The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Volume I Part 20

[Footnote 339: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 655.]

[Footnote 340: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 655 _sq._]

[Footnote 341: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 610.]

[Footnote 342: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 611.]

[Footnote 343: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 616 _sq._]

[Footnote 344: C. G. Seligmann. _op. cit._ p. 611.]

[Footnote 345: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 618 _sq._]

[Footnote 346: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 613 _sq._]

[Footnote 347: The Rev. J. T. Field of Tubetube (Slade Island), quoted by George Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London, 1910), pp.

442 _sq._]

[Footnote 348: Rev. J. T. Field, _op. cit._ pp. 443 _sq._]

[Footnote 349: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 629-631. Dr. Seligmann seems to think that the custom is at present dictated by courtesy and a reluctance to grieve the relatives of the deceased; but the original motive can hardly have been any other than a fear of the ghost.]

[Footnote 350: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 631 _sq._]

[Footnote 351: Rev. J. Chalmers, "Notes on the Natives of Kiwai Island, Fly River, British New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, x.x.xiii. (1903) pp. 119, 120.]

[Footnote 352: G. Landtman, "Wanderings of the Dead in the Folk-lore of the Kiwai-speaking Papuans," _Festskrift tillagnad Edvard Westermarck_ (Helsingfors, 1912), pp. 59-66.]

[Footnote 353: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 67 _sq._]

[Footnote 354: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 68-71.]

[Footnote 355: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 77 _sq._]

[Footnote 356: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ pp. 78 _sq._]

[Footnote 357: G. Landtman, _op. cit._ p. 71.]

LECTURE X

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF GERMAN NEW GUINEA

[Sidenote: Andrew Lang.]

I feel that I cannot begin my second course of lectures without referring to the loss which the study of primitive religion has lately sustained by the death of one of my predecessors in this chair, one who was a familiar and an honoured figure in this place, Mr. Andrew Lang.

Whatever may be the judgment of posterity on his theories--and all our theories on these subjects are as yet more or less tentative and provisional--there can be no question but that by the charm of his writings, the wide range of his knowledge, the freshness and vigour of his mind, and the contagious enthusiasm which he brought to bear on whatever he touched, he was a great power in promoting the study of primitive man not in this country only, but wherever the English language is spoken, and that he won for himself a permanent place in the history of the science to which he devoted so much of his remarkable gifts and abilities. As he spent a part of every winter in St. Andrews, I had thought that in the course on which I enter to-day I might perhaps be honoured by his presence at some of my lectures. But it was not to be. Yet a fancy strikes me to which I will venture to give utterance.

You may condemn, but I am sure you will not smile at it. It has been said of Macaulay that if his spirit ever revisited the earth, it might be expected to haunt the flagged walk beside the chapel in the great court of Trinity College, Cambridge, the walk which in his lifetime he loved to pace book in hand. And if Andrew Lang's spirit could be seen flitting pensively anywhere, would it not be just here, in "the college of the scarlet gown," in the "little city worn and grey," looking out on the cold North Sea, the city which he knew and loved so well? Be that as it may, his memory will always be a.s.sociated with St. Andrews; and if the students who shall in future go forth from this ancient university to carry St. Andrew's Cross, if I may say so, on their banner in the eternal warfare with falsehood and error,--if they cannot imitate Andrew Lang in the versatility of his genius, in the variety of his accomplishments, in the manifold graces of his literary art, it is to be hoped that they will strive to imitate him in qualities which are more within the reach of us all, in his pa.s.sionate devotion to knowledge, in his ardent and unflagging pursuit of truth.

[Sidenote: Review of preceding lectures.]

