The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Volume I Part 22

[Footnote 373: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 288-291.]

[Footnote 374: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 297 _sq._]

[Footnote 375: Erdweg, _op. cit._ p. 291.]

[Footnote 376: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 291-293.]

[Footnote 377: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 298, 371.]

[Footnote 378: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 295 _sqq._, 299 _sq._, 334 _sq._]

[Footnote 379: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 295-297.]

[Footnote 380: P. Franz Vormann, "Dorf und Hausanlage beiden Monumbo, Deutsch-Neuguinea," _Anthropos_, iv. (1909) pp. 660 _sqq._; _id._, "Zur Psychologie, Religion, Soziologie und Geschichte der Monumbo-Papua, Deutsch-Neuguinea," _Anthropos_, v. (1910) pp. 407-409.]

[Footnote 381: P. Franz Vormann, in _Anthropos_, v. (1910) pp. 409 _sq._]

[Footnote 382: P. Franz Vormann, in _Anthropos_, v. (1910) pp. 410, 411.]

[Footnote 383: P. Franz Vormann, _ibid._, p. 412.]

[Footnote 384: B. Hagen, _Unter den Papua's_ (Wiesbaden, 1899), pp. 143, 221.]

[Footnote 385: For the evidence see B. Hagen, _op. cit._ pp. 193 _sqq._ As to barter he tells us (p. 216) that all articles in use at Bogadyim are imported, nothing is made on the spot.]

[Footnote 386: B. Hagen, _Unter den Papua's_ (Wiesbaden, 1899), pp.

264-266.]

[Footnote 387: B. Hagen, _op. cit._ pp. 258 _sq._]

[Footnote 388: B. Hagen, _op. cit._ pp. 270 _sq._ As to the period and details of the circ.u.mcision ceremonies see _id._, pp. 234-238.]

[Footnote 389: B. Hagen, _op. cit._ p. 260.]

[Footnote 390: N. von Miklucho-Maclay, "Ethnologische Bemerkungen uber die Papuas der Maclay-Kuste in Neu-Guinea," _Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie_, x.x.xv. (1875) pp. 66-93; _id._, x.x.xvi. (1876) pp. 294-333.]

[Footnote 391: N. von Miklucho-Maclay, _op. cit._ x.x.xvi. (1876) p. 302.]

[Footnote 392: Rev. J. Roscoe, _The Baganda_ (London, 1911), pp. 109 _sqq._; _Totemism and Exogamy_, ii. 470.]

[Footnote 393: N. von Miklucho-Maclay, _op. cit._ x.x.xvi. (1876) pp.

300-302.]

LECTURE XI

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF GERMAN NEW GUINEA (_continued_)

[Sidenote: The Papuans of Cape King William.]

In my last lecture I gave you some account of the beliefs and practices concerning the dead which have been recorded among the Papuans of German New Guinea. To-day I resume the subject and shall first speak of the natives on the coast about Cape King William, at the foot of Mount Cromwell. We possess an account of their religion and customs from the pen of a German missionary, Mr. Stolz, who has lived three years among them and studied their language.[394] His description applies to the inhabitants of two villages only, namely Lamatkebolo and Quambu, or Sialum and Kwamkwam, as they are generally called on the maps, who together number about five hundred souls. They belong to the Papuan stock and subsist chiefly by the cultivation of yams, which they plant in April or May and reap in January or February. But they also cultivate sweet potatoes and make some use of bananas and coco-nuts. They clear the land for cultivation by burning down the gra.s.s and afterwards turning up the earth with digging-sticks, a labour which is performed chiefly by the men. The land is not common property; each family tills its own fields, though sometimes one family will aid another in the laborious task of breaking up the soil. Moreover they trade with the natives of the interior, who, inhabiting a more fertile and better-watered country, are able to export a portion of their superfluities, especially taro, sweet potatoes, betel-nuts, and tobacco, to the less favoured dwellers on the sea-coast, receiving mostly dried fish in return. Curiously enough the traffic is chiefly in the hands of old women.[395]

[Sidenote: Propitiation of ghosts and spirits. The spirit Mate. Spirits called _Nai_.]

With regard to the religion of these people Mr. Stolz tells us that they know nothing of a deity who should receive the homage of his wors.h.i.+ppers; they recognise only spirits and the souls of the dead. To these last they bring offerings, not because they feel any need to do them reverence, but simply out of fear and a desire to win their favour.

