It is moreover certain that in some instances savages have arrived spontaneously at no contemptible notions of morality, and that they have often lost their native virtues by their very contact with a higher form of faith. The African Bakwains declared that nothing described by the missionaries as sin had ever appeared to them otherwise, except polygamy; and the Tongan chiefs (if Mariner may be trusted), when asked what motives they had, beyond their fear of misfortunes in this life, for virtuous conduct, replied, ‘as if they wondered such a question should be asked:’ ‘The agreeable and happy feelings which a man experiences within himself when he does any good action and conducts himself nobly and generously, as a man ought to do.’ The natural virtues attributed to the same people include honour, justice, patriotism, friendship, meekness, modesty, conjugal fidelity, parental and filial love, patience in suffering, forbearance of temper, respect for rank and for age. The Khonds of India, much more savage than the Tongans (their chief virtues consisting in killing an enemy, dying as a warrior, or living as a priest), yet account as sinful acts the refusal of hospitality, the breach of an oath or promise, a lie, or the violation of a pledge of friendship. The virtues the Maoris now possess they are said to have possessed before we came among them, namely honesty, self-respect, truthfulness; and the belief that these virtues are even ‘fading under their assumed Christianity’ recalls the tradition of certain American tribes, that their lives and manners were originally less barbarous, the Odjibwas, for instance, actually tracing the increase of murders, thefts, falsehood, and disobedience to parents, to the advent of the Christian whites.

It is also remarkable that in several instances savages have of themselves hit upon those very helps to the maintenance of virtue which all Christian Churches have found so efficacious. For we find existing among them as religious and moral observances not only Fasting and Confession, but occasionally even Sermons. In the Tongan Islands fonos, or public assemblies, were held, at which the king would address his subjects, not only on agriculture but on morals and politics; and the lower chiefs had fonos also for the similar benefit of their feudal subordinates. In America, also, some tribes observed feasts at which the young were addressed on their moral duties, being admonished to be attentive and respectful to the old, to obey their parents, never to scoff at the decrepit or deformed, to be charitable and hospitable. Not only were such precepts dwelt on at great length, but enforced by the examples of good and bad individuals, just as they might be in London or Rome. Such considerations, indeed, prove nothing against the additional good that missionaries may do; but they add some force to the thought that had a tithe of the energy, the devotion, the suffering, the money, that has been lavished on coaxing savages to be baptized, been spent on promoting international peace in Europe, wars might by this time be as extinct, belong as purely to a past state of things, as judicial combats, the thumbscrew, or the knout.

The vexed question, whether savage life represents a primitive or a decadent condition, whether it represents what man at first everywhere was, or only what he may become, has throughout the following chapters been avoided, that controversy being regarded as ‘laid’ by the exhaustive researches of Mr. Tylor and other writers. But whilst the state of the lowest modern savages is taken as the nearest approximation we have of the primitive state from which mankind has risen, it is not pretended that the state of any particular tribe may not be one to which it has fallen. As the low position of many Bushmen tribes is quite explicable by their long border-warfare with the Dutch, and the consequent cruelties they were exposed to, or as the state of many Brazilian savages may be traced to similar contact with the Portuguese, so any case of extreme savagery may be the result of causes, whose operation has no historical or written proof to attest them. The gigantic stone images on Easter Island, or the great earthworks in America, are among the proofs, that but for such material traces of its existence it is possible for a whole civilisation to vanish, and to leave only the veriest savages on the soil where it flourished.[2] As we know that Europe was once as purely savage as parts of Africa are still, and can conceive the cycle of events restoring it to barbarism, so in the depths of time it may have happened in places where no suspicion of such a history is possible. As the surface of the earth seems subjected to processes of elevation and subsidence, land and sea constantly alternating their dominion, so it may be with civilisation, destined to no permanent home on the earth, but subsiding here to reappear there, and varying its level as it varies its latitude.

As the practical infinity of past time makes it impossible to calculate the influence exercised in different parts of the world by migrations, by conquests, or by commerce, except within a very limited period, so it precludes any definite belief in ethnological divisions, and relegates the question of the unity of the human race, like that of its origin, to the limbo of profitless discussion. No characteristic has yet been found by which mankind can be classified distinctly into races; and with all the differences of colour, hair, skull, or language, which now suffice for purposes of nomenclature, it remains true that there is nothing to choose between the hypothesis that we constitute only one species and the hypothesis that we constitute several. The world is so old as to admit of divergences from a single original type quite as wide as any that exist; whilst, on the other hand, similarity of customs (such, for instance, as that Tartars in Asia, Sioux Indians in America, and Kamschadals should all regard it as a sin to touch a fire with a knife), fail us as a proof of a unity of origin, in the face of our ignorance of prehistoric antiquity.

