When the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia have slain a wolf they lay the carcase on a blanket and take out the heart, of which every person who helped to kill the beast must eat four morsels. Then they wail over the body, saying, “Woe! our great friend!” After that they cover the carcase with a blanket and bury it. A bow or gun that killed a wolf is regarded as unlucky, and the owner gives it away. These Indians believe that the slaying of a wolf produces a scarcity of game.[634] When the Tinneh Indians of Central Alaska have killed a wolf or a wolverine, the carcase is brought into the camp or village with great pomp. The people go forth to meet it, saying, “The chief is coming.” Then the body is carried into a hut and propped up in a sitting posture; and the medicine-man spreads before it a copious banquet, to which every family in the village has contributed of its best. When the dead animal is supposed to have satisfied his hunger, the men consume the remains of the feast, but no woman is allowed to participate in what has been thus offered to the wolf or the wolverine.[635] No ordinary Cherokee dares to kill a wolf, if he can possibly help it; for he believes that the kindred of the slain beast would surely avenge its death, and that the weapon with which the deed had been done would be quite useless for the future, unless it were cleaned and exorcised by a medicine-man. However, certain persons who know the proper rites of atonement for such a crime can kill wolves with impunity, and they are sometimes hired to do so by people who have suffered from the raids of the [pg 221] wolves on their cattle or fish-traps. The professional wolf-killer prays to the animal whom he has bereaved of life, and seeks to avert the vengeance of the other wolves by laying the blame of the slaughter on the people of another settlement. To purify the gun which has perpetrated the murder, he unscrews the barrel, inserts into it seven small sour-wood rods which have been heated in the fire, and then allows the barrel and its contents to lie in a running stream till morning.[636] When the Chuckchees of north-eastern Siberia have killed a wolf, they hold a festival, at which they cry, “Wolf, be not angry with us. It was not we who killed you, it was the Russians who destroyed you.”[637] In ancient Athens any man who killed a wolf had to bury it by subscription.[638]
Certain birds respected.
In Jebel-Nuba, a district of the eastern Sudan, it is forbidden to touch the nests or remove the young of a species of black birds, resembling our blackbirds, because the people believe that the parent birds would avenge the wrong by causing a stormy wind to blow, which would destroy the harvest.[639] Some of the Sudanese negroes of Upper Egypt regard the great black raven (Corvus umbrinus) as their uncle and exact pecuniary compensation or blood-money from any one who has been so rash as to slay their sable relative. Having satisfied their scruples on that head, they give the bird a solemn burial, carrying the corpse to the graveyard on a bier with flags and shouts of la ill Allah, just as if they were interring one of their kinsfolk.[640] The Palenques of South America are very careful to spare harmless animals which are not good for food; because they believe that any injury inflicted on such creatures would entail the sickness or death of their own children.[641]
Apologies offered by savages to the animals which they are obliged to kill. Propitiation of slain bears by Kamtchatkans, Ostiaks, Koryak, Finns, and Lapps.
