Power of medicine-men among the North American Indians.
Among the American Indians the furthest advance towards civilisation was made under the monarchical and {p356} theocratic governments of Mexico and Peru; but we know too little of the early history of these countries to say whether the predecessors of their deified kings were medicine-men or not. Perhaps a trace of such a succession may be detected in the oath which the Mexican kings took when they mounted the throne: they swore that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance.[1266] Certainly, in aboriginal America the sorcerer or medicine-man, surrounded by a halo of mystery and an atmosphere of awe, was a personage of great influence and importance, and he may well have developed into a chief or king in many tribes, though positive evidence of such a development appears to be lacking. Thus Catlin tells us that in North America the medicine-men “are valued as dignitaries in the tribe, and the greatest respect is paid to them by the whole community; not only for their skill in their materia medica, but more especially for their tact in magic and mysteries, in which they all deal to a very great extent. . . . In all tribes their doctors are conjurors—are magicians—are sooth-sayers, and I had like to have said high-priests, inasmuch as they superintend and conduct all their religious ceremonies; they are looked upon by all as oracles of the nation. In all councils of war and peace, they have a seat with the chiefs, are regularly consulted before any public step is taken, and the greatest deference and respect is paid to their opinions.”[1267] Among the Loucheux of North-West America each band is “headed by a chief and one or more medicine-men. The latter, however, do not possess any secular power as chiefs, but they acquire an authority by shamanism to which even the chiefs themselves are subject.” “The Loucheux are very superstitious, and place implicit faith in the pretended incantations of their medicine-men, for whom they entertain great fear. . . . The power of the medicine-men is very great, and they use every means they can to increase it by working on the fears and credulity of the people. Their influence exceeds even that of the chiefs. The power of the {p357} latter consists in the quantity of beads they possess, their wealth and the means it affords them to work ill to those to whom they may be evil-disposed; while the power of the medicine-man consists in the harm they believe he is able to do by shamanism, should they happen to displease him in any way. It is when sickness prevails that the conjuror rules supreme; it is then that he fills his bead bags and increases his riches.”[1268] Amongst the Tinneh Indians of the same region “the social standing of a medicine-man is, on the whole, a desirable one; but it has also its drawbacks and its dark side. The medicine-man is decidedly influential among his fellow savages. He is consulted and listened to, on account of the superior knowledge imparted to him by the spirits. He is feared, on account of his power to do evil, viz. to cause the death of a person, to ruin his undertakings, to render him unsuccessful in the hunt by driving away the game from his path, to cause the loss of his property, of his strength, of his health, of his faculties, etc. The medicine-man is rich, because his services, when summoned, or even when accepted though uncalled for, are generously remunerated. He is respected on account of his continual intercourse with the supernatural world. His words, when said in a peculiar low tone, with a momentary glow in the eyes, which [he] seems able to control at will, or when uttered during his sleep (real or feigned) are taken as oracles, as the very words of the spirit. In short, for these tribes who have no chiefs, no religion, no medical knowledge, he is the nearest approach to a chief, a priest, and a physician.”[1269] Similarly in California “the shaman was, and still is, perhaps the most important individual among the Maidu. In the absence of any definite system of government, the word of a shaman has great weight: as a class they are regarded with much awe, and as a rule are obeyed much more than the chief.”[1270] As leader of the local branch {p358} of a secret society the most noted Maidu shaman of each district was supposed to make rain when it was needed, to ensure a good crop of edible acorns and a plentiful supply of salmon, and to drive away evil spirits, disease, and epidemics from the village. Further, it was his business to inflict disease and death on hostile villages, which he did by burning certain roots and blowing the smoke towards the doomed village, while he said, “Over there, over there, not here! To the other place! Do not come back this way. We are good. Make those people sick. Kill them, they are bad people.”[1271] Among the Yokuts, another tribe of Californian Indians, the rain-makers exercised great influence. One of them by his insinuating address, eloquence, and jugglery spread his fame to a distance of two hundred miles, and cunningly availed himself of two years of drought to levy contributions far and wide from the trembling Indians, who attributed to his magic the fall of the rain.[1272] In the same tribe the wizards drew large profits from the rattlesnake dance which they danced every spring, capering about with rattlesnakes twined round their arms; for after this exhibition many simpletons paid them for complete immunity from snake-bites, which the wizards were believed able to grant for a year.[1273]
Power of medicine-men among the South American Indians.
