In Latuka, a district of the Upper Nile, lions are much respected, and are only killed when they prove very troublesome and dangerous. There used to be in this region a Lion-chief, as he was called, who professed to have all lions under his control, and who actually kept several tame lions about his house. Whenever a lion was accidentally caught in a trap near the station of the Egyptian Government, this man would regularly present himself and demand the release of the noble animal. The favour was always granted, and planks were let down into the pit to enable the imprisoned lion to clamber up and escape.[664] Amongst some tribes of Eastern Africa, when a lion is killed, the carcase is brought before the king, who does homage to it by prostrating himself on the ground and rubbing his face on the muzzle of the beast.[665]
Propitiation of slain leopards in Africa.
In some parts of Western Africa if a negro kills a leopard he is bound fast and brought before the chiefs for having killed one of their peers. The man defends himself on the plea that the leopard is chief of the forest and therefore a stranger. He is then set at liberty and rewarded. But the dead leopard, adorned with a chief's bonnet, is set up in the village, where nightly dances are held in its honour.[666] The leopard is held in great veneration by the Igaras of the Niger. They call it “father” (atta), though they do not object to kill the animal in the chase. When a dead leopard is brought into Idah, the capital, it is dressed up in white and borne on the heads of four men from house to house, amidst singing and beating of drums. Each householder gives a present of cowries or cloth to the owner of the leopard, and at last the carcase is buried with great ceremony and firing of guns. Should these rites be neglected, the people imagine that the spirit of the dead leopard will punish them.[667] Among the Ewe negroes of Togoland [pg 229] “hunters who had killed buffaloes, leopards, or wild black swine observed in Agome for nine days the same, or very similar, ceremonies as are customary at the death of a woman, in order to prevent the soul of the slain beasts from avenging itself on them, a custom which is the less surprising because the mourning customs themselves are based on the fear of spirits, namely the spirits of the dead. The natives ascribe to the souls of these dangerous animals the power of killing the man who shot them, or of so blinding and enchanting him that in the chase he confuses animals and men and so incurs serious mishaps.”[668] The quaint ceremonies which these negroes observe for the purpose of avoiding the imaginary perils have been described by a German missionary. The leopard and the wild buffalo, he tells us, are believed to be animated by malignant souls which not only do the hunter a mischief while they still occupy the bodies of the living creatures, but even after death, in their disembodied state, continue to haunt and plague their slayer, sometimes egging on a serpent or a leopard to sting or bite him, sometimes blinding him so that he shoots a man for an animal, or cannot find his way home and goes groping about in the wilderness till he perishes miserably. If a man thus blinded and crazed should make his way back to the town, he is banished for life and sold into slavery; his house and plantation are razed to the ground; and his nearest relations are often given as bail into the hands of strangers. It is therefore a very serious matter indeed for a hunter to incur the wrath of a leopard's ghost, and it is quite natural that he should take all reasonable measures to guard himself against so threatening a calamity. Hence as soon as he has killed a leopard, he hurries back to the town and brings word of it to the other men who have slain leopards on former occasions, and who now assist him with their advice and experience. The first thing they do is to put a stalk of grass in his mouth as a sign that he may not speak. [pg 230] Then they repair to the place where the leopard lies dead in the forest, and inform the animal of the reasons why he has been shot, namely, because he has stolen sheep, fowls, and pigs, and has killed men. Next the drums are beaten and the people assemble in the open square of the town. The dead leopard meanwhile has been fastened to a pole, and with his eyes bandaged and his face upturned to heaven, is solemnly carried about the town and set down before the houses of the principal folk, who reward the hero and his comrades with presents. After the procession has gone the round, the leopard is tied to a tree, and the hunters paint the slayer with red and white so as to make him look like a leopard, except that the leopard's spots are only painted on the left side of his body; a basket painted in the same colours is clapped on his head, and magical strings of cowries are tied round his hands and feet. Thus attired, he and the other heroes who have killed leopards crawl about on all fours and roar like leopards when anybody comes near them. In his left hand every man grasps a bow for the slaughter of innocent cocks and hens, and with his right he grabbles about in the earth like an animal seeking what it may devour. None of them may speak, they may only roar, but they do that in a masterly manner. At the head of this imposing procession go two men armed with a thick cudgel and a spear respectively; and the rear is brought up by a third man, who is privileged to walk upright on his hind legs. This favoured person is the cook, whose office it is to dress the fowls which the human leopards; purloin in the course of their pilgrimage; indeed for nineteen days they are privileged, no doubt in their character of leopards, to rob the hen-roosts with impunity. In the afternoon the carcase of the leopard is taken down, skinned, and cut up. The titbits are sent to the chief and the other dignitaries, who eat them; and the remainder of the flesh is consumed by the common folk. The skin, the teeth, the head, and the claws belong to the hunter who killed the beast. But for nineteen days thereafter the slayer of the leopard must retain his peculiar costume: he may eat only warm-blooded animals and food seasoned with salt: he may not eat anything seasoned with pepper; and on no account [pg 231] may he taste fish, because they are cold-blooded creatures. A general feast, of which all the male inhabitants of the town partake, winds up the proceedings at the close of the nineteen days. A feature of the festivities is a dramatic representation of a leopard-hunt, which is carried out in every detail amid great excitement. If only all these ceremonies are strictly observed, the hunter need have no fear at all of being plagued by the leopard's ghost.[669]
Propitiation of slain buffaloes and sheep in Uganda.
