The influence of unspeculative affection, memory, and sentiment goes far towards accounting for the funeral ritual of the barbarians. But it is not sufficient. We must call in further aid; and that aid we find in the arbitrary conceits, the poetic associations, and the creative force of unregulated fancy and imagination. The poetic faculty which, supplied with materials by observation and speculation, constructed the complex mythologies of Egypt and Greece, and which, turning on its own resources, composed the Arabian tales of the genii and the modern literature of pure fiction, is particularly active, fertile, and tyrannical, though in a less continuous and systematic form, in the barbarian mind. Acting by wild fits and starts, there is no end to the extravagant conjectures and visions it bodies forth. Destitute of philosophical definitions, totally unacquainted with critical distinctions or analytic reflection, absurd notions, sober convictions, dim dreams, and sharp perceptions run confusedly together in the minds of savages. There is to them no clear and permanent demarcation between rational thoughts and crazy fancies. Now, no phenomenon can strike more deeply or work more powerfully in human nature, stirring up the exploring activities of intellect and imagination, than the event of death, with its bereaving stroke and prophetic appeal. Accordingly, we should expect to find among uncultivated nations, as we actually do, a vast medley of fragmentary thoughts and pictures plausible, strange, lovely, or terrible relating to the place and fate of the disembodied soul. These conceptions would naturally take their shaping and coloring, in some degree, from thescenery, circumstances, and experience amidst which they were conceived and born. Sometimes these figments were consciously entertained as wilful inventions, distinctly contemplated as poetry. Sometimes they were superstitiously credited in all their grossness with full assent of soul. Sometimes all coexisted in vague bewilderment. These lines of separation unquestionably existed: the difficulty is to know where, in given instances, to draw them. A few examples will serve at once to illustrate the
35 Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. Squier's Aboriginal Monuments, appendix, pp. 127-131.
operation of the principle now laid down, and to present still further specimens of the barbarian notions of a future life.
Some Indian tribes made offerings to the spirits of their departed heroes by casting the boughs of various trees around the ash, saying that the branches of this tree were eloquent with the ghosts of their warrior sires, who came at evening in the chariot of cloud to fire the young to deeds of war.36 There is an Indian legend of a witch who wore a mantle composed of the scalps of murdered women. Taking this off, she shook it, and all the scalps uttered shrieks of laughter. Another describes a magician scudding across a lake in a boat whose ribs were live rattlesnakes.37 An exercise of mind virtually identical with that which gave these strokes made the Philippine Islanders say that the souls of those who die struck by lightning go up the beams of the rainbow to a happy place, and animated Ali to declare that the pious, on coming out of their sepulchres, shall find awaiting them white winged camels with saddles of gold. The Ajetas suspended the bow and arrows of a deceased Papuan above his grave, and conceived him as emerging from beneath every night to go a hunting.38 The fisherman on the coast of Lapland was interred in a boat, and a flint and combustibles were given him to light him along the dark cavernous passage he was to traverse. The Dyaks of Borneo believe that every one whose head they can get possession of here will in the future state be their servant: consequently, they make a business of "head hunting," accumulating the ghastly visages of their victims in their huts.39 The Caribs have a sort of sensual paradise for the "brave and virtuous," where, it is promised, they shall enjoy the sublimated experience of all their earthly satisfactions; but the "degenerate and cowardly" are threatened with eternal banishment beyond the mountains, where they shall be tasked and driven as slaves by their enemies.40 The Hispaniolians locate their elysium in a pleasant valley abounding with guava, delicious fruits, cool shades, and murmuring rivulets, where they expect to live again with their departed ancestors and friends.41 The Patagonians say the stars are their translated countrymen, and the milky way is a field where the departed Patagonians hunt ostriches. Clouds are the feathers of the ostriches they kill.42 The play is here seen of the same mythological imagination which, in Italy, pictured a writhing giant beneath Mount Vesuvius, and, in Greenland, looked on the Pleiades as a group of dogs surrounding a white bear, and on the belt of Orion as a company of Greenlanders placed there because they could not find the way to their own country. Black Bird, the redoubtable chief of the O Ma Haws, when dying, said to his people, "Bury me on yonder lofty bluff on the banks of the Missouri, where I can see the men and boats passing by on the river." 43 Accordingly, as soon as he ceased
36 Browne, Trees of America, p. 328.
37 Schoolcraft, Hist. &c part i. pp. 32-34.
38 Earl, The Papuans, p. 132.
39 Earl, The Eastern Seas, ch. 8.
40 Edwards, Hist. of the West Indies, book i. ch. 2.
41 Ibid. ch. 3.