Primitive Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

It cannot, however, be proved with certainty that such rites are of native growth wherever they have been found, though similar feelings of natural impurity, of natural anxiety, may well have contributed to make them common all the world over. With this reservation, let it suffice to recall some illustrations drawn from the most distant parts of the world. The most touching form of the custom is told of a tribe in the Fiji Islands, where the priest, presented by the relations with food with which to notify the event to the gods before the birth-festival, would thus petition the latter: ‘This is the food of the little child: take knowledge of it, ye gods. Be kind to him. Do not pelt him or spit upon him, or seize him, but let him live to plant sugar-canes.’[50] In New Zealand, the tohunga, or priest, dipping a green branch into a calabash of water, sprinkled the child therewith and made incantations according to its sex;[51] whilst in the Hervey Islands, where the child was immersed in a taro leaf filled with water, the ceremony was intimately connected with their system of tribes and dedication for future sacrifice.[52] Crossing over to America, we find among the Indian tribes of Guiana the native priest dancing about an infant and dashing water over it, finishing the ceremony by passing his hands over its limbs, muttering all the while incantations and charms.[53] In some North American tribes, water having been boiled with a certain sweet-scented root, and some of it having been first thrown into the fire and the rest distributed to the company by the oldest woman present, the latter would then offer a short prayer to the Master of Life, on behalf of the child, that its life might be spared and that it might grow; and if, at the festival held to commemorate the child’s first slain animal, one of the chief persons present would entreat the Great Spirit to be kind to the lad and let him grow to be a great hunter, in war to take many scalps and not to behave like an old woman, it cannot be said that such a prayer was purely selfish in its aim or confined solely to present necessities.[54]

Although, however, it is impossible to dissociate baptismal rites so rude as these from a belief in magic, the idea of water as conferring moral as well as physical purity appears to have been attained by some of the more advanced heathen tribes. The rite of baptism, says Dr. Brinton, was of immemorial antiquity among the Cherokees, Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians: the use of water as symbolical of spiritual cleansing clearly appearing, for instance, in the prayer of the Peruvian Indian, who after confessing his guilt would bathe in the river and say: ‘O river, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the sun, carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear.’[55] It has often been told, on the original authority of Sahagun, how the Mexican nurse, after bathing the new-born child, would bid it approach its mother, the goddess of water; praying at the same time to her that she would receive it and wash it, would take away its inherited impurity, make it good and clean, and instil into it good habits and manners.[56]

The mere enunciation of a wish often amounts among savages to a complete prayer, it being conceived that the expression of desire is of more moment than the manner of such expression; such a conception still surviving among ourselves at certain wishing towers, wishing gates, or on the occurrence of certain natural phenomena. In Fiji it was common to shout aloud, after drinking a toast, the name of some object of desire, and this was equivalent to a prayer for whatever it might be—for food, wealth, a fair wind, or even for the gratification of cannibal gluttony. Franklin tells how some Indians, disappointed in the chase, set themselves to beat a large tambourine and sing an address to the Great Spirit, praying for relief, their prayer consisting solely of three words constantly repeated;[57] the tambourine probably being employed for the same purpose that the Sioux Indians kept a whistle in the mouth of one of their gods, namely, to make their invocation audible. The Ahts, praying to the moon, sometimes say no more than teech, teech, that is, Health or Life; and it is curious that the rude savages of Brazil exclaim teh, teh, to the same luminary.[58] The Sioux would often say, ‘Spirits of the dead, have mercy!’ adding thereto a notification of their wishes, whether for good health, good luck in hunting, or anything else.[59] The Zulus, however, sometimes carry this principle of brevity furthest, for sometimes in their prayers to the spirits of their dead they simply say, ‘Ye people of our house,’ ‘the suppliant taking it for granted that the Amatongo will know what he wants;’ though generally their addresses to their ancestors are of a much more orthodox length than this.[60] When we consider how large a place the spirits of the dead fill in the savage’s spirit-world it appears possible that many of the prayers and sacrifices, said to be offered to the Great Spirit or unknown divinities, are really addressed to the all-controlling, ever-present spirits of the departed.

