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THE
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PEOPLES OF THE WORLD:
HKIXf!
A Popular Description of the Characteristics, Condition, ami Customs
of the Human Family.
MY
ROBERT BROWN, M.A., PH.D., F.L.S., F.R.G.8.,
AVTHOK OF " THE COUNTRIES OK THE WORLD," ETC. ETC'.
9Hti*tr«tefc«
V*
VOL. T.
CASSELL, FETTER, GALPIN & Co,
LONDON, PARIS & NEW YORK.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
1882.
\\\
PREFACE,
BEING of the opinion of Sir Roger L' Estrange, that "'Tis neither usual
nor handsome to leap immediately from the title-page to the matter,"
I may explain that this Work is a new, much enlarged, and, it is
hoped, greatly improved, edition of THE RACES OF MANKIND. Indeed,
so thoroughly has the book been re-cast — both as regards letterpress
and illustrations — that it would have been misleading to have issued
it under its old name. Several of the volumes will be virtually the
result of the writer's own travels and observations, and in every case,
so far as space has admitted, the most recent authorities, and
published works in many languages, have been consulted. These
obligations are invariably acknowledged ; and it is trusted that in its
present dress, the only treatise which has attempted to describe man-
kind at once comprehensively, popularly, and yet scientifically, may
prove as worthy of the reader's regard as it did in its cruder form.
R. B.
y
CONTENTS.
I'AOK
INTRODUCTION .......................................... .. 1
CHAPTER I.
THE AMERICANS: THEIR ORIGIN AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS; THE ESKIMO ... ... ... ... ... 11
CHAPTER II.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAS INDIANS: CHARACTER; GAMES, ETC.
CHAPTER III.
THE NoBTH-WB8TEH> AMERICAN INDIANS: OCCUPATIONS; GOVERNMENT; .SLAVERY.; WAR
CHAPTER IV.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAS INDIANS: MERRYMAKINGS: MARRIAGE, BIRTH, AND BURIAL CUSTOMS ... 75
CHAPTER \.
RELIGION AND FOLKLORE OF THE NORTH-WESTERN INDIANS ........................ 100
CHAPTER VI.
THE INDIANS 01 CALIFORNIA: HOUSES; UAHITS; CONDITION... ... ... ... ... .. ... ... 137
CHAPTEIl VII.
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: THEM; GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS ................. 150
CHAPTER VI 11.
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: CO.HANCHES, AVACHES, ETC. ... ... ... ... ... ... 172
CI1A1TKK IX.
PUEIILO INDIANS: PIMAS ; Mouuis; PAVAGOS .............................. 183
CHAPTER X.
PLAIN AND PRAIRIE TRIHES : UTES, PAWNEES, ETC ........................... 1!>2
CHAPTER XI.
INDIANS or THE NORTH .EASTEHN STATES: DELAWARE**, CHEROKEES, CHOCT.WVS, AND OTHER TRIHES OF THE
INDIAN TERRITORY 202
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XII. PAGE
CANADIAN INDIANS: OJIKWAYS 210
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MEXICAN AND CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS: AZTECS; MOSQUITIAN AND OTHER TRIIIE^ ... 227
CHAPTER XIV.
SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: CARIBS; ARAAVAKS; WAKATS ; ACAWOIOS . ... 247
CHAPTER XV.
THE BRAZILIAN, BOLIVIAN, AND PAMPEAN INDIANS . 274
CHAPTER XVI.
CHILENO-PATAGONIANS : ARAUCANIANS ; PATAGONIANS; TIERRA DEL FUEGIANS . 282
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PERUVIANS: THEIR ANCIENT CIVILISATION; THEIR PRESENT CONDITION AND CHARACTER... .. ... 299
CHAPTER XVIII.
HISPAXO-AMERICAN LIFE: THE MIXTURE 01- THE COXUUEROR AND THE CONUUEKED ; THE RESULT .. ... 309
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PACK
Iroup of Greenlanders ... ... ... Frontispiece
I >rmish Bronze Knife of Bronze Age ... ... 1
Tumulus of the Neolithic, or Polished Stone Epoch 4
Rude Weapons of Primitive Man ... ... ... 5
Different Shapes of Skulls 8
Types of Heads 9
Kock-Shelter at Bruniquel, an Abode of Man
during the Reindeer Age ... ... ... 12
Swiss Lake Village of the Bronze Age (Restored) 13
An Eskimo Woman of the Adelaide Peninsula ... 16
Greenland Eskimo in his Kayak. (From fin Original
Drawing)... ... ... ... ... ... 17
In Council with the Xetehillik Eskimo ... ... 20
An Arctic Ferry-boat (Schwatka's Expedition) ... 21
Greenland Eskimo Men. (Front mi Or'u/in/il Photo-
(jnipli bi/ ]>r. ttnik)
Greenland Eskimo Dog-Sledgc
Eskimo Snow Huts, near Cape Herschel, King
William Land 28
The Danish Settlement of Godthaab in Greenland 29
Crow Chief, from the Rocky Mountains, in Gala
Dress 33
Flatbow and Kootanie Indians, near the Western
Side of the Rocky Mountains ... ... ... 36
Village of Prairie Indians ... ... ... ... 37
Mission Indians of Southern California ... ... 40
Indian Warriors and their Wives ... ... .. II
Ute Indians of Western Colorado ... ... ... 11
Dog Dance of the Minataree Indians (Upper Mis-
souri) To face page 47
Hydah Women from the Queen Charlotte Islands IS
The Buffalo-Dance of the Prairie Indians... ... 49
Shawanoh, the Ute Chief who was Sent to Wash-
ington in 1863 to Treat with the United States
Government ... ... ... ... ... 53
An Indian Bury ing-ground in the West 06
Chief in Full Dress 57
Blackfoot Indian Chief 61
Indian Bow, Quiver, and Baskets made from Grass,
Cyperus Root, &c 64
Three Stages of Civilisation : A Sketch near Foit
Laramie ... ... ... 65
Shoshone Indian and his Squaw 68
Indian Grandee at his Toilet, Waited on by a
Wave ... 69
Indian Scalping his Dead Enemy ... ... ...
The " Slabs " on the Columbia River, Mount Hood
in the Distance ... ... ... ... ...
Discovery of Skeletons of American Soldiers Slain
by Indians in 1867 ... ... Tof«ccp<igc
Indian Dancers personating <; Xight " and " Day"
Scene in a Mandan Village — The Rain-Maker ...
Squaw and Child ................
Mandan Indians, with "Medicine-Man" in Bear-
Skin ..................
Scene in the Sierra Nevada ... ... ... ...
Indians from the Lower Fraser, showing the Flat-
tened Forehead, and the Child in the Cradle
undergoing the Flattening Process ... ...
Mura Indian (South America), with Teeth-" Orna-
ments" through the Lips and Tattooing on
the Checks ...............
Indians of the Rio Oermejo (Brazil), showing Ear
and- Lip Ornaments in Wood, like those of
the Hydahs in Queen Charlotte Islands ...
Mandan Burial-ground ... ... ... ...
Indian Medicine-Men in Masks and Masquerade
Dresses ... ... ... ... ... ...
The " Rain-Maker" Shooting his Arrows at the
Clouds ..................
Medicine-Man Representing the Evil Spirit ...
Entering British Columbia. (Differ Milton and
Cheadtr) ..................
Mah-to-toh-pa, Second Chief of the Mandans in
the Year 1833 ... ..' ..........
The "Serpent and Beaver" Dance of the Indians
A River in the Rocky Mountains ... ... ....
North- Western American Indians. (From Original
Indian Painting on the Lodge Skins ... ...
Sioux Indian, showing the Method of Dressing
the Hair ..................
Canoe River. (After Milton and Chendlc]... ...
" Diggers" in a Canoe made of several Trees par-
tially Hollowed out and Fastened together ...
Diggers on Land ... ... ... ... ...
Indian of California ... ... ... ... ...
Indian Woman of Sacramento River ... ...
A View on the North Thompson. (After Milton
and Cheadle} ...
80
81
8">
88
89
92
96
105
108
109
116
117
120
121
125
128
132
133
136
137
140
141
144
vni
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE <
Calif ornian Mission Indians... ... ... ... 118
A Buffalo Kobe with Indian Paintings on it ... 149
A Cheyenne Chief in Semi-Civilised Dress ... 152
Indian Scout To face page 153
The " Wolf," a Ute Indian 156
Buffalo Hunting 160
Chcyennes and Araphoes , ... ... To face page 161
Sioux Indian Tobacco Bags, Mystery Whistle,
Rattles, and Drum. (Partly after Cat tin} ... 164
Prairie Indian Fully Equipped for Travel ... 165
Indian Scalp Dance ... ... ... ... ... 169
Indians Attacking the Overland Mail on the
" Plains" before the. Days of the Pacific Rail-
road To face page 170
Fort Bowie, Ari/ona, in the Country of the
Apaches ... ... ... ... .. ... 177
An Indian Horse Race ... ... ... ... 181
Mendicant Village Indians of Mexico ... ... 184
Village Indians, from Northern Mexico (Water
( 'arriers) ... ... ... ... ... ... 185
The Prong-horn Antelope (Antilocaprn Americana')
Hunted by the Utes, Comaiiches, and other
"Plains" Indians 189
Not-o-way (the Thinker), an Iroquois Indian.
(After Catlin} 192
On-Daig (the Crow), a Chippeway Indian. (After
Catlin} ... 193
Old Fort Garry, in the Red River Country (Mani-
toba) 196
A Night Encampment on Eagle River — Expecting
the Crees. (After Milton and Cheadle} ... 197
An Indian Burial-ground ... ... ... ... 200
The Benches of the Fraser River, near Lilloet,
British Columbia. (After Milton a, id Clieadle] 201
Pawnee Indians To face piii/i- 202
Portraits of Petohpeekis, a Blackfoot, and Tallee,
an Osage. (After Cat in,} 20)
Osceola, Leader of the Seminoles during their
War Against the United States. (After
Catlin} 209
Canadian Indians. (From Jl'i.'xf'x I'i.et.ttre of the
Death of General Wolfe, in Hampton Court
Palace] 212
Indian Hunting on Snow-Shoes ... ... ... 213
View in a Canadian Forest ... ... ... ... 216
View on the St. Lawrence, Canada ... ... 217
The Musquash, or Musk-Rat (Fiber zibethieux) ... 220
Chippeway Indians Fishing in Birch-bark Canoes,
Sault DC St. Mary's, Lake Superior 221
North-American Indian Type of Face (Ojibway) 224
A Creek in Newfoundland — Indian Wigwam ... 225
Aztec Ruin in Yucatan ... ... .. ... 228
Aztec Ruins at Palenque, Mexico ... ... ... 233
Race Types of Yucatan, Mexico ... ... ... 236
Aztec (or Toltec) Ruin in Central America ... 237
Indian Woman of the Ticrra Calient e, Mexico ... 240
Indian of the Mexican Coast ... ... . . 241
Mexican Indians Working in a Silver Mine at San
Pedro 245
Conibo Indian (Male) ... ... ... ... 248
Conibo Indian (Female) ... ... ... ... 249
Halt of Indians at the Threshold of the Forest ... 253
Mesaya Indian of the River Japura, one of the
Tributaries of the Amazon ... ... ... 25G
The First Steamer on the Orinoco ... To fare page 257
Miranhas Indians, from the Rio Negro ... ... 257
Pile Village of Maracaibo 260
Maracaibo Indians Embarking ... ... ... 201
" Yahna Indians," or Bush Negroes ... ... 265
Conibos Shooting Turtle 268
Combos Preparing Turtles' Eggs ... ... ... 269
Mayorunas Indians, from the Upper Am;i/on ... 272
Mundrucu Indian from the Amazon ... ... 273
Mundrucu Indian Woman ... ... ... ... 276
Machicuy Indian of the Gran Chaco 277
Antis Snuff-takers 280
Antis Indians of Eastern Bolivia ... To face pay c 281
Antis Indians Shooting Fish ... ... ,.. 281
Patagonian Woman and Man Dancing ... ... 2S5
A Patagonian Encampment... ... ... ... 289
Paraguayan with his Mate-Pot ... ... ... 292
The Strait of Magellan 29:5
Fuegians ... ... ... ... ... ... 296
Cape Horn ... ... ... ... ... ... 297
Conibos, from the River Ucayali, a Tributary of
the Amazon To face page 300
Group of " Tndios Mausos." or Domesticated
Peruvian Indians from Cuzco ... ... ... 301
Huascar, Thirteenth Emperor of the Incas ... 304
Coya Cahuana, Empress of the Incas 305
Negro Half-caste Girl 312
Young Mestiza Woman ... ... . . . . . . 313
Limeno "Swell" 310
Limena Belle ... ;!17
GROUP OF GREKNLANPKRS.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
INTRODUCTION.
beginning the study of man from a purely natural history point of
view, the first fact which strikes us is the immense diversity which he
displays. Every individual is different in appearance. No two faces are
exactly alike ; scarcely two minds are comparable from every point of view :
even the members of the same family will display the widest differences
in features, and in mental and moral characteristics. But when we take
a still more extended view we discover that the diversity among the races
of mankind is still greater than among the individuals. The Englishman
and the Negro, the Fijian and the Frenchman, the Bushman of South Africa
and the Arab of the northern part of the same Continent seem so dif-
ferent in appearance that at first sight the easiest solution of the problem
presented is to affirm that they are different species of the same genus,
just as the cat, the tiger, and the leopard are all species of the genus
Fclis. But this doctrine, though for a time adopted by some of the
DANISH BRONZE KNIFE wilder order of ethnologists, is now held by few whose names carry any
)F BRONZE AGE. weight. The best naturalists, even those whose faith is laid , deep in
Darwinian soil, are satisfied that whatever might have been the origin of man, the diversified
races, which it is the purpose of these volumes to describe, are all sprung from one stock,
and that the differences of complexion, features, and general character and distribution
are due to physical surroundings and other causes operating through long ages of
the earth's history. In the rest of the animal world we see something very similar.
The numerous varieties of oxen, horses, sheep, and dogs are all considered varieties
of a single species which, under the influence of domestication, has Branched off
into the bewildering complexity of forms we now see. This we know to be a fact.
Hence, though it may be sometimes a little puzzling to explain how one pair of the human
species should, even in the course of uncounted eons, have given birth to so diverse forms of
their species, it is a still easier hypothesis, and one infinitely more in accordance with facts,
than to assume the dogma of the " poiygem'sts,'" who to avoid one difficulty run into
another by insisting on the "plurality of man." Not to enumerate many other points,
2 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
which will be touched on by-and-by as we proceed from land to land and from tribe to tribe,
it may be mentioned that folk-lore, or traditionary mythology — which, so long despised, has
at length become one of the chief corner-stones of the ethnological fabric — lias shown that
races at one time believed to have no possible connection with each othei', and who speak
tongues in which the philologist can trace no similarities, have identically the same super-
stitions and tales, which could not, unless we are to allow the same belief, and that
of a very complicated description, arise among widely-scattered nations without books,
culture, or any external aid to their imagination, and who have never had any relations
with each other, or even been aware of each other's existence.
Entering into a consideration of the matter a little more fully, we find that even
colour, which at first strikes us as the most remarkable difference, is — as Linnaeus long
ago declared — of comparatively little moment as a specific character. As has been so
repeatedly pointed out, a black face is common to races very widely apart. The Moors
of Senegal are among the highest of the superior peoples of the world, the Bushmen
of the Cape Colony about the lowest; yet the first is as swarthy as the neighbouring
negroes, whilst the last is of " the colour of coffee with milk/' to use a French naturalist's
familiar simile. The skin of a negro is, moreover, of exactly the same structure anatomically as
that of a flaxen-haired Norseman, and in the mucous layer of very dark-complexioned
whites the pigment cells which give the colour to the skin of ' ' black " people are
developed in exactly the same way — in other words, there is a gradation in what has
been technically called " melanism. " Freckles are simply spots of the same nature as
that blackness which, owing to the same cause, has in the course of time suffused the entire
face of the swarthy barbarians of so many parts of the world ; though at the same time
sunshine and warmth are not the sole determining causes of colour. Otherwise, the Indians
of Central America would be as black as the West African negroes, though even there
the heat has some effect, since the Queen Charlotte Islanders who live off the northern
coast of British Columbia are among the fairest skinned of their race, while the Indians
from Mexico southward are among the darkest of all the American families of men. There
are also endless gradations in the hair of man. The "wool'"' of the negro, the lanky
horse-tail locks of the North American Indian, and the fine silky hair of the Caucasian
races have each some peculiarities. Links connecting them are not difficult to find ;
but, as ethnologists from the time of Prichard to that of Quatrefages have pointed out,
there is an infinitely greater variety displayed in a short time after certain of the
lower animals are transferred from their original home to a locality where they come under
different physical surroundings and influences. For example, the wool of the sheep will
in some hot countries be replaced by short, smooth hair, while in the high plains
of the Andes the wild boars are said to acquire a kind of wool, and numerous similar
changes attributed to climate and "the influence of surroundings " may be found described
in works treating of this department of "anthropology."
Our difficulties in studying the races of mankind, and in classifying them according
to some order is, that families once very different in appearance have in course of time
INTRODUCTION. 3
become crossed by intermarriage until they are now a hybrid people, combining the physical
and linguistic characters of the two, three, or more races of which they are the embodiment.
Nor is there any ground for believing, as has been argued from imperfect premisses, that
such " hybrid " nationalities become in time incapable of increase, a fact which goes far to
prove that the different families of men are " races " of the same species.
The origin of man, over which so much barren controversy has been expended, it is
no part of our business to discuss, nor need the kindred question of how long he has
existed on the earth occupy any part of these introductory paragraphs. The geologists have,
for the time being, exhausted the subject, and though for a period it seemed as if the
antiquity of the species was to be extended back to some indefinitely remote date, the
tendency of more recent and accurate researches has been, if not to falsify the earlier
observations, at least to warn hasty theorists to proceed less incautiously and assert more
tentatively. The spot on the earth's surface which was the earliest home of man, and from
whence he spread over the world, has also been the subject of keen dispute among those
who are at variance with Louis Agassiz and the illogical advocates of the doctrines held
by him in considering man of one species. This is a point that can never be accurately
determined, though for our purposes we may accept Quatrefages' view, that the primitive
family from which all the nations of mankind are sprung originally lived in Central Asia,
and wandered forth slowly in the course of long ages, impelled by various causes, into the
regions where we now find their descendants. That the people of the world have been
wanderers we have ample proof. There is scarcely any great nation without traditions of
having, at some period in its history, migrated from another country, and even when they
do not possess any such legend, language supplies a proof of their roamings, more sub-
stantial even than vague mythical history. The European nations by this test are
shown to be near relatives of those of India, while both are sprung from the shadowy
Aryans, whose home was most probably in the region of the Hindoo Koosh in Central
Asia, but about whom we hear so much and know so little. The Maoris of New Zealand
are no immediate relation of the Australians, but of the Sandwich Islanders, from whose
country they migrated within comparatively recent periods. The aborigines of Western
America have still traditions of their arrival in that country from Asia, just as have the
nations of South America and other countries. The dominant race in Madagascar are the
Hovas, a people of undoubted Malay origin ; and in the peopling of the Pacific Islands,
far apart, by tribes of the same kindred, we have a proof that this kind of voyaging is
possible, and has been actually accomplished. In modern times we have seen the Kalmouk
Horde, which in 1616 left the confines of China to settle in the Khanate of Kazan, upon the
shores of the Volga, retreating to the number of 600,000, with their cattle, children, and
effects, in eight months back to their original homes, nearly 800 leagues distant from the
Volga. This well-known historical event happened in the year 1771. But long before that
•date, and even since, we have seen man peopling the earth in a manner more extraordinary
than any hypothesis of one original centre for the race demands. The Europeans came
from Asia, but they have extended far beyond the limits of the Continent which they
•colonised, and have displaced aborigines more numerous and powerful than any which, at
4 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD-
the remote era of the arrival of the Aryans, in all likelihood wandered through the Euro-
pean forests. In less than four centuries they have covered North and South America, much
of Northern, Western, Southern, and Eastern Africa, and within the last few years have
begun to spread into the interior of that torrid Continent. Before them the warlike
aborigines of New Zealand have been compelled to retire : to make room for their surplus
population the Tasmanians have disappeared. Australia, which, prior to its attracting their
attention, was the home of a few miserable savages, is now being rapidly colonised in
TUMULI'S OF THE NEOLITHIC, OR POLISHED STONE EPOCH.
its habitable parts by busy graziers, farmers, miners, and traders of European birth or
descent. Long before Columbus touched the outliers of the American shore, wanderers;
from Norway and Greenland had reached the New England coast and established settlements.
There is indeed some ground for believing that, forestalling even the Scandinavian rovers,.
Europeans had visited the New World, and got gradually absorbed among the aborigines,
prior to the dawn of history (p. 15). Who reared the great earthen mounds in the Ohio Valley
we do not know any more than who mined by Lake Superior for copper and left their tools;
behind. It could not have been the present race of Indians, otherwise they must have
rapidly degenerated, since such erections are feats at present beyond their powers. We are
INTRODUCTION.
equally at a loss to know who were the highly civilised race who built the Casas grandes, the
" great houses " which the traveller comes upon in the depths of the forests in Yucatan and
Central America, and which in size and grandeur can only be compared with the like
ruins in the jungles of Cambodia, regarding the origin of which we are also in the dark.
RVDE WEAPONS OF PRIMITIVE MAX.
A, Paleolithic Flint Hatchet from Denmark ; B, Neolithic Danish Axe-Hammer, drilled for handle ; C, Spear-head from Denmark ;
D, Flint Arrow-head from Cirita Nuova, Italy ; E, Various Flint Arrow-heads from the Swiss Lake Dwellings ; F, Knife with
tang to fit into handle, from ditto ; G, Socketed Knife, from ditto ; H, Square Socketed Iron Hatchet, from ditto ; I, Bronze
Spear-head, from ditto ; K, Bronze Arrow-heads, from ditto ; L, Mode of fixing handle to a Scandinavian hatchet.
Numerous other instances of alien races, living in what is apparently their primeval home,
might be cited, and will be duly noticed as we proceed.
That physical surroundings will alter the appearance of those brought under them
is clear to any one who examines a few familiar facts. The rosy-cheeked, plump
Englishman is of the same race as the lithe, sparely-fleshed " Yankee" of New England,
6 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
or the straight, sinewy backwoodsmen of Canada or of Maine. In even a shorter time
some of our colonists have assumed the rank of a " race " in many respects different from
the stock of which they are offshoots. Take, for example, the Australian-born youth.
Familiarly he is known as a " corn-stalk," owing to his long, lank proportions. In like
manner the influence of the dry, desiccating climate is telling on the South African
Briton, and upon the people of almost any colony who live there long enough to enable
the physical atmosphere in which they are enveloped to work its influence upon their
bodies, and consequently on their minds. Even the Boer of dry South Africa is in
appearance very different from his cousins in moist Holland. The people who live in a
fine open country, abounding with game and food, and whose food of life induces active
exercise of mind and body, are invariably a finer race than those existing in low, malarious
districts, where the scanty subsistence which the country yields can be obtained without any
^•reat ingenuity and with the minimum of muscular exertion. The population of large towns
— it has been proved of France, and is affirmed of other countries — is only kept up by
continual streams of fresh blood from the rural districts, the unnatural condition of life
in a city being evidently unfitted for the natural increase of the population. Admitting,
then — as nearly every zoologist in our day does — that man is of one species, causes such as
we have faintly indicated must have been long in operation before the different breeds of
man could have become so widely separated as they are at present. When the Caucasian
recognises the Papuan, the Negro, or the aboriginal Australian as men and brothers, he
also by inference acknowledges that antiquity of the race, the evidence of which each of
these varieties of his common stock bears on hife countenance. Looked at in that way,
Dr. Tylor has remarked, in one of his useful digests, that the black, brown, yellow, and
white men, whom we may examine on our quays, may be regarded as " living records of
the remote past."
An hypothesis fondly cherished by unscientific writers, and even by some ethno-
logists of a certain class, is that many savage races are only degraded specimens of a
people who have fallen from a higher grade of civilisation. There is nothing to support
this view. People here and there retrograde in culture, but the instances in which this
has happened are so few that they can in general be easily traced, and are in most cases
purely local and due to exceptional causes. Every fact which we possess regarding the
early history of man goes to prove that originally he was a rude, uncultured barbarian,
as a rule little raised above the condition of a savage, and that he advanced little by
little, sometimes owing to one cause, or often owing to another, to a higher condition of
culture. Most frequently, likewise, the germs of civilisation have been introduced from
without and not from within, though, of course, this compels the presupposition of
civilisation somewhere else. Man hunted the wild beast with flint-pointed spears before
he tilled the soil with iron-shod ploughs. He lived in caves in the earth long before
he dreamed of making bricks and building houses, and the fragments of early faith and
polity which still linger among the most highly civilised of European natives show how
hideously primitive, how revoltingly vicious, were the relations of early man to his gods
and to his family. How rude some of these conditions of the " provisional races " were
INTRODUCTION.
we shall see by and by when we describe their modern representatives, and trace how
physical conditions influenced not only the persons of tribes, but the faith which he
formulated to replace the weirder devil-worship which in so many cases is the foundation
of savage religion.
It will thus be seen that any attempt to classify man must, owing to the circum-
stances mentioned, be exceedingly difficult. One race runs into another, and one class of
habits is partially or wholly common to the entire human family, or to several families.
The closet naturalist, with a few types before him, experiences little difficulty in dividing
off his collection into orders, and tribes, and genera. It is the same with the untravelled
anthropologist to whom we have been hitherto indebted (after a very subdued fashion)
for most of these racial "classifications." They find in their museums a shelf of skulls
labelled more or less accurately; they compile a few vocabularies from the travels of
voyagers not much better informed, and even less scientific, than themselves ; they separate
off these word-lists into families, and attach some type of skull to each, and call the
result an <e ethnological scheme/' any objections to which are overwhelmed with a cloud
of fragments of speech, mixed with the names of bits of bone.
In walking along the streets of any large city, or surveying the arrays of heads
presented at a crowded public meeting, the " craniologist" has no difficulty in detecting
every form of skull, and every possible connecting-link between all the forms he has
seen so patly described in the books. There are, however, certain forms of skulls
characteristic of certain races, their brain-pans of course inferring certain shapes of brain
inside them, and pro tanto certain mental peculiarities. There are, for example, the
" dolichocephalic," the " mesocephalie," and the " brachycephalic," or, in plain English,
the "long-headed/' the "middle-headed," and the "short-headed" peoples (p. 8). The negroes
are, among other races, all long-headed, and so are the North Germans, while the South
Germans are, in common with the Tartars, short or broad-headed people, while the
majority of mankind are middle-skulled. " Prognathism," or the projection of the jaws, as
contradistinguished from " Orthognathism," or " straightness " of that portion of the face,
is usually considered the distinguishing mark of a race of low mental characteristics, such
as the negroes who are particularly distinguished by faces of this description (p. 9).
But prognathism is common enough in individual cases among many European and even
Asiatic peoples, and is seen in an especial degree among the Esthonians of the southern
shores of the Baltic, a Finnish family of Mongol descent. This prognathism or the con-
trary, coupled with the protrusion or retreat of the forehead, gives rise to the "facial
angle," or the angle which results from the union of two lines, one drawn downwards
from the forehead to the front teeth, the other from the front teeth backward to the ear.
It has been assumed that the more acute this angle is, the lower is the intelligence of
the individual whose face displays it. To a certain extent this is true. The highest ape
has an acute facial angle, and the meanest intellects are not usually exhibited by people
with an obtuse one. Still the exceptions are so numerous that it would be rash to genera-
lise too confidently on this basis alone. It is therefore clear that no very sound
8 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
classification can be founded on the skull, though as an index to mental capacity and
some other points it is useful. The skin and hair, we have seen, are equally futile tests,
since there are all kinds of gradation in these features from one race to another, arid
even among the people of the same family. Moreover, bits of skin and tufts of hair in
every respect identical, could be produced from people who in other respects were the
antipodes of each other. Red hair is said to be found in every part of the world
except in America, but I have seen more than one North American Indian on the
DIFFERENT SHAPES OF SKULLS.
A, of Australian (prognathous) ; B, of African (prognathous) ; C, of European (orthognathous) ; D, of Samoyede (brachycephalic) ;
E, of European (mesocephalic) ; F, of Negro (dolichocephalic).
British Columbian coast with scarlet locks. The ancestry of these human "sports"
may, however, have been as doubtful as the Australian with red hair, whom D'Urville
describes. It is, however, unnecessary to pursue the subject further except to show what
grievous blunders mere closet system naturalists fall into, when, as in the case of Haeckel,
they form systems based on some unstable character, such as the hair, which has resulted
in massing together peoples having no second feature in common, and separating others
who are close allies, or even actual kinsmen.
Language, which is the basis of Latham's classification, and of those adopted by most
modern ethnologists, affords a better, though far from faultless, scheme. It must, indeed, be
INTRODUCTION.
received with extreme caution ; some nations having exchanged their language for that of
a different race, with whom, speaking in the conventional language of ethnologists, they
have no connection. The people of a great portion of France are Celts, but they speak
a Latin tongue which they adopted from their Roman conquerors ; the Germans east of
the Elbe were originally Slavs, but they have not spoken a Slavic dialect for nearly
two thousand years; and, not to multiply examples, numerous other instances might
be quoted of savage tribes, for some reason or another, exchanging their own
TYPES OF HEADS.
A, Gorilla; B, Australian; C, Negro ; D, American Indian; E, Mongol; F, European (highest type).
language for that of a people in no way akin to them. Yet, if we were not privy to this
fact, a grievous source of error would be introduced into our " classification." The Spanish-
speaking aborigines of America would, as Dr. Peschel aptly remarks, require, if language
were to be taken as the sole basis for classification, to be bracketed with the Iberian
people who subdued their territory, and the West African negroes, with the English
race who enslaved them, and in whose country they now live as freed men. Language
is, nevertheless, valuable in its place; out of that limited niche it is a mischievous
element in the work of the ethnographer, who is, however, year by year less and less
regarding it, as he less and less values classification except as a very secondary means
to an end, viz., the localisation of facts. By and by, as we travel around the world,
10 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
studying men and their manners, we shall see that there are three great fundamental
types of language, namely, the "monosyllabic" tongues, in which the words consist of one
syllable or sound; the "agglutinative" ones, in which several separate roots .are "joined
or glued on to the significant roots as terminations " in order to express an idea ; and
" inflected " languages, in which by various accents and inflections particular meanings
are given to particular words, as in the case of those spoken by the European and
Semitic nations. In these classes of languages speech has reached its highest development.
Here the significant root and the termination have become blended into one, and to a
great extent the traces of composition have been lost or obliterated by the phonetic changes
which the words have undergone. The families of language, so far as it is necessary
for us to enter upon their consideration, can be best examined under the head of the
races speaking them, since the classification which we shall adopt is to some extent based
upon linguistic characteristics. The origin of language has, from the earliest period at
which men felt any interest in such problems, excited the liveliest controversy. To cover
afresh the often-traversed ground is needless, except to say, in the briefest possible manner,
that the chances are that language originated in " emotional and constitution sounds,"
each of which had — according to this " bow-wow " theory, as it has been named — at one
time some likeness to the object whose appearance it expressed, or whose sound it imitated,
although an endless series of other causes have in addition been at work in adding to or
moulding those provisional tongues of primitive man. More than this we cannot affirm,
though in the works of Whitney, Sayce, Max Miiller, Pictet, Renan, Grimm, Steinthal,
Heyse, Peile, Hovelacque, Farrar, Tylor, and others, the question has been fully discussed.
Many semi-savage or wholly barbarous peoples can make themselves very intelligible by
means of a sign language, such as that " spoken" by some of the American prairie tribes,
whoso gestures are singularly well adapted to express their meaning. Indeed, every one
almost, unconsciously, even in the most cultured society, uses in a greater or less degree
this kind of "language" by grimaces, shakes of the head, nods, or waves of the hand, when
he expresses disapproval, affirmation, negation, or the resultant of other mental processes.
Writing, and the various arts of life, their mode of invention and their gradual develop-
ment are also interesting questions, but can best be discussed not in a systematic form, but at
the place where, in speaking of the different races, these arts or sciences call for notice.
Before, however, commencing the study of man as he now lives over the world, it
is well that the reader should remember that there were men before the present races of
mankind inhabited the countries they now do, the ancestors, it may be, of some of those
nations now high in civilisation, but who, at all events, lived and died, and gave way
to a nobler and better manhood, long before the dawn of written or traditional history.
They date from an age so remote, that their existence would not even have been suspected,
unless for the discoveries of late years. In the midst of the most highly civilised coun-
tries of Europe — France, Belgium, and England — the pick and shovel of the navvy, making
cuttings for railways and canals, have laid bare to the astonished gaze of the men of
to-day the rude dwellings of a long, long anterior race ; the cheerless caves in which they
buried their dead, or dragged in the remains of the now extinct animals with which they
INTRODUCTION. 11
warred ; the toys of their children ; the rude trinkets which ministered to the vanity of
their women, and the implements of stone with which they provided themselves with
food or defended themselves from their enemies. Man is essentially a " tool-makir.g
animal/' and about the earliest remains we discover of him are his rude spear-heads, flint
knives, stone axes, chisels, bone needles, &c., all furnishing materials for history to the
careful student, almost as perfect as if we had found the maker himself. These stone
implements are unequal in finish (p. 5). The earliest are very rudely fashioned, while the
more recent are much more finished, but all are unmistakably the work of an intelligent,
thinking being, namely, man. Then, by-and-by, in other deposits — peat or gravel — we
come upon bronze weapons, later, upon iron ; all showing certain advances in civilisation,
and, accordingly, antiquarians have classified the pre-historic ages of the world into the
Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, a classification, indeed, sketched out nineteen hundred years
ago by the great expositor of the Epicurean Philosophy.
" Man's earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails,
And stones, and fragments from the branching woods ;
Then copper next ; and last, as later traced,
The tyrant iron." — Lucretius, DC Herum Natura, v. 1282.
The Stone Age, however, is capable of further subdivision, according to the state of
civilisation shown to exist by means of the comparative finish of the weapon. Hence,
it has been divided into the Paleolithic (ancient stone) and Neolithic (new stone) periods;
and between these French archffiologists have distinguished a period which has been called
the Reindeer Age, from the presence in the South of the reindeer, an animal now confined
almost entirely to the far North. No doubt this classification is somewhat artificial, for some
nations, probably, used stone weapons long after others had got bronze or iron ; indeed,
many savage tribes do so at the present day. Still, for all practical purposes, it is
accurate enough, and supplies useful heads under which to classify our knowledge.
Some of these abodes of pre-historic man we have figured (pp. 4, 12, 13). Like
certain modern savages, he seems to have built villages on piles in shallow lakes, for safety
from wild beasts and wilder men; and in the mud of these lakes have been preserved
many of his tools and other surroundings, which enable us to learn much in regard to
the life of these remote inhabitants of Europe. But caves were his favourite homes. In
these caverns he either lived, or buried his dead, and, like his modern representative, laid
beside the corpse of the departed hunter the weapons he used, by that of the women
their rude ornaments., or by the bodies of the children the toys they played with.
Before the cave was a heavy sandstone slab, apparently placed there to protect it from
the ravages of wild beasts. In front of it was a terrace, where could be seen fragments
of charcoal and bones, with marks of the action of fire upon them. " Here the mourners
seem to have held their sad funeral feasts ; here the women wailed after nightfall ; and
then nightly, after the flat stone had been rolled to the cave's mouth and the weary
mourners took their departure," the hyaenas came prowling about to devour the remains of the
feast, as shown by the gnawing on the bones, and other traces of their visit scattered around.
The reader will have already gathered that we attach comparatively little importance
to one ethnological classification over another. Those which enable iis to comprise a
12
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
description of the different races in something like scientific order are almost equally good;
and it is clear, since the most distinguished philologists, craniologists, and ethnologists
ROCK-SHELTER AT URUNIQUEL, AN ABODE OF MAN DURING THE REINDEER AGE.
are not at one regarding the best mode into which to group the nations and tribes
of the world, no very exact or deep-rooted principles must be at stake in the formation
INTRODUCTION.
13
of the numerous classifications which have been published. Buff on, Blumenbach, Lacepede,
Cuvier, Virey, Prichard, Quatrefages, D' Halloy, Friedrich Mu'ller, and Latham, among others,
have all formed tabular lists of more or less merit. Perhaps, after all, Dr. Latham's
is the best, and it accordingly, with some trifling modifications, we shall adopt. The familiar
groups such as Caucasian (most of the European and some of the Asiatic peoples), the
Mongolian (Chinese, Tartars, &c.), Malays (Oceanic and Indian Islands), Americans, and
the Ethiopians or African races, will, however, be occasionally spoken of, more as
SWISS LAKE VILLAGE OF THE BKON7.E AGE (UESTOHEI)).
forming the small change of ethnological dealings, than as expressing any very strictly
defined groups. Latham divided mankind into (1) Americans; (2) the Oceanic group;
(3) Turanians — of whom some sticklers for philological accuracy, who strain at a gnat and
swallow a camel, deny the scientific existence; (4) the Persian group; (5) the Indian
stock; (6) the Africans; (7) the Mongolians; (8) the Caucasians, in the limited
meaning of the term ; and, (9) the Europeans. Under these nine groups and their
various subdivisions, we shall be able, without confining ourselves very strictly to their
exact limits, or vouching for the philological or anatomical accuracy of the data on which
they have been formed, to sketch the chief types of the Peoples of the World.
CHAPTER I.
THE AMERICANS : THEIR ORIGIN AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS : THE ESKIMO.
WEEN Columbus discovered the New World, he considered that he had come upon a part
of India ; and accordingly he called the natives of the American continent " Indians/' a
name by which they are familiarly known to this day. The name is of course geographically
incorrect, America having nothing- to do with India; still, as long1 use has rendered it difficult
to lay the name altogether aside, and as everybody knows what is meant by the " American
Indians," I shall continue to use it in the following pages. The American race, take it
as a whole, is a very homogeneous one, occupying the whole continent from the Arctic Ocean,
to Cape Horn, and though differing much in language, yet presenting many general
characteristics. They are as a rule robust, well made, strong, active specimens of humanity,
and, with the exception of the Eskimo branch, rather tall. The skull, when unaltered, is of an
oval shape, but the forehead is in general low and sloping. Many tribes, we shall by-and-by
see, flatten the forehead by artificial means; but other tribes, like the ancient Mexicans, are
naturally so formed. Indeed, the Aztecs used to represent their gods as possessing flattened
foreheads, which they thought a mark of great beauty; probably it was this idea that led them
to produce the same effect by artificial means. The nose in the greater number at least of the
North American tribes is long, aquiline, and well defined ; the mouth is not of great size, the
eyes are rather sloping in many of them, the teeth set vertically in the gums, while the lips do
not differ much from those of Europeans. Their eyes are brown, and the hair long, straight,
and black. When any beard is present, it is but scanty, though it is generally plucked out.
The colour of the skin varies from a light brown to a coppery brown, in some tribes being
almost black. The race is rather high in intelligence and in physical appearance, but is
entirely a nation of hunters and fishers, living, with few exceptions, in a state of savagedom,
and only in rare instances cultivating any portion of the soil.
That the American Indians originally came from the Asiatic coast, there can, I think, be
but little doubt. The Mongol appearance is very marked among the tribes nearest that
coast — that is, on the shores of the Pacific, but gets less noticeable as we go eastward, until
it is very little observed among the Indians north of the Atlantic sea-board. Indeed, the
traditions of the Western American Indians all point to the still further westward as the land
they came from, while the Eastern Indians say they came from the west : " A great medicine-
man went before them, and every night planted a red pole where they were to encamp."
A vast amount of speculation has been spent on the interesting question, as to the origin
of the Indian, from the Topsy-like hypothesis of the extreme German and French school, that
• nt>7 " growed," or sprung into existence just where they are, and did not come by migration from
any other place, to the theory that they are the lost ten tribes of Israel. On this charming
Semitic hypothesis the Book of Mormon was founded; but there seems no ground for it
THE AMERICANS: THEIR ORIGIN. 15
whatever, except in some semi-Jewish customs — customs, however, that are common to various
other nations as well, and may be only part of the common property of the human raee. Then
I he Phoenicians are supposed to have aided in the colonisation of America, and there is a legend
that a Welsh prince (Madoc), about a thousand years ago, landed and colonised the country. All
these are mere vague traditions, and though it is just barely possible that there may have been
an admixture of Europeans in America long before Columbus or even his predecessors, the old
Norsemen, discovered the continent (for instance, the Mandans of the Missouri, a tribe nearly
extinct, had the Welsh coracle, and many words said to be of Welsh origin among them),
yet there is nothing certain, or even reasonable, in support of these ideas.* On the contrary,
not only are the Western Indians in appearance very like their nearest neighbours, the North-
eastern Asiatics, but in language and tradition it is confidently affirmed there is also a
blending of the people. The Eskimo on the American, and the Tchuktchis 011 the Asiatic side
of Behring Strait, understand each other perfectly. Finally, if more proof was required, we have
only to point out that several canoes and junks from the opposite coast have been landed on the
American coast, and that in the winter the natives will cross from either side of Behring Strait
with their skin canoes on their heads. Mr. Dall, who lived for some time in that district of
country, and paid particular attention to the question, unhesitatingly declares his belief that the
North-western Indians — at least those of Alaska — are recent immigrants from Asia, and that
indeed they are still coming over. They carry on extensive commerce across Behring Strait in
skins, frames for boats, hunting and fishing equipments, &c. The Asiatic immigrants are, how-
ever, confined to a few leagues of country along the coast and large rivers, while another people,
or at least an earlier arrived one, inhabits the interior. The boundary line between the two
races is very marked, and encroachments on each other's territory are never tolerated. If a
hunter passes the line in the chase and kills any game, he can take the carcase away, but must
leave the skin at the nearest village. The coast people and the interior ones never intermarry.
Probably Japan, the Kuriles, and the region thereabouts must be looked upon as the
original home of the American race, or at least the greater portion of it. In 1831- a Japanese
junk was wrecked at Queen-haith, to the south of Cape Flattery, and the three survivors were
sent back to Japan. They had been driven off the Island of Yeso, and losing their reckoning,
had drifted about for several months, during which time the crew, which had been originally
forty in number, had dwindled down, by hardship and hunger, to three. Again, on the
21st of April, 1817, in lat. 35° north, long. 156° east, a Japanese junk was fallen in with
which had lost her rudder, and been driven to sea in a gale in November, 1846. She
had on board a crew of nine men, and about 2,000 Ibs. of beeswax, and other cargo.
Oil another occasion an American whaler, in May, 1847, fell in with a large junk of
200 tons burden, dismantled, with her rudder gone, and otherwise injured in a typhoon, which
had occurred seven months previously. The crew, originally consisting of seventeen persons,
was reduced to fourteen, who were in a most pitiable condition from famine, and all scarred
with dirk and knife wounds, for fearful scenes seemed to have been enacted on board during
the struggle for existence and amid the paroxysms of hunger and despair.f The Indians
* In a humorous form Washington Irving, in tho introduction to "Knickerbocker's History of New
York," gives a summary of these various hypotheses.
t Anderson, in the New York Historical Magazine for 1863, p. 81, quoting Honolulu Polynesian of 13 1'/.
16 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
have a tradition that, many years ago, long before the whites settled among them, a vessel
laden with wax, and apparently a Japanese junk, was wrecked on their coast. To this day
pieces of the wax are tossed up, and at one time the Hudson Bay Company used to trade it
AX ESKIMO WOMAN OF THE ADELAIDE PENINSVLA.
from the natives. Very recently a similar case was recorded in the newspapers ; but the above
will suffice to show that there are no obstacles to prevent America having been originally peopled
from the Asiatic coast. The number of tribes on the American continent is very remarkable,
and the languages are equally multifarious, though all of the general " agglutinative " con-
struction. The famous Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States, was in the habit of
pointing to this diversity of languages as a proof of the antiquity of the American aboriginal
THE ESKIMO: THEIR ORIGIN.
17
race. It points, however, to nothing more than that the native races of America have been
always at war with each other, and confined therefore to isolated communities, holding little
mutual intercourse with each other, and thus the languages have got further and further
separated from each other. In giving a general sketch of the American races, we may throw
them into great groups, of a more or less geographical diameter, the habits and, in most cases,
the origin of the tribes being similar in these regions.
GliEEXLAXD ESKIMO IN HIS KA1AK. (From an Orig'nal Drawing.)
THE ESKIMO.*
Here is a very distinct family of the Americans, that extends across the whole northern
coast of the American continent, from Behring Strait on the one side to Greenland on the other,
coming as far south as Labrador on the Atlantic and the Yukon River on the Pacific sea-board, but
throughout all this large area remaining a very isolated and characteristic people, not differing
very widely either in habits or language. The Laps and Samoyedes of the European coast,
* Commonly spelled Esquimaux, and pronounced Esquimaw or Esquimow ; but I prefer to adopt the Danish
orthography, which is now followed by the best writers. The English whaling sailors in Baffin's Bay call them
"Yaks," and the Hudson Bay men " Huskies." What is the origin of the first word I cannot say, but the latter
seems only a corruption of Esquimaux ; which, again, is said to be a corruption either of the Abenaki Indian Eskimatsic,
or the Ojibway Aakimeg, both words meaning "raw flesh-eaters." They call themselves "Inniut," or " the people."
18 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
though in some respects approximating1 to them, are yet of a different race: while the
Tchuktchis, on the Asiatic shores, Dr. Rink has clearly proved to be only the Asiatic
representatives in the most western limits of the Eskimo race. They are confined to the
unwooded shores of the Arctic Sea, rarely going far into the country, and having their
proper home on the — to us — most desolate, cold, and forbidding part of the continent.
An exploring or other Arctic-going ship will " hook on to the ice-floe " in some quiet bay,
as silent and as dreary as ever the eye of man rested on. Snow is all around, snow is
falling fast, the very eye gets chilled with the sight, even the water-birds, gorged with blubber,
sit in meditative rows on the edge of a piece of floating ice — it seems a world " unfinished from
the hands of the Creator." As we pace the snow-covered deck, alternately gazing on the snow-
covered, glacier-intersected land, and the snow-laden, frozen sails and shrouds, we are startled
by a clear sound through the still Arctic air. We listen ; surely it cannot be the sound of man ;
surely no man lives in this hope-forsaken place. Again ! It is the sound of 110 sea-bird — the
cry of no polar bear ; it must be the echo of men's voices. The snow has ceased for a moment
and the sun has peered out from behind the leaden clouds, and afar off, on the white ice-floe
connecting the land and our vessel, we see some black specks. As the specks approach nearer
we can make them out to be dog-sledges, filled with little fur-clad people.; and in another place
are numbers of skin-canoes, looking like large black dogs in the water, paddling through an
open " lane " in the ice. Soon, with shouts of gladness, and the howling of their motley dog-
teams, they are alongside — men, women, and children — and standing, wild-looking denizens of
the ice and snow, hailing every one with cries of " Timoo ! Timoo ! " (good cheer, good cheer) .
These are the Eskimo, the most northerly family of the human race, as well as of the American
subdivision of it. That they are Americans there can, I conceive, be but little doubt. Certainly
on the eastern shores they differ widely from the Indians, but as you approach the Pacific coast
they imperceptibly inosculate the one into the other in language, and even habits and
customs. When, in 18G3, I first saw the Indians of the north-west coast of America they
seemed old friends of mine ; and having only two years before passed a summer among the
Eskimo of the western shores of Davis Strait, I was struck with their remarkable resemblance to
the heavy-faced-looking people who lined the road from Esquimault to Victoria. In personal
appearance they are far from repulsive, though not handsome. In height they may be, on
an average, about five feet six inches ; but tall men are now and then seen amongst them, and
the notion that they are very small arises more from the style of their dress than from any real
deficiency in stature. Their faces are fat, egg-shaped, and good humoured, with small twinkling,
rather sloping eyes, and a flat nose meandering away on either side in an expanse of nostril
into fat brown cheeks. Their colour is fairer than that of many of the Indians, but their skin
being usually very dirty and smoked, the natural colour can rarely be seen. Their lips do not
differ much from those of Europeans, but the cleft of their mouth is usually very wide. Their
hair is generally long, black, straight, and coarse, while few of them have any whisker, beard, or
moustache, a slight amount of hair on the upper lip and a little on the chin being for the most
part the only approach to these which the most hirsute of them possess. Their hands and feet
are usually rather small, but their bodies are muscular and broad about the shoulders, yet — as
a rule — they are not nearly so strong as Europeans, the feats of ordinary sailors striking them as
miracles of strength. Their teeth are usually regular and well set, but in middle-aged and old
THE ESKIMO: THEIR APPEARANCE AND DRESS.
people worn down — as among the Indians and many other savages — to the gum, on account of
the hard or sand-mixed food which their not over-cleanly habits allow them to consume without
proper cooking or washing. Grey-haired people are not uncommon, though the Eskimo are not
a short-lived people, take them as a whole. I have spoken of their dirty habits, which darken
their otherwise not particularly swarthy complexions. To water they have a great dislike.
When they wash themselves (which is rarely), a dirty and offensive liquid often supplies the
place of the usual toilet requisite. If, however, they wet their feet, they never rest until
they change their boots, the cold climate rendering them stiff and the feet icy after their
immersion. It is probably the cold climate which gives them such an antipathy to washing.
None of them can swim, as the chilly water soon freezes them, and even if they had learned the
art, it would render the exercise of it impossible. If the mother wishes the child to look a
little more cleanly than the dirt and smoke of an Eskimo hut would naturally allow, she
applies her tongue to the infant, and the result is satisfactory — to the infant ! In like manner
after she has cooked a piece of meat, she licks any sand or dirt off it before handing it to her
husband or guest. The men's hair hangs in long dishevelled locks down their backs; while
the women's is more artistically dressed, being drawn up to the top of the head, and then
tied in a knot, with a bit of reindeer skin or similar material. Some of them allow a
plaited lock to hang down at either side of the neck. The dress of the children is only a
miniature edition of that of the adults, and is the same for males and females until they are
three or four years old, when some slight changes are introduced. The dress of the men and
women is very much the same, and though it differs slightly among different tribes, is yet on
the whole very similar throughout. The men wear a short jacket made of seal-skin or reindeer
fur, with a hood behind — which hood can be drawn over the head and ears, exposing nothing
but the face. In the winter season, underneath this jacket — which is put on by drawing it over
the head like a shirt — the Eskimo usually wears another with the fur inside) or a shirt made of
bird-skins. Their trousers, among the wilder tribes, are also made of seal, bear, or reindeer skin,
and usually reach just below the knee, and are made so loose that a pair of boots can go under
them, which, with a pair of large, fingerless, skin gloves, complete the dress. The boots are
very excellently made of native tanned sealskin, chewed soft by the women, until it is in a
condition to be manufactured. The way the " uppers" are crimped, so as to be sewed with sinew
thread to the soles, is most ingenious. The soles are also made of seal-skin of a stronger quality.
The boots are stuffed with grass, and have a stocking of reindeer or seal-skin, with the hair inside.
The whole forms an article of wear infinitely superior to anything of European make. Indeed,
Europeans, if they have occasion to travel among the Eskimo, soon cast off their clumsy, inflexible
boots, and adopt the light, elegant, and warm Eskimo foot-gear. The dress of the women is much
the same — only if the woman is a mother her jacket has a large hood behind, in which the baby
is carried, its little head, either bare or covered with a cap woven out of the hair of the white
Arctic hare, just peeping over its mother's shoulder, or reaching over to partake of nourish-
ment, as the family plod through ice and snow on the weary march from one hunting-ground
to another. The trousers of the women are generally shorter and tighter than those of the men,
and the boots are made of sealskin tanned white, and with wide tops stretching high over the
knees. These wide tops afford excellent pockets, or hiding-places, for any unconsidered
article they may come across. Finally, the woman's jacket has a tail behind, like the tail
20
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of an evening coat, which is, however, in general tucked up to keep it from trailing on the
ground. The dress differs in some slight particulars in various districts, and is generally more
ornamental than that of the men, with more of rude feather embroidery. Their dress, like
their tools, canoes, &c., shows great skill and neatness of hand — excelling in this respect
even those of their neighbours and mortal enemies, the Indians. Most of the savage tribes tattoo
themselves on the face, but this custom — contrary to the statements in most books — is not now
practised among the semi-civilised Greenland Eskimo, though in former times it was. The
IN COUNCIL WITH THE NETCHILLIK ESKIMO.
pattern simply consisted of blue lines, produced by drawing a needle and sinew thread smeared
with lampblack under the skin ; but every tribe has its own mode of tattooing. To the west
of the Mackenzie, the men cut a hole in their lower lip, near the corner of the mouth, which
they fill with a labret of bone, stone, or metal. Sir John Richardson informs us that at the
mouth of the Mackenzie small green pebbles are obtained, which, when neatly set in wood or
brass, are used for this purpose. That late illustrious naturalist and traveller is, however,
in error when he considers that the natives of Vancouver Island afford an example of a similar
custom ; hence he imagined that these people may have adopted the Eskimo habit when, as
he supposes, they came to Vancouver Island, and drove out the Eskimo, who once inhabited
that coast. The natives of Vancouver Island, as we shall by- and -by see, adopt no such
THE ESKIMO : THEIR IMPLEMENTS.
21
custom ; the nearest approach to it being among the Hydahs of Queen Charlotte Islands,
several hundreds of miles to the northward.
Such, in personal appearance, is the Eskimo, "this strange inh'dele, whose like was
never scene, read, nor heard of before," of stout Sir Martin Frobisher. Some of the
women are handsome ; but the old ones are such hags that we need not be surprised at
Frobisher's sailors pulling the boots off one to see if her feet were cloven, after the traditional
formation of the feet of the Evil One ! The different species of seal supply nearly everything
the Eskimo require in dress, food, implements, &c., and its hunt is one of the chief occupations
of their life and thoughts. Their bow is generally made of three pieces of the reindeer's
rib, and with its twisted string of sinew and strengthening behind, is a very powerful weapon ;
knives they manufacture from the copper obtained from the Coppermine River, from flint, from
ivory, from any stray pieces of iron which they may come across, or, as I am informed by Professor
AX ARCTIC FERRY-BOAT (SCHWATKA's EXPEDITION) .
Steenstrup, in former times, from the meteoric iron found in their country. Wood is scarce with
them, being traded from long distances, or coming as drift-wood, which the currents carry from
wooded coasts into the heart of the Arctic Sea. Among some tribes so scarce is it that a harpoon-
handle will be made of the valuable ivory " horns" or teeth of the narwhal, or sea-unicorn, or of
several bits of wood carefully spliced together. Sir Robert Maclure found one tribe so short of
wood that the "runners" of their sledges were made of several salmon tied up and hard frozen.
No more acceptable present can be given to an Eskimo than a broken oar, or any other bit of wood.
A common name amongst them is " Kresuk" (drift-wood], a fact pointing to the estimation in
which this material is held amongst them. Their spears, harpoons, arrows, &c., are all admirably
made, and constructed on most ingenious plans. One of them — the bird-spear — has a main point,
but it has also several supplementary points projecting from either side, so that if they should
miss the bird with the main point, the chances are that it will be struck by one of the supple-
mentary ones ; an inflated bladder attached to the spear keeps it from sinking. The harpoon
with which they strike the seal, white whale, whale, narwhal, walrus, and other marine animals, is
22 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
fitted into a shaft made usually of wood. This shaft, which is seven or eight feet in length, is only
used for throwing the harpoon into the animal by means of a wooden rest, or " harpoon-thrower/*
which is held in the hand. As soon as the animal is struck, the shaft falls out and is picked
up by the hunter as it floats on the surface, while the little harpoon-point remains in the seal's
body, attached to a long line of carefully -prepared seal-skin, which has attached to it a large
inflated seal-skin. This seal-skin marks where the animal is, but as it must come to the surface
to breathe, and soon gets tired, the hunter follows it up in his kuyak, spearing whenever he has
an opportunity, until at length it is killed. He then coils his line anew on a stand in front of him,
on his kayak, and proceeds as before. The kayak is one of the most ingenious contrivances of
the Eskimo. It is shaped like a weaver's shuttle — pointed at either end — and built on a
framework of whalebone or wood, covered completely over, with the exception of the hole in
which the Eskimo seats himself, with seal-skin, with the hair off, and carefully prepared for
that purpose. The hunter takes his seat in this fragile canoe, clad in a waterproof jacket made
of seal-skin, or of the whale's intestines, buttons this jacket down so that no water can enter,
puts on his waterproof mittens, and takes hold of his double paddle by the middle, and looks
almost a part of the kayak. This craft is often ornamented with knobs of narwhal or
walrus ivory at the ends, and sheathed with runners of bone beneath, while the paddle has on
either end a point of ivory or bone. The whole is one of the lightest and most elegant of
contrivances. In straps in front are fastened the spears, knives, &c.j in front also is the stand
for the line, nicely coiled up, and behind is the inflated seal-skin, or "drogue," which is
used in the manner I have described.'55'
No water can enter the kayak, and as the canoe-man paddles along, his face to the point
to which he is going, propelling and steadying the kayak with alternate strokes of the long
double paddle, the sea may dash over him with impunity. He rides buoyantly on the surface of
the waves, often with a seal fastened at either side. If the spray, freezing on the sides of the
kayak incommodes him, he scrapes it off with a blunt bone knife he carries in the straps in
front of him. He can even overturn the kayak and right it again ; but not unf requently the
ice cuts holes in it, when the fate of the buttoiied-in kayaker is death by drowning. If he
comes to a "neck" of ice between two spaces of open water, he forces the canoe on the ice,
gets out of it, and carries it on his head, until he can again launch it in open water. On
the shores of Behring Strait some of the kayaks are made with two holes, and are paddled
by two people. There is another boat, called the omiak, which is also made of seal-skin on a
framework of whalebone or wood, but it is open on the top, and of a more or less oblong form.