The Baganda greatly fear the ghosts of buffaloes which they have killed, and they always appease these dangerous spirits. On no account will they bring the head of a slain buffalo into a village or into a garden of plantains: they always eat the flesh of the head in the open country. Afterwards they place the skull in a small hut built for the purpose, where they pour out beer as an offering and pray to the ghost to stay where he is and not to harm them.[670] Oddly enough the Baganda also dread the ghosts of sheep, which they believe would haunt and kill the butcher if they saw him give the fatal stroke. Hence when a man is about to slaughter a sheep, he gets another man to divert its attention, and coming up behind the unsuspecting animal he stuns it with the blow of an axe-handle; then, before it can recover consciousness, he adroitly cuts its throat. In this way the ghost of the sheep is bamboozled and will not haunt the butcher. Moreover, when a sheep dies in a house, the housewife may not say bluntly to her husband, “The sheep is dead,” or its ghost, touched to the quick, would certainly make her fall ill and might even kill her. She must put a finer point on the painful truth by saying, “I am unable to untie such and such a sheep.” Her husband understands her, but the ghost of the animal does not, or at all events he does not resent so delicate an allusion to its melancholy decease.[671] Even the ghost of a fowl may haunt a Muganda [pg 232] woman and make her ill, if she has accidentally killed it with her hoe and flung away the body in the long grass instead of carrying it to her husband and confessing her fault.[672]
Propitiation of dead whales among the Koryak.
Another formidable beast whose life the savage hunter takes with joy, yet with fear and trembling, is the whale. After the slaughter of a whale the maritime Koryak of north-eastern Siberia hold a communal festival, the essential part of which “is based on the conception that the whale killed has come on a visit to the village; that it is staying for some time, during which it is treated with great respect; that it then returns to the sea to repeat its visit the following year; that it will induce its relatives to come along, telling them of the hospitable reception that has been accorded to it. According to the Koryak ideas, the whales, like all other animals, constitute one tribe, or rather family, of related individuals, who live in villages like the Koryak. They avenge the murder of one of their number, and are grateful for kindnesses that they may have received.”[673] As large whales are now rarely seen in the bays of the Okhotsk Sea, the Koryak at the present time generally celebrate the festival for a white whale. One such festival was witnessed by Mr. W. Jochelson, at the village of Kuel, in October 1900. A white whale had been caught in the nets, and as the sea was partially frozen, the carcase had to be brought ashore in a sledge. When it was seen nearing the beach, a number of women, arrayed in their long embroidered dancing-coats, went forth to meet and welcome it, carrying lighted fire-brands in their hands. To carry burning fire-brands from the hearth is the ancient Koryak fashion of greeting an honoured guest. Strictly speaking, the women who go forth to welcome a whale to the house should wear masks of sedge-grass on their faces as well as dancing-coats on their bodies, and should carry sacrificial alder branches as well as firebrands [pg 233] in their hands, but on the present occasion the women dispensed with the use of masks. They danced, shaking their heads, moving their shoulders, and swinging their whole bodies with arms outstretched, now squatting, now rising and singing, “Ah! a guest has come.” In spite of the cold and the wind the sweat dripped from them, so violently did they dance, and they sang and screamed till they were hoarse. When the sledge with its burden had reached the shore, one of the women pronounced an incantation over the whale's head, and then thrust alder branches and sacrificial grass into its mouth. Next they muffled its head in a hood, apparently to prevent the creature from witnessing the painful spectacle of its own dissection. After that the men cut up the carcase, and the women collected the blood in pails. Two seals, which had also been killed, were included in the festivities which followed. The heads of all three animals were cut off and placed on the roof of the house. Next day the festival began. In the morning the women plaited travelling bags of grass for the use of the whale, and made grass masks. In the evening, the people having assembled in a large underground house, some boiled pieces of the white whale were placed in a grass bag and set before a wooden image of a white whale, so that the animal, or its departed spirit, was thus apparently supposed to be regaled with portions of its own body; for the white whale and the seals were treated as honoured guests at the banquet. To keep up the pretence, the people were silent or spoke only in whispers for fear of wakening the guests before the time. At last the preparations were complete: fresh faggots piled on the hearth sent up a blaze, illumining with an unsteady light the smoke-blackened walls of the vast underground dwelling, which a moment before had been shrouded in darkness; and the long silence was broken by the joyful cries of the women, “Here