If we may believe the testimony of a great many travellers in all parts of the world, the case of the Yezidis, who to the recognition of a supreme being are said to join actual worship of the chief power of evil, represents no exceptional phase of human thought. Yet even the Yezidis, according to Dr. Latham, are said to be improperly called Devil-worshippers, since they only try to conciliate Satan, speak of him with respect or not at all, avoid his name in all their oaths, and are pained if they hear people make a light use of it.[61] In Equatorial Africa it is said that whilst Mburri, the spirit of evil, is worshipped piously as a tyrant to be appeased, it is not considered necessary to pray to Njambi, the good spirit.[62] Harmon says distinctly of all the different Indian tribes east of the Rocky Mountains that they pray and make frequent and costly sacrifices to the bad spirit for delivery from evils they feel or fear, but that they seldom pray to the supreme good spirit, to whom they ascribe every perfection, and whom they consider too benevolent ever to inflict evil on his creatures.[63] There is, indeed, little doubt that, if a certain amount of evidence suffices the requirements of proof, we must yield consent to the fact, in itself neither incredible nor unintelligible, that many savage tribes, recognising and believing in a good and powerful spirit, make that very goodness a reason for their neglect of him, and address their petitions instead to the mercy of that other spirit to whose power for evil they conceive the world to lie subject.[64] There is, however, much to be said in favour of the view, that the mind in its primitive state is unconscious of this moral dualism in the spirit-world, attributing rather (in perfect accordance with the analogy of human relationships) good and bad things alike to the agency of the same beings, according as transitory impulses affect them.

Thus, according to Castren, an antagonism between absolute good and absolute evil finds no place among the Samoyeds. They have no extreme divinities corresponding in their attributes to Ahriman and Ormuzd. ‘The human temper is the divine temper also, good and bad mixed.’[65] Mburri, who, according to one writer, is the evil spirit in Equatorial Africa, is, according to another, the good spirit, or at least the less wicked of the two, both the good and bad receiving worship, and being endowed with much the same powers.[66] The Beetjuans, venerating Morimo as the source of all good and evil that happened to them, were not agreed as to whether he was entirely a beneficent or a malevolent being; and, if they thanked him for benefits, they never hesitated to curse him for ills or for wishes unfulfilled.[67] ‘To the very same image,’ says Bosman of the negroes, ‘they at one time make offerings to God and at another to the devil, so that one image serves them in the capacity of god and devil.’ It was untrue, he declares, that the negroes prayed and made offerings to the devil, though some of them would try to appease a devil by leaving thousands of pots of victuals standing ever ready for his gratification; on the contrary, the devil was annually banished from their towns with great ceremony, being hunted away with dismal cries, and his spirit pelted with wood and stones.[68]