The offerings are presented at burials and when they begin to cultivate the fields. Their purpose is to persuade the souls of the dead to ward off all the evil influences that might thwart the growth of the yams, their staple food. The ghosts are also expected to guard the fields against the incursions of wild pigs and the ravages of locusts. At a burial the aim of the sacrifice is to induce the soul of the departed brother or sister to keep far away from the village and to do no harm to the people. Sacrifices are even offered to the souls of animals, such as dogs and pigs, to prevent them from coming back and working mischief.

However, the ghosts of these creatures are not very exacting; a few pieces of sugar-cane, a coco-nut sh.e.l.l, or a taro shoot suffice to content their simple tastes and to keep them quiet. Amongst the spirits to whom the people pay a sort of wors.h.i.+p there is one named Mate, who seems to be closely akin to Balum, a spirit about whom we shall hear more among the Yabim further to the east. However, not very much is known about Mate; his wors.h.i.+p, if it can be called so, flourishes chiefly among the inland tribes, of whom the coast people stand so much in awe that they dare not speak freely on the subject of this mysterious being. Some of them indeed are bold enough to whisper that there is no such being as Mate at all, and that the whole thing is a cheat devised by sly rogues for the purpose of appropriating a larger share of roast pork at their religious feasts, from which women are excluded. Whatever may be thought of these sceptical views, it appears to be certain that the name of Mate is also bestowed on a number of spirits who disport themselves by day in open gra.s.sy places, while they retire by night to the deep shades of the forest; and the majority of these spirits are thought to be the souls of ancestors or of the recently departed. Again, there is another cla.s.s of spirits called _Nai_, who unlike all other spirits are on friendly terms with men. These are the souls of dead villagers, who died far away from home. They warn people of danger and very obligingly notify them of the coming of trading steamers. When a man dies in a foreign land, his soul appears as a _Nai_ to his sorrowing relatives and announces his sad fate to them. He does so always at night. When the men are gathered round the fire on the open square of the village, the ghost climbs the platform which usually serves for public meetings and banquets, and from this coin of vantage, plunged in the deep shadow, he lifts up his voice and delivers his message of warning, news, or prediction, as the case may be.[396]

[Sidenote: The creator Nemunemu. Sickness and death often regarded as the effects of sorcery.]

However, ghosts of the dead are not the only spiritual beings with whom these people are acquainted. They know of a much higher being, of the name of Nemunemu, endowed with superhuman power, who made the heaven and the earth with the a.s.sistance of two brothers; the elder brother constructed the mainland of New Guinea, while the younger fas.h.i.+oned the islands and the sea. When the natives first saw a steamer on the horizon they thought it was Nemunemu's s.h.i.+p, and the smoke at the funnel they took to be the tobacco-smoke which he puffed to beguile the tedium of the voyage.[397] They are also great believers in magic and witchcraft, and cases of sickness and death, which are not attributed to the malignity of ghosts and spirits, are almost invariably set down to the machinations of sorcerers. Only the deaths of decrepit old folks are regarded as natural. When a man has died, and his death is believed to have been caused by magic, the people resort to divination in order to discover the wicked magician who has perpetrated the crime. For this purpose they place the corpse on a bier, cover it with a mat, and set it on the shoulders of four men, while a fifth man taps lightly with an arrow on the mat and enquires of the departed whether such and such a village has bewitched him to death. If the bier remains still, it means "No"; but if it rocks backward and forward, it means "Yes," and the avengers of blood must seek their victim, the guilty sorcerer, in that village. The answer is believed to be given by the dead man's ghost, who stirs his body at the moment when his murderer's village is named. It is useless for the inhabitants of that village to disclaim all knowledge of the sickness and death of the deceased. The people repose implicit faith in this form of divination. "His soul itself told us," they say, and surely he ought to know. Another form of divination which they employ for the same purpose is to put the question to the ghost, while two men hold a bow which belonged to him and to which some personal articles of his are attached. The answer is again yes or no according as the bow moves or is still.[398]

[Sidenote: Funeral and mourning customs.]

