[72] Lippert, Der Seelencult, p. 11. Kubary, in Original-Mittheil. aus der ethnol. Abtheil. d. königl. Museen zu Berlin, i. 78.
[73] Rosenberg, Der malayische Archipel, p. 461 (Papuans of Dorey).
[74] Hodson, ‘Native Tribes of Manipur,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 305 sq.
[75] Burton, Mission to Gelele, ii. 142 sq. (Dahomans).
[76] La Flesche, in Jour. American Folk-Lore, ii. 11 (Omahas).
[77] Bossu, op. cit. i. 258.
[78] Kovalewsky, Coutume contemporaine et loi ancienne, p. 327.
It is comparatively seldom that savages are reported to attach any stigma to suicide. To the instances mentioned above a few others may be added. The Waganda, we are told, greatly condemn the act.[79] Among the Bogos “a man never despairs, never gives himself up, and considers suicide as the greatest indignity.”[80] The Karens of Burma deem it an act of cowardice; but at the same time they have no command against it, they “seem to see little or no guilt in it,” and “we are nowhere told that it is displeasing to the God of heaven and earth.”[81] The Dacotahs said of a girl who had destroyed herself because her parents had turned her beloved from the wigwam, and would force her to marry a man she hated, that her spirit did not watch over her earthly remains, being offended when she brought trouble upon her aged mother and father.[82] In Dahomey “it is criminal to attempt to commit suicide, because every man is the property of the king. The bodies of suicides are exposed to public execration, and the head is always struck off and sent to Agbomi; at the expense of the family if the suicide were a free man, at that of his master if he were a slave.”[83] On the other hand, it is expressly stated of various savages that they do not punish attempts to commit suicide.[84] The negroes of Accra see nothing wrong in the act. “Why,” they would ask, “should a person not be allowed to die, when he no longer desires to live?” But they inflict cruel punishments upon slaves who try to put an end to themselves, in order to deter other slaves from doing the same.[85] Among the Pelew Islanders suicide “is neither praised nor blamed.”[86] The Eskimo around Northumberland Inlet and Davis Strait believe that any one who has been killed by accident, or who has taken his own life, certainly goes to the happy place after death.[87] The Chippewas hold suicide “to be a foolish, not a reprehensible action,” and do not believe it to entail any punishment in the other world.[88] In his sketches of the manners and customs of the North American Indians, Buchanan writes:—“Suicide is not considered by the Indians either as an act of heroism or of cowardice, nor is it with them a subject of praise or blame. They view this desperate act as the consequence of mental derangement, and the person who destroys himself is to them an object of pity.”[89]
[79] Felkin, in Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 723.
[80] Munzinger, Die Sitten und das Recht der Bogos, p. 93.