Indo-China and its primitive people

by Henry Baudesson

"I was stationed at Djiring in Annam and the night in question was dark and rainy. I was sleeping in a hut of straw which, by exception in these tiger-stricken regions, was not raised on piles. About midnight I was awakened by the sound of a prowling tiger, a sound which left no doubt of its origin. It is quite impossible to mistake the short 'cop-cop,' the tiger's hunting signal, as recognizable as that of a motor-horn. I got up, seized my rifle and prepared for the intruder. The walls of the hut were made of a network of palm leaves and so flimsy that the beast could have burst through at a bound. I waited in silence and in a few seconds heard a noise as of a heavy body falling, followed by the piercing cry of the victim, a young fawn, I surmised. The tiger growled and then gave vent to its feelings of satisfaction in a series of curious mewings. I went out, and though it was too dark to see more than a yard ahead of me I made for the spot from which the sound proceeded and fired point blank. There was an unmistakable sound of a huge creature springing up and bounding away, then silence.

"At daybreak I searched the neighbourhood for footprints and traces of the struggle. The ground was of clay and had been soaked by the rain. It was bound to reveal marks of the presence of any animal, however light. To my amazement the only footprints visible were those I had made myself! I repeat that I could not possibly have mistaken the sounds I had heard, for I had distinguished even the noise made by a large animal passing through the bushes.

"The explanation of my Moï attendants to whom I related this adventure was very simple and plausible. The Spirits were responsible for the trick played on me!"

Colonel Diguet relates a case of indirect envoûtement which he observed among the Man.

If a native has a serious complaint against another he commits the cause of action to paper, or rather the native equivalent of paper, along with the name of the accused and his village. He then rolls this up into a ball and thrusts it down the mouth of a goat, which he afterwards suspends by bands from the branches of a tree. He then beats the unfortunate creature with a cane, not without many apologies for the evil treatment which circumstances compel him to mete out. One by one he recites to the animal the matters of which he complains and begs it to plead his cause with the Spirits. To ensure a proper zeal on the part of the advocate he enumerates a series of torments which await it in the next world should it fail in its mission. He then departs in the sure and certain hope that his prayers, and especially his threats, will have the desired effect. The unhappy goat is then left to die of starvation.

It will be remembered that from the most ancient times the ceremony which has for its object the expulsion of a disease from an individual, or the transference of that disease from his body to that of another, is effected by means of an intermediary, generally a goat, which has come to be known as the "scapegoat" by reason of the part it plays on these occasions. He who performs the ceremony is supposed to have lodged in the body of the animal the evil thing which he wishes to expel or transfer. The comparison of this practice which, as I have said, dates from a remote antiquity, with the curious proceedings among the Man of which Colonel Diguet speaks is thus very striking.

The practice of direct envoûtement is also met with among the Man. It takes the form of making an image in rice-paper of your enemy and piercing it with arrows or spears.

Something very similar was practised in the Middle Ages, for there is hardly a museum of archæology or ethnography which has no show-case of small figures transfixed with nails, especially in the region of the heart.

The museum of Tervueren in Belgium is peculiarly rich in specimens of this kind, most of which were collected by the ethnographical expedition sent out from England to the Congo in 1907, under the direction of Mr. E. Torday, of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. The method of investigation followed by the explorers is worthy of note, for the leader, thanks to his unrivalled knowledge of the dialects, was enabled to dispense with the services of an interpreter. The information which the natives willingly supplied as to their rites and superstitions has thus come to us unadulterated by translation, since it was immediately transmitted to Mr. T. A. Joyce, the Honorary Secretary of the Institute in England, who forwarded a series of supplementary questions to Mr. Torday when a point seemed to require further elucidation. Mr. M. W. Hilton Simpson, and the artist, Norman H. Hardy, were also members of this mission, of which the results were such as to deserve special mention.