In my last course of lectures I explained that I proposed to treat of the belief in immortality from a purely historical point of view. My intention is not to discuss the truth of the belief or to criticise the grounds on which it has been maintained. To do so would be to trench on the province of the theologian and the philosopher. I limit myself to the far humbler task of describing, first, the belief as it has been held by some savage races, and, second, some of the practical consequences which these primitive peoples have deduced from it for the conduct of life, whether these consequences take the shape of religious rites or moral precepts. Now in such a survey of savage creed and practice it is convenient to begin with the lowest races of men about whom we have accurate information and to pa.s.s from them gradually to higher and higher races, because we thus start with the simplest forms of religion and advance by regular gradations to more complex forms, and we may hope in this way to render the course of religious evolution more intelligible than if we were to start from the most highly developed religions and to work our way down from them to the most embryonic. In pursuance of this plan I commenced my survey with the aborigines of Australia, because among the races of man about whom we are well informed these savages are commonly and, I believe, justly supposed to stand at the foot of the human scale. Having given you some account of their beliefs and practices concerning the dead I attempted to do the same for the islanders of Torres Straits and next for the natives of British New Guinea. There I broke off, and to-day I shall resume the thread of my discourse at the broken end by describing the beliefs and practices concerning the dead, as these beliefs are entertained and these practices observed by the natives of German New Guinea.

[Sidenote: German New Guinea.]

As you are aware, the German territory of New Guinea skirts the British territory on the north throughout its entire length and comprises roughly a quarter of the whole island, the British and German possessions making up together the eastern half of New Guinea, while the western half belongs to Holland.

[Sidenote: Information as to the natives of German New Guinea.]

Our information as to the natives of German New Guinea is very fragmentary, and is confined almost entirely to the tribes of the coast.

As to the inhabitants of the interior we know as yet very little.

However, German missionaries and others have described more or less fully the customs and beliefs of the natives at various points of this long coast, and I shall extract from their descriptions some notices of that particular aspect of the native religion with which in these lectures we are specially concerned. The points on the coast as to which a certain amount of ethnographical information is forthcoming are, to take them in the order from west to east, Berlin Harbour, Potsdam Harbour, Astrolabe Bay, the Maclay Coast, Cape King William, Finsch Harbour, and the Tami Islands in Huon Gulf. I propose to say something as to the natives at each of these points, beginning with Berlin Harbour, the most westerly of them.

[Sidenote: The island of Tumleo.]

Berlin Harbour is formed by a group of four small islands, which here lie off the coast. One of the islands bears the name of Tumleo or Tamara, and we possess an excellent account of the natives of this island from the pen of a Catholic missionary, Father Mathias Josef Erdweg,[358] which I shall draw upon in what follows. We have also a paper by a German ethnologist, the late Mr. R. Parkinson, on the same subject,[359] but his information is in part derived from Father Erdweg and he appears to have erred by applying too generally the statements which Father Erdweg strictly limited to the inhabitants of Tumleo.[360]

[Sidenote: The natives of Tumleo, their material and artistic culture.]

The island of Tumleo lies in 142 25" of East Longitude and 3 15" of South Lat.i.tude, and is distant about sixty sea-miles from the westernmost point of German New Guinea. It is a coral island, surrounded by a barrier reef and rising for the most part only a few feet above the sea.[361] In stature the natives fall below the average European height; but they are well fed and strongly built. Their colour varies from black to light brown. Their hair is very frizzly. Women and children wear it cut short; men wear it done up into wigs. They number less than three hundred, divided into four villages. The population seems to have declined through wars, disease, and infanticide.[362] Like the Papuans generally, they live in settled villages and engage in fis.h.i.+ng, agriculture, and commerce. The houses are solidly built of wood and are raised above the ground upon piles, which consist of a hard and durable timber, sometimes iron-wood.[363] The staple food of the people is sago, which they obtain from the sago-palm. These stately palms, with their fan-like foliage, are rare on the coral island of Tumleo, but grow abundantly in the swampy lowlands of the neighbouring mainland.

