Section 1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils.
THUS far we have dealt with that class of the general expulsion of evils
which I have called direct or immediate. In this class the evils are invisible,
at least to common eyes, and the mode of deliverance consists for the
most part in beating the empty air and raising such a hubbub as may scare
the mischievous spirits and put them to flight. It remains to illustrate the
second class of expulsions, in which the evil influences are embodied in a
visible form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium,
which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village, or
town. 1
The Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven
years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. "Twenty or
thirty men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint, and put
vessels of pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the
surrounding mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes
up to the top of the assembly-house, and makes a speech to the multitude.
At a signal agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the
mountains, with the vessels of pitch flaming on their heads, and with all the
frightful accessories of noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind
can devise in representation of demons. The terrified women and children
flee for life, the men huddle them inside a circle, and, on the principle of
fighting the devil with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the air, yell,
whoop, and make frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty devils,
so creating a terrific spectacle, and striking great fear into the hearts of the
assembled hundreds of women, who are screaming and fainting and
clinging to their valorous protectors. Finally the devils succeed in getting
into the assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold a
parley with them. As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon
courage, the devils are expelled from the assembly-house, and with a
prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the
mountains." In spring, as soon as the willow-leaves were full grown on the
banks of the river, the Mandan Indians celebrated their great annual
festival, one of the features of which was the expulsion of the devil. A man,
painted black to represent the devil, entered the village from the prairie,
chased and frightened the women, and acted the part of a buffalo bull in
the buffalo dance, the object of which was to ensure a plentiful supply of
buffaloes during the ensuing year. Finally he was chased from the village,
the women pursuing him with hisses and gibes, beating him with sticks,
and pelting him with dirt. 2
Some of the native tribes of Central Queensland believe in a noxious
being called Molonga, who prowls unseen and would kill men and violate
women if certain ceremonies were not performed. These ceremonies last
for five nights and consist of dances, in which only men, fantastically
painted and adorned, take part. On the fifth night Molonga himself,
personified by a man tricked out with red ochre and feathers and carrying
a long feather-tipped spear, rushes forth from the darkness at the
spectators and makes as if he would run them through. Great is the
excitement, loud are the shrieks and shouts, but after another feigned
attack the demon vanishes in the gloom. On the last night of the year the
palace of the Kings of Cambodia is purged of devils. Men painted as
fiends are chased by elephants about the palace courts. When they have
been expelled, a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the
palace to keep them out. In Munzerabad, a district of Mysore in Southern
India, when cholera or smallpox has broken out in a parish, the inhabitants
assemble and conjure the demon of the disease into a wooden image,
which they carry, generally at midnight, into the next parish. The
inhabitants of that parish in like manner pass the image on to their
neighbours, and thus the demon is expelled from one village after another,
until he comes to the bank of a river into which he is finally thrown. 3
Oftener, however, the expelled demons are not represented at all, but are
understood to be present invisibly in the material and visible vehicle which
conveys them away. Here, again, it will be convenient to distinguish
between occasional and periodical expulsions. We begin with the
former. 4