When the author of the death has been discovered in one way or another, the corpse is decked with all the ornaments that can be collected from the relatives and prepared for burial. A shallow grave is dug under the house and lined with mats. Then the body is lowered into the grave: one of the s.e.xtons strikes up a lament, and the shrill voices of the women in the house join in the melancholy strain. When he lies in his narrow bed, the ornaments are removed from his person, but some of his tools, weapons, and other belongings are buried with him, no doubt for his use in the life hereafter. The funeral celebration, in which the whole village commonly takes part, lasts several days and consists in the bringing of offerings to the dead and the abstinence from all labour in the fields. Yams are brought from the field of the departed and cooked.

A small pot filled with yams and a vessel of water are placed on the grave; the rest of the provisions is consumed by the mourners. The next of kin, especially the widow or widower, remain for about a week at the grave, watching day and night, lest the body should be dug up and devoured by a certain foul fiend with huge wings and long claws, who battens on corpses. The mourning costume of men consists in smearing the face with black and wearing a cord round the neck and a netted cap on the head. Instead of such a cap a woman in mourning wraps herself in a large net and a great ap.r.o.n of gra.s.s. While the other ensigns of woe are soon discarded or disappear, the cord about the neck is worn for a longer time, generally till next harvest. The sacrifice of a pig brings the period of mourning to an end and after it the cord may be laid aside. If any one were so hard-hearted as not to wear that badge of sorrow, the people believe that the angry ghost would come back and fetch him away. He would die.[399] Thus among these savages the mourning costume is regarded as a protection against the dangerous ghost of the departed; it soothes his wounded feelings and prevents him from making raids on the living.

[Sidenote: Fate of the souls of the dead.]

As to the place to which the souls of the dead repair and the fate that awaits them there, very vague and contradictory ideas prevail among the natives of this district. Some say that the ghosts go eastward to Bukaua on Huon Gulf and there lead a shadowy life very like their life on earth. Others think that the spirits hover near the village where they lived in the flesh. Others again are of opinion that they transmigrate into animals and prolong their life in one or other of the bodies of the lower creatures.[400]

[Sidenote: The Yabim and Bukaua tribes.]

Leaving Cape King William we pa.s.s eastward along the coast of German New Guinea and come to Finsch Harbour. From a point some miles to the north of Finsch Harbour as far as Samoa Harbour on Huon Gulf the coast is inhabited by two kindred tribes, the Yabim and the Bukaua, who speak a Melanesian language. I shall deal first with the Yabim tribe, whose customs and beliefs have been described for us with a fair degree of fulness by two German missionaries, Mr. Konrad Vetter and Mr. Heinrich Zahn.[401] The following account is based chiefly on the writings of Mr.

Vetter, whose mission station is at the village of Simbang.

[Sidenote: Material and artistic culture of the Yabim.]

Like the other natives of New Guinea the Yabim build permanent houses, live in settled villages, and till the ground. Every year they make a fresh clearing in the forest by cutting down the trees, burning the fallen timber, and planting taro, bananas, sugar-cane, and tobacco in the open glade. When the crops have been reaped, the place is abandoned, and is soon overgrown again by the rank tropical vegetation, while the natives move on to another patch, which they clear and cultivate in like manner. This rude mode of tillage is commonly practised by many savages, especially within the tropics. Cultivation of this sort is migratory, and in some places, though apparently not in New Guinea, the people s.h.i.+ft their habitations with their fields as they move on from one part of the forest to another. Among the Yabim the labour of clearing a patch for cultivation is performed by all the men of a village in common, but when the great trees have fallen with a crash to the ground, and the trunks, branches, foliage and underwood have been burnt, with a roar of flames and a crackling like a rolling fire of musketry, each family appropriates a portion of the clearing for its own use and marks off its boundaries with sticks. But they also subsist in part by fis.h.i.+ng, and for this purpose they build outrigger canoes. They display considerable skill and taste in wood-carving, and are fond of ornamenting their houses, canoes, paddles, tools, spears, and drums with figures of crocodiles, fish, and other patterns.[402]

[Sidenote: Men's clubhouses (_lum_).]

