But even more to be feared than the daemones are the ghosts and beast-embodied souls.[190] Like most other peoples in a parallel stage of mental life, the South American Indians very generally believe in metempsychosis, souls of men returning to earth in animal and even vegetal forms, and quite consistently with the malevolent purpose of wreaking vengeance upon olden foes. The belief has many characteristic modifications: in some cases the soul does not leave the body until the flesh is decayed; in many instances it passes for a time to a life of joy and dancing, a kind of temporary Paradisal limbo; but always it comes sooner or later back to fulfill its destiny as a were-beast.[191] The South American tiger, or jaguar, is naturally the form in which the reincarnate foe is most dreaded, and no mythic conception is wider spread in the continent than is that of the were-jaguar, lying in wait for his human foe,—who, if Garcilasso's account of jaguar-worshipping tribes is correct, offered themselves unresistingly when the beast was encountered.
It is probable that the conception of the were-jaguar, or of beast reincarnations, is associated in part at least with the enigmatical question of tropical American cannibalism.[192] A recent traveller, J. D. Haseman, who visited a region of reputed cannibalism, and found no trace of the practice, is of the opinion that it has no present existence, if indeed it ever had any. But against this view is the unanimous testimony of nearly all observers, with explicit descriptions of the custom, from Hans Staden and Cardim down to Koch-Grünberg and Whiffen. Hans Staden, who was held as a slave among the Tupinambi of the Brazilian coast, describes a visit which he made to his Indian master for the purpose of begging that certain prisoners be ransomed. "He had before him a great basket of human flesh, and was busy gnawing a bone. He put it to my mouth and asked if I did not wish to eat. I said to him: 'There is hardly a wild animal that will eat its kind; how then shall I eat human flesh?' Then he, resuming his meal: 'I am a tiger, and I find it good.'" Cardim's description of cannibal rites is in many ways reminiscent of the Aztec sacrifice of the devoted youth to Tezcatlipoca: the victim is painted and adorned, is given a wife, and indeed so honoured that he does not even seek to escape,—"for they say that it is a wretched thing to die, and lie stinking, and eaten with worms"; throughout, the ritual element is obvious. On the other hand, the conception of degradation is clearly a strong factor. Whiffen makes this the foremost reason for the practice. The Indian, he says, has very definite notions as to the inferiority of the brute creation. To resemble animals in any way is regarded as degrading; and this, he regards as the reason for the widespread South American custom of removing from the body all hair except from the scalp, and again for the disgrace attendant upon the birth of twins. But animals are slaughtered as food for men: what disgrace, then to the captured enemy comparable with being used as food by his captor? Undoubtedly, the vengeful nature of anthropophagy is a strong factor in maintaining the custom; from Hans Staden on, writers tell us that while the captive takes his lot fatalistically his last words are a reminder to his slayers that his kindred are preparing a like end for them. Probably the unique and curious South American method of preparing the heads of slain enemies as trophies, by a process of removing the bones, shrinking, and decorating, is a practice with the same end—the degradation of the enemy,—corresponding, of course, to the scalping and head-taking habits of other American tribes.
PLATE XLII.
Trophy head prepared by Jivaro Indians, Ecuador, now in the Peabody Museum. In the preparation of such trophies the bones are carefully removed, the head shrunken and dried, and frequently, as in this example, ornamented with brilliant feathers. The custom of preparing the heads of slain enemies or of sacrificial victims as trophies was widespread in aboriginal America, North and South, the North American custom of scalping being probably a late development from this earlier practice. It is possible that some at least of the masks which appear upon mythological figures in Nasca and other representations are meant to betoken trophy heads.
It is to be expected that with the custom of anthropophagy widespread, it should be constantly reflected in myth. A curious and enlightening instance is in the Bakairi hero-tale reported by von den Steinen:[193] A jaguar married a Bakairi maiden; while he was gone ahunting, his mother, Mero, the mother of all the tiger kind, killed the maiden, whose twin sons were saved from her body by a Caesarian section. The girl's body was then served up to the jaguar husband, without his knowledge. When he discovered the trick—infuriated at the trick and at having eaten his wife's flesh,—he was about to attack Mero: "I am thy mother!" she cried, and he desisted. Here we have the whole moral problem of the house of Pelops primitively adumbrated.
More in the nature of the purely ogreish is the tale related by Couto de Magalhães,[194] the tale of Ceiuci, the Famished Old Woman (who he says, is none other than the Pleiades). A young man sat in a tree-rest, when Ceiuci came to the waters beneath to fish. She saw the youth's shadow, and cast in her line. He laughed. She looked up. "Descend," she cried; and when he refused, she sent biting ants after him, compelling him to drop into the water. Thence she snared him, and went home with her game. While she was gone for wood to cook her take, her daughter looked into the catch, and saw the youth, at his request concealing him. "Show me my game or I will kill you," commanded the ogress. In company with the youth the maiden takes flight—the "magic flight," which figures in many myths, South American and North. As they flee they drop palm branches which are transformed into animals and these Ceiuci stops to devour. But in time all kinds of animals have been formed, and the girl can help the youth no longer. "When you hear a bird singing kan kan, kan kan, kan kan," she says, in leaving him, "my mother is not far." He goes on till he hears the warning. The monkeys hide him and Ceiuci passes. He resumes his journey, and again hears the warning chant. He begs the serpents to hide him; they do so, and the ogress passes once more. But the serpents now plan to devour the youth; he hears them laying their plot and calls upon the macauhau, a snake-eating bird, to help him; and the bird eats the serpents. Finally, the youth reaches a river, where he is aided by the herons to cross. From a tree he beholds a house, and going thither he finds an old woman complaining that her maniocs are being stolen by the agouti. The man tells her his story. He had started out as a youth; he is now old and white-haired. The woman recognizes him as her son, and she takes him in to live with her. Couto de Magalhães sees in this tale an image of the journey of life with its perils and its loves; the love of man for woman is the first solace sought, but abiding rest is found only in mother love. At least the story will bear this interpretation; nor will it be alone as a South American tale in which the moral meaning is conscious.
V. SUN, MOON, AND STARS
When the Greeks began to speculate about "the thing the Sophists call the world," they named it sometimes the Heaven, Ouranos, sometimes the Realm of Order, Cosmos; and the two terms seemed to them one in meaning, for the first and striking evidence of law and order in nature which man discovers is in the regular and recurrent movements of the heavenly bodies. But it takes a knowledge of number and a sense of time to be able to truly discern this orderliness of the celestial sequences; and both of these come most naturally to peoples dwelling in zones wherein the celestial changes are reflected in seasonal variations of vegetation and animal life. In the well-nigh seasonless tropics, and among peoples gifted with no powers of enumeration (for there are many South American tribes that cannot number the ten digits), it is but natural to expect that the cycles of the heavens should seem as lawless as does their own instable environment, and the stars themselves to be actuated by whims and lusts analogous to their own.
"I wander, always wander; and when I get where I want to be, I shall not stop, but still go on...."