But the savage clearly cannot afford to spare all animals. He must either eat some of them or starve, and when the question thus comes to be whether he or the animal must [pg 222] perish, he is forced to overcome his superstitious scruples and take the life of the beast. At the same time he does all he can to appease his victims and their kinsfolk. Even in the act of killing them he testifies his respect for them, endeavours to excuse or even conceal his share in procuring their death, and promises that their remains will be honourably treated. By thus robbing death of its terrors he hopes to reconcile his victims to their fate and to induce their fellows to come and be killed also. For example, it was a principle with the Kamtchatkans never to kill a land or sea animal without first making excuses to it and begging that the animal would not take it ill. Also they offered it cedar-nuts and so forth, to make it think that it was not a victim but a guest at a feast. They believed that this hindered other animals of the same species from growing shy. For instance, after they had killed a bear and feasted on its flesh, the host would bring the bear's head before the company, wrap it in grass, and present it with a variety of trifles. Then he would lay the blame of the bear's death on the Russians, and bid the beast wreak his wrath upon them. Also he would ask the bear to inform the other bears how well he had been treated, that they too might come without fear. Seals, sea-lions, and other animals were treated by the Kamtchatkans with the same ceremonious respect. Moreover, they used to insert sprigs of a plant resembling bear's wort in the mouths of the animals they killed; after which they would exhort the grinning skulls to have no fear but to go and tell it to their fellows, that they also might come and be caught and so partake of this splendid hospitality.[642] When the Ostiaks have hunted and killed a bear, they cut off its head and hang it on a tree. Then they gather round in a circle and pay it divine honours. Next they run towards the carcase uttering lamentations and saying, “Who killed you? It was the Russians. Who cut off your head? It was a Russian axe. Who skinned you? It was a knife made by a Russian.” They explain, too, that the feathers which sped the arrow on its flight came from the wing of a strange bird, and that they did nothing but let the arrow go. [pg 223] They do all this because they believe that the wandering ghost of the slain bear would attack them on the first opportunity, if they did not thus appease it.[643] Or they stuff the skin of the slain bear with hay; and after celebrating their victory with songs of mockery and insult, after spitting on and kicking it, they set it up on its hind legs, “and then, for a considerable time, they bestow on it all the veneration due to a guardian god.”[644] When a party of Koryak have killed a bear or a wolf, they skin the beast and dress one of themselves in the skin. Then they dance round the skin-clad man, saying that it was not they who killed the animal, but some one else, generally a Russian. When they kill a fox they skin it, wrap the body in grass, and bid him go tell his companions how hospitably he has been received, and how he has received a new cloak instead of his old one.[645] A fuller account of the Koryak ceremonies is given by a more recent writer. He tells us that when a dead bear is brought to the house, the women come out to meet it dancing with firebrands. The bear-skin is taken off along with the head; and one of the women puts on the skin, dances in it, and entreats the bear not to be angry, but to be kind to the people. At the same time they offer meat on a wooden platter to the dead beast, saying, “Eat, friend.” Afterwards a ceremony is performed for the purpose of sending the dead bear, or rather his spirit, away back to his home. He is provided with provisions for the journey in the shape of puddings or reindeer-flesh packed in a grass bag. His skin is stuffed with grass and carried round the house, after which he is supposed to depart towards the rising sun. The intention of the ceremonies is to protect the people from the wrath of the slain bear and his kinsfolk, and so to ensure success in future bear-hunts.[646] The Finns used to try to [pg 224] persuade a slain bear that he had not been killed by them, but had fallen from a tree, or met his death in some other way;[647] moreover, they held a funeral festival in his honour, at the close of which bards expatiated on the homage that had been paid to him, urging him to report to the other bears the high consideration with which he had been treated, in order that they also, following his example, might come and be slain.[648] When the Lapps had succeeded in killing a bear with impunity, they thanked him for not hurting them and for not breaking the clubs and spears which had given him his death wounds; and they prayed that he would not visit his death upon them by sending storms or in any other way. His flesh then furnished a feast.[649]
Propitiation of slain bears by the North American Indians.
