Section 4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection.
THIS view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no
adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered. Amongst
many savage tribes, especially such as are known to practice totemism, it
is customary for lads at puberty to undergo certain initiatory rites, of which
one of the commonest is a pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to
life again. Such rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance
consists in extracting the youth's soul in order to transfer it to his totem. For
the extraction of his soul would naturally be supposed to kill the youth or at
least to throw him into a death-like trance, which the savage hardly
distinguishes from death. His recovery would then be attributed either to
the gradual recovery of his system from the violent shock which it had
received, or, more probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from
the totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they consist
in a simulation of death and resurrection, would be an exchange of life or
souls between the man and his totem. The primitive belief in the possibility
of such an exchange of souls comes clearly out in a story of a Basque
hunter who affirmed that he had been killed by a bear, but that the bear
had, after killing him, breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear's
body was now dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the
bear's soul. This revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous
to what, on the theory here suggested, is supposed to take place in the
ceremony of killing a lad at puberty and bringing him to life again. The lad
dies as a man and comes to life again as an animal; the animal's soul is
now in him, and his human soul is in the animal. With good right, therefore,
does he call himself a Bear or a Wolf, etc., according to his totem; and with
good right does he treat the bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren,
since in these animals are lodged the souls of himself and his kindred. 1
Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at initiation are as
follows. In the Wonghi or Wonghibon tribe of New South Wales the youths
on approaching manhood are initiated at a secret ceremony, which none
but initiated men may witness. Part of the proceedings consists in knocking
out a tooth and giving a new name to the novice, indicative of the change
from youth to manhood. While the teeth are being knocked out an
instrument known as a bull-roarer, which consists of a flat piece of wood
with serrated edges tied to the end of a string, is swung round so as to
produce a loud humming noise. The uninitiated are not allowed to see this
instrument. Women are forbidden to witness the ceremonies under pain of
death. It is given out that the youths are each met in turn by a mythical
being, called Thuremlin (more commonly known as Daramulun) who takes
the youth to a distance, kills him, and in some instances cuts him up, after
which he restores him to life and knocks out a tooth. Their belief in the
power of Thuremlin is said to be undoubted. 2
The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River said that at initiation the boy met a
ghost, who killed him and brought him to life again as a young man.
Among the natives on the Lower Lachlan and Murray Rivers it was
Thrumalun (Daramulun) who was thought to slay and resuscitate the
novices. In the Unmatjera tribe of Central Australia women and children
believe that a spirit called Twanyirika kills the youth and afterwards brings
him to life again during the period of initiation. The rites of initiation in this
tribe, as in the other Central tribes, comprise the operations of circumcision
and subincision; and as soon as the second of these has been performed
on him, the young man receives from his father a sacred stick (churinga),
with which, he is told, his spirit was associated in the remotest past. While
he is out in the bush recovering from his wounds, he must swing the
bull-roarer, or a being who lives up in the sky will swoop down and carry
him off. In the Binbinga tribe, on the western coast of the Gulf of
Carpentaria, the women and children believe that the noise of the
bull-roarer at initiation is made by a spirit named Katajalina, who lives in
an ant-hill and comes out and eats up the boy, afterwards restoring him to
life. Similarly among their neighbours the Anula the women imagine that the
droning sound of the bull-roarer is produced by a spirit called Gnabaia,
who swallows the lads at initiation and afterwards disgorges them in the
form of initiated men. 3
Among the tribes settled on the southern coast of New South Wales, of
which the Coast Murring tribe may be regarded as typical, the drama of
resurrection from the dead was exhibited in a graphic form to the novices
at initiation. The ceremony has been described for us by an eye-witness.
A man, disguised with stringy bark fibre, lay down in a grave and was
lightly covered up with sticks and earth. In his hand he held a small bush,
which appeared to be growing in the soil, and other bushes were stuck in
the ground to heighten the effect. Then the novices were brought and
placed beside the grave. Next, a procession of men, disguised in stringy
bark fibre, drew near. They represented a party of medicine-men, guided
by two reverend seniors, who had come on pilgrimage to the grave of a
brother medicine-man, who lay buried there. When the little procession,
chanting an invocation to Daramulun, had defiled from among the rocks
and trees into the open, it drew up on the side of the grave opposite to the
novices, the two old men taking up a position in the rear of the dancers.
