Section 3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops.
THE INDIANS of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, used to sacrifice human
blood and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields. The
people of Cañar (now Cuenca in Ecuador) used to sacrifice a
hundred children annually at harvest. The kings of Quito, the
Incas of Peru, and for a long time the Spaniards were unable to
suppress the bloody rite. At a Mexican harvest-festival, when the
first-fruits of the season were offered to the sun, a criminal was
placed between two immense stones, balanced opposite each
other, and was crushed by them as they fell together. His remains
were buried, and a feast and dance followed. This sacrifice was
known as "the meeting of the stones." We have seen that the
ancient Mexicans also sacrificed human beings at all the various
stages in the growth of the maize, the age of the victims
corresponding to the age of the corn; for they sacrificed new-born
babes at sowing, older children when the grain had sprouted, and
so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old men. No doubt
the correspondence between the ages of the victims and the state
of the corn was supposed to enhance the efficacy of the
sacrifice. 1
The Pawnees annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when
they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been
enjoined on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which
the Morning Star had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was
stuffed and preserved as a powerful talisman. They thought that an
omission of this sacrifice would be followed by the total failure of
the crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The victim was a
captive of either sex. He was clad in the gayest and most costly
attire, was fattened on the choicest food, and carefully kept in
ignorance of his doom. When he was fat enough, they bound him
to a cross in the presence of the multitude, danced a solemn
dance, then cleft his head with a tomahawk and shot him with
arrows. According to one trader, the squaws then cut pieces of
flesh from the victim's body, with which they greased their hoes;
but this was denied by another trader who had been present at the
ceremony. Immediately after the sacrifice the people proceeded to
plant their fields. A particular account has been preserved of the
sacrifice of a Sioux girl by the Pawnees in April 1837 or 1838.
The girl was fourteen or fifteen years old and had been kept for six
months and well treated. Two days before the sacrifice she was
led from wigwam to wigwam, accompanied by the whole council
of chiefs and warriors. At each lodge she received a small billet of
wood and a little paint, which she handed to the warrior next to
her. In this way she called at every wigwam, receiving at each the
same present of wood and paint. On the twenty-second of April
she was taken out to be sacrificed, attended by the warriors, each
of whom carried two pieces of wood which he had received from
her hands. Her body having been painted half red and half black,
she was attached to a sort of gibbet and roasted for some time
over a slow fire, then shot to death with arrows. The chief
sacrificer next tore out her heart and devoured it. While her flesh
was still warm it was cut in small pieces from the bones, put in little
baskets, and taken to a neighbouring corn-field. There the head
chief took a piece of the flesh from a basket and squeezed a drop
of blood upon the newly-deposited grains of corn. His example
was followed by the rest, till all the seed had been sprinkled with
the blood; it was then covered up with earth. According to one
account the body of the victim was reduced to a kind of paste,
which was rubbed or sprinkled not only on the maize but also on
the potatoes, the beans, and other seeds to fertilise them. By this
sacrifice they hoped to obtain plentiful crops. 2
A West African queen used to sacrifice a man and woman in the
month of March. They were killed with spades and hoes, and their
bodies buried in the middle of a field which had just been tilled. At
Lagos in Guinea it was the custom annually to impale a young girl
alive soon after the spring equinox in order to secure good crops.
Along with her were sacrificed sheep and goats, which, with
yams, heads of maize, and plantains, were hung on stakes on
each side of her. The victims were bred up for the purpose in the
king's seraglio, and their minds had been so powerfully wrought
upon by the fetish men that they went cheerfully to their fate. A
similar sacrifice used to be annually offered at Benin, in Guinea.
The Marimos, a Bechuana tribe, sacrifice a human being for the
crops. The victim chosen is generally a short, stout man. He is
seized by violence or intoxicated and taken to the fields, where he
is killed amongst the wheat to serve as "seed" (so they phrase it).
