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

§ 2. Mourners tabooed

The taboos observed by sacred kings resemble those imposed on persons who are commonly regarded as unclean, such as menstruous women, homicides, and so forth. Taboos laid on persons who have been in contact with the dead in New Zealand.

Thus regarding his sacred chiefs and kings as charged with a mysterious spiritual force which so to say explodes at contact, the savage naturally ranks them among the dangerous classes of society, and imposes upon them the same sort of restraints that he lays on manslayers, menstruous women, and other persons whom he looks upon with a certain fear and horror. For example, sacred kings and priests in Polynesia were not allowed to touch food with their hands, and had therefore to be fed by others;[499 - W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches (Second Edition, London, 1832-1836), iv. 388. Ellis appears to imply that the rule was universal in Polynesia, but perhaps he refers only to Hawaii, of which in this part of his work he is specially treating. We are told that in Hawaii the priest who carried the principal idol about the country was tabooed during the performance of this sacred office; he might not touch anything with his hands, and the morsels of food which he ate had to be put into his mouth by the chiefs of the villages through which he passed or even by the king himself, who accompanied the priest on his rounds (L. de Freycinet, Voyage autour du monde, Historique, ii. Première Partie, Paris, 1829, p. 596). In Tonga the rule applied to chiefs only when their hands had become tabooed by touching a superior chief (W. Mariner, Tonga Islands, i. 82 sq.). In New Zealand chiefs were fed by slaves (A. S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, i. 102); or they may, like tabooed people in general, have taken up their food from little stages with their mouths or by means of fern-stalks (R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants,

p. 162).] and as we have just seen, their vessels, garments, and other property might not be used by others on pain of disease and death. Now precisely the same observances are exacted by some savages from girls at their first menstruation, women after childbirth, homicides, mourners, and all persons who have come into contact with the dead. Thus, for example, to begin with the last class of persons, among the Maoris any one who had handled a corpse, helped to convey it to the grave, or touched a dead man's bones, was cut off from all intercourse and almost all communication with mankind. He could not enter any house, or come into contact with any person or thing, without utterly bedevilling them. He might not even touch food with his hands, which had become so frightfully tabooed or unclean as to be quite useless. Food would be set for him on the ground, and he would then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands carefully held behind his back, would gnaw at it as best he could. In some cases he would be fed by another person, who with outstretched arm contrived to do it without touching the tabooed man; but the feeder was himself subjected to many severe restrictions, little less onerous than those which were imposed upon the other. In almost every populous village there lived a degraded wretch, the lowest of the low, who earned a sorry pittance by thus waiting upon the defiled. Clad in rags, daubed from head to foot with red ochre and stinking shark oil, always solitary and silent, generally old, haggard, and wizened, often half crazed, he might be seen sitting motionless all day apart from the common path or thoroughfare of the village, gazing with lack-lustre eyes on the busy doings in which he might never take a part. Twice a day a dole of food would be thrown on the ground before him to munch as well as he could without the use of his hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day. Such was the only human being deemed fit to associate at arm's length with one who had paid the last offices of respect and friendship to the dead. And when, the dismal term of his seclusion being over, the mourner was about to mix with his fellows once more, all the dishes he had used in his seclusion were diligently smashed, and all the garments he had worn were carefully thrown away, lest they should spread the contagion of his defilement among others,[500 - Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), pp. 104-114. For more evidence see W. Yate, New Zealand, p. 85; G. F. Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, ii. 90; E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 104 sq.; J. Dumont D'Urville, Voyage autour du monde et à la recherche de La Pérouse, ii. 530; Father Servant, “Notice sur la Nouvelle Zélande,” Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, xv. (1843) p. 22.] just as the vessels and clothes of sacred kings and chiefs are destroyed or cast away for a similar reason. So complete in these respects is the analogy which the savage traces between the spiritual influences that emanate from divinities and from the dead, between the odour of sanctity and the stench of corruption.

The rule which forbids persons who have been in contact with a corpse to touch food with their hands seems to have been universal in Polynesia. A rule of the same sort is observed in Melanesia and Africa.

The rule which forbids persons who have been in contact with the dead to touch food with their hands would seem to have been universal in Polynesia. Thus in Samoa “those who attended the deceased were most careful not to handle food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants. Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the punishment inflicted by the household god if they violated the rule.”[501 - G. Turner, Samoa, p. 145. Compare G. Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians (London, 1910), p. 402: “The men who took hold of the body were paia (sacred) for the time, were forbidden to touch their own food, and were fed by others. No food wad eaten in the same house with the dead body.”] Again, in Tonga, “no person can touch a dead chief without being taboo'd for ten lunar months, except chiefs, who are only taboo'd for three, four, or five months, according to the superiority of the dead chief; except again it be the body of Tooitonga [the great divine chief], and then even the greatest chief would be taboo'd ten months, as was the case with Finow's wife above mentioned. During the time a man is taboo'd he must not feed himself with his own hands, but must be fed by somebody else: he must not even use a toothpick himself, but must guide another person's hand holding the toothpick. If he is hungry and there is no one to feed him, he must go down upon his hands and knees, and pick up his victuals with his mouth: and if he infringes upon any of these rules, it is firmly expected that he will swell up and die: and this belief is so strong that Mr. Mariner thinks no native ever made an experiment to prove the contrary. They often saw him feed himself with his hands after having touched dead chiefs, and not observing his health to decline, they attributed it to his being a foreigner, and being governed by different gods.”[502 - W. Mariner, The Natives of the Tonga Islands

(London, 1818), i. 141 sq., note.] Again, in Wallis Island “contact with a corpse subjects the hands to the law of taboo till they are washed, which is not done for several weeks. Until that purification has taken place, the tabooed persons may not themselves put food to their mouths; other people render them that service.”[503 - Father Bataillon, in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, xiii. (1841) p. 19. For more evidence of the practice of this custom in Polynesia, see Captain J. Cook, Voyages (London, 1809), vii. 147; James Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), p. 363.] A rule of the same sort is or was observed in various parts of Melanesia. Thus in Fiji the taboo for handling a dead chief lasted from one to ten months according to his rank; for a commoner it lasted not more than four days. It was commonly resorted to by the lazy and idle; for during the time of their seclusion they were not only provided with food, but were actually fed by attendants or ate their food from the ground.[504 - Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, New Edition (New York, 1851), iii. 99 sq.] Similarly in the Motu tribe of New Guinea a man is tabooed, generally for three days, after handling a corpse, and while the taboo lasts he may not touch food with his hands. At the end of the time he bathes and the taboo is over.[505 - W. G. Lawes, “Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu, and Koiari Tribes of New Guinea,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, viii. (1879) p. 370.] So in New Caledonia the two men who are charged with the duty of burying and guarding a corpse have to remain in seclusion and observe a number of rules of abstinence. They live apart from their wives. They may not shave or cut their hair. Their food is laid for them on leaves and they take it up with their mouth or a stick; but oftener an attendant feeds them, just as he might feed a man whose limbs were palsied.[506 - Father Lambert, in Missions Catholiques, xii. (1880) p. 365; id., Mœurs et superstitions des Néo-Calédoniens (Nouméa, 1900), pp. 238 sq.] So among the Nandi of British East Africa persons who have handled a corpse bathe in a river, anoint their bodies with fat, partially shave their heads, and live in the hut of the deceased for four days. All these days they may not be seen by boys or women: they may not drink milk; and they may not touch food with their hands, but must eat it with the help of a potsherd or chip of a gourd.[507 - A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 70.] Similarly in the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa men who have dug a grave may not touch food with their fingers till the rites of their purification are accomplished; meantime they eat with the help of special spoons. If they broke this rule, it is thought that they would be consumptive.[508 - H. A. Junod, “Les Conceptions physiologiques des Bantou sud-africains et leurs tabous,” Revue d'Ethnographie et de Sociologie, i. (1910) p. 153.] So in the Ngarigo tribe of New South Wales a novice who has just passed through the ceremony of initiation has to go away to the mountains and stay there for a while, sometimes for more than six months, under the charge of one or more old men; and all the time of his absence among the mountains he may not touch cooked food with his hands; the food is put into his mouth by the man who looks after him.[509 - A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 563.]

Taboos laid on mourners among the Indian tribes of North America.