The evidence, again, in this respect concerning the aborigines of America is important. The Winnebagoes are said to have had a tradition that soon after the creation a bad spirit appeared on the scene, whose attempts to vie with the products of the Good Spirit resulted in making a negro in failure of an Indian, a grizzly bear in failure of a black one, and snakes which were endowed with venom; he also it was who made all the worthless trees, thistles, and weeds, who tempted Indians to lie, murder, and steal, and who receives bad Indians when they die. The suspicion, however, of Christian influence among this tribe makes the tradition of little value to the argument. Turning to other evidence, amid Schoolcraft’s reiterated statements of the original dualism of Indian theology, whereby the Indian was careful ‘to guard his good and merciful God from all evil acts and intentions, by attributing the whole catalogue of evil deeds among the sons of men to the Great Bad Spirit of his theology,’ we yet find this admission, that ‘it is impossible to witness closely the rites and ceremonies which the tribes practise in their sacred and ceremonial societies without perceiving that there is no very accurate or uniform discrimination between the powers of the two antagonistical deities.’[69] Mr. Pond, who resided with the Sioux Indians for eighteen years and had every opportunity to become acquainted with such matters, declares that it was ‘next to impossible to penetrate’ into the subject of their divinities; but he was never able to discover ‘the least degree of evidence that they divide the gods into classes of good and evil,’ nor did he believe that they ever distinguished the Great Spirit from other divinities ‘till they learnt to do so from intercourse with the whites;’ for they had no chants, feasts, dances, nor sacrificial rites which had any reference to such a being, or which, if they had, were not of recent origin.[70] Of the same people says Mr. Prescott, a man related to and resident among them many years: ‘As to their belief in evil spirits, they do not understand the difference between a great good spirit and a great evil spirit, as we do. The idea the Indians have is that a spirit can be good if necessary, and do evil if it thinks fit.’ They ‘know very little about whether the Great Spirit has anything to do with their affairs, present or future.’ Their idea of the Great Spirit is of the vaguest possible kind, since they lack entirely any conception of his power, or of the mode of, or of a reason for, man’s creation. The Great Spirit they believe made everything but the wild rice and the thunder; and they have been known to accuse their deity of badness in sending storms to cause them misery.[71] In the same way the Comanches of Texas neither worship the evil spirit nor are aware of his existence, ‘attributing everything to arise from the Great Spirit, whether of good or evil.’[72] Had the ancient Jews been described by Greek travellers instead of by themselves, we may fairly suspect that they would have been introduced to posterity as a people, consciously theistic indeed, but at the same time as addicted, in most of their rites, to demonolatry and the propitiation of imaginary evil beings. The true view would seem to be that the theology of the lower races does not admit of that preciseness of terminology, of that clear distinction of qualities, of that systematic marshalling of powers, which has been so often predicated of it, but that in its growth it undergoes a period of flux and change similar to that which may be seen to occur in the evolution of the lowest forms of physical life into more determinate types of being.

The Sioux Indians, abusing their Great Spirit for sending them storms, or the Kamschadals cursing Kutka for having created their mountains so high and their streams so rapid, expose a state of thought relating to the gods which is most difficult to reconcile with the savage’s habitual dread of them, still more with a high conception of them, but which is too well authenticated to admit of doubt. Franklin saw a Cree hunter tie offerings (a cotton handkerchief, looking-glass, tin pin, some ribbon and tobacco) to the value of twenty skins round an image of the god Kepoochikan, at the same time praying to him in a rapid monotonous tone to be propitious, explaining to him the value of his presents, and strongly cautioning him against ingratitude.[73] If all the prayers and presents made to their god by the Tahitians to save their chiefs from dying proved in vain, his image was inexorably banished from the temple and destroyed.[74] The Ostiaks of Siberia, if things went badly with them, would pull down from their place of honour in the hut and in every way maltreat the idols they generally honoured so exceedingly; the idols whose mouths were always so diligently smeared with fish-fat, and within whose reach a supply of snuff ever lay ready.[75] The Chinese are said to do the same by their household gods, if for a long time they are deaf to their prayers, and so do the Cinghalese;[76] so that the practice is more than an impulsive manifestation of merely local feeling. That such feelings occasionally crop out in civilised Catholic countries is matter of more surprise; but it is an authentic historical fact that the good people of Castelbranco, in Portugal, were once so angry with St. Anthony for letting the Spaniards plunder their town, contrary to his agreement, that they broke many of his statues in pieces, and, taking the head off one they specially revered, substituted for it the head of St. Francis.[77] Neapolitan fishermen are said to this day to throw their saints overboard if they do not help them in a storm; and the images of the Virgin or of St. Januarius, worn in Neapolitan caps, are in danger of being trodden under foot and destroyed, if adverse contingencies arise. The latter saint, indeed, once received during a famine very clear intimation, that, unless corn came by a certain time, he would forfeit his saintship.[78]

