Section 2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils.
WE can therefore understand why those general clearances of evil, to
which from time to time the savage resorts, should commonly take the form
of a forcible expulsion of devils. In these evil spirits primitive man sees the
cause of many if not of most of his troubles, and he fancies that if he can
only deliver himself from them, things will go better with him. The public
attempts to expel the accumulated ills of a whole community may be
divided into two classes, according as the expelled evils are immaterial
and invisible or are embodied in a material vehicle or scape-goat. The
former may be called the direct or immediate expulsion of evils; the latter
the indirect or mediate expulsion, or the expulsion by scapegoat. We begin
with examples of the former. 1
In the island of Rook, between New Guinea and New Britain, when any
misfortune has happened, all the people run together, scream, curse,
howl, and beat the air with sticks to drive away the devil, who is supposed
to be the author of the mishap. From the spot where the mishap took place
they drive him step by step to the sea, and on reaching the shore they
redouble their shouts and blows in order to expel him from the island. He
generally retires to the sea or to the island of Lottin. The natives of New
Britain ascribe sickness, drought, the failure of crops, and in short all
misfortunes, to the influence of wicked spirits. So at times when many
people sicken and die, as at the beginning of the rainy season, all the
inhabitants of a district, armed with branches and clubs, go out by
moonlight to the fields, where they beat and stamp on the ground with wild
howls till morning, believing that this drives away the devils; and for the
same purpose they rush through the village with burning torches. The
natives of New Caledonia are said to believe that all evils are caused by a
powerful and malignant spirit; hence in order to rid themselves of him they
will from time to time dig a great pit, round which the whole tribe gathers.
After cursing the demon, they fill up the pit with earth, and trample on the
top with loud shouts. This they call burying the evil spirit. Among the Dieri
tribe of Central Australia, when a serious illness occurs, the medicine-men
expel Cootchie or the devil by beating the ground in and outside of the
camp with the stuffed tail of a kangaroo, until they have chased the demon
away to some distance from the camp. 2
When a village has been visited by a series of disasters or a severe
epidemic, the inhabitants of Minahassa in Celebes lay the blame upon the
devils who are infesting the village and who must be expelled from it.
Accordingly, early one morning all the people, men, women, and children,
quit their homes, carrying their household goods with them, and take up
their quarters in temporary huts which have been erected outside the
village. Here they spend several days, offering sacrifices and preparing for
the final ceremony. At last the men, some wearing masks, others with their
faces blackened, and so on, but all armed with swords, guns, pikes, or
brooms, steal cautiously and silently back to the deserted village. Then, at
a signal from the priest, they rush furiously up and down the streets and
into and under the houses (which are raised on piles above the ground),
yelling and striking on walls, doors, and windows, to drive away the
devils. Next, the priests and the rest of the people come with the holy fire
and march nine times round each house and thrice round the ladder that
leads up to it, carrying the fire with them. Then they take the fire into the
kitchen, where it must burn for three days continuously. The devils are
now driven away, and great and general is the joy. 3
The Alfoors of Halmahera attribute epidemics to the devil who comes from
other villages to carry them off. So, in order to rid the village of the
disease, the sorcerer drives away the devil. From all the villagers he
receives a costly garment and places it on four vessels, which he takes to
the forest and leaves at the spot where the devil is supposed to be. Then
with mocking words he bids the demon abandon the place. In the Kei
Islands to the south-west of New Guinea, the evil spirits, who are quite
distinct from the souls of the dead, form a mighty host. Almost every tree
and every cave is the lodging-place of one of these fiends, who are
moreover extremely irascible and apt to fly out on the smallest provocation.
They manifest their displeasure by sending sickness and other calamities.
Hence in times of public misfortune, as when an epidemic is raging, and
all other remedies have failed, the whole population go forth with the priest
at their head to a place at some distance from the village. Here at sunset
they erect a couple of poles with a cross-bar between them, to which they
attach bags of rice, wooden models of pivot-guns, gongs, bracelets, and
so on. Then, when everybody has taken his place at the poles and a
death-like silence reigns, the priest lifts up his voice and addresses the
spirits in their own language as follows: "Ho! ho! ho! ye evil spirits who
dwell in the trees, ye evil spirits who live in the grottoes, ye evil spirits
who lodge in the earth, we give you these pivot-guns, these gongs, etc.
Let the sickness cease and not so many people die of it." Then everybody
runs home as fast as their legs can carry them. 4
In the island of Nias, when a man is seriously ill and other remedies have
been tried in vain, the sorcerer proceeds to exorcise the devil who is
causing the illness. A pole is set up in front of the house, and from the top
of the pole a rope of palm-leaves is stretched to the roof of the house.