That the works which have treated before, and better, of the subjects included in the following chapters should have exercised no deterrent effect in treating of them again, must find its excuse in the general interest which those works have produced for the studies in question, and of which the present work is but a sign and consequence. The reader has only himself to blame, if, having read the works on the same or similar subjects by Mr. Tylor, Mr. Spencer, and Sir John Lubbock, or those in German by Peschel, Wuttke, or Waitz, he troubles himself with yet another book which seeks rather to illustrate than to exhaust the many interesting problems connected with savage life; but the present writer, whilst under the deepest obligations to the labours of his predecessors—without which his own would have been impossible—has not studied simply to recapitulate their conclusions, but has sought rather to arrive at such results as the evidence forced upon him, independently as far as possible of existing theories or of the authority upon which they rest. Should he have succeeded in making anyone think better than before, with more interest and sympathy, of those outcasts of the world whom we designate as savage, something at least will have been done to claim for them a kindlier treatment and respect than in popular estimation they either deserve or obtain.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
SOME SAVAGE MYTHS AND BELIEFS.
The universality of religion—Nature and tests of the evidence relating to the subject—Savage ideas of creation: ideas of a first man confused with ideas of a first cause—Illustrative examples of primitive cosmogony—Origin of the myth of the Two Contending Brothers—Prevalence of the belief in a Golden Age—Deluge-myths—Their possible origin in recollections of local floods, in the changes of the land-level, or in fancies about the skies—Absence in most of them of any connection with human crime—Vivid belief in futurity among the lower races—Gradual growth of the idea of the future life as affected by the present one—Difficulties in the attainment of future happiness—The great difference between savage and civilised beliefs regarding the Unknown illustrated by the savage belief in a future life for animals or things as well as for men—Compensations in the savage’s creed: no terror of death nor of the future[pages 1-40]
CHAPTER II.
SAVAGE MODES OF PRAYER.
Difficulties in the study of natural religions—Importance of prayer in savage life—Examples of savage prayers—Are they limited to temporal interests?—Baptismal rites equivalent to prayers—Prayers in the form of toasts—The worship of evil spirits—Doubtful distinction between good and bad divinities among savages—Treatment of obdurate gods—Relation of sacrifice to prayer—Tendency of sacrifices to become more numerous and severe—Pantomimic dances possibly acted petitions—The African gorilla-dance, the Mandan buffalo-dance, the Sioux bear-dance, the Australian kangaroo-dance—A similar idea in prayers for rain—War-dances—Fetichistic practices perhaps extinct forms of prayer—Prayers to animals, to the moon, to trees, and their survival in modern folk-lore[41-77]
CHAPTER III.
SOME SAVAGE PROVERBS.
Differences of national character reflected in proverbs—Illustrated by Italian and German sayings on the custom of the Vendetta, by Italian and Persian proverbs about truth, by Catholic and Protestant sentiments about priests—Comparison between the proverbs of savage and civilised communities—Similarities of their feeling as regards poverty, blame, experience, perseverance, habit, cause, mendacity—Intelligence displayed in many savage proverbs—European proverbs of savage coinage, exemplified by a comparison between African and European proverbs relating to women—Inferences deducible from known proverbs[78-100]
CHAPTER IV.
SAVAGE MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
Are there any authentic cases of a total absence of moral distinctions among savages?—Unsatisfactory evidence regarding their moral notions—The Bushman’s notion of a good and bad action—The fear of fellow-tribesmen, of spirits and ghosts, the primary source of distinction in the moral quality of actions—Moral restraints in secular punishments—Compensation necessary for homicide—Collective responsibility for crimes—Is murder ever regarded as indifferent?—Different institutions for the prevention of wrongs—Greenland singing-combats, tabu, muru, confession. Sins or fanciful wrong acts, illustrated by feelings of proper behaviour with regard to storms, to ancestors, to names, and to animals—Little evidence among savages of any idea of moral qualities apart from the consequences of actions—Their ideas of a future state throw little light on their moral sentiments—Doubtful evidence of a belief in a future life as affected by good or bad conduct—Fundamental agreement between savage and civilised morality[101-129]
CHAPTER V.
SAVAGE POLITICAL LIFE.
Theory of social evolution—The hunting state not necessarily one of political inferiority—Do any tribes exist without any form of social government?—Examples of the loosest social connections—Connection of agriculture and slavery with more complex social systems—Freedom and equality little known in savage life—Natural foundations for distinction between aristocracy and commonalty—Ordeals previous to admission to higher ranks—Devices for marking differences of position: scars, dress, titles, artificial language, funeral ceremonies, crests—Savage monarchy—Confusion between gods and kings—Old Japanese and Samoan feelings about monarchy—Limitations on savage despotism—Orders of society, approaching to a system of caste—The relation of tabu to monarchy—Primogeniture in Tahiti—Absurd rights of nephews in Fiji—Taxation a festival in savage life—The subordination of the priesthood to the State[130-161]
CHAPTER VI.