It is essentially the women's boat, being used to carry them, the children, dogs, and baggage
from one place to another. It is propelled by the women, with single paddles or oars, and is
steered by an old man, who keeps up a stern discipline over his charge, not being at all par-
ticular what he throws at his chattering crew. The dog-sledge is made of two runners of wood,
pointed at the end, with cross-bars, forming a sort of platform. In front, attached to long
traces, the dogs, large wolfish brutes, are fastened by seal-skin harness ; while behind is a
sort of screen, on wrhich spare harness, whips, lines, &c., ai-e hung. The driver sits on the
* The natives of the western shores of Vancouver Island use an identical inflated seal-skin, and for a
similar purpose.
THE ESKIMO: THEIR HOUSES AND HABITS. 23
sledge and drives his canine team with a long-lashed whip, with a short handle. To wield this
whip is no easy task, but one requiring long practice ; when acquired thoroughly, the driver
could with his twenty or thirty feet lash flick a fly off his leader's head, at a distance of
as many feet. The dogs, to protect their feet, have on little seal-skin shoes or mufflers j and
over tolerably even snow-covered ice will travel at the rate of sixteen miles an hour. Six
dogs are generally attached to a sledge.
Unlike the Laps or Kamschatdales, the Eskimo have never thought of taming the reindeer,
but only use it for food. Their summer dwellings are rude tents made of seal-skin, but their
stationary dwellings are square or conical huts, half under ground, built of earth, bones, turf,
or any rubbish, lighted by a window of whale intestines, and entered by a long, low tunnel,
which has to be traversed on all fours. On two sides are low raised platforms, covered with
skins, and which can be used as seats or beds. A stone lamp, consisting of an oblong, hollow
vessel, cut out of the soft steatite, or soap-stone, with moss for wick and blubber for fuel, is
suspended from the roof. This serves at once for fire and light. The house is insufferably
warm, there being scarcely any ventilation, and half the inmates have the upper portion of
their body divested of clothing. In the roof are paddles, harpoons, &c. ; a dead seal may be
seen lying amid a pool of blood on the floor, and the dogs are growling just outside the
door in the tunnel, as the visitor cautiously picks his way on all fours to the door. The
object of this tunnel is to prevent unwelcome, unannounced visits of the fierce white polar
bear. In winter, moreover, especially if moving about from one place to another, they erect
snow huts, the blocks of snow being most ingeniously fitted into one another, no bridge-
builder being able to surpass them in the manner in which they arch over the roof. These
houses are warm, though in the spring they begin to get rather wet and damp, and the heat of
the summer soon compels them to be abandoned — though at that season it is almost unneces-
sary to say that these dwellings perforce become only temporary.
The Eskimo are enormous eaters, and take most of their food raw, or in a frozen condition.
To eat eight or nine pounds of meat is not accounted an extraordinary feat, and a man will lie
on his back while his wife feeds him with the tit-bits of flesh and blubber, when he is utterly
unable to move himself. Their powers of fasting are equally extraordinary. Fat of every kind
comes natural to them, and is necessary to keep up the animal heat of the body. In eating,
they cut off a large piece of flesh, take it between their teeth, then with a knife cut off a bit,
and so on, severing the attachment between the bit and the lump, until the whole is gone,
The ordinary routine of Eskimo life has been so admirably sketched by Sir John Richardson
that I may be allowed to quote it : — " In the month of September, the band, consisting of
perhaps five or six families, moves to some well-known pass, generally some narrow neck of land
between two lakes, and there awaits the southerly migration of the reindeer. When these
animals approach the vicinity, some of the young men go out, and gradually drive them
towards the pass, where they are met by other hunters, who kill as many as they can writh the
bow and arrow. The bulk of the herd is forced into the lake, and there the liers-in-wait in their
kayaks spear them at their leisure. Hunting in this way, day after day, as long as the deer are
passing, a large stock of venison is generally procured. As the country abounds in natural
ice cellars, or at least everywhere affords great facilities for constructing them in the frozen
subsoil, the venison might be kept sweet until the hard frost sets in, and so preserved
24 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
throughout the winter ; but the Eskimo take little trouble in the matter. If more deer are
killed in the summer than can be then consumed, part of the flesh is dried, but later in the
season it is merely laid up in some cool cleft in the rock, where wild animals cannot reach it,
and should it become considerably tainted before the cold weather comes on, it is only the more
agreeable to the Eskimo palate. When made very tender by keeping, it is consumed raw, or
after very little cooking. In the autumn also, the migratory flocks of geese and other birds
are laid under contribution, and salmon trout and fish of various kinds are taken. In this
GREENLAND ESKIMO MEN. (From an Original Photograph by Dr.
way a winter stock of provision is procured, and not a little is required, as the Eskimo, being
consumers of animal food only, get through a surprising quantity. In the autumn the berries
of the cranberry, the blueberry, creeping Arctic brambles, &c., and the half -digested lichen in
the paunch of the reindeer are considered to be a treat ; but in other seasons this people never
taste vegetables, and even in summer animal food is alone deemed essential. Carbon is
•applied to the system by the use of much oil and fat in the diet, and draughts of warm blood
from a newly-killed animal are considered as contributing greatly to preserve the hunter in
health. No part of the entrails is rejected as unfit for food. Little cleanliness is shown in
the preparation of the intestines, and when they are rendered crisp by frost they are eaten as
delicacies without further cooking. On parts of the coast where whales are common.. August
THE ESKIMO: THEIR HUNTS.
25
and September are devoted to the pursuit of these animals, deer-hunting being also attended
to at intervals. The killing of a right whale (Balana mysticetus) or of the kelleluak, or
GREEN'LAND ESKIMO DOG-SLEDGE.
white whale (Beluga albicans), secures winter feasts and abundance of oil for the lamps of a
whole village, and there is great rejoicing. On the return of light, the winter houses are
abandoned for the seal-hunt on the ice, sooner or later, according to the state of the larder
26 TIIE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The party then moves seaward, being1 guided in discovering the holes of the seal or walrus by
their dogs. At this time of the year huts are built of snow for the residence of the band, and
at no season is the hunter's skill more tested, the seal being a very wary animal, with acute
sight, smell, and hearing. It is no match, however, for the Eskimo hunter, who, sheltered
from the keen blast by a semicircular wall of snow, will sit motionless for hours, watching
for the bubble of air that warns him of the seal coming up to breathe ; and scarcely has
the animal raised its nostrils to the surface, before the hunter's harpoon is deeply buried in
its body. The sport is not without the danger that adds to the excitement of success. The
line attached to the point of the harpoon is passed in a loop round the hunter's loins, and,
should the animal he has struck be a large seal or walrus, woe betide him if he does not
instantly plant his feet in the notch cut for the purpose in the ice, and throw himself in such a
position that the strain on the line is as nearly as possible brought in the direction of the
length of the spine of his back and axis of his lower limbs. A transverse pull from one of
these powerful beasts would double him across the air-hole, and perhaps break his back ; or,
if the opening be large, as it often is when the spring is advanced, he would be dragged under
water and drowned. Accidents of this kind are but too common. When the seals come out
on the ice to bask in the powerful rays of a spring sun, the Eskimo hunter knows how to
approach them by imitating their forms and motions so perfectly that the poor animals take
him for one of their own species, and are not undeceived until he comes near enough to thrust
his lance into one. The principal seal fishery ends by the disruption of the ice, and then
the reindeer are again numerous on the shores of the Arctic Sea, the birds are breeding in
great flocks, and the annual routine of occupation, which has been briefly sketched, commences
anew."
In the hunting of the seal and other animals the utmost ingenuity is displayed, and page
after page could be filled with accounts of the different methods the Eskimo employ in so doing.
An ingenious method of killing bears was noticed among some tribes. A strong piece of
whalebone was coiled up, and secured by stringy pieces of blubber. These baits are tossed here
and there in the track of the bear, and swallowed one after another. Under the influence of
the heat of the animal's stomach the blubber melts and lets loose the spring, which lacerates
the interior of the animal, eventually killing it. The Eskimo always kill the old bear before
the cub. If this rule is accidentally disobeyed by some inexperienced or foolish individual,
they are very cautious to preserve themselves against the rage of the mother. In going home-
wards they will travel in a straight line and then suddenly turn off at right angles to it, so
that when the bear is precipitately following their tracks by scent it may be thrown off. This
trick they repeat frequently. When they arrive at home every precaution is taken against
being alarmed. The sledges are placed upright against the house, for if the enraged bear
should arrive she will knock down the sledges, considering it a suspicious circumstance that they
are in that position. By this ruse the hunters get warning, and pour out, dogs and all, to the
attack of their enemy. Various traps are used to capture animals, such as the ice-trap to capture
the fox, &c., which is simply constructed on the principle of the trap in which English boys
capture birds, and many savage tribes other animals — viz., that when the animal seizes the bait
it brings down from above a slab of ice, which either kills or holds it prisoner until it is frozen
to death or knocked on the head by the trap-builder.
THE ESKIMO: THEIR CHARACTER. 27
The Eskimo travel great distances to traffic with other tribes, and in this manner articles
obtained from the Russians in Siberia have been seen among the Eskimo in Pond's Bay, in Davis
Strait. This desire to traffic is a perfect passion with them, and they will come long distances
in order to do so. Needles, knives, iron tools of all kinds, food, and of late looking-glasses
beads, and muskets are among the chief articles desired. Their skill in providing food, under
the most adverse circumstances, and in fashioning their implements, we have already noticed.
Their intelligence is high and their \yits__are acute, sharpened as they are by the eternal
struggle against the forces of Nature. They have few wars with each other — indeed, I never
heard of such, but wherever they touch on the Indian border there is war to the knife between
the two races. The courage and ferocity of the Eskimo have been abundantly displayed on
these occasions, and the Dogrib Indians, and those of the Mackenzie, shudder at the vengeance
of the Eskimo, whose attacks they have suffered from at various times. In the hunt they will
with a single dog and their spear tackle the polar bear, or singly the scarcely less fierce
walrus. They are, however, treacherous and revengeful on occasions. That they killed some of
Sir John Franklin's men there can, I believe, be little doubt, from the stories circulating
among the Bond's Bay natives in 1861, several of the trading tribes in that vicinity having
had personal Cognizance of these acts. I was once witness of their revengeful disposition. An
Eskimo having been ordered out of a whaler for some act of misbehaviour, said not one word,
but disappeared over the side ; but no sooner had he regained the ice than he sent an arrow
whizzing past the ear of some one standing on the deck looking at him. They have, however,
some good qualities, such as hospitality to strangers and a kind of gratitude for favours received.
No Eskimo whom I have seen would receive anything from any one without thanking him, and
after looking it all over, putting it into his hood, or wherever else he was stowing his acquisi-
tions. Whenever they meet any one they cry, " Timoo !" and will even show their goodwill by
rubbing noses with him — a mark of politeness which could in most cases be dispensed with.
Take them all in all, they are a very good-natured people, neither so lazy nor self-conceited as the
Indians (though they have a sufficiently good opinion of themselves), free from many of their
graver vices, quite as intelligent, and, while they have insuperably greater obstacles to contend
against, showing higher moral and mental characteristics than most of the Indian tribes. Strange
to say, their love of home and pride in their ice-bound country are immense. Several of them
have visited England, Denmark, and America, but they always wearied to get back again, and
though impressed with what they saw, yet after they got back they ridiculed the whites in
every possible way. The warmer climates of the South disagree with them, and several have
died before they could reach their country again. " Do you see the ice ? do you see the ice ?"
was the constant cry of one of them who had been taken to civilisation, and as he reached his
country lay on his death-bed.
To finish this brief estimate of the Eskimo character, I may add that he is skilful in
imitating anything put before him, though deficient in inventive power; he is also an
excellent draughtsman and map-drawer. I have in my possession maps of various portions
of the Arctic coast-line, rudely but accurately drawn, and have examined similar ones. They
are fond of drawing portraits of well-known personages : I have seen myself portrayed on more
than one white-tanned seal-skin in an Eskimo hut, the materials being soot and oil ; and to
ritate the gait, gesture, or any other peculiarities of white men is a favourite amusement of
28 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the winter months. Everybody living amongst them has a nickname. During the long con-
finement to their hovels, in the dark winter months, the Eskimo men execute a variety of
figures in bone and in walrus or fossil ivory, besides making fish-hooks, knife-handles, and other
instruments neatly of these materials, or of metal or wood. Some of the bone articles purchased
from the Eskimo are used in games, resembling the European one of cup and ball, or in other
contrivances for passing the time. Imitations of the human figure are common, and also of
canoes, sledges, and other instruments of their menage or of animals known to them; but there is
no reason to believe that any of the figures they make are worshipped as gods ; indeed they part
with them freely by barter. Their social character is shown by several families being under
ESKIMO 8XOW HUTS, NEAK CAPE HE11SCHEL, KING WILLIAM LAND.
the same roof, or by building their houses alongside each other, in two rows, with a lane into
which each house opens. This lane or passage can be converted into a porch in winter, by'
roofing it over. In some villages, but not in those of Greenland or Labrador, there is a regular
kashim, or council-house, which is used as a place for feasts or other assemblages. Yon Baer,
in describing a tribe living on a river flowing into Behring Strait, mentions a curious use
of this council-house. At night, he says, all the able-bodied men retire to sleep in it, while
the women, children, and old men, along with the shaman, or "wizard," sleep in the
ordinary houses. In the morning the shaman goes to the kasJiim with a kind of tambourine,
and performs some ceremony, the nature of which he himself determines. Various feasts are
held in this house, particularly a great one at the end of the hunting season, when the success
of each hunter and his liberality and mighty deeds are duly extolled. The only women
ESKIMO: THEIR
fON.
;admitted on these occasions are those who have been initiated, after some mystic ceremonies
allied to the medicine-work of the Indian tribes, living farther south on the same coast, and
which probably may be somewhat of the same nature.
What this Shamanism is those travellers who have lived among the Eskimo for lengthened
jperiods are not very decided ; only we know that women can practise its rites, and I am
.•strongly convinced it is nothing more than the medicine-rites of the more southern coast
Indian tribes. The Angekoks are much the same as the shamans, employing ventriloquism,
THE DANISH SETTLEMENT OF GOUTHAAIJ IX UKEEXLAXD.
and various sleight-of-hand tricks to impress the people with their powers. In Greenland until
very recent times, and perhaps to some extent even now, there were certain women and old men
who by fasting and other rites were supposed to acquire the power of stilling the wind, causing
the rain to cease, and such like. Another kind of furious witch was called Illiseersut, and was
feared, hated, and destroyed without mercy. Their religion is a belief in spirits of various
degrees of power. The chief one is "Torngarsuk" — the great spirit, or devil, as the name
signifies, who, though only known to the common people by name, is constantly consulted by
the Angekoks. Whether he is in the shape of a bear or a man, or of no form at all, is disputed
among the hyperborean wise men. but that he Hves in the interior of the earth or under the
30 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
waters, in a land of abundance and everlasting- sunshine, is generally conceded. Yet he is not.
worshipped by the people, all intercourse with him being left to the Angekoks, who affect
great familiarity with him, and claim that he gives them power to heal sickness, obtain
wealth, success in the hunt, and indeed anything which they can be paid for procuring for
their votaries and dupes. In addition, the Eskimo lives in a perfect atmosphere of gods. In
every wind that blows he hears spirits; in the darkness of the night their whispers reach him;
every animal has its guardian angel ; the aurora, as it lights up the snow and rustles in the
Arctic air, is the spirits of the dead fighting in the air; — the very moon, which gladdens the long
Arctic night, provides for their necessities, giving the Labrador Eskimo reindeer, seals, and
other good things. But among the Greenlanders the moon is, or was, quite the contrary of good,
being a wicked young man, of whom silly girls could not be too careful. Once in chasing a young
lady she smeared his face with soot so that she could recognise him again — hence the eclipse
of the moon, when he turns that side of his face to the earth ! Among the Labrador people
a very old woman rules the reindeer, and selects those the Eskimo need, and to Torngarsuk they
assign a task like that of the Greek Proteus — viz., that of herding the whales and seals, and
on him they call in their need. Supperguksoak, the old woman, has many herdsmen — namely,
the souls of the dead, whom she has assembled to watch her reindeer flocks. Old Hans Egede,
the bravest and best of missionaries, tells us that in his day in Greenland there were many
minor spirits whom they held in dread. The chief of these were called limit a, and one of these
was selected by Torngarsuk as the familiar or Torngak of the Angekok. Some Angekoks have
their deceased parent for a Torngak. The Kong euser obit are marine Imiuae, that feed on fox-
tails. The Ingnersoit inhabit rocks on the shore, and are very desirous of the company of
Greenlanders, whom they carry away for that purpose. The Ttomersoit are Alpine phantoms.
r£\\Q Innnarolit are pigmies that live on the eastern shores of Greenland; and the Erkiglit, who
reside on the same coast, are of a monstrous size, with snouts like dogs. Sillagiksertok is a
spirit who makes fair weather, and lives upon the ice mountains. To the air the Greenlanders
ascribed some sort of divinity, and lest they should offend it, they were unwilling to go out
after dark. Nerrim-Innua is the ruler of diet — and a nice job he must have of it ! It is
pleasant to think that, thanks to Egede and his successors, all this is nearly something of the
past. The Eskimo think everything was much the same as it is just now. Their heaven is,
like the heaven of all barbarous or semi-barbarous people, a something better than this world
— a region where men revel in plenty of land-ice, with seals and reindeer in abundance, where
blubber never fails and hunger is unknown. They are ruled in a patriarchal fashion, having no
established laws or magistrates. Each man is a law for his own household, and punishes all
offences committed within his jurisdiction. When he is too weak to enforce his authority he
is quietly shelved, and takes his place with the women and children, over whom he endeavours
—with limited success, especially in the case of the latter — to keep up a semblance of authority.
In a word, the Eskimo agree well with old Fabricius's concise description of them : " Sine Deo,
domino — reguntur consuetudine " (without God or master, they are governed by custom) .
As a people they are lively and talkative, and by no means— as barbarians go — unpleasant
companions on a journey.
AVhen they meet strangers they will assume, afar off, the most ridiculous attitudes,
apparently cither to disarm their ill will or to attract attention. In 1861 we passed
THE ESKIMO: SOME PECULIARITIES. 31
close to Cape York, but without landing. The natives assembled on the ice-floe, men
and women, standing on their heads, tumbling1, jumping, and shouting, apparently with
a view to induce us to land and trade; for the Greenlanders north of the glaciers of
Melville Bay, unlike all the other Eskimo have no kayaks or oiuiaks. Some authors have
described them as wonderfully honest. Under the Danish rule they certainly are, but that
is no criterion. In their savage state those who know them best describe them as innately
thieves, long before they became familiar with white men, and I was assured by the captain
of the first whaler which ever crossed Baffin's Bay after Sir John Ross, when the Pond's Bay and
Lancaster Sound natives were in a state of pristine savagedom, that the first thing they did was
to attempt to steal the blacksmith's anvil, failing in which they managed to get off scot-free
with his hammer. Perhaps it would have been a miracle if they had not attempted to secure
what was, in their eyes, of priceless value. White men, without half the temptation, have
been known to do acts rather more heinous than that. They are highly talented liars, but so
little reticent are they that if they are only allowed to chatter on, a fair average amount of
truth will ooze out in spite of themselves. They quarrel but little amongst themselves, but
are said to be revengeful, and to wait long to get a safe opportunity to gratify their spite upon
an enemy, cutting his aicatuk or blown-up seal-skin, making a hole in his kayak, drowning his
dogs, or, if the offence is heinous, harpooning his victim as he sits with his back towards him in
the kayak. Women are treated with indifference, but not with cruelty, and have a say — much too
great a say all travellers will allow — in every bargain. The children are petted in every way, and
impudent mannikins they are. Having occasion to visit an Eskimo hut on the western shores
of Davis Strait, when the younger members of the family were being " put to bed," I was
amused to see how it was done. The youngster, after eating a piece of blubbery seal big enough
for an ordinary-sized man's dinner, and being suckled — as they are until about four years
old — was popped, naked, into a seal-skin bag filled with feathers, a cap made of the white hare's
fur put on to its head, the mouth of the bag drawn, and the whole deposited in a corner out of
the way. Polygamy is permitted, but is not common. They are betrothed at an early age, and
married when the youthful husband is capable of supporting a family, an event which generally
happens when they are young, as they soon begin to learn the business of their life — viz., hunting
seals. At one time, in Greenland, it was the fashion for the husband to make a show of stealing
his wife, her relatives coming in hot pursuit, and the lady a willing victim. At no time, I believe,
was marriage a case of purchase, as among other barbarous people. They bury their dead by
wrapping them in seal-skin, and heaping stones on them in some out-of-the-way place. Along
with the body they bury the lamp, knife, &c., and even the children's toys (the men, their
peculiar tools, and the women theirs) . Old graves are accordingly favourite places for seeking
antique implements. Among the Eskimo on the western shores of Davis Strait the relatives
will flee the house when a person is dying ; the reason of this being that if they remain inside
the house until death occurs, the clothes they have on will have to be forfeited. They are,
however, very indifferent to the body after death, for though they build stones above the grave,
they never repair it after being injured, and are seemingly careless whether dogs or wolves
devour the body. An instance is related in which a man bewailed the death of his child, and
immediately after made a hearty meal, using the dead body of the child as a table : yet when
they pass a grave they will throw a piece of meat upon it.
32 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Such are the iron race of the Eskimo — a people interesting in many respects from the-
peculiar character of their home, and for the bold struggle they have to maintain against ice,
snow, and terrible cold. Civilisation has only reached them at certain places on the Atlantic-
side of America. In Labrador the Moravians have succeeded in introducing religion and
civilisation among them with marked success, while farther north the American and English
whalers have engrafted culture of another sort. Vice of every description is now prevalent
among the natives of the western shores of Davis Strait, and as on that coast the population
has always been scanty, they are now fast decreasing. In Greenland civilisation has been,
introduced among them for the last 150 years or more, and with marked success. There,
thanks to the efforts of the Danish Go /eminent, the 9,000 or 10,000 natives under its rule are
a civilised, industrious people. North of the Danish possessions a handful of savages live;
Sir George Nares found them not to have decreased much in twenty years, though, when
Dr. Hayes visited them in 1860, they enjoined him to " Come back soon, or there will be
nobody to welcome you." When Kane first described them, he relates that they were
astonished to find that they were not the only people on the earth, but this Hans Heindrik,
Kane's Eskimo hunter, assures us is purely mythical. On the east coast of Greenland
there must be now very few of them left. The last German expedition only saw traces of
their dwellings, but none of themselves.*
CHAPTER II.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS : CHARACTER ; GAMES, ETC.
BETWEEN California and the Eskimo line in Alaska there stretches a wide region, more than
1,600 miles in length, and comprehending all the country to the west of the Rocky Mountains.
No region on the American continent is more varied in its physical features — wood, mountain,
river, lake, prairie, desert, and sea, all alternating or intermingling in a varied vista before the
traveller's eye, as he floats down one of the great rivers — Fraser, Columbia, or Sacramento
— which intersect it, and bear the melting snows of the Rocky, Cascade, or Sierra Nevada
Mountains to the Pacific. Nor are the aboriginal inhabitants less varied in character, habits,
and language, though all bearing a general family likeness, which enables us to give a tout-
ensemble of their chief customs and ideas. The wooded country which, with the exception
of a few prairies here and there in the Californian valleys, or in the valley of the Willamette
River, is of unbroken extent, and very dense, and comprehends the greater portion of the region
to the west of the Cascade Mountains, is in general without any inhabitants. To the Indians
these dark primeval forests are the home of all things fearful and to be avoided. There they
lie, wave after wave of forest and forest-clothed hill, oak and alder and fir, and the bright
* The semi-civilised Greenlandcrs are an especially interesting people. A full account of them will be found in
my editions of Rink's " Danish Greenland " (1877), and " Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo " (1875) ; in my articles
u Eskimo " and " Greenland " in the Encyclopedia Britannica ; and in " Countries of the World," Vol. I., pp. 123—139.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: GENERAL CHARACTER.
33
autumnal yellow-leaved maple, full of bear and of beaver and of elk, and, if the scared Indian
hunter is to be credited, worse things still — Cyclopean Smolenkos, one-eyed jointless fiends,
CROW CHIEF, FROM THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, IN GALA DEESS.
who run along the mountain-sides swifter than the black-tailed deer — Pans, and dryads, and
hamadryads, gods of the woods and the groves and of the waterfalls and the running streams ;
—all these haunt- the country out of sight of the salt water, for (evidence uncontrovertible !)
had not Kekean's father's brother's friend seen them when he was seeking his medicine, or
34 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Maauilla's grandfather's cousin, Wiccaninish, heard a hunter of elk tell it to the wondering
lodge at Kalooish's great salmon feast at Shesha? "Laugh as you like, chief of King
George/' an Indian once said to me, when pressing him to join me in exploring a portion of
the great forest, "but as long as there are salmon in Stalow and deer in Swuchas, you will not
get me to go with you there ! "
In the open country, where there exist grass and water in any abundance (and this is
almost entirely to the east of the Cascade Range), there are many tribes, with numerous horses,
though these people are now greatly decreasing. These " horse tribes " are the finest and
most manly of the aboriginal races of the North-west, and are variously divided into
Shoshones or Snakes, Cyuse, Nez Percez (or pierced nose), Okinagans, Flatbows, &c., all
members of one great family. They chiefly subsist by hunting deer and antelope,
occasionally crossing the Rocky Mountains to pursue the buffalo on the plains lying east
of that range, since that animal has now entirely deserted the Pacific slope. They are
very warlike, and have all, at various times, been at war with the United States. Until a
late period most of them made depredations on the whites, whenever they had a favourable
opportunity, and at best were only at "armed neutrality" with their more powerful pale-faced
neighbours. In the more desert country, like that of South-eastern Oregon, and to the
east of the Sierra Nevada, in California, and the State of Nevada, or in the remoter valleys
among the mountains, live the various petty tribes of " Digger Indians," a miserable race, who
derive their familiar name from the fact of their subsisting on roots, grubs, or any other garbage
which they can pick up. They are probably the most degraded of all the American races, and
have been driven from the more fertile plains in these desert places and mountain fastnesses by
the warlike horse tribes. Most of the California!! Indians belong to this type. They are
much darker than the rest of the North-west tribes. Along the banks of all the great rivers are
numerous small tribes, who subsist almost entirely by fishing, and drying the enormous quantities
of salmon which are found in all the streams of any size in this region. Along the coasts,
at nearly every available place, numerous small septs of fishing tribes are met with, who never
go far out of sight of their village, devoting themselves exclusively to fishing and collecting
berries and other wild fruits, and almost continually at war with each other (pp. 33, 36, 40, 48) .
Such are the tribes which inhabit the coasts of Vancouver Island and British Columbia,
in almost every inlet or quiet bay of which a board or mat village of these people smokes.
The Indians in California, Oregon, Washington, and other American territories have now
lost nearly all their former freedom, and much of their original habits and character, being
now for the greater part gathered by the United States Government on "reservations"
of land away from the white settlements, under the care of agents. How this system has
operated we shall inquire in a future chapter. In the meantime we may say, without fear
of contradiction, that these tribes are greatly on the decrease, and will eventually, perhaps in
a few years, disappear. War, disease, general mismanagement, and persecution are the
leading causes for this state of things. In the British possessions the natives still live,
to a great extent, in their primitive state, and, except in the vicinity of settlements,
have to a greater degree retained their primitive condition and habits. In California and the
States north of it I question if there are now over 45,000 or 46,000 Indians; while in the
British possessions the number may be about 35,000. In Vancouver Island alone the
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: DIFFERENT TRIBES.
35
aboriginal population is about 10,000; altogether, on the whole Pacific slope, the number
of natives may be estimated at not much over 97,000. All these tribes are nominally
independent of each other, and though bearing distinct names, are often little more than
separate villages or communities of the same tribe, and speaking a dialect of the same
language, though all mutually hating and often at war with each other. The number of separate
languages and dialects spoken in these wide regions is almost incredible ; indeed it has been
variously estimated at from forty upwards. In Vancouver Island alone there are four distinct
tongues spoken, and in British Columbia probably six or seven more. In habits, customs,
and character there is a considerable difference in all these numerous tribes, the names of the
chief of which we have already enumerated. Yet generally there is a great family likeness
between them all, and in many of their customs a great similarity. This enables us, therefore,
to direct our attention more especially to some of their more marked features and traits of
life, taking the coast tribes of the North as the basis round which we will weave our
sketches.
Ulloa,* however, made a great error when he said, " See one Indian, and you have seen all."
The word Indian comprehends many tribes — almost nations — different in personal appearance,
character, capabilities, language, customs, and religion, so that though they may all have a
prevailing tout-ensemble, yet it is impossible to present in brief a general description of the race.
In the "Far West" and on the shores of the North Pacific, the different tribes also differ
widely — indeed, almost as broadly as do the whites from the Indians themselves. The natives of
California and the east of the Sierra desert are, as we have already seen, the most miserable
race on the American continent — a dark, wretched, degraded set of beings — living upon
garbage of every sort, and crouching in almost inaccessible places in the mountain fastnesses,
for protection against the powerful tribes of their own race surrounding them, and whose
oppression may possibly, in remote times, have led to their present condition. Most of the
coast tribes up to 54° north latitude, including' those of Vancouver Island, and on the lower
reaches of the Columbia and the Fraser, are of a low type, dirty in person, though vastly
superior to the "Diggers" already described ; and though handsome men and women are far from
uncommon among them, yet from their taking little active exercise, and crouching continually
in canoes in fishing and travelling from place to place, their lower limbs are attenuated, and
contrast but strangely with their muscular arms and chests, and well-fed, swarthy appearance
generally. In addition, these coast tribes, and a few of the interior ones, having adopted the
very peculiar custom of flattening their foreheads, they cannot compare, generally speaking, with
the more northern tribes who have not adopted this outre improvement upon nature. Again,
011 the other hand, no sooner do you leave Bentiuck Arm than races differing very greatly from
those south of them appear — a manly, tall, handsome people, and comparatively fair in their
complexion. Such are the Tsimpseans, Hydahs (or Queen Charlotte Islanders), the Tongass,
Stekins, &c. — in fact, most of the tribes of the territory of Alaska, and the northern shores of
British Columbia. I will venture to say that finer-looking men than some of the Queen
Charlotte Islanders and other tribes mentioned it would be impossible to find, and the
" Mcmoircs Philosophiques, Historiques, Physiques, concernant la Decouverte dc 1'Amerique," &c. (Traduit
par M. ; Paris, 1787).
36
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
women especially of the Stekin and Tongass tribes are celebrated for their more than fair share of
good looks. They look with supreme contempt on the Flatheads of the southern coasts, styling
them Sapalel le tetes, or dough-heads ; and the compliment is returned by the southern tribes,
who accuse their detractors of every crime forbidden in the decalogue — albeit none of them
are paragons of perfection in the matter of morality. There is, however, a vast difference
between the morality of different tribes, even among those which have been corrupted by the
whites, the Flatbows and others in the vicinity of the Kootanie River, in British Columbia,
ranking highest, while the northern tribes are justly classed as the lowest in this respect.
FLATBOW AND KOOTANIE INDIANS, NEAR THE WESTERN SID3 OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
It is, perhaps, unfair for a writer to give a general character of any people, for there are
good and bad among all, and in an Indian village, however low the average of the moral
standard may be, you are sure to find good men and bad, who are just as well known and
appreciated among their neighbours as in an English hamlet of the same size and population.
Still they have some characteristics which seem to belong to them in peculiar, though, of
course, they are found in different individuals in various degrees of development : a notice of
some of the most prominent of these will not be uninteresting.
GENERAL CHARACTER.
The vice which prominently presents itself before those who have much intercourse with
them is that of ingratitude, for whatever may have been said of the "virtues" of their brethren
in the United States on the first advent of the whites, yet I know assuredly that he who
calculates upon the gratitude of an Indian in the West — speaking as a rule — reckons without
his host. You may confer numberless favours upon him, let him hang round your camp day
after day, feeding at your exDense, but if you ask him to go for a bucket of water, it is just as
38 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
likely as not that he will refuse, or ask you how much you are going to give him. I knew
this from personal experience, and always reckoned on it, and this quite apart from any corrup-
tion by witnessing the selfish manner they are treated by the whites. I know a man who
used to behave to all the vagrant Indians of his acquaintance in the most kindly and hospitable
manner; but it happened in an unlucky hour that, as he was descending Eraser River in
his canoe, he managed to get capsized, and while struggling in the water he shouted for
help to several of his old friends whom he noticed gaping on the banks. They came quietly
down, and as they viewed the poor fellow drowning, coolly asked, " Well, how much are you
going to give us?" He managed to get ashore, and I can assure the reader that no Indian
need ever reckon on a supper at his camp from now until the coming of the Greek Kalends —
and not then !
Another feature in their character, very much akin to that I have just noticed, is the
fact that they never forgive an injury or can be persuaded to make any allowance for an
accident. During one of my earliest expeditions I narrowly escaped shooting an Indian in
mistake for a bear which was prowling around my camp-fire, and though I fully made up to
him for his injured honour, and met him frequently afterwards, yet that man cherished the most
implacable feelings of resentment towards me, believing that I had intended taking his life, and
knowing this, I took very good care never to come within range of his musket in a shady,
out-of-the-way place. I have heard of a Frenchman who was out "fire-hunting" in the woods
one night, and as he was waving round the lighted torch or frying-pan of fire, he saw two eyes
glaring at him in the dark. Thinking it was a deer, he immediately fired, but was horrified to
find that he had shot an Indian of his acquaintance. The poor man was much distressed, and
in the morning put the body into his canoe and took it to the lodge of the Indian's brother,
narrating the circumstance, thinking that he would be forgiven on making some provision for
the dead man's family. The brother said nothing, however, but went into his lodge and
quietly loading his musket, shot the Frenchman dead. Blood for blood is their universal law,
and though among some tribes you can buy a body, or a wound, or any other injury can be
equally palliated by a douceur to the injured one or his friends, yet this is their law, and many
of the unaccountable murders in the Indian country are owing to this. If they cannot reach
the murderer, they will often kill an innocent man.
When an Indian meets you, his first thought invariably seems to be, " How can I
'do' this man? How can I protect myself against some design he is meditating against
me ?" He is so accustomed to see the white man treat him with the most callous selfishness,
that he is apt to value the morality of the whole race at a low estimate, and to think that
' the big meeting at the church is only for the purpose of arranging to lower the price
of beaver-skins/' when he sees the trader go there, and then come out and cheat him (if
he can) in the sale of his furs. One day an Indian entered a house in California when the
husband was absent. The wife — a new arrival — instantly seized a revolver and drove the
Indian, who only came out of the merest curiosity, to the door, much to her after-congratulation
and boastftilness on the head of her courage. The Indian, surprised at what he thought only
an exhibition of ill-temper on the part of a virago, merely remarked to his friends that ' ' now
he understood why so few white men in California were married ! " He is habitually suspicious,
and it is only after long acquaintance that his nature thaws. The Indian is no stoic — grand in
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: DISPOSITION. 39
his silence ; a more talkative fellow, when you know him, and he has cast off a portion of his
suspicious reserve, is not found in the desert. Among themselves they are great gossips and
full of a grim humour. You will often see an old man and woman bandying jokes with each
other, and as repartee after repartee passes, peals of laughter come from the bystanders. Even
with strangers they are the same ; but, as I have said, they are long before they recover from
their first suspicions of a design against them. Treachery is ever in their thoughts, and being
merely creatures of impulse — mere children of a very grim growth — though you may travel for
months and years among them quite alone, as I did most of the time, yet you are never safe,
and at any time your head may pay forfeit for your temerity. On the whole, though I do not
by any means approve of it, yet there is some truth in what an old friend of mine, Jim Baker,
a very celebrated Rocky Mountain trapper, told General Marcy : —
" They are the most onsartainest varmints in all creation, and I reckon thar not mor'n
half human ; for you never seed a human, arter you'd fed and treated him to the best fixins in
your lodge, just turn round and steal all your horses, or anything he could lay his hands on.
No, not adzackly ; he would feel kinder grateful, and ask you to spread a blanket in his lodge
ef ever you passed that a- way. But the Injun he don't care shucks for you, and is ready to
do you a heap of mischief as soon as he quits your feed. No, cap.," he continued, " it's not
the right way to give um presents to buy peace ; but ef I war Governor of these yeer U-nited
States, I'll tell you what I'd do : I'd invite um all to a big feast, and make b'lieve I wanted
to have a big talk ; and as soon as I got um all together, I'd pitch in and sculp half of um,
and then t' other half would be mighty glad to make a peace that would stick. That's the way
I'd make a treaty with the dog'ond, red-bellied varmints ; and as sure as you're born, cap.,
that's the only way It aint no use to talk about honour with them, cap. ; they
haint got no such thing in um ; and they won't show fair fight, any way you can fix it. Don't
they kill and sculp a white man, when-ar they get the better on him? The mean varmints,
they'll never behave themselves until you give um a clean out-and-out licking. They can't
onderstand white folks' ways, and they won't learn um; and ef you treat um decently, they
think you're afeared. You may depend on't, cap., the only way to treat Injuns is to thrash
them well at first, then the balance will sorter take to you and behave themselves." I quote
this opinion, not only for the amount of truth inherent in it, but also because it expresses the very
general rationale of the treatment the Indians get from the rough class who pursue their callings
on the great prairies and the frontier, and with such ideas we need not be surprised to hear
continually of " Indian outrages." It is well for the Indians that Jim Baker is not " Governor
of these yeer U-nited States ! " Give an Indian presents continually, and he will always expect
more, so that when you stop (as stop you must some time) he thinks your heart has changed to
him, and he is very likely your enemy. If you will give presents to them, it is best to give all
you are going to give at first and be done ; but still better to give none until you are leaving.
They are, as nearly all savages are, very honest among themselves, but with the whites they are
not at all backward in stealing. Taking your property by force is, of course, dignified with
another name. Again, among themselves a liar is looked upon in a most contemptuous light ;
but they will lie to you about the merest trifle, seemingly almost unconsciously. It is always
very bad policy to make a cache and conceal your property when obliged to leave any
behind in the vicinity of an Indian tribe because thev are sure to find it out, and will have no
40
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
mercy on you and your goods ; but if you put them into the chief's hands, with a few flattering1
compliments as to his high character for honour, honesty, and all the other cardinal virtues,
MISSION INDIANS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
though he be the veriest rogue in Pagandom, yet you may be sure, unless something extra-
ordinary interferes, that they will be returned uninjured.
When I first commenced to travel in the Columbia region, a worthy gentleman, whom to
name would be to recall to the recollection of all North-western travellers of any experience one
42 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of the most genial, shrewd, and daring of fur-traders, gave me many axioms regarding my
conduct in dealing with the Indians, and I afterwards found how valuable they were ever to keep
in my mind. They read, as Kohl* said of a similar code, " like a Machiavelli discoursing on
diplomatic intercourse with mankind." 1st. Never trust an Indian. Always appear to trust
him ; it natters his vanity. 2nd. Trust in the honour of most Indians regarding your property,
and you are safe. Trust in an Indian's honesty, and he will steal your ears. 3rd. Never draw a
weapon unless you intend to use it, and if there is going to be any shooting, have the first of it.
Never shoot unless you cannot avoid it, for by so doing you create a long line of blood-avengers.
4th. Never give presents to the common people; please the head-men, and the rest don't
matter much. 5th. If you apprehend trouble in an Indian village, sleep in the lodge of the
head-man, if possible ; or if not, in a lodge in which there are many women and children. An
Indian knows that if a white man is attacked there will be shooting going on, and a bullet
might strike a woman or child. Gth. Never pass a portage or a suspicious village in the dark,
because the Indians will be sure to know it, and then, like all bullies, will take advantage of
your fear of them so manifested. Pass in broad daylight, and then you will see what you are
about. 7th. Never attempt to give them medicine, for you will get no credit by the cure, and
if the patient die you will be accused of killing him. Besides, it offends the medicine-man,
and incurs his professional hatred. Always keep friends with these rogues, they are the
sharpest men in the tribe. 8th. Never make any promise that you are not quite certain of
being able to fulfil ; Indians are like children, and will hear of no excuse. Though they will lie
themselves, yet they are quick to detect it in others.
The Indians are very cruel to aged people, and when they get too old to work, will either kill
them or leave them to starve on some desert island. The poor creatures will go on, getting
clams and berries as long as they can stand, or making themselves useful in any way, knowing
that their lives are not worth much if once they cease to work. Admiral Mayne, from whom
I quote this, thinks that probably it is this fear of their days being abruptly shortened which
induces old women to start as dreamers, " second-sight " people, &c. These old wretches will
claim the gift of prophecy, and say that they can prevent people they dislike from obtaining
success. On a .morning old witches can be seen communicating their dreams to their tribe,
"men and women standing by with open mouths and wonder-stricken faces."
Though the Indian is markedly deficient in foresight, and considers treachery a most
venial offence, if an offence at all, yet this vice, as well as ingratitude, may be the effect of
circumstances, suspicion and reserve being ever so constantly before him as to prevent him
feeling gratitude to those who may benefit him. But the same excuse cannot be pleaded for
his cold-bloodedness and cruelty, which are engrained in him from his youth upwards. In
December, 1864, my friend, Mr. G. M. Sproat, witnessed one of their cold-blooded rites. A
woman of the Seshaaht tribe was put to death by an eld man, whose slave she was, at
the commencement of a celebration of a peculiar character, which lasted several days, and
is called the Klooh-quahn-nah. Doubtless, this murder was only a part of the celebration.
The body was exposed on the beach for two days, but even after the removal further
• " Kitchi-Gami" (English Translation by Wraxell, London, I860), pp. 131—133, where maybe found a very
interesting and valuable account of the Lake Superior tribes.
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: CRUEL RITES. 43
rites took place over the very spot where the body had been exposed. Apart from the
murder, the chief feature of the celebration was a pretended attack on the Indian village
by Indians representing- wolves, while the rest of the population, painted, armed, and with
furious yells, defended their houses from attack. On this occasion they had their hair tied out
from their head so as to represent a wolf -head and snout, and the blanket was put on so as to
show a tail, the motion of the wolf in running being imitated. Many acted like crows, having
on a large wooden bill, and with the blankets so arranged as to look like wings, they really appeared
like large ravens hopping about in the dusk. It is said that this celebration arose from the
son of a chief having been seized by wolves, but as it is to some extent a secret institution —
children not being acquainted with it until they are regularly initiated — Mr. Sproat's idea,
that it is intended to destroy the natural human feeling against murder, and to form, in the
people generally, and especially in the rising generation, hardened and fierce hearts, is not
unreasonable. Perhaps it may be allied to certain superstitions once existing among other
nations — the Lycanthropos of the Greeks, the Loup-garou of the French, the Persian Ghonle,
the Teutonic Werewolf, &c. The wolf figures much in Indian tradition and superstition. The
possession of the mincy-okey-ak, an instrument which could be flung from an unseen hand, bringing
sickness and death to the person struck, is, or was until recently, a strange article of their
belief. No one now knows how to make the miney-okey-ak ; the last family (among the Ohyat
tribe) who knew how to make this dire weapon having, in self-defence, been exterminated by
their tribesmen, four of the brothers being murdered by four friends, who separately invited
them to go out hunting, the other four being stabbed to death by those who sat next to them
at a feast. The women were sold into slavery, and their houses and property destroyed : the
whole story is one of Indian superstition, murder, and treachery. The Indian's evil qualities,
excesses, and defects come up more readily before our mind than any good qualities he may
possess ; " his virtues do not reach our standard, and his vices exceed our standard ... A
murder, if not perpetrated on one of his own tribe, or on a particular friend, is no more to an
Indian than the killing of a dog, and he seems altogether steeled against human misery, when
found among ordinary acquaintances or strangers. The most terrible sufferings, the most
pitiable conditions, elicit not the slightest show of sympathy, and do not interrupt the current
of his occupation or his jests for the moment ." When we add that the Indian is vindictive in
the extreme, cherishing revenge for years until he can gratify it ; that, indeed, the satiation of
revenge is one of his moral canons — paradoxical as it may seem — we have summed up the
more salient vices of the aboriginal American. A writer on the Indians once observed that
their faces expressed " a character in ambush." The phrase exactly expresses aptly the glance
of that furtive eye, different, and yet of much the same nature as the snaky eye of some of the
Asiatic races, and ever-suspicious face, yet shielding the present thought from the observer, though
in time the standard vices of anger, cunning, and pride are all stereotyped there and shown to all
who know how to read them, much more plainly than in the countenance of a European of not
much better character.
They believe greatly in their own consequence, and of their skill in war, and so on.
When Rear-Admiral Denman attacked a tribe on the coast, who had murdered the crew
of a trading vessel, an Indian remarked to me, that if 7te had been the admiral, he would
have done so and so, and even the great Washington was not above censure. Thanachrishon,
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
UTE INDIANS OF AVESTEKN COLORADO.
a chief of the Seneca tribe, judging him by their own rules, used to say that "he was a
good-natured man, but had no experience/' The Tsimpseans have a tradition of their first
meeting with whites on the coast, which shows these characteristics forcibly.* Indians
* Mayne's "British Columbia," p. 279.
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: GAMES. 45
are not fond of Americans, on account of the generally unjustifiable way they are treated
both by the citizens and the Government of that nation. Englishmen, if known as such,
are generally safe among them. An Indian, once describing to me the characteristics of
the different people whom he knew, did so most naively : " King George men (English) ,
very good; Boston man (American), good; John Chinaman, not good; but the black man,
he is no better than a dog!" They are particularly insulted if a black man is placed over them
in any way. They are not very certain whether the black goes all the way through; and
some years ago a party of negroes escaping into Texas were captured by some of the
Comanches, who scraped their skin and committed other cruelties upon them, writh a
view to settle this anatomical question. Many of their ideas about the whites are amusing,
and not a little suggestive. Soldiers and sailors they look upon as a distinct people, for among
a race where all are fighting men, they cannot understand why this duty should be delegated
to a few individuals. The colonial bishop they regard as a great medicine-man or sorcerer.
An Indian once asked me who was the chief of the English. I told him. " Ah ! Queen
Victoly" (for they cannot pronounce •/•). "Is shea woman?" "Yes." " Who is the chief
of the Boston men (Americans) ?" " Mr. Lincoln." "Ah ! I thought so; but another Indian
once told me it was Mr. Washington. Are Mr. Lincoln and the English woman-chief good
friends ? " " Yes, excellent friends." He thought for a moment, and finally said, eagerly,
[( Then if they are so good friends, ic/ty does not Mr. Lincoln take Queen Vidoly for his
tquaw!" The colonists they do not look upon as having been very great men in their
own country, and are shrewd enough to say, " They must have had no good land of their
own, that they come here to deprive us of ours." That a man may work for wages, without
being a slave of his employer, they are only beginning to understand. I have heard them
tell the foremen at saw-mills, that they know well enough that, big men as they were
here, they were only slaves of some big chief elsewhere. Such is their dislike to continuous
-"xcrtion that when working at saw-mills, they will, a few days before the end of their
month's engagement, frequently forfeit their wii^vs, rather than undergo the irksomeness of
finishing it. To see a number of Indians, with no other garment on than a blanket, carrying
lumber from the mill to the ship's side, paid for their labour in cotton shirts, blankets, or
vermilion, and dining on biscuits and molasses, is calculated to strike one as being about
the most primitive organisation of labour imaginable.
GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS.
The Indian has no impetus to continued exertion — the work of a few days or a few hours
will supply all his present wants, and the labour of the summer season will go far to render
him independent of the toil of procuring food for the winter. The rest of his time he passes
in sleep or idleness, and time hangs as heavy on his hands as it does on those of people
similarly situated in more civilised communities. Games and amusements of a rude sort
fill up his time, these games being, however, almost entirely limited to the men.
Gambling is one of the chief weaknesses of an Indian. Once into the heat of the game,
there is nothing he will not stake on its chance — canoes, horses, slaves, arms, even his wife
and children will go, one after another ; he has even been known to sell himself into slavery
46 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
before he would relinquish his chances of winning. More than once my Indians, when canoeing
along the coast or up a river, have asked permission to go ashore for a few minutes, to
where a number of Indians were sitting gambling, and in a short time have come back minus
all their loose property, or some article of clothing — not unfrequently almost stark naked.
There are even professional gamblers amongst them, who are great rogues and cheats. So
intent are they on their games that they will pass whole days and nights engaged in them,
often without ever touching food, or even being conscious of the lapse of time. A few
of these games I will briefly describe. One called by the Tsongeisth, near Victoria, smee-tell-
aew — from skel-e-ow, " the beaver," — is a game of dice played with beavers' teeth. A blanket
is spread on the ground — the number of players is two or three — generally two. A set of
beavers' incisor teeth are marked as follows : — Two of them with one " spot/' four with
five, two with three sets of transverse bars, and one of the spotted ones with a ring of
leather. This is the highest number. The counters are the bones of a wild duck's legs.
The " dice " are tossed up with a circular motion from the hand, and counted in pairs, each
of which counts one ; but if more than two of each kind turn up, it is counted as nothing.
If two bars and two spots, one of them with the " ace/' it counts double (four) ; and so on,
until -the counters are exhausted. This is a favourite game among the Cowichans, Tsongeisth,
and even as far east as Lilloett, on Fraser River. It is essentially what the Americans call
" poker dice." Card-playing has now spread pretty generally among the Indians, and
the traveller will often come upon a group playing at " seven up," " poker," " euchre," and
'•' froze out," with a skill and avidity which would do (dis) credit to any Calif ornian miner
or Mississippi "sport." I have seen cards made by themselves out of bark. In Chinook, or
general trade jargon, they are known as mamook le cult. They have also learned most of the
gamblers' tricks, with some others more transparent, but peculiarly their own. Indian card-
playing has some redeeming qualities of its own. Instead of being played in close rooms,
amid be-laced dowagers, it must be pleasant, on bright summer days or cool evenings, in some
pleasant valley, surrounded with lofty hills, by the banks of some silvery, dreamy river, with
the sound of the water ever flowing musically along, to "turn up the ace!" An Indian at
Lilloett (an essentially gambling wayside village to the mines), a professional swindler at
cards, wras good enough to explain to me, while acting as my escort down the banks of the
Fraser, how he could manage to cheat while dealing. Playing in the open air in that pleasant
valley — like the Happy Valley in "Rasselas" — writh a young Indian, while dealing he would
shout out if he saw some lovely " forest maid" ascending one of the "benches" of the Fraser,
"Xah! nanich okok tenass klotchman!" (Hallo! look at that young woman !) When the
Indian looked round, old "Buffaloo" immediately took the opportunity of dealing double to
himself, or of selecting an ace or two before his opponent had turned round. I believe that
this worthy gentleman was afterwards shot for horse-stealing.
Horse-racing is a very favourite amusement among the horse Indians, as much for tho
sake of showing off the mettle of their cyuses — a term applied to the Indian horses from
a tribe in Oregon, who are celebrated for their herds of horses — as for the sake of winning.
The chief of the Shouswaps used invariably to beat the whites. One of the most picturesque
sights in British Columbia or Northern Oregon is to see an Indian galloping along in his
gay attire, singing some love-song. They are invariably admirable horsemen, and have rarely
DOG DANCE OF THE MINATAREE INDIANS (UPPER MISSOURI)
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: GAMES. 47
any saddle, except one of their own manufacture, made of wood, and for bridle, a cord of horse-
hair twisted round the lower jaw of the animal.
The game I am now about to describe is par excellence the Indian game. It is played all
through British Columbia, Vancouver Island, and Washington Territory, perhaps also in Oregon.
Large quantities of property — even women and slaves, ay, even the gambler's own liberty — are
staked on it, and the din of the game resounds in every Indian village in which I had ever
an opportunity of residing for any length of time. The players are generally four, two on each
side ; but it may be played by any number, so long as the number of players is equal on either
side. The gambling implements, which differ somewhat in appearance, are two round, carved
pieces of polished wood, something like draught-men. These are tossed about in the hand, and
from hand to hand, concealed in the blanket, and in any other manner by which the Indian can
delude his opponent, the point of the game being that his opponent has to guess in which hand
the particular disc of wood is held, and a stick (used as a counter) is lost or gained as the case
may be. The game is, however, conducted without a word being spoken, the players sitting in a
circle, the only sounds being the sing-song kept up while the players are manipulating the pieces
of wood. So violent, however, are their exertions while so doing that the players are generally
streaming with perspiration, which might lead a stranger on first seeing them at it to suppose
them akin to the " dancing dervishes," and their employment of a religious character, instead of
being the purest gambling. The betting is done by pointing to the arm of the hand in which
the sought-for piece of wood is supposed to be held. Sometimes they decline guessing and
watch a little longer, to see if by any means they can be quick enough to detect the piece of
wood in its passage from one hand to another. This they express by pointing their forefinger
downwards in the middle of the circle, and then the manipulation commences anew. A similar
game is played by the Tsimpseans, on the northern coast of British Columbia, with
beautifully polished pieces of rounded stick, about the size of the middle finger, each piece of
stick having a different name. There is another modification of this game. A number of the
pieces are taken and enveloped in a quantity of teased-out cedar bark. They are then skil-
fully tossed out, and bets are made on the guesses — whether a particularly marked one remains
in the bark or not : this is played by most tribes. Another game is to set up a number of
pieces of the tangle, and throw arrows at them with the hand, betting on the result. I have
seen boys in Ucluluaht, on the western shores of Vancouver Island, playing at this. Some
of the youngsters about Victoria have learned cricket and other European games, and are
excessively fond of theatrical performances, though they may not be able to understand a word
of the play. The theatre — not "a tavern/' as Tylor, among some more serious blunders
regarding these tribes, has it — they call the Jtee-Jiee, or " laughing-house."
Among their own amusements are imitations of, or encounters with, wild animals, and
other semi-theatrical entertainments. Hooking fingers, to try their strength by pulling
against each other, is another amusement among some Indians. The "war-dance" of the
western coast Indians consists merely of a number of men with blackened faces running out,
yelling, hopping on one leg, firing guns, and then rushing in again. Dancing is a favourite
amusement, and in some lodge or other almost every night in winter there will be a " little
dance." If not, the chief will muster a number of the young men to dance in his house. The
children amuse themselves by climbing poles, shooting with miniature bow and arrows, or
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
45
throwing 'tiny spears, paddling in a small canoe, and then overturning it and righting it
&c An eye-witness-Mr. Sproat-thus describes one ot their dances :-
dlnce'is a common one. The men strip naked, though it may be a cold frosty mght a
into the water, from which they soon appear, dragging their hod.es along the sand hke seals.
HYDAH WOMEX FROM THE QVEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS.
They enter the houses, and crawl about round the fires, of which there may be fifteen or twenty
kept bright with oil. After a time the dancers jump up, and dance about the hor
another dance in which all the performers are naked, a man appears with his arms tied 1
his back with long cords, the ends of which are held like reins by other natives, wh(
* The under lip of the central figure shows the lip "ornament." In the background is a curiously carved
enclosure of boards containing the dead body of a chief. The engraving is made from original photc
50 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
about. The spectators sing and beat time with their wooden dishes and bear-skin drums.
Suddenly the chief appears, armed with a knife, which he plunges into the runner's back, who
springs forward, moving wildly as if in search of shelter. Another blow is given ; blood flows
down his back, and great excitement prevails, amidst which the civilised spectator shudders
and remonstrates. The stroke is repeated, and the victim staggers weakly, and falls prostrate
and lifeless. Friends gather round, and remove the body, which outside the house, washes
itself and puts on its blanket." It has only been a piece of consummate acting, which would
make the fortune of a minor theatre in London. The " blood" is a mixture of red gum, resin, oil,
and water — the same colouring matter, indeed, which is used to paint the inside of the canoes.