dear guests have come!” “Visit us often!” “When you go back to the sea, tell your friends to call on us also, we will prepare just as nice food for them as for you.” With these words they pointed to puddings set out temptingly on the boards. Next the host took a piece of the fat of the white whale and threw it into the fire, saying, “We are burning it in the fire for thee!” Then he went to the domestic shrine, [pg 234] placed lumps of fat before the rude effigies of the guardian spirits, and smeared fat on their mouths. The appetites of the higher powers having thus been satisfied, the people set to and partook of the good things provided for them, including the flesh of the white whale and the seals. Lastly, two old men practised divination by means of the shoulder-blade of a seal to discover whether the white whale would go back to the sea and call his fellows to come and be caught like himself. In order to extract this information from the bone burning coals were piled on it, and the resulting cracks were carefully scrutinised. To the delight of all present the omens proved favourable: a long transverse crack indicated the sea to which the spirit of the white whale would soon depart. Four days later the departure actually took place. It was a bright sunshiny wintry morning: the frost was keen; and for more than a mile seaward the beach was covered with blocks of ice. In the great underground dwelling, where the feast had been held, the hearth had been turned into something like an altar. On it lay the heads of the white whale and the seals, and beside them travelling-bags of grass filled with puddings, which the souls of the animals were to take with them on their long journey. Beside the hearth knelt two women, their faces covered with grass masks and their heads bent over the bags, mumbling an incantation. The sunlight streamed down on them through the smoke-hole overhead, but spread only a dim twilight through the remoter recesses of the vast subterranean chamber. The masks worn by the women were intended to guard them against the spirit of the white whale, which was supposed to be hovering invisible in the air. The incantation over, the women rose from their knees and doffed their masks. A careful examination of a pudding, which had been offered in sacrifice to the white whale, now revealed the joyful intelligence that the spirit of the whale had accepted the sacrifice and was about to return to the sea. All that remained, therefore, to do was to speed him on his way. For that purpose two men ascended the roof, let down thongs through the smoke-hole, and hauled up the heads of the white whale and of the seals together with the travelling-bags of provisions. That concluded the despatch of the [pg 235] souls of the dead animals to their home in the great waters.[674]
Propitiation of whales, hippopotamuses, ounces, and apes.
When the inhabitants of the Isle of St. Mary, to the north of Madagascar, go a-whaling, they single out the young whales for attack and “humbly beg the mother's pardon, stating the necessity that drives them to kill her progeny, and requesting that she will be pleased to go below while the deed is doing, that her maternal feelings may not be outraged by witnessing what must cause her so much uneasiness.”[675] An Ajumba hunter having killed a female hippopotamus on Lake Azyingo in West Africa, the animal was decapitated and its quarters and bowels removed. Then the hunter, naked, stepped into the hollow of the ribs, and kneeling down in the bloody pool washed his whole body with the blood and excretions of the animal, while he prayed to the soul of the hippopotamus not to bear him a grudge for having killed her and so blighted her hopes of future maternity; and he further entreated the ghost not to stir up other hippopotamuses to avenge her death by butting at and capsizing his canoe.[676] The ounce, a leopard-like creature, is dreaded for its depredations by the Indians of Brazil. When they have caught one of these animals in a snare, they kill it and carry the body home to the village. There the women deck the carcase with feathers of many colours, put bracelets on its legs, and weep over it, saying, “I pray thee not to take vengeance on our little ones for having been caught and killed through thine own ignorance. For it was not we who deceived thee, it was thyself. Our husbands only set the trap to catch animals that are good to eat: they never thought to take thee in it. Therefore, let not thy soul counsel thy fellows to avenge thy death on our little ones!”[677] When the Yuracares Indians of Bolivia have killed great apes in their tropical forests, they bring the bodies home, set them out in a row on palm leaves with their heads [pg 236] all looking one way, sprinkle them with chicha, and say, “We love you, since we have brought you home.” They imagine that the performance of this ceremony is very gratifying to the other apes in the woods.[678] Before they leave a temporary camp in the forest, where they have killed a tapir and dried the meat on a babracot, the Indians of Guiana invariably destroy this babracot, saying that should a tapir passing that way find traces of the slaughter of one of his kind, he would come by night on the next occasion when Indians slept at that place, and, taking a man, would babracot him in revenge.[679]
Propitiation of dead eagles. Deceiving the ghosts of spiders.