Then the sorcerer mounts the roof with a pig, which he kills and allows to
roll from the roof to the ground. The devil, anxious to get the pig, lets
himself down hastily from the roof by the rope of palm-leaves, and a good
spirit, invoked by the sorcerer, prevents him from climbing up again. If this
remedy fails, it is believed that other devils must still be lurking in the
house. So a general hunt is made after them. All the doors and windows in
the house are closed, except a single dormer-window in the roof. The
men, shut up in the house, hew and slash with their swords right and left to
the clash of gongs and the rub-a-dub of drums. Terrified at this onslaught,
the devils escape by the dormer-window, and sliding down the rope of
palm-leaves take themselves off. As all the doors and windows, except the
one in the roof, are shut, the devils cannot get into the house again. In the
case of an epidemic, the proceedings are similar. All the gates of the
village, except one, are closed; every voice is raised, every gong and
drum beaten, every sword brandished. Thus the devils are driven out and
the last gate is shut behind them. For eight days thereafter the village is in
a state of siege, no one being allowed to enter it. 5
When cholera has broken out in a Burmese village the able-bodied men
scramble on the roofs and lay about them with bamboos and billets of
wood, while all the rest of the population, old and young, stand below and
thump drums, blow trumpets, yell, scream, beat floors, walls, tin pans,
everything to make a din. This uproar, repeated on three successive
nights, is thought to be very effective in driving away the cholera demons.
When smallpox first appeared amongst the Kumis of South-Eastern India,
they thought it was a devil come from Aracan. The villages were placed in
a state of siege, no one being allowed to leave or enter them. A monkey
was killed by being dashed on the ground, and its body was hung at the
village gate. Its blood, mixed with small river pebbles, was sprinkled on the
houses, the threshold of every house was swept with the monkey's tail,
and the fiend was adjured to depart. 6
When an epidemic is raging on the Gold Coast of West Africa, the people
will sometimes turn out, armed with clubs and torches, to drive the evil
spirits away. At a given signal the whole population begin with frightful
yells to beat in every corner of the houses, then rush like mad into the
streets waving torches and striking frantically in the empty air. The uproar
goes on till somebody reports that the cowed and daunted demons have
made good their escape by a gate of the town or village; the people stream
out after them, pursue them for some distance into the forest, and warn
them never to return. The expulsion of the devils is followed by a general
massacre of all the cocks in the village or town, lest by their unseasonable
crowing they should betray to the banished demons the direction they must
take to return to their old homes. When sickness was prevalent in a Huron
village, and all other remedies had been tried in vain, the Indians had
recourse to the ceremony called Lonouyroya, "which is the principal
invention and most proper means, so they say, to expel from the town or
village the devils and evil spirits which cause, induce, and import all the
maladies and infirmities which they suffer in body and mind." Accordingly,
one evening the men would begin to rush like madmen about the village,
breaking and upsetting whatever they came across in the wigwams. They
threw fire and burning brands about the streets, and all night long they ran
howling and singing without cessation. Then they all dreamed of
something, a knife, dog, skin, or whatever it might be, and when morning
came they went from wigwam to wigwam asking for presents. These they
received silently, till the particular thing was given them which they had
dreamed about. On receiving it they uttered a cry of joy and rushed from
the hut, amid the congratulations of all present. The health of those who
received what they had dreamed of was believed to be assured; whereas
those who did not get what they had set their hearts upon regarded their
fate as sealed. 7
Sometimes, instead of chasing the demon of disease from their homes,
savages prefer to leave him in peaceable possession, while they
themselves take to flight and attempt to prevent him from following in their
tracks. Thus when the Patagonians were attacked by small-pox, which
they attributed to the machinations of an evil spirit, they used to abandon
their sick and flee, slashing the air with their weapons and throwing water
about in order to keep off the dreadful pursuer; and when after several
days' march they reached a place where they hoped to be beyond his
reach, they used by way of precaution to plant all their cutting weapons
with the sharp edges turned towards the quarter from which they had
come, as if they were repelling a charge of cavalry. Similarly, when the
Lules or Tonocotes Indians of the Gran Chaco were attacked by an
epidemic, they regularly sought to evade it by flight, but in so doing they
always followed a sinuous, not a straight, course; because they said that
when the disease made after them he would be so exhausted by the
turnings and windings of the route that he would never be able to come up
with them. When the Indians of New Mexico were decimated by smallpox
or other infectious disease, they used to shift their quarters every day,
retreating into the most sequestered parts of the mountains and choosing
the thorniest thickets they could find, in the hope that the smallpox would
be too afraid of scratching himself on the thorns to follow them. When some
Chins on a visit to Rangoon were attacked by cholera, they went about
with drawn swords to scare away the demon, and they spent the day
hiding under bushes so that he might not be able to find them. 8