Among the Shuswap of British Columbia widows and widowers in mourning are secluded and forbidden to touch their own head or body; the cups and cooking-vessels which they use may be used by no one else. They must build a sweat-house beside a creek, sweat there all night and bathe regularly, after which they must rub their bodies with branches of spruce. The branches may not be used more than once, and when they have served their purpose they are stuck into the ground all round the hut. No hunter would come near such mourners, for their presence is unlucky. If their shadow were to fall on any one, he would be taken ill at once. They employ thorn bushes for bed and pillow, in order to keep away the ghost of the deceased; and thorn bushes are also laid all around their beds.[510 - Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, pp. 91 sq. (separate Reprint from the Report of the British Association for 1890).] This last precaution shews clearly what the spiritual danger is which leads to the exclusion of such persons from ordinary society; it is simply a fear of the ghost who is supposed to be hovering near them. Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia the persons who handled a corpse and dug the grave were secluded for four days. They fasted until the body was buried, after which they were given food apart from the other people. They would not touch the food with their hands, but must put it into their mouths with sharp-pointed sticks. They ate off a small mat, and drank out of birch-bark cups, which, together with the mat, were thrown away at the end of the four days. The first four mouthfuls of food, as well as of water, had to be spit into the fire. During their seclusion they bathed in a stream and might not sleep with their wives. Widows and widowers were obliged to observe rules of a similar kind. Immediately after the death they went out and passed through a patch of rose-bushes four times, probably in order to rid themselves of the ghost, who might be supposed to stick on a thorn. For a year they had to sleep on a bed of fir-boughs, on which sticks of rose-bushes were laid; many wore twigs of rose-bush and juniper in a piece of buckskin on their persons. The first four days they might not touch their food, but ate with sharp-pointed sticks and spat out the first four mouthfuls of each meal, and the first four of water, into the fire. A widower might not fish at another man's fishing-place or with another man's net; if he did, it would make the place and the net useless for the season. If he transplanted a trout into another lake, before releasing it he blew on the head of the fish, and after chewing deer-fat, he spat some of the grease on its head in order to remove the baneful effect of his touch. Then he let the trout go, bidding it farewell, and asking it to propagate its kind in plenty. Any grass or branches that a widow or widower sat or lay down on withered up. If a widow should break sticks or boughs, her hands or arms would also break. She might not pick berries for a year, else the whole crop of berries would fall off the bushes or wither up. She might not cook food or fetch water for her children, nor let them lie down on her bed, nor should she lie or sit where they slept. Sometimes a widow would wear a breech-cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several days to prevent her husband's ghost from having intercourse with her.[511 - J. Teit, “The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. i. part iv. (April 1900) pp. 331, 332 sq.] Among the Tinneh or Déné Indians of North-West America all who have handled a corpse are subject to many restrictions and taboos. They are debarred for a certain period from eating any fresh meat: they may never use a knife to cut their food but must tear it with their teeth: they may not drink out of a vessel in common use, but must employ a gourd which they carry about for the purpose; and they wear peeled willow wands about their arms and necks or carry them in their hands as disinfectants to annul the evil consequences which are supposed to follow from handling the dead.[512 - C. Hill-Tout, The Far West, the Home of the Salish and Déné (London, 1907), pp. 193 sq.] Among the Indian tribes of Queen Charlotte Sound a widow or widower goes into special mourning for a month; among the Koskimos the period of mourning is four months. During this time he or she lives apart in a very small hut behind the house, eating and drinking alone, and using for that purpose dishes which are not employed by other members of the tribe.[513 - G. M. Dawson, “Notes and Observations on the Kwakiool People of the Northern part of Vancouver Island and adjacent Coasts,” Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for the Year 1887, vol. v. (Montreal, 1888) Trans. Section ii. pp. 78 sq.]

Seclusion of widows and widowers in the Philippines and New Guinea.

Among the Agutainos, who inhabit Palawan, one of the Philippine Islands, a widow may not leave her hut for seven or eight days after the death; and even then she may only go out at an hour when she is not likely to meet anybody, for whoever looks upon her dies a sudden death. To prevent this fatal catastrophe, the widow knocks with a wooden peg on the trees as she goes along, thus warning people of her dangerous proximity; and the very trees on which she knocks soon die.[514 - F. Blumentritt, “Über die Eingeborenen der Insel Palawan und der Inselgruppe der Talamlanen,” Globus, lix. (1891) p. 182.] So poisonous is the atmosphere of death that surrounds those to whom the ghost of the departed may be thought to cleave. In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea a widower loses all his civil rights and becomes a social outcast, an object of fear and horror, shunned by all. He may not cultivate a garden, nor shew himself in public, nor traverse the village, nor walk on the roads and paths. Like a wild beast he must skulk in the long grass and the bushes; and if he sees or hears any one coming, especially a woman, he must hide behind a tree or a thicket. If he wishes to fish or hunt, he must do it alone and at night. If he would consult any one, even the missionary, he does so by stealth and at night; he seems to have lost his voice and speaks only in whispers. Were he to join a party of fishers or hunters, his presence would bring misfortune on them; the ghost of his dead wife would frighten away the fish or the game. He goes about everywhere and at all times armed with a tomahawk to defend himself, not only against wild boars in the jungle, but against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who would do him an ill turn if she could; for all the souls of the dead are malignant and their only delight is to harm the living.[515 - Father Guis, “Les Canaques, Mort-Deuil,” Missions Catholiques, xxxiv. (1902) pp. 208 sq.]

§ 3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth

Taboos imposed on women at menstruation.

In general, we may say that the prohibition to use the vessels, garments, and so on of certain persons, and the effects supposed to follow an infraction of the rule, are exactly the same whether the persons to whom the things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and polluted. As the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous woman. An Australian blackfellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of terror himself within a fortnight.[516 - Capt. W. E. Armit, “Customs of the Australian Aborigines,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, ix. (1880) p. 459.] Hence Australian women at these times are forbidden under pain of death to touch anything that men use, or even to walk on a path that any man frequents. They are also secluded at childbirth, and all vessels used by them during their seclusion are burned.[517 - W. Ridley, “Report on Australian Languages and Traditions,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, ii. (1873) p. 268.] In Uganda the pots which a woman touches while the impurity of childbirth or of menstruation is on her should be destroyed; spears and shields defiled by her touch are not destroyed but only purified.[518 - From information given me by Messrs. Roscoe and Miller, missionaries to Uganda (June 24, 1897), and afterwards corrected by the Katikiro (Prime Minister) of Uganda in conversation with Mr. Roscoe (June 20, 1902).] No Esquimaux of Alaska will willingly drink out of the same cup or eat out of the same dish that has been used by a woman at her confinement until it has been purified by certain incantations.[519 - Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska (Washington, 1885), p. 46.] Amongst some of the Indians of North America, women at menstruation are forbidden to touch men's utensils, which would be so defiled by their touch that their subsequent use would be attended by certain mischief or misfortune.[520 - Alexander Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal through the Continent of North America (London, 1801), p. cxxiii.] For instance, in some of the Tinneh or Déné tribes girls verging on maturity take care that the dishes out of which they eat are used by no one else. When their first periodical sickness comes on, they are fed by their mothers or nearest kinswomen, and will on no account touch their food with their own hands. At the same time they abstain from touching their heads with their hands, and keep a small stick to scratch their heads with when they itch. They remain outside the house in a hut built for the purpose, and wear a skull-cap made of skin to fit very tight, which they never lay aside till the first monthly infirmity is over. A fringe of shells, bones, and so on hangs down from their forehead so as to cover their eyes, lest any malicious sorcerer should harm them during this critical period.[521 - Gavin Hamilton, “Customs of the New Caledonian Women,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vii. (1878) p. 206. Among the Nootkas of British Columbia a girl at puberty is hidden from the sight of men for several days behind a partition of mats; during her seclusion she may not scratch her head or her body with her hands, but she may do so with a comb or a piece of bone, which is provided for the purpose. See Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 41 (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association for 1890). Again, among the Shuswap of British Columbia a girl at puberty lives alone in a little hut on the mountains and is forbidden to touch her head or scratch her body; but she may scratch her head with a three-toothed comb and her body with the painted bone of a deer. See Fr. Boas, op. cit. pp. 89 sq. In the East Indian island of Ceram a girl may not scratch herself with her fingers the night before her teeth are filed, but she may do it with a piece of bamboo. See J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 137.] “Among all the Déné and most other American tribes, hardly any other being was the object of so much dread as a menstruating woman. As soon as signs of that condition made themselves apparent in a young girl she was carefully segregated from all but female company, and had to live by herself in a small hut away from the gaze of the villagers or of the male members of the roving band. While in that awful state, she had to abstain from touching anything belonging to man, or the spoils of any venison or other animal, lest she would thereby pollute the same, and condemn the hunters to failure, owing to the anger of the game thus slighted. Dried fish formed her diet, and cold water, absorbed through a drinking tube, was her only beverage. Moreover, as the very sight of her was dangerous to society, a special skin bonnet, with fringes falling over her face down to her breast, hid her from the public gaze, even some time after she had recovered her normal state.”[522 - A. G. Morice, “The Canadian Dénés,” Annual Archaeological Report (Toronto), 1905, p. 218.] Among the Bribri Indians of Costa Rica a menstruous woman is regarded as unclean (bukuru). The only plates she may use for her food are banana leaves, which, when she has done with them, she throws away in some sequestered spot; for were a cow to find them and eat them, the animal would waste away and perish. And she drinks out of a special vessel for a like reason; because if any one drank out of the same cup after her, he would surely die.[523 - H. Pittier de Fabrega, “Die Sprache der Bribri-Indianer in Costa Rica,” Sitzungsberichte der philosophischen-historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna), cxxxviii. (1898) p. 20.] In the islands of Mabuiag and Saibai, in Torres Straits, girls at their first menstruation are strictly secluded from the sight of men. In Mabuiag the seclusion lasts three months, in Saibai about a fortnight. During the time of her separation the girl is forbidden to feed herself or to handle food, which is put into her mouth by women or girls told off to wait on her.[524 - C. G. Seligmann, in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 201, 203.]

Taboos imposed on women in childbed.

