Religions of Primitive Peoples

by Daniel G. Brinton

In some savage tribes, the woman is a mere chattel or slave, denied actual participation in religious rites. But that is by no means the case with all. Among the Hottentots, for example,—who were, when first discovered, a people of respectable culture,—a man can take no higher oath than to swear by his eldest sister; and such is the respect inculcated through his religion, that he never speaks to her unless she addresses him first.[268]

The more delicate nervous organisation of women adapts them peculiarly to the perception of those sub-conscious states which are the psychic sources of inspiration and revelation. Very widely, therefore, in primitive religions they occupied the position of seeresses and priestesses, and were reverenced in accordance therewith. Among the Dyaks of Borneo, in former days, all the recognised priestly class were women. Their bodies were supposed to be the chosen residence of the Sangsangs, beautiful beings, friendly to men. These inspired women, called Bilians or Borich, were subject to theoleptic fits, in which they gave advice, foretold the future, recited rhythmic songs, etc. They were under no restraint of conduct, as what they did, it was held, was the prompting of the god. So firm was their influence that, when, in modern days, the men also became priests, they were obliged to wear the garb of women.[269]

The Siamese also entertain this opinion. Their gods speak through the mouth of some chosen woman. When she feels the visit of the spirit to be near, she arrays herself in a handsome red silk garment, and as the deity enters her, she discourses of the other world, tells where lost objects are to be found, and the like. The assembled company worship her, or rather the god in her. On recovering from her theopneustic trance, she professes entire unconsciousness of what has taken place.[270]

The American Indians very generally concede to their women an exalted rank in their religious mysteries. The Algonquins had quite as famous “medicine-women” as medicine-men, and the same was true generally. Mr. Cushing tells me that there is only one person among the Zuñis who is a member of all the sacred societies and thus knows the secrets of all, and that person is a woman.

When Votan, the legendary hero of the Tzentals of Chiapas, left them for his long journey, he placed his sacred apparatus and his magical scrolls in a cave under the charge of a high priestess, who was to appoint her successor of the same sex until his return. The secret was faithfully kept and the successors appointed for more than a hundred and fifty years after their conversion to Christianity; until, in 1692, on the occasion of the visit of the Bishop to the hamlet where the priestess lived, she disclosed the story, and the holy relics were burned.[271]

Twenty years later, as if to avenge this, the Tzentals revolted in a body, their leader being an inspired prophetess of their tribe, a girl of twenty, fired with enthusiasm to drive the Spaniards from the land and restore the worship of the ancient gods.[272]

It is quite usual to find in early religions many rites, such as dances and sacrifices, which women alone carry out, and to which it is tabu for any man to be admitted. This naturally arises in those cults where the deities are divided sexually into male and female. Such in their origin were the Bacchanals of ancient Greece, participated in at first by women and girls only, celebrated in devotion to the productive powers of nature, which were held to belong more especially to the female sex.[273] The “wise women” of many primitive faiths formed a close caste by themselves, no male being admitted, in imitation of their mythological prototypes in the heavens. The “witches” of the Middle Ages were lineal successors of the Teutonic priestesses, who took as their model the “swan-maidens” or “wish-women” of Odin.[274]

Another form of early institutions was that of the societies of virgins, such as that which from primitive Italic times kept alive the holy fire of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home. Extensive associations of a similar nature were found by the European explorers in Mexico, Yucatan, Peru, and elsewhere.

A curious teaching of several wide-spread cults was that women alone were endowed with immortality. Such was the opinion of the natives of the Marquesas Islands, and in Samoa the myth related that the god Supa (paralysis) ordained in the council of creation that the life of a man should be like a torch, which, when blown out, cannot be again lighted by blowing; but that a woman’s soul should live always.[275]