After his blood has coagulated in the sun, it is burned along with
the frontal bone, the flesh attached to it, and the brain; the ashes
are then scattered over the ground to fertilise it. The rest of the
body is eaten. 3
The Bagobos of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands, offer a
human sacrifice before they sow their rice. The victim is a slave,
who is hewn to pieces in the forest. The natives of Bontoc in the
interior of Luzon, one of the Philippine Islands, are passionate
head-hunters. Their principal seasons for head-hunting are the
times of planting and reaping the rice. In order that the crop may
turn out well, every farm must get at least one human head at
planting and one at sowing. The head-hunters go out in twos or
threes, lie in wait for the victim, whether man or woman, cut off his
or her head, hands, and feet, and bring them back in haste to the
village, where they are received with great rejoicings. The skulls
are at first exposed on the branches of two or three dead trees
which stand in an open space of every village surrounded by
large stones which serve as seats. The people then dance round
them and feast and get drunk. When the flesh has decayed from
the head, the man who cut it off takes it home and preserves it as
a relic, while his companions do the same with the hands and the
feet. Similar customs are observed by the Apoyaos, another tribe
in the interior of Luzon. 4
Among the Lhota Naga, one of the many savage tribes who
inhabit the deep rugged labyrinthine glens which wind into the
mountains from the rich valley of Brahmapootra, it used to be a
common custom to chop off the heads, hands, and feet of people
they met with, and then to stick up the severed extremities in their
fields to ensure a good crop of grain. They bore no ill-will
whatever to the persons upon whom they operated in this
unceremonious fashion. Once they flayed a boy alive, carved him
in pieces, and distributed the flesh among all the villagers, who
put it into their corn-bins to avert bad luck and ensure plentiful
crops of grain. The Gonds of India, a Dravidian race, kidnapped
Brahman boys, and kept them as victims to be sacrificed on
various occasions. At sowing and reaping, after a triumphal
procession, one of the lads was slain by being punctured with a
poisoned arrow. His blood was then sprinkled over the ploughed
field or the ripe crop, and his flesh was devoured. The Oraons or
Uraons of Chota Nagpur worship a goddess called Anna Kuari,
who can give good crops and make a man rich, but to induce her
to do so it is necessary to offer human sacrifices. In spite of the
vigilance of the British Government these sacrifices are said to be
still secretly perpetrated. The victims are poor waifs and strays
whose disappearance attracts no notice. April and May are the
months when the catchpoles are out on the prowl. At that time
strangers will not go about the country alone, and parents will not
let their children enter the jungle or herd the cattle. When a
catchpole has found a victim, he cuts his throat and carries away
the upper part of the ring finger and the nose. The goddess takes
up her abode in the house of any man who has offered her a
sacrifice, and from that time his fields yield a double harvest. The
form she assumes in the house is that of a small child. When the
householder brings in his unhusked rice, he takes the goddess
and rolls her over the heap to double its size. But she soon grows
restless and can only be pacified with the blood of fresh human
victims. 5
But the best known case of human sacrifices, systematically
offered to ensure good crops, is supplied by the Khonds or
Kandhs, another Dravidian race in Bengal. Our knowledge of them
is derived from the accounts written by British officers who, about
the middle of the nineteenth century, were engaged in putting
them down. The sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess. Tari
Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops
and immunity from all disease and accidents. In particular, they
were considered necessary in the cultivation of turmeric, the
Khonds arguing that the turmeric could not have a deep red
colour without the shedding of blood. The victim or Meriah, as he
was called, was acceptable to the goddess only if he had been
purchased, or had been born a victim-that is, the son of a victim
father, or had been devoted as a child by his father or guardian.
Khonds in distress often sold their children for victims,
"considering the beatification of their souls certain, and their
death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable possible." A
man of the Panua tribe was once seen to load a Khond with
curses, and finally to spit in his face, because the Khond had sold
for a victim his own child, whom the Panua had wished to marry.
A party of Khonds, who saw this, immediately pressed forward to
comfort the seller of his child, saying, "Your child has died that all
the world may live, and the Earth Goddess herself will wipe that
spittle from your face." The victims were often kept for years before
they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings, they
were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference, and
were welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth, on attaining
maturity, was generally given a wife, who was herself usually a
Meriah or victim; and with her he received a portion of land and
farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human sacrifices
were offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes, or
villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary
occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged
by tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was
enabled, at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his
fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid
down. 6
The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows.
Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by
cutting off his hair, which, until then, had been kept unshorn.
Crowds of men and women assembled to witness the sacrifice;
none might be excluded, since the sacrifice was declared to be
for all mankind. It was preceded by several days of wild revelry
and gross debauchery. On the day before the sacrifice the victim,
dressed in a new garment, was led forth from the village in solemn
procession, with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove, a clump
of high forest trees standing a little way from the village and
untouched by the axe. There they tied him to a post, which was
sometimes placed between two plants of the sankissar shrub. He
was then anointed with oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with
flowers; and "a species of reverence, which it is not easy to
distinguish from adoration," was paid to him throughout the day. A
great struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic from his
person; a particle of the turmeric paste with which he was
smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of sovereign
virtue, especially by the women. The crowd danced round the
post to music, and addressing the earth, said, "O God, we offer
this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health";
then speaking to the victim they said, "We bought you with a
price, and did not seize you; now we sacrifice you according to
custom, and no sin rests with us." 7
On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely
interrupted during the night, were resumed, and continued till
noon, when they ceased, and the assembly proceeded to
consummate the sacrifice. The victim was again anointed with oil,
and each person touched the anointed part, and wiped the oil on
his own head. In some places they took the victim in procession
round the village, from door to door, where some plucked hair from
his head, and others begged for a drop of his spittle, with which
they anointed their heads. As the victim might not be bound nor
make any show of resistance, the bones of his arms and, if
necessary, his legs were broken; but often this precaution was
rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium. The mode of
putting him to death varied in different places. One of the
commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or
squeezing to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several
feet down the middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest)
was inserted in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants,
strove with all his force to close. Then he wounded the victim
slightly with his axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch
and hewed the flesh from the bones, leaving the head and bowels
untouched. Sometimes he was cut up alive. In Chinna Kimedy he
was dragged along the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who,
avoiding his head and intestines, hacked the flesh from his body
with their knives till he died. Another very common mode of
sacrifice in the same district was to fasten the victim to the
proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved on a stout post,
and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut the flesh from the victim
while life remained. In some villages Major Campbell found as
many as fourteen of these wooden elephants, which had been
used at sacrifices. In one district the victim was put to death slowly
by fire. A low stage was formed, sloping on either side like a roof;
upon it they laid the victim, his limbs wound round with cords to
confine his struggles. Fires were then lighted and hot brands
applied, to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as
long as possible; for the more tears he shed the more abundant
would be the supply of rain. Next day the body was cut to
pieces. 8
The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the
persons who had been deputed by each village to bring it. To
secure its rapid arrival, it was sometimes forwarded by relays of
men, and conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In
each village all who stayed at home fasted rigidly until the flesh
arrived. The bearer deposited it in the place of public assembly,
where it was received by the priest and the heads of families. The
priest divided it into two portions, one of which he offered to the
Earth Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground with his back
turned, and without looking. Then each man added a little earth to
bury it, and the priest poured water on the spot from a hill gourd.