Among many peoples similar restrictions are imposed on women in childbed and apparently for similar reasons; at such periods women are supposed to be in a dangerous condition which would infect any person or thing they might touch; hence they are put into quarantine until, with the recovery of their health and strength, the imaginary danger has passed away. Thus, in Tahiti a woman after childbirth was secluded for a fortnight or three weeks in a temporary hut erected on sacred ground; during the time of her seclusion she was debarred from touching provisions, and had to be fed by another. Further, if any one else touched the child at this period, he was subjected to the same restrictions as the mother until the ceremony of her purification had been performed.[525 - James Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, p. 354.] Similarly in Manahiki, an island of the Southern Pacific, for ten days after her delivery a woman was not allowed to handle food, and had to be fed by some other person.[526 - G. Turner, Samoa, p. 276.] In the Sinaugolo tribe of British New Guinea, for about a month after her confinement a woman may not prepare or handle food; she may not even cook for herself, and when she is eating the food made ready for her by her friends she must use a sharpened stick to transfer it to her mouth.[527 - C. G. Seligmann, “The Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery of the Sinaugolo,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 302. In Uganda a bride is secluded for a month, during which she only receives near relatives; she wears her veil all this time. She may not handle food, but is fed by one of her attendants. A peasant's wife is secluded for two or three days only. See J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 37.] Similarly in the Roro and Mekeo districts of British New Guinea a woman after childbirth becomes for a time taboo (opu), and any person or thing she may chance to touch becomes taboo also. Accordingly during this time she abstains from cooking; for were she to cook food, not only the victuals themselves but the pot and the fire would be tabooed, so that nobody could eat the victuals, or use the pot, or warm himself at the fire. Further at meals she may not dip her hand into the dish and help herself, as the natives commonly do; she must use for the purpose a long fork, with which she takes up the bananas, sweet potatoes, yams, and so forth, in order not to contaminate the rest of the food in the vessel by the touch of her fingers. If she wishes to drink, a gourd is set before her, and wrapping up her hands in a cloth or coco-nut fibre she pours the water into a small calabash for her use; or she may pour the water directly into her mouth without letting the gourd touch her lips. If anything has to be handed to her, it is not given from hand to hand but reached to her at the end of a long stick.[528 - Father Guis, “Les Canaques, ce qu'ils font, ce qu'ils disent,” Missions Catholiques, xxx. (1898) p. 119.] Similarly in the island of Kadiak, off Alaska, a woman about to be delivered retires to a miserable low hovel built of reeds, where she must remain for twenty days after the birth of her child, whatever the season may be, and she is considered so unclean that no one will touch her, and food is reached to her on sticks.[529 - V. Lisiansky, A Voyage Round the World (London, 1814), p. 201.] In the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa a woman in childbed may not touch her food with her hands all the time of her seclusion; she must eat with the help of a wooden spoon. They think that if she touched her victuals she might infect them with her bloody flux, and that having partaken of such tainted food she would fall into a consumption.[530 - H. A. Junod, “Les Conceptions physiologiques des Bantou sud-africains et leurs tabous,” Revue d' Ethnographie et de Sociologie, i. (1910) p. 153.] The Bribri Indians regard the pollution of childbed as much more dangerous even than that of menstruation. When a woman feels her time approaching, she informs her husband, who makes haste to build a hut for her in a lonely spot. There she must live alone, holding no converse with anybody save her mother or another woman. After her delivery the medicine-man purifies her by breathing on her and laying an animal, it matters not what, upon her. But even this ceremony only mitigates her uncleanness into a state considered to be equivalent to that of a menstruous woman; and for a full lunar month she must live apart from her housemates, observing the same rules with regard to eating and drinking as at her monthly periods. The case is still worse, the pollution is still more deadly, if she has had a miscarriage or has been delivered of a stillborn child. In that case she may not go near a living soul: the mere contact with things she has used is exceedingly dangerous: her food is handed to her at the end of a long stick. This lasts generally for three weeks, after which she may go home subject only to the restrictions incident to an ordinary confinement.[531 - H. Pittier de Fábrega, op. cit. pp. 20 sq.] Among the Adivi or forest Gollas of Southern India, when a woman feels the first pains of labour, she is turned clean out of the village and must take up her quarters in a little hut made of leaves or mats about two hundred yards away. In this hut she must bring forth her offspring unaided, unless a midwife can be fetched in time to be with her before the child is born; if the midwife arrives after the birth has taken place she may not go near the woman. For ninety days the mother lives in the hut by herself. If any one touches her, he or she becomes, like the mother herself, an outcast and is expelled from the village for three months, The woman's husband generally makes a little hut about fifty yards from hers and stays in it sometimes to watch over her, but he may not go near her on pain of being an outcast for three months. Food is placed on the ground near the woman's hut and she takes it. On the fourth day after the birth a woman of the village goes to her and pours water on her, but may not come into contact with her. On the fifth day the villagers clear away the stones and thorny bushes from a patch of ground about ten yards on the village side of the hut, and to this clearing the woman removes her hut unaided; no one may help her to do so. On the ninth, fifteenth, and thirtieth days she again shifts her hut nearer and nearer to the village; and again once in each of the two following months she brings her hut still nearer. On the ninetieth day of her seclusion the woman is called out from her hut, washed, clad in clean clothes, and after being taken to the village temple is conducted to her own house by a man of the caste, who performs purificatory ceremonies.[532 - F. Fawcett, “Note on a Custom of the Mysore ‘Gollaválu’ or Shepherd Caste People,” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. 536 sq.; E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), ii. 287 sq.]

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed.

These customs shew that in the opinion of some primitive peoples a woman at and after childbirth is pervaded by a certain dangerous influence which can infect anything and anybody she touches; so that in the interest of the community it becomes necessary to seclude her from society for a while until the virulence of the infection has passed away, when, after submitting to certain rites of purification, she is again free to mingle with her fellows. This dread of lying-in women appears to be widespread, for the practice of shutting them up at such times in lonely huts away from the rest of the people is very common. Sometimes the nature of the danger which is apprehended from them is explicitly stated. Thus in the island of Tumleo, off German New Guinea, after the birth of her first child a woman is shut up with her infant for five to eight days, during which no man, not even her husband, may see her; for the men think that were they to see her, their bodies would swell up and they would die.[533 - M. J. Erdweg, “Die Bewohner der Insel Tumleo, Berlinhafen, Deutsch Neu-Guinea,” Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, xxxii. (1902) p. 280.] Apparently their notion is that the sight of a woman who has just been big with child will, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, make their bodies big also to bursting. The Sulka of New Britain imagine that, when a woman has been delivered of a child, the men become cowardly, weapons lose their force, and the slips which are to be planted out are deprived of their power of germinating. Hence they perform a ceremony which is intended to counteract this mysterious influence on men and plants. As soon as it is known that a woman has been brought to bed, all the male population of the village assembles in the men's clubhouse. Branches of a strong-smelling tree are fetched, the twigs are broken off, the leaves stripped off and put on the fire. All the men present then seize branches with young buds. One of them holds ginger in his hand, which, after reciting a spell over it, he distributes to the others. They chew it and spit it out on the twigs, and these twigs are afterwards laid on the shields and other weapons in the house, and also on the slips which are to be planted; moreover they are fastened on the roofs and over the doorways of the houses. In this way they seek to annul the noxious infection of childbirth.[534 - P. Rascher, “Die Sulka,” Archiv für Anthropologie, xxix. (1904) p. 212; R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 180.] Among the Yabim of German New Guinea, when a birth has taken place in the village, all the inhabitants remain at home next morning “in order that the fruits of the field may not be spoiled.”[535 - K. Vetter, in Nachrichten über Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und den Bismarck-Archipel, 1897, p. 87.] Apparently they fear that if they went out to their fields and gardens immediately after a woman had been brought to bed, they would carry with them a dangerous contagion which might blight the crops. When a Herero woman has given birth to a child, her female companions hastily construct a special hut for her to which she is transferred. Both the hut and the woman are sacred and “for this reason, the men are not allowed to see the lying-in woman until the navel string has separated from the child, otherwise they would become weaklings, and when later they yumbana, that is, go to war with spear and bow, they would be shot.”[536 - Rev. E. Dannert, “Customs of the Ovaherero at the Birth of a Child,” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 63.] Thus the Herero like the Sulka appear to imagine that the weakness of a lying-in woman can, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, infect any men who may chance to see her.

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed by Indians and Esquimaux.

Among the Saragacos Indians of eastern Ecuador, as soon as a woman feels the travail-pangs beginning, she retires into the forest to a distance of three or four leagues from her home, where she takes up her abode in a hut of leaves which has been already prepared for her. “This banishment,” we are told, “is the fruit of the superstition of these Indians, who are persuaded that the spirit of evil would attach himself to their house if the women were brought to bed in it.”[537 - Levrault, “Rapport sur les provinces de Canélos et du Napo,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), Deuxième Série, xi. (1839) p. 74.] The Esquimaux of Baffin Land think that the body of a lying-in woman exhales a vapour which would adhere to the souls of seals if she ate the flesh of any seals except such as have been caught by her husband, by a boy, or by an aged man. “Cases of premature birth require particularly careful treatment. The event must be announced publicly, else dire results will follow. If a woman should conceal from the other people that she has had a premature birth, they might come near her, or even eat in her hut of the seals procured by her husband. The vapor arising from her would thus affect them, and they would be avoided by the seals. The transgression would also become attached to the soul of the seal, which would take it down to Sedna,” the mythical mother of the sea-mammals, who lives in the lower world and controls the destinies of mankind.[538 - Franz Boas, “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, xv. part i. (New York, 1901) pp. 125 sq. As to Sedna, see id. pp. 119 sqq.]

