[44] Westermarck, op. cit. p. 125 sq.
[45] Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, i. 610.
[46] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 287.
[47] Skrzyncki, in Am Ur-Quell, v. 208.
[48] von Struve, in Ausland, 1880, p. 777.
[49] Steller, op. cit. p. 269. Cf. Krasheninnikoff, op. cit. p. 204.
[50] Supra, [i. 389 sq.] (Fijians). Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, ii. 331. Steller, op. cit. p. 294 (Kamchadales).
Whilst in some cases suicide opens the door to a happy land beyond the grave, it in other cases entails consequences of a very different kind. The Omahas believe that a self-murderer ceases to exist.[51] According to the Thompson Indians in British Columbia, “the souls of people who commit suicide do not go to the land of souls. The shamans declare they never saw such people there; and some say that they have looked for the souls of such people, but could not find their tracks. Some shamans say they cannot locate the place where the souls of suicides go, but think they must be lost, because they seem to disappear altogether. Others say that these souls die, and cease to exist. Still others claim that the souls never leave the earth, but wander around aimlessly.”[52] So also the Jakuts believe that the ghost of a self-murderer never comes to rest.[53] Sometimes the fate of suicides after death is represented as a punishment which they suffer for their deed. Thus the Dacotahs, among whom women not infrequently put an end to their existence by hanging themselves, are of opinion that suicide is displeasing to the “Father of Life,” and will be punished in the land of spirits by the ghost being doomed for ever to drag the tree on which the person hanged herself; hence the women always suspend themselves to as small a tree as can possibly sustain their weight.[54] The Pahárias of the Rájmahal Hills, in India, say that “suicide is a crime in God’s eyes,” and that “the soul of one who so offends shall not be admitted into heaven, but must hover eternally as a ghost between heaven and earth,”[55] The Kayans of Borneo maintain that self-murderers are sent to a place called Tan Tekkan, where they will be very poor and wretched, subsisting on leaves, roots, or anything they can pick up in the forests, and being easily distinguished by their miserable appearance.[56] According to Dyak beliefs, they go to a special place, where those who have drowned themselves must thenceforth live up to their waists in water, and those who have poisoned themselves must live in houses built of poisonous woods and surrounded by noxious plants, the exhalations of which are painful to the spirits.[57] In other instances we are simply told that the souls of suicides, together with those of persons who have been killed in war,[58] or who have died a violent death,[59] are not permitted to live with the rest of the souls, to whom their presence would cause uneasiness. Among the Hidatsa Indians some people say that the ghosts of men who have made away with themselves occupy a separate part of the village of the dead, but that their condition in no other wise differs from that of the other ghosts.[60]
[51] La Flesche, ‘Death and Funeral Customs among the Omahas,’ in Jour. of American Folk-Lore, ii. 11.
[52] Teit, ‘Thompson Indians of British Columbia,’ in Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Anthropology, i. 358 sq.