Religions of Primitive Peoples

by Daniel G. Brinton

For convenience of presentation they may be examined under seven headings, as they were connected with: 1. The primitive social bond; 2. The family and the position of woman; 3. The growth of jurisprudence; 4. The development of ethics; 5. The advance in positive knowledge; 6. The fostering of the arts; and 7. The independent life of the individual.

These are the main elements of ethnology; and as they progressed to higher forms and finer specialisations, partly through the influence of religion, they in turn reflected back to it their brighter lustre, and the symmetrical growth of a richer culture was thus secured.

1. The first to be named should be the construction of the primitive society. This was essentially religious. I have already emphasised how completely the savage is bound up in his faith, how it enters into nigh every act and thought of his daily life. This may be illustrated by its part in four very early and widely existing forms of social ties—the totem, the sacred society, the priesthood, and the ceremonial law.

The totemic bond I have previously explained. It existed in many American and Australian tribes and relics of it can be discerned in the early peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its constitution was avowedly religious. The supposed or “eponymous” ancestor of the totem was a mythical existence, a sort of deity. He was known only through a revelation, either in visions, or, through the assertions of the elders of the clan, in which latter case the myth was the origin of the relationship. Theoretically, all members of the totem were kinfolk, “of one blood,” and the numerous rites connected with the letting of blood were generally to symbolise this teaching.[265]

In various tribes, as among the Sioux and in Polynesia, the totem did not prevail. Its place was taken by societies, sacred in character, the members of which were bound closely together by some supernatural tie. As our Indians say, all the members “had the same medicine.” The relation these societies bear to the tribe is not dissimilar to that elsewhere held by totems.

In nearly all primitive peoples the priesthood exerts a powerful influence in preserving the unity of the tribe, in presenting an immovable opposition to external control. This is well known to the Christian missionaries and bitterly resented by them. These shamans and “medicine-men” are the most persistent opponents of civilisation and Christianity; but it must be remembered that the same conservatism on their part has for centuries been the chief preventive of tribal dissolution and decay. While we regret that they should resist what is good, we must recognise the value of their services to their people in the past.[266]

The ceremonial law belongs, as I have elsewhere said, to the primary forms of religion. It is in full force, as among the Mincopies and Yahgans, where it is difficult to perceive any other form of religious expression. It is deemed by all to be divine in origin, imparted in dreams or visions by supernatural visitors, transcending therefore all human enactments. It defines the proper conduct of the individual, and prescribes what is allowed and what is forbidden to him. Obedience to it is constantly inculcated under the threat of the severest penalties.

These are the main forces which moulded the earliest human societies known to us, and may be said to have first created society itself. They are all distinctly religious, and their consideration obliges us to acknowledge the correctness of the statement of a distinguished Italian, Professor Tito Vignoli,—“There is no society, however rude and primitive, in which all the relations, both of the individual and of the society itself, are not visibly based on superstitions and mythical beliefs.”[267]

2. Earlier, perhaps, than any definite social organisation was the family bond which united together those of one kinship. This rested upon marriage, the religious character of which in even the rudest tribes I dwelt upon in the last lecture. I then explained the matriarchal system prevalent in so many savage peoples. Necessarily, this exalted the position of woman, by conferring upon her the titular position of head of the house, and often the actual ownership of the family property.

It is a general truth in sociology that we may gauge the tendencies of a given society towards progressive growth by the position it assigns to woman, by the amount of freedom it gives her, and by the respect it pays to her peculiar faculties. Religions which, like Mohammedanism, reduce her to a very subordinate place in life, wholly secondary to that of the male, have worked detrimentally to the advancement of the peoples who have adopted them.