For some time the dance and song went on till the tree that seemed to
grow from the grave began to quiver. "Look there!" cried the men to the
novices, pointing to the trembling leaves. As they looked, the tree
quivered more and more, then was violently agitated and fell to the
ground, while amid the excited dancing of the dancers and the chanting of
the choir the supposed dead man spurned from him the superincumbent
mass of sticks and leaves, and springing to his feet danced his magic
dance in the grave itself, and exhibited in his mouth the magic substances
which he was supposed to have received from Daramulun in person. 4
Some tribes of Northern New Guinea-the Yabim, Bukaua, Kai, and
Tami-like many Australian tribes, require every male member of the tribe to
be circumcised before he ranks as a full-grown man; and the tribal
initiation, of which circumcision is the central feature, is conceived by
them, as by some Australian tribes, as a process of being swallowed and
disgorged by a mythical monster, whose voice is heard in the humming
sound of the bull-roarer. Indeed the New Guinea tribes not only impress
this belief on the minds of women and children, but enact it in a dramatic
form at the actual rites of initiation, at which no woman or uninitiated
person may be present. For this purpose a hut about a hundred feet long is
erected either in the village or in a lonely part of the forest. It is modelled in
the shape of the mythical monster; at the end which represents his head it
is high, and it tapers away at the other end. A betel-palm, grubbed up with
the roots, stands for the backbone of the great being and its clustering
fibres for his hair; and to complete the resemblance the butt end of the
building is adorned by a native artist with a pair of goggle eyes and a
gaping mouth. When after a tearful parting from their mothers and women
folk, who believe or pretend to believe in the monster that swallows their
dear ones, the awe-struck novices are brought face to face with this
imposing structure, the huge creature emits a sullen growl, which is in fact
no other than the humming note of bull-roarers swung by men concealed
in the monster's belly. The actual process of deglutition is variously
enacted. Among the Tami it is represented by causing the candidates to
defile past a row of men who hold bull-roarers over their heads; among the
Kai it is more graphically set forth by making them pass under a scaffold on
which stands a man, who makes a gesture of swallowing and takes in fact
a gulp of water as each trembling novice passes beneath him. But the
present of a pig, opportunely offered for the redemption of the youth,
induces the monster to relent and disgorge his victim; the man who
represents the monster accepts the gift vicariously, a gurgling sound is
heard, and the water which had just been swallowed descends in a jet on
the novice. This signifies that the young man has been released from the
monster's belly. However, he has now to undergo the more painful and
dangerous operation of circumcision. It follows immediately, and the cut
made by the knife of the operator is explained to be a bite or scratch which
the monster inflicted on the novice in spewing him out of his capacious
maw. While the operation is proceeding, a prodigious noise is made by the
swinging of bull-roarers to represent the roar of the dreadful being who is
in the act of swallowing the young man. 5
When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the operation,
he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing mother is told that the
monster has a pig's stomach as well as a human stomach, and that
unfortunately her son slipped into the wrong stomach, from which it was
impossible to extricate him. After they have been circumcised the lads must
remain for some months in seclusion, shunning all contact with women and
even the sight of them. They live in the long hut which represents the
monster's belly. When at last the lads, now ranking as initiated men, are
brought back with great pomp and ceremony to the village, they are
received with sobs and tears of joy by the women, as if the grave had
given up its dead. At first the young men keep their eyes rigidly closed or
even sealed with a plaster of chalk, and they appear not to understand the
words of command which are given them by an elder. Gradually, however,
they come to themselves as if awakening from a stupor, and next day they
bathe and wash off the crust of white chalk with which their bodies had
been coated. 6
It is highly significant that all these tribes of New Guinea apply the same
word to the bull-roarer and to the monster, who is supposed to swallow the
novices at circumcision, and whose fearful roar is represented by the hum
of the harmless wooden instruments. Further, it deserves to be noted that in
three languages out of the four the same word which is applied to the
bull-roarer and to the monster means also a ghost or spirit of the dead,
while in the fourth language (the Kai) it signifies "grandfather." From this it
seems to follow that the being who swallows and disgorges the novices at
