The

apparent

contradic

behaviour

of these

tribes to

bears is not

us at first

sight. Savage logic.

falsely assumed, celebrated only at the killing of a housebear but are held on every occasion when a Gilyak succeeds in slaughtering a bear in the chase. It is true that in such cases the festival assumes less imposing dimensions, but in its essence it remains the same. When the head and skin of a bear killed in the forest are brought into the village, they are accorded a triumphal reception with music and solemn ceremonial. The head is laid on a consecrated scaffold, fed, and treated with offerings, just as at the killing of a house-bear; and the guests of honour (Narch-en) are also assembled. So, too, dogs are sacrificed, and the bones of the bear are preserved in the same place and with the same marks of respect as the bones of a house-bear. Hence the great winter festival is only an extension of the rite which is observed at the slaughter of every bear." 1

Thus the apparent contradiction in the practice of these tribes, who venerate and almost deify the animals which tion in the they habitually hunt, kill, and eat, is not so flagrant as at first sight it appears to us: the people have reasons, and some very practical reasons, for acting as they do. For the so great as savage is by no means so illogical and unpractical as to it seems to superficial observers he is apt to seem; he has thought deeply on the questions which immediately concern him, he reasons about them, and though his conclusions often diverge very widely from ours, we ought not to deny him the credit of patient and prolonged meditation on some fundamental problems of human existence. In the present case, if he treats bears in general as creatures wholly subservient to human needs and yet singles out certain individuals of the species for homage which almost amounts to deification, we must not hastily set him down as irrational and inconsistent, but must endeavour to place ourselves at his point of view, to see things as he sees them, and to divest ourselves of the prepossessions which tinge so deeply our own views of the world. If we do so, we shall probably discover that, however absurd his conduct may appear to us, the savage nevertheless generally acts on a train of reasoning which seems to him in harmony with the

1 L. Sternberg, "Die Religion der Giljaken," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, viii. (1905) p. 272.

facts of his limited experience. This I propose to illustrate in the following chapter, where I shall attempt to shew that the solemn ceremonial of the bear-festival among the Ainos. and other tribes of north-eastern Asia is only a particularly striking example of the respect which on the principles of his rude philosophy the savage habitually pays to the animals which he kills and eats.

believes

that

animals,

like men,

are en

dowed

with souls

vive the death of their

bodies.

draw no

CHAPTER XIV

THE PROPITIATION OF WILD ANIMALS BY HUNTERS

The savage THE explanation of life by the theory of an indwelling and practically immortal soul is one which the savage does not confine to human beings but extends to the animate creation in general. In so doing he is more liberal and perhaps more logical than the civilised man, who which sur. commonly denies to animals that privilege of immortality which he claims for himself. The savage is not so proud; he commonly believes that animals are endowed with feelings and intelligence like those of men, and that, like men, they possess souls which survive the death of their bodies either to wander about as disembodied spirits or to be born again The Ameri- in animal form. Thus, for example, we are told that the can Indians Indian of Guiana does not see "any sharp line of distinction, such as we see, between man and other animals, between one kind of animal and another, or between animals—man included-and inanimate objects. On the contrary, to the Indian, all objects, animate and inanimate, seem exactly of the same nature except that they differ in the accident of bodily form. Every object in the whole world is a being, consisting of a body and spirit, and differs from every other object in no respect except that of bodily form, and in the greater or less degree of brute power and brute cunning consequent on the difference of bodily form and bodily habits." Similarly we read that "in Cherokee mythology, as in that of Indian tribes generally, there is no essential difference between men and animals. In the primal genesis period they seem to be completely undifferentiated, and we

sharp dis

tinction between animals

and men.

1 E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana (London, 1883), p. 350.

find all creatures alike living and working together in harmony and mutual helpfulness until man, by his aggressiveness and disregard for the rights of the others, provokes their hostility, when insects, birds, fishes, reptiles, and fourfooted beasts join forces against him. Henceforth their lives are apart, but the difference is always one of degree only. The animals, like the people, are organized into tribes and have like them their chiefs and townhouses, their councils and ballplays, and the same hereafter in the Darkening land of Usunhiyi. Man is still the paramount power, and hunts and slaughters the others as his own necessities compel, but is obliged to satisfy the animal tribes in every instance, very much as a murder is compounded for, according to the Indian system, by 'covering the bones of the dead' with presents for the bereaved relatives."1 To the same effect another observer of the North American Indians writes: "I have often reflected on the curious connexion which appears to subsist in the mind of an Indian between man and the brute creation, and found much matter in it for curious observation. Although they consider themselves superior to all other animals and are very proud of that superiority; although they believe that the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the waters, were created by the Almighty Being for the use of man; yet it seems as if they ascribe the difference between themselves and the brute kind, and the dominion which they have over them, more to their superior bodily strength and dexterity than to their immortal souls. All beings endowed by the Creator with the power of volition and self-motion, they view in a manner as a great society of which they are the head, whom they are appointed, indeed, to govern, but between whom and themselves intimate ties of connexion and relationship may exist, or at least did exist in the beginning of time. They are, in fact, according to their opinions, only the first among equals, the legitimate hereditary sovereigns of the whole animated race, of which they are themselves a constituent part. Hence, in their languages, those inflections of their nouns which we call genders, are not, as with us,

1 J. Mooney, "Myths of the Chero"Nineteenth Annual Report of

kee,'

the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part i. (Washington, 1900) p. 261.

Some savages

of animals

from the bodies of

men.

descriptive of the masculine and feminine species, but of the animate and inanimate kinds. Indeed, they go so far as to include trees and plants within the first of these descriptions. All animated nature, in whatever degree, is in their eyes a great whole, from which they have not yet ventured to separate themselves. They do not exclude other animals from their world of spirits, the place to which they expect 'to go after death." Even Chinese authors "have roundly avowed themselves altogether unable to discover any real difference between men and animals," and they have drawn out the parallelism between the two in some detail.

An

But it is not merely between the mental and spiritual nature of man and the animals that the savage traces a apparently fail to dis- close resemblance; even the distinction of their bodily form tinguish clearly even appears sometimes to elude his dull apprehension. the bodies unusually intelligent Bushman questioned by a missionary "could not state any difference between a man and a brute -he did not know but a buffalo might shoot with bows and arrows as well as a man, if it had them." In the opinion of the Gilyak, "the form and size of an animal are merely a sort of appearance. Every animal is in point of fact a real being like man, nay a Gilyak such as himself, but endowed with reason and strength which often surpass those of mere men." Nor is it merely that in the mental fog the savage takes beasts for men; he seems to be nearly as ready to take himself and his fellows for beasts. When the Russians first landed on one of the Alaskan islands the people took them for cuttle-fish, “on account of the buttons on their clothes." 5 We have seen how some savages identify themselves with animals of various sorts by eating the maggots bred in the rotting carcases of the beasts, and how thereafter, when occasion serves, they behave in their adopted

"4

1 Rev. John Heckewelder, "An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the neighbouring States," Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society, vol. i. (Philadelphia, 1819) pp. 247 sq. 2 J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, iv. (Leyden, 1901) pp. 157 sq.

3 John Campbell, Travels in South Africa, being a Narrative of a Second Journey in the Interior of that Country (London, 1822), ii. 34.

4 L. Sternberg, "Die Religion der Giljaken," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, viii. (1905) p. 248.

5 I. Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of Alaska, p. 145.