Let us begin by looking at the lowest race of men as to whom we possess comparatively full and accurate information, the aborigines of Australia. These savages are ruled neither by chiefs nor kings. So far as their tribes can be {p335} said to have a political constitution, it is a democracy or rather an oligarchy of old and influential men, who meet in council and decide on all measures of importance to the practical exclusion of the younger men. Their deliberative assembly answers to the senate of later times: if we had to coin a word for such a government of elders we might call it a gerontocracy.[1193] The elders who in aboriginal Australia thus meet and direct the affairs of their tribe appear to be for the most part the headmen of their respective totem clans. Now in Central Australia, where the desert nature of the country and the almost complete isolation from foreign influences have retarded progress and preserved the natives on the whole in their most primitive state, the headmen of the various totem clans are charged with the important task of performing magical ceremonies for the multiplication of the totems, and as the great majority of the totems are edible animals or plants, it follows that these men are commonly expected to provide the people with food by means of magic. Others have to make the rain to fall or to render other services to the community. In short, among the tribes of Central Australia the headmen are public magicians. Further, their most important function is to take charge of the sacred storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in the ground, where are kept the holy stones and sticks (churinga) with which the souls of all the people, both living and dead, are apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up. Thus while the headmen have certainly to perform what we should call civil duties, such as to inflict punishment for breaches of tribal custom, their principal functions are sacred or magical.[1194]
Social importance of magicians among the aborigines of South-Eastern Australia.
Again, in the tribes of South-Eastern Australia the headman was often, sometimes invariably, a magician. Thus in the southern Wiradjuri tribe the headman was always a wizard or a medicine-man. There was one for each local {p336} division. He called the people together for the initiation ceremonies or to discuss matters of public importance.[1195] In the Yerkla-mining tribe the medicine-men are the headmen; they are called Mobung-bai, from mobung, “magic.” They decide disputes, arrange marriages, conduct the ceremonies of initiation, and in certain circumstances settle the formalities to be observed in ordeals of battle. “In fact, they wield authority in the tribe, and give orders where others only make requests.”[1196] Again, in the Yuin tribe there was a headman for each local division, and in order to be fitted for his office he had, among other qualifications, to be a medicine-man; above all he must be able to perform magical feats at the initiation ceremonies. The greatest headman of all was he who on these occasions could bring up the largest number of things out of his inside.[1197] In fact the budding statesman and king must be first and foremost a conjuror in the most literal sense of the word. Some forty or fifty years ago the principal headman of the Dieri tribe was a certain Jalina piramurana, who was known among the colonists as the Frenchman on account of his polished manners. He was not only a brave and skilful warrior, but also a powerful medicine-man, greatly feared by the neighbouring tribes, who sent him presents even from a distance of a hundred miles. He boasted of being the “tree of life,” for he was the head of a totem consisting of a particular sort of seed which forms at certain times the chief vegetable food of these tribes. His people spoke of him as the plant itself (manyura) which yields the edible seed.[1198] Again, an early writer on the tribes of South-Western Australia, near King George’s Sound, tells us that “the individuals who possess most influence are the mulgarradocks, or doctors. . . . A mulgarradock is considered to possess the power of driving away wind or rain, as well as bringing down lightning or disease upon any object of their or others’ hatred,” and they also attempted to heal the sick.[1199] On the {p337} whole, then, it is highly significant that in the most primitive society about which we are accurately informed it is especially the magicians or medicine-men who appear to have been in process of developing into chiefs.
Social importance of magicians in New Guinea.
When we pass from Australia to New Guinea we find that, though the natives stand at a far higher level of culture than the Australian aborigines, the constitution of society among them is still essentially democratic or oligarchic, and chieftainship exists only in embryo. Thus Sir William MacGregor tells us that in British New Guinea no one has ever arisen wise enough, bold enough, and strong enough to become the despot even of a single district. “The nearest approach to this has been the very distant one of some person becoming a renowned wizard; but that has only resulted in levying a certain amount of blackmail.”[1200] To the same effect a Catholic missionary observes that in New Guinea the nepu or sorcerers “are everywhere. They boast of their misdeeds; everybody fears them, everybody accuses them, and, after all, nothing positive is known of their secret practices. This cursed brood is as it were the soul of the Papuan life. Nothing happens without the sorcerer’s intervention: wars, marriages, diseases, deaths, expeditions, fishing, hunting, always and everywhere the sorcerer. . . . One thing is certain for them, and they do not regard it as an article of faith, but as a fact patent and indisputable, and that is the extraordinary power of the nepu; he is the master of life and of death. Hence it is only natural that they should fear him and obey him in everything and give him all that he asks for. The nepu is not a chief, but he domineers over the chiefs, and we may say that the true authority, the only effective influence in New Guinea, is that of the nepu. Nothing can resist him.”[1201] We are told that in the Toaripi or Motumotu tribe of British New Guinea chiefs have not necessarily supernatural powers, but that a sorcerer is looked upon as a chief. Some years ago, for example, one man of the tribe was a chief because he was supposed to rule the sea, calming it or rousing it to fury at his pleasure. {p338} Another owed his power to his skill in making the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and the plantations to bear fruit.[1202] It is believed that the chief of Mowat in British New Guinea, can affect the growth of crops for good or ill, and coax the turtle and dugong to come from all parts of the sea and allow themselves to be caught.[1203] At Bartle Bay in British New Guinea there are magicians (taniwaga) who are expected to manage certain departments of nature for the good of the community by means of charms (pari) which are known only to them. One of these men, for example, works magic for rain, another for taro, another for wallaby, and another for fish. A magician who is believed to control an important department of nature may be the chief of his community. Thus the present chief of Wedau is a sorcerer who can make rain and raise or calm the winds. He is greatly respected by all and receives many presents.[1204] A chief of Kolem, on Finsch Harbour, in German New Guinea, enjoyed a great reputation as a magician; it was supposed that he could make wind and storm, rain and sunshine, and visit his enemies with sickness and death.[1205]
Supposed magical or supernatural powers of chiefs in Melanesia.
