looked to another in which he should find a compensation and a consolation for the woes of his present condition.

Following these funerary functions came the customs of mourning. They were often excessively protracted and severe, involving self-mutilation, as the lopping of a finger or an ear, scarification, flagellation, fasting, and cutting the hair. These were shared by the friends and relatives of the deceased, and at the death of some famous chief “the whole tribe will prostrate themselves to their woe.”