It is perhaps a refinement of thought when a present becomes an advisable accompaniment to a simple petition; but the principle of exchange once entered into, the relations between man and the supernatural lead logically from the offering of fruits and flowers to the sacrifice of animals and of men. Some Algonkin Indians, mistaking once a missionary for a god, and petitioning his mercy, begged him to let the earth yield them corn, the rivers fish, and to prevent sickness from slaying or hunger from tormenting them. Their request they backed with the offer of a pipe;[79] and in this ridiculous incident the whole of the savage’s philosophy of sacrifice is contained. Prescott, coming with some Indians to a lake they were to cross, saw his companions light their pipes and smoke by way of invoking the winds to be calm.[80] And the Hurons offered a similar prayer with tobacco to a local god, saying: ‘Oki, thou who livest on this spot, we offer thee tobacco. Help us, save us from shipwreck. Defend us from our enemies. Give us good trade, and bring us safe back to our villages.’[81] In the island of Tanna, the village priest, addressing the spirits of departed chiefs (thought to preside over the growth of yams and fruits), after the firstfruits of vegetation had been deposited on a stone, on the branch of a tree, or on a rude altar of sticks, would pray: ‘Compassionate father, here is some food; eat it, be kind to us on account of it;’ and in Samoa, too, a libation of ava at the evening meal was the offering, in return for which the father of a family would beg of the gods health and prosperity, productiveness for his plantations, and for his tribe generally a strong and large population for war.[82] In Fiji, again, when the chief priests and leading men assembled to discuss public affairs in the yaquona or kava circle, the chief herald, as the water was poured into the kava, after naming the gods for whom the libation was prepared, would say: ‘Be gracious, ye lords, the gods, that the rain may cease, and the sun shine forth;’ and again when the potion was ready: ‘Let the gods be of a gracious mind, and send a wind from the east.’[83]

It is a somewhat obvious inference, if presents like these fail to obtain corresponding results, that the spirit addressed is not satisfied, and that he requires a greater value in exchange for the blessings at his disposal. The crowning petition, therefore, of disappointed and despairing humanity is, by an irrefragable chain of reasoning, the sacrifice of a human life, or, if this fails, of many lives. Long and frequent were the prayers of the Tahitians to the gods when their chiefs were ill, for, under the idea that ‘the gods were always influenced by the same motives as themselves, they imagined that the efficacy of their prayers would be in exact proportion to the value of the offerings with which they were accompanied.’ Hence, if the disease grew violent, the fruits of whole plantain fields or more than a hundred pigs would be hurried to the marae; nay, not unfrequently a number of men with ropes round their necks would be led to the altar and presented to the idol, with prayers that the mere sight of them might satisfy his wrath.[84] It does not appear that on such occasions they were actually slain, but we seem here rather to see the first step towards human sacrifice than merely a survival of it, for the obtaining of this particular wish. The process is naturally from the sacrifice of the least possible to the sacrifice of the greatest possible, though after that point has been reached there may well be a tendency, varying with the character of a tribe, to fall back upon make-believe, curtailed losses. The Mandan Indians, Catlin repeats, always sacrificed the best of its kind to the Great Spirit, the favourite horse, the best arrow, or the best piece of buffalo;[85] so that the sacrifice of their fingers was more probably a form of incipient human sacrifice than, as it sometimes is, a relic of a more complete self-surrender. Both the Aztecs and the Mayas, with all the cruel forms of sacrifice that disgraced their civilization, retained traditions of a time when the gods were contented with the milder offerings of fruits and flowers; and in Yucatan, where hundreds of young girls were sacrificed in the dark but sacred pit of Chichen, there were recollections of a time when one victim sufficed the demands of the spirit-world. And in this instance may be seen how human sacrifice, besides being the highest gift man could offer to his god or gods, was in yet another sense a mode of prayer; for whilst the victims stood round the pit, whilst the incense burnt on the altar and in the braziers, the officiating priest explained to the messengers from earth ‘the things for which they were to implore the gods into whose presence they were about to be introduced.’[86] So also the priests of Mexico would exhort the deputation of eighteen souls they sent to the sun to remember the mission for which they were sent, the people’s wants they were to make known, the favours they were to ask for their countrymen.[87]