There is another dance, in which both men and women join, all bare to the waist, with their hair
hanging loose, and what with the jingling of the women's bracelets and anklets of brass rod, and
the movements of half -naked blanket-kilted dancers, seen through the smoke of a dimly-lighted
Indian house, it does not require a very vivid imagination to conjure up visions of another dance,
of which Tarn o' Shanter was a spectator in " Alloway's auld haunted kirk ! " In this dance no
special notice is taken of the v/omen, there being no partners, and each one leaves the dance as
he or she chooses without ceremony — unless, indeed, when some especially gallant youth throws
a string of beads or other ornament round the neck of a dusky maiden more than usually active
in the dance. The figure is so complicated that it would be difficult to describe it, but one
portion of the peculiarities of the dance is for strips of blanket to be passed under the arm so
quickly from one to another, that unless it was noticed now and then that some tired performer
walked off with a strip in his hand, it would be difficult to say what it was which was being
passed so rapidly through the maze of dancers. Few of their dances are, however, so wild
and weird as the buffalo-dance of some of the Prairie Indians, of which our artist's illustration
conveys so vivid an idea that we may spare ourselves a description of it (p. 49) .
Their blankets are white, scarlet, green, or blue, and are usually obtained from the whites.
Formerly they were woven of dogs' hair, and very gaudily ornamented with differently-coloured
dyed wool. On Fraser lliver, until recent times, whole flocks of dogs were kept at the villages
to be shorn annually for the purpose of this manufacture. These curious fabrics are now rarely
seen, but on the west coast of Yancouver Island, blankets neatly woven of white pine (Finns
niiniticolti] bark, with a lace of nettle hemp, and trimmed with sea-otter fur, are quite common.
The women are very ingenious in weaving these blankets, and mats in variegated patterns of
cedar bark, which are used for a variety of purposes.
INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER.
In intellectual capacity Indians are far from contemptible, and soon learn the elements
of education, though their wandering, excitable disposition will scarcely allow of their
settling down long enough for them to acquire much instruction, even when an opportunity
occurs, as around the missions. They learn, however, very rapidly up to a certain age — say
twelve, after which white children start ahead of them. Their intellect seems at that state
to get sluggish. I was amused when sailing along the British Columbian coast, a few
years ago, to find a little boy in one of the most savage tribes in that region reading a
newspaper over my shoulder, and retailing it to his companions. I discovered, on inquiring,
that he had been for a little while servant to a priest at one of the Catholic missions. I
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY. 51
fancy few English boys of the same age would have been so sharp as to learn to read with such
facility, and that too in a foreign language. Some of them are very skilful orators, and this
branch of rhetoric is sedulously cultivated among them. Boys will be taught portions of
celebrated speeches, and future envoys and orators will be pointed out by the old men as they
lounge in front of the lodge doors in the evening, with young aboriginal America playing on
the beach. Next to skill in the art of war, this accomplishment leads to the greatest honour
and preferment. Most of the great chiefs, if they are not skilful in that direction themselves,
keep some one to repeat their speeches to the assembled council. I have heard some speeches
among the interior tribes which would favourably compare with some of the finest pieces of
civilised eloquence, though, I confess, a great deal consists in the translation, and in the
; simplicity of the diction and ideas. Some tribes have a fashion for the orator when addressing
a multitude to hold a wand in his hand, which he flourishes about or sticks into the ground,
and which, after the talk is finished and the bargain made, he presents to the orator or head of
the opposite party. In speaking, they have a peculiar jerking kind of utterance. Among a
people who are so fond of show and praise, it is not surprising to find professional troubadours.
Such a one existed a few years ago on the north-west coast. He was white-haired and blind,
and was escorted round the tribes, whom he used to visit every summer, by his two sons. In
rude verse he celebrated the deeds and glory of the chiefs — and, indeed, of anybody who would
pay, but if they did not speedily show signs of largess, this aboriginal bard would inform
them, in plain words, that it was with him no pay, no praise. He might not be so elegant in
bearing as Bernard Ventadour or Bertrand Born, but in his own way this minstrel of the
"West was as successful in his profession as the medieval troubadour, for he was one of the
richest men in his tribe.
In arts they are also not unskilful. Their beautiful canoes, carved out of a single
cedar-tree, nets, and various descriptions of arms, fully illustrate this, though the southern
tribes (the Diggers) have only the rudest description of these. The northern tribes excel in
this capacity for art, and many of their pipes and other carvings, made of a soft shale or slate
found in their country, are now common objects in European museums. These are all made by
the Queen Charlotte Islanders, the Tsimpseans, and the tribes of the territory of Alaska.
I knew a Hydah who could take a very fair portrait on ivory, scratching it out with a broken
knife; and the railings of the balcony of the Bank of British Columbia, in Victoria, were
designed by the same man. I have seen a pair of gold bracelets made out of twenty-dollar
pieces by him ; and rings, earrings, and other pieces of jewellery made by the same people in a
style which would not disgrace a civilised artist, are very common along the north-west coast.
Mr. Dallas, formerly Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, has an excellent bust of
himself, carved by an Indian out of a walrus' tusk, the only tools used being a file, an old
knife, and a piece of shark's skin in lieu of sand-paper. On this being shown to an eminent
sculptor in London, he assured him that it could not have been executed better by himself.
The same gentleman has a pair of the ear-bones of a whale carved by an Indian in a similarly
excellent manner. The man-bull of Nineveh is often copied by them in slate from the pictures
in the illustrated newspapers obtained from traders and others, and, unless this was known, the
presence of such designs among them would rather puzzle an ethnologist.
The American Indians have usually been described as stolid and impassive, and to a
52 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
passing- stranger they really appear so ; but once let the suspicion and reserve wear off, and
they are far from reserved in their behaviour. When excited, they have no control over
themselves, and are mere creatures of impulse, scarcely answerable for their acts. A trifle,
which would never affect a white man, would with an Indian act like a spark to a gunpowder-
magazine. One moment he is stolid, the next excited and wild. The use of intoxicants, which
might only make a white lively, converts an Indian into a perfect demon, who can only be
approached at risk of life. "When tipsy, all his evil passions get full sway, and every slumber-
ing suspicion is fanned into a flame. Murder is of the most common occurrence, and in former
times when rum was the itnum necessariiim of Indian trade, there was scarcely a debauch in
which some one was not killed, or some helpless child got disabled by neglect of its drunken
parents. Old traders describe these debauches as perfect pandemonia ; and from what is seen
when a cask of whisky is introduced into a camp of Indians at this day we can well believe it.
I once had occasion to pass near a party of northern Indians encamped, on their way home from
Victoria, 011 a little flat by the seashore, south of Fort Rupert, in Vancouver Island. Without
the slightest provocation, a man whom I had never seen before, but who was quite mad, rushed
at me with a knife, and so sudden was the attack, that had he not been held back by some
women just at the moment he was reaching me, this narrative might never have been written.
He broke loose again from the women — most of the men being incapably drunk — but tripped up
on a tuft of grass and lay there. Of course I could easily have shot him; but then it would
have been necessary to buy his body or limb from his relatives, if even I had not paid for my
rashness writh my life. Accordingly I was prepared to club him with my rifle at arm's length
before he could lay hands on me.
An Indian expresses no surprise at any novelty which is shown to him, simply because he
cannot understand the meaning of it ; but if any strange object of which he can comprehend
the general nature is shown him, he will instantly display astonishment at what transcends
his ideas on the subject, and anything similar with which he can compare it.
In their domestic relations there is no great demonstration of affection, if even any exists.
Admiral Mayne tells a story of a woman of one of the northern tribes being rescued from
slavery by the vessel on board which he was an officer. Her husband had escaped from the
massacre in which she had been captured, but she supposed that he had either been killed or
lost, while he looked upon her in a similar light. When afterwards, to their mutual surprise,
they were both rescued and brought face to face on the deck of the same vessel, beyond the
slightest recognition they expressed no surprise, and never spoke to each other until he called
her to his canoe on leaving the vessel.
On one occasion I took a hunter, old Quassoon, one of the best of his people, away with
me for a day or two, but unexpectedly he was absent nearly two weeks. When he returned to
his lodge, I watched the meeting between him and his wife : no sentiment, no surprise, no
demonstration whatever ; the hungry husband simply asked in a gruff tone — " No food ? " — and
ordered her down to carry up his baggage from the canoe. Yet this same old man once
expressed great anxiety about what she might think when, on another occasion, he was in
danger of being compelled to absent himself from home on one of my expeditions.*
* In the first Edition of this work ("Races of Mankind," Vol. I., pp. 40—47) an account of the expedition
vas given.
s:iAwAx6H, THE VTE CHIEF WHO WAS RENT TO WASHINGTON IN 1883 TO TIIEAT
WITH THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER III.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: OCCUPATIONS; GOVERNMENT; SLAVERY; WAR.
I HAVE preferred to dwell 011 the polity and pursuits of these Indian tribes on the west
of the Rocky Mountains, and especially on the sea-side of the Cascade range, first,
because the writer spent more than four years in their midst, and is intimately acquainted
with the habits of many of the tribes, and secondly, because the general characteristics
51. THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
are in many respects the same as those to the east of the mountains, and therefore a
more complete systematic account of some of their habits in this place will save the
necessity of going- over similar ground at a later stage of our labours. The Selish, or
flat-headed branch of the North American Indians, have been classed by Morgan as the
Ganowaneari, or Bow and Arrow people, but the term is a piece of rather meaningless
pedantry, and is on a par with the vast amount of pretentious blunders which have been
published and are still being issued by compilers and unscientific tourists regarding these
peoples. For instance, among other mistakes of this nature in a recent encyclopaedia article,
they are divided into five groups — the Hydahs, the Nootkas, the Selish, the Sahaptins, and
the Chinooks. The first is tolerably accurate, though it is ludicrous to read that the name
was " originally applied " to them by a tourist who is named, when in reality the term
has been the familiar appellation for at least fifty years, and was used by the present
writer in an account of the Queen Charlotte Islands as early as 1869. The Nootkas are,
however, no group at all. There is no such geographical name as Nootka known in
Vancouver Island — the nearest being Nootche, a mountain, or Nootka, a dancing game.
In Vancouver Island the little tribes on the coast speak four entirely distinct languages,
while the Selish, or flat heads, is an equally heterogeneous farrago of names, flat heads
being found as commonly among the " Nootkas" as among them. However, in time we
may hope for better work by more competent labourers should the tribes not become
extinct. *
The habits of all the Indian tribes have so changed since the whites came amongst
them that in many cases their aboriginal customs and mode of life have entirely altered,
and of few tribes can it be affirmed that a description written twenty or thirty years ago
is still applicable in every respect. Even the coast tribes before the settlement of British
Columbia, Washington Territory, and Oregon had comparatively little intercourse with the
traders. The Russian Imperial Fur Company supplied the tribes in what was then
Russian America, and is now the " unorganised " and almost unpeopled United States*
territory of Alaska, though the interior races had either few opportunities of reaching the
posts or the coast, or had to penetrate inland to those of the Hudson's Bay Company. Farther
south, they were dependent for articles of civilised life on the corporation last named, or on
the occasional American vessels which touched on the coast here and there. Still, up to
the period of the "gold excitement/' in 1858, the tribes of this wide region could only
obtain firearms, clothing, and other luxuries with difficulty and at a high price. In the
interior there were even more obstacles in their way, since the expense of transport in-
creased in a direct ratio to the distance the tribe lived from the seaboard. Over a great
part of this country there are to this day no roads ; but on some of the rivers and lakes
there are steamers, and at intervals there are settlements and even towns, where at a com-
paratively moderate cost everything required by the Indian — plus a gieat many articles
which he does not need, and would be infinitely better without — can be bought. Hence
the tribesmen have invariably become idler and more vicious than they were in the old
days ; fur animals are fewer ; and though hunting is of necessity diminished, civilised labour
* See "Countries of the World," Vol. L, pp. 261 — 302, for an account of the physical geography and general
features of the region, the people of which are described in this work.
THE NORTH-WEST AMERICAN INDIANS: OCCUPATION. 55
has not been adopted in a corresponding degree. Moreover, now that blankets can be
bought so much more cheaply than they could in ancient times be woven out of dogs'
hair or pine bark, the squaws have less work to do, and the axiom that Satan finds
some mischief for idle hands to do applies with great force in their case. Firearms, in
like manner, save the hunter many a weary journey, and many a toilsome day spent in
making his bow and arrows. The flint knife was a weapon which cost serious labour
compared with the weapon which he can buy for a few shillings or their equivalent in
trade, and if he wears shoes, which he does not invariably do even when from home, he
can buy a pair for the price of a day's toil which will last much longer than several
pairs of the more comfortable and picturesque mocassins. The only articles which the
whites cannot supply the Indian with are his fishing utensils and his canoe. But if the
trader has yet failed to provide a substitute for these necessaries, he has tools for sale
which enable the native artificer to manufacture them at a tithe of the cost of time and
manual labour which in former days had to be devoted to their slow fabrication. A steel
saw, an axe, a chisel, and an adze, are expeditious in their work compared with the same
tools composed of stone or shell, and in making a fishing spear, the iron, which until the
Indians came in contact with the whites was an impossible acquisition, wonderfully
lightens his task. Yet, though there are few Indians from the Mississippi to the Pacific
who have not seen a blacksmith at work either in the forges attached to the military
and trading posts, or in the villages and towns, I never met with one in the region
under description who had any other idea of converting a piece of iron to the purpose for
which he wished to adapt it, except by wearing a bigger piece down by rubbing it on a
stone or filing it until it got smaller.
Time to an Indian — as, indeed, to all savages and most barbarians — is of no account. It
was made for slaves and for white people. So long as he does not find the absolute want
of any particular object, he takes into no account the labour he may have bestowed on it
or the time he may have wasted over its production. If anything takes his fancy he will
readily part with his most cherished treasures in order to become the owner of the article
which for the moment may have attracted his passing whim. Colonel Dodge tells a story of a
Sioux Indian who came to Fort Sedgwick, having in his possession a very fine and elaborately-
painted buffalo robe. Various tempting offers, to the amount of nearly twenty dollars,
were made for it, but all refused, until a sergeant passing with a paper of loaf sugar cut into
cubic lumps attracted the owner of the coveted robe. In a few moments the Indian had
exchanged it for the three or four pounds of sugar, and then sitting down on the ground slowly
and deliberately ate up every lump, meanwhile perfectly satisfied with his bargain.
The occupation of all the members of these tribes is simply hunting and fishing and the
arts connected with them. Every season has its special duties to perform — at one there is the
halibut-fishing, in another, the dog-fish, from the livers of which large quantities of oil are made,
are captured ; a third, is the clam months ; while elk, deer, seal, whale, &c., are hunted at all
or at particular periods, as the Indians may have opportunity or inclination. The women
collect roots, such as the underground rhizome of the common bracken, which contains some
starch, and various bulbs, such as that of the gamass (Gamassia esculenta), which is stored up
for winter use, and is very pleasant and nourishing. The gamass-gathering is in June, when
50 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the prairie, blue with the flowers of the lily in question, is dotted with brush camps of the
gamass-gatherers. The women, girls, and children are the workers, each being provided with a
pointed stick, by which they adroitly turn up the bulb. A young man will look on about this
time, and if he is inclined for a hard-working wife, will select her in accordance with her
eligibilities for work as exhibited at the gamass-gathering. The salmon season is the great one.
Most of the salmon are got by spearing, after which, they are split and dried for winter use. In
AN INDIAN BUBTING-QROtriTD IN THE WEST.
passing down the Fraser and other rivers, I have seen stages erected to enable the fisher to
spear the salmon below, and most picturesque it was to observe the stark savage intent on his
business, silent and engrossed, until a shout would proclaim that he had procured one. The
spear has a harpoon attached to it, which gets detached after the salmon is struck ; the fish is
Hum hauled up by the attached cord.* On the banks of that river there are boxes in the trees,
where the salmon are stored — it is said to keep them from the wolves. Wild animals are shot
* These spears are figured in the JVocmft/^s of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, 1870, p. 295.
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOOD.
57
and trapped in various ways for their flesh or skins. Berries of all sorts are collected and
either dried for winter use or eaten raw. A mes^ of fresh berries and whale oil is accounted
a great luxury. Shell-fish of all kinds are eaten and also dried. Tea the Indians are very fond
CHIEF IN FULL IHIESS.
and tobacco they have been so long- accustomed to as to scarcely recollect how they used to
do without it. I have seen an Indian, when tobacco was scarce, swallow the smoke until it
ime out at his ears, nostrils, and even eyes, repeating- this several times, until he would lie
down insensible. The pipe would then be taken by the next, until they had all had their
58 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
desire for tobacco gratified, so far as the supply would go. " You white men/' they told me,
"do not know how to use it. You puff out the food: we swallow it.-" The pipe is not
amongst these people so much a symbol of peace as among the Indians of the eastern side
of the continent. In times of scarcity they will smoke the leaves of the bear-berry (Arctos-
tiqihylos uva ursi), or even cedar leaves. They generally mix their tobacco with the leaves
of the former plant, or with the bark of the "red willow/' a practice the fur-traders have
learned from them. They can eat an enormous quantity at a time, and can fast equally long ;
I have never seen them refuse food, even though they had shortly before taken a full meal.
When travelling, they will string a number of square pieces of cooked meat on a stick and fasten
it on the top of their load, reaching every now and again for a piece, which they will devour
while walking. Of agriculture they are quite ignorant. Unlike the Eastern Indians, who
from the earliest times have grown maize, they have no aboriginal plant which they cultivate.
Of lute years, in the vicinity of most villages, they have begun to grow a few potatoes, but,
though a plentiful supply of these would add materially to their comfort, their utter laziness
prevents them from scratching over anything but a mere scrap of ground. The Queen
Charlotte Islanders are accounted the best potato-cultivators, and here a regular kind of
potato-fair is held in the autumn, when the members of other tribes come to purchase
potatoes from them. They have, however, some rather primitive ideas of how best to grow
them. I once lived in an Indian village in which every morning, as the squaws were lighting
the lodge fires, the old chief would march through the village, shouting in solemn stentorian
tones, " Eat the little potatoes, keep the big ones for seed ! Eat the little potatoes, keep the
big ones for seed ! " Their canoes are most elegantly fashioned out of the large trunks of the
" cedar " (Thuja giyantea], and are sometimes of very large size. They have no birch-bark canoes,
the canoe birch (Betnla papyracea] not being found except in the extreme north-eastern point
of North-west America. Their canoes are tastefully painted, and of different shapes among
different tribes, or to suit particular purposes, as for war, the ascent of shallow rivers, rough
weather, &c. Like all Indian canoes, they are steered entirely by the paddle, in the use of
which the women are almost as adroit as the men. Of late they have begun to use sails,
either of cotton or of mats of cedar bark, but in the use of these they are much less skilful,
being only able to sail before a fair wind — ' ' fore and aft."
In making a bargain they have no superiors. Time is nothing to them, and in general
the trader's patience will give way before the Indian's. They will often keep a valuable skin — •
like a sea-otter's — for years, until they can dispose of it to advantage; though, at the same
time, if anything struck their fancy, or if they required money, they would dispose of it at a
" ruinous sacrifice." There is a good deal of intertribal trade, " middle-men," or rather
middle-tribes, claiming the right of interposing in this, and tithing the profit derived from it.
For instance, suppose a southern tribe had some particular commodity for sale which a northern
tribe held in esteem, some intervening tribe or tribes, if powerful enough, would not allow the
southern tribe to pass northward with its commodity, but force them to sell to these middle-men,
who would again dispose of it at an enhanced value. News among these people travels apace.
Let a trader in a village give a higher price than usual for some fur or other commodity, and
before he gets a few hundred miles north he will find that the news has reached there before him.
Among the colonists many ridiculous theories are afioat as to how this coast telegraph works.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: OCCUPATIONS. 59
In reality, however,, it is very simply accomplished. Indians go out fishing towards the extreme
northern and southern terminations of their fishing-ground. Here they meet fishers from
more northern tribes, to whom, true to their love of gossip, and especially of profitable gossip,
they communicate the news ; the others go home to their village and tell it. Next day,
perhaps, some of the men from this village go out fishing farther to the north, and again gossip
with still more northern tribesmen, and so the news travels fast.
Though among savages there is no real division of labour, yet it is a curious feature
among some of the Vancouver tribes that certain families have a monopoly of certain
trades or arts, such as canoe-making, and that other villages are famous for some other branch
of industry. Generally speaking, every Indian is his own blacksmith (if such a trade can
be said to exist, for forging they know nothing about), carpenter, and tailor. The latter
profession would, however, not be a very lucrative occupation among the coast tribes. Their
ordinary dress is a blanket pinned under the chin and hung like a cloak behind, with
a shirt made of a flour-sack or any odd substance. The hair of both men and women
is black and long. Most of the men wear it hanging loose, bound round by a ribbon, or
tied behind their ears with cedar bark. This may not be so artistic, but it is decidedly
more elegant than the method of dressing the hair adopted by some of the " plain tribes/'
The women divide theirs in the middle, plaiting it into two divisions, weighted at the end and
hanging down the back. Some of them wear hats made of the roots of a fir, shaped like a
truncated cone, and very gaudily painted ; others have capes of the bark of the cedar, and quite
wateqjroof . The women used to wear a sort of petticoat composed of a number of strings of
bark twisted, and pendant from a girdle all around, but this is now discontinued, and all the
coast tribes have now more or less of European dress, some of them being quite gaily attired on
high occasions. The interior, or horse tribes (for the wrooded character of the country to the
west of the Cascades, will not admit of horses being used), generally dress in buckskin trousers
and shirt, gaily beaded or ornamented with porcupine quills, and mocassins of the same material.
Their cap is usually of some fur, with a fox's tail, and among some tribes foxes' tails are worn at
the heels of those who have slain their enemies in war. The women's dress among these tribes
is generally a long buckskin shirt, beaded and fringed, with a superabundance of ribbons in their
hair. The dress of the men, especially when new and well made, is very picturesque and handsome,
and is much affected by travellers and hunters in their country. The Diggers go nearly always
in puris natnralibus. The houses of the coast tribes are long parallelograms of cedar boards,
fastened by withes to upright poles, and divided for different families by breast-high partitions ;
each house is usually occupied by the head of a family, and there are partitions for the different
families of his kinsfolk. The fires are in the middle of the house, and the smoke escapes
as best it can through the open boards of the roof. Often I have had to run out of their lodges
on account of the pungent smoke, when they would good-naturedly, even though it was
snowing, draw the roof-boards aside, to allow the surplus to escape for my convenience.
These boards are laboriously chiseled out of cedar logs, and are accordingly of great value.
When the Indians remove to any other fishing village, where they intend staying for some
time, they take the boards along with them, leaving only the bare skeleton of the village, which
soon gets overgrown with nettles and other vegetation, and might appear to a stranger
unacquainted with Indian habits as long deserted. To accomplish their removal they lash two
60 THE PEOPLES OF THE \V011LD.
large canoes together, lay the boards across them, and on this platform place all sorts of
household goods, boxes, dogs, &c., and so slowly paddle on to their new locality. Here they
disembark, and in a day or two the deserted framework is clothed with walls and roof, and
what looked as if long deserted is soon stirring with life. This habit of a tribe to migrate from
place to place has given origin to some nominal tribes, the so-called tribes being only villages
of the same people, occupied at different times of the year. In the summer, or while moving
from place to place they will use mat wigwams, and the plain tribes use lodges of a conical
form made of skins, the form and variety of which vary with every tribe. Some of the tribes
on the east coast of Vancouver and the northern coast of British Columbia have houses in
imitation of the whites with separate apartments within the main building. Few of them
have tried to imitate the European style of furniture, though one or two of the more
civilised ones about the Metlakatlah Mission on the northern coast of British Columbia
have made a faint attempt at this. A Clalam* Indian of my acquaintance, in a fit of
enthusiastic civilisation, built and furnished a cottage like the settlers about him, and for a
while was very proud of his establishment. By-and-by he and his squaw got into a quarrel, when
to spite the lady, who was very fond of her home, he set to work with an axe, chopped up the
furniture, and then burnt the whole to ashes.
Barter is the general mode of purchase amongst Indians, though the tribes nearest the
white settlements are now learning the use of money, and prefer it to goods. Among some of
the tribes near Fort Rupert certain pieces of wood studded with sea-otter teeth are used as
a medium of exchange, and in Southern Oregon and Northern California the Indians employ
the scarlet scalps of the carpenter woodpecker for money. There are numerous articles held in
high esteem by them, though they are not regular articles of barter — such as the skin of an
albino deer, but the universal substitute for money which once prevailed among all the North-
western Indian tribes, and does so to a considerable extent even at the present day, was the hioqua,
shell, and which held the same place as the cowry among some African tribes in its purchasing
power. This Indian money, or hioqua, is the Dentalium jpretiosum. It is a shell from half an
inch to two and a half inches in length, pearly white, and, as its name infers, in shape like a
slender specimen of the canine tooth or tusk of a bear, dog, or such-like animal. The Indians
value a shell according to its length. Those representing the greatest value are called, when
strung together, hioqua; but the standard by which the dental'mm is calculated to be fit for
a hioqua is that twenty-five shells placed end to end must make a fathom (or six feet) in
length. At one time a hioqua would purchase a small slave, equal in value to fifty blankets,
or about £50 sterling. The shorter and defective shells are strung together in various lengths,
and are called kop-kops. About forty kop-kops equal a hioqua in value. These strings
of (hntalia are usually the stakes gambled for. These shells are procured off Cape
Flattery and from the north-west end of Vancouver Island, chiefly Koskeemo Sound, a locality
abounding in marine life. The Indian fairy tales tell of youths who went away to such far-
off lands that they came to a people who were so rich that they lived in houses writh copper
doors, and fed on the flesh of the hioqua shell ! The dentalia live in the soft mud, in
water from three to five fathoms in depth. The habit of the creature is to bury itself in the
* On the Washington Territory shores of Do Ftiea's Strait ; the tribe is so designated by the whites, but the real
pronunciation of the name is S'calam.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: OCCUPATIONS.
61
sand, the small end of the shell being invariably downwards, and the larger end close to the
surface, thus allowing the mollusc to protrude its feeding and breathing organs. The Indian
turns this to account in the instrument he uses to capture them with. He arms himself with
a long spear, the shaft made of light fir, to the end of which is fastened a strip of wood,
BLACKFOOT INDIAN1 CHIEF.
closely resembling a long comb with the teeth very wide apart. A squaw sits in the stern or
the canoe, and paddles it slowly along, whilst the Indian with the spear stands in the bow.
He now sticks this comb-like tool into the sand at the bottom of the water, and after giving it
two or three stabs draws it up to look at it. If he has been successful, perhaps four or five
dentalia have been impaled on the teeth of the spear. Mr. Lord— from whom I quote this—
G3 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
seems to think that it was only in remote times that the interior tribes traded these from the
coast tribes. This is not so; to this day the interior tribes, even as far south as California,
use and value them highly. The Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Rupert purchase large
quantities from the Koskeemo Indians, for the purpose of sending to San Francisco, from
whence they are scattered by the American traders all through the interior.
With all their suspiciousness, it was often a surprise to me how nearly all the Indians I
have ever fallen in with had such implicit belief in " papers." Indians have often taken my notes
of hand for sums due to them, and at other times — and this was most extraordinary — they would
demand before starting a " paper " to the effect that they were to get so-and-so for the work to
be done, quite unconscious, as they could not read, and had no one to read it for them, that
the document might, to say the least of it, be very informal ! Traders are in the habit of
granting these promissory notes, and I fancy they cannot be often dishonoured — the trader's
credit, not to say the safety of his head, being dependent on his meeting them faithfully — as
their belief is still strong in a " papaw." They are always anxious to get from you another
kind of " paper " — namely, a certificate of character. Now these certificates are very usef ul to
those who come after him, if the traveller knows his man well and states his character fairly,
The contrary is, however, more often the case. Every trader or vagabond who " knocks about "
the country immediately airs his penmanship in such documents, which are of no value except as
specimens of peculiar orthography, or often of profanity. Sometimes the writers attempt doggerel
— the result of which is sufficiently amusing. Generally the first thing an Indian does, if he
wishes to establish diplomatic relations with you, is to march off to his lodge and produce a
packet of greasy documents, which he hands out from beneath his blanket, with a look upon his
countenance, as of ' ' Read this, my friend, and then tell me what you think of me ! " You
open them — " This is to certtifie that the Bayrer is one of the allfiredest scoundrels in all the
counttry, and would steal the ears off your head — not to say the hed itself — if they was not
fastened. Kick him behind with the kind regards of The Lord High Dook of Newcastle the
riter of this ; " or, " This is a good honest Injun, very obliging and truthfull, and greatfull for
kindness. J. Smith, schooner Indian Maid." The extreme value of this certificate is proved
by the fact that the bearer so highly recommended, after gorging himself at your expense, is
caught making off, not only without once thanking you (which is not expected), but with your
coat under his blanket !
Writing, indeed, the more primitive tribes entertain a superstitious fear regarding, and
instances of a similar idea might be culled from the folk-lore of numerous other savage
races. Most Indians dread to have their portraits taken, though the feeling is now dying
away, since the photographers' cases in Victoria and all the frontier towns are filled with the
'cartes de visile of more or less ferocious-looking aborigines. The fear, where it exists, is
due to an idea that the person possessing the portrait can by means of it hold the life
and safety of the original of it in his power. In like manner, the Queen Charlotte Islanders
conceive that if! any one gets possession of some article belonging to a dead man he
might work him evil in the land of spirits. Other Indians believe that pictures are highly
efficient charms. The natives of Bornou dread being " written about/' and the Laplanders,
as well as the natives of Madagascar, hold graphic representation of them in like evil
odour. There are nowadays few North American tribes so primitive as those savages who
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: GOVERNMENT. G3
imagined Carver's book to be his familiar spirit, or the Minatarees (Plate II.) who pur-
chased Catlings newspaper as a medicine for sore eyes. In various parts of semi-civilised
Africa a prayer is written on a board and then washed off, and the water sold at a high
price as a sovereign remedy for many evils. Among the Kirghiz similar amulets are sold
"at the rate of a sheep for each scrap of paper." * So highly do the Coast Indians of
British Columbia value a paper that the owner of one will frequently sell it to another
as a marketable commodity. When, in 1866, I visited the then very primitive and
interesting Koskeemo Indians on the north-west coast of Vancouver Island, the wife
of old Negatsay the chief produced for my inspection the family papers, and though these
documents consisted for the most part of the usual testimonials from traders, scrawls from,
one hunter to another, old printed proclamations of a long departed Governor, &c., no
autograph collector could have displayed more pride in his treasures than did Madame
Negatsay and her handsome daughter in their family archives.
Yet an Indian who places such a superstitious value on " a paper " experiences no
such awe for a treaty. Again and again have the chief men of a tribe placed their sig-
natures— or their attested " mark/' which to them amounts to the same — to a solemn com-
pact, and only kept it so long as its conditions did not interfere with their propensities
to plunder, or their desire to wreak vengeance on the whites, a fact which the endless
Indian wars of the United States sufficiently prove. It is indeed very questionable whether
the Indian tribes as a whole understand the nature of those elaborate compacts which the
United States' Government have formed with the wild tribes of the West. They quite
appreciate the fact that in return for certain supplies of blankets, coats, red paint, and
bad cutlery they are to abstain from trespassing on certain lands, from murdering the
whites, and stealing their property. But the idea of any moral obligation attaching to this
treaty is beyond their comprehension. In this respect it is fair to say that the example
set them by the whites is not calculated to inculcate an opposite code of morals.
GOVERNMENT.
The government of the Indian tribes is essentially patriarchal, every man ruling
Mo own family; but the tribes are governed by hereditary chiefs, who are treated with
great respect. Rank of a certain kind may also be acquired through wealth and prowess
in war, as with us, and even women can receive a certain rank. Their ideas of right in
land are rather vague, though there is generally some tract held by each tribe and claimed
as its own. The boundaries of the fishing-grounds are much more accurately defined,
r.nd excessive jealousy exists in regard to any encroachment upon them. They claim
from the whites the right of selling their land, but this is really an after-idea started
with a view to obtain something from them, for until the whites came land had no worth
except for hunting, and the trees which they affect to value so highly now were of little
or no use to them, except for the very minor purposes to which they applied the wood-
Every man claims a right in what he can make. There is no communism of property among
them, though it was an old custom for a young unmarried man to give whatever he earned
* Lubbock : " The Origin of Civilisation," pp. 14 — 13,,
Gt THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
to his elder brother. Crimes are punished by the individual who is the chief sufferer by them,
though nearly all crimes have well-understood and established expiations marked out for them.
Most minor injuries can be wiped out by payments to the person injured — as indeed they can in
more civilised regions — but "a life for a life" is the universal law, admitting of no deviation,
except to the dishonour of the individual whose the vengeance is. Many crimes exist among
these people, which are left altogether unpunished, being looked upon as no crimes at all — such
as infanticide, for example. On the whole, they are much more free from crime than civilised
communities; for " killing" they look upon as "no murder." Hereditary rank, "gentle blood,
INDIAN1 BOW, QUIVER, AND BASKETS MADE FROM GRASS, CYPERUS ROOT, ETC.
and long descent" are highly valued among them, and great efforts are made to attain to
position among these frowsy savages.
The chiefs, however, have not now the same power and influence over their tribes which
they used to have. Wars are less common, and since the settlements of the whites have been
established here and there through the country, this influence is lessening still more. The whites
will patronise the most useful man, regardless of rank, and accordingly a smart young fellow
who can speak English will soon get property and influence in his tribe, while the hoary old
• King/' whose name once carried terror, is looked upon by the Indians, with a few exceptions,
and by the rough frontier men universally, as a " regular no 'count Injun." The fur-traders
others in out-of-the-way places, no doubt, still curry favour with the chiefs and treat them
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: CHIEFS.
65
with marked respect, though I question if even this is so great nowadays as it used to be in the
palmy times of the fur trade — at least I never heard of such men as Tsosieten or Tsohailum in
these latter degenerate days, or such a powerful chief as Casino, a chief of the Klickitats, who
claimed fealty from all the Indians inhabiting the Columbia River, from Astoria to the Cascades.
This chief, in the plenitude of his power, travelled in great — almost regal state, and was often
accompanied by a hundred slaves obedient to his slightest caprice. The bands over whom he
presided paid him tribute on all the furs and fish taken, as also upon the increase of their horses,
to support him in his affluence. He was the favourite chief of the Hudson's Bay Company, and
THHEE STAGES OF CIVILISATION : A SKETCH FROM NEAR FORT LARAMIE.
through him they were undoubtedly much indebted for the quiet ascendency they always main-
tained, in troublesome times, over these tribes. It is said that on visiting Fort Vancouver, his
slaves often carpeted the road, from the landing at the river-side to the fort, with beaver and
other furs, for the distance of a quarter of a mile ; and on his return, the officers of the Hudson's
Bay Company would take the furs and carpet the same distance with blankets and other Indian
goods as his recompense. When last I heard of him he was an old man, having outlived his
prosperity and posterity, to see a once numerous people reduced to a few scattered lodges, which
must soon disappear before the rapidly growing settlements of the adventurous pioneers."*
* In 1848 Mr. J. M. Stanley painted his portrait, which was among tho^e destroyed in 1 Sfifi. when a portion of
the Smithsonian Institution was burnt. See Catalogue of Portraits of North America* Indians in Smithsonian,
Institution (1852\ ' ;
U
Co THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The portrait of another very remarkable old chief used to hang in Mr. Stanley's collection
in Washington. It was that of Peo-peo-mux-mux, principal chief of the Wallas, an Upper
Columbia River tribe, but who was generally called by the Hudson's Bay Company " Serpent
Jaune" (the Yellow Serpent). This old worthy came, perhaps, nearer the Lean-ideal of a
savage grandee than any Indian whom I have ever known. In the days of his prosperity he is
said to have owned more than 2,000 horses, droves of which feeding in the grassy valleys
constitute the wealth of the nation to which he belonged, as blankets form the sitmmnin lonnm
of a coast Indian's ambition. In an evil hour, however, he rose against the whites, during- the.
Indian war of 1855, and after maintaining an unequal fight for upwards of two years, was
forced to make terms with the United States Government. He had then only a remnant of
his former wealth. During the war, Colonel Wright, with a view to weaken the power of the
old chief, gave orders to collect his horses, and having surrounded them with a stockade, platoons
of soldiers would fire all day at them, until they were vastly reduced in numbers. A considerable
number were also appropriated by the frontier men, who looked upon the Indian war as an
excellent opportunity to recruit their stock of horses at the enemy's expense. Indeed, it is
more than hinted that this and many other such " wars " owed their origin in no small degree
to a desire on the part of these whites to make profit out of the Government by contracts for
provisions 1'or the soldiers, or to have an excuse to rob the Indians of their property. Fifteen
years ago could be seen all over North- West America horses marked with Peo-peo-mux-nmx's
brand — an arrow within a circle. There are many incidents of thrilling interest in this man's
life, one of which may be quoted to show his cool, determined courage; for it we are indebted
to Mr. M'Kinley. In the year 1811 his eldest son, a youth of twenty-one years, had some
difficulty with one of the clerks of the Hudson's Bay Company, which terminated in a hand-
to-hand fight. The young chief coming off second best, carried, with the tale of his inglorious
defeat, a pair of black eyes to his father's lodge. The chief's dignity was insulted and the
son's honour lost, unless the officer in charge of Fort Walla- Walla, Mr. Archibald M'Kinley,
should have the offender punished.
The old chief, at the head of a hundred armed warriors, went into the fort and demanded
of the factor the person of the clerk for punishment. Mr. M'Kinley, not having heard of
the difficulty, was quite taken by surprise, and after instituting inquiries he found nothing to
censure in the conduct of the young man. This decision having been made known to the
Yellow Serpent, resulted in an animated discussion of 'the case. The Indians were not to be
appeased, and some of the warriors attempted to seize the clerk ; but being a powerful and
athletic man, he defended himself until Mr. M'Kinley handed him a pistol, reserving two for
himself, and charging him not to fire until he gave the signal. The crisis was now at hand,
the war-cry was sounded and the savages had raised their weapons to spill the white man's
blood. Mr. M'Kinley rushed into an adjoining room, and seizing a keg of gunpowder, placed
it in the centre of the floor, stood over it with flint and steel raised, and exclaimed that they
were brave men, and would all die together. The result was the immediate flight of all the
Indians save the old chief and his son. As soon as the warriors had gained the outer walls of
the fort, the gates were closed against them ; while they, halting at a respectful distance, were
in momentary expectation of seeing the fort blown to atoms. Mr. M'Kinley then quietly
seated himself with the old chief and amicably arranged the difficulty.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: SLAVERY. G7
One almost shares in the old fur-trader's love of dwelling1 upon the deeds of these old
chiefs, Tsosieten, Tsohailum, Peo-peo-mux-mux, Casino, and even old Concomely, the one-eyed
chief of the Chinooks, so abundantly celebrated by Washington Irving and other historians
of the "Astoria" enterprise. His grandson, a half-breed, yet lives on the north- west coast,
and was my companion for a whole summer. " Nowadays," well might old Tsosieten remark,
" there are no chiefs." You may sail up the Columbia River and see no Indians, for populous
towns now mark the sites of their old villages, and gorgeous steamers have taken the place of
the light canoes. A few lazy, drunken rascals hanging round the white settlements, redolent of
surreptitious whisky, and speaking English with a very objectionable vocabulary, are the only
representatives of the grand old chiefs and sturdy warriors of twenty or thirty years ago. To
see an Indian in his native state you must travel far into the outer world, into such few fresh
fields and pastures new as the reader is to some extent introduced to in these chapters.
SLAVERY.
The " peculiar institution" is found in full force among the North- West American tribes,
prisoners in war (if not killed) being invariably devoted to slavery. There are few slaves
among the horse tribes, probably on account of their wandering life, or from the love of scalps,
which overrules all other considerations ; but among the lazy stationary coast races a slave is
highly valued. Wars are generally looked upon as providers of such, and there are few chiefs
who have not one or two. Owing to there being less war now than formerly, and to the re-
straining influence of the whites on certain portions of the coast, slaves are greatly decreasing
in number, and it is rarely that the number owned by one man exceeds two or three. They
are far from being cruelly treated, though kicked about and subject to every indignity. Often
the master and his man may be seen working' together, or engaged in familiar intercourse. If
they have been long in slavery, however, they soon beget the cowed, crouching look peculiar to
people of all races in that condition. Long hair is a mark of freeborn condition, and accord-
ingly we generally find that the slaves have theirs cut close. In the lodge of the great chief of
the Mowichahts, in Nootka Sound, I have seen his group of slaves sitting apart by themselves,
with their hair closely cut. The Hudson's Bay Company used to take advantage of this
pride in long locks by punishing minor offenders among their Indian and half-breed servants
by cutting their hair.* Slaves not unfrequently escape from their masters, but their condition
is not much improved if they return to their native village after a long absence. One summer
<lay I was standing in the Quamichan Indian village on the Cowichan River, in Vancouver
Island, when there was a hum and stir in the little community. Two Indian boys, who had
been taken as slaves when very young by the Stekin Indians in Russian America, had
returned home again. They remembered nothing of their home, but an old woman told them
that their friends were here, and with that yearning desire of all men for home and liberty, they
finally managed to steal a canoe, and after many risks and hardships, contrived to thread the
thousand miles of sea-coast between the Stekin village and their home. Their condition was
pitiable. No one knew them or their friends. All who ever remembered them were dead or
gone, or did not care to remember two slave boys, and they were likely enough to have been ready
* Among some tribes short hair is a sign of mourning. The now obsolete cropping of English apprentices'
hair, John Aubrey thinks, was derived from Roman slavery.
68
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
again to return to their master's house, where at least they were known, when an old hunter named
Louis, who had himself in early life heen a slave, took them into his lodge and adopted them
as his children. I remember a similar instance of a S'calam boy who had been stolen by the
Seshahts from the village of the former tribe near Cape Flattery when a mere child. He had
grown up among the tribe until he was almost looked upon as a freeman. Being clever, he
was employed on board a trading schooner as a seaman, and in this capacity made many voyages
to Victoria and other towns, and even to the Sandwich Islands. On one occasion, being at
SHOSHONE INDIAN AND HIS
Victoria, some of the S'calams who knew his parents, persuaded him to escape and return home-
with them. On arriving at the village, however, he was disappointed in the bright things
he had pictured to himself. Nobody knew or cared much about him. His father was dead,.
and his mother barely remembered him, nor could he speak her language, having long ago forgot
his native tongue. Other children had been born to her, whose constant presence had rendered
them dearer to her, and finally seeing that home was not what he had been led to suppose,
he took the earliest opportunity of returning again to his easy life of slavery. Runaway
slaves are rarely punished among the coast tribes, though the humane master has frequently
on that account to suffer most from the loss of his fugitive serfs. I have heard of an
old chief, well known to the gold-diggers on the Stekin River as " Shakes," who used to
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: SLAVERY. 69
punish a fugitive slave with most cruel tortures, and frequently with death in the most
revolting form. Binding the trembling wretch with his throat over the sharp point of a rock,
he would place a pole on the back of the slave's neck. On either end of this pole a youthful
demon would see-saw up and down until the poor victim's neck was slowly sawn through.
Among the Klamaths, in Southern Oregon, slaves who have been recaptured in an attempt
to escape are generally put to death by a stake being driven through their bodies. These
INDIAN GRANDEE AT HIS TOILET, WAITED ON BY A SLATE.
punishments are believed to deter others from making the attempt, and as it is supposed that
if the life of the runaway was spared he would only try to repeat the experiment, it is deemed
as well to destroy him at once.
Of late years, owing to the establishment of white settlements, female slaves are highly
valued, in order to be used for the vilest purposes. An old chief of Tsamena told me that
travelling up the wooded banks of the Cowichan River, in Vancouver Island, he arrived at
night at a rude hunting-lodge he had built for his convenience on the banks. Entering, he
was surprised to find a woman crouching in the corner. She was a Nuchultaw from the
70 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Rapids Village in Discovery Passage, and had been a slave with the S'calams on the other
side of De Fuca's Strait for a number of years. Yearning for home, she and another woman
of the same tribe determined to attempt their escape. They only knew that the direction
•of their home was somewhere on the other side of the range of mountains they saw on
the Vancouver shore, and that beyond lay a river by which they might seek the coast, and
so go northward. Accordingly, one dark night they stole a canoe and crossed the strait-
alone, and took to the woods, travelling by the sun. Probably no human being had ever
penetrated these mountains before, and how laborious the journey must have been may be
gathered from the fact that a well-equipped party of experienced travellers sent by me to
explore the same route took more than a week to traverse it. While descending a precipice
one of the women fell and fractured her leg. Her companion could do nothing for her ; so
leaving her to the certain fate which awaited her, she pursued her perilous and laborious
journey, arriving finally at the river, and travelling down it, she at length sought shelter m
the hut whers my friend Kakalatza found her. The old fellow stopped in his narrative.
•" What did you do with her ? " we inquired. A curious sinister smile played round the
leathern features of this chivalrous Indian gentleman as he replied, " Went home again an-A
sold her to the Lummi Indians for eighty blankets/'
A slave is valued according to sex, age, beauty, or strength at from 120 down to twenty
or thirty blankets, or from about £00 to JP-10, or £15. Among some tribes slaves are after
death carelessly buried, without any ceremonies, or even thrown into the sea, and no one but
slaves allowed to touch them. On the Columbia River it used to be the custom among the
Chinooks, if the slave died in winter, to tie a big stone about the neck and throw the body into
the river. To this day slaves can be killed by their masters without any one having the power,
even if he had the will, to prevent it ; and at one time slaves were slain on the death of a
.great man, for the same reason that any other property was destroyed on a similar occasion.
Again, if a person had been disgraced in any way, he would attempt to wipe out the dishonour
t>y destroying property or killing slaves, which was much the same thing. To this day a
master will order a slave to go and kill an enemy, knowing that it will be the slave who will
suffer, if anybody, and not himself. Hence much injustice is done in the provincial courts of
law in British Columbia. An Indian kills another in or near a white settlement. The "active
and intelligent" stipendiary magistrate demands the murderer. After a little parley he is
handed over, and generally, if an impatient jury has anything to do with it, suffers the last
penalties of the law, even though he may be a slave executing his master's behest, in accord-
ance with custom that knows of no deviation, and the neglect of which would have cost
him his life.
Slavery must have existed among these people from an early date, for if one term of con-
tempt worse than ' '' a dog " (strange that it should be a term of contempt among savages) is
intended to be hurled at a person, it is " a slave/' Probably slavery is coeval with laziness and
selfishness in Indian domestic economy. Slaves are traded backwards and forwards all along1
the north-west coast. Cape Flattery and the northern coast of British Columbia are the great
feeders of the slave-market, while some of the smaller British Columbian and Vancouver coast
tribes are looked upon, in the words of an able writer on this shameful traffic, as " slave-breeding
tribes attacked periodically by stronger tribes, who make prisoners and sell them as slaves."
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: WAR CUSTOMS. 7J.
WAR CUSTOMS.
ie war customs of a people whose normal condition is that of being almost continually
at war — one tribe with another — must be so varied and numerous that in a work of this nature
I had better limit myself to a description of a few of the more prominent features in the
warfare of the coast tribes, that of the interior races of America having been often described,
and the horse tribes' customs being- less familiar to me. At the proper place, moreover, will
bo given an account of the prairie tribes and their habits. Not only are these coast tribes and
their allies living near the mouths of the great rivers almost constantly at war with each other,
but nearly every family has some little rendetta of its own to prosecute. These tribes all
congregate in villages for mutual protection, and the appearance of palisades in front of their
hamlets suggests to the traveller the state of constant trepidation and uncertainty in which
the people live. How these wars originate it is sometimes difficult to say. They are of old
origin, being handed down from father to son as legacies, and sometimes their exciting cause
is lost in the forgotten past. Revenge for fancied tribal or personal insults, trespass on each
other's fishing-grounds, love of plunder and slaves, or merely a desire for glory, may be said
to be the chief causes which impel these savage clansmen to fight. Before war the chief
makes a long speech explaining how matters stand. The warriors bathe, and even scratch
themselves with sharp instruments with a view to making themselves hardy, and spies
are sent scouting in the vicinity of the village to be attacked. The attack is almost
invariably made after sundown, and I have heard a most graphic description of the band
of warriors standing on the sandy shores of a little bay, just opposite to the village to be
attacked, while a man who was married to a woma-n of that tribe drew, by the light of the
glimmering moon, a plan of the lodges, and explained to the listening black-painted warriors,
who lived in each, the strength of his family, and the character of the man for bravery or
strength. The old chief then arranged his men accordingly. All these men are painted
black, the paint no way differing from the mourning paint, except that the eyes are painted
blacker than the rest of the face. Prisoners of war not reserved for slaves are universally
decapitated, and their heads stuck on poles in front of the lodges, or tossed about the village.
This taking the head as a trophy is the natural impulse of savages, and has been adopted by
all barbarous and even semi-civilised nations from the earliest times. The untutored mind
is the same in all ages, and resolves itself into the same material manifestations, whether these
be exhibited in sticking heads on poles in Vancouver Island, or upon Temple Bar, or on London
Bridge, as was done in England scarcely more than a hundred years ago. The interior tribes, who
will often travel on horseback hundreds of miles on these warlike forays, could not conveniently
carry a few human heads dangling at their saddle-bows, and accordingly they take the more
portable scalp-lock as a trophy and remembrance of their slain enemy. This is, I conceive, the
true interpretation of the familiar custom of scalping adopted by all those tribes who do not use
canoes. Some of them become very expert at this hideous art. There is a story told of some
Indians who fell a-boasting of their proficiency in this art ; one of them, to show his skill, neatly
skinned the whole head and neck of his fallen enemy, while a second, not to be beaten, absolutely
flayed the whole body ! On the frontier " har-liftin'/' as it is called, is spoken about quite
familiarly, and some of the more " wild cat-like" of the American frontier damsels look upon a
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
INDIAN SCALPING HIS DEAD ENEMY.
neat scalp set in gold as making quite a chaste brooch. Head-taking does not require such
proficiency, but still I have seen little Indian boys practising the art on clay images, while
playing on the beach, their sires looking on with paternal pride and hope of the talent thus
early developed. Civilisation treads fast on the heels of barbarism in the far West. One winter
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: WAR CUSTOMS.
73
day, coming down from Nanaimo, at a distance of ninety miles from Victoria, the capital of
the colony, I met several large Nuchultaw war-canoes sailing north full of painted warriors.
They told me that they had been on a war-expedition against the Lummis, just south of
Eraser River mouth, and pointing to the cowering prisoners, and ghastly human heads hung
through the holes in the bows of the canoes, remarked that they had had pretty faiv success.
They seemed to look upon the whole matter very much in the light of a hunting excursion.
Here is a striking tale of Indian treachery and vindictiveness in war. The Assiniboines and
the Saskatchewans are two great horse tribes living on the prairies near the Rocky Mountains,
THE "SLABS" ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER, MOUNT HOOD IN THE DISTANCE.
who had a long-cherished feud between each other. A party of the former had been hunting
for the winter supply of food, and had accumulated a large quantity of meat, which the women
were drying in their camp in a shady hollow in the mountains. The young men, growing tired
of the monotony of their life, proposed to go on a war-party against the Saskatchewans, which
raid was so successful that they defeated a hunting party of that tribe, and took many scalps
and much plunder, and returned leisurely home with their heavily-laden horses. As they came
in sight of their wigwams again, they began to raise the song of rejoicing — the song of warriors
returning from victory. But no women came out to meet them. Still they sang as they
approached nearer, but still no sign of life, no children playing about the doors, or old men
smoking their calumets. Louder and louder still they sang, until the horrible truth flashing
10
74 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
on them, they rushed down to their lodges. There lay the old men, the women, and the children,
butchered in cold blood. The Saskatchewans had revenged themselves by working round in
another direction, and coming to the defenceless wigwams of their enemies,, had turned their
victory into mourning.
Treachery is one of the cardinal vices of the Indian, and figures in his war-practices as
one of his most prominent characteristics. The Stekins and other northern tribes have long been
a great thorn in the side of the more southern tribes, and to this day it is nothing uncommon
for a party of northern Indians to fall upon a Cowichan or Nanaimo camp, and slaughter the
inhabitants or take them prisoners. Old Locha, of Cowichan, some years ago took a bitter revenge
on them, which, as a specimen of Indian wiles, may be related as I heard it from the old man's
mouth. Learning that a party of Stekins were on their way to attack his village, he took a
strong party of his men and posted them in the woods about a mile from his village, leaving
his little son wrapped up in a blanket in a canoe drawn up on the beach, in convenient
proximity to the ambush. Suspecting nothing, the Stekins sailed up Cowichan Bay until they
spied what they took for an Indian girl, left in the canoe while her mother was gathering roots
and berries in the wood. They immediately paddled to shore, anxious to secure this easily-
acquired slave. The little boy had, however, received his directions. Waiting until they were
close at hand, in apparent fright he ran into the woods. Every one of the Stekins was anxious
to catch him, and accordingly, hastily leaving their canoes on the beach, they pursued him
into the woods; but the boy was too swift-footed for them. Returning to the beach, they
were horrified to find themselves, unarmed and defenceless, surrounded by Locha and his
warriors; and it is said that all of them were either killed or taken prisoners. A score of such
tales of treachery and bloodshed could be given. Even when two tribes make peace, the peace
is often only a design to treacherously take advantage of each other. These same Stekin
Indians were long at war with the Kolush tribe, at Sitka, the one tribe continually molesting
the other, and in the intervals of regular warfare cutting off all stragglers in their power. The
Stekins, anxious to make peace, invited their enemies to a feast, which they accepted, and all
went off well. But the Kolushes, not to be behindhand, invited them in return. So the
Stekins, putting on their cloaks made of marten skins, went off, and were received with great
rejoicing. But in the midst of the merriment the Kolushes rose like one man and slaughtered
their unsuspecting guests, literally cutting them to pieces, and burning the bodies. These
same Kolushes have ever been noted as a very fierce tribe, and gave the Russians much trouble,
and have continued to show their character to the Americans, since Sitka was ceded to the
United States. Plate 3 represents the discovery of the remains of a party of American
soldiers who had been entrapped and murdered by the Indians in 1867.
Though the Indians generally attack at night, yet Tsosieten's great battle with the
Nuchultaws was fairly fought, on the Nuchultaw plain, about two miles f'-om Victoria ; and
only a few years ago skulls and other human remains were continually turning up among
the bushes and long grass. The fight was also continued on the sea, and the waves were said
by the Indians to be of the colour of blood, on account of the number of dead bodies thrown
into the water. It was, perhaps, the greatest battle ever fought on the north-west coast. Into
it Tsosieten (the great Taitka chief) managed to enlist nearly every southern tribe, and the
object was to exterminate their common enemy, the Nuchultaws".*
* In the first edition of this work, Vol. I., pp. 70 — 75, I have given this and other North- Western " Eddas."
75
CHAPTER IV.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS : MERRYMAKINGS, MARRIAGE, BIRTH,
AND BURIAL CUSTOMS.
INDIAN life, though sufficiently squalid, is by no means entirely devoid of amusement, or
wholly devoted to providing daily food, gratifying public or private vengeance, and guarding
against the onslaughts of the tribal enemies. It is true that savage pastimes are of the
least intellectual character. They consist in gambling, drinking in order to get drunk,
story-telling, horse-racing, dancing, singing, doll playing, and baby housekeeping among
the children — in a word, just the same class of amusements that are indulged in by the
more uncultured classes of society in every part of the world, the only difference being in the
rationale of the games and the rules which regulate them.
MERRYMAKINGS.
At these merrymakings Indian life, at least in the North- West, appears in its gayest
and most pleasing aspects. For once, selfishness, so far as it can be severed from everything
Indian, disappears, or is at least kept in the background, and every one strives to be as friendly
and as kind as possible. The dull tenor of the Indian way is absolutely broken by something
which is decidedly picturesque. Indeed, if I were asked what constitutes the most peculiar
feature in the economy of these North-Western Indian tribes, I should certainly reply, their
great gift-feasts, or as they are known to the white traders, their potlatcltes (or " givings
away "}, a term derived from the Chinook jargon wQV&potlatch, " to give." Gambling is an
every-day amusement, while horse-racing can only be indulged in by some of the interior
tribes ; but a potlatch, combining glory ? amusement, and the gratification of vanity, can be
given whenever the donor has means enough. These coast Indians are very avaricious in
the acquisition of property, blankets being the standard of riches amongst them, as horses
are among the interior tribes. Though muskets, canoes, &c., are all carefully collected, yet
most of these articles owe their acquisition to blankets, and an Indian, in describing the
wealth of another, will indicate this by telling how many pessisse (or blankets) he has. This
hoarding up of blankets is the engrossing passion of these people in time of peace, and the
exciting cause of their wars is often the desire of obtaining prisoners as slaves, by the sale of
whom, or by whose labour, they may add to their hoard. I have often commiserated a poor-
looking man lounging about, his only covering a threadbare, tattered blanket, and on inquiry
would be surprised to learn that he was one of the wealthiest men in the tribe, and had several
hundred new blankets stored up in air-tight boxes, of native manufacture, in his lodge. I was
once sneered at as " no great chief" because, forsooth, I had only one pair of " Mackinaw"
blankets in my canoe, when halting at a village of Indians who had little intercourse with the
whites, and were accordingly in a primitive condition. To obtain these blankets, there is no act
of self-denial at which the coast fisherman will hesitate ; I might almost say no crime which
will deter him, if he sees blankets likely to be the result of it. The end of all this scraping and
hoarding is to give away the property again at some potlatch, at which in a few hours the labour
76
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of years will be dissipated. These feasts are often given by the chief men of small tribes as a sort
of peace-offering to more powerful ones; but most frequently they are simply for the purpose of
gratifying the vanity of the giver and of adding to his personal consequence. His praise
sounds far and near. He henceforth assumes a sort of parvenu rank in the tribe, very different,
however, from the hereditary aristocracy already referred to. The chiefs are under the necessity
of frequently giving these potlatches, in order to preserve their popularity, just as the old
INDIAN DANCERS PERSONATING " NIGHT " AXD "DAY."
knights used to scatter largess to their followers; and accordingly we generally find these
dignitaries about the poorest men in the tribe.