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed by Bantu tribes of South Africa. Dangers apprehended from a concealed miscarriage.

Some Bantu tribes of South Africa entertain even more exaggerated notions of the virulent infection spread by a woman who has had a miscarriage and has concealed it. An experienced observer of these people tells us that the blood of childbirth “appears to the eyes of the South Africans to be tainted with a pollution still more dangerous than that of the menstrual fluid. The husband is excluded from the hut for eight days of the lying-in period, chiefly from fear that he might be contaminated by this secretion. He dare not take his child in his arms for the three first months after the birth. But the secretion of childbed is particularly terrible when it is the product of a miscarriage, especially a concealed miscarriage. In this case it is not merely the man who is threatened or killed, it is the whole country, it is the sky itself which suffers. By a curious association of ideas a physiological fact causes cosmic troubles!”[539 - H. A. Junod, “Les Conceptions physiologiques des Bantou sud-africains et leurs tabous,” Revue d'Ethnographie et de Sociologie, i. (1910) p. 139.] Thus, for example, the Ba-Pedi believe that a woman who has procured abortion can kill a man merely by lying with him; her victim is poisoned, shrivels up, and dies within a week. As for the disastrous effect which a miscarriage may have on the whole country I will quote the words of a medicine-man and rain-maker of the Ba-Pedi tribe: “When a woman has had a miscarriage, when she has allowed her blood to flow, and has hidden the child, it is enough to cause the burning winds to blow and to parch the country with heat. The rain no longer falls, for the country is no longer in order. When the rain approaches the place where the blood is, it will not dare to approach. It will fear and remain at a distance. That woman has committed a great fault. She has spoiled the country of the chief, for she has hidden blood which had not yet been well congealed to fashion a man. That blood is taboo (yila). It should never drip on the road! The chief will assemble his men and say to them, ‘Are you in order in your villages?’ Some one will answer, ‘Such and such a woman was pregnant and we have not yet seen the child which she has given birth to.’ Then they go and arrest the woman. They say to her, ‘Shew us where you have hidden it.’ They go and dig at the spot, they sprinkle the hole with a decoction of mbendoula and nyangale (two sorts of roots) prepared in a special pot. They take a little of the earth of this grave, they throw it into the river, then they bring back water from the river and sprinkle it where she shed her blood. She herself must wash every day with the medicine. Then the country will be moistened again (by rain). Further, we (medicine-men) summon the women of the country; we tell them to prepare a ball of the earth which contains the blood. They bring it to us one morning. If we wish to prepare medicine with which to sprinkle the whole country, we crumble this earth to powder; at the end of five days we send little boys and little girls, girls that yet know nothing of women's affairs and have not yet had relations with men. We put the medicine in the horns of oxen, and these children go to all the fords, to all the entrances of the country. A little girl turns up the soil with her mattock, the others dip a branch in the horn and sprinkle the inside of the hole saying, ‘Rain! rain!’ So we remove the misfortune which the women have brought on the roads; the rain will be able to come. The country is purified!”[540 - H. A. Junod, op. cit. pp. 139 sq.]

Belief of the Ba-Thonga that severe droughts result from the concealment of miscarriages by women.

Similarly the Ba-Thonga, another Bantu tribe of South Africa in the valley of the Limpopo river, attribute severe droughts to the concealment of miscarriages by women, and they perform the following rites to remove the pollution and procure rain. A small clearing is made in a thick and thorny wood, and here a pot is buried in the ground so that its mouth is flush with the surface. From the pot four channels run in the form of a cross to the four cardinal points of the horizon. Then a black ox or a black ram, without a speck of white on it, is killed and the pot is stuffed with the half-digested grass found in the animal's stomach. Next, little girls, still in the age of innocence, are sent to draw water, which they pour into the pot till it overflows into the four channels. After that the women assemble, strip off their clothes, and covering their nakedness only with a scanty petticoat of grass they dance, leap, and sing, “Rain, fall!” Then they go and dig up the remains of the prematurely born infants and of twins buried in dry ground on a hill. These they collect in one place. No man may approach the spot. The women would beat any male who might be so indiscreet as to intrude on their privacy, and they would put riddles to him which he would have to answer in the most filthy language borrowed from the circumcision ceremonies; for obscene words, which are usually forbidden, are customary and legitimate on these occasions. The women pour water on the graves of the infants and of twins in order to “extinguish” (timula) them, as the natives phrase it; which seems to imply that the graves are thought to be the source of the scorching heat which is blasting the country. At the fall of evening they bury all the remains they have discovered, poking them away in the mud near a stream. Then the rain will be free to fall.[541 - H. A. Junod, op. cit. pp. 140 sq.] In these ceremonies the pouring of water into channels which run in the direction of the four quarters of the heaven is clearly a charm based on the principles of homoeopathic magic to procure rain. The supposed influence of twins over the waters of heaven and the use of foul language at rain-making ceremonies have been illustrated in another part of this work.[542 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. pp. 262 sqq., 278.]

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed by some tribes of Annam.

Among the natives of the Nguôn So'n valley in Annam, during the first month after a woman has been delivered of a child, all the persons of the house are supposed to be affected with an evil destiny or ill luck called phong long. If a member of such a household enters another house, the inmates never fail to say to him, “You bring me the phong long!” Should a member of a family in which somebody is seriously ill have to enter a house infected by the phong long, on returning home he always fumigates himself with tea leaves or some other plant in order to rid himself of the infection which he has contracted; for they fear that the blood of the woman who has been brought to bed may harm the patient. All the time a house is tainted with the phong long, a branch of cactus (Euphorbia antiquorum) or pandanus is hung at the door. The same thing is done to a house infected by small-pox: it is a danger signal to warn people off. The phong long only disappears when the woman has gone to market for the first time after her delivery.[543 - Le R. P. Cadière, “Coutumes populaires de la vallée du Nguôn-So'n,” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, ii. (Hanoi, 1902) pp. 353 sq.] A trace of a similar belief in the dangerous infection of childbirth may be seen in the rule of ancient Greek religion, which forbade persons who had handled a corpse or been in contact with a lying-in woman to enter a temple or approach an altar for a certain time, sometimes for two days.[544 - Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 566; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'inscriptions grecques, No. 730 ἁγνευέτωσαν δὲ καὶ εἰσίτωσαν εἰς τὸν τῆς θεο[ῦ ναὸν] … ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ κήδους καὶ τεκούσης γυναικὸς δευτεραῖος: Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 380 sqq.:τὰ τῆς θεοῦ δὲ μέμφομαι σοφίσματα, ἤτις. βροτῶν μὲν ἤν τις ἄψηται φόνου ἥ καὶ λοχείας ἢ νεκροῦ θιγῇ χεροῖν, βωμῶν ἀπείργει, μυσαρὸν ὡς ἡγουμένη.Compare also a mutilated Greek inscription found in Egypt (Revue archéologique, IIIme Série, ii. 182 sqq.). In the passage of Euripides which I have just quoted an acute verbal scholar, the late Dr. Badham, proposed to omit the line ἢ καὶ λοχείας ἢ νεκροῦ θιγῇ χεροῖν with the comment: “Nihil facit ad argumentum puerperae mentio; patet versum a sciolo additum.” To do Dr. Badham justice, the inscription which furnishes so close a parallel to the line of Euripides had not yet been discovered among the ruins of Pergamum, when he proposed to mutilate the text of the poet.]

Taboos imposed on lads at initiation.

Restrictions and taboos like those laid on menstruous and lying-in women are imposed by some savages on lads at the initiatory rites which celebrate the attainment of puberty; hence we may infer that at such times young men are supposed to be in a state like that of women at menstruation and in childbed. Thus, among the Creek Indians a lad at initiation had to abstain for twelve moons from picking his ears or scratching his head with his fingers; he had to use a small stick for these purposes. For four moons he must have a fire of his own to cook his food at; and a little girl, a virgin, might cook for him. During the fifth moon any person might cook for him, but he must serve himself first, and use one spoon and pan. On the fifth day of the twelfth moon he gathered corn cobs, burned them to ashes, and with the ashes rubbed his body all over. At the end of the twelfth moon he sweated under blankets, and then bathed in water, which ended the ceremony. While the ceremonies lasted, he might touch no one but lads who were undergoing a like course of initiation.[545 - B. Hawkins, “The Creek Confederacy,” Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, iii. pt. i. (Savannah, 1848) pp. 78 sq. Hawkins's account is reproduced by A. S. Gatschett, in his Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, i. 185 sq. (Philadelphia, 1884). In the Turrbal tribe of southern Queensland boys at initiation were not allowed to scratch themselves with their fingers, but they might do it with a stick. See A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 596.] Caffre boys at circumcision live secluded in a special hut; they are smeared from head to foot with white clay; they wear tall head-dresses with horn-like projections and short skirts like those of ballet-dancers. When their wounds are healed, all the vessels which they had used during their seclusion and the boyish mantles which they had hitherto worn are burned, together with the hut, and the boys rush away from the burning hut without looking back, “lest a fearful curse should cling to them.” After that they are bathed, anointed, and clad in new garments.[546 - L. Alberti, De Kaffers (Amsterdam, 1810), pp. 76 sq.; H. Lichtenstein, Reisen im südlichen Afrika (Berlin, 1811-12), i. 427; S. Kay, Travels and Researches in Caffraria (London, 1833), pp. 273 sq.; Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 208; J. Stewart, D.D., Lovedale, South Africa (Edinburgh, 1894), pp. 105 sq., with illustrations.]

