A JESUIT MARTYR.

127

in triumph to the king;' as the American Indian bears away the scalps of his slain, to-day. Modern historians, indeed, show us other resemblances than this between the aboriginal American and the ancient Scythian.

The Jesuit founder of the Huron Mission to the American Indians, "its truest hero, and its greatest martyr," was Jean de Brébeuf. After a heroic life among a savage people, he was subjected to frightful torture, and to the cruelest death. His character had won the admiration of those who felt that duty to their gods demanded his martyrdom; and his bearing under torture exalted him in their esteem, as heroic be

yond compare. "He came of a noble race," says Parkman,”—“the same [race], it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling, with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and 'his death was an astonishment to his murderers.'" "We saw no part of his body," wrote an eye-witness, "from head to foot, which was not burned [while he was yet living], even to his eyes, in the sockets of which these wretches had placed live coals." Such manhood as he displayed under these tortures, the Indians could appre2 Jesuits in No. Am. in 17th Cent., p. 389 f. 3 Ragueneau; cited by Parkman.

1 Hist., IV., 64.

war.

ciate. Such courage and constancy as his, they longed to possess for themselves. When, therefore, they perceived that the brave and faithful man of God was finally sinking into death, they sprang toward him, scalped him, "laid open his breast, and came in a crowd to drink the blood of so valiant an enemy; thinking to imbibe with it some portion of his courage. A chief then tore out his heart, and devoured it." Not unlike this has been a common practice among the American Indians, in the treatment of prisoners of "If the victim had shown courage," again says Parkman, concerning the Hurons, "the heart was first roasted, cut into small pieces, and given to the young men and boys, who devoured it, to increase their own courage." So, similarly, with the Iroquois.2 Burton says of the Dakotas: "They are not cannibals, except when a warrior, after slaying a foe, eats, porcupine-like, the heart or liver, with the idea of increasing his own courage." Schomburgk, writing concerning the natives of British Guiana, says: "In order to increase their courage, and [so their] contempt of death, the Caribs were wont to cut out the heart of a slain enemy, dry it on the fire, powder it, and mix the powder in their drink."4

1

3

1 Jesuits in No. Am., Introduction, p. xxxix.

3

And

2 Ibid., p. 250.

City of the Saints, p. 117. See also Appendix.

Reisen in Brit. Guian., II., 430; cited in Spencer's Des. Soc., VI., 36.

ABSORBING AN ENEMY'S LIFE.

129

The native Australians find, it is said, an inducement to bloodshed, in their belief-like that of the ancient Scythians-that the life, or the spirit, of the first man whom one slays, enters into the life of the slayer, and remains as his helpful possession thereafter.1 The Ashantee fetishmen, of West Africa, apparently acting on a kindred thought, make a mixture of the hearts of enemies, mingled with blood and consecrated herbs, for the vivifying of the conquerors. "All who have never before killed an enemy eat of the preparation; it being believed that if they did not, their energy would be secretly wasted by the haunting spirits of their deceased foes." The underlying motive of the bloody "head-hunting" in Borneo, is the Dayak belief, that the spirits of those whose heads are taken are to be subject to him who does the decapitating. The heads are primarily simply the proof-like the Indian's scalps-that their owner has so many lives absorbed in his own.3

A keen observer of Fellâheen life in Palestine has reported: "There is an ugly expression used among

1 Trans. of Ethn. Soc. new series, III., 240, cited in Spencer's Des. Soc., III., 36.

2 Beecham's Ashantee and the Gold Coast, p. 211; cited in Spencer's Des Soc., IV., 33.

3 See Tylor's Primitive Culture, I., 459; also Bock's Head Hunters of Borneo, passim.

Mrs. Finn's "Fellaheen of Palestine" in Surv. of West. Pal. "Special Papers," p. 360.

the fellâheen of South Palestine, in speaking of an enemy slain in war-Dhabbahhtho bisnâny' ('I slew him with my teeth'); and it is said that there have been instances of killing in battle in this fashion by biting at the throat. In the Nablous district (Samaria), where the people are much more ferocious, the expression is, 'I have drunk his blood'; but that is understood figuratively."

An ancient Greek version of the story of Jason, telling of that hero's treatment of the body of Apsyrtos-whom he had slain-says: "Thrice he tasted the blood, thrice [he] spat it out between his teeth;" and a modern collator informs us that the scholiast here finds "the description of an archaic custom, popular among murderers." This certainly corresponds with the Semitic phrases lingering among the Fellâheen of Palestine.

In the old German epic, the Nibelungen Lied, it is told of the brave Burgundians, when they were fighting desperately in the burning hall of the Huns, that they were given new courage for the hopeless conflict by drinking the blood of their fallen comrades; which quenched their thirst, and made them fierce." With

1 This is Mrs. Finn's rendering of it; but it should be “I sacrificed

(ذبح)

him with my teeth." The Arabic word is obviously dhabaha (D), identical with the Hebrew zabhakh (2) “ to sacrifice."

2 Lang's Custom and Myth, p. 95 f.; also Grimm's Household Tales,

p. lxviii.

Cox and Jones's Pop. Rom. of Mid. Ages, p. 310.

VICARIOUS EXECUTION.

131

their added life, from the added blood of heroes, they battled as never before.

"It strung again their sinews, and failing strength renewed.

This, in her lover's person, many a fair lady rued." 2

Is there not, indeed, a trace of the primitive custom -thus recognized in all quarters of the globe—of absorbing the life of a slain one by drinking in his blood, in our common phrase, "blood-thirstiness," as descriptive of a life-seeker? That phrase certainly gains added force and appropriateness in the light of this universal idea.

It is evident that the wide-spread popular belief in nature-absorption through blood-appropriation, has included the idea of a tribal absorption of new life in vicarious blood. Alcedo, a Spanish-American writer, has illustrated this in his description of the native Araucanians of South America. When they have triumphed in war, they select a representative prisoner for official and vicarious execution. After due preparation, they "give him a handful of small sticks and a sharp stake, with which they oblige him to dig a hole in the ground; and in this they order him to cast the sticks one by one, repeating the names of the principal warriors of his country, while at the same time the surrounding soldiers load these abhorred names with the bitterest execrations. He is then ordered to cover

2 Lettsom's Nibel. Lied, p. 373.