The villages are divided into wards, and every ward contains its clubhouse for men, called a _lum_, in which young men and lads are obliged to pa.s.s the night. It consists of a bedroom above and a parlour with fireplaces below. In the parlour the grown men pa.s.s their leisure hours during the day, and here the councils are held. The wives cook the food at home and bring it for their husbands to the clubhouse. The bull-roarers which are used at the initiatory ceremonies are kept in the princ.i.p.al clubhouse of the village. Such a clubhouse serves as an asylum; men fleeing from the avenger of blood who escape into it are safe. It is said that the spirit (_balum_) has swallowed or concealed them. But if they steal out of it and attempt to make their way to another village, they carry their life in their hand.[403] Among the Yabim, according to Mr. Zahn, religion in the proper sense does not exist, but on the other hand the whole people is dominated by the fear of witchcraft and of the spirits of the dead.[404] The following is the account which Mr. Vetter gives of the beliefs and customs of these people concerning the departed.

[Sidenote: Beliefs of the Yabim concerning the state of the dead. The ghostly ferry.]

They do not believe that death is the end of all things for the individual; they think that his soul survives and becomes a spirit or ghost, which they call a _balum_. The life of human spirits in the other world is a shadowy continuation of the life on earth, and as such it has little attraction for the mind of the Papuan. Of heaven and h.e.l.l, a place of reward and a place of punishment for the souls of the good and bad respectively, he has no idea. However, his world of the dead is to some extent divided into compartments. In one of them reside the ghosts of people who have been slain, in another the ghosts of people who have been hanged, and in a third the ghosts of people who have been devoured by a shark or a crocodile. How many more compartments there may be for the accommodation of the souls, we are not told. The place is in one of the islands of Siasi. No living man has ever set foot in the island, for smoke and mist hang over it perpetually; but from out the mist you may hear the sound of the barking of dogs, the grunting of swine, and the crowing of c.o.c.ks, which seems to shew that in the opinion of these people animals have immortal souls as well as men. The natives of the Siasi islands say that the newly arrived ghosts may often be seen strolling on the beach; sometimes the people can even recognise the familiar features of friends with whom they did business in the flesh.

The mode in which the spirits of the dead arrive at their destination from the mainland is naturally by a ferry: indeed, the prow of the ghostly ferry-boat may be seen to this day in the village of Bogiseng.

The way in which it came to be found there was this. A man of the village lay dying, and on his deathbed he promised to give his friends a sign of his continued existence after death by appearing as a ghost in their midst. Only he stipulated that in order to enable him to do so they would place a stone club in the hand of his corpse. This was done.

He died, the club was placed in his cold hand, and his sorrowing but hopeful relations awaited results. They had not very long to wait. For no sooner had the ghost, armed with the stone club, stepped down to the sea-sh.o.r.e than he called imperiously for the ferry-boat. It soon hove in sight, with the ghostly ferryman in it paddling to the beach to receive the pa.s.senger. But when the prow grated on the pebbles, the artful ghost, instead of stepping into it as he should have done, lunged out at it with the stone club so forcibly that he broke the prow clean off. In a rage the ferryman roared out to him, "I won't put you across! You and your people shall be kangaroos." The ghost had gained his point. He turned back from the ferry and brought to his friends as a trophy the prow of the ghostly canoe, which is treasured in the village to this day. I should add that the prow in question bears a suspicious resemblance to a powder-horn which has been floating about for some time in the water; but no doubt this resemblance is purely fortuitous and without any deep significance.

[Sidenote: Transmigration of human souls into animals.]

From this veracious narrative we gather that sometimes the souls of the dead, instead of going away to the spirit-land, transmigrate into the bodies of animals. The case of the kangaroos is not singular. In the village of Simbang Mr. Vetter knows two families, of whom the ghosts pa.s.s at death into the carcases of crocodiles and a species of fabulous pigs respectively. Hence members of the one family are careful not to injure crocodiles, lest the souls of their dead should chance to be lodged in the reptiles; and the members of the other family would be equally careful not to hurt the fabulous pigs if ever they fell in with them. However, the crocodile people, not to be behind their neighbours, a.s.sert that after death their spirits can also roam about the wood as ghosts and go to the spirit-land. In explanation they say that every human being has two souls; one of them is his reflection on the water, the other is his shadow on the land. No doubt it is the water-soul which goes to the island of Siasi, while the land-soul is free to occupy the body of a crocodile, a kangaroo, or some other animal.[405]

[Sidenote: Return of the ghosts.]