The reverence of hunters for the bear whom they regularly kill and eat may thus be traced all along the northern region of the Old World, from Bering's Straits to Lappland. It reappears in similar forms in North America. With the American Indians a bear hunt was an important event for which they prepared by long fasts and purgations. Before setting out they offered expiatory sacrifices to the souls of bears slain in previous hunts, and besought them to be favourable to the hunters. When a bear was killed the hunter lit his pipe, and putting the mouth of it between the bear's lips, blew into the bowl, filling the beast's mouth with smoke. Then he begged the bear not to be angry at having been killed, and not to thwart him afterwards in the chase. The carcase was roasted whole and eaten; not a morsel of the flesh might be left over. The head, painted red and blue, was hung on a post and addressed by orators, who heaped praise on the dead beast.[650] When men of the Bear clan in the Otawa tribe killed a bear, they made him a feast of his own flesh, and addressed him thus: “Cherish us no grudge because we [pg 225] have killed you. You have sense; you see that our children are hungry. They love you and wish to take you into their bodies. Is it not glorious to be eaten by the children of a chief?”[651] Amongst the Nootka Indians of British Columbia, when a bear had been killed, it was brought in and seated before the head chief in an upright posture, with a chief's bonnet, wrought in figures, on its head, and its fur powdered over with white down. A tray of provisions was then set before it, and it was invited by words and gestures to eat. After that the animal was skinned, boiled, and eaten.[652] The Assiniboins pray to the bear and offer sacrifices to it of tobacco, belts, and other valuable objects. Moreover, they hold feasts in its honour, that they may win the beast's favour and live safe and sound. The bear's head is often kept in camp for several days mounted in some suitable position and decked with scraps of scarlet cloth, necklaces, collars, and coloured feathers. They offer the pipe to it, and pray that they may be able to kill all the bears they meet, without harm to themselves, for the purpose of anointing themselves with his fine grease and banqueting on his tender flesh.[653] The Ojibways will not suffer dogs to eat the flesh or gnaw the bones of a bear, and they throw all the waste portions into the fire. They think that if the flesh were desecrated, they would have no luck in hunting bears thereafter.[654] A trader of the eighteenth century has described the endearments which a party of Ojibways lavished on a she-bear which he had just killed. They took her head in their hands, stroked it and kissed it, and begged a thousand pardons for her violent death; they called her their relation and grandmother, and begged her not to lay the fault at their door, for indeed it was an Englishman who had killed [pg 226] her. Having severed the head from the body, they adorned it with all the trinkets they could muster and set it up on a scaffold in the lodge. Next day pipes were lit and tobacco smoke blown into the nostrils of the dead bear, and the trader was invited to pay this mark of respect to the animal as an atonement for having taken her life. Before they feasted on the bear's flesh, an orator made a speech in which he deplored the sad necessity under which they laboured of destroying their friends the bears; for how otherwise could they subsist?[655] Some of the Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the north-western coast of America, used to mark the skins of bears, otters, and other animals with four red crosses in a line, by way of propitiating the spirit of the beast they had killed.[656] When the Thompson Indians of British Columbia were about to hunt bears, they would sometimes address the animal and ask it to come and be shot. They prayed the grisly bear not to be angry with the hunter, nor to fight him, but rather to have pity on him and to deliver himself up to his mercies. The man who intended to hunt the grisly bear had to be chaste for some time before he set out on his dangerous adventure. When he had killed a bear, he and his companions painted their faces in alternate perpendicular stripes of black and red, and sang the bear song. Sometimes the hunter also prayed, thanking the beast for letting itself be killed so easily, and begging that its mate might share the same fate. After they had eaten the flesh of the bear's head, they tied the skull to the top of a small tree, as high as they could reach, and left it there. Having done so, they painted their faces with alternate stripes of red and black as before; for if they failed to observe this ceremony, the bears would be offended, and the hunters would not be able to kill any more. To place the heads of bears or any large beasts on trees or stones was a mark of respect to the animals.[657] The Lillooet and Shuswap Indians [pg 227] of the same region used to observe similar ceremonies at the killing of a bear.[658]
Propitiation of slain elephants in Africa.
A like respect is testified for other dangerous creatures by the hunters who regularly trap and kill them. When Caffre hunters are in the act of showering spears on an elephant, they call out, “Don't kill us, great captain; don't strike or tread upon us, mighty chief.”[659] When he is dead they make their excuses to him, pretending that his death was a pure accident. As a mark of respect they bury his trunk with much solemn ceremony; for they say that “the elephant is a great lord; his trunk is his hand.”[660] Before the Amaxosa Caffres attack an elephant they shout to the animal and beg him to pardon them for the slaughter they are about to perpetrate, professing great submission to his person and explaining clearly the need they have of his tusks to enable them to procure beads and supply their wants. When they have killed him they bury in the ground, along with the end of his trunk, a few of the articles they have obtained for the ivory, thus hoping to avert some mishap that would otherwise befall them.[661] Among the Wanyamwezi of Central Africa, when hunters have killed an elephant, they bury his legs on the spot where he fell and then cover the place with stones. The burial is supposed to appease the spirit of the dead elephant and to ensure the success of the hunters in future undertakings.[662] When the Baganda have killed an elephant, they extract the nerve from the tusk and bury it, taking care to mark the place of the burial. For they think that the ghost of the dead elephant attaches itself to the nerve, and that if a [pg 228] hunter were to step over the nerve, the elephant's ghost would cause him to be killed by an elephant the next time he went forth to hunt the beasts.[663]
Propitiation of lions in Africa.