The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)

D. W. Harmon, in Rev. Jedidiah Morse's Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs (New-haven, 1822), p. 345. The Carriers are an Indian tribe of North-West America who call themselves Ta-cul-lies, “a people who go upon water” (ibid. p. 343).

684

Francis C. Nicholas, “The Aborigines of Santa Maria, Colombia,” American Anthropologist, N.S. iii. (1901) pp. 639-641.

685

A. de Herrera, The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, translated by Capt. J. Stevens (London, 1725-26), iv. 148. The confession of sins appears to have held an important place in the native religion of the American Indians, particularly the Mexicans and Peruvians. There is no sufficient reason to suppose that they learned the practice from Catholic priests. For more evidence of the custom among the aborigines of America see L. H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois (Rochester, U.S. America, 1851), pp. 170 sq., 187 sq.; B. de Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, bk. i. ch. 12, bk. vi. ch. 7, pp. 22-27, 339-344 (Jourdanet and Simeon's French translation); A. de Herrera, op. cit. iv. 173, 190; Diego de Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864), pp. 154 sqq.; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale, ii. 114 sq., 567, iii. 567-569; P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), pp. 18, 28 sq.

686

As to this means of hastening the delivery see Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 248 sqq. The intention of the exchange of clothes at childbirth between husband and wife seems to be to relieve the woman by transferring the travail pangs to the man.

687

G. Ferrand, Les Musulmans à Madagascar, Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1893), pp. 20 sq.

688

H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), pp. 319 sq.

689

Satapatha Brahmana, translated by J. Eggeling, pt. i. p. 397 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xii.).

690

The similarity of some of the Mosaic laws to savage customs has struck most Europeans who have acquired an intimate knowledge of the savage and his ways. They have often explained the coincidences as due to a primitive revelation or to the dispersion of the Jews into all parts of the earth. Some examples of these coincidences were cited in my article “Taboo,” Encyclopaedia Britannica,

xxiii. 17. The subject has since been handled, with consummate ability and learning, by my lamented friend W. Robertson Smith in his Religion of the Semites (New Edition, London, 1894). In Psyche's Task I have illustrated by examples the influence of superstition on the growth of morality.

691

A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, i. 106 sq.

692

J. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 118.

693

C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 224.

694

L. Alberti, De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika (Amsterdam, 1810), pp. 158 sq. Compare H. Lichtenstein, Reisen im südlichen Africa (Berlin, 1811-12), i. 419. These accounts were written about a century ago. The custom may since have become obsolete. A similar remark applies to other customs described in this and the following paragraph.

695

P. Kolbe, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, I.

(London, 1738) pp. 251-255. The reason alleged for the custom is to allow the slayer to recruit his strength. But the reason is clearly inadequate as an explanation of this and similar practices.

696

J. Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfort, 1673), pp. 234-243; C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae eorumque lingua, vita et religione pristina commentatio (Copenhagen, 1767), pp. 502 sq.; E. J. Jessen, De Finnorum Lapponumque Nouvegicorum religione pagana tractatus singularis, pp. 64 sq. (bound up with Leemius's work).

697

S. Kay, Travels and Researches in Caffraria (London, 1833), pp. 341 sq.

698

J. Duncan, Travels in Western Africa (London, 1847), i. 195 sq.; F. E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (London, 1851), i. 107; P. Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves (Paris, 1885), p. 397; A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, pp. 58 sq.

699

Indian Antiquary, xxi. (1892) p. 224. Many of the above examples of expiation exacted for the slaughter of animals have already been cited by me in a note on Pausanias, ii. 7. 7, where I suggested that the legendary purification of Apollo for the slaughter of the python at Delphi (Plutarch, Quaest. Graec., 12; id., De defectu oraculorum, 15; Aelian, Var. Hist. iii. 1) may be a reminiscence of a custom of this sort.

700

Le R. P. Cadière, “Croyances et dictons populaires de la Vallée du Nguôn-son, Province de Quang-binh (Annam),” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient, i. (1901) pp. 183 sq.

701

On the nature of taboo see my article “Taboo” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, vol. xxiii. (1888) pp. 15 sqq.; W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites

(London, 1894), pp. 148 sqq., 446 sqq. Some languages have retained a word for that general idea which includes under it the notions which we now distinguish as sanctity and pollution. The word in Latin is sacer, in Greek, ἅγιος. In Polynesian it is tabu (Tongan), tapu (Samoan, Tahitian, Marquesan, Maori, etc.), or kapu (Hawaiian). See E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Wellington, N.Z., 1891), s. v.tapu. In Dacotan the word is wakan, which in Riggs's Dakota-English Dictionary (Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. vii., Washington, 1890, pp. 507 sq.) is defined as “spiritual, sacred, consecrated; wonderful, incomprehensible; said also of women at the menstrual period.” Another writer in the same dictionary defines wakan more fully as follows: “Mysterious; incomprehensible; in a peculiar state, which, from not being understood, it is dangerous to meddle with; hence the application of this word to women at the menstrual period, and from hence, too, arises the feeling among the wilder Indians, that if the Bible, the church, the missionary, etc., are ‘wakan,’ they are to be avoided, or shunned, not as being bad or dangerous, but as wakan. The word seems to be the only one suitable for holy, sacred, etc., but the common acceptation of it, given above, makes it quite misleading to the heathen.” On the notion designated by wakan, see also G. H. Pond, “Dakota Superstitions,” Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society for the year 1867 (Saint Paul, 1867), p. 33; J. Owen Dorsey, in Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1894), pp. 366 sq. It is characteristic of the equivocal notion denoted by these terms that, whereas the condition of women in childbed is commonly regarded by the savage as what we should call unclean, among the Herero the same condition is described as holy; for some time after the birth of her child, the woman is secluded in a hut made specially for her, and every morning the milk of all the cows is brought to her that she may consecrate it by touching it with her mouth. See H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, p. 167. Again, whereas a girl at puberty is commonly secluded as dangerous, among the Warundi of eastern Africa she is led by her grandmother all over the house and obliged to touch everything (O. Baumann, Durch Massailand sur Nilquelle (Berlin, 1894), p. 221), as if her touch imparted a blessing instead of a curse.

702

Plutarch, Agis, 19.

703

W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches,

iii. 102.

704

E. Aymonier, Le Cambodge, ii. (Paris, 1901) p. 25.

705

J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge (Paris, 1883), i. 226.

706