initiation is believed to be a powerful ghost or ancestral spirit, and that the
bull-roarer, which bears his name, is his material representative. That
would explain the jealous secrecy with which the sacred implement is kept
from the sight of women. While they are not in use, the bull-roarers are
stowed away in the men's club-houses, which no woman may enter;
indeed no woman or uninitiated person may set eyes on a bull-roarer
under pain of death. Similarly among the Tugeri or Kaya-Kaya, a large
Papuan tribe on the south coast of Dutch New Guinea, the name of the
bull-roarer, which they call sosom, is given to a mythical giant, who is
supposed to appear every year with the south-east monsoon. When he
comes, a festival is held in his honour and bull-roarers are swung. Boys
are presented to the giant, and he kills them, but considerately brings them
to life again. 7
In certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, the drama
of death and resurrection used to be acted with much solemnity before the
eyes of young men at initiation. In a sacred enclosure they were shown a
row of dead or seemingly dead men lying on the ground, their bodies cut
open and covered with blood, their entrails protruding. But at a yell from
the high priest the counterfeit dead men started to their feet and ran down
to the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and guts of pigs with
which they were beslobbered. Soon they marched back to the sacred
enclosure as if come to life, clean, fresh, and garlanded, swaying their
bodies in time to the music of a solemn hymn, and took their places in front
of the novices. Such was the drama of death and resurrection. 8
The people of Rook, an island between New Guinea and New Britain,
hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads covered with
wooden masks, go dancing through the village, followed by all the other
men. They demand that the circumcised boys who have not yet been
swallowed by Marsaba (the devil) shall be given up to them. The boys,
trembling and shrieking, are delivered to them, and must creep between
the legs of the disguised men. Then the procession moves through the
village again, and announces that Marsaba has eaten up the boys, and
will not disgorge them till he receives a present of pigs, taro, and so forth.
So all the villagers, according to their means, contribute provisions, which
are then consumed in the name of Marsaba. 9
In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian
association. Modern writers have commonly regarded this association as
primarily a political league instituted to resist foreign domination. In reality
its objects are purely religious and social, though it is possible that the
priests may have occasionally used their powerful influence for political
ends. The society is in fact merely one of those widely-diffused primitive
institutions, of which a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent
years the true nature of the association has been duly recognised by the
distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house is an
oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the depth of the
forest, and is built to admit so little light that it is impossible to see what
goes on in it. Every village has such a house. Thither the boys who are to
be initiated are conducted blindfold, followed by their parents and
relations. Each boy is led by the hand of two men, who act as his
sponsors or guardians, looking after him during the period of initiation.
When all are assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon
the devils. Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the
shed. It is made by men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly
introduced into the building by a back door, but the women and children
think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified. Then the priests enter
the shed, followed by the boys, one at a time. As soon as each boy has
disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful
cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through
the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off,
and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to
regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers
weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. In some
places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an opening made in
the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it is then said
that the devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed for five or
nine days. Sitting in the dark, they hear the blast of the bamboo trumpets,
and from time to time the sound of musket shots and the clash of swords.
Every day they bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a
yellow dye, to give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the
devil. During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two
crosses tattooed with thorns on his breast or arm. When they are not
sleeping, the lads must sit in a crouching posture without moving a muscle.