It is, as I have said, at these gatherings that Indian character is seen in its most
attractive if not most characteristic aspect.* An Indian may have accumulated by hard
work, by knavery, or by violence, a large store of blankets or other property. He then
announces to his friends — it may be three, four, or twenty — his intention of having a feast
and potlatcli. The invitees make the most of these occasions, and each of them brings
his canoe full of neighbours, so that often half the tribe will be present, including the women,
*For an extended description of the great Opichesaht pot latch see the first edition of this work, Vol. I.,
pp. 76—89.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: " POTLATCHES."
77
who are generally escorted by one or two men in a large canoe by themselves. There was a chief
near Clayoquot Sound, well known to the coasters as " Trader George of Clayoquot/' but who was
called by the Indians by a name signifying "the man who takes everything and gives nothing."
When I last heard of him he was said to have between 700 and 800 blankets, besides a vast
accumulation of other property. Yet this abominably cruel wretch has been known to cut off
young slave children's heads just to show how careless he was of valuable property. On these
SCENE IN A MANDAN VILLAGE — THE RAIN-MAKER.
festive occasions I have known them to smash canoes, break muskets to pieces, and burn large
numbers of blankets, their object being to show how little they cared for wealth. At a great
feast of this nature given by the Thongeisth tribe at Victoria, in 1863, a slave was presented.
On tins occasion the blankets were pitched by a pole from an elevated platform. But the
customs of the east coast tribes differ considerably from those of the western shores of Vancouver
Island, and, moreover, in this instance a desire to make as great a show as possible before the
crowd of whites was evident. At these feasts, as all the world over, the greatest man gets the
most, while the poor people come off with a very small share : sometimes this is only a strip
78 THE PEOPLES OF THE AVORLD.
of blanket. Hence Indians may be seen with a blanket composed of these shreds sewn together
like the capelets of a cabman's coat. At these feasts savage life is exhibited in its least
repulsive features. The intense selfishness, the greed and the mendicancy, so almost invariably
witnessed in an Indian village, especially if white men are present, are almost entirely absent.
Liberality is the rule, hospitality is as delicate and open-handed as in civilised life, and
the unobtrusiveness of the minor vices of barbarism remarkable.* Among some of the
comparatively rich northern tribes these pollatches are on a much greater scale; as many as 800
blankets, hundreds of yards of cotton, and at one, which I know of, several furs, including two
sea- otter skins, worth from £15 to £20 each, were given away. Individuals will often travel
great distances to be present at one of these feasts ; but people of the same totem (or crest) are
not invited to each other's feasts. They are, however, much more particular than the southern
tribes as to whom they invite to their banquets; and at some great ceremonials men and women
are served separately, the women (curiously enough) taking precedence. All, however, are
just the same — only an interchange of presents; for an Indian, if he is overlooked at one of
these, or is presented with something inferior to what he gave, will not be backward in
informing his host of the fact, and demanding something better. Among the northern tribes
nun feasts are now beginning to be given, and most demoniacal orgies they are.
There are other festivities, at the end of the salmon season, &c., or when a new house is built
• — in fact, a sort of " house-warming." Any Indian who values his reputation always invites
his friends to partake of a seal or a deer which he has killed, or to share any other food at all
above the common which he may have come into possession of. The guests go early, and sit
chatting while the food is being prepared — of course, before their eyes, since there is only one
compartment in the house, or the young people amuse themselves in various ways. They eat
in silence ; going away one by one, each taking what has not been eaten of his allowance in a
corner of his blanket — a habit which we shall see, by-and-by, is common to the Japanese, and
some other more or less civilised nations. After a whale is killed, about a hundredweight of
the best parts is cut off and presented to the chief, and the harpooner, fish-priest, and other
dignitaries each receives his share, the rest being distributed among the people according to
their rank. Those who have received the larger portions are, however, expected to give feasts
all around. Messengers, with red and blue blankets tastefully put on, go to each house, and in
a loud and official tone of voice invite the different guests ; but the women are not invited to-
feasts of this nature, only to the waickoaJts, or potlatches, already described.
The common people go early, and modestly take their seats near the door as they enter ;
but, as in some other parts of the world, it is the fashion for men of rank to go late to these
aboriginal dinner-parties, and to require several messengers sent requesting the honour of theii
company. Each person's place is duly reserved for him. His name is announced as he
enters the door and is ushered to his seat, where he cleans his bare feet on strips of cedai
bark placed there for that purpose. If he is a popular man, he is generally loudly cheered by
striking the board walls with the back of the hand or a piece of stick. After all the invited
guests have arrived the meal is served, though all the time cooking is going on. Silence is-
observed while eating, this being a mark of etiquette. The food is cooked by the chief's wives
* These potlatcJies are, as far as I know, peculiar to the North-West American coast tribes.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FEASTS. 79
(if the chief happen to be the giver of the feast) , and each person is served with a piece of meat,
large or small, according- to the degree of his consequence in the tribe. During dinner the host
and one of his servants walk round the guests and see that each person receives due attention.
After dinner is finished, each guest wipes his fingers on a quantity of teased-out cedar bark,
and the remains are carefully gathered up by the host's servants and carried to the guests'
dwellings. " By-and-bye," remarks Mr. Sproat, "conversation begins; a few compliments are
paid to the chief for his good fare, and then perhaps some tribal topics are introduced, and
animated speeches are delivered by various orators. Praises of their own and their forefathers'
achievements in war, or skill in hunting and fishing, and boasts of the number of their power-
ful friends and the admirable qualities of each, form the burden of these after-dinner speeches.
When the guests retire, it is usual, in fine weather, for small groups to meet and discuss the
whole proceedings and criticise the speeches. . . Oratory is the readiest way of gaining power
and station ; a blanket is a much more becoming garment to an orator than a frock coat."
There are other feasts, to which some man will invite the women; and others to which a female
chief or other well-to-do-female will invite men alone. I am inclined to think that this feast, to
which a woman invites several men, is of the kind described by an old writer on the Indians —
viz., for the purpose of choosing a husband.*
This is one phase of savage life. I little thought that before another autumn had come and
gone that I should draw another picture — one less pleasant, but not less characteristic of the
uncertainty of Indian existence. As a contrast, let me here present it. The scene lies more
than 700 miles south of Opichesa, away in Eastern Oregon, among the great horse tribes, that
had for years waged war against the whites. At last the Shoshones sued for peace. One of
the many treaties of "eternal peace and amity" had been signed by " us the high consenting
parties," and we were now on our way back to civilisation, a little party travelling slowly but
cautiously. For days the beautiful valleys through which we rode had rung with the lively
bonjours of Indian cavaliers and damsels, gay in buckskin and beads, and at night our camp-
fire was surrounded by a laughing, careless throng of light-hearted savages. We were almost
ready to envy the Indian as he now appeared before us. It cannot be denied that he possesses
a rude sort of independence. He is troubled with no house-rent, nor are the horrors of an
assessment-roll before him. His house is in the sage brush, and when he mounts his horse
at dawn of day he has all his possessions under his eye, and at night he rolls himself up in his
blanket with no fear of an hotel bill or livery stable charges before him in the morning. His
supper is a piece of dry antelope-steak ; or perhaps he has killed a prairie hen, or caught some
trout, or if not — who cares ! he swallows a handful of grasshoppers, and in the summer his
larder is all around him. The iron of the income-tax never enters into his soul, and opera-
boxes are represented by scalp-dances. The whites are his drovers and his merchants ; and he
is a thorough believer in miyht being a convertible term for right, and in that good old plan,
" That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can."
An Indian comes down to the water-side where I am drinking, and asks me to pour a little
water in his cup of parched pond-lily seed (NupJiar adrena] meal. He stirs it up with his finger,
* For full details, see Carver, " Travels in North America," p. 245.
80
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
and remarking, as he washes it down with a drink of water, " Hyas kloosh muckamuck"
(very good food, indeed). Quarrels they have among themselves, and bitter ones too, over
the division of the spoil — and certain infidelities of their spouses are a source of continual
heart-burnings; but, as the Divorce Court shows, they are unfortunately not alone in this.
As to " chivalry/' they are, forsooth, as chivalry goes nowadays — dirty, ragged, and not over
honourable — like certain brethren on this side of the Rocky Mountains, and, moreover (venial
offence as it may be looked upon in these latter days) rather given unto loot ! Politics they
have, and though in the good old times they had an hereditary monarchy, with a strong tinge of
medieval policy, yet, since the advent of the republicans in the civilised portion of the country,
some of their chiefs are elected, and there is as much chicanery and political engineering displayed
SQUAW AND CHILD.
as would (dis) grace the most civilised statesmen. If "early to bed and early to rise" would
bring to the practitioner thereof only a moiety of the blessings the couplet ascribes to it, one
would think our Shoshone ought to be a happy man, for, little burdened with the world's goods,
he is asleep by the time the sun goes down, and is off by the break of day. But this easy-
come-easy-go sort of existence is not without its drawbacks, some of which certainly are not
compensated ft>r by the advantages which recommend it to the free and independent Indian.
The following incident will illustrate this statement : — One evening, as we were rolling-, each
man behind his bush for the night, a strange Indian rode into our camp, mounted on a sorry
animal, and, as to his garments, scanty withal. Our gladsome friends had all left by ones and
twos, and for days we had travelled alone. Though none of us could understand much of his
language, yet this Knight of the Ragged Poncho made himself very much at home, and finished
the remains of our supper with the iitmost suavity. He did not appear to be a native of this
reorion, and after some difficulty he made us understand that he came from somewhere in the
i
Humboldt country, in the direction of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and that he had fled from
his tribe for some offence (in which cutting throats mingled forcibly) ; that his enemies were
MANDAN INDIANS, WITH "MEDICINE-MAN" IN BEAR-SKIN.
11
82 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
on his track ; and that seeing- our trail, he had resolved to put himself under our protection ;
and finally, that he was going to remain with us. Though none of us had much objection to
Indians murdering each other as one of the fine arts, yet we had no desire to be the Quixotes
of this ragged vagabond, or to embroil ourselves with his countrymen, and accordingly told
him, in that grandiloquent tone supposed to be necessary to assume in addressing the savage,
that "we were going to a distant country — to the setting- sun," whereupon we were mos^
distinctly assured that that was the very place he was searching for. And by morning he
made himself so handy in getting- our horses, and begged so piteously to go to the "setting sun"
with us, that ordinary humanity prevailed, and Sancho Panza — as with small adherence to the
plot of " Cervantes >} we dubbed him — was soon recognised as a member of our party, sharing
in all the honours, privileges, and immunities, and doing full justice to the comestibles thereof.
Sancho, moreover, ingratiated himself so exceedingly that before long he became the possessor
of a butcher's knife, a " hickory shirt," and an old blanket, and the first day's travel had not
ended before he had done my animal the flattering compliment of offering to "swop" with me.
All fear of his pursuers seemed to have left him, and we were gradually losing our suspicions
that he might possibly, in an absent moment, decamp with our horses, leaving us afoot in the
desert. The signs of civilised men were getting apparent, in another day we might reach the
first outpost and be in safety once more. One morning, after travelling about two miles on
our way, he recollected that he had left his knife at the camp-fire, and lightening his horse of
his blanket he rode back, telling us that he would overtake us before long : we watched him
riding rapidly over the sage-brush plain until a rising ground hid him from our sight. At
mid-day we halted long for him ; and at evening, fearing that he might have missed our trail,
some of us rode rapidly back by moonlight, and soon came to the prairie which we had left that
morning. There was Sancho's old horse grazing about, and by the embers of our fire lay the
Indian boy, with three arrows through him and his scalp gone. His relentless enemies had no
doubt been dogging his steps day after day, but feared to attack him while under the guard of
our rifles ; but their turn had come at last, and his scalp paid forfeit for his temerity. They
had no doubt been alarmed, otherwise the arrows would have been removed. As we rode back-
by moonlight through these lovely valleys we were silent, but to many of us since, in different
lands and scenes, the face of that dead Indian boy looking up ghastly to the harvest-moon,
rises often before us. Such is daily Indian life in the far West ! Let us turn to a pleasanter
aspect of savage life — marriage.
MAIIRIAGE.
Passing through an Indian — say a Cowichan — village of a morning, you may chance to
see a young fellow wrapped up in his blanket sitting crouched Up in the doorway of one of the
lodges. That young man has come on a delicate errand. He is a lover, and this is his way of
going about the rather serious business of taking a wife. By-and-by the occupants of the lodge
will get up and walk out, nobody taking the slightest notice of him. For a week this may go
on, every day the young man coming and then returning without being invited in. At last,
if he is agreeable in the eyes of the parents, he is asked in and food set before him ; if he is
an honoured guest, the food, such as the roasted or dried salmon, is prepared by the master of
the house, and then business opens. His friends bring forward the presents he is prepared to give
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: MARRIAGE. 83
for the damsel, or an equivalent for the same, until he has no more. If the father is satisfied,
all is well; if not, he must go elsewhere. This is the general rationale of Indian marriages —
merely purchase. However, the Indians themselves stoutly deny that it is so, and possibly with
truth. They say that the presents are not given as the price of the wife, but only to express
her value and rank, a woman of low status in society being assessed at much less. If the father
is a man of any ton at all, he will send back with his daughter fully as much as he received. All
I can say is, that this is so rare that I never heard of it more than once or twice. I have more
frequently seen the young lover beggared to his last blanket. In addition, if he is a chief, he
is expected to distribute a little largess among the 01 TroXXot — the commonalty of the village.
Sometimes the arrangements are made through old women, and the young man does not
trouble himself much. In other cases there is much more ceremony, but the principle is just the
same. Polygamy is not only allowed, but a man's rank is measured by the number of wives
he can support, each woman attending to her own children, though the first wife ranks highest in
esteem, the younger being often little better than slaves to her; and probably it is this advantage
which induces her to listen to the proposals of her husband to increase the matrimonial stock
in the lodge. Few have more than two wives. An old chief only recently dead, having received
some favour at the hands of the missionary, was good enough to offer him one of his wives
as a present, adding that it was a mere trifle — he had eleven more at home. Elopements of
young men and girls are quite common, and of married women with lovers, though this vicious
practice is to a great extent checked by the fact that in the first instance the lover is looked
upon as a young fellow who only wishes to avoid paying the price of his wife, and that most
frequently he has to pacify the woman's friends with blankets, and in the latter, the danger
arising from the injured husband's knife acts as a salutary preventive to passionate but yet
prudent Lotharios. The respect in which female chastity was at one time held among the
Indians has been to a great extent lost since the whites came amongst them. Divorce is some-
times performed by the wife's friends throwing the blankets on the waves, though in general
it merely consists in the unlucky wife being sent back to her friends well whipped, and with
an insulting message. The husband can divorce his wife at his will ; but again, among some of
the coast tribes of Vancouver and neighbouring territory, a wife can, with the consent of her
friends, leave her husband at any time. Accordingly, if her lord wishes to retain her he must
treat her well. In this case an active female slave would be more valued than a wife who does
not bring riches or connection, for the slave cannot leave her master's service. Infidelity can
be punished by death — and is, indeed, not unfrequently so punished. I knew a chief who took
an erring wife out of his lodge and in presence of the whole village stabbed her to death.
Whether, however, this was stretching his marital rights too far, or that public morality was not
so Spartan as it once was, I was led to understand that the chief lost in prestige and popularity
by this act. Another mode of punishment is to take the wife down to the beach, kneel on her,
surrounded by her wailing friends, and then fire several blank musket-charges close to her car.
Perhaps the punishment may consist in the publicity, or the suspense engendered by the fear
that one charge may enclose a bullet. In one case where this peculiar mode of chastisement was
resorted to the woman sat apart for several days, weeping all the time bitterly. Should there
be a separation, the fishing or hunting ground which her husband acquired with her again
reverts to the wife as a dowry for her next matrimonial venture. If the wife belongs to a
84 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
different tribe, and the children are young-, they go with the mother to her tribe. The main
cause of divorce is not wanting1, and is now more abundant than ever, the offence being" more
lightly esteemed. Betrothals in early youth, or even in childhood, are common, and as an
earnest of good faith, the parents on both sides deposit a certain amount of goods, commonly
blankets. These betrothals are generally respected, a breach of engagement being a serious
cause of offence to the injured lover. Though at betrothal the price of the future wife is
tolerably well known, yet the father can raise it if, in the opinion of the majority of her tribe,
she has materially improved since the date of that ceremony — though, curiously enough, this is
said to happen rather rarely. The betrothal may be cancelled if during the interval the lover's
second offer for her is refused, supposing that no price has been fixed at the time of betrothal ;
but this generally gives cause to bitterness, and not unfrequently to feuds. Young men, before
being married, will often, to show their courage, scratch their faces until the blood comes.
That an Indian is not altogether deficient in sentiment and love must not, however, be inferred
from the matter-of-fact way he treats marriage. Many of their songs are about love, and
often in the vicinity of Indian villages, the traveller may notice young fir shoots split down the
middle to the very ground. This is done by youthful lovers, to see if they will be faithful to
each other. They split the top of the shoot with the nails, then carefully divide it downward
and downward ; but if one side breaks off at a knot, then one of them will prove untrue. But
they will not be content with this augury, but will try and try again until they find a young
fir which will act according to their washes. I used to be the repositary of many a sighing tale
and love-message to damsels in distant tribes, from young lovers who had met them when with
me in the previous summer's travels, and from the way they were received I fancy that human
nature — the human nature in youthful hearts — is pretty much the same all the world over.
On the western shores of Vancouver Island, another and more dignified style of marriage
ceremony than that described in the preceding pages prevails. Thirty or forty canoes some-
times escort the suitor to the shore. No word is spoken on either side for ten minutes. At
last, on the question being asked where the visitors are from, and what is wanted — a form that
is gone through though the object of the visit is perfectly well known — a speaker rises in one
of the canoes and addresses the natives on shore in a loud voice. Talk of a voice — it would fill
St. Paul's ! He gives the name, titles, and history of the expectant husband, and states the
number and influence of his friends and connections in his own and among other tribes, the
object being to show that the honour of marrying so great a person should suffice without much
purchase-money. At the end of the speech a canoe is paddled to the beach and a bundle of
blankets is thrown on land. Contemptuous laughter follows from the friends of the woman,
and the suitor is told to go away, as he places too small a value upon the intended bride. Then
some orator on shore gets up and praises the woman, and thus with the speeches and additional
gifts, many hours are occupied, until finally the woman is brought down to the shore and
stripped to her under garment (the greed of her relatives not allowing them to send her to her
husband with the slightest thing more than the barest decency requires) and delivered to her
lover. His first wedding present, it follows, is the necessary covering of a blanket.* Stern as
are the aboriginal fathers of the "West in the matter of "settlements/' they also strongly insist
* Sproat: "Scenes and Studies of Savage Life," p. 101.
THE NOKTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: MARRIAGE.
85
that the future son-in-law should be of such strength and vigour in war and all active exercises
as befits the head of a family in a nation where the weaker invariably goes to the wall. How
would some of our fond lovers like the following shibboleth of their manhood? In front of the
house of the head chief of Clayoquet, on the western shores of Vancouver Island, is a large
stone. When a young man — or, for the matter of that, any man — proposes for one of this
Western Spartan's daughters — he is politely pointed to the large stone, and if he cannot lift
and carry it, he is, with sneers and contempt, dismissed as ineligible to woo such a dignitary's
SCENE IN THE SIEKRA NEVADA.
daughter. The wife is in most cases kindly treated, the husband seldom beating her, except
when intoxicated, and though a drudge, yet she has a voice in every bargain, and prudent
travellers are generally wise enough to buy her good will before commencing to transact
business with the husband. I usually did so by making small presents to the children, for by
this means I accomplished my purpose of gaining the goodwill of the mother without risking
the chance of the irate husband's jealousy. Very curiously, a chief is always expected to marry
out of the tribe, and generally to take his wives from different tribes, for the purpose of
making peace with powerful septs, and, as is intended by our Royal Marriage Act, to prevent
undue influence being exerted over him by any one particular family in his own tribe. Among
the northern tribes no person is allowed to marry one of his own crest, i.e., one of a certain
number of persons who live under the guardianship of the same animal, &c., or, as it is called
86 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
among most of the O jib way and other American tribes, whose history has been frequently written,
the totem.* Again, in every Indian tribe with which I am acquainted, the relationship of the
children goes with the mother. The same law prevails in the Sandwich Islands,f both people
giving the same reason for it. The shrewdness is more to be admired than the state of morals
into which it gives an insight. It is easy enough, they say, to know who a person's mother is,
but the father's case is proverbially different. Hence, also, the custom of " Borough English."
Totems are qxiite analogous to the escutcheons of more civilised people. Some families
adopt the crow, some the beaver, others the wolf, the whale, the fox, the deer, and so on.
An Indian once told me, "Oh, you white people are no better than we. My totem is the
eagle. Why, the Boston men's (Americans) is just the same. You King George men (English-
men) adopt a big cat (a lion) as yours. It is your totem, is it not?" These totems are
painted on their boxes, paddles, canoes, blankets, and various domestic utensils, being often
curiously quartered and interlaced after a pattern which it is difficult for a white to understand,
and perhaps just as difficult for the Indians to explain. Among the north-west tribes, in the
vicinity of Fort Simpson, and northward along the Alaskan coasts and on to the Queen Charlotte
Islands (Hydahs), these pieces of heraldry are more attended to than among the less handsome,
less warlike, and less intellectual flat-headed tribes of the south. Among the northern tribes
the " arms" are elaborately engraved on large copper plates, from three to five feet in length
and about two in breadth — rather concavo-convex, and with an hour-glass construction in the
middle. These plates are very highly valued, and are often heirlooms in the family. One
which the chief of a small tribe at the northern end of the Queen Charlotte Islands possesses
he values at 800 blankets, or between £300 and £400 sterling. They are, many of them, made
of virgin copper, which is found in that region; but the Indians have a notion that the
material was vomited out by some great fish which lives in the northern seas. Of late a
good number of these plates have been sold to them by the Hudson's Bay and Imperial Fur
Companies, and, of course, are of smelted copper. The possessors of such "coppers" are,
however, looked upon with supareilious contempt by the owners of the original fish-vomited
ones. When I visited the Queen Charlotte Islands, Skidegate, the chief of the tribe of that
name (and an unmitigated scoundrel), nearly killed an Indian boy, an interpreter of ouiv;,
because the boy had attempted to lower the dignity of the lord of the soil, by hinting to us
that he was a mere parvenu, his copper having only been bought in Victoria, where it was
made out of the old sheathing of a ship. The reason why they have adopted this system of
totem.s is, that intermarriage may be thereby prevented among people of too close consan-
guinity, and in order that people of the same kindred may support in times of scarcity, sickness,
or in old age, the members of their own totem. Members of the same tribe do intermarry s
i.e., unless they be chiefs, but those of the same crest are prohibited from so doing under any
circumstances. The child always takes the mother's crest ; accordingly, if a mother is a irJtule,
all the children are whales ; if &frog or a deer, all frogs or deer. Among these people feasts
are given for the cementing of friendships, or for the purpose of securing it and allaying angry
strife. Accordingly, people of the same crest are not invited to one of these fishy banquets,
* This word, which has now got almost anglicised, is apparently only the Ojibway word todhaim, a tribe. The
Hydah Islanders' "coppers" arc illustrated by Swan in "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge," Vol. XXI., 1816
f And among many other tribes; see Bachofen ; "Das Mutterrecht," p. xxvii.
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: TOTEMS. 87
it being taken for granted that relatives will always agree, and that accordingly the panacea
of a dinner need not be thrown away upon them. As Indian family love is not very
different from the "love of kinsmen" nearer home, the reader will scarcely require to be
told that this supposition is more a theory than an experience-supported fact. No Indian
would think of killing the animal which he had adopted as his totem. Indeed, if any one kills
such an animal in his presence, he will cover his face with his hands, horrified at the sacrilegious
deed, and will compel the offender to solace his wounded feelings by some substantial repara-
tion, the offence being not so much the killing of the animal as the affront of killing it in the
presence of the person whose totem it is.
\Vhen an Indian, in his own good pleasure, chooses to exhibit his arms in public, long-
established customs compel the passers-by to cast gifts before them — those gifts being propor-
tionate to the means or rank of the donor. Accordingly if a greedy, mischievous, or needy
Indian paints his totem on his forehead or canoe, or embroiders it in worsted on his blanket or
sleeve, there is nothing for it but to present gifts to him, or to his totem, which amounts to
the same thing. Rumour has it that there are certain chivalrous gentlemen among" our
North-western friends who are not above making a business of thus sporting their armorial
bearings in public !
BIRTH CUSTOMS : IMPROVEMENTS ox NATURE.
An Indian woman early arrives at maturity, but soon ceases to have children.45' In fact,
Indian women have little middle age, they soon get old and haggard-looking ; the old women
look hags indeed. They have rarely more than five children, who are kindly treated, though
not unfrequently of late years the boy will be killed and the girl saved, because she can be
sold afterwards in marriage. One of twins is almost invariably killed. Children ai'e nursed
to the age of about two years, or until another is born. They are rarely if ever chastised ;
indeed, to whip refractory children is by savages looked upon as very cruel, and the sign
of an unnatural mother. The girl, as she grows up, is gradually initiated by the mother
into all the duties of her condition, and the boy by his father into his, being taken out
by him on his hunting and fishing excursions, holding the torch while his father spears
the salmon at night, keeping the canoe " on " while the halibut-fishing is proceeding, and
so forth. Girls are often married when twelve years of age. When the mother considers
that the young lady ought to be looking out for a husband, she makes her retire into the
woods fasting, and concealed from the light of the sun or human gaze for as long a period
as it is possible for her to endure. On her return she wears for some days in her ears large
flat pendants composed of the hioqua shell {Dental in-m preciosuw} as a sign that she is now
marriageable — a hint to all eligible young men. Among the Snakes in Oregon and Idaho it is
said that the women are set to dig a trench as a sign of the same period of life having arrived,
and among the Klamaths in Southern Oregon the women erect those curious piles of stones
you can see perched upon precipices and every conspicuous place through the country, for the
same reason. Years, however, before this denouement arrives, an operation very necessary
* Before the child is born the woman lives in a hut apart by herself, a crstom common to tho Kaffirs of Csntral
Asia and other people. The child is generally named after some relative, but changes its name frequently in the corn-so
oJ its life.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
(to them) has to be performed. This is the well-known flattening of the forehead, the method
of performing which is by means of pads, while the whole of the body of the child, with the
exception of openings for the operations of nature, is swaddled and bound to a board, which is
at once its cradle and bed. The cradle is only a hollowed piece of wood, or among the interior
tribes, is made of cypress bark. The mother laces it in there by a cord passed from side to
side, a small piece of wood covered with teased bark serving for a pillow. Some of the interior
•;""~"'~
INDIANS FROM THE LOWER FRASER, SHOWING THE FLATTENED FOREHEAD, AND THE
CHILD IN THE CRADLE UNDERGOING THE FLATTENING PROCESS.
tribes have bells attached to this cradle, and the tinkling sound has a pleasing effect when heard
in the lonely wilds. When the mother is travelling she carries the cradle and its contents on
her back in an upright position, the child's head just appearing over the mother's shoulder.
When she is working she will hang it to the pliant branch of a tree, allowing the wind to roc-k
it, or if more convenient, to a flexible pole stuck in the ground. This is a common way of sus-
pending the cradle inside the lodge, the mother every now and again giving the cradle a swing
to send baby to sleep. It is said that some of the interior tribes — more especially to the cast
of the Rocky Mountains — when children die, put them in some lake or pond in their cradles,
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: DEFORMITIES.
89
and leave them to float about ; ever after this the water is regarded as sacred.* Among some
of these flat-headed tribes a curious custom prevails. If the child dies the mother puts a bunch
of black feathers into the place which it occupied in the cradle, and for a year, or even more,
pays all the attention to this which she would have paid to her child if living.
The Koskeemos, a tribe living on the north-west coast of Vancouver Island, adopt a still
more extraordinary method of deformity — viz., bandaging the head of the women into a
•cone-shaped form, until, as in a skull in my collection, f it attains almost hideous proportions.
The girl to which it belonged while in life measured eighteen inches from the symphisis of the
HURA INDIAN (SOUTH AMERICA), WITH TEETH-" ORNAMENTS " THROUGH THE LIPS AND TATTOOING ON THE CHEEKS.
lower jaw to the crown of the head. Among this tribe the men have only the usual head-
flattening — a flattening which, however, is always carried to greater excess in the females than
m the men in all the tribes. It prevails among all the coast tribes, and their allies living up
the great rivers for a little way, and also among a few scattered tribes in the interior, who may
probably at a remote period have been members of the same family, from lat. 45° N. to Milbank
Soi;nd, lat. 53° N. It was also at one time common amongst the Choctaws and Chicksaws of
the Mississippi. Northward of this line, among the Queen Charlotte Islanders and their allies,
the head assumes a squarish form from being compressed from above. This deformity of the
skull does not at all, as far as my observation has gone, injure the brain, the cerebral matter not
Mayne, " British Columbia," p. 303. f Now in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London.
12
9U THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
being- crushed or destroyed, but only forced into another portion of the cranium. It is looked
upon as a sign of great servility if the head is not manipulated. I have heard one little
Indian boy shouting to another, " Oh ! your mother was too lazy to flatten your head ! " and
the youngster would retreat into the paternal lodge, there to brood over his wrongs. The heads
of the children of slaves are not allowed to be treated in this manner, and hence I cannot agree
with that excellent and generally accurate writer — Mr. Sproat — that it is not a mark of free
birth. Beyond this outre deformity they do not much affect otherwise to improve on nature.
Tattooing the face and hands to a very slight extent is prevalent amongst the Hydahs (Queen
Charlotte Islanders) , and a few other northern tribes, though among the Indians in Southern
Oregon, &c., it is more common. Painting the face in red and black streaks, and down the
seam of the hair, is almost universal on any high occasion. In the summer-time, to protect
it from the sun, the women will often smear their faces with blood and grease, and the
Diggers of California and Southern Oregon, when mourning, cover the lower portion of their
faces with a much less savoury substance — viz., the pitch of trees. The women look, with
their chins covered with this black substance, like bearded ogres, and on the whole one
cannot praise the taste of the beaux who admire this extraordinary disfiguration of an
otherwise rather comely face. Earrings, rings, and nose-pendants of shells (Denlalium and
pieces of Haliotis) are very common. Sometimes, what with repeated fittings in of more eligible
nose-pendants, and taking them out again to sell when the world or the gambling-blanket deals
imkindly with them, the hole in the septum of the nose gets so enlarged that I have seen
a man more than once, when wishing to put his clay pipe out of the way temporarily, stick
it through the septum of his nose, and this was done so unconcernedly that it seemed to be
a regular habit of his. The women are very fond of vermilion to paint their faces with,
though in some tribes the women cease to paint after twenty-five — a contrast to what
obtains among the females of more civilised nations, with whom (we are credibly informed)
the era of rouge commences instead of ceasing at a late period of life. The men sometimes
blacken their faces as a sign of mourning, but this differs from the war-paint. In the latter
case the faces of the warriors are painted all black, and that of the leader in stripes, while
in mourning-paint the circle round the eyes is left unpainted. It is only the Hydahs and their
allies that adopt the curious lip-ornaments (p. 48) which I am about to describe. The lower lip
is the one which is selected to be disfigured by the insertion of a bone instrument, concave
externally and internally, and more than an inch long aud about half an inch broad, the result of
which is to cause the lip to protrude like a shelf, exposing the interior, and completely concealing
the exterior of it. The result is that in our eyes nothing — not even the labrets of lapis lazuli
used by some Eskimo, and the lip and cheek studs of other races (pp. 89, 92), can be
uglier, though, curiously enough, the wild Botucudos of Brazil adopt an almost identical
method of improving on nature. The Hydah women, however, are the only members of the
nation who practise this, and until recent periods it was looked upon as a mark of the very
lowest breading to be without this labial "ornament." They commence to get it inserted when
very young, in the form of a metal tube, gradually increasing the size of the ornament until
it flourishes in all its full-sized ugliness. When a young and an old woman quarrel, the elderlv
dame will reproach the younger with her youth, inexperience, and general ignorance, pointing,
v/ere further proof necessary, to the inferior size of her lip. I have heard it often asserted
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: DEFORMITIES. 91
that an old woman will allow her food to remain on this sJielf until it is sufficiently cooled,
when she will empty the natural platter into her mouth. To witness an old hag with this
" ornament " in her lip, attempting to whistle, is to witness one of the most ludicrously hideous
feats in the world. I have seen some stick a pin through the lower lip, and young girls who
cannot make up their minds to wholly dispense with it, compromise by putting a short silver
tube, about an inch long and the thickness of a crow quill, in its place. However, of late years
the young ones have been giving it up, finding it is not agreeable to their Caucasian admirers.
This propensity to improve upon nature is a curious trait of savages or of civilised people
with barbarous tastes. We shall see by-and-by that many races temporarily mutilate themselves
of their luxuriant locks in order to give adequate expression to the sorrow which they are
supposed to be enduring. For instance, the Brazilian Coroados shave their crowns ; the
Manchus and some North American Indians grow a pigtail ; the Leper Islanders of New
Hebrides twist their hair into long ringlets with strips of bark ; the Andaman Islanders shave
their heads, &c. In Africa and elsewhere the teeth are often ground for purposes of ornamenta-
tion into sharp points. Long finger-nails are commonly considered signs of the proprietor being
exempt from the necessity of manual labour. A Hottentot mother flattens the naturally flat
nose of her baby, and in ancient times a little Persian prince had a bold aquiline nose shaped
for him, even though fortune had denied him this much-coveted feature. The country of the
skull compressors is, however, we have seen, the region we are now studying. But Hippo-
crates mentions that the Makrokephali, or (t long-headed " people of the Black Sea region, also
adopted this custom. Again, among the Greeks of Constantinople it became the fashion to
mould the oval skulls of the Hellenic babies into the broad form prevalent among the Tartar
or Turkish conquerors. Relics of such barbarism, Dr. Tylor informs us, still linger in the
midst of civilisation, since the nurses of Normandy were until recently — and are probably to
this day — giving the children's heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages or a tight cap, while in
Brittany they preferred to press it round.*
Superficial travellers often remark how few deformed, sickly, or even maimed people are
seen among savages — Indians, for instance — and point to the fact (for fact it is) as a proof of
the healthiness of the race, or of the facility which they have in overcoming any sickness or
bodily infirmity. No fact could be truer, no conclusion more erroneous. Among a savage people
there is a " struggle for existence/' and the weakly and sickly go to the wall, while the strong
survive. The Indian baby swinging in its board cradle in the tree, or on its mother's back, to
* "Anthropology" (1881), pp. 240—241. The Hydahs, of whom in the earlier editions of this work I gavo
a fuller account, have been several times incidentally referred to as among the most intelligent and handsomest of
the North American races, though also one of those who most perseveringly attempt to make themselves as ugly
as possible. The space, however, demanded by the many tribes, and by the results of the researches which during
the last ten years have come to the front, will prevent me from relating my experiences in 1866 among these
curious inhabitants of the off -lying British Columbian Islands. Mr. Swan's treatise (" Smithsonian Contribution
to Knowledge," No. 267), and still more recently Dr. Dawson's monograph in " Report of Progress of the Geological
Survey of Canada," 1873 — 79, render this detail almost unnecessary. The reader may also be referred to my
paper in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (1869), and Petermann's " Geographische Mitthcilungen" (1870),
Svan's "Three Years in Washington Territory" (1857), "Indians of Cape Flattery" (Smithsonian Contributions,
No. 220), Dall's " Contributions to North American Ethnology" (1877 — 81), and Bancroft's encyclopsediac, though, in
many cases, extremely inaccurate, compilation on the North- Western Indians.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: BURIAL. 93
the sound of tinkling bells, must ever take its risk of many a mishap from which the civilised
child is exempt, before its hope of handling a bow or a paddle is a matter of the slightest
certainty. It was calculated (probably by some fur-dealer who had given them credit) that
the life of an Indian of the Sioux tribe — a race much given to war — was only worth on an
average seven years after he had attained manhood. Yet if an Indian has a fair chance he will
often attain a good old age.
This longevity is, however, on the wane since the advent of white civilisation and European
vice — both of which, par I passu, are gradually permeating through the tribes. In Hudson's
Bay and elsewhere it is said that when an Indian wishes to live to a very old age, he prays that
he may live until his hair turns grey, considering that if his petition is granted he may
reckon himself sure of something approaching to immortality. On the Pacific coast,
however, this greyness of the hair is not rare, even among Indians not much advanced
in years, though it must be acknowledged that grey hair is much rarer among them than
among the whites.
BURIAL CUSTOMS.
When an Indian is about to die, and the medicine-men have given him over, his coffin
— a square box — is introduced, and along with it a fir branch, not unlike a Christmas tree,
strewed with downy feathers, both of which are set down beside him. What the meaning of
the feathers is it is hard to say. They are used plentifully in all their feasts, being scattered
after the dancers. Possibly in this case they may have some reference to Psyche, the spirit
— souls being supposed to go into birds. The moment life is extinct (and sometimes before,
of which more anon), a couple of men, whose services have been previously secured, and who
are anxious to earn something, will double up the body into this box, in a position not unlike
that of the Inca mummies found in jars in Peru, and nail it down. We have supposed, as is
most commonly the case, that the body is to be buried in a box. There are, however, several
other methods of sepulture in use among the coast Indians. These are, first, placing the bodies
in boxes up trees. Aroimd the tree are hung blankets and other property; and it is quite
weird-like to pass through a gloomy primeval forest and see the grave-boxes fastened overhead,
or perhaps — the cedar-bark cords having given way — to find the ghastly remains lying under
the tree (p. 96) . Such is their horror of a dead body, or desire to squeeze it into the box before
the corpse gets stiffened, that not unfrequently it is put into the coffin before life is extinct.
In support of this I may relate a curious anecdote of an incident which befel a friend
of the author's, a well-known and most trustworthy officer of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Walking one day near an Indian village, he heard faint cries in the direction of the
dense foliage of a fir. Examining more closely, he satisfied himself that they came from a
coffin-box which had been recently placed there. Wondering what could be the matter, my
friend climbed up, at the risk of being surprised by the Indians and suffering the penalty of
meddling with the dead, and, wrenching off the lid, was horrified to see a young man raise
himself up and look round in bewilderment. The poor fellow was well known to the trader,
and had been put into the box while in a trance. Though much injured, he managed to
get down the tree, and to the horror and astonishment of the Indians walked into the village,
where, for all I know to the contrary, he is yet living.
94 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The second method is to put the box into a little tent or house, with trinkets and household
implements around, the box itself being- supported on trestles. I have often been attracted
during my lonely canoe voyages among- the gloomy and solitary scenery of the islands of
Puget Sound by what I thought to be a settler's house, but which turned out to be only the
last receptacle of the dead. On one occasion I was travelling on foot down the banks of the
Fraser River, and was delighted to see what I thought a pioneer hut, with the owner, his
wife, and boy sitting on a bench in front of the door. The wife appeared to be knitting some
description of mat, and the husband had his rifle over his knee. Hailing them repeatedly and
getting no answer, I climbed up the cliff, and found that I had been hallooing to three figures
carved out of wood — their bodies lying inside the hut. It was an Indian grave. Since the
advent of the whites, the Indians, sad to relate, have been forced to put the property over
the graves in such a condition that it should not tempt some economical but irreverential
settler to furnish his house from the Indian cemetery. Accordingly, it will be found that in
almost every case the looking-glasses have holes punched in them, the kettles broken, and
so on. At one time they used to bury money — often large sums — with the bodies. I expect
this custom is discontinued, the Indian now knowing better what to do with his coin. At
Boston Bar, on the Fraser, is a great burial-ground of this description, and on the Douglas
Portage, in British Columbia, is one where numerous banners and muskets are suspended on
trees and poles. I had the curiosity to examine some of these muskets, and invariably found
them to want the locks. Sometimes the coffin is placed in the open air, on pillars curiously
carved with figures of owls or other birds, or into human semblance, some of these sculptures
being most obscene. At other times a bird is carved in wood as if in the act of flying from
the edge of the box ; perhaps this may refer to some idea of the soul escaping after death. A
third method is " burying" (if it can be so called) the body in a canoe. On an island in the
Columbia River there used to be quite a collection of canoes with such freights; and Deadmaivs
Island, in Victoria Harbour, is another place where many of the bodies were placed in canoes.
The fourth method is to burn the body and either bury or hang up the ashes in the lodge.
This is partially practised by the Tsimpseans, the Hydahs, the Takali, and most of the
Southern Oregonian and Californian tribes. With the body are burnt the deceased's broken
canoes and such of his blankets as are not sold. Inquiring of a medicine-man of the
Klamaths if the object of this was to afford the grandee burnt material for a comfortable
sojourn in the other world, I was assured that the sole intention was simply to put every-
thing belonging to the dead man out of sight, so that they might have no temptation to
remember him, and therefore not offend the dead by mentioning his name. Indians think
that it is unlucky to mention the name of a dead person, and though you may talk about
him as much as you like, yet it must only be as " that dead man," or some circumlocutory
name. This desire to destroy all traces of the dead cannot be universal, because the
northern tribes flaunt mementoes of them about the grave, and even erect monuments in
the shape of figures of wood in the close vicinity of their lodges. We therefore may
still cherish the more poetical idea that it has something to do with their condition in the
land of spirits. It not unfrequently, however, happens that when people get old and
helpless, their friends will take them out into the forest, and expose them where, if death
does not soon relieve them, the wolves will. During the small-pox panic, bodies were
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: BURIAL. 95
often left thus, and arriving in Vancouver Island soon after the epidemic of 1862, I frequently
came across the ghastly remains of these victims in my rambles through the woods in the neigh-
bourhood of Victoria. As lately as the month of January, 1872, the small-pox again decimated
the southern tribes, and I learn from my correspondents in the country that victims were often
left to die or were tossed into the harbour, and that the Government was compelled to
undertake their burial. At one time the inmates would desert a lodge in which any one had died.
Slaves were also killed at the death of a great chief, but this custom has now been almost quite
abandoned. An Indian grave-place has generally a melancholy and forbidding appearance, though
sometimes, as in the case of the burial-ground at Boston Bar, with its streaming banners, a
contrary effect is produced. Fragments of old canoes, boxes, boards, paddles, blankets, &c., litter
the ground, and lie in rags on the bushes or among the long grass and nettles. The scene may
be thus truthfully described, in the words of Mr. Sproat : — " Here and there rude coloured wooden
carvings are placed near the bodies of chiefs. The labour of carving these images, when a sharp
shell or a piece of bone was the only instrument used, must have been great. You may see a
wooden image which stands grimly contemplating the skull of an enemy placed in his hand ;
another, famous as a speaker in his lifetime, is represented with an outstretched arm ; a third
grasps a wolf. I once saw canoes daily visiting at twilight, for several weeks, one of these
burying-places, where they remained till past midnight. The visitors lighted a great fire,
and fed it with oil, resinous pine sticks, and other combustible materials, and they wailed loudly
at intervals during the whole time. The death and burial of the deceased, who in this case
was a person of high rank, were thus described to me : — The whole tribe had assembled in the
house, and a friend of the sick person in a loud and grave tone announced that his relative
was breathing his last. He then recounted his generous acts and deeds of daring, and intimated
that the dying man wished to bequeath all his personal effects to his tribe. There was a con-
trast between the voice and appearance of this chief and the poor creature who lay on a few
mats, breathing heavily, his eyes glazed and his features pinched and pallid from disease and
exhaustion. The distribution next began, in which each person shared according to his rank.
About an hour after life had departed, messengers went round to the different houses to give
notice of the funeral. All the women in the village began to wail loudly ; the men remained
stern, sad, and silent. The corpse, wrapped in a blue blanket, was put into a canoe, which moved
slowly from the shore, accompanied by about ninety canoes. Having reached an islet, a native
climbed a large tree, and after various ceremonies, the body was hoisted up and secured to a
ty branch. Long speeches were afterwards made in praise of the deceased, whose death it
as stated should be honoured by a human sacrifice. A small neighbouring tributary tribe
was accordingly visited by an armed party, which returned in a day or two with several heads.
These, it was stated, had not been taken by force, but had been demanded and given as a
>cessary sacrifice on the occasion of this great warrior's death. Such human sacrifices arc
.ow, happily, of rare occurrence." These natives on the west coast, the same close observer
remarks, have periods of mourning, but whether of definite duration or dependent on the will of
the mourner, could not be accurately ascertained. They cut their hair as a mark of respect for
the dead. The men seek solitude while mourning, but the women display their grief openly.
In their houses the women often talk about friends who have died — how they were respected,
whot great things they did, how good they were — but always without directly mentioning the
MANDAN BURIAL GROUND.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: DEATH CEREMONIES. 97
persons by name. During these conversations the men become sad — these occasions occurring
at intervals, often for as much as four or five years after the death of the person spoken of — and
the old women go outside and sit wailing for days. It seems odd to our notions that a woman
should sit by herself, crying for so long a time without any one taking the least notice of her.
"The men do not indulge in such long-drawn-out sorrow; but their grief is sharp, as they
have strong natural affections. I remember an old Ohyaht grieving for his eldest son, who
was drowned. The mourner's hair was cut close, the body and face blackened, tattered blankets
wrapped round him (sackcloth, indeed, and ashes !) and all the while he piteously wept. There
is a heart-rending expression in an Indian's grave, hard face distorted by grief. Tears did not
often come to his relief, and now and then he ceased his wail and sat still, all his emotion
contracted into one long cry of woe. The body of the son had not been found, and the old
man, with a few friends, carried to a resting-place in the forest two cedar boards — a sort of
bier, I suppose — on one of which was a small porpoise, over which was placed the other board,
which bore the roughly-traced effigy of a man. After the funeral, the bereaved father divided
all his own property among those present."
Widows are in most tribes allowed to marry again, after the usual howling over the grave
in plaintive cadence is finished, if they are lucky enough to secure a husband; but among the
Takali or Carrier tribe, in British Columbia, she must carry her husband's ashes on her back
for seven years, after which she is free to marry again. The position of a widow is, however,
by no means an enviable one, unless she has property of her own, or compensating advantages
of rank or influence. The eldest son takes all the property of the father, which has not been
given away or destroyed at his death, and the mother must shift as best she can. She is often
neglected by her children, for filial regard is not one of the most prominent virtues of these
people. Among some tribes it is usual for a well-to-do man to take a widow and her children
into his house, if she is wholly destitute. The children are treated as little better than slaves,
and in time come to be regarded as such entirely, though they cannot be sold out of the tribe.
Some very remarkable men have occasionally arisen among these coast tribes. Such a one
was Lechi, who roused up all the Indian tribes of Washington Territory and Oregon to war
against the whites in 1855, and for two years they waged a warfare which nearly exterminated
the whites of that country; though, to the honour of the English be it spoken, no Hudson's
Bay Company's servant or officer was killed except one, and he only by accident. Everywhere
this remarkable man passed among the Indian tribes, " like night, from land to land," exciting
them by telling them that the whites were driving them to a land where all was darkness,
where the rivers flowed mud, and where the bite of a mosquito wounded like the stroke of a
spear. Such was the force of his character that in one day the Indian tribes over an immense
extent of country rose almost as one man.*
Another most remarkable man was Tsosieten, war chief of Taitka, now — if not dead— a
very aged man. In old times his prowess in war was sung along the coast for many a
* He was afterwards executed at Steilacoom. His coadjutor " Neilson" was also supposed to have been killed by
the " friendly" Indians, but I have reason to know that in 1866 at least he was still alive, skulking about Black P.iver.
The head which was brought in as his by old Sanawa, the Snoqnnlami chief, was oiily that of a sla.ve cf the lattc:.1.. who
was very like Neilson, and was accordingly decapitated, so that tha reward might bo obtained !
13
93 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
league, and still lives in the memory of the neighbouring tribes, whose terror he was.
"War after war he waged with them, until the whole coast paid tribute to him, and he
really did not know his wealth in slaves and blankets. Sometimes he would buy slaves — if
captives from the more distant tribes, so much the better — give them canoes and provisions,
and set them off to their homes. Then everybody would gather round and eagerly ask, " Oh J
who bought you and set you free?" "Tsosieten bought me and set me free." Then
great was the name of Tsosieten. In "piping times of peace" he lived on "Indian Island,"
in a stockaded fort armed with cannon which he had bought from the Imperial Fur
Company in Russian America, and inside its pickets was the village of his chosen warriors.
Alas ! — sic transit gloria mundi — blind and helpless, last of his name, when I last saw him he
still lived in his ruined fort, with only the recollections of his former deeds to console him.
"They all call themselves chiefs nowadays," he said bitterly to me. "/ am the only chief V*
Tsosieten, even in his own day, had his rival among his own people, and for years the thought
made his life bitter. This rival was Tsohailum, chief of Quamichan, Tsohailum was once but
a poor boy, a slave's son, despised by all. Gradually the boy distinguished himself, and was.
allowed to join Tsosieten's great war-parties, when he did such doughty deeds that, on the
death of the chief of Quamichan, they elected him in his stead, the heir being but a sickly boy.
Tsohailum was never seen to smile, and carried a knife in his breast day and night. So afraid
was he of treachery, that he never slept in the same part of his lodge two nights running, and
would often get iip and lie down in another part, afraid of the midnight assassin. He grew so
powerful that when he wanted a wife he didn't go begging like common people, but sent an
envoy, and he was rarely unsuccessful, for all men feared Tsohailum, or were anxious to get
connected with him. If a refusal did come, war was declared. Many stories are told of his
daring. On one occasion, when visiting some of his relations on the British Columbia shore,
there was much talk of the bravery of his rivals, the Nuchultaws, of whom he affected to speak
lightly. His brothers-in-law rather sneering at him, to show his daring, he offered to cross
with a single companion in a little canoe to the Nuchultaw village in broad daylight, and bring
back a head or die. The offer was accepted, and after paddling for half a day, they approached
the village. Nobody appeared about, except two men on the beach, who ran to the lodges for
arms at the sight of strange warriors. He followed, and soon brought one down. Seizing his
other musket, he shot the other just at his lodge door. In a trice their heads were off, and
Tsohailum was back to the canoe before the affrighted villagers could recover from their sur-
prise. Shouting his dreaded name, he and his companion sprang to their paddles, and shot out
of sight. Pursuit was soon given, but in vain, and by night the daring pair reached their
village in triumph, after having accomplished their dangerous feat. On another occasion, he
Went to attack the Classaht village, near Cape Flattery. It was dark when he and his warriors
arrived, and nobody was about. Tsohailum, tired of waiting for a head (for he had only one
ca-noe), against the remonstrances of his people, climbed on to the roof of one of the lodges,
pushed the boards aside, and dropped in among his sleeping enemies. Listening for the
breathing, he approached and severed a head, and escaped out as he had entered, just as the
village was alarmed, and the men poured out in affright. Tsohailum was, however, by this
time well on his way home, and had added one more to his many feats. He built a great
lodge, and in his poir.p invited all the tribes to help to erect the pillars — the greatest ever
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FATALISM. 99
seen. His poor old father, once a slave, looked on in pride. "Now," said Tsohailum to him,
" I am a great man just now, and so are you ; but some day I shall get killed, and then
you will be nobody, and when you die will be buried accordingly. Better let me kill you ; then
there will be many blankets given away, and canoes and muskets, and you will be buried
like a great chief." The old tellow, much to his son's disgust, declared that he thought he
would like to take his chance. Yet, with all his power, he Avas unfortunate in affairs matri-
monial— as, indeed, might be expected from the very summary method of wooing he adopted.
•One night he surprised one of his wives in flay r ante delicto. Without saying a word, he killed
the lover ; then, cutting off his head, he tossed it outside the door. While the lodges were
roused by the screams of the paramour, Tsohailum drew his long knife several times across the
soles of his wife's feet, saying, as she limped outside, " Now go home to your father's house,
you strumpet \" He said he would never stoop to kill a woman. Tsohailum used to boast that
if ever he was kiUed, it \vould not be by a man, but by a woman, a boy, or an idiot, but that
the bullet which would end his career had not yet been cast. His end was approaching. His
power and pride grew so great that he closed the Cowichan lliver, from time immemorial the
common canoe-way of different tribes, all friendly with him. None but those of his own tribe,
he said, should pass in front of his door. Now this was infringing on the right of way, and
nobody looks upon this more jealously than the Indian ; so treachery began to hatch for him.
" He is too proud, Tsohailum, now/' the old people and the young people all alike said ; " he
is too powerful." On an island not far from the mouth of the Cowichan lliver lived a small
tribe called the Lamalchas, mostly runaway slaves of Tsosieten, whose existence was merely
tolerated. If a Lamakha had a pretty daughter or wife, she was taken from him, and he
himself treated as a slave. Now, a rumour came to the ears of Tsohailum that the Lamalchas
had heen speaking evil of him, and saying that he wasn't such a big man as he pretended to
be, and such-like calumny. In his wrath, Tsohailum declared that he would exterminate the
dogs. Many volunteered to assist him, but he declared he would not take good men to dogs
like they, but would do it himself, only taking enough men to paddle him. So he loaded his
two muskets and lay down to sleep, telling his men to arouse him when he was in sight of the
Lamalcha village. They exchanged glances, and gently raising his arms, they withdrew the
charges and dropped the balls overboard. Suspecting nothing, Tsohailum was roused when in
sight of the village, and the canoe drawn into a cove, where the paddlers remained. The
Lamalcha "village" was only one very large lodge, and nobody was about in the heat of the
day. Entering the doorway, he shouted his war-cry, " I am Tsohailum, chief of Quamichan,"
and at the dreaded cry the terrified inmates ran into a corner. Levelling his musket at the
chief, he fired, and to the astonishment of himself and every one else, without effect.
Seizing the other he again fired and missed. A woman who was sitting unperceived behind the
high boards which formed the walls of the entrance, seeing this, threw the stick they dig up
shell-fish with over his head, and held him back, crying, " Now you have got Tsohailum ; he's
bewitched \" The men then took courage, and rushed upon him with axes, and killed him who
was looked upon as more than mortal. So Tsohailum's prophecy came true — he was killed
by a woman at last. Then his old rival and master — Tsosieten — bought his head for five
blankets, to kick about his village.
' O
This fatalism is common among the Indians. A Flatbow chief declared that if he cUed it
100 THE PEOl'LES OF THE WORLD.
would be by a wound in his little finger. This place he looked upon — like the heel of Achilles-
— as his only vulnerable point. It so happened that he was wounded there, and died of
inflammation resulting- therefrom.
The North- Western Indian is a thorough conservative ; he is loth to change. What was
good enough for his father is good enough for him. Why should he bother himself with
change, unless it is absolutely forced on him ? And so he stands still. The picture of the-
Nimpkish village in Vancouver's narrative, and of that in Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, in
Goofs volume, might stand for the portraits of the same villages at this day. Notwith-
standing, also, the multiplicity of languages, they have not materially altered since the days of
Cook, as the vocabulary of the Nootka language given in the account of that famous traveller's-
voyage of 1778 (the earliest date at which we hear of the Western Vancouver Indians), proves.
In fact, the diversity of their dialects shows how stationary they are in particular spots, for if
they moved about much their language would soon have varied, and altered altogether by the
incorporation of words of foreign origin. Of course, an unwritten language will vary some-
what, but these North- Western languages have not altered to anything like the extent of those
in the interior, especially to the east of the Rocky Mountains, where a missionary will form a
vocabulaiy of a language, and come back twenty years afterwards and find it of no use to him.
These wandering tribes go great distances to war, are often taken prisoners by other tribes,
whose language they acquire, and, if they return home, partially introduce into their own
tribes. Foreign wives (who naturally have much intercourse with the children), as well
as slaves speaking other tongues, are also influential. In these and similar ways the
languages of the plain Indians change, while, from the absence of like causes, thoie of:
the coast tribes are tolerably stable.
CHAPTER V.
RELIGION AND FOLKLORE OF THE NORTH-WESTERN INDIANS.