§ 4. Warriors tabooed

Taboos laid on warriors when they go forth to fight.

Once more, warriors are conceived by the savage to move, so to say, in an atmosphere of spiritual danger which constrains them to practise a variety of superstitious observances quite different in their nature from those rational precautions which, as a matter of course, they adopt against foes of flesh and blood. The general effect of these observances is to place the warrior, both before and after victory, in the same state of seclusion or spiritual quarantine in which, for his own safety, primitive man puts his human gods and other dangerous characters. Thus when the Maoris went out on the war-path they were sacred or taboo in the highest degree, and they and their friends at home had to observe strictly many curious customs over and above the numerous taboos of ordinary life. They became, in the irreverent language of Europeans who knew them in the old fighting days, “tabooed an inch thick”; and as for the leader of the expedition, he was quite unapproachable.[547 - Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), pp. 96, 114 sq. One of the customs mentioned by the writer was that all the people left in the camp had to fast strictly while the warriors were out in the field. This rule is obviously based on the sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between friends at a distance, especially at critical times. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. pp. 126 sqq.] Similarly, when the Israelites marched forth to war they were bound by certain rules of ceremonial purity identical with rules observed by Maoris and Australian blackfellows on the war-path. The vessels they used were sacred, and they had to practise continence and a custom of personal cleanliness of which the original motive, if we may judge from the avowed motive of savages who conform to the same custom, was a fear lest the enemy should obtain the refuse of their persons, and thus be enabled to work their destruction by magic.[548 - Deuteronomy xxiii. 9-14; 1 Samuel xxi. 5. The rule laid down in Deuteronomy xxiii. 10, 11, suffices to prove that the custom of continence observed in time of war by the Israelites, as by a multitude of savage and barbarous peoples, was based on a superstitious, not a rational motive. To convince us of this it is enough to remark that the rule is often observed by warriors for some time after their victorious return, and also by the persons left at home during the absence of the fighting men. In these cases the observance of the rule evidently does not admit of a rational explanation, which could hardly, indeed, be entertained by any one conversant with savage modes of thought. For examples, see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. pp. 125, 128, 131, 133, and below, pp. 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 175 sq., 178, 179, 181.The other rule of personal cleanliness referred to in the text is exactly observed, for the reason I have indicated, by the aborigines in various parts of Australia. See (Sir) George Grey, Journals, ii. 344; R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 165; J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 12; P. Beveridge, in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, xvii. (1883) pp. 69 sq. Compare W. Stanbridge, “On the Aborigines of Victoria,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. i. (1861) p. 299; Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 251; E. M. Curr, The Australian Race, iii. 178 sq., 547; W. E. Roth, North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 5 (Brisbane, 1903), p. 22, § 80. The same dread has resulted in a similar custom of cleanliness in Melanesia and Africa. See R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck-Archipel, pp. 143 sq.; R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 203 note; F. von Luschan, “Einiges über Sitten und Gebräuche der Eingeborenen Neu-Guineas,” Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie, und Urgeschichte (1900), p. 416; J. Macdonald, “Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Religions of South African Tribes,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xx. (1891) p. 131. Mr. Lorimer Fison sent me some notes on the Fijian practice, which agrees with the one described by Dr. Codrington. The same rule is observed, probably from the same motives, by the Miranha Indians of Brazil. See Spix und Martius, Reise in Brasilien, iii. 1251 note. On this subject compare F. Schwally, Semitische Kriegsaltertümer, i. (Leipsic, 1901) pp. 67 sq.] Among some Indian tribes of North America a young warrior in his first campaign had to conform to certain customs, of which two were identical with the observances imposed by the same Indians on girls at their first menstruation: the vessels he ate and drank out of might be touched by no other person, and he was forbidden to scratch his head or any other part of his body with his fingers; if he could not help scratching himself, he had to do it with a stick.[549 - Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (London, 1830), p. 122.] The latter rule, like the one which forbids a tabooed person to feed himself with his own fingers, seems to rest on the supposed sanctity or pollution, whichever we choose to call it, of the tabooed hands.[550 - We have seen (pp. 146 (#x_10_i25), 156 (#x_10_i37)) that the same rule is observed by girls at puberty among some Indian tribes of British Columbia and by Creek lads at initiation. It is also observed by Kwakiutl Indians who have eaten human flesh (see below, p. 189 (#x_11_i35)). Among the Blackfoot Indians the man who was appointed every four years to take charge of the sacred pipe and other emblems of their religion might not scratch his body with his finger-nails, but carried a sharp stick in his hair which he used for this purpose. During the term of his priesthood he had to fast and practise strict continence. None but he dare handle the sacred pipe and emblems (W. W. Warren, “History of the Ojibways,” Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, v. (1885) pp. 68 sq.). In Vedic India the man who was about to offer the solemn sacrifice of soma prepared himself for his duties by a ceremony of consecration, during which he carried the horn of a black deer or antelope wherewith to scratch himself if necessary (Satapatha-Brâhmana, bk. iii. 31, vol. ii. pp. 33 sq. trans. by J. Eggeling; H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 399). Some of the Peruvian Indians used to prepare themselves for an important office by fasting, continence, and refusing to wash themselves, to comb their hair, and to put their hands to their heads; if they wished to scratch themselves, they must do it with a stick. See P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), p. 20. Among the Isistines Indians of Paraguay mourners refrained from scratching their heads with their fingers, believing that to break the rule would make them bald, no hair growing on the part of the head which their fingers had touched. See Guevara, “Historia del Paraguay,” in P. de Angelis's Coleccion de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Rio de la Plata, ii. (Buenos-Aires, 1836) p. 30. Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a woman has given birth to a child, the father hangs up his hammock beside that of his wife and stays there till the navel-string drops off the child. During this time the parents have to observe certain rules, of which one is that they may not scratch their heads or bodies with their nails, but must use for this purpose a piece of palm-leaf. If they broke this rule, they think the child would die or be an invalid all its life. See R. Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, ii. 314. Some aborigines of Queensland believe that if they scratched themselves with their fingers during a rain-making ceremony, no rain would fall. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. p. 254. In all these cases, plainly, the hands are conceived to be so strongly infected with the venom of taboo that it is dangerous even for the owner of the hands to touch himself with them. The cowboy who herded the cows of the king of Unyoro had to live strictly chaste, no one might touch him, and he might not scratch or wound himself so as to draw blood. But it is not said that he was forbidden to touch himself with his own hands. See my Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 527.] Moreover among these Indian tribes the men on the war-path had always to sleep at night with their faces turned towards their own country; however uneasy the posture they might not change it. They might not sit upon the bare ground, nor wet their feet, nor walk on a beaten path if they could help it; when they had no choice but to walk on a path, they sought to counteract the ill effect of doing so by doctoring their legs with certain medicines or charms which they carried with them for the purpose. No member of the party was permitted to step over the legs, hands, or body of any other member who chanced to be sitting or lying on the ground; and it was equally forbidden to step over his blanket, gun, tomahawk, or anything that belonged to him. If this rule was inadvertently broken, it became the duty of the member whose person or property had been stepped over to knock the other member down, and it was similarly the duty of that other to be knocked down peaceably and without resistance. The vessels out of which the warriors ate their food were commonly small bowls of wood or birch bark, with marks to distinguish the two sides; in marching from home the Indians invariably drank out of one side of the bowl, and in returning they drank out of the other. When on their way home they came within a day's march of the village, they hung up all their bowls on trees, or threw them away on the prairie,[551 - Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (London, 1830), p. 123. As to the custom of not stepping over a person or his weapons, see the note at the end of the volume.] doubtless to prevent their sanctity or defilement from being communicated with disastrous effects to their friends, just as we have seen that the vessels and clothes of the sacred Mikado, of women at childbirth and menstruation, of boys at circumcision, and of persons defiled by contact with the dead are destroyed or laid aside for a similar reason. The first four times that an Apache Indian goes out on the war-path, he is bound to refrain from scratching his head with his fingers and from letting water touch his lips. Hence he scratches his head with a stick, and drinks through a hollow reed or cane. Stick and reed are attached to the warrior's belt and to each other by a leathern thong.[552 - J. G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook (New York, 1891), p. 133; id., in Folk-lore, ii. (1891) p. 453; id., in Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1892), p. 490.] The rule not to scratch their heads with their fingers, but to use a stick for the purpose instead, was regularly observed by Ojebways on the war-path.[553 - J. G. Kohl, Kitschi-Gami, ii. 168.]

Ceremonies observed by American Indians before they went out on the war-path. Rules observed by Indians on a war-expedition.