Accordingly in the months of May and June, when the sea is calm, the natives cross over to the mainland in their canoes and obtain a supply of sago in exchange for the products of their island. The sago is eaten in the form both of porridge and of bread.[364] Other vegetable foods are furnished by sweet potatoes, taro, yams, bananas, sugar-cane, and coco-nuts, all of which the natives cultivate.[365] Fis.h.i.+ng is a princ.i.p.al industry of the people; it is plied by both s.e.xes and by old and young, with nets, spears, and bows and arrows.[366] Pottery is another flouris.h.i.+ng industry. As among many other savages, it is practised only by women, but the men take the pots to market; for these islanders do a good business in pots with the neighbouring tribes.[367]

They build large outrigger canoes, which sail well before the wind, but can hardly beat up against it, being heavy to row. In these canoes the natives of Tumleo make long voyages along the coast; but as the craft are not very seaworthy they never stand out to sea, if they can help it, but hug the sh.o.r.e in order to run for safety to the beach in stormy weather.[368] In regard to art the natives display some taste and skill in wood-carving. For example, the projecting house-beams are sometimes carved in the shape of crocodiles, birds, and grotesque human figures; and their canoes, paddles, head-rests, drums, drum-sticks, and vessels are also decorated with carving. Birds, fish, crocodiles, foliage, and scroll-work are the usual patterns.[369]

[Sidenote: The temples (_paraks_) of Tumleo.]

A remarkable feature in the villages of Tumleo and the neighbouring islands and mainland consists of the _paraks_ or temples, the high gables of which may be seen rising above the bushes in all the villages of this part of the coast. No such buildings exist elsewhere in this region. They are set apart for the wors.h.i.+p of certain guardian spirits, and on them the native lavishes all the resources of his elementary arts of sculpture and painting. They are built of wood in two storeys and raised on piles besides. The approach to one of them is always by one or two ladders provided on both sides with hand-rails or banisters. These banisters are elaborately decorated with carving, which is always of the same pattern. One banister is invariably carved in the shape of a crocodile holding a grotesque human figure in its jaws, while on the other hand the animal's tail is grasped by one or more human figures.

The other banister regularly exhibits a row of human or rather ape-like effigies seated one behind the other, each of them resting his arms on the shoulders of the figure in front. Often there are seven such figures in a row. The natives are so shy in speaking of these temples that it is difficult to ascertain the meaning of the curious carvings by which they are adorned. Mr. Parkinson supposed that they represent spirits, not apes. He tells us that there are no apes in New Guinea. The interior of the temple (_parak_) is generally empty. The only things to be seen in its two rooms, the upper and lower, are bamboo flutes and drums made out of the hollow trunks of trees. On these instruments men concealed in the temple discourse music in order to signify the presence of the spirit.[370]

[Sidenote: The bachelors' houses (_alols_) of Tumleo.]

Different from these _paraks_ or temples are the _alols_, which are bachelors' houses and council-houses in one. Like the temples, they are raised above the ground and approached by a ladder, but unlike the temples they have only one storey. In them the unmarried men live and the married men meet to take counsel and to speak of things which may not be mentioned before women. On a small stand or table in each of these _alols_ or men's clubhouses are kept the skulls of dead men. And as the temple (_parak_) is devoted to the wors.h.i.+p of spirits, so the men's clubhouse (_alol_) is the place where the dead ancestors are wors.h.i.+pped. Women and children may not enter it, but it is not regarded with such superst.i.tious fear as the temple. The dead are buried in their houses or beside them. Afterwards the bones are dug up and the skulls of grown men are deposited, along with one of the leg bones, on the stand or table in the men's clubhouse (_alol_). The skulls of youths, women, and children are kept in the houses where they died. When the table in the clubhouse is quite full of grinning trophies of mortality, the old skulls are removed to make room for the new ones and are thrown away in a sort of charnel-house, where the other bones are deposited after they have been dug up from the graves. Such a charnel-house is called a _tjoll paru_. There is one such place for the bones of grown men and another for the bones of women and children. Some bones, however, are kept and used as ornaments or as means to work magic with. For the dead are often invoked, for example, to lay the wind or for other useful purposes; and at such invocations the bones play a part.[371]

[Sidenote: Spirits of the dead thought to be the causes of sickness and disease.]

