That there is some hiding of the merry mood here is not a mere matter of inference, since travellers distinctly testify to the fact. The undisciplined savage will now and again show a degree of self-restraint comparable with that which an educated Frenchman will show when in a Paris street he is addressed by a hardy British youth in what the latter cheerfully supposes to be the language of the country. The following story may serve as an example. A public meeting was being held in a native village in Africa. An Englishman who was present got up on a recumbent trunk of a tree, which is used as a seat in native villages. The log rolled and the Englishman fell heavily. Yet the whole meeting looked as grave as if the accident had been a part of the programme. An uninstructed observer might have hastily inferred that the tribe was wanting in a “sense of humour”. The narrator of the incident knew better, and gives the incident as a proof of the great power of self-restraint displayed. The same writer observes that African savages, while allowing a European traveller to humour them and treat them as children, will “amuse themselves at his expense after he is gone, and, indeed, while he is present, if they know that he cannot understand their speech”.[138] {222}
These considerations will prepare us to understand how some have regarded savages as dull creatures, who know not how to laugh. That this view is commonly held by those who have not visited them is suggested by a passage in one of Peacock’s stories. In Crotchet Castle Mr. MacQueedy puts forward the thesis that laughter is “an involuntary action developed in man by the progress of civilisation,” and adds that “the savage never laughs”.[139]
It is only fair to say that travellers themselves have not been so foolish as to uphold this view. At the same time, some of them have drawn hasty conclusions from the fact that they happened never to have heard members of a particular tribe indulge in laughter. A curious illustration of this reasoning from inadequate negative evidence is the dispute that took place, not so long ago, as to whether a people of Ceylon, known as Weddas (or Veddas), came into the category of the laughing animal. It was confidently asserted by a certain Mr. Hartshorne that they never laughed, even when they were experimented upon, and were confronted with the spectacle of others convulsed. Another visitor may help us to understand this by his remark that they vary “between a taciturn and almost morose mood when hungry, and a laughing reckless mood when not hungry”. Hartshorne must evidently have observed them in a hungry mood. Could it have been that, unlike Mary Kingsley, as some of us remember her playfully observing, he had something about him which kindled appetite?[140] {223}
Other illustrations of a too confident basing of a conclusion on failure to observe may be found. Thus it is said by one traveller, Bates, that the Brazilian Indians are of a phlegmatic, apathetic temperament. A more recent visitor, Von den Steinen, gives us a different impression, remarking in one instance that “the silent Indian men and women continually chattered, and Eva’s laughter sounded forth right merrily” (lustig heraus).[141]
These apparent discrepancies in the notes of different observers point, I suspect, to something besides such accidents as the particular mood in which the tribe is found. The ability to provoke laughter is not possessed by all: witness the failure of many meritorious attempts by adults to excite children’s merriment. Something of the easy good-nature which disarms timidity, of fraternal sympathy, and of the knack of making your audience believe you are like themselves, seems needed to draw forth all the mirthfulness of these children of nature.[142] We must always allow for this factor in the personal equation of the observer of savage ways. It is refreshing to find that missionaries have so often succeeded in getting at the lighter moods of the heathen. It speaks well for their genial humanity.
The general impression one derives from these accounts is that savage tribes are certainly not given over to a sullen despair, but on the contrary have a large and abundant mirth. Like children, they appear to express {224} their emotions with great freedom, and their laughter and other signs of good spirits are of the most energetic kind. Darwin tells us that his correspondents, missionaries and others, satisfied him on this point. Loud laughter accompanied by jumping about and clapping of the hands, and frequently carried to the point of a flooding of the eyes—these are conspicuous characteristics to be met with among the Australians and other savage tribes.[143] Other testimony supports Darwin. Sturt, for example, tells us that the natives of Central Australia are a merry people, and sit up laughing and talking all the night long.[144] The more recent observations of Lumholtz support the view that the natives are “very humorous”.[145] The Maoris (of New Zealand) are said by one traveller to be “remarkable for their natural gaiety: they are merry fellows: always laughing and joking, especially during the adventures of a journey”.[146] Of the Tasmanians we read: “There is not a little love of fun in the despised aborigine”.[147] Similarly, the South Sea Islanders are “more accustomed to jesting, mirth and humour than irritating and reproachful language”.[148] The natives of Tahiti, again, “jest upon each other with greater freedom than the Europeans”.[149] So, the Tongans have “a strong sense of the ludicrous” which they show in “the ordinary intercourse of life”.[150] Mr. Ling Roth, writing of the natives of Borneo, speaks of “the chaff and fun so dear to the heart of every Kanowit”.[151] {225}
In other regions, too, and among other races we light on the same exuberance of mirth. This is true of the natives of Africa, when they are unspoiled by Europeans. The Kafirs were said, by one who knew them earlier, to be generally speaking a good-humoured people with a keen relish for amusement, and ready to join in a jest.[152] Visitors to the Gold Coast found that the natives dearly loved a joke, and had a most lively sense of the ludicrous.[153] Miss Kingsley, as is well known, found in the West Africans a people still given to mirth and jokes. In a letter to me she writes: “I think the West African, unadulterated, the most humorous form of human being there is, and this makes him exceedingly good company for me”.
Nor is this joyous exuberance confined to the natives of warm climates. We find examples of it in the chilly North. One who visited the Indians of the Canadian Red River (the Chippewas) about forty years ago says, that they are “full of frolic and fond of relating anecdotes; they laugh immoderately at any trifling joke or absurdity and seem thoroughly to enjoy existence”.[154]
These recurring statements of travellers about the mirthfulness of savages are to some extent supported by other evidence. The writer on the Tasmanians, already quoted, gives us a number of their different local names for fun. When a people—and especially a savage people—has a name for a thing, it is a fair inference that it has some considerable acquaintance with the thing itself.
To say that this or that tribe is given to laughter and joking does not, of course, imply that the merry temper is {226} the constant or even the predominant one. We are told, indeed, in certain cases that the mood is a changeable one, and that these undisciplined men and women resemble children in their rapid transitions from grave to gay. Thus one traveller to the Gold Coast remarks that the inhabitants will change suddenly from reckless gaiety to despondency.[155] On the other hand, as may be seen from our quotations, the predominance of the gay temper, as expressed in the habitual smile and readiness to laugh, seems to be a distinguishing trait of certain savage peoples. One traveller, writing of the Patagonians, tells us that their faces were “ordinarily bright and good-natured,” and that two of them in particular, whom he knew intimately, “always had a smile on their faces”.[156]