For three or four weeks before they went on a warlike expedition, the Nootka Indians made it an invariable rule to go into the water five or six times a day, when they washed and scrubbed themselves from head to foot with bushes intermixed with briars, so that their bodies and faces were often entirely covered with blood. During this severe exercise they continually exclaimed, “Good or great God, let me live, not be sick, find the enemy, not fear him, find him asleep, and kill a great many of them.” All this time they had no intercourse with their women, and for a week before setting out abstained from feasting and every kind of merriment. For the last three days they were almost constantly in the water, scrubbing and lacerating themselves in a terrible manner. They believed that this hardened their skin, so that the weapons of the enemy could not pierce them.[554 - Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt (Middletown, 1820), pp. 148 sq.] Before they went out on the war-path the Arikaras and the Big Belly Indians (“Gros Ventres”) “observe a rigorous fast, or rather abstain from every kind of food for four days. In this interval their imagination is exalted to delirium; whether it be through bodily weakness or the natural effect of the warlike plans they cherish, they pretend to have strange visions. The elders and sages of the tribe, being called upon to interpret these dreams, draw from them omens more or less favourable to the success of the enterprise; and their explanations are received as oracles by which the expedition will be faithfully regulated. So long as the preparatory fast continues, the warriors make incisions in their bodies, insert pieces of wood in the flesh, and having fastened leather thongs to them cause themselves to be hung from a beam which is fixed horizontally above an abyss a hundred and fifty feet deep. Often indeed they cut off one or two fingers which they offer in sacrifice to the Great Spirit in order that they may come back laden with scalps.”[555 - J. de Smet, in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, xiv. (1842) pp. 67 sq. These customs have doubtless long passed away, and the Indians who practised them may well have suffered the extinction which they did their best to incur.] It is hard to conceive any course of training which could more effectually incapacitate men for the business of war than that which these foolish Indians actually adopted. With regard to the Creek Indians and kindred tribes we are told they “will not cohabit with women while they are out at war; they religiously abstain from every kind of intercourse even with their own wives, for the space of three days and nights before they go to war, and so after they return home, because they are to sanctify themselves.”[556 - J. Adair, History of the American Indians (London, 1775), p. 163.] And as a preparation for attacking the enemy they “go to the aforesaid winter house, and there drink a warm decoction of their supposed holy consecrated herbs and roots for three days and nights, sometimes without any other refreshment. This is to induce the deity to guard and prosper them, amidst their impending dangers. In the most promising appearance of things, they are not to take the least nourishment of food, nor so much as to sit down, during that time of sanctifying themselves, till after sunset. While on their expedition, they are not allowed to lean themselves against a tree, though they may be exceedingly fatigued, after a sharp day's march; nor must they lie by, a whole day to refresh themselves, or kill and barbicue deer and bear for their war journey. The more virtuous they are, they reckon the greater will be their success against the enemy, by the bountiful smiles of the deity. To gain that favourite point, some of the aged warriors narrowly watch the young men who are newly initiated, lest they should prove irreligious, and prophane the holy fast, and bring misfortunes on the out-standing camp. A gentleman of my acquaintance, in his youthful days observed one of their religious fasts, but under the greatest suspicion of his virtue in this respect, though he had often headed them against the common enemy: during their three days' purification, he was not allowed to go out of the sanctified ground, without a trusty guard, lest hunger should have tempted him to violate their old martial law, and by that means have raised the burning wrath of the holy fire against the whole camp.” “Every war captain chuses a noted warrior, to attend on him and the company. He is called Etissû, or ‘the waiter.’ Everything they eat or drink during their journey, he gives them out of his hand, by a rigid abstemious rule, – though each carries on his back all his travelling conveniencies, wrapt in a deer skin, yet they are so bigoted in their religious customs in war that none, though prompted by sharp hunger or burning thirst, dares relieve himself. They are contented with such trifling allowance as the religious waiter distributes to them, even with a scanty hand. Such a regimen would be too mortifying to any of the white people, let their opinion of its violation be ever so dangerous. When I roved the woods in a war party with the Indians, though I carried no scrip, nor bottle, nor staff, I kept a large hollow cane well corked at each end, and used to sheer off now and then to drink, while they suffered greatly by thirst. The constancy of the savages in mortifying their bodies, to gain the divine favour, is astonishing, from the very time they beat to arms, till they return from their campaign. All the while they are out, they are prohibited by ancient custom, the leaning against a tree, either sitting or standing; nor are they allowed to sit in the day-time, under the shade of trees, if it can be avoided; nor on the ground, during the whole journey, but on such rocks, stones, or fallen wood, as their ark of war rests upon. By the attention they invariably pay to those severe rules of living, they weaken themselves much more than by the unavoidable fatigues of war; but it is fruitless to endeavour to dissuade them from those things which they have by tradition, as the appointed means to move the deity, to grant them success against the enemy, and a safe return home.”[557 - J. Adair, History of the American Indians, pp. 380-382.] “An Indian, intending to go to war, will commence by blacking his face, permitting his hair to grow long, and neglecting his personal appearance, and also will frequently fast, sometimes for two or three days together, and refrain from all intercourse with the other sex. If his dreams are favorable, he thinks that the Great Spirit will give him success.”[558 - Maj. M. Marston, in Rev. Jedidiah Morse's Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs (New-haven, 1822), Appendix, p. 130. The account in the text refers especially to the Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo Indians, at the junction of the Rock and Mississippi rivers.] Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of south Africa not only have the warriors to abstain from women, but the people left behind in the villages are also bound to continence; they think that any incontinence on their part would cause thorns to grow on the ground traversed by the warriors, and that success would not attend the expedition.[559 - H. A. Junod, “Les Conceptions physiologiques des Bantou sud-africains et leurs tabous,” Revue d'Ethnographie et de Sociologie, i. (1910) p. 149.]

The rule of continence observed by savage warriors is perhaps based on a fear of infecting themselves sympathetically with feminine weakness and cowardice.

When we observe what pains these misguided savages took to unfit themselves for the business of war by abstaining from food, denying themselves rest, and lacerating their bodies, we shall probably not be disposed to attribute their practice of continence in war to a rational fear of dissipating their bodily energies by indulgence in the lusts of the flesh. On the contrary, we can scarcely doubt that the motive which impelled them to observe chastity on a campaign was just as frivolous as the motive which led them simultaneously to fritter away their strength by severe fasts, gratuitous fatigue, and voluntary wounds at the very moment when prudence called most loudly for a precisely opposite regimen. Why exactly so many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in time of war,[560 - For more evidence of the practice of continence by warriors, see R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants,

p. 189; E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 85 sq.; Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, iii. 78; J. Chalmers, “Toaripi,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxvii. (1898) p. 332; id., Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 65; Van Schmidt, “Aanteekeningen nopens de zeden, etc., der bevolking van de eilanden Saparoea, Haroekoe, Noessa Laut, etc.,” Tijdschrift voor Neêrlands Indie, 1843, deel ii. p. 507; J. G. F. Riedel, De sluikharige en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 223; id., “Galela und Tobeloresen,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xvii. (1885) p. 68; W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 524; E. Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie universelle, viii. 126 (compare J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 18); N. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, i. 120; H. Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, iv. 437 sq.; Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 306; A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 203; H. Cole, “Notes on the Wagogo of German East Africa,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 317; R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, p. 177; H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iv. 63; J. Morse, Report to the Secretary of War of the U.S. on Indian Affairs (New-haven, 1822), pp. 130, 131; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 189. On the other hand in Uganda, before an army set out, the general and all the chiefs had either to lie with their wives or to jump over them. This was supposed to ensure victory and plenty of booty. See J. Roscoe, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 59. And in Kiwai Island, off British New Guinea, men had intercourse with their wives before they went to war, and they drew omens from it. See J. Chalmers, “Notes on the Natives of Kiwai,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. (1903) p. 123.] we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their motive was a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic magic, close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and cowardice. Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons.[561 - See above, pp. 151 (#x_10_i29)sq.] Indeed the Kayans of central Borneo go so far as to hold that to touch a loom or women's clothes would so weaken a man that he would have no success in hunting, fishing, and war.[562 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, i. 350.] Hence it is not merely sexual intercourse with women that the savage warrior sometimes shuns; he is careful to avoid the sex altogether. Thus among the hill tribes of Assam, not only are men forbidden to cohabit with their wives during or after a raid, but they may not eat food cooked by a woman; nay they should not address a word even to their own wives. Once a woman, who unwittingly broke the rule by speaking to her husband while he was under the war taboo, sickened and died when she learned the awful crime she had committed.[563 - T. C. Hodson, “The genna amongst the Tribes of Assam,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvi. (1906) p. 100.]

§ 5. Manslayers tabooed

Taboos laid on warriors after slaying their foes. The effect of the taboos is to seclude the tabooed person from ordinary society. Seclusion of manslayers in the East Indies.