As they sit in a row cross-legged, with their hands stretched out, the chief
takes his trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hands of each lad,
speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of the spirits. He
warns the lads, under pain of death, to observe the rules of the Kakian
society, and never to reveal what has passed in the Kakian house. The
novices are also told by the priests to behave well to their blood relations,
and are taught the traditions and secrets of the tribe. 10
Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have gone home to weep
and mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted as guardians or
sponsors to the novices return to the village with the glad tidings that the
devil, at the intercession of the priests, has restored the lads to life. The
men who bring this news come in a fainting state and daubed with mud,
like messengers freshly arrived from the nether world. Before leaving the
Kakian house, each lad receives from the priest a stick adorned at both
ends with a cock's or cassowary's feathers. The sticks are supposed to
have been given to the lads by the devil at the time when he restored them
to life, and they serve as a token that the youths have been in the spirit
land. When they return to their homes they totter in their walk, and enter
the house backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk properly; or they
enter the house by the back door. If a plate of food is given to them, they
hold it upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their wants by signs
only. All this is to show that they are still under the influence of the devil or
the spirits. Their sponsors have to teach them all the common acts of life,
as if they were newborn children. Further, upon leaving the Kakian house
the boys are strictly forbidden to eat of certain fruits until the next
celebration of the rites has taken place. And for twenty or thirty days their
hair may not be combed by their mothers or sisters. At the end of that time
the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the forest, and cuts off a
lock of hair from the crown of each of their heads. After these initiatory rites
the lads are deemed men, and may marry; it would be a scandal if they
married before. 11
In the region of the Lower Congo a simulation of death and resurrection
is, or rather used to be, practised by the members of a guild or secret
society called ndembo. "In the practice of Ndembo the initiating doctors get
some one to fall down in a pretended fit, and in that state he is carried
away to an enclosed place outside the town. This is called `dying
Ndembo.' Others follow suit, generally boys and girls, but often young men
and women... . They are supposed to have died. But the parents and
friends supply food, and after a period varying, according to custom, from
three months to three years, it is arranged that the doctor shall bring them
to life again... . When the doctor's fee has been paid, and money (goods)
saved for a feast, the Ndembo people are brought to life. At first they
pretend to know no one and nothing; they do not even know how to
masticate food, and friends have to perform that office for them. They want
everything nice that any one uninitiated may have, and beat them if it is
not granted, or even strangle and kill people. They do not get into trouble
for this, because it is thought that they do not know better. Sometimes they
carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they had
returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another name,
peculiar to those who have `died Ndembo.' ... We hear of the custom far
along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region." 12
Among some of the Indian tribes of North America there exist certain
religious associations which are only open to candidates who have gone
through a pretence of being killed and brought to life again. In 1766 or
1767 Captain Jonathan Carver witnessed the admission of a candidate to
an association called "the friendly society of the Spirit"
(Wakon-Kitchewah) among the Naudowessies, a Siouan or Dacotan tribe
in the region of the great lakes. The candidate knelt before the chief, who
told him that "he himself was now agitated by the same spirit which he
should in a few moments communicate to him; that it would strike him dead,
but that he would instantly be restored again to life; to this he added, that
the communication, however terrifying, was a necessary introduction to the
advantages enjoyed by the community into which he was on the point of
being admitted. As he spoke this, he appeared to be greatly agitated; till at
last his emotions became so violent, that his countenance was distorted,
and his whole frame convulsed. At this juncture he threw something that
appeared both in shape and colour like a small bean, at the young man,
which seemed to enter his mouth, and he instantly fell as motionless as if
he had been shot." For a time the man lay like dead, but under a shower
of blows he showed signs of consciousness, and finally, discharging from
his mouth the bean, or whatever it was that the chief had thrown at him, he
came to life. In other tribes, for example, the Ojebways, Winnebagoes, and
Dacotas or Sioux, the instrument by which the candidate is apparently
slain is the medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal (such
as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of which
it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society has one of
these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make up his
"medicine" or charms. "They believe that from the miscellaneous contents
in the belly of the skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which
has the power, not only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him
up and restore him to life." The mode of killing a man with one of these
medicine-bags is to thrust it at him; he falls like dead, but a second thrust
of the bag restores him to life. 13
A ceremony witnessed by the castaway John R. Jewitt during his
captivity among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless belongs to this
class of customs. The Indian king or chief "discharged a pistol close to his
son's ear, who immediately fell down as if killed, upon which all the women
of the house set up a most lamentable cry, tearing handfuls of hair from
their heads, and exclaiming that the prince was dead; at the same time a
great number of the inhabitants rushed into the house armed with their
daggers, muskets, etc., enquiring the cause of their outcry. These were
immediately followed by two others dressed in wolf-skins, with masks over
their faces representing the head of that animal. The latter came in on their
hands and feet in the manner of a beast, and taking up the prince, carried
him off upon their backs, retiring in the same manner they entered." In
another place Jewitt mentions that the young prince-a lad of about eleven
years of age-wore a mask in imitation of a wolf's head. Now, as the
Indians of this part of America are divided into totem clans, of which the
Wolf clan is one of the principal, and as the members of each clan are in
the habit of wearing some portion of the totem animal about their person, it
is probable that the prince belonged to the Wolf clan, and that the
ceremony described by Jewitt represented the killing of the lad in order
that he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the
Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to have come to
life again as a bear. 14
This conjectural explanation of the ceremony has, since it was first put
forward, been to some extent confirmed by the researches of Dr. Franz
Boas among these Indians; though it would seem that the community to
which the chief's son thus obtained admission was not so much a totem
clan as a secret society called Tlokoala, whose members imitated wolves.