In South America also the magicians or medicine-men seem to have been on the highroad to chieftainship or kingship. One of the earliest settlers on the coast of Brazil, the Frenchman Thevet, reports that the Indians “hold these pages (or medicine-men) in such honour and reverence that they adore, or rather idolise them. You may see the common folk go to meet them, prostrate themselves, and pray to them, saying, ‘Grant that I be not ill, that I do not die, neither I nor my children,’ or some such request. And he answers, ‘You shall not die, you shall not be ill,’ and such like replies. But sometimes if it happens that these pages do not tell the truth, and things turn out otherwise than they predicted, the people make no scruple of killing them as unworthy of the title and dignity {p359} of pages.”[1274] The Indians of Brazil, says a modern writer who knew them well, “have no priests but only magicians, who at the same time use medical help and exorcism in order to exert influence over the superstition and the dread of spirits felt by the rude multitude. We may perfectly compare them with the shamans of the north-eastern Asiatic peoples. But like the shamans they are not mere magicians, fetish-men, soothsayers, interpreters of dreams, visionaries, and casters-out of devils; their activity has also a political character in so far as they influence the decisions of the leaders and of the community in public business, and exert a certain authority, more than anybody else, as judges, sureties, and witnesses in private affairs.”[1275] Among the Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco every clan has its cazique or chief, but he possesses little authority. In virtue of his office he has to make many presents, so he seldom grows rich and is generally more shabbily clad than any of his subjects. “As a matter of fact the magician is the man who has most power in his hands, and he is accustomed to receive presents instead of to give them.” It is the magician’s duty to bring down misfortune and plagues on the enemies of his tribe, and to guard his own people against hostile magic. For these services he is well paid and by them he acquires a position of great influence and authority.[1276] Among the Indians of Guiana also the magician or medicine-man (piai, peaiman) is a personage of great importance. By his magic art he alone, it is believed, can counteract the machinations of the great host of evil spirits, to which these savages attribute all the ills of life. It is almost impossible, we are told, to overestimate the dreadful sense of constant and unavoidable danger in which the Indian would live were it not for his trust in the protecting power of the magician. Every village has one such spiritual guardian, who is physician, priest, and magician in one. His influence is immense. No Indian dare refuse him anything he takes a fancy to, {p360} from a trifle of food up to a man’s wife. Hence these cunning fellows live in idleness on the fat of the land and acquire a large harem; their houses are commonly full of women who serve them in the capacity of beasts of burden as well as of wives, plodding wearily along under the weight of the baggage on long journeys, while their lord and master, fantastically tricked out in feathers and paint, strolls ahead, burdened only with his magic rattle and perhaps his bow and arrows.[1277]
Power of medicine-men among the pagan tribes of the Malay Peninsula.
Among the wild pagan tribes of the Malay peninsula the connexion between the offices of magician and chief is very close; indeed the two offices are often united in the same person. Among these savages, “as among the Malays, the accredited intermediary between gods and men is in all cases the medicine-man or sorcerer. In the Semang tribes the office of chief medicine-man appears to be generally combined with that of chief, but amongst the Sakai and Jakun these offices are sometimes separated, and although the chief is almost invariably a medicine-man of some repute, he is not necessarily the chief medicine-man, any more than the chief medicine-man is necessarily the administrative head of the tribe. In both cases there is an unfailing supply of aspirants to the office, though it may be taken for granted that, all else being equal, a successful medicine-man would have much the best prospect of being elected chief, and that in the vast majority of cases his priestly duties form an important part of a chief’s work. The medicine-man is, as might be expected, duly credited with supernatural powers. His tasks are to preside as chief medium at all the ceremonies, to instruct the youth of the tribe, to ward off as well as to heal all forms of sickness and trouble, to foretell the future (as affecting the results of any given act), to avert when necessary the wrath of heaven, and even when re-embodied after death in the shape of a wild beast, to extend a benign protection to his devoted descendants. Among the Sakai and the Jakun he is provided with a distinctive form of dress and {p361} body-painting, and carries an emblematic wand or staff by virtue of his office.”[1278]
Development of kings out of magicians among the Malays.
Throughout the Malay region the rajah or king is commonly regarded with superstitious veneration as the possessor of supernatural powers, and there are grounds for thinking that he too, like apparently so many African chiefs, has been developed out of a simple magician. At the present day the Malays firmly believe that the king possesses a personal influence over the works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit-trees. The same prolific virtue is supposed to reside, though in a lesser degree, in his delegates, and even in the persons of Europeans who chance to have charge of districts. Thus in Selangor, one of the native states of the Malay Peninsula, the success or failure of the rice crops is often attributed to a change of district officers.[1279] The Toorateyas of southern Celebes hold that the prosperity of the rice depends on the behaviour of their princes, and that bad government, by which they mean a government which does not conform to ancient custom, will result in a failure of the crops.[1280]
Belief of the Dyaks in the power of the rajah to fertilise the rice.
The Dyaks of Sarawak believed that their famous English ruler, Rajah Brooke, was endowed with a certain magical virtue which, if properly applied, could render the rice-crops abundant. Hence when he visited a tribe, they used to bring him the seed which they intended to sow next year, and he fertilised it by shaking over it the women’s necklaces, which had been previously dipped in a special mixture. And when he entered a village, the women would wash and bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young coco-nut, and lastly with water again, and all this water which had touched his person they preserved for the purpose of distributing it on their farms, believing that it ensured an abundant harvest. Tribes which were too far {p362} off for him to visit used to send him a small piece of white cloth and a little gold or silver, and when these things had been impregnated by his generative virtue they buried them in their fields, and confidently expected a heavy crop. Once when a European remarked that the rice-crops of the Samban tribe were thin, the chief immediately replied that they could not be otherwise, since Rajah Brooke had never visited them, and he begged that Mr. Brooke might be induced to visit his tribe and remove the sterility of their land.[1281]