If the reader still doubts whether the rules of conduct which we have just been considering are based on superstitious fears or dictated by a rational prudence, his doubts will probably be dissipated when he learns that rules of the same sort are often imposed even more stringently on warriors after the victory has been won and when all fear of the living corporeal foe is at an end. In such cases one motive for the inconvenient restrictions laid on the victors in their hour of triumph is probably a dread of the angry ghosts of the slain; and that the fear of the vengeful ghosts does influence the behaviour of the slayers is often expressly affirmed. The general effect of the taboos laid on sacred chiefs, mourners, women at childbirth, men on the war-path, and so on, is to seclude or isolate the tabooed persons from ordinary society, this effect being attained by a variety of rules, which oblige the men or women to live in separate huts or in the open air, to shun the commerce of the sexes, to avoid the use of vessels employed by others, and so forth. Now the same effect is produced by similar means in the case of victorious warriors, particularly such as have actually shed the blood of their enemies. In the island of Timor, when a warlike expedition has returned in triumph bringing the heads of the vanquished foe, the leader of the expedition is forbidden by religion and custom to return at once to his own house. A special hut is prepared for him, in which he has to reside for two months, undergoing bodily and spiritual purification. During this time he may not go to his wife nor feed himself; the food must be put into his mouth by another person.[564 - S. Müller, Reizen en Onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel (Amsterdam, 1857), ii. 252.] That these observances are dictated by fear of the ghosts of the slain seems certain; for from another account of the ceremonies performed on the return of a successful head-hunter in the same island we learn that sacrifices are offered on this occasion to appease the soul of the man whose head has been taken; the people think that some misfortune would befall the victor were such offerings omitted. Moreover, a part of the ceremony consists of a dance accompanied by a song, in which the death of the slain man is lamented and his forgiveness is entreated. “Be not angry,” they say, “because your head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads might now have been exposed in your village. We have offered the sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now rest and leave us at peace. Why were you our enemy? Would it not have been better that we should remain friends? Then your blood would not have been spilt and your head would not have been cut off.”[565 - J. S. G. Gramberg, “Eene maand in de binnenlanden van Timor,” Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxxvi. (1872) pp. 208, 216 sq. Compare H. Zondervan, “Timor en de Timoreezen,” Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, v. (1888) Afdeeling, meer uitgebreide artikelen, pp. 399, 413. Similarly Gallas returning from war sacrifice to the jinn or guardian spirits of their slain foes before they will re-enter their own houses (Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die geistige Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl, pp. 50, 136). Sometimes perhaps the sacrifice consists of the slayers' own blood. See below, pp. 174 (#x_11_i19), 176 (#x_11_i21), 180 (#x_11_i27). Orestes is said to have appeased the Furies of his murdered mother by biting off one of his fingers (Pausanias, viii. 34. 3).] The people of Paloo, in central Celebes, take the heads of their enemies in war and afterwards propitiate the souls of the slain in the temple.[566 - N. Adriani en A. C. Kruijt, “Van Posso naar Parigi, Sigi en Lindoe,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlii. (1898) p. 451.] In some Dyak tribes men on returning from an expedition in which they have taken human heads are obliged to keep by themselves and abstain from a variety of things for several days; they may not touch iron nor eat salt or fish with bones, and they may have no intercourse with women.[567 - S. W. Tromp, “Uit de Salasila van Koetei,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxvii. (1888) p. 74.]

Seclusion of manslayers in New Guinea.

In Logea, an island off the south-eastern extremity of New Guinea, men who have killed or assisted in killing enemies shut themselves up for about a week in their houses. They must avoid all intercourse with their wives and friends, and they may not touch food with their hands. They may eat vegetable food only, which is brought to them cooked in special pots. The intention of these restrictions is to guard the men against the smell of the blood of the slain; for it is believed that if they smelt the blood, they would fall ill and die.[568 - Dr. L. Loria, “Notes on the Ancient War Customs of the Natives of Logea and Neighbourhood,” British New Guinea, Annual Report for 1894-1895 (London, 1896), p. 52.] In the Toaripi or Motumotu tribe of south-eastern New Guinea a man who has killed another may not go near his wife, and may not touch food with his fingers. He is fed by others, and only with certain kinds of food. These observances last till the new moon.[569 - Rev. J. Chalmers, “Toaripi,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxvii. (1898) p. 333.] Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New Guinea, “a man who has taken life is considered to be impure until he has undergone certain ceremonies: as soon as possible after the deed he cleanses himself and his weapon. This satisfactorily accomplished, he repairs to his village and seats himself on the logs of sacrificial staging. No one approaches him or takes any notice whatever of him. A house is prepared for him which is put in charge of two or three small boys as servants. He may eat only toasted bananas, and only the centre portion of them – the ends being thrown away. On the third day of his seclusion a small feast is prepared by his friends, who also fashion some new perineal bands for him. This is called ivi poro. The next day the man dons all his best ornaments and badges for taking life, and sallies forth fully armed and parades the village. The next day a hunt is organised, and a kangaroo selected from the game captured. It is cut open and the spleen and liver rubbed over the back of the man. He then walks solemnly down to the nearest water, and standing straddle-legs in it washes himself. All the young untried warriors swim between his legs. This is supposed to impart courage and strength to them. The following day, at early dawn, he dashes out of his house, fully armed, and calls aloud the name of his victim. Having satisfied himself that he has thoroughly scared the ghost of the dead man, he returns to his house. The beating of flooring-boards and the lighting of fires is also a certain method of scaring the ghost. A day later his purification is finished. He can then enter his wife's house.”[570 - R. E. Guise, “On the Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the Wanigela River, New Guinea,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxviii. (1899) pp. 213 sq.] Among the Roro-speaking tribes of British New Guinea homicides were secluded in the warriors' clubhouse. They had to pass the night in the building, but during the day they might paint and decorate themselves and dance in front of it. For some time they might not eat much food nor touch it with their hands, but were obliged to pick it up on a bone fork, the heft of which was wrapped in a banana leaf. After a while they bathed in the sea and thence forward for a period of about a month, though they had still to sleep in the warriors' clubhouse, they were free to eat as much food as they pleased and to pick it up with their bare hands. Finally, those warriors who had never killed a man before assumed a beautiful ornament made of fretted turtle shell, which none but homicides were allowed to flaunt in their head-dresses. Then came a dance, and that same night the men who wore the honourable badge of homicide for the first time were chased about the village; embers were thrown at them and firebrands waved in order, apparently, to drive away the souls of the dead enemies, who seem to be conceived as immanent in some way in the headgear of their slayers.[571 - C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (Cambridge, 1910), p. 298.] Again, among the Koita of British New Guinea, when a man had killed another, whether the victim were male or female, he did not wash the blood off the spear or club, but carefully allowed it to dry on the weapon. On his way home he bathed in fresh or salt water, and on reaching his village went straight to his own house, where he remained in seclusion for about a week. He was taboo (aina): he might not approach women, and he lifted his food to his mouth with a bone fork. His women-folk were not obliged to leave the house, but they might not come near him. At the end of a week he built a rough shelter in the forest, where he lived for a few days. During this time he made a new waist-band, which he wore on his return to the village. A man who has slain another is supposed to grow thin and emaciated, because he had been splashed with the blood of his victim, and as the corpse rotted he wasted away.[572 - C. G. Seligmann, op. cit. pp. 129 sq.] Among the Southern Massim of British New Guinea a warrior who has taken a prisoner or slain a man remains secluded in his house for six days. During the first three days he may eat only roasted food and must cook it for himself. Then he bathes and blackens his face for the remaining three days.[573 - C. G. Seligmann, op. cit. pp. 563 sq.]

The manslayer unclean. Driving away the ghosts of the slain.

Among the Monumbos of German New Guinea any one who has slain a foe in war becomes thereby “unclean” (bolobolo), and they apply the same term “unclean” to menstruous and lying-in women and also to everything that has come into contact with a corpse, which shews that all these classes of persons and things are closely associated in their minds. The “unclean” man who has killed an enemy in battle must remain a long time in the men's clubhouse, while the villagers gather round him and celebrate his victory with dance and song. He may touch nobody, not even his own wife and children; if he were to touch them it is believed that they would be covered with sores. He becomes clean again by washing and using other modes of purification.[574 - P. Franz Vormann, “Zur Psychologie, Religion, Soziologie und Geschichte der Monumbo-Papua, Deutsch-Neuguinea,” Anthropos, v. (1910) pp. 410 sq.] In Windessi, Dutch New Guinea, when a party of head-hunters has been successful, and they are nearing home, they announce their approach and success by blowing on triton shells. Their canoes are also decked with branches. The faces of the men who have taken a head are blackened with charcoal. If several have taken part in killing the same victim, his head is divided among them. They always time their arrival so as to reach home in the early morning. They come rowing to the village with a great noise, and the women stand ready to dance in the verandahs of the houses. The canoes row past the room sram or house where the young men live; and as they pass, the murderers throw as many pointed sticks or bamboos at the wall or the roof as there were enemies killed. The day is spent very quietly. Now and then they drum or blow on the conch; at other times they beat the walls of the houses with loud shouts to drive away the ghosts of the slain.[575 - J. L. D. van der Roest, “Uit het leven der Bevolking van Windessi,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xl. (1898) pp. 157 sq.] Similarly in the Doreh district of Dutch New Guinea, if a murder has taken place in the village, the inhabitants assemble for several evenings in succession and utter frightful yells to drive away the ghost of the victim in case he should be minded to hang about the village.[576 - H. von Rosenberg, Der malayische Archipel, p. 461.] So the Yabim of German New Guinea believe that the spirit of a murdered man pursues his murderer and seeks to do him a mischief. Hence they drive away the spirit with shouts and the beating of drums.[577 - K. Vetter, in Nachrichten über Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und den Bismarck-Archipel, 1897, p. 94.] When the Fijians had buried a man alive, as they often did, they used at nightfall to make a great uproar by means of bamboos, trumpet-shells, and so forth, for the purpose of frightening away his ghost, lest he should attempt to return to his old home. And to render his house unattractive to him they dismantled it and clothed it with everything that to their ideas seemed most repulsive.[578 - J. E. Erskine, The Western Pacific (London, 1853), p. 477.] On the evening of the day on which they had tortured a prisoner to death, the American Indians were wont to run through the village with hideous yells, beating with sticks on the furniture, the walls, and the roofs of the huts to prevent the angry ghost of their victim from settling there and taking vengeance for the torments that his body had endured at their hands.[579 - Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vi. pp. 77, 122 sq.; J. F. Lafitau, Mœ urs des sauvages ameriquains, ii. 279. In many places it is customary to drive away the ghosts even of persons who have died a natural death. An account of these customs is reserved for another work.] “Once,” says a traveller, “on approaching in the night a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion: they were all busily engaged in raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind. Upon inquiry, I found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent the ghosts of the departed combatants from entering the village.”[580 - W. H. Keating, Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River (London, 1825), i. 109.]