"Ye who love a nation's legends,
Love the ballads of a people,
'I hat like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause and listen,
* # # *
Listen to this Indian Legend.
Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
* * * *
Listen to this simple story." — Lotiy fellow.
LOOKING at the smoke-dried, leathern-looking countenance of an old Indian sitting in front
of his lodge, gazing at the river rushing past (though in all likelihood he is gazing on vacancy
and thinking of nothing), you are very apt to ask, has he any joys and higher animation than
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: RELIGION. 101
the merely animal, anything in the shape of religion — theology it cannot be styled — any
pious feelings and aspirations ; in this sensual here, anything of a more lasting and better
hereafter ? No merely passing traveller can give anything like a connected account of their
superstitious tenets, and this will be the more apparent when I say that after residing among
these races for several years, and my fellow-labourer (Mr. Sproat) an even more protracted
period, with our minds constantly directed to this object, and ready to pick up the merest
fragments of their religious belief, our combined knowledge is of the most imperfect
character, and our ascertained facts only obtained with the utmost difficulty and at rare
intervals. The race is so habitually suspicious of strangers, so afraid of ridicule, and so over-
awed by things mysterious, that even when they do know facts bearing on this subject, they
are very wary in enlightening you. The truth is, however, few of them — even the most
intelligent men — have any very clear idea of a religious system, and no two of them agree on.
the subject. They have no priests (in the true sense of the term), whose duty and interest it
is to perpetuate the remembrance of dogmas, rites, and creeds, and accordingly, as invariably
happens under such a system, the people lapse into many beliefs, or into ignorance. Among the
Western Vancouver Island Indians there is a credence in Quawteaht as the Supreme Being —
the Originator of all things. A belief in this Being, under different names, is found throughout
the Indian tribes all over the American continent. My old friend Quassoon, whose name
figures frequently in these pages, anul who was one of our chief informants, having accompanied
both Mr. Sproat and myself on our exploratory or hunting tours, gave us this tradition of
the origin of the Indians : —
The first Indian who ever lived was of short stature, and with very strong hairy arms and
legs, and was named Quawteaht. Where he came from was not known, but he was the father
of all the Aht or west coast Indians. Before his time birds, beasts, and fishes existed in the
world. Quawteaht killed himself — why, the narrator could not say — but as he lay covered
with vermin, a beneficent spirit, Tootah (the word for " thunder ") , in the shape of a bird, came
and put the vermin into a box, and Quawteaht revived, and looked about, but saw no one, as.
the bird had flown away. By-and-by the bird returned, and Quawteaht married her, and had a
son, who was the forefather of all the Indians.
Quawteaht lived at Toquaht, and named all the tribes, who affix aht to their tribal names,
in honour of their great ancestor; though really this termination of the west coast names
appears to be derived from in alt t, "a house." At one time there must have been only a few
tribes — collections of people from the same district in Asia, or speaking one language. Then
a fx'w families branched off here and there, for better fishing and hunting grounds, and in
course of time increased and formed separate tribes ; or some village would assert independent
tribal rights, and in due time become in reality a distinct race, speaking a different dialect.
In Vancouver Island, for instance, there are numerous small tribes, thirty or so in number,
some of which appear once to have been much greater, while others do not appear to have
ever exceeded their present numbers. Among the natives of the east coast of Vancouver
Island, Quawteaht is called Hselse, and the same or similar stories are related of his doings*
It was he who named all the tribes, and who taught men all the arts. Before his day men
lived in holes in the ground, until he taught them to make an axe out of the elk's horn,
and cut down the cedar-trees and make board lodges. Formerly they could not fish, but only
102 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
caught salmon in immense weirs thrown across rivers, or at river-mouths. Hselse taught
them to chisel out a canoe ; but it was a fatal art, for then they went from home and engaged
in war, and from that day to this the Indians have been on the decrease.
I could never clearly understand whether the east coast Indians believed that at one time
all men were in the form of beasts, or whether they were in the form of men, but with the
nature, habits, and disposition of certain animals. For instance, in the tradition of the contest
for the chief's daughter (hereafter related), the different tribes are represented as coming in the
form of wild animals — wolves, deer, bears, &c. Again, many of the traditions of Haelse repre-
sent him as coming to people, and requesting them to do certain favours for him, and on their
refusing he converts them into beasts. Thus he converted a canoe-man on a lake into a beaver, for
refusing to ferry him over. A fisher on the Coquitlam River, a tributary of the Fraser, was con-
verted into a pillar of stone for refusing him salmon, and there the rock stands to this day, the
monument of an inhospitable man. A similar tale is told of some pillars standing in the Stekin
River, in Alaska ; they are represented to be a chief and his family, who stole berries from the
smaller tribes on the river bank. A woman was converted into a raven for refusing Haslse
berries, and a boy who was swallowed by a whale, and vomited up again, was changed into
a mink, because he refused him sea-eggs (echini). He was diving for them, but when this
supernatural being came up, he was ashamed of his occupation, and said he had got them in his
big canoe, so Haelse slapped his face, and threw water on him, when he was converted into the
shape of that water-loving mammal. This slapping and throwing water on the person about to
be metamorphosed are the constant accompaniments of all Hselse's acts of vengeance. It sounds
like some of the " Grecian fables of sailors turned to swine," and occurs in a hundred different
forms. Dr. Tolmie, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who has lived in the country
since 1836, informs me that the Flatheads (so called) of the Rocky Mountains believed before
the adoption of the Catholic religion, that the sun was the Supreme Being, and that good men
went there after death, while the bad remained near the earth, and troubled the living ; while
others supposed that the worthless ceased to exist at death. They also believed, in common
with nearly every other tribe, that all animals, and at least the edible roots, were once human
beings, and that the son of the sun came to earth, and compelled all these beings to swim across
a lake of oil, on emerging from which they assumed their present form and peculiarities. The
bear dived, and became fat; the goose did not dive, and therefore has only fat behind the neck ;
and so on. The sun is thus with them, as with many other Indian tribes, particularly those
of the tropics, an object of worship ; all of them hold it in reverence. The ancient Peruvians
not only worshipped the sun, but, like their descendants, kept alive the sacred fire. It was
entrusted to the care of the "virgins of the sun," and if by any accident it was allowed to go
out, danger and disaster threatened the monarchy. A similar idea regarding the lodge-fires
prevailed in America before the introduction of flint and steel, and matches.
The Flatheads of the Kootanie county and the Tsimseans of Fort Simpson, tribes
living very remote from each other, think that when the son of the sun came on earth he was
accompanied by a dog, though the latter do not say that the metamorphosis of human beings
into beasts was accomplished by this supernatural being — who is, again, nothing more than Hslse
of the Cowichans, &c. It seems almost as if they thought that all the beasts were made by
this process out of men. The Indians themselves can give no intelligible explanation when you
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: RELIGION. 103
point to the contradictory character of their stories; they only shake their head, and say
that "no white man can understand these things." You have to be very careful not to be
unintentionally imposed upon by them, for if an Indian sees that you wish information on a
certain point, if leading- questions are put to him, he will answer just as you wish, without
absolutely intending to " sell " you. Among the Klamath Lake Indians in Southern Oregon, I
found this Hselse and Quawteaht under the name of Komikunx-Komaseyn, with much the same
stories attached to him, altered, of course, according to climate, country, and the habits of the
people. He is said to have come from the south. I was pointed out Komikunx's dog, and
Komikunx's house, in the shape of knolls of rock on the prairies. " After he had made peace
among the tribes he went away/' were the quaint words of my informant. To the east of the
Rocky Mountains, this Haelse, Quawteaht, Komikunx, or by whatever name he is called to the
west of that range, is well known under the various names of Michabou, Chiabo, Nanahbozhoo,
Tarenyawagon, and Hiawatha, under which latter title Longfellow has made him familiar to
the readers of his quaintly beautiful, but (for an ethnologist) somewhat too poetical poem of that
name. Schoolcraft has given an account of this mythical personage in his " Algic Researches/'
Vol. I., p. 134, and in his elaborate " History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes
of the United States/' Part III., p. 311, may be found the Iroquois version of the tradition.
Among the Ojibways of Hudson's Bay I recognise the same myth under the name of Anina,
Boojo.* Hitherto students of mythology have only been acquainted with it as a tradition among
the east of the Rocky Mountain tribes, but I believe that I have established it as a universal
myth, originating out of that longing desire of all men, however rude, to recognise some
originator and beginner of all things, and from a consciousness that the arts of peace cannot
begin from within but from without. It is just possible, too, that the tales of Montezuma,
among the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, may be another form of the same myth, and that
it may be even traced among the ancient Peruvians to some extent, under the persons of Manco
Ccapac and Mama Ocllo Huaco. We can find it in Asia among many wild and even civilised
nations ; in one case at least among the Assyrians in a form which has left its impress on the
world's history.
They also worship other spirits or beings, though they make no images of these objects, at
least as objects of worship. The carved figures which Cook saw, and called their gods, were
enly the wooden figures found generally around their lodges, often of a gigantic size, either as
ornamental pillars to support the roof beams, or as monuments of the dead. There are spirits
who preside over the woods, the salmon, &c., and you must be careful not to offend those.
Yearly at Alberni there used to be a feast (called kloftk-quat-iiiat) at the close of the autumn
fishery, in honour of the salmon deity, when occasionally a person (a slave, I believe) was
killed in the most cruel manner, and the people would dance round the body for several days,
while it lay exposed on the beach. A distinguishing feature in this entertainment (which
I have already described) was a pretended attack on the village by other Indians personating-
a band of wolves. Whether this had not something to do with the ideas regarding the
transmigration of souls into other animals, or (as some of them say) in memory of a chief's
» Nevin's " Narrative of Two Voyages to Hudson's Bay, with Traditions of the North American Indians," p. 105
(1847). He is the Mexican " Quetzalcoatl," the Oreo " Gepuchican," the Micmac " Glooscap," &c.
104. THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
sons who long- ago were carried off by wolves, I cannot decide. When men die, the all but
universal belief among the Indians of the north-west coast is, that they go into birds — a
sort of transmigration of souls. Owls are supposed to be the chief recipients of these spirits.
and Indians are very careful not to mention the name of the dead. Often when encampec
out in the woods with them at night, the Indians, in great affright, would draw over to my
fire, and whisper that some one must have been talking about the dead. A woman once
begged of me not to shoot a fine specimen of the great owl (Bnbo virginianns, Bon.), because
it contained the soul of her grandfather. Of course, I spared the lady's feelings. However,
they have also, on the west coast of Vancouver Island at least, a belief in an after country
of bliss, which they describe as a happy country, situated somewhere up in the sky, though
not exactly over the earth. Everything- there is beautiful and abundant. There a continual
calm prevails, and the canoes float lightly on the sleeping waters ; frost does not bind the
rivers, and the snow never spreads its white blanket over the ground. In this pleasant country
of continual sunshine and warmth and gladness it is believed that the high chiefs, and those
natives who have been slain in battle, find their repose, the chiefs living in a large house as the
guests of Quawteaht, and the slain, in battle living in another hoiise by themselves. Like Odin,
he drives away the pauper and the bondsman from the doors of Walhalla. Myalhi is their word
for the personification of sickness, and Clay-her for the personification of death. His country is
quite the antipodes of Quawteaht's. It is generally regarded as the country to which all common
people and slaves (unless slain in battle) go after death; and there they remain, as there is no
passage to the martial and aristocratic elysium of Quawteaht's land. Clay-far is sometimes
described as an old man, with a long greybeard, and a figure of flesh without bones, and is believed
to wander at night, seeking- men's souls, which he steals away, and unless the doctors recover
them, the losers will die. In wishing death to any one, the natives blow and say, " Cluy-her,
come quick." A corresponding- belief is that when a person is sick, his soul (kont#-)iin'/i} leaves
his body, and goes into the country of Clay-her, but does not enter a house. If it enters, that is
a sign that it has taken up its abode below for good, and the sick man dies. Clnif-lier's country
is situated deep down in the earth, but it is very like the world we live in, with inferior houses,
no salmon, and very small deer.* The blankets are thin and small, and therefore when the
funeral obsequies are performed the friends of the dead, infused with a kindly scepticism
regarding- the landing of the deceased, often burn blankets, for by incinerating the blankets
they send them to the departed in the world below. The heaven of the Indians — the happy
hunting-grounds of story-book writers — (as of other people more civilised) is framed upon the
idea of something pleasanter than the world they live in, though I cannot learn that there is
much of Mahomet's paradise about it. The matter-of-fact character of the Indian is much
happier in having an abundance of food and a good lodge, than in any enjoyments more
refined or less innocent. The common medicine-man has no power over a soul demanded by
Clay-Jterj but the higher one, or sorcei'er, has the power of sending his own soul in pursuit
of the descended soul of the sick man. If the mission is successful, the truant soul is brought
back to the sorcerer, who throws it into the sick man's head, for the soul, they believe, dwells
in the heart (libuxti], and also in the head (/rdt/, "brain.") "My informant," Mr. Sproat
* Sproat, "Scenes and Studies of Savage Lire," p. 213.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: RELIGION.
105
writes, " asked me if I had ever seen a soul, and said he had once seen his own, when at
the close of a severe illness it was brought to him by the sorcerer, on the end of a small
piece of stick, and thrown into his head ! "
INDIAN MEDICINE-MEN IN MASKS AND MASQVERADE DRESSES.
To repeat all the religious beliefs of even one tribe would be tedious in the extreme,
without any corresponding gain, because none of these beliefs are settled, but merely the vague
fancies of individuals rather more intelligent than the general run of a race, which, though
perhaps not cultivated or intellectual, is yet far from unthinking on such matters.
14
106 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
I have spoken of the " medicine-man ; " let me now say a few words upon this prominent
character among the Indians — sorcerer,, priest, or whatever name is applied to the charlatan, so
familiarly known to all readers of Indian stories. Though we have been in the habit of
translating the Indian name for anything very strange or supernatural in their eyes into
"medicine/' yet the reader must not suppose that these people have any connection with
medical practice, except in so far as- it relates to incantations and "sorcery/' Medicine,
understood as the physician's art, is chiefly in the hands of old women — withered, wrinkled
old hags, bearing a strong family likeness to the witches in "Macbeth/' who, of course,
superadd to it many incantations and charms. Indeed, they have little knowledge of any
curative agents, but what little information, supposed or real, they do possess, I have
given a summary of in another place.* These medicine-men seem to hold the office of
wizards or " mediums " between the supernatural world and the Indians. They are generally
the idlest and the sharpest fellows in the whole tribe, and by dint of imposing on the credulity
of superstitious people, manage to make a very easy living from the more industrious. All of
them, probably on the same principle that an habitual liar in course of time believes in his
own often-repeated falsehoods, have more or less credence in their own power — a credulity
which they share with the "witches" and "wizards" of all ages and countries. Among the
northern tribes there are three grades of them, and to attain to the highest (sic] of these ranks
is vouchsafed to few. During their exhibitions of prowess, the lowest grade eat the ordinary
food of the people, the next dogs, whilst the "highest" will, while in the frenzied condition
they work themselves into, tear human flesh. Mr. Duncan — who has done so much for the
civilisation of the Tsimseans, on the northern coast of British Columbia — thus describes
one of these horrible scenes. An old chief had killed a female, and the body was thrown
into the sea : — " I saw crowds of people running out of their houses near to where the corpse
was thrown, and forming themselves into groups at a good distance away. This I learned was
from fear of what was to follow. Presently two bands of furious wretches appeared, each
headed by a man in a state of nudity. They gave vent to the most unearthly sounds, and the
two naked men made themselves look as unearthly as possible, proceeding in a creeping kind
of stoop, and stepping like two proud horses, at the same time shooting forward each arm
alternately, which they held out at full length for a little time, in the most defiant manner.
Besides this, the f recjuent jerking of their heads backward, causing their long black hair to twist
about, adding much to their savage appearance. For some time they pretended to be seeking
the body, and the instant they came where it lay, they commenced screaming and rushing round
it like so many angry wolves. Finally they seized it, dragged it out of the water, and laid it
on the beach, where, I was told, the naked men would commence tearing it to pieces with their
teeth. The two bands of men immediately surrounded them, and hid their horrid work. In a
few minutes the crowd broke again into two, when each of the naked cannibals appeared with
half of the body in his hands. Separating a few yards, they commenced, amid horrid yells,
their still more horrid feast. The sight was too terrible to behold." There is also, I may here
mention, among many of the Indian tribes, a secret fraternity, which looks suspiciously like
* Transactions of the Edinburgh Botanical Society, ix. ; Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, August and
September, 1868.
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: RELIGION. 107
freemasonry ; indeed, I have heard a white man long- resident among the Indians declare that
it is nothing- else. " Meetings arc held at different places ahout once a year, in a house covered
round on the inside with mats. All non-members and women are excluded. ' As many as
seventy natives from the Vancouver shore, and also from the American side, have been known
to attend one of these meetings. It is not a tribal, chiefs', nor a medic ine-man's affair ;
these persons may or may not be members of the association, but unless they are members
they are not permitted to enter the house, and seem to be quite ignorant of what is going
on. A meeting sometimes lasts for five days. The members wash and paint themselves, and
wear their best clean blankets, and now and then come out of the house to wash and put on
clean paint. The proceedings inside the house are conducted in silence ; there is no singing
nor noise during the meeting of this secret association." Of this grade there were only two
when I last heard from the north-west coast. They will often go into the woods for days
together, fast (or pretend to fast), lacerate themselves with knives or thorns, and then rush
naked into the village, yelling and vociferating in a manner so demoniacal that once heard it
can never be forgot. All run from them in apparent or real fright, as they will bite any one
who comes in their way. The women secrete their children, the slaves withdraw in terror,
and the dogs are hastily called aside by their anxious mistresses ; for dog-, or slave — regarded
as little better than dog, if encountered during this assumed frenzy — speedily falls a sacrifice.
During the time the medicine-man is concealed in the woods, or elsewhere, working himself
into this demoniacal state, often for a period of several days, every care is taken not to
approach the suspected neighbourhood of his retreat. In the event of an intrusion, death even
is the reported penalty if the unfortunate offender be a female or slave.* The wounds inflicted
on those whom they meet during this frenzied rush through the village are supposed to be very
honourable, and they generally manage to inflict them on those who will value them. A friend
of mine, on one occasion, happened to be in an Indian village on the west coast of Vancouver
Island when such a scene as this was being enacted. Doubtless thinking that he was impress-
ing the trader with equal astonishment and fear with the rest, the medicine-man rushed at
him, but my friend, being a stolid, matter-of-fact Scotchman, rather muscularly inclined, and
with a supreme contempt for medicine-men, however exalted, coolly planting a well-directed
blow between the sorcerer's eyes, laid him prostrate. This somewhat abated his fury, and ever
after the rascal managed to avoid the prosaic trader. On account of these displays, the Indians
on the north-west coast have often been accused, by superficial observers, of being cannibals,
and the case is instanced of two seamen, belonging to a Hudson's Bay Company trader, who
were seized, killed, and torn up at one of these feasts, 'near the present Nuchultaw village
in Discovery Passage. The fact that ghouls are occasionally found who will exhume and devour
corpses, is also adduced as a proof. This charge of cannibalism I must, however, deny in
toto. They have an utter abomination of the thought of using human flesh as an article of
food, and it is only in these demon-worship-like rites that it is ever used. It will, I think, be
found that cannibalism, among- whatever nation practised, is to be referred to a connection with
religious superstition — a most consoling doctrine for those unfortunate enough to undergo the
* Anderson, in New York Historical Magazine, vii. 79. Under various forms and different names, this rite of
the Kluqiiolla, as it is called on the west coast, prevails.
108
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
rite ! When Mr. Waddington's men were murdered by the Chilcoaten Indians on the Bute
Inlet Trail, in 1864, the hearts of several of the men were torn out, and supposed to have been
devoured. This was pointed out at the time as an instance of the ferocity of these people,
THE "UAIX-MAKKll" SHOOTING HIS AUKOWS AT THE CLOUDS.
mutilating the dead after murdering them. On the contrary, it was a mark of high respect to
the courage of the dead, for the object desired to be attained was a portion of the courage of
the murdered men. The same superstition prevails very generally among savage tribes, and i
even found among the Chinese— a parallelism which ought not to be lost sight of. Admitting-
and instructing pupils into these horrible "medicine-rites" employ numbers, and excite interest
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: RELIGION.
109
^
in all of the tribe during1 the winter months. Women can even be instructed in them, in which
case the pupils are always taken young. The medicine-man combines the trade of the conjurer
also, and performs many sleight-of-hand tricks, which must have taken some time to acquire a
dexterity in, as it is not easy to see the method of performing them. The interior tribes have
also these medicine-feasts, and, like most Indians, wear " medicine-bags " about their necks.
Nothing- can be done without this, which is generally made of the skin of some mammal, bird, or
MEDICINE-MAN KEPKESENTING THE EVIL SPIRIT.
reptile, and stuffed with dry grass or leaves, and then sewn up and ornamented. Before a young-
man can become a warrior, he must go into the woods to fast and pray, and the first animal which,
he dreams of becomes his medicine. His medicine-bag should be made of the skin of that animal.
There are among them rain-priests, who procure rain, as among the coast tribes there are fish-
priests, who begin to walk about mysteriously at night, and then tell the tribe that they have
dreamt that plenty of fish will be caught at such and such a place, taking care to indicate some
locality where many fish are usually caught. If they are not caught, then, of course, something
must have been done which has given offence to the deity which presides over the destiny o£
110 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
finny tribes, and the soothsayer's reputation is unshaken. Yet, after all, the medicine-man's
couch is not a bed of roses. If he is seen communing with spirits in the woods and lonely
places, he must be killed, or commit suicide ; and if he fails to cure any one, he is equally liable
to be killed, on the plea that though he could, he is unwilling to cure the afflicted person. This
Chinese-like law is not usually put into force ; yet if he is unsuccessful more than once, the
chances of the medicine-man's life need not be estimated at a high figure. In cases of sickness
which defy the ordinary old woman doctor, or those who have escaped some great danger, or
who have been very ill themselves and have recovered, and are therefore supposed to have
acquired a sort of brevet-doctorate, the medicine-man is called in. One or more will dance
round the patient for hours, yelling fearfully, beating drums, shaking rattles of the bills of
the horned puffin, and in other ways attempting to frighten the evil spirit. I have seen them
sometimes clutch the air (as if they had seen the evil spirit), and hold their hands below
water, as if to drown it, or put it into the fire so as to burn it. The medicine-man will
sometimes declare that he has seen the evil spirit fly away, and tell them it is like a fly
with a long curved proboscis. I have also seen them suck the groin of the sick person, and
then spit out mouthfuls of black blood. This method of cure is also in vogue among some
of the South American tribes. A trader who submitted to this operation has assured me that
he was much better after it, in a case of severe constipation. Most of the tricks of this
nature consist of mere sleight of hand. I have known them to put a boy under a basket, and
then, after dancing round, lift it up, when there was nothing but feathers there. The
" Davenport Brothers' " rope trick, which for some time created such a sensation, has been
long practised by the North American Indians, though not commonly, or by every
medicine-man. For my own part, I never witnessed it. Curiously enough, the Assiniboine
Indians, on the Yellow Stone River, have also been long skilful at these " spiritual manifesta-
tions." A trustworthy informant, who was long a trader among these people, informs me that
he has frequently seen their chief medicine-man allow himself to be stripped to the breech-clout,
tied at every joint from toes to neck with buffalo thong, then rolled in a blanket and tied again,
finally rolled in a buffalo robe, and tied the third time, until he was apparently as helpless as a
log. In this condition the red-skinned " medium " was placed in a small tent, surrounded by
a ring of spectators, and an Indian drum, flute, and a gourd of water laid by his side. In less
than three minutes the drum and flute were heard, and at the end of five the Indian wralked out
untrammelled. The men who tied him were whites, who had bet heavily against the perform-
ance of the feat. Other tricks, more extraordinary, are related of them, and even believed in
by some who ought to know better.* It has been well remarked that, in many of their feats,
and in their influence on the minds of the people, these medicine-men correspond very closely
to the inferior lamas of Tartary, and that, making exception for the more refined character of
the people of the latter country, Hue and Gabet's description of the latter might be transferred
to these pages. Another occupation of the medicine-man, is the allaying of ghosts and other
apparitions, which, owing to the quantity of indigestible food which the Indians eat, they are
very apt to be troubled with in the shape of nightmares. On a person seeing one, he will start
* For an account of the medicine-men of some of the Rocky Mountain tribes, see an article in the Atlantic
Monthly, 1866. Many of the old Plains trappers, Col. Dodge tells us, firmly believe in the power of these medicine -men.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: RELIGION. Ill
up with a scream. The whole lodge is alarmed, the fire is fanned up again, the dreamer snatches
up feathers and eats them, and covers his head with them. His nearest relative scarifies the
dreamer's limbs with a knife, until blood comes, which is received into a dish and sprinkled on
his face, to allay the ghostly walker of the night. If the vision still continues, the friends
throw articles belonging to the dreamer into the fire, and cry, " More ! more ! " till all his
property, including clothes, mats, and even his boxes, are heaped on the fire. The greatest
excitement prevails, and girls are often sick and exhausted for days after such an unfortunate
dream. It is very unlucky to dream about any friend, and in this case, to obviate the evil con-
sequence, the dreamer and the dreamed about exchange names. An. Indian once told me, with a
very ghastly face, that he had dreamt about me; so instantly, like good savages and brothers in
affliction, we exchanged names. A man may thus have in a few years many names, but the
relinquished name is never mentioned. Sometimes, if a higher rank in the tribe is acquired
along with the name, the event is celebrated with feasting and present-giving. As an Indian is
continually troubled with fears of the malevolence of the unseen world, the sorcerer waxes fat
iipon his employment and fees. In a sentence, they are, in general, an idle, cunning set
of rascals, who, though they sometimes thoroughly believe in their own incantations, are yet
only charlatans who work on the fears of their dupes. I have, however, always found it
prudent to keep friends with them, and never attempt to interfere with their pseudo-medical
practices. If an Indian applies to you for medical treatment, it is never (unless, indeed, in a
surgical case) until he has lost confidence in his own medicine-men. If he recovers, you
never get the credit of it — it is the medicine-man who does; but if the patient dies (as he
generally does, being most frequently on the eve of dissolution before he applies to you), then
the outcry is that you killed him, and your life is not safe. I could repeat many cases in
illustration. For instance, on one of my earliest trips in the country I accompanied a fur-
trader, who was, as is usual with non-professional people entrusted with some medicines, very
fond of doctoring everybody who would submit to him. Among others, he tried his hand on
the dying chief of a tribe which we visited. He gave him nothing more serious than a dose of
Epsom salts, but it was quite enough. On our return we were met a long way out of the
village by an Indian, who was related to the trader's wife, who warned us not to go near their
village, as the chief was dead, and we had got the blame of killing him — at least, so the
medicine-men said, and that was enough. Having a serious regard for the continuity of
head and trunk, we worked round in an opposite direction, and avoided the unfortunate village,
which the trader did not venture into for a long time. His mishap, however, cured him of the
propensity to play the apothecary — in an Indian village, at least. (An almost identical incident
also befell myself on one occasion.*) This, at least, was my experience, and I acted on it, and
got along very well among the Indian tribes. I might probably have attributed my ill-success
in Indian doctoring to my want of skill, had it not been that this was the experience of nearly
every one whom I consulted, who had travelled among those tribes who are yet in something
like their primitive condition. The sorcerer is sometimes employed in even less reputable
pursuits. If one person takes a spite against another, he will seek the sorcerer's aid to secretly
destroy his enemy, by charms and spells, closely corresponding to those in use in Europe in the
* "Adventures among the North American Indians'" (1870), Cacsell's " Library of Wonders.''
112 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD,
dark ages, or even still — if all tales are true — among some ignorant wretches. I was told by
Governor Sir James Douglas of a case in which a medicine-man among the Takalis, in British
Columbia, wished to compass the destruction of a family, by burying certain animals in a box,
each animal having a name attached to it corresponding to that of the parson intended to be
destroyed ; it was supposed that as the animals gradually died, the persons whose representa-
tives they were would also pine away and die. The mediaeval custom of putting waxen images
before the fire with a similar intent will readily recur to the mind. Philip le Bel suspected
his minister, Marigny, of employing magicians to attempt the king's life, by moulding
waxen images of him and running them through with pins. In the eleventh century, the Jews
were accused of having murdered a bishop in this way ; they made a waxen image of him, had
it baptised, and then burnt it. In the time of Mary de Medicis the idea was very prevalent
that a person could be tortured by sticking pins into a waxen image of him. In 1440 the
Duchess of Gloucester did penance through London for conspiring with certain priests and
necromancers against the life of Henry VI. by melting a wax image of him ; and in James the
First's reign several witches were burnt for sticking pins in an image of the king, that thereby
they might "cause pains and diseases to fall upon him." I have known of a similar super-
stition being acted upon near Moffat, in Scotland. Again, only lately I heard of a very
similar instance in Inverness-shire. A corp ere, or criadt, was discovered in a stream in that
county. The body was of clay, into which were stuck the nails of human beings, birds' claws,
bones, pins, &c. It was partly covered by, and tied in, a black cotton apron, and had an old
beaver hat on its head. For the information of those not learned in Highland superstition, it
may be mentioned that a corp ere means an effigy or representation in clay of a person who has
made himself so obnoxious to another as to render it desirable that he should not live. When
the corp is made, it is placed in a stream, or in the ashes, and as the waters, or fire, gradually
crumble away, the clay, so, it is supposed, wastes the life of the person whose death is desired.
I may also mention that there prevails on the Assam frontier a superstition almost identical
with that described.
It was the custom from very early times to name the lions in the Tower of London
after the reigning monarchs, and it was supposed that the sovereign's fate was in a manner
bound up with that of the royal beast. Thus Lord Chesterfield, as quoted by Earl Stanhope,
in his " History of England," remarks, in reference to a serious illness from which George II.,
just two years previous to his death, recovered, that "it was generally thought that His
Majesty would have died, for a very good reason — for the oldest lion in the Tower, much
about the king's age, died a fortnight ago." The idea is also humorously alluded to by
Addison, in the Freeholder, where he represents the Jacobite squire as anxiously inquiring
whether none of the lions had fallen sick when (in 1715) Perth was taken by the Royalists,
and the Pretender fled.
The Indians also attribute illness to the malevolence of evil-disposed persons — a superstition
which has its counterpart in every country. The person who may have bewitched the ill-fated
may be a slave, a stranger who has arrived in the camp, or (more likely) a person with whom the
sick or dead man may have quarrelled. In such a case, the death of the person is often the
only way the bereaved relatives can be consoled. When an Indian quarrels with another, he will
say, " You will die soon." As likely as not the threatened person, frightened at the threat,
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE. 113
will fall sick or die, in which case the dead man's relatives may take the first opportunity of
shooting- his " bewitcher."
I have already spoken about the birds of ill-omen, and the superstitions connected with
" Minerva's bird." Owing to the connection of birds with the dead, nearly all of them are
viewed with superstition, and it is said that before the Indians got so familiar with the whites,
as they are just now in some places, they did not use them as articles of food. A curious notion
prevails among- many of the coast Indians, that the grouse are converted into seagulls in the
winter — originating, I suppose, from the former birds being- less seen during the winter season,,
and vice versa. "The raven that croaked on Duncan's battlements" is not more a bird of ill-
omen than the bird (perhaps of a different species) which sits "cawing" on the salmon-dry ing-
frames of an Indian coast village. The old Norsemen called it the " gallows-swan/' and nearly
every nation has superstitions connected with it. Country folks in England consider it quite
a weather-prophet.* Among the Thlinkeets — a general name for the Alaska coast tribes — the
crow is credited with the peopling of the world, and was once white, but became black through
the perfidy of an inhospitable individual named Kanook, wno confined it in a smoky hut.
After the world was destroyed by a flood, the few survivors re-peopled it by throwing stones
behind them, after the manner of Deucalion and Pyrrha, in the Roman mythology. How
much of this is aboriginal and how much imported is hardly worth inquiring.
Old Indians will often inform you by the croaking of the raven whether there is a likelihood
of rain or no. Old men will be pointed out to you, who are high in honour, because they have
warded off ruin and disaster to the tribe by listening to the raven's talk. There is an old, dis-
mantled village on Village Point, Hornby's Island, which was once the scene of such a prophecy.
All was going on about the village as usual, when an old seer predicted, from the croaking of the
raven, that on a certain day the Nuchultaws would come south and attack their village. Now
the Komouks (to whom the village belonged) had been at peace with the Nuchultaws for several
months, and accordingly everybody laughed at the foreteller of evil tidings. (Night, I may
mention, is the usual time of attack, but on this occasion the disaster was to happen during
daylight.) Nevertheless, every morning he repeated his warning, cautioning them to draw
their canoes within the pickets, then usually surrounding most villages, at least on their sea-
ward aspect, and get prepared. Still they jeered him, but his warnings were so persistently
repeated — "he had heard the raven say it" — that at the eleventh hour they commenced
preparations, and went south and asked the help of their friends, the Nanaimos, who sent a
chosen band of warriors to be stationed in the woods in ambush, so as to surprise the enemy in
the rear. Morning came, and the day was wearing away, and yet there were no signs of the
enemy. The old man still repeated his prophecy, but instead of being listened to, he was about
* In the Highlands of Scotland, the raven's feathers under the head of a dying person were supposed to prolong-
the patient's life. The Highlanders have also an adage referring to the raven superstition — "Nae gude cornea o*
shootin' black craws.'' For one to alight on a house presaged the death of an inmate. And
"Is it not ominous in all countries
When crows and ravena croak upon trees ? " — HwKbras, Part II., canto iii.
See also Henderson: " Folklore of the Northern Counties," pp. 60, 228—233 ; Gregor : "Folklore of the North-east <*f
Scotland," pp. 34, 206 ; and "Folklore Record," Vol. I. p. 59, and Vol. III. (Part I.), p. 127.
15
114- THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
to run the chance of being- rather badly used, as a false alarmist, when those on the look-out
reported several war-canoes in sight, which increased in immber till quite a fleet was on the
horizon. Closely they paddled tog-ether, until they were in sight of the village, when, be-
coming alarmed at the absence of the canoes drawn up on the beach, and seeing no women
guthering shell-fish, or children playing about as usual, they halted for a council, the result
of which was that, suspecting mischief, they sailed again northward.
It was subsequently discovered that this attack had long been determined on, and, but
for the old man's warning, it might have resulted disastrously to the Komouks. It may,
however, be shrewdly suspected that the old seer had received some private information of the
intended attack, for among Indian, as among other soothsayers, one of their maxims is, "Never
prophesy unless you know."* Figures of owls, it may be remarked, are frequently seen carved
on the pillars of lodges, or painted on the boards. The ruins of the village in question, when
visited by me in August, 1804, had many such representations. All which calls to mind Philip
von Martius's remark, regarding a scene of mummery and superstition similar to some recorded
in the preceding- pages, that all this is only a remnant of that once higher and grander worship
of Nature found among- these now degenerate and degraded races, and that through this pagan
darkness we see glimmering- a light which tells us
" There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not ;
That the feeble hands, and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness."
" Tell me the songs of a nation, and I will tell you their history/' is an old truism.
It is equally true regarding a savage race, that their traditions are their songs, their chronicles
their metaphysics. Without a written history, historical events soon get into the reg-ion of
fiction, and therefore we find few events which can be distinctly classed as history. Many
of their traditions are myths of observation — such as the natural feattires which may have
struck a people as peculiar, and accordingly they have set their imagination to work to devise
an explanation. Another set of traditions have a deeper origin, and may be classed as world-
wide, and as pointing to the Asiatic origin of the Indians. All of them are very imaginative,
and may serve to "point a moral" while "adorning a tale" in an Indian wigwam. A few of
them are local, but the greater number are found widely scattered, under different versions,
among the Indian tribes, but in few cases is the disguise so deep as to conceal the original
outline of the tale. These traditions and myths are so numerous that even were my know-
ledge sufficient, the space at my disposal would only admit of a few of the more characteristic
being given in this place. Nowadays, as the young people affect to despise these idle tales,
and only a few of the old people know them, they are dropping fast into oblivion, as the more
ignorant class of the whites, who have opportunities of collecting them, look upon them as so
many foolish Indian stories, without being aware that they form some of the treasures of that
un wrought mine of Indian mythology which, followed out in the same spirit of investigation
* Restrained by this superstition about crows, like the Highlanders, they hesitate to kill these bird?, though
troublesome to th«m, but set a child to watch and drive them away from the fish-drying frames.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE. 115
as that adopted by the Brothers Grimm in studying- the European folk-lore, is capable of
yielding so much to the stores of science. It is not always possible to obtain these tales, for
an Indian, even if he is not too lazy or too ignorant to be capable of imparting this informa-
tion, is so afraid of being laughed at that it is with the utmost difficulty he can be induced
to tell the traditions of his people. I have often heard part of a story, and have had to wait
weeks before hearing the end of it, if even then so fortunate. To add to our difficulties, few
of the Indians have the same version of the same tradition. Our Indian hunter, Toma, was
noted for his skill in this style of narrative, and among the many scattered through my notes,
I give the following as specimens of these unedited and unwritten tales : —
The Indian story of "Jack and the Bean Stalk" — Once on a time long ago (this was
in the days no more remembered, when the heavens were nearer earth, and the gods were
more familiar — it never happens nowadays), two Tsongeisth girls were gathering gamass,* at
Stummas (near Elk Lake, Vancouver Island), and after the manner of the gamass -gatherers
they camped on the ground during the season. One night they lay awake, looking up at the
bright stars overhead, thinking of their lovers, and such things as girls, Indians or English, will
talk about. The Indians suppose the stars to be little people, and the region they live in to be
much the same as this world down below. As one of the girls looked up at the little people
twinkling overhead, one said to the other, looking at Aldebaran, the red eye of the Bull, "That's
the little man to my liking ; how I would like him for my lover ! " " No," said the other,
" I don't think I should ; he's too glaring and angry-looking for me. I am afraid he would
whip me. I would better like that pale, gentle-looking star, not far from him." And so the
gamass-gatherers of Stummas talked until they fell asleep. But as they slumbered under the
tall pines, Aldebaran and Sirius took pity on their lovers and came down to earth, and when the
girls awoke in the morning it was in Starland, with their lovers by their sides, in the country
up in the sky. For a while all went well and happily, until, after the manner of their race,
they wearied to see their friends at Quonsung ("The Gorge/' in the Victoria Arm) and Chekuth
(Equimault), and their gentle husbands grew sad at their melancholy wives. One day one of
the sisters came upon the other busily engaged in Starland, and she said, "What are you doing1,
sister ? " "I am twisting a rope/' she said ; " a rope of cedar bark, by which to get back
again to Quonsung. Come, sister, our husbands are asleep, help me." So the sisters fell to
work, and while their husbands slept they wrought, until they had twisted a rope long enough,
in their opinion, to drop themselves down to earth again. This they concealed in the woods,
and then commenced to dig a hole in the vault of heaven with a pointed stake. For many days
they dug, until they heard a hollow sound, and then they knew that they were nearly through ;
and next day they finished their work (at a fitting time), and saw the clouds beneath, but the
earth was a long way down. All this time their husbands were out hunting, or asleep in the
lodge. They then fastened a stick transversely over the hole, and to this they attached the
rope, and commenced to slide down. For long they slid, but yet did not come to the earth,
and they began to fear for the results, for the rope was nearly ended, but Satitz (the east wind)
took pity on them, and blew them to the earth, and they knew not what had happened, Init on
recovering their senses they found themselves near the valley of the Colquitz — not far from
* The bulbs of the Gamassia esculenta, Lindl.
116
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
thn
Sealmm (my lord the sun) has ended his travels over the great plam of the e rth for
-ny informant, told me, "don't you often see at night the stars connng to earth .
ENTEMHO BKIT1SH COU'MMA (AFTEH MILTON A»D CHEADIE).
us he referred to the • falling stars," I bethought me that the philosophers of « King George's
whik supplying no more sensible explanation of that phenomenon, had g,ven one wlu
n*haTsoywfl. to the imagination. If I were to d»w a mo.,1 from t h» ^ ™™
should say that it teaches us not to wish for thmgs that are out ot on reach
h I.Khan
storv I sou say a
Iwev a far deeper interest attached to it, and for this re^on I have s.vl-d ,t the
story o" a* and the Bean Stalk," for I believe it to be the Amencan analogue ot th t
altered, no doubt), which I need not tell mythologies is not, as „ vulgarly suppos,
tale, but a strange myth found among nearly all nat.ons, savage and MM.
• The reader win remember that women, to a eertair. extent, can bo initiated in the medieme-rite mysteries.
MAH-TO-TOH-PA, SECOND CHIEF OF THE MANDANS IN THE YEAR 1833.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Among the Indians this story goes up to the Rocky Mountains at least, and, perhaps, farther,
in one guise or another, but little altered. " Knochan Hill/' the scene of the Tsongeisth
adventure, which they describe as the rope coiled up, is an eminence at the head of the
" Victoria Arm/' and means, in the Tsongeisth language, " coiled up." It is, probably, this
peculiarity that has suggested placing there the locale of the final catastrophe of the damsels.
Much of the Indian mythology is occupied with strange stories of what young hunters
saw who " went out seeking their medicine." A hunter will wander for a long time, fasting*
and weary, until he dreams of something which is to be his guardian angel through life. No
doubt these men dream strange dreams, and the overstrained nervous system helps to conjure
up hobgoblins, suited to the wild scenery around. When the hunter wakes up at night the
silent moon looks down upon him, and the stars are watching him with their twinkling eyes.
Every wind that sighs through the forest bears the whispers of unseen spirits, and afar off he
hears the spirits of the waterfalls. On the mountain-side he is alarmed by the blazing forest,
ignited by sparks from his fire, or by two trees rubbing together. Besides, to an Indian,
all the world out of sight of his village is an unknown land, full of wonders and wonder-
workers, and the Indian traveller is not a little addicted to foster the belief that " cows afar off
have long horns." This fasting is called in Chinook "making1 tomanawas" and the young man
ambitious of this distinction must pass night after night away from his father's lodge, in some
lonely place, without food, and with strict attention to chastity and personal cleanliness, until
he dreams of something which is to become his tomanawas. This tomanaivas is believed to
descend from father to son. It is of much the same nature as " seeking his medicine." What
follows is essentially a "were- wolf" (German), "lupo-mannaro" (Italian), "lobis-homem"
(Portuguese), or "loup-garou" (French) story. *
The Wolf-hunter seeking his Medicine. — Stuckeia (the wolves) were once a tribe of Indians,
who were turned into their present form by Haelse for their evil deeds. One day a hunter
of Quantlint went into the mountains to seek his medicine. He travelled all that day and
all the next day, still he dreamt not of his medicine ; but he resolved to find it, be a great
hunter, or die. One night he saw the light of a great fire on the side of a mountain, and drew
near. Round it were the wolves sitting in a circle, talking of the day's hunt. They had taken
off their skins, and were drying them on sticks. Our hunter sprang within the light of the fire,
and instantly the wolves jumped into their skins again, and howled round him, but the hunter
moved not, and lay down and slept uninjured. That night he dreamt of his medicine, and
next day he began to travel with the wolves, now his guardians, and did so for a long time,
until his friends grieved for him and thought him dead. But one day a hunter saw him in the
mountains travelling along the hill-side with the wolves. Sometimes he travelled on two legs
• — more often on all-fours. His face was bearded like that of a wolf, and he looked savage and
fierce. So the young man went back to his village and told the story. " Ah," said the people,
" that is his medicine ; but we must bring him back again/' So they took strong nets made
of elk-sinew, and went out to find him. At last they sighted him, and finally caught him in
this net, and brought him to Quantlin ; but he could not speak, only howled like a wolf, and
had lost all human attributes. He had found his medicine with a vengeance ! He was not
* Kelly : " Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition," pp. 242—265. t Fort Langley, British Columbia.
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE. 119
long in escaping again, and nobody went in search of him. Occasionally still he has been
seen in the mountains travelling with the wolves. The last time he was sighted was about
Fort Yale.
The Indian Cyclops. — There was a widow who had three sons. One day the eldest said
to her, " Mother, I must go and seek my medicine ; make me a cloak of bird-skins/' The
mother tried to dissuade him, but in vain. So he went away and wandered through the
woods until he came to a lonely lake surrounded by swampy marshes. The cry of the
crane sounded lonely on this lake, and as he was wondering how he should cross it, the
crane came up in her canoe and ferried him over. Now, on the other side of the lake
lived a one-eyed giant, Xetsachen, or Koquochem, whose servant the crane was. The crane
invited him in to see his master, and as he passed the door, which opened with a spring, it shut
after him so fast that, though he would willingly have retreated when he saw the giant, he
could not. So the giant killed him, and took out his heart, and laid it on a bench beside his
body. The widow grieved very much at her son not returning, until the second brother said,
"Mother, I will go and seek my brother." So he went and travelled until he reached the
same lake, when the crane ferried him over ; and when he went in to see the giant he met the
same fate ; his heart was taken out and laid beside his body. Now the widow was very sorry
at their not returning, but still she could not oppose the wish of the last son when he wished
to go after his two brothers. The same incident happened to him. He was ferried over the
lake, and his heart taken out by the giant and laid beside his body on the bench where already
his two brothers were. Long and sadly cried the childless widow at the non-return of her
sons, and as she cried her tears fell on the ground. Now an Indian is superstitious about
tears or mucus gathering on the ground, so she took a little moss and wiped up the tears. *
Her eyes were very dim with weeping, so that she could scarcely see, but as she looked down
at the moss she was astonished at seeing a little child lying where the moss was. So she tocfk
it up and laid it on her couch. Next day he had grown up a big boy, and next day was a full-
sized man. " Ah," said the people, " he is a great medicine-man/' Still the poor widow
cried bitterly for her lost sons, and one day when she was crying much, the "medicine-child"
said, " Do not cry, mother ! I will bring back your sons." " Oh no, you won't," the poor
mother sobbed. But as the youth insisted, she made him a cloak of woodpecker-skins which
he shot for the purpose ; and, armed with a sword made of elk-horn, he started off, and
travelled until he came to the lonely lake where the crane presented itself as ferryman. "Do
you know where my brothers are ? " he asked. " Yes, they are over seeing my master." So he
crossed the lake and came to Koquochem's house. The crane, as before — for an Indian story
always repeats itself — invited him in to see his master ; but the medicine-youth refused, and
said, "No, your master must come out to see me;" and as the giant came out, being a very
big man, he stooped, and as his neck bent the youth cut off his head with the elk-horn sword ;
after which the crane, much frightened, screamed and fled away. The youth now entered the
house, and found the three brothers lying en a bench with their hearts beside them. So he
took up their hearts and put them again in the bodies and breathed on them ; when they
* Probably owing to the same reason that the New Zealaiider wipes up his saliva — viz., that no one can get
hold of it to bewitch him with it.
120
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
all lived again, and were very happy, and came home in the crane's canoe over the lake. Of
course, their mother was very glad to see them, and the medicine-youth was a great man. The
brothers were also very grateful, and paddled him about in their canoe wherever he cared to go.
This went on for a while, until they began to forget their deliverer, and the youth grew sad
at this neglect. One day he lay in the lodge tired with hunting, with his blanket covering
his head, and the sons were all sitting waiting for their meal of venison. The mother called
THE " SERPEXT AND BEAVER" DANCE OF THE INDIANS.
them when it was ready, but she forgot her medicine-son, as the people called the strangely-
come youth. At this ho must have been sad, for afterwards recollecting him, she shook him,
but the blanket fell in, and on taking it up she found nobody there, only the tuft of moss with
the tears from whence he had sprung. Now they were all very sorry, for they were no longer
any better than other people; but he could not be recalled: the medicine-youth had disappeared
as strangely as he came.
It may not be unworthy of note that this continual use of a cloak of bird-skins, and of
feathers, occurs much in Indian mythology. At feasts the chiefs scatter feathers over them-
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE.
121
elves, and at death the dying person is strewed with them. While negotiations are going on
in the west coast, the negotiators will cover all their backs with feathers, as if powdered, and
when going among a strange tribe an Indian will often put white feathers in his cap. (In this,
perhaps, the Indian shows the "white feather" in more senses than one.) All over the continent,
v-hiVfs and other great men wear eagles' feathers in their hair and caps. Remarkably enough,
the same idea is found in Scandinavian mythology — apparently the same thought striking
semi-barbarous people in the same way. This feather cloak of the Northern ballads is the
A KIV1UI IX THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
ferder linnim. In the original Edda, Thor borrows it from the goddess Freya. In many of the
Danish ballads it is referred to.
Skelecknn, the Lightning-eyed. — Skelechun. was a poor man's son, who died when he was
very little, and he was brought up by his grandmother. He was, moreover, a very small boy, with
whom no one would play. His head was full of vermin and scabs, and though his grandmother
cried much for him, and often took him down to the water and scrubbed him with sand, yet it
was of little avail. In course of time he grew up, and said to his grandmother, " Grandmother,
I think I will go away and seek my medicine." So she made him a cloak of bird-skins for a
blanket, and he went away and travelled in the mountains. Many days and many nights he
travelled, but yet never dreamt of his medicine. One night he lay on the top of a high hill, and
16
122 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
there was a fearful storm of thunder and lightning- : it was then that he got his medicine.
The lightning-birds took out his eyes, and put in the lightning-serpent's instead, and every time
he opened his eyes he burnt up everything before him. Ah ! it was a great medicine ! So he
came home to his village again, and when the boys jeered at him, and said, "Oh! ho! have you
got you medicine ?" he just opened his eyes and burnt them up. When he went into his grand-
mother's lodge she was glad to see him again, and said, " Open your eyes ; let me see your
pretty eyes;" but he did not dare, though opening them a little away from her, she saw enough
to frighten her, so that she never asked him again. No longer was there want in Skelechuii's
lodge. His grandmother became a great lady, and this slave's son more than a chief. If any one
disobeyed him, he had only to open his eyes, and the lightning burnt them up. Chiefs became
his slaves, and chiefs' daughters his wives. If they refused, he had only to open his fatal eyes,
:uul there was an end of them. When he went about, seven chiefs paddled him and his
grandmother, another carried his platter, and another his paddle or his blanket. Everybody was
afraid of him ; everybody was his slave. He built a house on the top of Salt Spring Island
— a mighty lodge it was, and there daily trains of slaves (once chiefs) toiled up, carrying bear
and beaver, salmon and porpoise, and gamass and clams — everything good — to this Skeleclmn
the Lightning-eyed. There, with his grandmother, he sat in state, sleeping and eating like
any lazy chief, with nothing to do. If a slave offended him, he had only to open one eye,
and before he could wink it again a slave lay dead ! Who could resist such a power ? But
Squemet, a Taitka, and his cousin, a Klem-clem-alut, said one day, " It is not right that this
slave's son should have all the chiefs' daughters ; let us try and kill him." So they made
swords of elk-horn, and concealed them in their blankets, when as usual they toiled up the hill
with bear and beaver, elk and porpoise loads. His slaves were all standing in a row, chiefs and
chiefs' sons. Now Skelechun was afraid to lift up his eyes in case he should destroy them all,
so he always looked down, and called Squemet to stir up the fire, but while Squemet was pre-
tending to do so he struck heavily on Skelechun's bended neck, and Klem-clem-alut helping
him, before he could turn his lightning-eyes they killed him. So every chief took his wife and
his daughter, and they were (as fairy-stories end) happy for the rest of their days.
Some of these stories are love-songs and tradition mixed, — how the course of true love never
runs smooth, but all goes well in the end. Such a tale was the
Contest for the Chiefs Daughter. — There was once a great chief who had a very
handsome daughter, and all the young warriors, hunters, and fishers came courting her ; but
her father said, " I will only give my child to him who will split the tines of an elk-horn
asunder with his hands." So the news went forth, and the competitors began to assemble
until the lodge was full. The bears sat growling in one corner and the wolves in another.
The racoons and the deer all came, but all tried in vain, and went back disheartened. And
after all had tried Kewuk (the salmon) came, and the lodge resounded with jeers and laughter
at the bare idea of his attempting it after the flower of Indian athletes had failed. But
Kewuk was the sweetheart of the girl, and had prayed to Halse to put power into his arms;
and Hajlse, in pity, answered the love-sick pair, and split the tines asunder, and the bride w.is
Kcwuk's. Now all the rivals were bitter with envy, and went off to their lodges inflamed with
m ilice and rage against all the salmon tribe. But the young wolf was worst of all, and deter-
mined to effect by foul means what he could not accomplish by fair. Watching his opportunity,
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE. 123
while the young- husband was absent for a few minutes, he seized the bride and fled with her.
As he dragged her along through the bush, she tore off pieces from her blanket and tied them
to the shrubs, and so marked her way till she arrived, disconsolate, at the wolfs lodge.* The
salmon was sad, and pursued him, and escaped with his bride again ; but he was no match for
the young wolf and his father, and as he saw them gaining on him, he jumped into the river at
hand, and Haelse turned him into the form of salmon, f and so he escaped the crafty Stuckeia.
This tradition has a smack of the old Roman mythology about it, and more learned
mythologists than the present writer may decide how far its origin connects it with Asiatic
myths. The Kootanie tradition about the origin of the Americans has a broad vein of
humour in it, and shows their hatred of that nation — a hatred shared by all the Indian race,
and more especially by those oil the British frontier. Once on a time, the Indians say,
they and the Pesioux (French Canadian voyageurs) lived together in. such happiness that the
Great Spirit above envied the happy condition of the Indian. So he came to the earth, and as
he was riding on the prairies on the other side of the Rocky [Mountains he killed a buffalo,
and out of the buffalo crawled a lank, lean figure, called a "Boston man" (American), and
from that day to this their troubles commenced, and there has never been peace for the
Indian, and never will be, until they again go where their fathers are — they who lived so
happily with the Pesioux and the fur-traders of King George.
Not a few of these myths have been invented to account for natural phenomena. Such is
the story of the origin of the mosqiiitoes, and their mysterious appearance in the spring.
Round the mouth of Fraser River in British Columbia are extensive swamps, or marshy flats,
where the mosquitoes revel in superabundance. So terrible is this pest that, though the land
is clear, and for the most part good and suitable for agriculture, yet it was until lately almost
uninhabitable during the summer and autumn months. The whole of the lower parts of
Fraser River are much troubled with these poisonous insects, and especially wherever there are
swamps or lowlands. Cattle are equally tortured by them. When the Boundary Commission
horses were placed on the Somass Prairie, the mosquitoes filled their ears, until the horses,
almost mad, jumped into the river, and many of them wrere drowned. Clouds of them rise off
the swamps and hover over the river. The tough skins of the Indians are even penetrated
by them, and it is almost impossible to persuade a native to accompany you in exploring these
places unless for enormous pay. Hence we may well account for Indian imagination giving
ich an origin for the mosquitoes as is evidenced in the story of
Slal-akuM-kul-kul-aith (the evil women of the Fraser River flats). — Once on a time — a
ig time ago — two bad (slal-akum) women lived on Fraser River. They are still remembered as
.ul-kul-aith. They lived on young children, and travelled about from village to village, picking
up their victims and pitching them into a basket woven of water-snakes, which they carried on
their backs. They both came to an evil end, as might be expected, for an Indian hobgoblin
story is as poetically just in its retribution as are such all the world over. One day one of
the women went to the Lummi village, not far from Point Roberts, bent on her infamous.
A similar method of marking the path occurs in German nursery-stories.
T Among other tribes the salmon was the wife of the raven, who, after being exasperated with losing1 at gambling,
caught her by the gilis, and beat her so sorely that she jumped into the river, and has remained there ever since.
12-4 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
trade. The men were all off fishing1, and the women gathering- clams on the shore at low tide,
seeking gamass or berries, or sleeping in the lodges, while the children were disporting
themselves on the beach. Kul-kul-aith came along, and snatching up the children one after
:u id her, pitched them into her snake-basket) and before their cries could alarm the sleeping
village on that drowsy summer afternoon, she had escaped into the woods with them, and iay
concealed in its dark recesses until nightfall, when she lit a fire. The children, with the
elasticity of youth, had now recovered from their fright, and were intent on watching her
operations. After heating some stones, she dug a hole and put them into it. The children
now thought that they had detected her designs, and that the stones were to broil them after
the Indian fashion, by pouring water on the stones, and while the steam arose covering them
with mats. "Shut your eyes, my little children," said the old hag, ."and dance around me."
They obeyed, but the younger ones were always peeping at odd times, \mtil she put something
on their eyes so that they could not open them. The elder ones were more cautious, and only
occasionally peeped to see what she was about, and watching their opportunity, which at last
occurred. Whilst she was stooping over the fire to arrange it, the children rushed behind her
and pushed her into the hole she had dug for them, and there held her until she was burnt to
ashes. But her evil spirit lived after her, for out of her ashes, bloAvn about by the wind,
sprang the pest of mosquitoes, which even now. troubles mankind.