SAVAGE PENAL LAWS.
The interest of savage laws—Stage in which the redress of wrongs is a merely personal matter—Tendency of offences to be regarded as matters of family or tribal interest—Growth of the conception of crime as an offence against the tribe, promoted by the custom of submitting disputes to the judgment of chiefs, and marked by customs, which, while making such chiefs judges, leave the punishment of the criminal to the injured party—Such customs found in America, Africa, Samoa, Afghanistan—Tendency of penal laws to become more cruel—Primitive punishments not gratuitously cruel—Savage laws not always arbitrary nor uncertain—Force of precedents in Caffre law—Regularity in legal procedure—Curious notions of equity—The ordeal in savage law, not an appeal to the judgment of God, but an invention of priestcraft for the detection of guilt—Comparison of some ordeals—Their utility for the discovery of guilt—Death a frequent result of concealing real or fancied guilt—Oaths a later development of the ordeal—The English judicial oath compared with that in vogue in Samoa—Origin of the supposed virtue in touching or kissing the thing sworn by—Invisible connection between the thing touched and the calamity invoked in touching it[162-187]
CHAPTER VII.
EARLY WEDDING CUSTOMS.
Curious wedding custom of the Garos, in India—Natural affection among savages, tested by some of the evidence of eye-witnesses—Love-stories—Treatment of women not uniformly bad among savages—Married life—Duty of bashfulness, displayed in curious manners and notions of the Esquimaux, the Hottentots, the Hos, the Thlinkeets, the Kirghiz, Kamschadals, the Bushmen, the Zulus, and the Bedouins—Conventional reserve between husband and wife—Restrictions on intercourse between near relations—Kicking and screaming the proper behaviour at weddings—Real disinclination also often a cause for the employment of real force—The ceremony of capture affords a bride a real chance of escape from a bridegroom she dislikes—Mercantile aspect of marriage—Marriages by capture often voluntary elopements in defeat of parental contracts, illustrated by customs in India, Afghanistan, Bokhara—Such marriages legalised by successful elopement and subsequent settlement with parents—Exogamy and endogamy, how related—Doubtful origin of exogamy—Its effect in preserving peace between tribes—Woman-stealing the result of artificial social customs—Origin of the difference of language between the sexes among the Caribs—The same phenomenon among the Zulus—Doubtful evidence of a total absence of marriage ceremonies[188-238]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FAIRY-LORE OF SAVAGES.
Primitive philosophy of nature—Astro-mythology of Australian tribes, of the Tasmanians, the Bushmen, the Esquimaux, Hervey Islanders, Thlinkeet Indians—Such myths invented to account for natural phenomena—Not always the result of forgotten etymologies—The Aht story of the origin of the moon—American story of the robin—Hervey Islanders’ story of the sole—Stories also invented to account for curious customs or beliefs—Reason given by the Irish for their annual persecution of the wren—The story of the wren and the eagle, very similar in Ireland and North America—Facility of the dispersion of stories often accounts for their resemblance—Wide range of the story of Faithful John—Polynesian stories of Maui stopping the sun’s motion—the same idea in Wallachia and North America—Many similar stories arose independently of each other, as the versions of the idea contained in Jack and the Beanstalk—Some Aryan myths, explained as fancies about the clouds, found also in the New World—Hindu myth of Urvasi compared with myths from Borneo and America—Story-roots to be looked for on earth, not in the clouds—Celestial and terrestrial phenomena confused—The influence of dreams in the production of myths—The influence of flattery—Tendency of chiefs and sorcerers to become gods and heroes after death—Zeus compared with the culture-heroes of savage mythology—The Hottentot Utixo, Mannan MacLear, Manabozho, Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, Heitsi Eibip, all probably of human origin—Nicknames a factor in mythology—Tendency to personify abstractions—Vivid imagination of savages[239-275]
CHAPTER IX.
COMPARATIVE FOLK-LORE.
Interest of folk-lore due to the wide range of similar superstitions—Three ways of accounting for such resemblances—Great extent of superstition in civilised life—Savage incomplete distinction of things—Motion and life identified—Analogy of bee superstitions with superstitions about inanimate things—Fear of offending animals by a light use of their names—Spiritualistic character of witchcraft—Illustrations—Relics of object-worship—Sacred trees, animals, birds—Reverence for red things—Chinese analogues to Aryan folk-lore—Mythology probably founded on folk-lore, not folk-lore on mythology—Traces of fire-worship—Beltane fires, formerly perhaps connected with human sacrifices—Scotch needfires for cattle—Similar customs among the Mayas of America and the Hottentots—Ideas about the purity of new fire—Recent examples of the sacrifice of living things to appease spirits—Moon superstitions like those about the tides—Remnants of water-worship—Folk-lore a link between civilisation and barbarism—Influence of Christianity on folk-lore—The history of mankind that of a rise, not of a fall[276-315]