The other portion of flesh he divided into as many shares as there
were heads of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his
shred of flesh in leaves, and buried it in his favourite field, placing
it in the earth behind his back without looking. In some places
each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered
his fields, and there hung it on a pole. For three days thereafter no
house was swept; and, in one district, strict silence was observed,
no fire might be given out, no wood cut, and no strangers
received. The remains of the human victim (namely, the head,
bowels, and bones) were watched by strong parties the night after
the sacrifice; and next morning they were burned, along with a
whole sheep, on a funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the
fields, laid as paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with
the new corn to preserve it from insects. Sometimes, however, the
head and bones were buried, not burnt. After the suppression of
the human sacrifices, inferior victims were substituted in some
places; for instance, in the capital of Chinna Kimedy a goat took
the place of the human victim. Others sacrifice a buffalo. They tie
it to a wooden post in a sacred grove, dance wildly round it with
brandished knives, then, falling on the living animal, hack it to
shreds and tatters in a few minutes, fighting and struggling with
each other for every particle of flesh. As soon as a man has
secured a piece he makes off with it at full speed to bury it in his
fields, according to ancient custom, before the sun has set, and
as some of them have far to go they must run very fast. All the
women throw clods of earth at the rapidly retreating figures of the
men, some of them taking very good aim. Soon the sacred grove,
so lately a scene of tumult, is silent and deserted except for a few
people who remain to guard all that is left of the buffalo, to wit, the
head, the bones, and the stomach, which are burned with
ceremony at the foot of the stake. 9
In these Khond sacrifices the Meriahs are represented by our
authorities as victims offered to propitiate the Earth Goddess. But
from the treatment of the victims both before and after death it
appears that the custom cannot be explained as merely a
propitiatory sacrifice. A part of the flesh certainly was offered to
the Earth Goddess, but the rest was buried by each householder
in his fields, and the ashes of the other parts of the body were
scattered over the fields, laid as paste on the granaries, or mixed
with the new corn. These latter customs imply that to the body of
the Meriah there was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power of
making the crops to grow, quite independent of the indirect
efficacy which it might have as an offering to secure the good-will
of the deity. In other words, the flesh and ashes of the victim were
believed to be endowed with a magical or physical power of
fertilising the land. The same intrinsic power was ascribed to the
blood and tears of the Meriah, his blood causing the redness of
the turmeric and his tears producing rain; for it can hardly be
doubted that, originally at least, the tears were supposed to bring
down the rain, not merely to prognosticate it. Similarly the custom
of pouring water on the buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a
rain-charm. Again, magical power as an attribute of the Meriah
appears in the sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that
came from his person, as his hair or spittle. The ascription of such
power to the Meriah indicates that he was much more than a mere
man sacrificed to propitiate a deity. Once more, the extreme
reverence paid him points to the same conclusion. Major
Campbell speaks of the Meriah as "being regarded as something
more than mortal," and Major Macpherson says, "A species of
reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is
paid to him." In short, the Meriah seems to have been regarded as
divine. As such, he may originally have represented the Earth
Goddess or, perhaps, a deity of vegetation; though in later times
he came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than
as himself an incarnate god. This later view of the Meriah as a
victim rather than a divinity may perhaps have received undue
emphasis from the European writers who have described the
Khond religion. Habituated to the later idea of sacrifice as an
offering made to a god for the purpose of conciliating his favour,
European observers are apt to interpret all religious slaughter in
this sense, and to suppose that wherever such slaughter takes
place, there must necessarily be a deity to whom the carnage is
believed by the slayers to be acceptable. Thus their preconceived
ideas may unconsciously colour and warp their descriptions of
savage rites. 10
The same custom of killing the representative of a god, of which
strong traces appear in the Khond sacrifices, may perhaps be
detected in some of the other human sacrifices described above.
Thus the ashes of the slaughtered Marimo were scattered over the
fields; the blood of the Brahman lad was put on the crop and field;
the flesh of the slain Naga was stowed in the corn-bin; and the
blood of the Sioux girl was allowed to trickle on the seed. Again,
the identification of the victim with the corn, in other words, the
view that he is an embodiment or spirit of the corn, is brought out
in the pains which seem to be taken to secure a physical
correspondence between him and the natural object which he
embodies or represents. Thus the Mexicans killed young victims
for the young corn and old ones for the ripe corn; the Marimos
sacrifice, as "seed," a short, fat man, the shortness of his stature
corresponding to that of the young corn, his fatness to the
condition which it is desired that the crops may attain; and the
Pawnees fattened their victims probably with the same view.
Again, the identification of the victim with the corn comes out in
the African custom of killing him with spades and hoes, and the
Mexican custom of grinding him, like corn, between two
stones. 11
One more point in these savage customs deserves to be noted.
The Pawnee chief devoured the heart of the Sioux girl, and the
Marimos and Gonds ate the victim's flesh. If, as we suppose, the
victim was regarded as divine, it follows that in eating his flesh his
worshippers believed themselves to be partaking of the body of
their god. 12