The other witch died after this fashion:— One day two young fishers were spearing salmon
in Mud Bay, when they heard some one shouting to them on the shore. "Who can it be?"
they cogitated, but as they paddled near they said, "Ah! it must be the Slal-akum Slane"
(the bad woman), and they were afraid. "Our canoe is very leaky," they said. "Oh, never
mind that, my sons; I do not care." But they still hesitated. "It is very small, and you will
capsize it." "Oh no," she said, "I will lie very quiet. Do take me, I want to go back to
my house and my little children." So the boys were forced to comply, and shoved the canoe
ashore, and cut branches to keep her from the wet, until they were nearly level with the gun-
wale. They then told her to lie down carefully on the top. She did so, and when they got into
deep water, by a rapid motion they capsized her out, and notwithstanding all her efforts, she
was drowned. The Indian thinks that she yet lives at the bottom of the sea, and devours
drowned men. This story, in one form or another, is found among all the northern tribes, as far
as Queen Charlotte Islands, or farther. A Hydah chief, in crossing from these islands to the
mainland in a large canoe, with some of his people, was in danger of being lost in a storm. One
of the Indians told me that, handing him a pistol, the chief requested to be shot when the canoe
was going to be capsized. He did not wish to be eaten by the bad woman at the bottom. The
names of these women are the "Goody Two Shoes" of the Indian nursery, and mothers
will quiet their children to sleep by telling them, "I will bring Kul-kul-aith to you," as
Longfellow has represented old Nookoomis hushing the little Hiawatha to sleep by repeating
an Indian legend of a similar character —
" Hush ! the naked bear will get you!"
Other myths are more palpably " myths of observation," such as the one I have ahead y
related in reference to the star-lovers and Kuockan Hill. For instance, the Indians about Victoria
say that Cedar Hill was once the highest eminence in that district, but thai quarrelling with Point
.Roberts, on the mainland, they commenced throwing stones at each other until Cedar Hill got
126 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
lowered. Few of the stones came more than half way, which accounts for the numerous islands
in the Haro Archipelago between British Columbia and Vancouver Island. On the Columbia
lliver, just where the river bursts through the Cascades Mountains, there are certain broken
rapids, well known as " The Cascades of the Columbia/' These were formed by some of the
volcanic convulsions of the region. Most of the peaks of the Cascades are still either active or
bear evidence of being extinct or at least dormant volcanoes. The Indians have a tradition con-
cerning- Mounts Hood and Adams, the two nearest to the Cascades. They were once husband and
wife, but the}' quarrelled, as (I am told) married people sometimes do, and commenced throwing
stones at each other, and Mount Hood, who was the wife, determined, after the manner of
womankind, to have the last word, and continued long after her husband had stopped. She still
occasionally vents out her fury. This is, no doubt, a tradition of former severe eruptions
of the mountain, when stones and ashes were thrown out.* They further say that once at
the Cascades the rocks formed a bridge across, but that during one of these convulsions the
bridge broke down and formed an islet in the middle of the Cascades, as at the present da}-.
I have little doubt of the probability of those traditions being tolerably correct history.
They have, however, another story which goes off into the region of myths. Once on a time,
they say, instead of cascades being here, there was a high fall which prevented the salmon from
ascending to the Upper Columbia. Now, in a dream, a vision appeared to a great medicine-
man, that some day the banks of the Upper Columbia would be peopled by numerous tribes of
Indians, and that the ascent of the salmon would be necessary to their existence. He, therefore,
conceived the philanthropic project of converting these falls into cascades, but to effect this
he had to go cautiously about his task. The falls were guarded by two medicine-women, who
lived in a lodge by themselves, and who were nearly as powerful as himself.f So he travelled
up to the place, and while the women were off gathering berries in the woods, he converted
himself into a little child. "When the women came home, they found him crying in the corner,
and womanly instinct being strong even in witches, they took good care of him. Every morning
they went off gathering berries, and as soon as they were out of sight he restored himself to his
original form, and commenced "prizing" away with a stake at the falls, and before they came home
was again a little child crying in the corner. This went on for some days, until one evening,
intent upon his labours, he forgot about the women coming home, and was discovered. The
witches gave a loud cry, and made for him, but just then the falls gave way ; the magician
sprang into the river, and was soon beyond the vengeance of the enraged witches. Since that
date the falls have ever since remained cascades, and many generations have blessed the wisdom
of the medicine-man — name unknown. I heard the story in the summer of 1805, as I sat
looking at the cascades — scene of many a tale of bygone adventure and fur-trader's exploit. A
little block-house yet stands there, where several settlers were beleaguered by the Indians in
the war of 1853, until they were relieved by a dashing lieutenant of dragoons, who afterwards
rose to fame as General Phil. Sheridan.
The wild, romantic tale of how the Alberni Canal came to be explored to the top by two
hunters, and how they found a fine lodge, with two bad women living in it, is also another of a
* Most of these mountains have been ascended, and the volcanoes found to be still only partially dormant,
t 1'his incident of two medicine-women living in a lodge by themselves occurs in several Indian traditions.
THE NORTH- WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE. 127
similar character. The story relates how the canal closed behind them as they paddled up ; a
very natural appearance, for, as you round the bends and points of this long narrow inlet of the
sea, it seems to the eye as if the canal were closing behind you. Crossing the wild, silent lakes
of Vancouver Island,* you often hear the strange cry of the loon, and it is then that the Indian
will tell you the story of the two halibut fishers, one of whom stole the other's fish, and cut
out his tongue, on the principle that silent men tell no tales, and how the tongueless man was
converted by Quawteaht, or Haelse, as the case might be, into this bird. As his lonely cry is heard,
the Indians will relate how this is the mangled fisher trying to tell of his wrongs. Every hill has a
tale attached to it; every silent lake frequented by the Indian is the subject of a tradition, and
the number of these stories is very great. On the Snoqualami Prairie, in Washington Territory, is
ji large rock, and the story connected with it is, that once on a time this rock was suspended from
heaven, but the Great Spirit, offended at the improper conduct of some minor deity and his
inamorata, cut the rope, when it dropped down on the prairie. Their gods are of like passions
with themselves. This conversion of human beings into animals, already noticed, shows a
striking similarity to Greek and Roman mythology, a great portion of which, ag'ain, came from
Hindostan.
I do not think that the North-west American Indians have any decided theory on the
subject of the creation of the world. The world was always as it is now — a big, flat plain, and if
they have any further notions about it, I have not yet been able to clearly ascertain them. Most
Indian tribes have some tradition or another about a great flood which once covered their
country, but in most cases these are merely " myths of observation." They see shells, rolled
stones, and bones of whales, or other marine animals, high on mountains, and they then set
their wits to discover how they could possibly have come there. Knowing nothing of the
gradual elevation of coasts, the most natural theory is that once, there was a great flood, and in
due course the minor incidents get worked in, until what was originally only an invention of
some ingenious aboriginal philosophers, becomes part and parcel of their traditions. Again, we
must be exceedingly cautious in receiving as native any of the pseudo-Biblical tales, as I have
found that in very many instances they can be traced to the teachings of missionaries, or other
civilised men — either directly or indirectly — proximately or remotely. The tribe among whom
a particular tradition is extant may be pagans, to whom no teacher of religion has come,
but these people are so fond of mythological lore, that a curious story of the great flood,
and such like, will permeate from tribe to tribe in a hundred conceivable ways, such as through
intermarriages, slaves, native traders, or intervisits at their great feasts or pot latches. It will
get twisted into the most aboriginal form imaginable, and .it is only by some trifle, such as a
name, that you can detect its origin. An eminent ethnologist once told me that, after great
trouble, he had, at least as he thought, got hold of a tradition of the flood among the North-
west American Indians, but he could only get it bit by bit out of the old man who was the
repositary of this and other such-like lore. It cost my friend many blankets and other presents,
and the labour of hours to write it down from the aboriginal language. At last he came to
* For a description of the interior of Vancouver Island so far as known, I know of no publication to which I can
refer the reader except a memoir by the present writer, entitled "Das Innere von Vancouver Insel," published in Ger-
man, with original map, in Pctcrmann's " Geographische Mitthoilungen," 1869. Very little has been done since then.
128
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the finale. " Now what was the man's name who got away with his wife in the big canoe ? "
The old Indian could not recollect, and went in search of another who knew the name. The
two came back in pride, and related to my breathlessly eager friend, " His name was Noahl "
INDIAN PAINTING ON THE LODGE .SKINS
It was, of course, a Bible story, told them by the priests, and not understanding the value of
myths, the old Indian innocently thought that it must be just as novel to the ethnologist
himself. He was, however, undeceived in a violent manner, as he was speedily landed on
the other side of the door, and will to the end of his life doubtless remember my friend on the
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE.
129
rather forcible " ex pede Herculem " kind of evidence which was so vigorously impressed
on his retreating person.
The natives in Barclay Sound have a tradition of a great deluge which is certainly abori-
ginal, but whether this refers to a flood, or only, apparently, to a great spring-tide, or earthquake
tidal wave, it is difficult to say. Though the tale lias already appeared in print, yet, as I heard
it long ago, I think it is worthy of being given here in the words of my note-book : —
Generations back the Seshahts were unacquainted with the head of the Alberni Canal. They
.d two villages in the Sound, and used to migrate from one to the other. At that time a most
urious phenomenon of Nature occurred. The tide ebbed away down the canal and left it dry,
xl the sea itself retreated a long distance. This continued for four days, and the Seshahts
made light of the occurrence. There was, however, one Wish-pe-op, who had with him his
two brothers, who did not do so. After mature consideration of the circumstances, he thought
it probable that the ebb would be succeeded by a flood of unusual height. Accordingly, he
and his brothers spent three days in collecting cedar-bark for a rope, which when made was so
large as to fill four boxes. Thei'e was a rock near the Seshaht village, from the base of which
sprang a group of bushes. Wish-pe-op fastened one end of the rope here, and the other to his
noe. In the canoe were placed all his property, his wife, his brothers, and their wives and
:hildren, and thus prepared they waited the result. After four days the tide began to flow, and
•ept slowly up to about half between the point of its furthest ebb and the Seshaht houses. At
his point its pace was considerably quickened, and it marched up with fearful speed. The
eshahts then rushed to their canoes; some begged to be attached to Wish-pe-op's rope, but to this
e would not consent, in case his rope should be broken, and others would have given him some
f the women to take care of, but he would not receive them. They were soon all caught in the
ising tide, and while Wish-pe-op rode safely at anchor, the Seshahts were unable to resist its
rce, and drifted to distant parts. Finally, the water covered the whole face of the country,
xcept Quossakt, a high mountain near the Toquahts' village, and Mount Arrowsmith (Kush-
h-chuhl). The Toquahts got into a large canoe (Eher Kleetsoolh), and paddled to the summit
Quossakt, where they landed. At the end of four days the flood began to abate ; Wish-pe-op
en began to haul in his rope, and as the waters descended to the usual level, found himself
oat near the site of the former Seshaht village. He then built himself a small house with
wo compartments, one he occupied himself, the other was tenanted by his brothers. One da;*
a Klah-oh-quaht canoe, manned by three Indians, approached the shore where the house was
built. One of them had with him a quantity of the medicine which they use to make them
successful in the capture of the whale (ehe-toop.} They brought their canoe close to the land, and
when asked what they wanted, they said, " We have come to see Wish-pe-op's house." After
I some consideration, they were invited to land, and, as the Indian manner is when friendship is
intended, assisted to pull up their canoe and offered sleeping accommodation (chimoinlh.} The
Klah-oh-quahts, to show their good-will, made a present of their whale medicine to Wish-pe-op.
After this Wish-pe-op proposed to make himself chief of the small household. This was finally
agreed to, and the Klah-oh-quahts took each a Toquaht wife (for that tribe had returned from
Quossakt), and this is the origin of the present tribe of Seshahts. The person who thus rose to
dignity was the great-grandfather of Hy-yu-penuel, chief of Seshaht, and the present good
understanding between the Klah-oh-quahts and the Seshahts is owing to this circumstance.
17
±i
130 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
From this it appears that this deluge was of marine origin, very local, and of recent occur-
rence. There are many other such tales among the Carriere and other Indians in British
Columbia, corresponding more or less to the Biblical version, but I think they ought all to be
looked upon with grave suspicion, and we must put under the same ban the numerous South
American flood-stories related by Humboldt and other travellers.
The Indians on the east coast of Vancouver Island have also a tradition of a boy who was
swallowed up by a whale, and while in its stomach commenced to cut his way out, which so irri-
tated the animal that it cast him on land again, and hence originates a long series of adventures
before he gets home. In some versions of the story his sister helped him, &c. However, so far
from regarding this as a perverted Bible tale, I am inclined to consider it a remnant of the uni-
versal Asiatic tradition of that nature, and of which Jonah and the whale is only one variant.
Among a people without a written language, or any mode of perpetuating the records of
their history except by oral tradition, all events, but especially those of a remarkable or
apparently supernatural character, are very apt to get into the region of myths in a short time.
For instance, all students of North-West American history must remember the blowing up of
the Tonqnin by Mackay, the interpreter, after its capture by the Indians, and the immense
•destruction of the Indians thereby. This event happened only in 1812, and is indeed so recent
that Mr. Mackay's grandson yet lives in Oregon, and is an acquaintance of my own, yet
already this is looked upon as a great manifestation of the power of Quawteaht. On the other
hand, they still talk of the loves and mishaps of Jewett, armourer, of the Boston, whose
narrative of his captivity in Nootka Sound is yet much read among seaman ; and old Seattle,
a chief of Puget Sound, used to relate with great gusto how the Indians loved to come round
Vancouver's ship, to see his boatswain give three dozen to the men of a morning — a remi-
niscence quite in keeping with the martinet character of the great explorer. Lewis and Clarke
are also well remembered, and in Nootka Sound the Indians yet pronounce quite distinctly
the names of Cook, Meares, and Vancouver.* The " sign language " so common among the
" plain Indians " is to a great extent here unknown ; though by certain rude figures on trees
and rocks, &c., they can inform strange Indians, or whites who learn the meaning of these marks,
that the ford is dangerous, or that some other Indians passed here at such and such a date. A
few Classahts near Cape Flattery were said to have been able to express certain ideas in writing,
this knowledge being probably learned from some Japanese who were wrecked among them,
and afterwards rescued by the Hudson's Bay Company. They have various signs among them
•expressive of contempt, admiration, &c. Thus, to spit on the palm of the hand, and then
extend it with fingers outstretched towards a person, is a mark of great contempt ; to put
the thumb between the fore and middle fingers is also a gross insult, and so forth.
* In 1770 the New Zealandcrs had no recollection of Tasman's visit, though this important event took place less
than 130 years before. It is also affirmed that the North American Indians soon lost all tradition of De Soto's expedi-
tion. But Sir John Lubbock is in error when he concludes that savages speedily cease to remember remarkable events.
They recollect them well, as the above-mentioned facts sufficiently prove, though they are apt, like the Devonshire
rustics who have entwined round Sir Francis Drake's memory a series of mythical legends, or the mediaeval Italians
who insist on regarding Virgil as a sorcerer, to tack to them imaginary legends, or embody in them folk ston
primeval origin. Lubbock: "Prehistoric Times," p. 335; Tylor: "Primitive Culture," I. 252; Lach-Szyrma : ' -Folk-
lore Record," 1881, p. 159.
I
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE. 131
The North-West Indians have very little idea of the nature of the heavenly bodies or of
the causes of natural operations. The winds, they think, come out of large boulders or rocks,
which were once old people converted into stones. The south wind is an old woman who lives
in the south, and when they wish a breeze of this kind they throw water in that direction, and
commence abusing her. Between Cowichan and Victoria are some large rocks, which are supposed
to be these CEolus-like hags. On one occasion, in a dead calm on a warm day, I was passing
that locality with some Indians. They went to the rocks, slapped them, and threw water on
them, abusing them in the most obscene and insolent manner ; shortly afterwards the afternoon
breeze came up, and of course they thoroughly believed that it was owing to their imprecations
on the old hags who had charge of the winds. Rain is caused, they think, by smoke, and this
is perhaps the most reasonable of all their myths of observation. However, when Hselse con-
verted the boatman on the lake into a beaver, for his incivility, he also gave it the power of
bringing rain, so that its dams might be filled. Thunder is the napping of the wings of the
thunder-bird and the lightning is a serpent which darts out of its mouth.
This bird, among the western Indians of Vancouver Island, is called Tootooch, hence tootah
(the lightning) . He is the survivor of four great birds, which once dwelt in the land of the
llowchucklesahts, in the Alberni Canal, three of which were killed by Quawteaht. These birds
fed upon whales. Quawteaht, one day, desiring to destroy them, entered into a whale and
gradually approached the shore, spouting to attract attention. The bird soon swooped down
upon him, when he dived to the bottom and drowned it. This manoeuvre was twice repeated,,
nd two more were destroyed. The fourth flew off into inaccessible regions, where it yet lives,,
using thunder and lightning. It is not, however, so far off, because one of their stories tells,
about a man who found its nest. Admiral Mayne informs us that after a storm they always
search on the coast for dead whales, and seem to connect them in some way with thunder.
These western Indians think that the Prometheus who gave them fire was the cuttle-fish
(Telhoop). After the earth was made, fire only burned in its dwelling, but in those days Telhoop •
could live both on sea and land. "All the beasts of the forest went in search of the necessary
element (for in those days the beasts required fire, having Indians in their bodies), which was
finally discovered, and stolen from the house of Telhoop by the deer (Mouch), who carried it away,
as the natives curiously describe it, both by words and signs, in the knee-joint of his hind-leg."
Why the cuttle-fish of all animals was fixed upon as the owner of fire, in this curious myth, is
not at all apparent, and would admit of some very curious speculation, more especially as in
Scandinavian mythology Loki, the Fire God, dwelt in water, and in other countries the same'
idea prevails.*
The stars are little people, and, like the Arabians, the Indians point out constellations and
give them the names of animate and inanimate objects. For instance, the " milky way " is a
collection of fishes ; the Pleiades are three men in a canoe ; and so on. The sun is a great chief,
driving a fiery sledge, and the old people, when they wake up in the morning and see it rising,,
will often be heard to say, " There goes my lord the sun ; he's a great traveller/'' The moon
* In the Ladrone Islands, the Spaniards are said to have found the natives unacquainted with fire, but
this, like many similar tales, is not true — e.g., that when Magellan set fire to the huts of the Ladrone Islanders,,
they looked upon the flame as a living creature which fed upon wood. However, most nations — Egyptians,,
Phoenicians, Persians, Chinese, Greeks, &c. — have myths about the introduction of a knowledge of fire.
132
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
is also a human being, and is worshipped. The Cowichan tribes think that the moon has a frog
in it — a superstition equivalent to ours of " the man in the moon."H Among the Ahl, or
Western Vancouver Indians, the moon (as among the Teutons) is the husband, and the sun (not
as among the eastern coast Indians) is the wife. The moon is among all the heavenly bodies
the highest object of veneration. When working at the settlement at Alberni in gangs by
moonlight, individuals have been observed to look up to the moon, blow a breath, and utter
quickly the word Teech! teech! (health, or life.) "Life! life!" this is the great prayer of
these people's heart — even such a miserable life as theirs seems to the civilised observer.
Teech! teech! is their almost constant and common prayer. This belief in the influence of
the moon is widespread; witness the common European superstitious practice of turning
INDIAN, SHOWING THE METHOD OF DRESSING THE HAIR.
money in the pocket when first the new moon is seen, the idea of the fatal influence of the
moon, or of plants grown under its rays, &c. It is related by John Aubrey, who lived in the
latter half of the seventeenth century, that " in Scotland, especially among the Highlanders,
the woemen doe make a Curtsey to the New Moon, and our English woemen in the Country doe
retaine (some of them) a touch of this Gentilisme still .... sitting astride on a gate or
a stile the first evening the new moon appeares, saying ' A fine moon, God bless her ! "\ In
Orkney the increase, full growth, and wane of the moon are emblems of a rising, flourishing,
* Again, among other tribes, the raven married a daughter of the sun. Their son by this marriage, in
attempting to drive bis grandsire's fiery chariot, set fire to some mountains, one of which is Mount Baker, in the
Cascade Range, occasionally an active volcano. This is said to prevail among the Frascr River, Cowichans,
and other tribes speaking that language, but it is rather curious, if uncorrupt, how they thought of a carriage
or chariot, such being unknown amongst them : perhaos it is of recent invention, or tinkered up by the tellers.
t "Reujumes ot Ueiitilisme and Juuuuuue," p. 36, printed for the Folklore Society (1881).
THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE.
133
id declining fortune. No business of importance is begun during the moon's wane. Tf an
animal is killed at that time, its flesh is supposed to be unwholesome. No couple would think
of marrying at that period. Old people in some parts of Argyllshire were wont to invoke the
Divine blessing after the monthly change of the moon. The Gaelic word for " fortune " is
borrowed from that which denotes the full moon, and a birth or marriage occurring at that
period is believed to augur prosperity.*
Earthquakes are caused by the tramp of an imaginary host. During the earthquake
CANOE RIVER. (After Milton and Cheadle.)
'hich occurred in Vancouver Island on the 25th of August, 1865, some friends of mine were
in Nootka Sound. While the shocks lasted, the Indians set up a fearful, unearthly yell,
which they continued until the whole party had assembled. They entreated the whites to
<'e their fowling-pieces to frighten away the spirit of evil, who, according to their notion,
mes upon the earth (at this particular time) , with all the Indians who have ever died, to slay
the living for the evil they have committed.
They have, again, many superstitions about sneezing and cutting nails. When they cut
nails they throw them on the coals, and if the smoke goes straight up, then they will be
* Rogers : " Scottish. Life," p. 194 ; Henderson : " Folklore of Northern Counties," p. 114 et seq.
134 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
lucky, but if not, the evil will come from the side from which the smoke is blown. If a person
lias been guilty of conjugal infidelity, some of the horse tribes, such as the Klamaths, suppose
that his horse will be in a perspiration after a very little exertion.
A good number of their superstitions relate to animals, and more particularly to the
fishes which form such a large proportion of the food of the coast Indians, who live on river-
banks, such as the Fraser, the Columbia, Naas, Stekin, and other drainers of the Pacific Slope.
At Beutinck Arm for many years the Indians would not sell fresh salmon to the whites,
thinking that this would be unlucky. Furthermore, they would not allow their women to eat
them unless they were partially dried. At Fort Langely they would not let the whites take the
first salmon in the spring out of the canoe, but they must carry them out in a stated way them-
selves. At Sooke they are careful not to allow the first-caught salmon bones to be eaten by dogs
or cats, and accordingly they carry these carefully down to the beach so as to be washed out by
the tide. The early adventurers on the Columbia River were much annoyed to find that the
Chi nooks would not sell them salmon for about ten days after they had entered the river, unless
they would agree not to cut them crosswise, nor boil, but roast them ; nor would they allow
them to be sold without the heart being first taken out ; nor would they permit them to be kept
over-night : they had to be all consumed the first day they were taken out of the water.*
The capture of the oulachan, or Pacific smelt (Osmerus pacific us, Rich.), plays an important
part in Indian life among the northern coast tribes of British Columbia and Alaska, its-
capture and the expression of the oil being surrounded with numerous superstitions. For
instance, the expression of the half-boiled mass which remains after the best oil has been
skimmed off by being "tried" out, by throwing red-hot stones into a bucket of fresh water,
must be done with the naked breast. None of the dirt must be washed off, or even removed
from the vicinity of the lodges, however offensive it becomes, until the fishery is over. These
and other features of Indian life may be found recorded in another place.f
The heron (Ardea herodias, L.) is called sluckah by the Nisqually Indians in Puget Sound,
\vlm have likewise applied to it the name of tsah-pali, or "our grandfather," probably owing to
the grave dignity with which the creature struts about on the shores of its favourite feeding-
grounds, t These Indians suppose that the heron was formerly an Indian who, having quarrelled
Avith his wife, now the Ho-hwhy, or horned grebe (Podiceps corn?// us, L.), they wrere both
transformed into their present condition. The wife seems to have been a shocking bad
r-haracter, and to have been abundantly punished for her manifold sins by the Nisqually Jupiter
— here known as Dokweebottle — though in all his attributes the representative of the Ila-lse
or Quawteaht of the Vancouver Island Indians.
The Night heron (Nycliardea Gardeni, Gm.) is another bird of superstition. Indians
are much frightened when they hear it, supposing that it can transform human beings into
inferior animals ; in regard to which power they have many traditions. The " medicine- wolf "
(V-nIpes viryiuianus, Baird) is supposed to be a 'harbinger of ill-luck and misfortune. The
seifellel, or s/tow'fl, of the Nisqually Indians (Aplodontia leporina, Rich.) is honoured by them
by having attached to it the reputation of being the first animal created with life. The musk-
* Boss, "Adventures on the Columbia River," p. 97. f Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, June, 1868.
J Suckley, " Nat. Hist., Washington Territory," Zoology, p. 228.
THE NORTH-WEST AMERICAN INDIANS: FOLKLORE.
135
rat is supposed to have some influence upon labour, for the women on the Cowlitz nse it as a
kind of smelling-salt during the agonies of parturition.
The western grebe is called by the Nisquallies sivah-teese, and is said by them to have
been an Indian — the elder brother of Podiceps cornutus, whom we have had occasion to notice
as a very disreputable female, and the wife of the great blue heron. The wolf figures much
in all Indian fable, especially among the tribes at the Columbia River, under the names of
Talipus, or Italipus, and the evil spirit is generally believed to present himself under that
guise. As among nearly every nation in the world, the word dog — useful though the animal
may be — is a term of contempt.
Some animals are looked upon in a peculiar light, and their skins (as was once the custom
in Europe) can only be worn by men of a certain standing. Thus the tail or skin of the
skunk (Mephitis occidentalis) } a very common animal, can only be claimed by distinguished
warriors as a badge of distinction. Some tribes have a fashion of fastening the tails of foxes to
he mocassins of men who have slain their enemies in war, as shown in our woodcut, repre-
senting two Indians fighting (p. 128). It is copied from a rude Indian painting, on the
buffalo hides of which a wigwam was made. In Plate 2 the Indian dancer has foxes'
tails attached to his mocassins. The claws of the grizzly bear, in like manner, are attached
to the dress of famous hunters.
More singular still are the stories of great monsters, but even in these superstitions and
exaggerations the naturalist is able to see much that is deeply interesting to him. When,
in 1863, I ascended the then lonely Snohomish and Snoqualami Rivers, in Washington
territory, my Indian canoe-men related to me many stories about a huge animal which,
es ago, ravaged that country, destroying the Indian villages, until they had to erect
(as some African and other tribes do at the present day) scaffolds to sleep on, or even houses
n platforms in shallow lakes, like the old lake-dwellers in Switzerland and other parts of
urope. It is very curious that an almost identical tradition prevails near Stewart Lake and
eace River, in British Columbia, and the Snoqualami in Washington Territory — regions
idely separated, and inhabited by different races, speaking most dissimilar languages. It
also interesting that in both regions bones of the mastodon are found in abundance; and
ough possibly the tradition may have originated in a desire to account for the presence of
hese remains, yet I think it is more than probable that both these legends are only the
fragmentary remembrance, handed down from generation to generation, of a time when this
animal was contemporary with man, as recent discoveries have left little doubt that it was.
ndeed, as far back as 1840 Albert Koch found near Bourbon River, in Gasconade Count}-,
Missouri, bones of the mastodon associated with Indian remains, and expressed his belief that
a human race existed contemporary with his Mis-sourium (as the genus was called), and that the
fact of these relics not having hitherto been found was owing to the remains being generally
investigated by people not aware of the importance of a minute examination of the locality.
This idea is supported by the fact of an Indian stone axe and knife, with charcoal, half-burnt
pieces of wood, and implements of the chase, being mingled with the mastodon's bones.
Added to this, about 150 pieces of rock, evidently brought from the river and thrown at the
animal, were found in the immediate vicinity. Some of the animal's teeth had been broken
by the blows, and had escaped the fire. These were evidently the remains of a hunter's feast,
136
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the animal having1 been roasted where it was killed.* As an amusing trait of credulity, I may
mention that a white man — a hunter — of Port Angelos, in Washington Territory, always
declares that when hunting in the Olympian Range, he saw an animal which could be no other
than the mastodon, yet living in these almost inaccessible fastnesses !
The Indians are unwilling to approach Shawnigan Lake in the southern section of
Vancouver Island, declaring that it is haunted by some great animal.
Again, some of the Crees, who inhabit, or used to inhabit, the country in the vicinity of the
Athabasca River, have a curious tradition concerning certain animals which they state formerly
frequented the mountains. They allege that these animals were of frightful magnitude,
"DIGGERS" IN A CANOE MADE OF SEVERAL TREES PARTIALLY HOLLOWED OUT AND FASTENED TOGETHER.
being from 200 to 300 feet in length, and tall in proportion ; that they formerly lived in the
plains, a great distance to the eastward, from which they were gradually driven by the Indians
to the Rocky Mountains; that they destroyed all smaller animals, and if their agility had been
equal to their size, would have exterminated the natives also, &c. One man used to live there
who asserted that his grandfather told him he saw one of these animils in a mountain pass,
when he was hunting, and that on hearing its roar, which he compa-red to loud thunder, the
sight almost left his eyes, and his heart became as small as an infant's. This may, perhaps, al>»
refer to a tradition of the mastodon. It must, however, strike every one ho\v similar are the
Indian stories of ogres, giants, and dragon-like monsters to the corresponding myths of Europe.
* See Koch, in Transactions of the Academy of Sciences of SI. Louis, i. 160 (1860) ; American Journal of S<
xxxvi. 198 (1839); and R. Brown (in a letter to Professor Rupert Jones) in Lartet and Christy's " Reli<iui;v
Aquit.-mii .-..," I'art VI. (1863), and notes in subsequent parts of that work.
137
CHAPTER VI.
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA : HOUSES ; HABITS ; CONDITION.
IN the foregoing pages I have regarded the tribes of North- West America as a whole,
though these tribes speak numerous languages, distinct one from another, and vary widely
in habits and character. To enumerate all the tribal distinctions would be a tedious and, in
most respects, an unprofitable task, even could it be done with any degree of accuracy. Between
California and the southern limits of the Eskimo, in the trackless region bordering the Arctic
DIGGERS ON LAND.
„
:
cean, the tribes nominally at least distinct, and living under chiefs more or less independent,
must be numbered by hundreds, and speaking probably more than forty different languages or
ry distinct dialects. The broad characteristics and salient habits of these tribes we have
touched up; >n in general in the preceding chapters ; it is therefore unnecessary to describe them
more in detail. Moreover, it is very dubious how far many of these tribes are independent,
where are their haunts, and whether every little village has not been classed as a separate tribe.
They are, unquestionably, all of one origin — viz., from some of the more northerly portions of
Asia — and though long isolation one from another has somewhat altered their habits, it is scarcely
more accurate to term these little septs different tribes, and far less (as has been done) separate
tions, than it would be to divide the people of England into the separate tribes of York-
shirites, Devonians, Middlesexians, Londoners, Manchesters, &c. &c. It is, however, doubtful
18
138 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
if the miserable tribes inhabiting the Califomian valleys, or extending into Nevada and the
south-eastern desert of Oregon, are of the same origin as the more northerly savages. There
seems some reason to believe that they originally came from some of the Polynesian Islands —
canoe-men drifted off in a storm at some remote period. In habits they differ considerably
from the northern tribes, and in social condition are the most miserable of all the American
aborigines. Never of a high character, they have sunk into the utmost degradation since
the " civilisation " of the country. They were known to the French Canadian voyageurs and
trappers of the great fur companies as the gens du pitie (the pitiable race). Abused and
persecuted by the more powerful tribes to the north of them, " civilised off the face of the
earth " by the Americans, they are fast decreasing, and in a few years the persecuted " Digger
Indian " will have disappeared from the American continent. The name " Digger," by which
they are now universally known, was first applied to them by Genei'al Fremont, the Rocky
Mountain explorer, from the fact that they gained a precarious subsistence in winter by digging
for roots and grubs through the snow, or searching the rocks for lizards, &c. They live in small
communities here and there, treacherous and cowardly, divided into a number of little rival
septs, but all so mutually jealous of each other as to be almost powerless to commit any greater
evil than stealing a few cattle, or murdering a solitary traveller whom they may overpower in
some lonely mountain pass or valley in the Sierras (pp. 136, 137, 140, 141, 148).
When the country was first invaded by the crowd of gold-diggers in 1849, beyond the few
thousands who had collected round the Spanish missions in Lower California, and were in a state
of the most abject subjection to and dependence on the priests, there must have roamed over the
wide region more than 100,000 Indians, living in a state of freedom and of nature, as complete
as the elk, antelope, or sage rabbit, which furnished their then by no means precarious livelihood.
A head-dress of feathers, with a scanty coat of paint on his face, was the full dress of a brave,
while a fringe of bark or grass suspended from her waist furnished a complete wardrobe for his
squaw. To this day the males go quite naked during the summer, if living at a distance from
the whites. The men have no beard, this being plucked out by the squaw with a couple of
shells as soon as it appears. They all wear ornaments in their ears — or at least did. The
children had theirs bored at an early age, larger and larger pieces of stick being inserted until
the aperture was capable of taking in one of the larger bones of a pelican's wing — five or
.six inches long, carved in rude style, and decorated at the end with crimson feathers — which
is worn permanently. The back hair of the men is fastened up in a net, and made fast by
a pin of wood pushed through both hair and net, the large end being ornamented with crimson
feathers, obtained from the head of the " carpentero " woodpecker,* and sometimes, also, with
the tail feathers of an eagle. The women, before the advent of the whites, wore no hair-nets or
ornaments. Before being corrupted by the rude gold-diggers and lumber-men, they were not a
bad kind of people on the whole The men were treacherous, but (unless ill-treated) harmless
enough, and the girls frank and even confiding — perhaps quite as much as young grizzly
bears. But then the men always were ill-treated, and the children could scarcely be expected to
be very confiding to a paleface, when from their infancy a white man was the bugbear used to
frighten them into submission to the maternal will. A Californiau boy could no more tell you
* The Mtlenerpesforuiicivorxs of naturalists.
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA : HOUSES ; WOMEN.
131)
when he first learned to swim, than he could say when he remembered to have first walked.
The boy has a bow and arrow put into his hand as soon as he can use them; while girls
learn to weave blankets and make bread of acorns. They are much more familiar with the
points of the compass than their more northern neighbours. If a ball or an arrow is lost,
instead of searching about in all directions for it, the one who saw it fall will say, " To the
east; a little nprth ; now three steps N.E.," and so on. Even in the darkest night an Indian
will fetch water from a spring-, by following the directions of a companion who had been there
previously — " Three hundred steps east and twenty steps north." They are, accordingly, ex-
cellent trackers of game, and say that it is impossible to mistake a white man's foot, even if
bare, for it is deformed by the pressure of boots or shoes; while the Indian's foot, never
trammelled by any such foot-gear, is so formed that he can use his toes to hold arrows whilst
he is making them. They roam about from place to place, as the attractions of game or other
food may incline, and hence are generally well acquainted with a wide range of country.
If caught by a storm while out hunting, an Indian Avill dig a hole in the ground, and with
a small fire shelter himself until the weather abates. In building his ordinary fires, he takes the
itmost precaution in choosing the situation, in selecting the wood, and the way of arranging
the logs. He laughs in contempt of the white man, who builds a fire so large that he cannot
near it. His hut is differently built in different localities. In the Sacramento Valley, an
ipright post, six feet long, is fixed in the middle of a hole three or four feet deep, and ten feet
2ross. Poles are then laid from the edge of the hole to rest on this upright post, and the whole
)vered with grass and dirt. In other places, large pieces of bark are laid upon a framework
}f poles, and covered with rushes and sedges (the title of the Californian). In the San Joaquin
ralley, a framework of poles covered with rushes is a common mode of architecture. The ordinary
rinter hut is a rude affair like this, half of it being below the ground, the roof dome-shaped,
fith a hole to allow the surplus smoke to escape. Like all Indian abodes, it is never clear of
lis pungent smoke, which, however, does not seem to inconvenience the inmates much. Inside,
)ii a raised platform of poles and reeds, are skins and blankets woven from geese-feathers, on
rhich the master and his family repose, while at the side — generally on the south side — is a
>w door. When they go out, a branch is left in the door to show that nobody is at home.
Lost of the wilder Indians have no permanent place of residence, but each tribe has a territory
rhich it considers its own, and a cluster of huts, known to the whites as ranclieria. These
mts are built on the banks of streams, in the vicinity of oak-trees, bushes, and patches of the
aid clover which the Indian is fond of eating. More provident than most aborigines, the
)igger stores away some food for the winter, in rude granaries, made of poles, in the vicinity
his house. In the autumn the whole tribe — men, women, and children — are working
ether, gathering acorns for their winter stores. The women are the drudges, and the lord
creation laughs at the whites for allowing their wives to remain at home idle while their
lusbands are at work out of doors, " just like squaws." The squaw must collect the roots
and prepare them, carry the portable property when her lord moves his establishment ; and ill
return for all this is beaten on the slightest provocation, and is never once consulted about
public or private affairs. In fact, she is a chattel bought from her parents, and is treated as
such. Mark the contrast between the woman of the East and the West. In the West she is a
slave ; in the East she leads a life of luxury. Like all Indians, they think and say with great
140
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
shrewdness, " What is the use of making a slave of one's self all one's life, just to make a son
or daughter idle on the proceeds of one's labour?" Accordingly, the Digger only works when
INDIAN OF CALIFORNIA.
lie cannot help it. Custom is with him law, and a perfectly satisfactory excuse to him for not
doing anything is, that " it has never been done before." The tribes are very small, and are
governed by hereditary chiefs, who, however, have little power. These tribes are without wealth,
or other laws than custom. Public vengeance for offences so grave as to deserve death is
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA: RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
141
satisfied by a. number of the leading men agreeing to kill the offender. This is then accom-
plished by their waylaying him and shooting him with arrows. Their law is blood for blood.
Slavery is found amongst them, but not of an hereditary kind. Prisoners in war, if men, are
generally killed ; but women and children are frequently retained as slaves.
At one time the Indians in California must have been very numerous, for everywhere along
the banks of lakes and rivers may be seen the traces of old villages, not inhabited even in the
memory of tradition. Here and there will be found a few scattered families speaking a different
language to any of the petty tribes around them, showing that they are the remnants of dying-off
tribes. Like all their race, the Diggers are fond of home, and if away for a short time from the
locality where they have been born or brought up, soon weary to return. The mounds on the
/I
INDIAN WOMAN OF SACRAMENTO RIVER.
site of old villages are mere " kitchen-middens/' formed of the refuse of the food, &c., of the
)ple who once lived there, and are entirely different from the great mounds in the Valley of
the Ohio, and elsewhere. And here it may be remarked that whatever may be the origin of
the California!! Indians there is no ground for believing, as so many have done, that they are
of Chinese or Japanese origin, though Lieutenant Wheeler has attempted to prove this, and
to trace Sinetic words in an inscription engraved on the Basalt Rocks near Ben ton, in Southern
California. Most probably, the Diggers are Polynesians. The languages of the various tribes
)oint to some of them being related to the widely-spread Athabascon and Shoshone families.
>ut beyond the fact that they may be roughly assorted into three great divisions, we are
puzzled to classify the ethnic and linguistic types of the Golden State and the neighbouring
one of Nevada. What their religious belief is it is difficult to say, and, no doubt, it is a
good deal mixed up with ideas learned in a vague manner from the old Spanish priests
or modern missionaries. A good spirit is invoked to give them food, and evil ones must be
propitiated. The oldest chief prays at certain seasons, morning and evening, outside of the
council-lodge, and sings in a monotone a few sentences only. This is not in words taken from
142 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
tlu-ir language, but is supposed to be intelligible to the Great Spirit.* "When any ordinary
request for success in boating or fishing is preferred, it is made in their own language.
Although an Indian prays constantly for success, he takes admirable precautions and displays
wonderful skill and craft to secure it. He will stalk the prong-horn on the open prairie by
covering his head and shoulders with the antelope's head and neck, and going on all-fours
until he gets within bow-shot, and in other ways practise peculiar hunting artifices.
To illustrate the ease with which an Indian can provide himself with food, an eye-wit nr-s
relates what he once witnessed on the banks of the Feather River. The Indian sat duwn and
lit a fire. Turning over a sod, and searching under the logs and stones, he found some grubs.
Pulling up some light dry reeds of the last year's growth, he plucked a few hairs from his own
head and tied the grubs to the bottom of the reeds, surrounding the bait with a circle of loops.
These reeds were now stuck lightly in the mud and shallow water near the edge of the river,
and he squatted and watched the top of his reeds. Not a sound now broke the quiet of the
place. The Indian was as motionless as the trees that shaded him. Presently, one of the reeds
trembled at the top, and the Indian quietly placed his thumb and finger on the reed, and with
a light toss a fish was thrown on the grass. The reed was put back; another reed shook, and
two fish were thrown out ; then still another, and the angler was soon cooking his dinner. f
Spearing salmon by moonlight on the rivers is as exciting a scene as a similar sport in the
quiet bays of the North. The poor savage has an abiding belief that the Creator will send
salmon in the stream and grasshoppers on the plain for his food, and year after year he leads his
precarious life, buoyed up by the confidence his simple faith inspires. Certain portions of the
north-west and central regions of North America swarm with several species c£ grasshoppers —
veritable locusts — which cover the country and eat up every green thing. The farmer looks
upon them with dread, and many and ingenious are the inventions to keep them out of his
fields. The Indians all through the region between the Rocky and Cascade Mountains, and
throughout Nevada, Utah, and California, regard them as one of the most unqualified
blessings from "the Great Spirit " — illustrating the old and homely proverb about one man's
meat being another man's poison. They are eaten either fresh or preserved for winter use, just
as the Arabs do locusts, and with equal gusto. The grasshopper season is almost equal in
importance to the acorn one. To procure the former luxury, a hole is dug deep enough to
prevent the insects jumping out. The Indians, old and young, then form a circle, each person
being armed with a piece of bush. They then commence beating the grasshoppers towards the
hole, in which, when once driven, they are prisoners. Altogether, hunting this small game is an
* When first the Spanish friars came among them it is confidently affirmed that they had no religion
and no form of government, and that no words to express "God" or "soul" were to be found in their
language. Though they did not deny the possibility of the whites rising from the dead, yet, as they burned the
bodies of their departed friends, they considered that this was an utter impossibility as regarded them. They
had no idea — nor does it seem they ever attempted to have one— respecting the creation of the earth and
heavenly bodies. On this subject they entertained the philosophical beliefs of the Abipones, a South
American tribe, who told M. Dobritzhoffer that their fathers were wont to contemplate the earth alone,
solicitous only to see whether the plain afforded grass and water for their horses. " They never troubled
themselves about what went on in the heavens, and who was the creator and governor of the stars." — Seo-
Baegert, "Nachrichten von der Am. Halbinsel," trans, in SmitJisonian Reports, 1863-4.
t Cheever, in " American Naturalist," iv. 137.
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA: ARTS; FOOD.
:
tive and moderately-exciting- exercise. Sometimes the grass and weeds around are set on fire,
so that the grasshoppers are disabled and afterwards picked up.
Only one kind of game is hunted at a time, and each kind when it can be hunted most
advantageously. Accordingly, when an eminent artist — Albert Bierstadt — introduces into his
painting of the Yosemite Valley an Indian camp with all kind of game lying around, he only
evinces his disregard or ignorance of natural history and aboriginal habits. Their bows are
made of Lawson's cypress (Cnpressus Law-son iana) or of yew (Taxuslrevifolia), and strengthened
in the middle with sinew. The string is composed of sinew also ; and the arrows of reeds,
pointed with obsidian. They use a tool for making the arrow-heads, with its working edge
shaped like the side of a glazier's diamond. The arrow-head is held in the left hand, while
the nick on the side of the hole is used as a nipper to chip off small fragments. An Indian.
s usually a pouch of treasures, consisting of unfinished arrow-heads, or unworked stones, to
slowly completed when industriously inclined. The feathers are so placed on the arrow
as to give it a spiral motion in its flight, proving- that the idea of imparting a rotatory motion
to a missile is older than the rifling of our guns. Arrow-poison the}* prepare by causing an
irritated but confined rattlesnake to repeatedly bite a liver of some animal until it is saturated
ith poison, into which they dip their arrow-points. The arrows are always dangerous,
whether poisoned or not, as the heat of the body loosens the sinew fastenings, and allows the
ragged flint-head to remain in the flesh. Few of the Indians have ever acquired or learned
to use fire-arms. Wild fowl and other wild animals they catch with nets, in pitfalls, and
by various other ingenious methods. The women are very skilful in making baskets and all
kinds of vessels of the root of a species of cyperus, a marsh sedge, which are so tightly woven
as to be perfectly water-tight. They even boil food in these baskets, as the northern Indians
do in boxes, by dropping red-hot stones into the water, continually keeping up the heat by
king out the cooled ones and dropping in hot ones. In this manner water will be boiled
iich quicker than in the ordinary way of putting the pot on the fire. These stones are
it'ted by two sticks, which the women will handle as adroitly as the Chinese do chopsticks,
r we tongs. Acorns are pounded up between two stones, and then baked into bread, the
itterness of the acorn-meal being partially removed by "leaching" — that is, allowing water
slowly percolate through the meal. The dough is then wrapped in leaves, and these balls
vered with hot stones. The result is a rather unsightly mass, but if proper care is taken
free every bite from sand, bits of leaf, stone, and dirt generally, the quality is not so very
Fremont's men ate it readily enough, and so has the writer when hard pressed by hunger
the mountains. Fish and meat are sometimes cooked in the same way. An intelligent
iter on these people (Mr. Cheever) remarks, truly enough, that a " salmon rolled in grape-
.ves and surrounded with hot stones, the whole covered with dry earth or ashes overnight,
d taken out hot for breakfast, does not need a hunter's appetite for its appreciation." The
rched seed of the yellow water-lily (Xuphar advena] is also a favourite food of these people,
hen it can be procured (pp. 64, 137).
About the Klamath lakes, in Southern Oregon, we used to be interested in the busy
enes at the wokas gathering. Rude " dug-outs/' consisting either of several trees lashad
gether (p. 13G), or merely of the trunk of a pine-tree, fourteen or fifteen feet in length, with
e side roughly hollowed out, and very different from the elegant canoes of the northern and
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
A VIEW ON THE NOUTH THOMPSON. (After Hilton and Choadle.)
eastern tribes, were continually landed, laden with the capsules of the lily which had been col-
lected by boys, girls, and women. These capsules were spread out to dry, and then threshed to
get the seed out, which was finally stowed away for winter use. When a little was required,
it wus shelled by being parched with some live coals in the squaw's saucer-like hat made of the
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA: MARRIAGE, AMUSEMENTS, ETC. 145
sedge-roots. This was ground into meal, mixed with a little water, and the sleepy husband
roused to breakfast. This seemed to be the squaws' regular morning occupation. The Indians
declared that they could travel further on a meal of this wokas than on any other kind of food.
The wild horse-chestnuts, pine-seeds, grass-seeds, as well as grass and clover (which they regard
as a great luxury, and get fat on), are also eaten. Lizards, snakes, the roots of the tule, &c.,
are all eaten, but they never think of tilling the soil.
Marriage, as among other Indian tribes, is simply a matter of purchase ; and as the
Digger, rude though he may be, and low in the scale of civilisation, has the good sense to select
a wife for other qualities than mere personal charms, he is generally very happy in his family
relations. When they were in even a ruder state than now, marriage by force (after the
Australian model), with all its accompanying brutalities, was common. Polygamy is permitted
by many of the tribes, but (though few marriageable girls long remain single, being wedded
at thirteen or fourteen) not many men have more than one wife. I knew one man who had
three, and they seemed to agree tolerably well, although the somewhat henpecked husband
informed me, in an aside whisper between two whiffs of his pipe, that as an experienced family
man he could not advise me to take more than one wife, as in his house there was " too much
tongue." The duration of the marriage relation depends entirely on the caprice of the husband.
Woman-stealing from other tribes is one of the most fertile causes of their wars, but, unlike
their northern neighbours, they do not take the head of their fallen enemy. There are
generally few children in a family, and mostly boys — the girls, it is said by those best
acquainted with these savages, being neglected or made away with soon after birth. This is
contrary to the custom in the North, where it is the girls who are most esteemed, on account
of their marketable value.
Dancing is one of their favourite amusements, and in one of their dances the women join,
though so solemn is it that a stranger might be in doubt whether it was rejoicing or mourning.
In this dance the women form a circle, while the men, dancing with very great activity, leap
across a fire burning in " the centre, and yell and sing, while the women continue their
solemn dancing, singing in a low monotonous chant." Running races is a common amusement,
but endurance rather than speed is what is aimed at. They will frequently start out after a
runaway horse or mule, and though they may not be able to run so fast as the animal,
their endurance is even greater, and in general they will return with it in an hour or
two. They are inveterate gamblers, staking, like their more intellectual neighbours in the
North, everything they possess on the chances of the game. A sort of game of " odds and
even" is the favourite one, and, as in the northern games, singing is an accompaniment of this
amusement.
Their medical treatment of the sick is about as scientific as is usual among savages. The
" sweating-house" (or tamascal) is, however, something more interesting than usual. It is found
not only among these Indians, but northward as far as Fraser River, in British Columbia. A
hole is made in the ground, and rudely arched over with boughs covered with earth and rubbish .
Only a hole is left at the top for entrance and exit. A situation near a river or lake is
generally chosen. In this confined place a number of Indians assemble ; water is poured on
hot stones until the whole place is filled with steam, and the Indians are streaming with
perspiration. In this state they will spring into the chill river or lake, repeating this
19
146 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
treatment again and again. It is said — and I do not doubt it — that the result is very
favourable to the cure of some diseases of the chest. It is also in use near the Missouri.
Among those tribes that bury their dead, a hole is dug and the body placed in it in a
sitting posture, the head reclining 011 the knees. If it is a man, his nets are wrapped round
his body, and weapons are placed by his side ; if a woman, her blanket encloses the corpse, and
a basket is also put in beside her. Among other tribes — and this custom extends as far north
as the Klamath Lakes — the body (as well as all the goods and chattels of the deceased) is
burnt to ashes. I have known even the horses and slaves to be burnt, and the reason the
Klamaths assign for this is, as I have remarked in another chapter, not the stereotyped one of
these being for the use of the dead in the other world, but simply that all traces of the deceased
may be for ever removed from their sight. The cremation commences after dark, the fire being
kept up all night, while the friends watch, and the female relatives of the deceased utter
plaintive cries until daybreak. Among those tribes wrho practise cremation, a portion of the
ashes is mixed up with pine-resin, and this black compound applied to the lower portion of
the women's faces during the few months of mourning. During several weeks women
wail every night in a most distracting manner. Among some of the northern tribes, if a
woman who has a helpless infant dies, the infant is buried with her. Their language is guttural
and difficult to render into writing, especially when spoken fast. Like all uncivilised people, they
enumerate by means of their toes and fingers — up to twenty. They are very stolid, expressing
no surprise — at least by external signs — at anything which might be expected to amaze them.
This is characteristic of the whole race. " When the first steam-boat passed the Indian
villages/" remarks Mr. Cheever, "I watched the Indians to see what effect it would pro-
duce; but to my disappointment it did not excite them, or elicit any expression of wonder.
Even the steam-whistle failed to move them; they did not understand it, and would not
exhibit surprise. Two years later a brig sailed up the river, and the Indians were full
of excitement; the size of the sails and the strength of the ropes came within their
comprehension, filling them with wonder. The task of gathering fibre* enough to weave
so much cloth and to make such ropes made the while man a wonderful worker in their
estimation/*
Phyxically the Californian Indians do not rank higher than they do intellectually. In
height the}' average about four feet ten inches for the women, to five and a half feet for the
men. Some of them are, however, taller; our figures portray some exceptionally athletic
individuals. They are thick in the chest, and have voices of wonderful strength. The women
are very wide in the shoulders, and strongly built ; while the children are heavy-set and clumsy.
They are large in the body, but slim in the legs, compared with Europeans. When not affected
with hereditary diseases, they are long lived, many having died with the reputation of being
more than 120 years old.f They are said never to catch cold, though often going about in
severe winters almost naked. They are very filthy in their habits, and their houses swarm
with fleas and other equally objectionable insects. There is nothing whatever to show that
before the advent of the Spaniards — the first civilised people who resided in the country —
* The wild nettle supplies the fibre out of which their lines and nets are made.
f Hittell'a " California," p. 390 ; Po-.ver : " Contributions to the Ethnology of the United States," Vol. III.
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA: PRESENT CONDITION. 147
•the Indians were anything more than savages of a low type. They never had any domestic
.animals, and have none yet, except a wretched breed of dogs. So little skill have they usually
in the preservation of food that, notwithstanding their acorn and grasshopper stores, they will,
like the wild beasts, get fat in summer and emaciated in winter.
The foregoing remarks apply solely to savage Indians ; but during the last twenty years or
-so their intercourse with the whites has materially altered many of their habits, and led to the
. acquisition of new ones, not in all cases particularly good — such as the custom of indulging in
the most brutal drunkenness and other vices, whenever they have an opportunity. In some
places they have acquired firearms, and are clothed in civilised garments, and do a little
work for the white settlers. In the southern countries a few live in houses of adobe (or
: sun-dried brick) , and support themselves by herding cattle, breaking horses, working in
the fields and vineyards, &c. The majority are, however, idle and untrustworthy in the extreme.
Some have learned a vulgar dialect of Spanish, and one or two here and there speak a
little broken English. Many of the younger ones only know Spanish and English, having
failed to acquire their mother-tongue. Twenty-five years ago the Calif ornian Indians numbered
between 50,000 and 100,000 ; the official census of 1880 gives 16,581 as their number in the
whole State, but the race is rapidly becoming extinct. Even before California was acquired
by the United States, the aborigines were maltreated by the farmers, who made raids on their
villages for the purpose of capturing servants. In these expeditions the whites had their chief
atsistants among C/tristianos, or converted (?) Indians from the Missions, who, like all renegades,
cordially hated (and were hated by) their barbarous countrymen. They were driven from their
hunting-grounds and fishing-places. The result was that they stole cattle for food, and the
whites punished them for this by the sharp law of the rifle. The end of this is, that nowadays
the Indians throughout California, with a few exceptions, are used in the most unjustifiable and
brutal manner by the whites — buffeted, robbed, and ill-used on any or no provocation, butchered,
often with the most abominable cruelty, by men hardly worthy of the name, and even
without the excuse of self-defence, the Indians being under their protection at the time.* When
we speak of the way the Indians have been used in the United States, the reader may see what
the extent of their cruelties has been. " For every white man that has been killed, fifty Indians
have fallen." These are the words of one of the most honest and impartial of the historians of
California. In 18-1-8 nearly every little valley had its tribe, but now most of these are de-
stroyed, either by the white man's rifle, the white man's whisky, or the white man's diseases.
Vices unknown even in their low state of native degradation have become familiar to them, and
the concomitants of their vices have not been long in following. Listen to what Mr. Cheever
:says : — "Feather River, before its sands were washed for gold, was so clear, that the shadows
reflected on its surface seemed brighter than the real objects above. The river abounded in
fish, as did the plains on either side in antelope, deer, elk, and bear. The happy laughter of
children came from the villages, the splash of salmon leaping from the surface sent ripples
circling to the shore, and the blue dome of heaven was arched, from the Sierra Nevada with
its fields of snow on the east, to the distant coast-range that shut out the Pacific 011 the west.
Grand oaks, with far-spreading shade, dotted the plains that stretched for miles on eithef
* The " Modoc war" of 1872 and 1873, which resulted in the murder of General Canby and Dr. Thomas, was
• only one of many examples of this.
148
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOKLD.
side, and in spring-time the valley was brilliant with flowers. This was the possession and home
of the Indians, whose ancestors had lived and hunted, without patent or title obtained from
deeds, long before the first sailor planted his flag on the sea-coast, and claimed the country oy
right of discovery. It could not be expected that the Indian would see his trees cut down and
game destroyed, and the clean rivers turned into muddy streams, without regret."
CAN THESE PEOPLE BE CIVILISED?
It is often asked — and asked with the best of intentions — whether these people can
be civilised? For at least one century several generations of devoted men, of several
CALIl'OHNIAX MISSION INDIANS.
Christian sects, have been endeavouring to answer the question, but as yet their reply is at best
enigmatical. The Roman Catholic missions in California have perhaps been the most successful
south of British Columbia. The labours of Mr. Duncan at Metlakatlah, in the last-named
province, are certainly wonderful examples of what a self-denying, large-hearted man working
among an intelligent people can accomplish. The Wesleyan body from Canada, the Church of
England, and the French Canadian Catholics, have also established missions, more or less
flourishing, in various parts of the wide region under description, while each of the reservations
on which the tribesmen have been collected in the American territory have teachers of religion,
and the arts of civilisation attached to them. But the result is, after all, singularly little. A
trifling impression has been made here and there, a few outward observances have been learned,
a few savage ways discontinued, but as was the case in the Eastern States, and is still to a
great extent among the tribes west of the Rocky Mountains, they remain the rudest of barbarians.
THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA: THEIR FUTURE.
149
The mat hut or the wigwam is his home. The school-house opens its doors to him in vain,
for he despises the letters of the "pale-face." In the varied book that Nature spreads out
before him he learns his lessons, and his poetry (if poetry he has) he drinks from the heavens
where sentinel stars keep their watch in the night. The missionary has gone to him with a heart
overflowing with kindness and Christian love ; but whatever balm the Bible may possess, it
has borne on its wings little healing to the hut of the Indian. With an apathetic, confused,
A BUFFALO ROBE "WITH INDIAN PAINTINGS ON IT.
indefinite, and dreamy faith, he looks for fairer hunting-grounds in the spirit-land, where the
streams abound in salmon, the woods are filled with game, and where his every material want is
supplied by the hand of the Great Spirit who directs them thither. " Westward the star of
empire takes its way," and not afar off he hears the sure, sullen noise of that march of the white
man, " where soon shall roll a human sea." Confused and saddened, he sees the wonders of the
white man. " They are perfect devils," he says, as he sees the wonderful arts; but he makes no
attempt to imitate them. Now and then some dreamer, like Leschi, will revive their hopes of
once more regaining their fair heritage ; but hope dies off as they see the futility of the dream.
150 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
When I lived at the Dalles of the Columbia, a locality well known to all readers of Washington
Irving's "Astoria/' and other stirring tales of the old fur-traders, I knew an Indian
who dreamt often that some day the Indians will yet gain back all, and that the white man
shall then be his slave. No doubt, the dull, frowsy denizens of the lodge brighten as they
listen to that pleasant, moving tale ; but their hearts sink again, for, as the chief of an
Indian tribe told me, after he had been for eight years at war with the United States — " Kill off
one Boston man, and two start in his place ; they are like grass on the prairie ; burn it, and it
monies up next year fresher and more plentiful than ever — ugh ! " Those who have seen most
of the Indians can least congratulate those Governments which (like that of the United States)
have attempted to do something towards the civilisation of the Indians. But the purpose of
the red man's creation in the economy of Nature is — in spite of Colonel Mallory's pleasant
liction which insists that he is increasing — well-nigh accomplished, and no human hand can avert
his early extermination from the face of the Continent. Silently, but irresistibly, the purposes
of Providence take their way through ages, and across the line of their march treaties would
.seem but straws, and the plans of man on the tide of history but waifs upon the sea.
CHAPTER VII.
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS : THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
THE country to the west of the Rocky Mountains is, with the exception of the semi-treeless
desert (or dry country) between the Cascades and the Rocky Mountains, generally densely
wooded. Across the Rocky Mountains a region widely different is entered into. As soon as
we pass beyond the influence of the moisture afforded by the melting snows of the Rocky
Mountains, we enter the area of the great prairies stretching north, south, and eastward
— mile after mile. These are familiarly known as the " plains/' and are for the most part
covered with grass or low bush, the only trees found on them being in the vicinity of the few
watercourses which intersect the region. The more southerly plains are covered with the sage
brash (Artemisia), and are exceedingly dry and desert; while those farther to the north —
commonly distinguished as the " prairies " proper — are more fertile, and covered with grass.
Far as the eye can see all is grass, wave after wave, a long, silent sea of undulating, grassy
land, bounded by a dim horizon in the far distance, the only sight or sound to break the
monotony being the curl of the smoke from the little camp-fire lit by a solitary traveller or
merchant who does his business in these wild tracts, the bark of a prairie-dog, the amble of an
antelope, the sight of a herd of bison, those primeval oxen which still frequent a great extent of
these regions, or what, possibly, the solitary traveller cares less to see — the dash of a party of
savage horsemen, bent on plunder, war, or the chase of the buffalo or other wild animals of the
prairie. Roaming over this broad extent of central, treeless plains, are numerous tribes of Indians,
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTEAL PLAINS: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 151
alike in many characteristics, but all differing- widely from those which inhabited at a former
time the country east of the Mississippi, and in many respects also from the numerous tribes
west of the Rocky Mountains, whose habits we have described in the preceding chapters.
These Indians are divided into numerous tribes — Crees, Sioux, Dakotahs, Cheyennes, Araphoes,
Kioways, Blackfeet, Kickapoos, Comanches, Apaches, &c., all alike in many characteristics of
vagabondism, and frequently of lawless marauding. Most of them are possessed of horses, but
few of the tribes have stationary villages, the bands moving about from place to place as the
circumstances of the hunt, &c., may determine. Let us describe some of the more marked
customs of the chief of these tribes.
We first hear of these "plain Indians" in 1511, from Castenada, who wrote the account of
the expedition of Coronado, which set out from New Mexico in search of the " golden city " of
Quivera. In those days these " buffalo -eaters" lived on the raw flesh of the bison, and dwelt in
tents made of its skins, but had no horses, the steeds possessed by nearly all of the prairie tribes
being descended from those originally introduced by the Spaniards into America. The tribes on
the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains obtained horses at a still later period. The old Kyuse
chief who a few years ago had — it is said — upwards of 3,000 horses, told me that he remem-
bered an old man who recollected the first horse which was brought to his tribe. An Indian of
an inquiring turn of mind had gone far to the south, and after a long absence returned with
an extraordinary animal which he was afraid to mount, and had accordingly led all the way.
It was a horse. He had obtained it from some of the southern tribes — probably the Shoshones,
or one of the New Mexican tribes, and for a long time it was led out at high feasts and
festivals, no one venturing to get on its back. At last a daring youth essayed the task,
and after having himself carefully bound on its back, trotted off, to the consternation of the
female members of his family and the admiration of the rest of the village. No mishap came
to him, and soon his feat was no nine days' wonder. Other youths mounted, and by-and-bv
they also went south and got horses, until they became quite common, and the Kyuse are now
some of the best horsemen among the Indians, and until they went to war with the United
States and lost the greater portion of their stock, were exceedingly rich in horseflesh : yet
they did not care to sell any, though in times of scarcity they would live upon them.
To return, however, to the plain Indians. At the time of Coronado 's expedition these tribes
had no horses, but large troops of dogs, which they employed to transport their baggage, as some
of the more northern tribes do at the present day. They were then a mild and peaceable people,
showing great hospitality to the Spaniards, and we have no evidence that they were addicted
to the horrible practices which prevailed among the Indians in New Mexico and Sonora at that
date. Their dress, their mode of preparing food, and (with the exception of the few changes
which the introduction of the horse and other more questionable bits of civilisation has
caused among them) their habits were exactly the same as those of their descendants at the
present day. All the prairie tribes agree in these respects — they all follow the buffalo, use
the bow and arrow, lance and shield, take the war-path, and fight their battles mounted on
horseback in the open prairie, transport their lodges and all their worldly effects wherever
they go, never till the ground, and subsist almost exclusively, with the exception of a few
berries, on a fresh-meat diet. All equally use the sweat or "medicine lodges," which I
described in a former chapter, and religiously believe in the efficacy of incantations and jugglery
152
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
in curing diseases, and in preparing1 for war and the chase. On the other hand, as Gen. Marcy
(on whose experience with these tribes we have drawn to a great extent) points out, the tribes
in what are now the eastern United States, from the time of the first discovery of the country,
A CHEYENNE CHIEF IN SEMI-CIVILISED DRESS.
lived in permanent villages, cultivated fields of corn, and possessed strong attachment to their
abodes, and the graves of their dead, visiting them at long intervals, and preserving, even when
removed by the strong hand of the Government, the most vivid and accurate traditional accounts
of the sites of the sepulchres of their fathers. Unlike the tribes of the plains, they seldom
wandered far from home, used no horses, and always made their hunting or warlike expeditions
INDIAN SCOUT.
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 153
on foot, and sought the shelter of trees when in action. Their treatment of prisoners was also
essentially different; though the eastern tribes put their captives to torture of the most horrible
description, yet I cannot learn that the honour of the females was violated, while among the
plain Indians we have the most abundant evidence that the contrary always was, and/as the facts
before me while I write prove with sufficient horror, is still the case. In a word, these prairie
tribes are the Arabs of the plains of Central America, with little of the reverence and few of the
virtues of that people. They have no permanent abodes, the skin lodge, once pitched, being
their home until they again require to remove. Laws they have none, except what vague, and
often vacillating, undefined custom requires, and their government is essentially patriarchal —
their chief only leading them in war, but guided in his acts by the advice of the old men, or
the unanimous opinion of the people in mob assembled. Poverty and riches are alike unknown,
and being insensible to the wants and luxuries of civilisation, and it may be also said to vice
or equally to virtue, the revolution of Fortune's wheel brings no change to them. With the
exception of the worthless " loafers " who hung about the frontier settlements, or block-houses
on the plains — and of late years about the Pacific Railroad stations generally — they are all
pretty much on a dead level of social equality. Like the Arabs, they are expert riders, and
esteem their steeds highly. Their only property, with the exception of a few articles of domestic
economy, consists in these ponies, or mules, pillaged from the whites, for among their other
accomplishments they are most expert horse-thieves. The chief's office is hereditary, but it
lasts only so long as his rule is pleasing to the mass of his subjects, for should he disgrace him-
self in war or in council, he is speedily replaced by a more competent successor. The subordinate
chiefs execute the behests of the council, whether for reward or punishment, and in the performance
of this duty these aboriginal lictors do not, assuredly, let the grass grow under their mocassins.
In respect to their right of property, they are, Marcy remarks, truly Spartan. No more arrant
freebooters exist upon the earth. Stealing from strangers is a virtue which raises the thief
high in public esteem — indeed, a young man who has not made one or two predatory expeditions
into Mexico is, among the more southern plain tribes, held in little esteem, and considered a
person deficient in public spirit. An old Comanche chief told a friend of mine that he was
the lather of four sons — fine fellows — as fine young men as could be found, and that in his old
age they were a great comfort to him — a great comfort indeed, they could steal more horses
than any ether eight in all his bund . Sometimes a party of young men will start out on their
plundering expeditions, and be absent two or three years, before their success is such that in their
opinion they can return to their tribe with honour. They will swoop down on some quiet
district in Mexico, and with shouts and yells drive off the herd of horses or cattle, while, if the
teiTor-stricken herdsman offers the slightest resistance, his scalp is speedily added to their trophies.
The bow of the osage orange, or bois d'arc (Madura auranf/nni}, is their favourite weapon and
constant companion, and so skilful are they with it that not unfrequently a good archer will
send an arrow right through a buffalo. His shield is composed of two layers of hard, undressed
buffalo-hide separated by a padding of hair about one inch in thickness. This shield he carries
on his left arm, and so effectual is it as a means of protection to the body, that even a musket-
ball, unless it strike it perpendicularly, will not penetrate it. They also use a war-club, made
of a shaft of wood, about fourteen inches long, bound with buffalo-hide, and weighted at the
end with a hard stone, weighing a couple of pounds or so, firmly secured by means of a withe into
20
154, THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
a oroove prepared for it. A spear, fourteen or fifteen feet in length, to which is attached the
scalps he possesses, is also commonly used by most tribes. In addition, he sometimes has a rifle,
pistol, or even a cavalry sword, if he can steal one. (See engravings on pp. 33, 61, 152.)
The men are middle-sized, of a bright copper-coloured complexion, not unintelligent faces,
in many cases with more aquiline nose than those on the Pacific coast, thin lips, little beard,
and with the black eyes and long black hair characteristic of their whole race. Their hair is
never cut, and on high occasions is ornamented with silver and beads. Some of the men wear
it so long as to sweep 011 the ground, if allowed to fall behind. Everywhere long hair is a mark
of elegance. They have often a head-dress of eagle's feathers, or even the horns of the buffalo,
scraped as thin as paper, placed on either side of the head ; but these latter distinctions are only
accorded to very distinguished warriors (see engravings on pp. 65, 81, 117). To slay a grizzly
bear is accounted as honourable as to kill a human enemy; accordingly, a hunter decorates himself
with the large claws of that most formidable animal of the American wilds. Among some tribes
the scars of old wounds are painted red, so as to perpetuate the remembrance of these notable
marks of combat. On their robes, as well as on their wigwams, are painted rude emblematic
figures, descriptive of deeds the owner has taken part in, and the check of the other warriors
is quite sufficient to prevent the slightest attempt to claim in these picture-writings glory
for deeds never performed. (See engraving on p. 149.)
Some of the tribes in the eastern United States and Canada used to decorate themselves
with necklaces, or belts, made of waiHjnim, which was composed of bits of a fresh-water
shell, carved and perforated like pipe-stems. This was highly valued, and though the
w.uiipnm is still to some extent used amowg a few of the tribes which removed from their old
homes to the west, yet the greater portion of it is only imitation porcelain, sold by the
traders, the real article being now almost unknown. Such is the ordinary dress of these
people, but in every tribe there are dandies, effeminate creatures, gorgeous in paint and oiled
locks, decorated with elegantly-dressed, easily-obtained furs, fanning themselves in hot weather,
bestriding natty piebald ponies, unskilful in any athletic exercises., owners of no scalps but
their own — exquisites, in fine, but who find their consolation for the contempt of the chiefs and
the braves, in the admiration of the women and the young people. The dress of the prairie
Indians consists of leggings and mocassins (tanned buckskin shoes), with a cloth wrapped round
the loins. With the exception of the invariable buffalo robe, the body is naked about the middle.
The women are short and crooked-legged, and are by no means so good-looking as the men. They
are obliged to crop their hair close, and in addition to the leggings and mocassins, wear a shirt of
dressed deer-skins. They also to a slight extent tattoo their faces and breasts, and are, in general,
far from cleanly in their persons. Hospitable on occasions, and not unf requently kind to strangers,
like all their race they are implacable in revenge ; no insult or injury, fancied or real, but must
be effaced by the most cruel retaliation that can be devised. Forgiveness they do not know the
meaning of. Unlike the coast Indian, no presents can wipe out a wrong with them. Money they
use mainly as ornaments; but paint, red and blue, is in great demand as an article of toilet decora-
tion. Vermilion forms a large portion of the stock-in-trade of a prairie merchant, and after his
visit the aboriginal coxcomb appears in all Lis glory. Like all their race they have a sufficiently
good opinion of themselves. "Some few of those chiefs who have visited their ' great father' at
Washington have returned strongly impressed with the numerical power and prosperity of the
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: IDEAS REGARDING THE WHITES. 155
whites ; but the great majority of them, ignorant of everything that relates to us, and a portion
of them never having seen a white man, believe the prairie Indians to be the most powerful
people in existence, and the relation of facts which conflict with this notion by their own
people to the masses of the tribes at their prairie firesides, only subjects the narrator to ridicule,
and he is set down as one whose brain is turned by the necromancy of the pale-faces, and is
thenceforth regarded as wholly unworthy of confidence." I remember a man who had visited
Washington telling such tales to his tribe, but he was always regarded as a wondrous archer
witli the long bow, and still his people dreamt on of exterminating the whole " Boston tribe "
(Americans), believing that all the race consisted of such individuals as they saw before them,
notwithstanding the warning of the travelled man, that though they killed all these off to-day,
next year they would spring up more numerous and stronger than ever. The first Shoshone
Indian who saw Lewis and Clarke's party — the first " pale-faces " who had ever crossed the
Continent — was entirely discredited when he, in horror, ran off and told his tribe that he
had seen " men with pale faces, like ashes, and who had tools in their hands with which they
could make thunder and lightning." In council assembled, it was gravely resolved that a man
cnpable of telling falsehoods so vile and blasphemous as these should be put to death ; and,
undoubtedly, his life would have paid penalty for telling to his stay-at-home brethren such
traveller's tales, had not the appearance of the white men themselves settled the point in his
favour. A semi-civilised Delaware, named Black Beaver, who was a favourite henchman of our
friend (Jem-nil Ma rev, had visited St. Louis, and the small frontier towns on the Missouri.
Accordingly, he prided himself not a little on his knowledge of cities and men, white and
civilised. Camping one night with a Coinaiiehe guide, the general overheard the two in an
apparently earnest and amicable talk. On inquiring, it appeared, to use his own language,
that " I've been telling this Cmnanehe what I've seen 'mong the white folks. ... I tell
him 'bout the steam-boats, and the railroads, and the heap o' house I seen in St. Louis, but he
say I'/e fool. I tell him the world is round, but he keep all 'e time say, ' Hush, you
fool ! do you s'pose I'ze child ? Haven't I get eyes ? Can't I see the prairie ? You call him
round ? ' He say too, ' Maybe so I tell you something you not know before. One time my
grandfather he made long journey that way' (pointing to the west) ; 'when he got on big
mountain, he seen heap water on t'other side, jest so flat he can be, and he seen the sun go
straight down on t'other side.' I then tell him all the 'serivers (rivers) he seen, all 'e time the
water lie run, s'jMtse the \\orld flat, the water he stand still. May be so he not b'lieve me?"
General Marcy then told Beaver to explain the telegraph ; but there he was nonplussed. " What
you call that magnetic telegraph?" He was told. "You have heard of New York and New
Orleans ''. " " Oh yes." " Very well ; we have a wire connecting these two cities, which are
about a thousand miles apart, and it would take a man thirty days to ride it upon a good horse.
Now a man stands at one end of this wire in New York, and by touching it a few times he
inquires of his friend in New Orleans what he had for breakfast. His friend in New Orleans
touches the other end of the wire, and in ten minutes the answer comes back — ham and eggs.
Tell him that, Beaver." He remained silent, his countenance all the time with a most comical
puzzled expression playing over it. Again he was asked to tell him, when he observed, "No,
captain, I not tell him that, for I don't b'lieve that myself." He was assured it was the
fact, but no assurances of the personal experience of his informant would induce Black Beaver
156
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
to pin his faith on such a seemingly incredible statement. All he would reply was simply,
" Injun not very smart ; sometimes he's big fool, but he holler pretty loud ; you hear him
maybe half a mile ; you say 'Merican man he talk thousand miles : I Aspect you try to fool me
now, cap'n. May be so yon lie!"
c'r \rs:
X »K<> ^>
THE "WOLF," A UTE INDIAN.
Unacquainted with the luxuries of civilisation, the plain Indian does not fret his life away
in wearying or striving for them ; the healthy prairie is his home, his trusty bow his friend,
his horse his companion, the skin of the buffalo supplies him with raiment, its flesh with
abundance of food. What more does he require ?
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: HORSEMANSHIP; POLYGAMY. 157
The women are quite as expert as the men in horsemanship, and in throwing the lasso
(or coiled rope with a running noose at the end of it) over the heads of horses, cattle, or even the
prong-horned antelope of the prairie. The Indian never mounts his favourite war-horse except
when going into battle, on the buffalo-chase, or on very state occasions. He will part with
him at no price. When he returns to his home from his distant expedition, his wife — or one
of them at least — humbly waits upon him, leads his horse off to pasture, and otherwise attends
to it. So skilful are they in horsemanship, that they habitually throw themselves on the side of
the horse, clinging to its back solely by one foot in a sort of loop formed by the mane. Their
whole bodies are out of sight. In this manner they will discharge arrow after arrow, either over
the horse's back or under its belly. Their only bridle is the horsehair rope, or lariat (I'arret, "the
arrest" of the French traders), twisted by a loop round the lower jaw of the animal. Swinging
on the sides of their steeds, they will approach a herd of half-wild horses, or an enemy, and before
either is alarmed (seeing that the troop of horses approaching have no riders) a shower of arrows
in one case, or a lariat over their necks in the other, is the first intimation of their mistake.
Wild horses are tamed a good deal a la Rarey. After the running noose of the lariat is over its
neck, the captor dismounts and approaches, tightening the noose sufficiently to let the horse
know it is in his power, but not sufficiently to choke it. He then breathes strongly in its nostrils,
and soon it is perfectly obedient, and very often so tame as to be ridden into camp. If hobbled
for a few days, it is broken. The prairie warrior would consider it beneath him to do any menial
labour. His wife — a trifle dearer to him than his horse (if it happen to be of inferior quality)
— is his obedient slave, beaten on the smallest provocation by her haughty lord, who passes his
leisure hours in smoking, eating, and sleeping. Polygamy, however, among the Indians, is not
an unmitigated evil. Among a people so much at war there are always many widows and
unmarried women who would, unless they were married, be left destitute. A chief, moreover,
by putting his wives to work, dress skins, &c., is no great loser by them. On the contrary, they
are really a source of wealth to him, and the man who has most wives has in general the most
comfortable, well-appointed lodge and the best-stocked larder. Among many tribes prisoners
taken in war are tortured ; but, again, many of them are married to the widows of the slain, are
adopted into the tribe, and treated accordingly. In his own opinion, the Indian is the most
lordly soul in the universe, and his wives have almost as high an opinion of him as he has
himself, the proverb that no man is a hero to his valet de chamhre notwithstanding.
Even in time of peace the horses are carefully guarded day and night, and on the slightest
sign of danger, or even upon the approach of a stranger, are driven to a place of safety,
and preparations made for their defence. A stranger is received by the chief with much
hugging and face-rubbing ; a lodge is prepared for him, and he is welcome to entertainment
as long as he likes to remain. Among themselves they are kind and charitable, and in times
of scarcity the last bite of food is shared all round. But with this we have finished their short
catalogue of virtues.
Polygamy is permitted, and is common amongst them, food being in general abundant.
Catlin tells an amusing story of a Poncah boy of only eighteen, whose father considering that
he had arrived at the years of discretion, presented him with a lodge, several horses, and
goods enough to establish him in life. The first thing the precocious youth did was to go
and secretly bargain with a chief for his daughter, enjoining secrecy, and then to a second,
158 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
third, and fourth, the result of which was that on a fixed day he claimed all four ladies, to the
astonishment of the tribe and the indignation of the fathers. Public opinion, however, was in
his favour, and his four wives were marched off to his wigwam. Not only did the quadruply-
married man obtain his brides, but the chiefs determined that a youth of such tender years
capable of devising and accomplishing so extraordinarily bold an act, must be a person of
discretion, and deserved a seat in the council among the warriors and medicine-men !
Slavery is almost unknown among the prairie Indians, though the more civilised tribes-
like the now almost extinct Seminoles of Florida, and the Cherokees, who are almost altogether
civilised — had until the outbreak of the American civil war many negro slaves. Yet these
people, so fond of freedom themselves, treat their wives as little better than slaves. Though a
beast of burden and drudge to her inconsiderate, harsh master, the wife submits to her lot
without a murmur, never having known anything better, and tradition alone assigning such a
lot to her unfortunate sex. Between herself and her husband there is a wide gulf, which"
she never imagines can be filled. He treats her as a Southern planter would treat a negro, but
without the good-natm*ed indulgence the kindly white accorded the well-behaved " boy." No
office is too degraded for her, and the result is that in mental characteristics and general
morality the prairie Indian woman is inferior to even the most degraded coast tribes, where so
much more liberty of action is accorded to the squaws.
An old chief once told me that he thought that the Indian and the white man were both
much alike, only among the Indians the squaw worked and the man idled ; among the whites
the man worked and the squaw dressed and enjoyed herself ; otherwise he did not see that there
was any material difference. In a word, the Indian, without knowing it, is ever in his daily
•conduct repeating, in deeds, in regard to his dusky spouse, what Petruchio says of Catherine :
" I will be master of what is mine own.
She is my goods, my chattels ; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my everything."
They are, like all Indians, not a prolific race, three or four children being about the average ;
and even then, owing to exposure and a hundred accidents, many never attain maturity.
Boys are generally reared with care, while girls, unlike what we found among the coast
Indians, being of comparatively little value, are often beaten unmercifully. Idiots and deformed
people are as excessively rare among them as among other savages : the reason, I think, is
not difficult to find — at least as regards deformed people — the climate does not agree wit// them.
(See p. 74.)
Like all their race they are fond of spirituous liquor, though conscious that it " makes
fools of them;" and all are excessively addicted to smoking tobacco, inhaling the smoke into their
lungs, and sending it out through their nostrils. Their diet is simple, and consists, as already
remarked, chiefly of animal food. They can eat an immense meal at a time, and can fast long.
The verbal language consists of only a few words, some of which are common to all the
prairie tribes, even though these tribes speak different dialects. Accustomed to live much
in situations where noise is dangerous, they have acquired a sort of pantomimic language, even
more expressive than the verbal one, and Indians will sit round a camp-fire for hours almost
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: SIGN LANGUAGE. 159
without exchanging1 a spoken word, while, in reality, holding1 a tolerably animated conversation.
It is even said that so much is this pantomimic language used, and so limited the verbal
vocabulary, that the Araphoe Indians, whose language contains a very small number of words,
can with difficulty converse in the dark, but must adjourn to the camp-fire before they
can fully communicate their ideas to each other. This sign-language is commonly used by
distant tribes to communicate with each other when they do not understand each other's
language. For hours they will thus talk without an articulate word being uttered, except now
and then one of a language, such as that of the Crows, which is understood by different tribes,
being used as connecting links to the signs. This pantomimic vocabulary is used and understood
easily by nearly all the tribes from the Gila River to the Columbia, and is very graceful and
significant. It is said to be nearly the same as that practised by the mutes of deaf and dumb
institutions. General Marcy, to whom we are indebted for this curious fact, informs us that he
went to one of these institutions, and some five or six boys were directed to take their places at
the blackboards, and interpret what he proposed to say. Then, by means of the pantomimic-
signs used by the prairie Indians, he told them that he had gone to a buffalo-hunt, saw a herd,,
chased them on horseback, fired, and killed one, cut it up, ate some of the meat, and went to-
sleep, every word of the narrative being written down by each boy as the signs were made, the-
only mistake being the very natural one of mistaking the buffalo for deer. Each tribe has a.
particular sign by which the tribe is meant, and this sign is well understood by all the plain
tribes. Thus the Comanche is indicated by making with the hand a wavy motion in imitation
of a snake, the Comanches being sometimes called " Snakes;" the Cheyennes, or "Cut-arms/'
by drawing the hand across the arm, to imitate the cutting of it with a knife ; the Araphoes,.
or " Smellers," by seizing the nose with the thumb and forefinger ; the Sioux, or " Cut-throats/'
by drawing the hand across the throat; the Pawnees, or "Wolves," by placing a hand on each
side of the forehead, with tvvo fingers pointing to the front, to represent the narrow sharp ears;
of the wolf ; the Crows, by flapping the palms of the hand, so as to imitate the motion of
the bird's wings. *
" On approaching strangers the prairie Indians put their horses at full speed, and persons-
not familiar with their peculiarities and habits might interpret this as an act of hostility; but it--
is their custom with friends as well as enemies. When a party is discovered approaching theirs,
and are near enough to distinguish signals, all that is necessary in order to ascertain their
disposition, is to raise the right hand with the palm in front, and gradually push it forward
and back several times. They all understand this to be a command to halt, and if they are not
hostile, it will at once be obeyed. After they have stopped, the right hand is raised again as
before, and slowly moved to the right and left, which signifies, ' I do not know you ; who are
you?' They will then answer the inquiry by giving their signal. If this should not be
understood, they may be asked if they are friends by raising both hands grasped in the manner
of shaking hands, or by locking the two forefingers firmly, while the hands are held up. If"
friendly, they will respond with the same signal, but if enemies, they will, probably, disregard1
the command to halt, or give the signal of anger by closing the hand, placing it against the
forehead, and turning it back and forth while in this position."
*" Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border," p. 33; Dodge: "Hunting Grounds of the Great West,"
pp. xv.— Ivii., and pp. 255—430.
160
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
No people value military renown more than the plain Indians, and probably in no part of
the world does success as a warrior bring more social consideration. From their earliest boyhood
they are initiated in all the customs of war by mimic fights, in which murder and scalp-taking
are imitated, with all the fearful yells and horrid rites peculiar to such scenes. A battle with
them, is a mere hand-to-hand fight. There is a leader, but he must be in the thick of
the fray, fighting like the rest, the idea of a general directing a large body of men to act
in concert having never occurred to them. In addition to the weapons I have already men-
tioned, most of the tribes also carry a small axe (or tomahawk), and all the invariable scalping-
BUFFALO HUNTING.
knife — the latter being merely an ordinary butcher's knife — made, like the formidable toma-
hawk, by Britons in Birmingham and Sheffield for "the Indian trade.-" Most of the tribes, have,
of late years, obtained fire-arms, often of an excellent description, but few Indians are good
shots; though with the bow and arrow they are, at short range, excellent marksmen, being able
to discharge arrow after arrow with surprising quickness. These arrows (in most cases pointed
with flints, and in some cases poisoned with the venom of the rattlesnake) make ugly wounds,
and Indians, as we have noticed before, are not unfrequently able, with their stout, short, sinew-
strengthened bows of osage-wood, to send an arrow right through a buffalo, so that it drops on
the side of the animal opposite to that in which it was shot. Before proceeding to war they paint
and decorate themselves, and undergo other ceremonies of the most serious description. Young
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: PLUNDERING EXPEDITIONS. 161
men will set out on war parties, against tribes with whom they may be unfriendly (and few of
the plain tribes are on " speaking terms " with all their neighbours) , and will not return, if they
can possibly help it, without scalps or other spoils. For long- periods they have carried on plun-
dering, murderous expeditions in Northern Mexico, and have completely devastated the greater
part of Sonora and Chihuahua. Horses, mules, and scalps are the objects of these marauding
forays, and they will not unfrequently extend to two or three years. If they return unsuccessful,
there is a strong temptation to waylay any weaker party they may meet on the homeward jour-
ney, rather than return without the trophies which secure, both in war and in the council, such
consideration. The proprietor of the greatest number of scalps has obtained the blue ribbon of
Indian warfare. Hence these ambitious youths ought to be particularly sharply looked after by
the traveller who may meet them on the prairie, for the desire to obtain the scalp of an enemy
will often make them more reckless than the older men. Gratitude is a virtue even rarer
among the prairie Indians than among the degraded coast tribes of the Pacific. Indeed, I
question much if they understand the meaning of the word, or experience at all the feeling
which it expresses. Benevolence and kindness are only in their eyes dictated by fear or
expectation of reward. A present given means simply a bait for a larger one in return.
With them gratitude is truly, according to the Rochefoucaldian maxim, only " a lively
sense of favours to come/'' A limited space would be sufficient for the narration of any other
virtues they possess. They are most inveterate beggars. Our friend General Marcy met with
an amusing illustration of this ; but the sequel proves that they mistook their man. " A
party of Kechis," says he, "once visited my camp with their principal chief, who said he had
some important business to discuss, and demanded a council with the capitan. After consent
had been given, he assembled his principal men, and going through the usual preliminary of
taking a 'big smoke/ he arose, and with a great deal of ceremony commenced his pompous
and flowery speech, which, like all others of a similar nature, amounted to nothing, until he
had touched upon the real object of his visit. He said he had travelled a long distance over
the prairies to see and have a talk with his white brothers ; that his people were very hungry
and naked. He then approached me with six small sticks, and after shaking hands, laid one of
the sticks in my hand, which he said represented sugar, another signified tobacco, and the
other four, pork, flour, whisky, and blankets, all of which he assured me his people were in
much need of, and must have. His talk was then concluded, and he sat down, apparently
much gratified with the graceful and impressive manner with which he had executed his part
of the performance.
" It then devolved upon me to respond to the brilliant efforts of the prairie orator, which I did
in something like the following manner. After imitating his style for a short time, I closed my
remarks by telling him that we were poor infantry soldiers, who were always obliged to go on foot ;
that we had become very tired of walking, and would like much to ride. Furthermore, I had
observed that they had among them many fine horses and mules. I then took two small sticks,
and imitating as nearly as possible the manner of the chief, placed one in his hand, which I
told him was nothing more nor less than a first-rate horse, and then the other, which signified a
good large mule. I closed by saying that I was ready to exchange presents when it suited his
convenience. They looked at each other for some time without speaking, but finally got up
and walked away, and I was not troubled with them again "
21
162 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The experienced prairie traveller will notice that though there is much in common in
the method of constructing the lodges, fires, &c., of all the tribes, yet each tribe has its
own peculiarities in this respect. The Osages, for example, make lodges of the shape of a
wagon-cover, of bent rods or willows covered with skins, blankets, or bark ; while the Kickapoo
lodges are made "in an oval form, something like a rounded haystack, of poles set in the
ground and united at the top," the whole being covered with cloths or bark. The Crees, Sioux,
Araphoes, Cheyennes, Utes, Comanches, Blackfeet, and Kioways use a conical lodge (or tepee)
covered with buffalo-hides ; and so on. These particular tribes carry along with them their
lodge-poles and coverings when they remove from one place to another, and hence the trail of
such a party can be traced by the marks left in the mud or dust of the path by the trailing
of the poles fastened on each side of a horse, but touching the ground. The tribes, however,
that construct lodges different from those last mentioned, leave the framework standing when
they quit any encampment^
Whatever may be the religious tenets of the prairie tribes, like all the race to which
they belong they implicitly believe in " medicine-work," and the medicine-men are important
individuals in every tribe. Unlike the Pacific tribes, medicine-work is not confined to a
certain class, but every warrior must undergo some ceremonies of this nature before he can
take his place among the councillors of the nation. Among some tribes — the Sioux and the
nearly extinct tribe of Mandans, who lived on the Missouri (see engravings on pp. 77, 81, and
96) — these rites were of a most complicated and cruel character, the young men who were
candidates for the honours of warriors having to suffer the most excruciating tortures under the
eyes of the chiefs, who were watching them closely, and the slightest sign of impatience, or
inability to bear the pain, would have disgraced the novice for life.
Among them, as among all tribes, the " medicine-bag " figures prominently. A young
fellow goes out into the prairie, or into some lonely place, and sleeps until he dreams
of some animal. This animal is then his c( medicine." He kills it, and turning its skin
into a bag, he wears it continually about his person. The skin may be small enough to be
put next to his breast under his garment, or so large as to be rather an encumbrance, but
carry it he must. Everything wonderful and strange is a medicine. Painting is a great
medicine ; photography is a still greater ; while the six-shooter, especially if they experience
the effect of it on their own persons, is a most wonderful medicine. There is a medicine
for everything, and specialists among the medicine-men. There are medicine-men who can
bring the buffalo, and rain-makers who can produce rain, and some even who will pretend
to stop it. These latter gentlemen are generally fair practical meteorologists, and their exer-
tions are not unfrequently only a cloak to conceal the fact that they are prophesying on a
certainty. The power to produce rain is of importance to the few tribes who cultivate a little
corn, and is accordingly well paid for. Medicine-work is successful, the medicine-men tell
their dupes, just in proportion to the length of time occupied in making preparations for it :
if you continue your work long enough, rain is sure to come (pp. 105, 108, 109, 164).
One of the most extraordinary medicine-rites I have heard of is found among the
Tonkawas, one of the Texan tribes, who are regarded as renegades and aliens from social inter-
course with the other tribes. They are, in fact, not unlike the Diggers of the Sierra Nevada,
and do not attempt to cultivate the soil or build houses, but live in temporary bark or brush
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: MEDICINE RITES. 163
tenements, and eke out a miserable existence on reptiles, roots, or any other garbage affording
the least nutriment. They seem but little elevated above the brutes; indeed, the "medicine"
scene which follows shows that they hold rather advanced views on that subject themselves.
They consider that their original progenitor was brought into the world by the agency of
wolves, and to celebrate the event the " wolf -dance " is performed on certain occasions, though
always with the utmost solemnity and secrecy. Major Neighbors, by great interest, managed
to get concealed in the lodge before the dance commenced, and could observe what was going
on without himself being seen. Soon after the major was hidden, about fifty warriors, all
dressed in wolf-skins from head to foot, so as to represent the animal very fairly, made their
entrance upon all-fours in single file, and passed round the lodge, howling, growling, and
making other demonstrations peculiar to that carnivorous quadruped. After this had con-
tinued for some time, they next put down their noses and sniffed the earth in every direc-
tion, until at length one of them suddenly stopped, uttered a, shrill cry, and commenced
scratching the ground at a particular spot. The others immediately uttered a shrill cry, and
followed his example, then, gathering round, they all set to work scratching up the earth
with their hands, imitating the motions of the wolf in so doing, and in a few minutes, they
exhumed from the spot a genuine live Tonkawa, who had previously been interred for the per-
formance. As soon as they had unearthed this strange biped, they ran round him, scenting
his person and examining him from head to foot with the greatest apparent delight and
curiosity. The advent of this curious and novel creature was an occasion of no small
moment to them, and a council of venerable and sage old wolves was at once assembled to
determine what disposition should be made of him. The Tonkawa addressed them as
follows : — " You have taken me from the spirit-land, where I was contented and happy, and
brought me into a world where I am a stranger, and I know not what I shall do for subsistence
and clothing. It is better you should place me back where you found me, otherwise I shall freeze
and starve." After mature deliberation the council declined returning him to the earth, and
advised him to gain a livelihood as the wolves did ; to go out into the wilderness, and rob, kill,
and steal whenever opportunity presented. They then placed a bow and arrows in his hands,
and told him with these he must furnish himself with food and clothing ; that he could wander
about from place to place like the wolves, but that he must never build a house or cultivate the
soil ; that if he did, he would surely die. This injunction, the chief assured our informant,
had always been strictly adhered to by the Tonkawas, and for once he lied not. This rite is
very peculiar, and may be compared with the wolf -attack among the Seshahts, mentioned at
p. 43, and with other superstitions in which the wolf figures (p. 118).
Buffalo-hunting is likewise an occupation common to all the plain tribes. They are hunted by
the tribesmen at all seasons, and the bullet, the long lance, and the arrow play an equal part in the
work of destruction. They will even entice them into " pounds," V-shaped enclosures, or rather
traps, where they will be slaughtered remorselessly. Sometimes a herd will be driven in the direction
of a high precipice, and one after another, either unaware of the danger or unable to avoid it,
will tumble over and be killed on the spot. If the animals attempt to turn back in time, their
fate is almost equally certain, for few escape this running the gauntlet of the Indians. In the
winter they are pursued by the Indians in snow-shoes, and numbers are killed while struggling
almost helplessly through the snow-drifts. Sometimes the buffalo will attempt to cross a lake
1C4
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
on the smooth ice, when they become perfectly helpless, and fall an easy prey to their enemies.
They will be even pursued on foot during the summer months, the Indians creeping within
range by means of the disguise of a wolf-skin drawn over their naked bodies. The buffalo
suspects nothing, for the cowardly prairie-wolf will never attack the buffalo when in herds, but
^F^^^Pil
SIOUX INDIAN TOBACCO BAGS, MYSTEUV WHISTLE, BATTLES, AND DRUM. (Partlj after Catliit.)
only singly : then the silent arrow soon does its work. So dependent are many of the tribes on
the buffalo, that if the herds do not approach for a length of time within a reasonable distance
of the village the tribe is reduced to starvation, and there is nothing for it but to resort to
the buffalo-dance (p. 49). So certain is this dance of bringing the game to the village, that
every adult must keep by him a mask composed of the head and part of the hide of the buffalo,
so that, when occasion arises, he may take part in this very necessary Terpsichorean rite. It
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: HUNTING.
165
lever fails, because, with a logic as incontestable as that of the rain-maker, it has to be con-
tinued until the buffalo come. When one man is exhausted, another pretends to kill him, and so
being supposed to be hors de combat, another takes his place ; and thus the weird dance continues,
day and night, until the buffalo come in sight, when, of course, it is patent to every unprejudiced
mind that this " medicine-dance " has been of sovereign power. The rate at which buffaloes
are butchered has rapidly thinned them, and though still existing in immense herds, their area
is year by year narrowing ; and eventually, with the settling up of the prairies, their inter-
section by railways, and the general use of firearms by the Indians, their extermination is
only a question of time. Thousands are annually slaughtered through sheer wastefulness, and
PRAIRIE INDIAN FULLY EQUIPPED FOK TRAVEL.
the hides of the cows being in greater request for robes than those of the bulls, the former are
killed in greater number. In the Missouri region alone nearly 4,500,000 were massacred
in three years, and the number of buffaloes shot annually cannot be much less than from a
quarter to half a million. When Coronado went on his famous expedition he traversed,
says Castenada, the historian of his expedition, "immense plains, seeing nothing for miles
together but skies and herds of bison." To this day, in many places, thousands may be seen at
one view. When Lewis and Clarke first crossed the prairies they saw, on one occasion, as
many as 20,000 in a herd. At another spot such a multitude of these animals were fording
the Missouri that for a mile the stream was so filled up that they could not proceed until the
herd had passed. Such sights, if not already among the things of the past, soon will be, and
when the last buffalo becomes extinct the last Prairie Indian will disappear* (pp. 160, 189).
* Allen: " The Buffalo" (1875) ; Dodge : "Hunting Grounds of the Great West" (1877), &c.
166 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
In addition to buffalo hunting, which is ranked both as an amusement and a necessity of
life, horse-racing (p. 181), dancing, ball-playing, and other amusements fill up the leisure;
time not devoted to war or sleep. Drunkenness is now gaining ground amongst them, and
round every railway-station on the line of the Pacific Railroad dirty, besotted wretches are seen
lounging. In the train of drunkenness comes a host of other iniquities, as well as diseases,
which, singly or combined, will speedily make the plain Indian an ethnological curiosity.
Nearly all the Indians, with the exception of most of the north-western tribes, pay great
respect to the calumet, or tobacco-pipe ; every negotiation must begin and end with a smoke.
No council can be held without it, and to offer it to an enemy is a sign of peace and goodwill.
The bowls of most of their pipes are carved out of a kind of steatite (catlinite) found in the
Coteau des Prairies, in the Dakotah or Sioux territory, and which is looked upon by the Indians
as of a sacred character. The long slender pipe-stems, made out of reeds, are ornamented with
feathers, tufts of dyed hair, &c., and are very elegant in shape. Among some tribes the bearer
•of the pipe of peace was a most important personage, being held for the time being as almost
sacred, albeit he had to pay rather smartly for his office to his predecessor.
We have seen that few of the North- Western Indians are skilful at tracking. The peculiar
talent for following up a trail by signs undiscernible to a white man is also little cultivated
among the prairie Indians. The trailers employed by the Government officers on the prairies are
Indians from the Eastern United States, who are now all settled to the west of the Mississippi.
In them this quality — which has been celebrated in a hundred tales, and more particularly
in the works of Fenimore Cooper, which give such an alluring description of the manners of
the tribes whose home was once in the more thickly-populated Atlantic States — is very strongly
•developed. Perhaps the most skilful are the Delawares, a remnant of the great Alonquin
family who, when William Penn colonised Pennsylvania, occupied the site of the present city
of Philadelphia. They were then very unwarlike, having been subjugated by the Six Nations.
But after their removal to the west they regained all their old reputation, and carried their
" war-path" almost to the shores of the Pacific. They are now very scattered, and possess an
unconquerable desire for roaming. As traders, or trappers, or hunters, they are found among
all the prairie tribes, wherever any advantage is to be gained. They are the Jews of the Indian
tribes, dispersed amongst all nations, and wondrously alive to the " main chance." The Shawnees,
another tribe of the Eastern States, have been associated with them for more than 170 years,
and may be said to form with the Delawares really one people. When at home they live near
the Missouri River and also on the Canadian River. Many of them, like nearly all the eastern
tribes who have moved west of the Mississippi, are more or less civilised, but they still retain
some of their old characteristics, more especially this instinct of following a trail, which was
originally acquired by force of circumstances, but, continued from father to son through long
generations, has now become intensified and hereditary. They are close observers of every
object which would enable them to recognise a place again, or to follow the slightest trace
of a trail — trifles which a white man would never notice. "An incident," writes General
Marcy, " which was related to me as occurring with one of these guides a few years since,
forcibly illustrates their character. The officer having charge of the party to which he was
attached, sent him out to examine a trail he had met with on the prairie, for the purpose of
ascertaining where it would lead to. The guide, after following it as far as he supposed he
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: TRAILING. 167
would be required to do, returned and reported that it led off into the prairie to no place, so-
fur as he could discover. He was told that this was not satisfactory, and directed to take the
trail again, and to follow it until he gained the required information. He accordingly went
out a second time, but did not return that day, nor the next, and the party, after a time, began
to be alarmed for his safety, fearing he might have been killed by the Indians. Days and
weeks passed by, but still nothing was heard of the guide, until on arriving at the first border
settlement, to their astonishment, he made his appearance among them, and approaching the
commanding officer, said, ' Captain, that trail which you ordered me to follow comes out here/
He had, with indomitable energy, traversed alone several hundred miles of wild and desolate
prairie, with nothing but his gun to depend upon for a subsistence, determined this time to
carry out the instructions of his employer to the letter."
Few white men ever become good trailers, their senses seemingly not being sufficiently
acute for the points necessary to be observed in order to render them accomplished in this art.
It cannot be taught from books ; it is essentially observation carried into practice — premises and
deduction. From childhood the exigencies of his life compel the Indian to develop faculties,
without which he would figure but indifferently either in war or the chase. There is really
nothing mysterious about this trailing-, though one would imagine, from the way in which it
is treated in works of fiction, that it was something supernatural. For instance, if on the
prairie you see in the trail of a travelling party of Indians no signs of lodge-poles, you may be
sure that you are on the track of a war or hunting party — in either case, aboriginal wayfarers
to be avoided in the interest of what a surgeon calls " the continuity of tissue." For knowledge
of native habits tells us that when moving about from place to place the Indian carries along
with him his lodge-poles trailing behind from either side of the horse's back ; but that when
he goes to war, in order to be lightly equipped, he carries no baggage of that sort. If there are
no footprints of women or children on a foot-trail, then the probabilities are that the party
are after no good. The marks which the horses' hoofs leave in the soil will also indicate to
an experienced trailer whether they have been walking, trotting, or running, and Indians
have often tried to point out to me the difference between the print of the foot of a woman
and that of a man, and the difference between the footprint of a woman with a load on
her back and of one without it. Indian and American horses' tracks can be distinguished by
the first being always unshod, and being, moreover, smaller than the latter. The droppings of
the dung from animals are also good indications of the age of a trail, and if you bear in
mind whether there has been rain within a few days, the age of a trail may sometimes be
determined in this way. Wild horses, in moving about from place to place, will often leave
a track behind which might be mistaken for that of a war-party, but if you watch the trail
until some dung is found, and see whether this lies in a pile or not, you have a sure indication
of the nature of the trail. A wild horse always stops to relieve itself, while a party of
Indians would keep their horses in motion, and the ordure would be scattered along the road.
If the trail passes through woodland, Marcy has very properly pointed out that the mustang
(or wild horse) will occasionally go under the limbs of trees too low to admit the passage of a
man on horseback. >
An Indian can even tell by what particular tribe a trail has been made, the number of the
fty, its age, and many other things connected with it, astounding to the uninitiated. General
Ci
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
jMarcy gives such an apt instance of .this that I may quote it from his notes on this subject.
On one occasion lie was riding1 with a Delaware upon the prairies, and crossed the trail of a
large party of Indians travelling with lodges. The tracks appeared to him quite fresh, and
he remarked to the Indian that they must be near the party. " Oh no/' said he, " the track
was made two days before, in the morning/' at the same time pointing with his finger to where
the sun would be about eight o'clock. He then showed how he arrived at this conclusion. He
called his companion's attention to some blades of grass that had been pressed down into the
earth by the horses' hoofs, upon which the sand still adhered, having dried on, thus clearly
showing that the grass was wet when the tracks were made : now there had been no dew for
the last two nights, but on the previous morning it had been heavy. On another occasion the
same Indian pointed to what looked like a distinctly marked impression of the heel and all the
toes of a bear, and accordingly his white companion, fancying that here was an opportunity
for distinguishing himself, mentioned that such was his conclusion. The Indian, however,
knew better, and that at a glance. " Oh no, captain," he replied, " may be so he not bear-
track." He then pointed with his ram-rod to some spears of grass that grew near the
impressions, and explained that when the wind was blowing, the blades of grass would be
bent over towards the ground, and the oscillating motion thereby produced would scoop out the
loose sand into the shape I have described. Such a solution would have baffled the wits of
most white men. A white man lost on a prairie, or on a snow-covered country, has a fatal
facility for going in a circle, always supposing that he is following up a more and more
beaten track, until gradually the idea dawns upon him that he is only following his own
footsteps round and round, in a wide circle. An Indian never does that, but will strike from
place to place, with almost unerring certainty, arriving at the point desired, even though he
has travelled for many miles over a country trackless to the white man's eye, but familiar
enough by well-known landmarks to him. Nearly all Indians mark trails by tying the
branches of low bushes into knots, rarely thinking of " blazing" the trail after the white man's
fashion — viz., by chipping a fragment off the bark of trees with the axe, as he passes by,
without stopping. Indians can conceal themselves while skirmishing much better than white
men, and signal by smokes from peak to peak all day, and by fires at night. A war or hunting
party, if they have lost their friends, will signal their whereabouts in this manner. AVhen
travelling through a hostile country it is by no means reassuring to see that your movements
are observed and telegraphed all over the country by the smokes which rise from the hills
around, ahead of, and behind you, and by the fires which shoot up in the darkness of the
lonely danger-hiding night.
All the prairie tribes, the Navajos (if they can be styled a prairie tribe) excepted, like those
who used to inhabit the Eastern United States and Canada, agree in this, that they take the
scalp as a trophy, and a proof that they have killed their enemy. This operation is performed bv
making a circular incision immediately above the ears. Their teeth are then employed to separate
the scalp, or the warrior will seize by his hands the "scalp-lock," and pressing his feet against
the shoulders of the dead man, will tear it off (see engraving on p. 72). The scalp, of course, is
understood to be from the head of a dead enemy, but cases are not unknown in which the person
has only been stunned, and after being scalped survived the operation for years, his baldness, of
course, being beyond the power of capUiipoientt. Some scalps are not much larger than a crown
170 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
piece, and these are hung- to different parts of the dress, or suspended from the bridle or halter of
the horses, or carried as trophies at great feasts or parades. Sometimes they are cut into a
fringe, and used to decorate their weapons, or attached to a " scalp-pole " over the wigwam.
This is done by the chief setting the example by suspending all the scalps which he has taken
over his wigwam, when all the minor dignitaries immediately follow suit. On such an occasion
a stranger, by counting* the number of scalps over each lodge, can ascertain the rank of each
individual in the tribe ; it is, in fact, a rude sort of peerage. On other occasions the scalp,
if large, is stretched on a hoop at the end of a stick two or three feet in length, for the
purpose of being danced. This " scalp-dance," found more or less amongst all these tribes, is a
hideous savage display. It is danced at night by the light of torches, and just before retiring
to bed. " When a war-party returns from a war-excursion, bringing home with them the
scalps of their enemies, they generally dance them for fifteen nights in succession, vaunting
forth the most extravagant boasts of their wonderful prowess in. war, whilst they brandish their
Avar-weapons in their hands. A number of young women are selected to aid (though they do
not actually join in the dance), by stepping into the centre of the ring and holding up the
scalps that have been taken, whilst the warriors dance (or, rather, jump) around in a circle,
brandishing their weapons, and barking and yelping in the most frightful manner, all jumping
on both feet at once, with a simultaneous stamp and blow and thrust of their weapons, with
which, it would seem, they were actually cutting and carving each other to pieces. During
these frantic leaps and yelps and thrusts every man distorts his face to the utmost, darting
about his glaring eye-balls, and snapping his teeth, as if he were in the heat of battle ! No
description could convey more than a faint idea of the frightful effects of these scenes, enacted
in the dead of night, under the glaring light of their blazing flambeaux ; nor could all the
years allotted to mortal man in the least obliterate the vivid impression that one scene of this
kind would leave upon his memory " (p. 1G9).
On the plains, of late years, the scalps which form the red man's " jewellery" have been, for
the most part, those of whites, for, almost without exception, nearly all of the prairie tribes are,
or have been, at war with them. The details of these outrages are sickening. Suffice it to say
that houses are burnt, the inmates slaughtered and scalped, or taken prisoners, the lonely stations
on the plains captured, often after bitter resistance, and the mail coach attacked by these fiends
so frequently, that until recently, when the formation of the railway made this mode of con-
veyance a thing of the past, soldiers had to guard it, often ineffectually, for a great part of the
distance. (See Plate 6.) Sometimes these guerilla wars originated in the desire for plunder,
at other times for the purpose of preventing the whites penetrating into the country — for instance,
a few years ago many of the tribes coalesced for that purpose — but frequently enough revenge
for brutal outrages perpetrated upon defenceless women and children by the half-civilised
whites who hang about the frontier was the primary cause of these terrible scenes of blood-
shed. A. single instance (and I could give a score) may be sufficient for the reader. Sonic years
ago a party of frontier men were crossing the plains to Oregon, armed of course, and reckles
most of them are. One day, whilst one of them was practising with his rifle, he noticed
an old Indian squaw gathering berries. Not another Indian was in sight, and in spil-
the protests of his companions, in mere wantonness he fired at the woman and killed her.
They travelled on, but still a fear possessed them that the deed might be discovered and be
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL PLAINS: SCALPING.
171
revenged. Days passed, and nothing- was seen of the Indians, but at last, when least thinking
of them, they were overtaken and surrounded by a party so large that resistance was hopeless.
The Indians were more reasonable, and seemingly more merciful than the whites. They did not,
as they had the power to do, slaughter the whole party ; they only asked that the murderer
should be surrendered to them for punishment. As cowardly as he was cruel, he begged his
comrades to save him, and for a while the party were undecided. Should they do so or not ?
Would it not be worth while to fight it out — hopeless as the contest seemed ? At last they re-
solved to give him up, on the Indians solemnly promising that they would not take his life.
The wretched man was handed over to the fiends thirsting for vengeance, his companions retiring
to some distance to await the result. They saw little, but on their ears burst the most heart-
rending yells of pain, which they knew proceeded from their late companion. They could do
nothing but listen, in terror and horror, all through the dark night, unable, if even they had
been willing, to sleep. Morning came, and their companion, shrieking with pain, was led into
their camp, alive, certainly : the Indians had kept their word. But at the sight which met
their eyes even these rough backwoodsmen grew sick and faint. His fend ish torturers It ad, lit
ly lit, flayed the unhappy man, until there was not an inch of skin on his whole body. His
comrades, on his urgent entreaties, put him out of pain by sending a bullet through his head,
after which they went one way and the Indians another.
"Whenever they have a chance they mutilate the bodies of the white men whom they have
slain, and Dr. Bell tells us that each tribe inflicts a mutilation corresponding to the sign —
in the sign-language — (already described) of * the tribe. For instance, a non-commissioned
American officer was killed in a fight with them, and when found had been stripped quite
naked and scalped. Through his head a bullet had passed, while his brain was exposed by a
tomahawk blow. The nose was slit up, the throat cut from ear to ear, seven arrows were
sticking in his body, the breast was laid open so as to expose the heart, and the arm was hacked
to the bone, while his legs from the hip to the knee lay open with horrible gashes ; they had
even cut the flesh from the knee to the foot. The allied tribes who had shared in this fight
were Cheyennes, Araphoes, and Sioux. The hacked muscles of the right arm spoke of the
Cheyennes, or " cut-arms ; " the slit nose, of the Araphoes, or " smellers ; " while the throat cut
seemed to be intended by the savage Sioux to let the whites know that they too had been
present at these horrible orgies.
The Indians of the plains rarely care to make captives of men, unless with a view
to torture. Even then the trouble they give is hardly equal to the pleasure which their
anguish affords these fiends. But children they are fond of kidnapping and training up as
savages, and women are invariably subjected to a demoniacal brutality, which goes far to account
for the undying antipathy which exists between the red men of the prairies and the whites
of the frontier. The Indians have undoubtedly been treated with scant justice by the
Government and people of the United States, but between the Mississippi and the Rocky
Mountains it would be a vain task to attempt to rouse a scintilla of sympathy for the
maltreated lords of the American soil.*
* Among the numerous works published on the Prairie Indians, those of Marcy and Dodge are the most recent
and best. Col. Dodge ia assuredly sufficiently outspoken, though perhaps too much of a pessimist.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE INDIANS OP THE CENTRAL PLAINS : COMANCHES, APACHES, ETC,
NUMEROUS classifications have been made of the aborigines of North America, but not one
of them is so satisfactory that anything need be sacrificed to the desire of availing ourselves
of them. For example, the tribes occupying the extreme northern part of the continent, close
to the Eskimo line, have been bracketed under the name of the Alonquin or O jib way
Confederacy. The Mobilian, or Cherokee Alliance, occupies a more southern region, while
the Ochunkorow, or Winnebago Confederacy, extends from Lake Superior to the Arkansas
River and to the Rocky Mountains. The Dakotahs, or Sioux, comprise the Santees, Yantons,
Tetons, Sissetons, and numerous subdivisions, in addition to the Assiniboines, Crows (p. 33),
Minatarees (Plate 2), Hidatsa, and Mandans (pp. 77, 81, 96), including the Omahas lowas,
and allied tribes are comprised in the stock.
COMANCHES.
The Shoshone and Pawnee families are even more widely spread, for they extend to
both sides of the Rocky Mountains, and comprise the Moqui, the Utes, and the Comanches.