Precautions taken by executioners against the ghosts of their victims.

The executioner at Porto Novo, on the coast of Guinea, used to decorate his walls with the jawbones of the persons on whom he had operated in the course of business. But for this simple precaution their ghosts would unquestionably have come at night to knock with sobs and groans, in an insufferable manner, at the door of the room where he slept the sleep of the just.[581 - Father Baudin, “Féticheurs, ou ministres religieux des Nègres de la Guinée,” Missions Catholiques, xvi. (1884) p. 332.] The temper of a man who has just been executed is naturally somewhat short, and in a burst of vexation his ghost is apt to fall foul of the first person he comes across, without discriminating between the objects of his wrath with that nicety of judgment which in calmer moments he may be expected to display. Hence in China it is, or used to be, customary for the spectators of an execution to shew a clean pair of heels to the ghosts as soon as the last head was off.[582 - Juan de la Concepcion, Historia general de Philipinas, xi. (Manilla, 1791) p. 387.] The same fear of the spirits of his victims leads the executioner sometimes to live in seclusion for some time after he has discharged his office. Thus an old writer, speaking of Issini on the Gold Coast of West Africa, tells us that the “executioners, being reckoned impure for three days, they build them a separate hut at a distance from the village. Meantime these fellows run like madmen through the place, seizing all they can lay hands on; poultry, sheep, bread, and oil; everything they can touch is theirs; being deemed so polluted that the owners willingly give it up. They continue three days confined to their hut, their friends bringing them victuals. This time expired, they take their hut in pieces, which they bundle up, not leaving so much as the ashes of their fire. The first executioner, having a pot on his head, leads them to the place where the criminal suffered. There they all call him thrice by his name. The first executioner breaks his pot, and leaving their old rags and bundles they all scamper home.”[583 - G. Loyer, “Voyage to Issini on the Gold Coast,” in T. Astley's New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, ii. (London, 1745) p. 444. Among the tribes of the Lower Niger it is customary for the executioner to remain in the house for three days after the execution; during this time he sleeps on the bare floor, eats off broken platters, and drinks out of calabashes or mugs, which are also damaged. See Major A. G. Leonard, The Lower Niger and its Tribes (London, 1906), p. 180.] Here the thrice-repeated invocation of the victim by name gives the clue to the rest of the observances; all of them are probably intended to ward off the angry ghost of the slain man or to give him the slip.

Purification of manslayers among the Basutos, Bechuanas, and Bageshu. Expulsion of the ghosts of the slain by the Angoni.

Among the Basutos “ablution is specially performed on return from battle. It is absolutely necessary that the warriors should rid themselves, as soon as possible, of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would pursue them incessantly, and disturb their slumbers. They go in a procession, and in full armour, to the nearest stream. At the moment they enter the water a diviner, placed higher up, throws some purifying substances into the current. This is, however, not strictly necessary. The javelins and battle-axes also undergo the process of washing.”[584 - E. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 258. So Caffres returning from battle are unclean and must wash before they enter their houses (L. Alberti, De Kaffers, p. 104). It would seem that after the slaughter of a foe the Greeks or Romans had also to bathe in running water before they might touch holy things (Virgil, Aen. ii. 719 sqq.).] According to another account of the Basuto custom, “warriors who have killed an enemy are purified. The chief has to wash them, sacrificing an ox in presence of the whole army. They are also anointed with the gall of the animal, which prevents the ghost of the enemy from pursuing them any further.”[585 - Father Porte, “Les Réminiscences d'un missionnaire du Basutoland,” Missions Catholiques, xxviii. (1896) p. 371. For a fuller description of a ceremony of this sort see T. Arbousset et F. Daumas, Voyage d'exploration au nord-est de la colonie du Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Paris, 1842), pp. 561-563.] Among the Bechuanas a man who has killed another, whether in war or in single combat, is not allowed to enter the village until he has been purified. The ceremony takes place in the evening. An ox is slaughtered, and a hole having been made through the middle of the carcase with a spear, the manslayer has to force himself through the animal, while two men hold its stomach open.[586 - “Extrait du journal des missions évangeliques,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), IIme Série, ii. (1834) pp. 199 sq.] Sometimes instead of being obliged to squeeze through the carcase of an ox the manslayer is merely smeared with the contents of its stomach. The ceremony has been described as follows: “In the purification of warriors, too, the ox takes a conspicuous part. The warrior who has slain a man in the battle is unclean, and must on no account enter his own courtyard, for it would be a serious thing if even his shadow were to fall upon his children. He studiously keeps himself apart from the civil life of the town until he is purified. The purification ceremony is significant. Having bathed himself in running water, or, if that is not convenient, in water that has been appropriately medicated, he is smeared by the doctor with the contents of the stomach of an ox, into which certain powdered roots have been already mixed, and then the doctor strikes him on the back, sides, and belly with the large bowel of an ox… A doctor takes a piece of roasted beef and cuts it into small lumps of about the size of a walnut, laying them carefully on a large wooden trencher. He has already prepared charcoal, by roasting the root of certain trees in an old cracked pot, and this he grinds down and sprinkles on the lumps of meat on the trencher. Then the army surrounds the trencher, and every one who has slain a foe in the battle steps forth, kneels down before the trencher, and takes out a piece of meat with his mouth, taking care not to touch it or the trencher with his hands. As he takes the meat, the doctor gives him a smart cut with a switch. And when he has eaten that lump of meat his purification is complete. This ceremony is called Go alafsha dintèè, or ‘the purification of the strikers.’ ” The writer to whom we owe this description adds: “This taking of meat from the trencher without using the hands is evidently a matter of ritual.”[587 - Rev. W. C. Willoughby, “Notes on the Totemism of the Becwana,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) pp. 305 sq.] The observation is correct. Here as in so many cases persons ceremonially unclean are forbidden to touch food with defiled hands until their uncleanness has been purged away. The same taboo is laid on the manslayer by the Bageshu of British East Africa. Among them a man who has killed another may not return to his own house on the same day, though he may enter the village and spend the night in a friend's house. He kills a sheep and smears his chest, his right arm, and his head with the contents of the animal's stomach. His children are brought to him and he smears them in like manner. Then he smears each side of the doorway with the tripe and entrails, and finally throws the rest of the stomach on the roof of his house. For a whole day he may not touch food with his hands, but picks it up with two sticks and so conveys it to his mouth. His wife is not under any such restrictions. She may even go to mourn for the man whom her husband has killed, if she wishes to do so.[588 - Rev. J. Roscoe, “Notes on the Bageshu,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xxxix. (1909) p. 190.] In some Bechuana tribes the victorious warrior is obliged to eat a piece of the skin of the man he killed; the skin is taken from about the navel of his victim, and without it he may not enter the cattle pen. Moreover, the medicine-man makes a gash with a spear in the warrior's thigh for every man he has killed.[589 - Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 310.] Among the Angoni, a Zulu tribe settled to the north of the Zambesi, warriors who have slain foes on an expedition smear their bodies and faces with ashes, hang garments of their victims on their persons, and tie bark ropes round their necks, so that the ends hang down over their shoulders or breasts. This costume they wear for three days after their return, and rising at break of day they run through the village uttering frightful yells to drive away the ghosts of the slain, which, if they were not thus banished from the houses, might bring sickness and misfortune on the inmates.[590 - C. Wiese, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Zulu im Norden des Zambesi,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxxii. (1900) pp. 197 sq.] In some Caffre tribes of South Africa men who have been wounded or killed an enemy in fight may not see the king nor drink milk till they have been purified. An ox is killed, and its gall, intestines, and other parts are boiled with roots. Of this decoction the men have to take three gulps, and the rest is sprinkled on their bodies. The wounded man has then to take a stick, spit on it thrice, point it thrice at the enemy, and then throw it in his direction. After that he takes an emetic and is declared clean.[591 - Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, pp. 309 sq.]

Seclusion and purification of manslayers in Africa.

In some of these accounts nothing is said of an enforced seclusion, at least after the ceremonial cleansing, but some South African tribes certainly require the slayer of a very gallant foe in war to keep apart from his wife and family for ten days after he has washed his body in running water. He also receives from the tribal doctor a medicine which he chews with his food.[592 - Rev. J. Macdonald, “Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Religions of South African Tribes,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xx. (1891) p. 138; id., Light in Africa, p. 220.] When a Nandi of British East Africa has killed a member of another tribe, he paints one side of his body, spear, and sword red, and the other side white. For four days after the slaughter he is considered unclean and may not go home. He has to build a small shelter by a river and live there; he may not associate with his wife or sweetheart, and he may eat nothing but porridge, beef, and goat's flesh. At the end of the fourth day he must purify himself by taking a strong purge made from the bark of the segetet tree and by drinking goat's milk mixed with blood.[593 - A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 74. As to the painting of the body red on one side and white on the other see also C. W. Hobley, Eastern Uganda, pp. 38, 42; Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, ii. 868. As to the custom of painting the bodies of homicides, see below, p. 178 (#x_11_i23) note