But while the spirits of the dead are thus invited to help their living relations and friends, they are also feared as the causes of sickness and disease. Any serious ailment is usually attributed to magic or witchcraft, and the treatment which is resorted to aims rather at breaking the spell which has been cast on the sick man than at curing his malady by the application of physical remedies. In short the remedy is exorcism rather than physic. Now the enchantment under which the patient is supposed to be labouring is often, though not always, ascribed to the malignant arts of the spirits of the dead, or the _ms_, as the natives of Tumleo call them. In such a case the ghosts are thought to be clinging to the body of the sufferer, and the object of the medical treatment is to detach them from him and send them far away.

With this kindly intention some men will go into the forest and collect a number of herbs, including a kind of peppermint. These are tied into one or more bundles according to the number of the patients and then taken to the men's clubhouse (_alol_), where they are heated over a fire. Then the patient is brought, and two men strike him lightly with the packet of herbs on his body and legs, while they utter an incantation, inviting the ancestral spirits who are plaguing him to leave his body and go away, in order that he may be made whole. One such incantation, freely translated, runs thus: "Spirit of the great-grandfather, of the father, come out! We give thee coco-nuts, sago-porridge, fish. Go away (from the sick man). Let him be well. Do no harm here and there. Tell the people of Leming (O spirit) to give us tobacco. When the waves are still, we push off from the land, sailing northward (to Tumleo). It is the time of the north-west wind (when the surf is heavy). May the billows calm down in the south, O in the south, on the coast of Leming, that we may sail to the south, to Leming! Out there may the sea be calm, that we may push off from the land for home!"

In this incantation a prayer to the spirit of the dead to relax his hold on the sufferer appears to be curiously combined with a prayer or spell to calm the sea when the people sail across to the coast of Leming to fetch a cargo of tobacco. When the incantation has been recited and the patient stroked with the bundle of herbs, one of his ears and both his arm-pits are moistened with a blood-red spittle produced by the chewing of betel-nut, pepper, and lime. Then they take hold of his fingers and make each of them crack, one after the other, while they recite some of the words of the preceding incantation. Next three men take each of them a branch of the _volju_ tree, bend it into a bow, and stroke the sick man from head to foot, while they recite another incantation, in which they command the spirit to let the sick man alone and to go away into the water or the mud. Often when a man is seriously ill he will remove from his own house to the house of a relation or friend, hoping that the spirit who has been tormenting him will not be able to discover him at his new address.[372]

[Sidenote: Burial and mourning customs in Tumleo.]

If despite of all these precautions the patient should die, he or she is placed in a wooden coffin and buried with little delay in a grave, which is dug either in the house or close beside it. The body is smeared all over with clay and decked with many rings or ornaments, most of which, however, are removed in a spirit of economy before the lid of the coffin is shut down. Sometimes arrows, sometimes a rudder, sometimes the bones of dead relations are buried with the corpse in the grave. When the grave is dug outside of the house, a small hut is erected over it, and a fire is kept burning on it for a time. In the house of mourning the wife, sister, or other female relative of the deceased must remain strictly secluded for a period which varies from a few weeks to three months. In token of mourning the widow's body is smeared with clay, and from time to time she is heard to chant a dirge in a whining, melancholy tone. This seclusion lasts so long as the ghost is supposed to be still on his way to the other world. When he has reached his destination, the fire is suffered to die down on the grave, and his widow or other female relative is free to quit the house and resume her ordinary occupations.

Through her long seclusion in the shade her swarthy complexion a.s.sumes a lighter tint, but it soon deepens again when she is exposed once more to the strong tropical suns.h.i.+ne.[373]