Turning now to the natives of the Melanesian islands, which stretch in an immense quadrant of a circle round New Guinea and Australia on the east, we are told by Dr. Codrington that among these savages “as a matter of fact the power of chiefs has hitherto rested upon the belief in their supernatural power derived from the spirits or ghosts with which they had intercourse. As this belief has failed, in the Banks’ Islands for example some time ago, the position of a chief has tended to become obscure; and as this belief is now being generally undermined a new kind of chief must needs arise, unless a time of anarchy is to begin.”[1206] According to a native Melanesian account, the origin of the power of chiefs lies entirely in the belief that they have communication with mighty ghosts (tindalo), and wield that {p339} supernatural power (mana) whereby they can bring the influence of the ghosts to bear. If a chief imposed a fine, it was paid because the people universally dreaded his ghostly power, and firmly believed that he could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as any considerable number of his people began to disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts, his power to levy fines was shaken.[1207] In Malo, one of the New Hebrides, the highest nobility consists of those persons who have sacrificed a thousand little pigs to the souls of their ancestors. No one ever resists a man of that exalted rank, because in him are supposed to dwell all the souls of the ancient chiefs and all the spirits who preside over the tribe.[1208] In the Northern New Hebrides the son does not inherit the chieftainship, but he inherits, if his father can manage it, what gives him the chieftainship, namely, his father’s supernatural power, his charms, magical songs, stones and apparatus, and his knowledge of the way to approach spiritual beings.[1209] A chief in the island of Paramatta informed a European that he had the power of making rain, wind, storm, thunder and lightning, and dry weather. He exhibited as his magical instrument a piece of bamboo with some parti-coloured rags attached to it. In this bamboo, he said, were kept the devils of rain and wind, and when he commanded them to discharge their office or to lie still, they were obliged to obey, being his subjects and prisoners. When he had given his orders to these captive devils, the bamboo had to be fastened to the highest point of his house.[1210] In the Marshall Bennet Islands to the east of New Guinea it was the duty of each chief of a clan to charm the gardens of his clan so as to make them productive. The charm consisted of turning up part of the soil with a long stick and muttering an appropriate spell. Each special crop, such as yams, bananas, {p340} sugar-cane, and coco-nuts, had its special kind of stick and its special spell.[1211]
Magicians as chiefs in New Britain.
With regard to government among the Melanesians of New Britain or the Bismarck Archipelago, I may cite the evidence of an experienced missionary, the Rev. Dr. George Brown, who settled in the islands at a time when no other white man was living in the group, and who resided among the savage islanders for some five or six years. He says: “There was no government so called in New Britain except that form of jurisdiction or power represented by the secret societies and that exercised by chiefs, who were supposed to possess exceptional powers of sorcery and witchcraft. These powers were very real, owing, I think, principally to two reasons—one of which was that the men themselves thoroughly believed that they were the possessors of the powers which they claimed, and the other was that the people themselves believed that the men really possessed them. There was indeed the title of chief (todaru) claimed and also given to them by the people; but this was not the result of any election or necessarily by inheritance, it was simply that a certain man claimed to be the possessor of these powers and succeeded in convincing the people that he really possessed them.”[1212] Again, Dr. Brown tells us that in New Britain “a ruling chief was always supposed to exercise priestly functions, that is, he professed to be in constant communication with the tebarans (spirits), and through their influence he was enabled to bring rain or sunshine, fair winds or foul ones, sickness or health, success or disaster in war, and generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the applicant was willing to pay a sufficient price. If his spells did not produce the desired effect he always had a plausible explanation ready, which was generally accepted as a sufficient excuse. I think much of the success which these men undoubtedly had was due to their keen observations of natural phenomena, and to the effects of fear upon the people.”[1213] {p341}
Dr. Turner on the power of the magical disease-makers in Tana.