Every new member of the society must be initiated by the wolves. At night
a pack of wolves, personated by Indians dressed in wolf-skins and
wearing wolf-masks, make their appearance, seize the novice, and carry
him into the woods. When the wolves are heard outside the village, coming
to fetch away the novice, all the members of the society blacken their
faces and sing, "Among all the tribes is great excitement, because I am
Tlokoala." Next day the wolves bring back the novice dead, and the
members of the society have to revive him. The wolves are supposed to
have put a magic stone into his body, which must be removed before he
can come to life. Till this is done the pretended corpse is left lying outside
the house. Two wizards go and remove the stone, which appears to be
quartz, and then the novice is resuscitated. Among the Niska Indians of
British Columbia, who are divided into four principal clans with the raven,
the wolf, the eagle, and the bear for their respective totems, the novice at
initiation is always brought back by an artificial totem animal. Thus when a
man was about to be initiated into a secret society called Olala, his friends
drew their knives and pretended to kill him. In reality they let him slip
away, while they cut off the head of a dummy which had been adroitly
substituted for him. Then they laid the decapitated dummy down and
covered it over, and the women began to mourn and wail. His relations
gave a funeral banquet and solemnly burnt the effigy. In short, they held a
regular funeral. For a whole year the novice remained absent and was
seen by none but members of the secret society. But at the end of that time
he came back alive, carried by an artificial animal which represented his
totem. 15
In these ceremonies the essence of the rite appears to be the killing of
the novice in his character of a man and his restoration to life in the form
of the animal which is thenceforward to be, if not his guardian spirit, at
least linked to him in a peculiarly intimate relation. It is to be remembered
that the Indians of Guatemala, whose life was bound up with an animal,
were supposed to have the power of appearing in the shape of the
particular creature with which they were thus sympathetically united.
Hence it seems not unreasonable to conjecture that in like manner the
Indians of British Columbia may imagine that their life depends on the life
of some one of that species of creature to which they assimilate
themselves by their costume. At least if that is not an article of belief with
the Columbian Indians of the present day, it may very well have been so
with their ancestors in the past, and thus may have helped to mould the
rites and ceremonies both of the totem clans and of the secret societies.
For though these two sorts of communities differ in respect of the mode in
which membership of them is obtained-a man being born into his totem
clan but admitted into a secret society later in life-we can hardly doubt
that they are near akin and have their root in the same mode of thought.
That thought, if I am right, is the possibility of establishing a sympathetic
relation with an animal, a spirit, or other mighty being, with whom a man
deposits for safe-keeping his soul or some part of it, and from whom he
receives in return a gift of magical powers. 16
Thus, on the theory here suggested, wherever totemism is found, and
wherever a pretence is made of killing and bringing to life again the novice
at initiation, there may exist or have existed not only a belief in the
possibility of permanently depositing the soul in some external
object-animal, plant, or what not-but an actual intention of so doing. If the
question is put, why do men desire to deposit their life outside their
bodies? the answer can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they
think it safer to do so than to carry it about with them, just as people
deposit their money with a banker rather than carry it on their persons. We
have seen that at critical periods the life or soul is sometimes temporarily
stowed away in a safe place till the danger is past. But institutions like
totemism are not resorted to merely on special occasions of danger; they
are systems into which every one, or at least every male, is obliged to be
initiated at a certain period of life. Now the period of life at which initiation
takes place is regularly puberty; and this fact suggests that the special
danger which totemism and systems like it are intended to obviate is
supposed not to arise till sexual maturity has been attained, in fact, that the
danger apprehended is believed to attend the relation of the sexes to each
other. It would be easy to prove by a long array of facts that the sexual
relation is associated in the primitive mind with many serious perils; but the
exact nature of the danger apprehended is still obscure. We may hope that
a more exact acquaintance with savage modes of thought will in time
disclose this central mystery of primitive society, and will thereby furnish
the clue, not only to totemism, but to the origin of the marriage system. 17