[88] Ibid. p. 113 sq.
[89] Campbell, op. cit. p. 51.
[90] Ibid. p. 56. Cf. ibid. p. 73.
[91] Russell, quoted ibid. p. 54.
[92] Russell, quoted ibid. p. 55.
[93] Macpherson, op. cit. p. 122 sq.
[94] Ibid. p. 128.
[95] Campbell, op. cit. p. 181.
[96] Ibid. p. 120. Cf. ibid. p. 197:—Among the Ooryahs human sacrifice is “performed on important occasions, such as going to battle, building a fort in an important village, and to avert any threatened danger.”
The same may be said about other cases mentioned by Dr. Frazer, when more closely examined. “The Indians of Guayaquil, in Ecuador,” he says, “used to sacrifice human blood and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields.”[97] But our authority, Cieza de Leon, adds that those Indians also offered human victims when their chiefs were sick “to appease the wrath of their gods.“[98] “The Pawnees,” Dr. Frazer writes, “annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning Star had sent to them as its messenger…. They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed by the total failure of the crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins.[99] James, to whom Dr. Frazer refers, and other authorities say that the human sacrifice was a propitiatory offering made to that star,[100] a planet which especially with the Skidi—the only section of the Pawnees who offered human sacrifices—was an object of superstitious veneration.[101] Sickness, misfortune, and personal mishaps of various kinds were often spoken of as attributable to the incurred ill-will of the heavenly bodies;[102] and the object of the sacrifice to the morning star is expressly said to have been “to avert the evil influences exerted by that planet.”[103] According to Mr. Dunbar, whose important[104] article dealing with the subject has escaped Dr. Frazer’s notice, “the design of the bloody ordeal was to conciliate that being and secure a good crop. Hence,” he continues, “it has been supposed that the morning star was regarded by them as presiding over agriculture, but this was a mistake. They sacrificed to that star because they feared it, imagining that it exerted malign influence if not well disposed. It has also been stated that the sacrifice was made annually. This, too, was an error. It was made only when special occurrences were interpreted as calling for it.”[105] At the present day the Indians speak of the sacrifice as having been made to Ti-ra’-wa, the Supreme Being or the deity “who is in and of everything.”[106] In the detailed account of the rite, which was given to Mr. Grinnell by an old chief who had himself witnessed it several times, it is said:—“While the smoke of the blood and the buffalo meat, and of the burning body, ascended to the sky, all the people prayed to Ti-ra’-wa, and walked by the fire and grasped handfuls of the smoke, and passed it over their bodies and over those of their children, and prayed Ti-ra’-wa to take pity on them, and to give them health, and success in war, and plenteous crops…. This sacrifice always seemed acceptable to Ti-ra’-wa, and when the Skidi made it they always seemed to have good fortune in war, and good crops, and they were always well.”[107] According to this description, then, the human sacrifice of the Pawnees, like that of the Kandhs, was not an exclusively agricultural rite, but was performed for the purpose of averting dangers of various kinds. And this is also suggested by Mr. Dunbar’s relation of the last instance of this sacrifice, which occurred in April, 1838. In the previous winter the Skidi, soon after starting on their hunt, had a successful fight with a band of Oglala Dacotahs, and fearing that the Dacotahs would retaliate by coming upon them in overwhelming force, they returned for safety to their village before taking a sufficient number of buffaloes. “With little to eat, they lived miserably, lost many of their ponies from scarcity of forage, and, worst of all, one of the captives proved to have the small-pox, which rapidly spread through the band, and in the spring was communicated to the rest of the tribe. All these accumulated misfortunes the Ski’-di attributed to the anger of the morning star; and accordingly they resolved to propitiate its favour by a repetition of the sacrifice, though in direct violation of a stipulation made two years before that the sacrifice should not occur again.”[108]