The last were at one time the most ruthless of all the prairie tribes. But nowadays,
owing to repeated wars with the whites, and other misfortunes, they do not number over
3,000, the greater portion of whom reside in Texas. The Comanches, or " Serpents/'
as they are called, from their custom of imitating the crawling nature of a snake by
the waving of the hand or forefinger, are not a handsome race. Inclined to corpulency,
in stature rather low, with bright copper faces and long hair, the men are on foot slow
and awkward. But, once on horseback, Mr. Blackmore justly characterises them as
among the most graceful, as they are the most daring and expert, of riders. Even the
women are bold equestriennes, and are skilful at shooting buffaloes or lassooing antelopes
(p. 189). The squaws, however, wear their hair short, have stolid unintelligent faces,
and, owing to being early habituated to hard work and rough usage, are ill-shapen, bow-
legged, and as is not unfrequently the case among savages, are inferior in personal appear-
ance to their lords. The Comanches consider themselves one of the most prosperous and
powerful nations on the earth. For the most part, the southern division, or Tennawas,
lead the lives of herdsmen and robbers, wandering from place to place in search of game for
themselves and grass for their animals. In this way all the wide region, from the Red River
of the south to the Colorado, has umvelcome visits from them. They derive no portion of their
food from the buffalo, their country being out of its range — deer, antelopes, and smaller game
imperfectly supplying its place, and were it not for the large number of mules and horses which
they still possess, they would sometimes be driven to great straits for food, in spite of the aid
the Government affords those who choose to come into reservations. As it is, their stock is
THE INDIANS OF THE WESTERN PLAINS: THE COMANCHES. 173
rapidly decreasing1, as well as the Indians themselves, and in a few years starvation, and
the vile habits of drunkenness and other civilised (?) customs which they have learned from
association with the border whites, will exterminate this band.
The " middle Comanches/' or Yamparaco as they are called, spend their winters in North-
western Texas, and in summer cross Red River and Canadian River towards the Arkansas, in
pursuit of the buffalo. They are much less civilised than the southern Comanches, seldom
visiting the white settlements, and using- the buffalo-skin as clothing-. They have only a vague
conception of the customs, numbers, and power of the whites, and what little they do know
has not given them a very elevated idea of the moral character of the " pale faces/'
The "northern Comanches" are still wilder, and as late as thirty years ago few of
these primitive people had ever met with a white man. During the summer they follow the
buffalo over the plains. At this season they are supplied with abundance of food, while in
winter they are famishing for the want of the merest amount necessary to sustain life ; they
are a race of hunters, living from day to day, and from hand to mouth. In number they
greatly exceed that of the other two divisions. Where the Comanches came from cannot now
be determined, but, like most of the prairie Indians, they trace their origin from the West.
Polygamy is common amongst them, and their courtship is of the briefest description
possible, as well as of the most prosaic, business-like character. The suitor comes with what
horses and other goods he thinks the young lady may be worth, and sends word to the father as
to the object of this visit ; a consultation ensues, and if the terms are satisfactory, she is led out
and handed over to her proprietor. The lady is in no way consulted, though it ought to be
added that not unfrequently she afterwards consults her own choice — by eloping Avith a more
favoured lover. In such a case the irate husband pursues the runaway couple, and may, according
to long-established custom, put them to death (if he can), though more frequently he solaces his
wounded honour (and purse) by accepting a present of horses, after which he surrenders all right
in the girl. Incontinence among them is sometimes punished by the husband firing a bullet
through the crossed feet of the erring wife. Morality is not high, and the temporary marriage
of a stranger who may visit the tribe is thought, as among other tribes, essential to hospitality.
Among all savages marriage is a prosaic matter. Compare, for instance, the custom of the
Hudson Bay Indians, in former times, of wrestling for wives, the strongest man carrying off
tha prize. The result was that no man could be certain of keeping his spouse, if he were
challenged to contest with another for her possession. The same custom prevails among the
Coppermine and Chippeweyan Indians — the stronger man considering that he has a perfect
right to the wife of the weaker. Yet long custom has taught the woman, whatever might be
her private feelings on the matter, that to protest would be useless, and accordingly she never
dreams of such a course.
Horse-racing and gambling are among their most inveterate passions ; war is also an
essential of their existence.
When a chief wishes volunteers for a war-party, he rides through the camp carrying a
)le surrounded with eagles' feathers, suspended to which is a small red flag. Mounted on his
.>est horse, and clad in full war-costume, he parades around, singing the war-song. Warriors who
re willing to follow him mount and join in the procession. After a time they also dismount
ind join in the war-dance. This parade is continued for some days, until the requisite number
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
is obtained. It not unfrequently happens that the chief who has organised the war-party is
discouraged at the prospect, and returns home again. In such a case the followers elect another
leader, and continue on, as long as anybody remains. In this the reader will see how loose is
tho authority of the prairie chiefs. Not unfrequently among them there is one chief who
administers the government of the tribe and another who leads the war-expedition, but either
can be deposed at the will of his tribesmen, and neither has any power over life, limb, or liberty :
all this must be decided by the council of the tribes, composed of the chiefs, the warriors, and
the medicine-men. All the followers of a chief are free warriors fighting under a chosen
leader, not subjects of an autocratic head. Any one may desert at any time, and the chief has
no power to keep or to punish him, though the contempt which cowardice invariably obtains
generally acts as a sufficient restraining influence on such conduct.
Sometimes a war-party is absent for a long period, but no sooner is it sighted on its return
than all the village is astir with excitement, and men, women, and children swarm out to
meet it. The white horses are painted and decked out most fantastically, and the whole party
is received with howls of joy as it passes through the village, after which the scalp-dance is
celebrated with all the pomp and ceremony of wrhich their limited resources admit. If, on the
contrary, the expedition is unsuccessful, then the relatives of the deceased cut off their hair and
the tails of their horses as symbols of mourning, though I am not aware that they black their
faces, as they do when celebrating the scalp-dance.
Among these Indians are numbers of Mexicans as well as other whites, whom they have
captured and hold in bondage. With one of these cases I have some little acquaintance. A young
man and his sister had been kidnapped when children, after the murder of their father and the
rest of their family . They grew up to adult condition, but afterwards a trader purchased the
boy, and brought him to one of the United States forts, from which in due course he reached
his mother, who at. the time of the massacre happened, fortunately, to have been from home.
As she pined to see her daughter again, the youth was persuaded to return to the Comanches
and endeavour to negotiate for her release. He did so — but found, however willing the
Indians might be to release her, an insuperable obstacle in the girl herself. She had married
an Indian ; she had never known anything else but Indian life ; her husband, her friends —
in a word, all that she held dear on earth, were among the Comanches, and she declined to leave
these, for the sake of a mother and a civilisation which she had never known, and of which she
had never felt the loss. Probably she is still living among the savages. Another case I have
heai-d of was that of a man who had been captured when a little boy, and lived with the
Indians until he was grown up. For some time after his return to his relatives he was so
exceedingly Comancheised that when he felt hungry he would go to his father's pasture,
shoot an ox, light a fire and cook as much of the meat as he might require, leaving the
remainder to the wolves. It was not for a long time that he could be persuaded to abandon
this rather improvident practice. It is even related that about a century ago the daughter
of the Spanish Governor- General at Chihuahua was stolen by them. The father immediately
pursued, and by means of an agent, after some weeks had elapsed, effected her ransom. But
she refused to return to her home, and sent them back the message "that the Indians had
tattooed her face according to their style of beauty ; had given her to be the wife of a young-
man; that her husband treated her well, and reconciled her to her mode of life; that she would
THE INDIANS OF THE WESTERN PLAINS: COMANCHES.
175
be more unhappy by returning to her father under these circumstances than by remaining
where she was." She continued to live among the Comanches, and reared a family of children
— at least so runs the tale. Sanaco, a Comanche chief, had a German wife whom he had stolen.
Among all the prairie tribes civilised women are held in captivity. Many of them are
Mexicans — only semi-civilised — and after residing for some time among the savages they
not unnaturally show no great desire to return again to civilisation. A most pitiful tale came
to my knowledge a few years ago. Some Red River hunters found at Bute Isle, on the other
side of the Coteau du Missouri, a number of Sioux lodges. The Indians had living amongst
them a beautiful American girl of sixteen, who had been at school in St. PauFs when the Sioux
war broke out. She begged the hunters to purchase her ; but an old Sioux, who treated her as
his wife, demanded as her price a puncheon of rum, a chest of tea, two horses, and some
powder and shot. They had not the price demanded, and so had to leave the poor girl to her
fate. She cried piteously as they moved off, the old Sioux watching her angrily. She seemed
to be tolerably well used, though I have been told by a woman who had been held captive
among the Cheyennes that the Indian squaws are very jealous of their white rivals, and ready to
heap every possible indignity and cruelty on them. The squaws are also the most pitiless in
their torture of the captives.
When a warrior of the Comanche nation dies, his robe is wrapped about him, and the rest
of his limited wardrobe put upon him. He is then buried on the summit of a hill, in a sitting
posture, with his face to the east. As in the Southern Oregon tribe mentioned at p. 94,
his friends then kill his best horses, all his war implements are destroyed, and the other
horses have their manes and tails clipped close as a sign of mourning and as a symbol of
affection. For some time — not unfrequently for a month — after the funeral, the relatives and
friends of the deceased assemble night and morning, for the purpose of crying and cutting
themselves with knives. The corpse is always buried immediately, but the mourning is in strict
proportion to the value of the departed to his tribe, a young- warrior being long and sadly
lamented, while an aged one is dismissed with a shorter period of woe.
Some of tlie other prairie tribes swathe the body in skins, and elevate it on a sort of
scaffolding of poles and there allow it to mummify, while the dry prairie winds sweep around
it. Others elevate it into the branches of a tree, like some of the Pacific coast tribes
(p. 5G). The system of burying on high places is, however, the favourite method of sepulture.
A famous Omaha chief, Blackbird, was, for instance, buried sitting erect on his favourite
horse, fully equipped for battle, by his kinsmen and warriors gradually building both in with
turves and stones, on a high bluff — situated about a thousand miles above St. Louis, on the
Missouri. The place is still visited by the Indians as sacred, and by the more prosaic whites,
to obtain a good view of the surroimding country.
General Marcy knew the widow of a prominent Comanche chief who continued the mourning-
ceremonies, though at the time of his meeting her about three years had elapsed since her
husband's death. (At one time, for the wife to immolate herself on the death of her husband was
not unknown.) This dignified and faithful wife was one of the best hunters in her tribe, and is
said to have killed in one morning, near Fort Chadbourn, fourteen deer. The Comanche heaven
is the heaven of all other Indians — a place where men who have taken plenty of scalps and
stolen abundance of horses revel in a never-failing supply of buffalo. They may visit the earth
1?6 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
during- the night, but must return to the spirit-land before break of day. They have a vague
belief that they can hold some converse with the Supreme Being, in whom they trust, through
the medium of the sun ; but what other religion they have it is not easy to make out.
Doubtless they have a complicated and vague enough mythology.
One thing' is certain, they believe in one great Supreme Being, however many minor deities
they may have, and that they make no images of the object or objects of their worship. That
they have ever been idolaters I cannot learn. On the whole, they are theists of a mild type —
making, doubtless, supplications to the sun, moon, or earth, but not to these objects as gods,
but only as media of intercommunication with God,* in which respect they differ from some
nations of the Old World, who worship the heavenly bodies themselves as the actual deities ; and
in older times in Egypt, Greece, Chaldea, India, Scandinavia, Lapland, Britain, Germany, and
many other countries, sun-worship was very common. Among tha Peruvians, the Incas claimed
to be the children of the sun, and in a figurative sense some of the modern American Indians
call themselves " children of the sun/' or " souls made of fire." " My father," exclaimed
the indignant warrior and chief Tecumseh, as he threw himself on the ground when the
Governor of Indiana desired him to take a chair, " the sun is my father, and the earth is my
mother j I will repose upon her bosom."f Yet with all their respect for the Great Spirit,
the first words they learn in coming in contact with the whites are those of obscenity and
profanity, though it must be remembered that their first associates are immoral, uneducated
hunters, traders, or frontier-men, and that they have often little idea of the meaning of the
phrases put into their mouths by these unworthy tutors. Like most of their brethren, they are
very fond of obtaining certificates of character, and value the worth of a man and the strength
of his friendship by the presents they receive from him. Though like other Indians they are
fond of assuming a nil admirari air, yet in reality they are very inquisitive and even nervous.
The steam-bath is in much vogue amongst them, and is not only resorted to for the
cure of disease, but also as part of the regular course which young warriors must undergo
before being permitted to assume the responsible position of scalp-lifters. The northern
Comanches have an immense idea of their own importance, and nothing but severe punish-
ment, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge of the line of conduct to be pursued
towards them, will ever cause them to respect the whites. With the exception of the southern
Comanches, few of them have taken the first steps towards civilisation, and when the buffalo
becomes exterminated or scarce — a question only of time, and not a very long time either —
they must take to agriculture or other civilised mode of obtaining a subsistence, live by
plundering their civilised neighbours, or disappear. The latter two contingencies are much
more likely than the former. " That they are ultimately destined to extinction does not,
in my mind," writes one well qualified to speak on the subject, " admit of a doubt, and it may
be beyond the agency of human control to avert such a result. But it seems to me in
accordance with the benevolent spirit of our institutions that we should endeavour to make
the pathway of their exit as smooth and easy as possible, and I know no more effectual way
of accomplishing this than by teaching them to till the soil." But will they be taught ? I
* A contrary and (I think) erroneous view is given by Major Neighbors, in Schoolcraft's " Indian Tribes,"
ii. 127.
t " Theology of the American Indians," American National Quarterly Review, June, 1863.
178 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
fancy not; the race will die out — Ishmaels, whose hands are against every man, and against
whom every man's hand is turned, either to avenge the past, protect himself for the present.
or, as often as not, as a precaution for the future.
APACHES.
It is now more than 100 years ago since Miguel Venegas, the Spanish friar, wrote
the following description of the tribe whose name heads this paragraph : — "Within a circui
of 300 leagues they reside in their small ranckerias* erected in the valleys and in the breach e.
of the mountains. They are cruel to those who have the misfortune to fall into their hands
and among them are several apostates. They go entirely naked, but make their incursions 01
horses of great swiftness, which they have stolen from other parts. A skin serves them a
a saddle. Of the same skins they make little shoes of one piece, and by them they are tracei
in their flight. They begin the attack with shouts at a great distance, to strike the enenv
with terror. They have not naturally any great share of courage; but the little they can
boast of is extravagantly increased on any good success. In war they rather depend upon
artifice than valour ; and on any defeat submit to the most ignominious terms, but keep their
treaties no longer than suits their convenience. His Majesty has ordered that if they require
peace, it should be granted, and even offered to them before they are attacked. But this
generosity they construe to proceed from fear. Their arrows are the common bows and arrows
of the country. The intention of their incursions is plunder, especially horses, which they use
both for riding and eating, the flesh of these creatures being one of their greatest dainties.
These people, during the last eighty years, have been the dread of Sonora, no part of which is
secure from their violence .... The Apaches penetrate into the province by different
passes, and after loading themselves with booty, will travel in one night fifteen, eighteen, or
twenty leagues. To pursue them over the mountains is equally dangerous and difficult, and
in the levels they follow no path. On any entrance into their country, they give notice to
one another by smokes or fires ; and at a signal they all hide themselves. The damages they
have done in the villages, settlements, farms, roads, pastures, woods, and mines are beyond
description; and many of the latter, though very rich, have been forsaken." Without the
change of almost a word, this lucid description by the old missionary applies to the Apaches
at the present day, as it would have applied to them 200 years before it was written.
Under the name " Apache " are comprehended several tribes or bands, numbering in all
something over 10,000 souls, f but, with the exception of a few hundreds too cowardly or too weak
to fight, and who therefore prefer to be fed by the Government, all hostile to the whites. The
Indian Department is endeavouring to collect the rest of them on " reservations," and to teach
them the arts of peace — at least so far as may prevent them being an annoyance to theii
civilised neighbours. These efforts have hitherto been most unsuccessful. They will " make
treaty " and accept all the presents with an avidity which leaves nothing to be desired. They
will even do the department the honour to live in the houses prepared for them, until they find
it to their profit to do otherwise, when they instantly commence that series of murderou;
depredations which in western parlance is known as "going on the rampage." Abou
* Or houses, a Spanish term applied in the extreme western portion of America very commonly to Indian village-
t By the census of 1880, chiefly on reservations or at large in Arizona and New Mexico.
THE INDIANS OF THE CENTEAL PLAINS: APACHES; NAVAJOS. 179
the habits or social condition of the others very little is known. Too much, on the other
hand, is known about their outrages. Signal failure has marked every attempt to either
" clear them out " or to " improve them — off the face of the earth.-" A few years ago
the commander at Camp Grant conceived that he had a special mission for this task, but the
result proved that in this opinion the gallant gentleman was altogether singular, he and
his soldiers being exceedingly glad, before they had gone many miles, to beat an undignified
retreat out of the country. Northern Sonora is their favourite plundering ground, and more
than a hundred years ago the Spaniards found it necessary to protect their outlying provinces
by a complete system of military posts, from San Antonio, in Texas, to the Pacific. So long as
this system was adopted, the country, being comparatively safe, prospered, but soon after the
withdrawal of the troops, owing to the decay of Spanish power, the region again became
desolated by the ravages of the savage hordes, hitherto kept in check by these forts. The
Apaches poured down upon it, the herdsmen fled for their lives, and left their cattle and horses
— herds of which in a wild condition are now found in the territory — to their fate. The country
districts cleared, the savages next attacked the smaller towns, until the word Apache became
such a name of terror, that even the news of one of these savage bands being seen twenty or
thirty miles off was sufficient to cause them to leave everything and flee. Secure in the
mountain fastnesses of his home in the north, the Apache meanwhile knew that he was safe
from pursuit or retaliation, and increased in boldness and atrocity. The result is that the
country is almost uninhabitable. Even though the United States has stipulated to protect the
Mexican border from these disagreeable denizens of the great Republic, they have felt them-
selves powerless to accomplish this, and the helpless frontier on both sides of the boundary
line lies waste. In this, indeed, is its principal safety, for there being nothing to steal or
murder, the Apaches do not visit it. Once, however, let the owner of a scalp settle in the
territory, or a flock of cattle graze in its villages, then, as of old, their yells would be heard in
the land. But Nature has taken in hand what the Government of the United States, or what
passes for such in Mexico, has failed to do ; the Apaches are dying off gradually, and the
general wish in the region surrounding their haunts is that that pleasant event cannot be too
speedily accelerated. The illustration on page 177 shows the scene of a terrible massacre by
this bloodthirsty tribe in 1867. Ethnically, they are a severed branch of the Athabascan family.
NAVAJOS.
This people, though often classed with the Apaches, are not only their hereditary enemies,,
but, though also aberrant Athabascans, a much finer race. Bold, defiant, with lustrous eyes, and
sharp, intelligent countenances, their skill in minor arts does not belie their appearance. ' They
have taken to agriculture, and in some cases have raised large crops of various kinds. They
also weave blankets, in appearance and quality, according to Dr. Bell, scarcely excelled even
by the costly semphes of Mexico and South America, and they manufacture baskets, ropes,
saddles, and bridle-bits. Yet in their love of rapine and plunder the Navajos are scarcely
excelled by the Apaches. Until they were partially settled upon " reservations " by the
Government they inhabited a fine tract of well-watered country, bounded on the north by the
Ute Indians, on the south by the Apaches, on the west by the Moqui and Zuni Pueblo
Indians, and on the east by the Rio Grande Valley. By the census of 1880 they
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
number 11,850. While they left their wives and old men to plant, reap, and attend to the
stock, and make blankets, the braves spent their lives traversing the whole country, and
carrying off the stock of the helpless Mexican farmers, besides keeping the entire agricultural
and mining population in a constant state of alarm. To give a slight idea of the depredations
of these hordes, it may be stated that between August 1, 1846, and October 1, 1856, there were
stolen by them no less than 12,887 mules, 7,050 horses, 31,581 horned cattle, and 453,293 head
of sheep. The official reports from New Mexico appear to contain nothing but catalogues of
depredations committed by the Navajos, or of similar deeds done by the Apaches ; and not only
was the valley of the Rio Grande swept over and over again of its stock, but the Indian, Pueblo
and Zuiii, and other native towns, barely escaped destruction, and this, too, since the annexation
of these places to the United States.
From 1846 up to the present date their history is simply one of plunderings by them and
reprisals by the whites. Their corn-fields were set on fire, their cattle and sheep driven away,
their stores plundered, and they themselves slaughtered by the enraged settlers and Indians
friendly to the whites. If there were no flocks to drive off, the military would attempt to
destroy the remnants of their stock by encamping at the different springs, thinking by this
means to prevent the sheep from obtaining water. This was not, however, altogether
successful, for the Navajo sheep, by long habit, only require water every three or four days. So
that the soldiers, after guarding a spring for some days, and seeing no signs of Indians, would
fancy the country must be deserted, and leave. Then the Navajos, who were grazing their stock
quietly in some secluded valley among the mountains hard by, would come and water these
flocks with the utmost impunity. Still the result of this continual warfare was to decrease them,
and at the present time there exists not a tithe of the number who once made the country
so lively. Numbers have gone on to " reserves," and it is said there are about 2,000 in the
hands of the Mexicans, \vhoprofess to bring them up as members of their families and households.
Perhaps so. They are, however, far from contented on the reservations, and we are informed
by their superintendent that of the state of their health and morals the hospital reports give a
woful account. "The tale is not half told, because they have such an aversion to the hospital
that if taken sick they will never go there, and so they are fast diminishing in numbers;
while the births are many the deaths are more. Discontent fills every breast of this brave and
light-hearted tribe, and a piteous cry comes from all as they think of their own far-off lands,
'Carry me back, carry me back!" In character they are said to be superior to most of
the neighbouring tribes, sparing life when no resistance was offered, though death was, and is,
the unvarying result of opposition to their plundering. In battle they never scalp an enemy,
and in many other respects they are generous, and more like the Pueblo Indians, or town-building
Indians of New Mexico, and with whom they claim a common relationship and origin. And
here it may be added that omnivorous as are many of the tribes of North America, there are r.o
grounds for believing that at present they practise cannibalism. The Tonkewas are, however,
affirmed to have in eai-lier times devoured their prisoners " out of revenge/' and there cannot
be a doubt that the Miamis, Kickapoos, Iroquois, and Alonquins at one time ate human flesh.
Recent researches in the shell mounds of Florida and New England, by Professor "Wymun and
Mr. Manly Hardy, demonstrate that the custom existed in these countries, as historical evidence
shows that it did in Louisiana and Illinois, and, perhaps, though as a religious rite, on the North-
182 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
West Coast. On the other hand, the Apaches have never been known to show the faintest trace
of humanity or good taste, scalping or mutilating their enemies in the most frightful manner,
and if they capture them alive torturing them to death by means of slow fires, sticking them full
of pine-knot chips, and then setting this chevaux-de-frise on firejand other diabolical inventions.
COLORADO RIVER INDIANS.
Between the limits of the Apache country (Rio Verde) and the Colorado are the Hualpais
and Yampais, two tribes few in number, and about the lowest type of American aboriginal
humanity. They are at peace with the whites, but rapidly decreasing, though at one time num-
bering many thousands. Those in the vicinity of Fort Mojave (Mojaveves) are the most powerful
of these Indians. They cultivate the bottom lands of the Colorado, and are entirely dependent
on the overflow of the river. If this fails the result is generally a famine — their resources from
wild fruits and game being now curtailed by the spread of the white settlements and their
own utter improvidence. The Cocopas near the river mouth are less dependent on the overflow,
and are therefore much more comfortably situated. As a specimen of the way in which these
tribes have decreased, it may be mentioned that while the Yumas — a tribe living higher up the
river — numbered at the period of the American occupation 5,000 souls, they do not now number
much more than 1,000. The last account I have of these people, who have little general interest,
is in a letter of the late superintendent of Indian affairs for Arizona. " We found," writes Mr.
Posten, " the Yumas indulging in great expectations. They are as dependent upon the overflow
of the river as the inhabitants of the Nile, but have no Joseph to provide for the years of
famine. The river having entirely failed to overflow its banks the previous year, they had not
planted, and consequently had not reaped , they were in a literal state of starvation, and many
of them absolutely died from the effects of hunger. Old Pasqual, the head chief, a friend of
long standing, with many more recent friends, came out to meet us, supposing the baggage-
wagon was laden with food. We gave them the usual peace-offering of the Indian weed,
which, judging from their rueful countenances, only increased the goneness of the stomach,
consequent on acute hunger. We had no food ; there are no contractors for food in the Indian
service; we had only shoddy and hardware (for presents). They asked us for bread, and we
gave them a hoe ; they begged for meat, and we gave them a blanket. ... It was un-
fortunate, too for the Smithsonian Institution. They had commissioned me to catch all the
bugs, snakes, rats, rabbits, birds, beetles, fish, grasshoppers, and horned frogs in Arizona for
their Institute, but there were none left; the Indians had eaten them all up, and hungered for
more. The commander at Fort Yuma did what he could to enable them to celebrate Christmas
— he managed to give them an issue of damaged hominy, which the horses had refused to eat.
It was a sad adieu to leave these starving wretches, but a source of congratulation to get away
from such a cannibalistic neighbourhood without loss of flesh."
In point of civilisation these Colorado tribes form a sort of connecting link between
the wild Apaches and the civilised Pueblo Indians. Altogether, the Yuma stock, including
the Yampais, Maricopas, Hualpais, Mojaveves, Yumas (proper), Cocopas, Comoyei, Cochemi,
and other small tribes do not number over 6,000 souls.*
* Gatschet: " Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie" (1877), pp. 341, 366.
183
CHAPTER IX.
PUEBLO INDIANS : PIMAS ; MOQUIS ; PAPAGOS.
A STRIKING contrast to the savage, merciless, murderous, and marauding1 heathens lying outside
of their boundary, are the semi-civilised tribes of New Mexico, who live in villages and support
themselves by agriculture and trade, and are hence known as the Pueblo (or village) Indians.
A brief account is necessary of these Indians, who seem to be direct descendants of the Aztecs,
the highly-civilised race which the early conquerors of the Mexican Empire found inhabiting
that country. I prefer to give it at this stage as a contrast to their immediate neighbours
already described. The Pueblo Indians proper, excluding the Pimas, Papagos, and those
Moquis, who also live in villages, do not now number more than about 9,000, while
the wild Indians of New Mexico and Arizona are estimated at about 48,000. In all
their characteristics the Pueblo Indians bear the highest reputation. Industrious, gentle,
yet brave, kind and hospitable, this race of men, with their sad, mild faces, on which a
smile is never seen to play, quietly cultivating their lands, and selling their onions, peaches,
grapes, beans, melons, and hay to the dominant race, and, while sanguine of better days, wearily
ascending their housetops at sunrise, to look for the coming from the East of that Montezuma,
whose steps are so laggard in travel, are of deep interest to every heart capable of kindly feeling.
These semi-civilised Indians — Dr. Bell tells us — are not found except in New Mexico and
Arizona, south of the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude, and there is no proof to show that
they ever came from the North, or spread farther northward than the Rio Grande Valley,
and a few of the more accessible branches of the San Juan river. In this region, which
equals the size of France, only five remnants of this once powerful nation remain at present.
There are according to the traveller mentioned (1) the Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande Valley,
numbering 5,86G ; (2) the Indians of Zuiii, numbering 1;200 ; (3) the Indians of the seven
Moqui Pueblos, situated about 150 miles N.W. of Zuiii, numbering 1,780; (4) the Pimas
of the Gila Valley, occupying eight villages, and numbering 3,500 ; and, lastly, the Papagos
and Maricopas, occupying about nineteen villages, and numbering rather over than under
7,000 souls. Like all the Indian race, their numbers have much decreased since the first
discovery and settlement of the country by the whites. All the Rio Grande Pueblo Indians
are — nominally at least — Christians, the Spanish missionaries having early visited them. In
each pueblo is a plain church, built of sun-dried bricks, and dedicated to its patron saint.
Their houses are usually of one storey, but sufficiently large to contain several families. The
roofs are flat, but at each corner of the village are watch-towers which rise above the roof. In
the centre of the chief house in the village is usually found a large room, partly excavated out
of the earth. Previous to the introduction of Christianity the estufa (or sacred fire) was kept
alight here, and though in most cases this room is now converted into a council chamber,* yet
* So hard is it to get at facts, and so distorted do they become when viewed through differently coloured
media, that an otherwise most intelligent observer describes this sacred council chamber as a " kind of village
grocery," where the old folks assemble to smoke, gossip, and possibly to talk scandal!
184
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
there is little doubt — so persistent are early superstitions, or so sacred religious beliefs — that in
some places this sacred fire is still kept burning.
Each pueblo has a local government of its own, consisting of a cacique, or governor, selected
from among the village sages, and who holds his office for life ; a war captain, who looks to
expeditions of offence and defence, and through a subordinate has charge of the nahattada, or
herd of horses — every one having to take his turn as a watcher — and various minor officers,
who have charge of church matters, repairs of public buildings, &c. The laws are made by the
old men, who elect all the officers except the cacique, or captain, who is generally elected by
universal suffrage. In most cases the office is so far hereditary that, all other things being
equal, his successor is chosen from the family next in rank. As different dialects are spoken
MENDICANT VILLAGE INDIANS OF MEXICO.
in each village, Spanish is now adopted as the general medium of intercommunication.
Though externally good Roman Catholics, there are not wanting those who declare that their
Christianity is all on the outside, and that they still cling to the religion of their forefathers,
and can only be induced to attend church by threats, promises, or even blows, while their own
heathen rites are performed with the utmost regularity. All, however, agree in bearing
testimony to the honesty and sobriety of the men, and the chastity of the women.
Some of the pvcllns are in the form of strong and almost impregnable fortifications,
while those in San Domingo, Candia, and other places have no doors or windows on the out-
side, but are entered by ladders from the roof. The early Spanish explorers found seven-storeyed
fortresses, but these are no more, though ruins are found here and there scattered through the
territory, which bear witness to a greater population and many more buildings in former times
than now. The fortress of Zimi is, however, at the present day a rather remarkable one, being
built on a rising ground, and at least six terraces can be counted one above the other. The
VILLAGE INDIANS, FROM NORTHERN MEXICO (WATER CARRIERS).
186 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
doors of the houses on the different terraces are entered by means of ladders planted against
the walls. Cultivation is considerable through the Zufti Valley, but cotton was not until lately
generally grown. Water is everywhere of such importance to cultivation that it figures rather
extensively in their traditions. Near Zufii is a sacred spring at which neither man nor cattle
may drink, the water being sacred to the frogs, tortoises, and snakes. " Once a year the cacique
and his attendants perform certain religious rites at the spring ; it is thoroughly cleaned out,
water-pots are brought as an offering to the spirit of Montezuma, and are placed bottom-
upwards on the top of the wall of stones. Many of these have been removed, but some still
remain, while the ground around is strewn with fragments of vases which have crumbled into
decay from age." At Zufii, Christianity is rather weak, and the people to some extent still
cling to their old rites, believing that the comparative immunity of the neighbouring country
from droughts is to a great degree owing to the fidelity of the inhabitants to the religion of
their forefathers. Here they believe in one great and good spirit, and in Montezuma his sonr
who shall some day come from the East and unite once more all the nations under his banner."""
After frequent revolts against the Spaniards, they peaceably accepted the United States rule,,
and since 1848 have been citizens.
The Moqui Pueblos are in the midst of an arid country and the villages, mostly composed
of three-storeyed houses, are often planted on the very edge of steep mesas, or flats partly
formed by volcanic peaks. They are very quiet in their manners, though much more light-
hearted than the Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande; are honest, frank, and hospitable, and
neat in their domestic arrangements, yet wanting the manly bearing of the Zufii Indians,
] uiving until lately lived in great fear of their warlike neighbours, theNavajos. In each village
there is a water-tank, and most of their crops are raised by carefully husbanding the rainfall
and using it for irrigation. Many flocks of sheep are owned by them. Since 1850 they have
decreased from 6,700 to 1,780, on account of the ravages of small-pox, and deficiency of food,
owing to dry seasons. In the introductory remarks regarding the origin of the Americans, I
alluded (p. 15) to the supposed Welsh origin of some of the tribes. Whether from national
pride or from the force of misunderstood fact, Welshmen who have lived amongst the Moquis
declare that the chiefs can pronounce any Welsh word with facility, but not in the modern
dialect. Such stories cannot be received without several grains of salt.
The Pima houses are only huts of interlaced willows, yet the people are skilful agriculturists:
and manufacturers, and, as the Apaches have more than once experienced, fearless on the
•''war-path." Any successes the United States have ever gained in contest with these Ishmaels
of Arizona have been through the aid of the Pima warriors. Mr. Posten, at one time
superintendent of Indian affairs for the territory of Arizona, declares that they have no
* It is stated by some tfiat the Montezuma of the Pueblo Indians is not the Montezuma who figured at
the conquest of Mexico, but an agent of the Spanish Government chosen to protect the rights and interests
of the Pueblos. The Indians, however, do not believe this, but declare that he originated in New Mexico,
some say that he was born at the old pueblo of Picos, and others at an old pueblo near Ojo-Caliente, the ruins
of which arc still to be seen. It is supposed, too, that Montezuma was not the original name of this demigod,
but one bestowed on him after he had proved the divinity of his mission. There is, indeed, a document extant
which declares that he was born at Tognays, one of the ancient pueblos of New Mexico, in the year 1538, and
this account makes him out more a prophet than anything else.
PUEBLO INDIANS: PIMAS; PAPAGOS. 187
religion, and worship no deity, unless a habit of hailing the rising sun with an ovation may
be the remains of the habits of some sun- worshipping tribe. They have many "Jewish habits/'
but do not practise circumcision, and polygamy is in vogue only among the more prosperous
men. Marriage is not binding until there is progeny. The women do all the work, the men
considering themselves degraded by menial labour, and pass most of their time in horse-
racing, foot-ball, cards, and other sports. They have ever been friendly to the alien race which
now surrounds them, and boast that they do not know the colour of the white man's blood.*
From the general prosperity of the people, and the number of children seen amongst them,
there seems every likelihood that the Pimas will escape the general decay and extermination of
the Indian race, and that, unless some great calamity befalls them, they may go on for an in-
definite period in their present condition. Drunkenness and its attendant vices are, however, rife.
The Papagos, though living in a desolate country south of the Gila River, to the west of
the Sierra Catarina, are a virtuous, industrious people, and physically a very fine race.
They have been described as the " Scots " of aboriginal America. The Papagos are only a
branch of the Pimas, but after being baptised they took the name of " Vassconia," meaning, in
their language, " Christians/' but which has now got corrupted into " Papagos." The fruit of
the pitakayo, or cactus (Cerens gig anted) furnishes them with a kind of bread and molasses, and
they plant in the rainy season, hunt, keep cattle, and labour in the harvest-fields of Sonora.
The sheep which the Pueblo Indians now have are probably the descendants of a flock brought
to the country 329 years ago by Marco de Ni9a, a devoted Franciscan friar.
Everything in their villages is conducted methodically, and with rather more than the
average wisdom of governments. For instance, every morning, at least in Santa Dominga, the
governor sends round as public criers young men clad in a peculiar dress, their brows bound
with garlands of wheat, and each armed with a gourd containing small pebbles, to summon the
people to labour. The criers, as they dance round in a kind of monotonous gait, rattle the gourd,
shake the ladders of the houses (if the door is on the roof), and call out for the people to rise, for
the day has dawned. In like manner the people are summoned to church by the jingling of
the church bells, which they seem never weary of ringing. The church services are, in places
where there are no priests, a strange mixture of the Roman Catholic service and heathen rites.
A song in honour of Montezuma is generally sung, the governor and some of the old men make
speeches, and the people lay little images of clay — representing sheep, goats, horses, cows, deer,
&c., on the altar. This is an old custom of this people, and means that whatever they have
been successful in during the year, either in agriculture or in the chase, should be modelled and
brought to church on Christmas (at least) to be laid at the feet of the Great Spirit. Dr. Ten
Broeck, who visited the church of Laguna on Christmas Day, relates that he was astonished
at hearing music like the warbling of birds issuing from a gallery over the main door of the
church, simultaneously with the commencement of the service. The warbling went through the
whole house, bounding from side to side, echoing from the very rafters — fine-toned warblings
and deep-toned thrilling sounds. He could particularly notice the note of the wood thrush,
and the trillings of the canary bird. On working his way into the gallery he found fifteen or
twenty young boys lying down on the floor, each with a small basin of water in front of him,
* Export of the Commissioner of Indian Affairsf 1864, p. 152.
188 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
and one or more short reeds perforated and split in a peculiar manner. Placing one end in the
water and blowing through the other they imitated most wondrously the notes of different birds,
thus forming an orchestra of the most novel character.
On the occasion mentioned the Indians danced in front of the church to the sound of a
rude kind of drum, and then after a short time adjourned to the village square, where they
continued dancing till dark, after which they separated. On the 26th, 27th, and 28th of
December the dancing was continued in the same manner as upon Christmas Day.
In some of the houses are " horrible little Aztec images " made of wood and clay, and
decorated with paint and feathers, which they declare are saints ; but if so, then they pay little
respect to them, as the children play with them in a most irreverent manner. Dances are
their favourite amusements, and some of them are of the most whimsical description
imaginable. Clowns with painted faces, masks, and something very like the ordinary tricks of
such attendants on pantomimes and circuses, are frequent assistants at these amusements.
Among the Moquis the women are not allowed to dance, their part being played by young-
men dressed like girls.
Some of their religious ideas (either held in their entirety or mixed with the Christian
religion) we have already mentioned. They believe in the existence of a Great Father, who
lives where the sun rises, and a Great Mother who lives where the sun sets. Of their origin
they give the following account : " Many years ago their Great Mother brought from her home
in the west nine races of men, in the following form : first, the deer race ; second, the sand
race ; third, the water race ; fourth, the bear race ; fifth, the hare race ; sixth, the prairie-wolf
race ; seventh, the rattlesnake race ; eighth, the tobacco race ; and ninth, the grass-seed race.
Having placed them on the spot where the villages now stand, she transformed them into men,
who built the present p ueblos, and the distinction of races is still kept up. One will say he is
of the sand race, another of the deer race, &c. They are firm believers in metempsychosis,
and say that when they die they will resolve into their original forms, and become bears, deer,
&c. Shortly after the pueblos were built, the Great Mother came in person, and brought them
all the domestic animals they now have."
The sacred fire, Dr. Ten Broeck declares, is still kept burning by the old men among the
Moquis, and he was told that they believe great misfortune would befall them if it was allowed
to be extinguished. He thinks — but in this I believe he is in error — that the Moquis know
nothing of Montezuma. It is whispered among those best acquainted with these Pueblo
Indians, that some of the more horrible rites of the old Aztec religion — such as serpent-worship
(common among the Aztecs as among many other nations) — are still preserved among some
of them. I have repeatedly heard — though others declare that it is a myth — that in one
village a huge, overgrown, fatted serpent — to which human sacrifices are offered — is kept, but
I could never gain any exact particulars in reference to it. Their marriage rite is remarkable.
Instead of the custom prevalent among all civilised and most savage races, the young lady,
when she sees a young man who takes her fancy, informs her father. The father, in his turn,
proposes to the sire of the fortunate youth, and the proposal is never rejected. The young man
furnishes two pairs of mocassins, two fine blankets, two mattresses, and two sashes used at the
feasts ; while the bride, for her share, provides abundance of edibles. The marriage is then
celebrated by feasting and dancing. Though polygamy is unknown, they can divorce
a
5 CQ
e ^
190 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOKLD.
themselves and marry others if either of the parties becomes dissatisfied — a very necessary law,
one would think, after the rather summary method of "natural selection" adopted by the wife.
If there are children by such a marriage, after divorce they are taken care of by their respective
grandparents or other relatives. They have no kind of intoxicating liquors, and drunkenness is
unknown among them. Hospitable to the last degree, in every house which a stranger enters
the first act is to set food before him, and nothing can be done until he has eaten.
All through their country are ruins of great fortresses, towers, aqueducts, and other
public works, the origin of which is strange to the present Indians, or only vaguely known by
tradition. Some of these houses contained from 100 to 160 rooms.
In Pecos the ruins of a Christian church and a temple to Montezuma stand side by side — •
the pagan temple being apparently the older of the two — just as the two religions may have
for a time flourished alongside of each other. According to Indian tradition, it was built by
Montezuma himself, who charged them not to lose heart under the foreign yoke, and never to
let the sacred fire burn out in the estufa, for " when the time should come in which the tree
should fall, men with pale faces would pour in from the east and overthrow their oppressors,
and he himself would return to build up his kingdom ; the earth again would become fertile,
and the mountains yield abundance of silver and gold/' How the Spaniards came and
conquered them is, according to them, a partial fulfilment of Montezuma' s prophecy, and how
the Americans with the pale faces came in their turn and drove out the Mexicans, may be taken
as a second part of the fulfilment ; the third they are still waiting for. The Pimas themselves
state that at one time they used to live in large houses and were a great and powerful nation,
but after the destruction of their kingdom they travelled southward, and settled in the valley
where they now live, preferring to live in huts, so that they might not become a subject of
envy for a future enemy. " He that is down needs fear no fall," was the simple maxim of a
simple-minded people. So much for tradition — now for fact. The truth is these now ruined
towns, houses, and fortresses were all thickly inhabited at and shortly after the time of the
conquest of Mexico. Even here the inhuman followers of Cortes could not allow the Aztecs
to remain in peace. In search of gold, hither in 1526 went Don Bas9onzales, but never
returned, his name carved on " El Moro," the inscription rock a few miles to the east of Zuiii,
being the only record we have of his ill-fated journey, and the expeditions of Pamphilo Narvaez,
Marco de Ni9a, Francisco Coronado, and others in search of the fabled El Dorado of this arid
region, are all matters of quaint old Spanish history. Everywhere they met a bold people,
with a civilisation even higher than that of these days, and though in many cases their feeble
arms could do little for them against the rapacious mail-clad caballeros of Castile, yet in not a
few instances the adventurers returned from those early visits to the Pueblo Indians " with more
fear than victuals," as they quaintly expressed the state of their minds and stomachs. There
seems little doubt but that those town-building Indians were, as Dr. Bell describes them, <l the
skirmish line of the Aztec race, when that race was united and in the plenitude of its power.
They came originally from the southern provinces of Mexico, probably in detachments — the
restless spirits of semi-civilised tribes, speaking distinct dialects, though more or less united
under one central government, and they tried with all the skill brought out from Anahuac and
the southern provinces of Mexico to colonise the outlying countries to the northward." At
first they received -the Spanish adventurers as brothers come to help them in their struggle
THE PUEBLO INDIANS: THE STORY OF THEIR RUIN. 191
against barbarism and the forces of Nature — superior beings to themselves. But they soon
discovered that the unprincipled hordes of Narvaez, Ni£a, or Coronado had but one maxim in
religion, one aim in life, and these were — to convert to the creed of the conqueror by force an 1
cruelty, and obtain gold at whatever cost. The result was a struggle, long continued in some
cases, but in the greater number of instances short and bitter. Soon the Spaniards held
undisputed sway everywhere, and up to 1680 they kept the wretched natives in slavery, working
in the mines and toiling at labours which decimated the population, and sometimes the
broken-hearted Aztec, weary of such a life, even anticipated death by throwing himself over
a precipice of the mountain down which he trudged with his load of ore. It is a miserable
story, the shame and disgrace of Spain, but one which we can only look at in silence when we
contemplate, as we shall by-and-by, the tale of the Tasmanians. At last the down-trodden
people, once so free and happy, turned upon their oppressors and swept them from the land,
no quarter being given, no mercy ever asked. Some of the Pueblos maintained their liberty,
and for ever renounced Christianity, which to them had been only a symbol of cruelty and
unrighteousness; most of them were again retaken by the Spaniards, but not until after
seven years of hard fighting. The conquerors, after their first vengeance had been satiated on
the people who had trampled on the cross and massacred their countrymen, seem at least to-
have learned from these misfortunes a lesson of greater humanity to the natives. However,
though the Pueblo Indians grow poor and die, the grandees and noble gentlemen of lordly Spain
must grow rich, oro must be brought in, for are not silver pesos and the spread of the cross the
only things worth living for ? The end is soon told. The Indians grew few and weak, the
'iHH'blos became deserted, and the Apaches, then as now hanging round their borders, soon
rushed in and did their best to complete the ruin. "The dead tell no tales; but if these
ruins could speak, I think they might relate dismal stories of crops yearly destroyed all around
them, of cattle run off by thousands, of famished children calling for bread, and of sons and
fathers left dead among the mountains." The dissensions in the south caused the Spaniards
to withdraw their troops, and the Pueblo Indians, as well as the Mexicans, found themselves
unable to keep the savage at bay. The land soon became desolate — the remnant of the people
crowded together into the strongest or richest spots and formed the organisations found at the
present day, which enable them to keep their enemies, in most cases at least, at arm's length.
In South-western Colorado, on the San Juan River and its branches, in North-west
New Mexico, in South-eastern Utah, and over most parts of Arizona, are found ruins of
towns — built of stone set in mortar, which seem to have been the centre of a densely popu-
lated country. Another class of dwellings are simple " caves," or walled-in niches in the
face of steep cliffs. Vast quantities of pottery, wicker-work, and spear and arrow-heads
are found in the vicinity, showing that a region now waste and almost unpeopled was
at one time inhabited by a race as high in intelligence and civilisation as the Pueblo
Indians, but who have been driven from bank to wall by ruthless enemies until they
became extinct.*
* For illustrations of these cliff-dwellings of Colorado, see "Scribner's Monthly Magazine," Dec., 1878. For the
ethnology of the region, see also Power: " Contributions to the Ethnology of the United States," Vol. III. (1878);
Field: " Indian Bibliography " (1873); Ludwig and Turner: "The Literature of American Languages" (1864);
Taylor: « Bibliographia Californica" (1863) ; Harper's " Monthly Magazine." Oct., 1881, p. 676, &c.
192
CHAPTER X.
PLAIN AND PRAIRIE TRIBES : UTES, PAWNEES, ETC.
WITH this interlude of comparative civilisation we may return once more to the rude
tribes of the Central Plains, or of the valleys, in that central range called the Rocky
Mountains, though in reality it is more a mountainous region than a range of mountains.
Many of the smaller tribes belong to the Shoshone and Pawnee families. The first-named
NOT-O-WAY (THE THINKER), AN IROQUOIS INDIAN. (After Cailin.)
are very widespread, roaming on both sides the Rocky Mountains, and southward to Texas.
The latter comprise the Arickarees, Wichitas, and Pawnees proper. Some of the Moqui Pueblos
— judging from their language — are of Shoshone origin, though in every other respect they
are at one with their neighbours, while the Utes, with all their minor subdivisions, belong
to the same section of Americans. Among these septs the Goships, or Goshutes, who live
partly in Nevada, are the lowest. They have been characterised by a recent tourist, in
terms which may be described as not less humorous than truthful, as "A silent, sneaking,
PRAIRIE TRIBES: THE GOSHIPS.
193
treacherous-looking race, taking note of everything covertly, like all other ' noble red
men ' that we (do not) read about, and betraying no sign in their countenances ;
indolent, everlastingly patient and tireless, like all other Indians; prideless beggars —
for if the beggar instinct were left out of an Indian he would not ' go/ any more than
a clock without a pendulum ; hungry, always hungry, and yet never refusing anything
that a hog would eat, though often eating what a hog would decline ; hunters, but having
no higher ambition than to kill and eat jackass-rabbits, crickets, and grasshoppers, and
(THE CROW), A CHIPPEWAY INDIAN. (After Catlin.)
embezzle carrion from buzzards and cayotes; savages who, when asked if they have the
common Indian belief in a Great Spirit, show a something which almost amounts to
emotion, thinking whisky is referred to; a thin scattering race of almost naked black
children, who produce nothing at all, and have no villages, and no gatherings together into
strictly defined communities ; a people whose only shelter is a rag cast on a bush to keep oft' a
portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit one of the most rocky, wintry, and repulsive wastes
that our country or any other can exhibit . . . They deserve pity, poor creatures, and they can
have mine — at this distance. Nearer by, they never get anybody's." Yet these wretched
creatures often waylay travellers, and were in the habit of attacking the overland stage. What
they do now, except hang about the stations of the Pacific Railway, I cannot well imagine.
The Government have attempted to gather them upon reservations, but the roving, vagabond
25
.
194 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
instinct is strong in them as in all their race, and the experiment of preserving alive the
remnant of them is hardly likely to be more successful than popular.
A few years ago their condition was even worse. Then they wore no clothing of any
description, and made no more provision for their future wants than now. There were not any
whites to rob, and their more powerful aboriginal neighbours took particular good care of any
little portable property which they might possess. In the winter their condition was miserable.
Snails, lizards, and other vermin on which they lived were torpid in holes beyond their reach,
while the roots were buried beneath a deep covering of snow. They were said to retire at this
season to the vicinity of timber, dig oven-like holes in the steep sides of the sand-hills, " and
sleep and fast till the weather permitted them to go abroad again for food. Persons who have
visited their haunts after a severe winter have found the ground around these family ovens
strewn with the unburied bodies of the dead, and others crawling among them, who had various
degrees of strength, from a bare sufficiency to gasp in death, to those that crawled upon their
hands and feet, eating grass like cattle'/' They had then no weapons of defence except the
club, and even in the use of that they were far from skilful. Though such degradation almost
passes our belief, yet it will be still more difficult to credit that less than thirty years ago, to
use the language of our informant — Mr. Farnham — " these poor creatures were hunted in the
spring of the year, when weak and helpless, by a certain class of men, and when taken were
fattened, carried to Santa Fe, and sold as slaves during their minority. c A likely girl ' in her
teens brought oftentimes £60 or .£80. The males are valued at less."
Allied to the Arraphoes and Sioux are the powerful Cheyennes, or " cut- wrists," once
one of the most ruthless of all the horse tribes. They have been continually in the midst
of all the outrages on the travellers across the plains or on the settlements, and have been
the subject of the most brutal retaliations by the whites. The Arraphoes and the Kiowas also
enter this region, and, like the Cheyennes, are beginning to get collected on reserves, finding
that the railway has to a great extent destroyed their chance of successful depredation. A
friend writes to me — and his opinion may be taken as a fair average idea of the chances of
these plain Indians ever taking to the arts of civilisation — "You were inquiring in regard
to the state of the Indians in this territory. You know I always doubted whether there
was a real ' friendly Indian ' in this section. Last week, however, I saw one — quiet, peaceful,
harmless : he was suspended to the branch of a tree." They number 3,600, and live in
the Indian Territory.
The Arraphoes, or " dog-eaters " (" Gros Ventres " of the French), get their name from
their habit of fattening and eating dogs. They are sadly fallen off since the whites came on
their borders, both in morals and in numbers. Thirty years ago, or less, trappers who lived
amongst them gave them the name of being a fearless, ingenious, and hospitable people. At
that time they owned large numbers of mules, dogs, sheep, and horses, and manufactured from
the sheep's wool blankets of a very superior quality. So dense were these blankets that rain
would not penetrate them. A curious law of naturalisation prevails — or at least did prevail
amongst them — which any man, either white or red, could avail himself of. The applicant was
simply required to bring to the chief a horse swift enough to hunt the buffalo on, and another
horse or mule capable of carrying a load of SOOlbs. His intentions being made known he was
forthwith declared a member of the tribe. " The wife of an Arraphoe takes care of his horses; inanu-
PRAIRIE TRIBES: THE ARRAPHOES ; THE AEICKAREES; THE PONCAS, ETC. 195
factures his saddles and bridles, leash-ropes and whips, his mocassins, leggings, and hunting-
shirts, from leather and other materials prepared by her o\vn hands; beats with a wooden adze
his buffalo robes, till they are soft and pleasant for his couch ; tans hides for his tent-eovering,
and drags from the distant hills the clean white pine poles to support it ; cooks his daily food,
and places it before him ; and should sickness overtake him, and death rap at the door of his
lodge, his squaw watches kindly the last yearnings of the departing spirit. His sole duty, as
her lord in life, and a member of the Arraphoe tribe, is to ride the horse which she saddles
and brings to his tent, kill the game which she dresses and cures, sit or slumber on the couch
which she spreads, and fight the enemies of the tribe." Like the Cheyeiines, the Arraphoes
are of Alonquin stock. They originally belonged to the Platte and Arkansas region. Part
of them live in the Indian Territory, part on the Shoshone Reservation in Wyoming.
A curious " medicine-rite," in performance of which young men go at a certain season of the
year to fast in solitary places, &c., obtains amongst this and other plain tribes. This ceremony
differs only in details from similar rites found among other tribes, both of North and South
America, and even of Asia, where the young warriors and " medicine men " require to fast, and
to frequently mingle in strange mystic dances, before they can attain the position at which they
aim. Even among the Eskimo — the last people whom we should suppose to be addicted to this
— the aiiyekolis have to fast and dream in a manner almost identical with the custom as
practised among the North- West Americans (p. 110).
The Arickarees, Poncas, Yanktons, Kiowas, and Sioux proper are the chief tribes of
the territory of Dakotah, and the latter also extend into Minnesota and the British territory
of Red River (or Manitoba). They are one of the tribes which, in the American territory
at least, have inflicted most injury on the white settlements. Numbering about 35,000
some nineteen years ago, they descended on the white settlement, massacring and burning
everywhere, and taking the women and children prisoners. The result was a long, bloody, and
very unsatisfactory war, which in course of time died out, and for the present these Indians are
at peace. It seems that the fear of the extermination of the buffalo is the chief cause which has
led them to attempt to keep back the tide of immigration to and settlement on the prairies, once
only sacred to the Indian and his prey. They roam about Dakotah, Montana, and Wyoming,
hunting the buffalo, the antelope, wapiti, &c. They have numbers of the common hardy
fleet Indian ponies, and are most expert horsemen and daring warriors. In riding they use no
saddle or bridle, and have no vehicle save the travallle — as the French Canadians call it —
common to many of the northern prairie tribes, which is a triangle formed of two poles, each
twelve feet long, and connected by cross-bars, which bear the load, while the apex rests on the
horse's neck. For dogs they have a similar contrivance, but on a smaller scale. In travelling
you generally see the women perched on the horses which have the travaille attached, while a
long straggling chain of loaded dogs brings up the rear. On this travaille is placed their skin
lodges and a few cooking utensils. In navigation most of them have little skill, using nothing
but a rude boat formed of a buffalo-hide stretched over a round frame like a tub. When the
stream is too deep to ford they use these to cross in, and then abandon them. They are a powerful
race of men, averaging fully six feet in height. Notwithstanding that among these Indians, as
among most savage tribes, who possess this animal, the term " a dog/' or " a dog-eater," is an
expression of contempt, yet they will eat its liver in order to try and become possessed of its courage
expi
and cunning'.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The >ider will remember that the North-West Indians believe that if they eat
OLD FOUT GA11UY, IN THE KED K1VEH COUNTKY (MANITOBA).
t £ elear away thegrass, say from one to two feet in diameter and the. ^ace h, stone,
« god, a, he would term it, and make an offering of some tobacco and some feathe^, .ri ^J a^
to "he stone to deliver him from some danger that he has probahly dreamed rf
,,thor Angular, for most of the Indians keep no semblance of then- gods. Among
3* J amon<: other tribes, there is a curious variation on the »^™™f."^
A II will wed (by purchase) the chief's eldest daughter , after th.s a 1 the <»**>**
tel«n» to him, and he will take them to wife as suits lum. Sir John LubboeU, pe,
PRAIK1E TEIBES: THE SIOUX; THE ASSINIBOINES.
197
rightly, looks upon this and similar customs among other nations as explaining the importance
they attach to adoption. Among some of the wild Eskimo, for instance, if a son is adopted
into a family, and is older than the sons of his adopted father, he will inherit the whole
property, just as if he had been related by descent. Mothers-in-law, again, are looked upon
with infinitely more respect than these estimable ladies are usually regarded in more civilised
quarters. Among some tribes it is not etiquette for a mother-in law to speak to her son, and
if she has to communicate with him she must turn her back to him and address him through
a third person. Among the Sioux — I believe — but certainly among some of the other plain
A NIGHT EXCAMl'MKNT OX EAGLE 1UVEH — EXI'ECTIXG THE CUBES. (After Milton anil ClieaAle.)
tribes, it is not proper for a mother-in-law and son-in-law to converse immediately with
each other, or to mention each other by name — an admirable custom on the whole.
The Sioux, like most other Indians, regard a portrait as something living and supernatural,
and believe that if any person had the portrait of another in his possession, he has the original
of the portrait in his power. Some of the Sioux are taking to agriculture; and with the
surrender of Sitting Bull, who for so many years waged successful war with the United
States, their day may be considered over.
The Ass'uiiJjoines are another branch of the Sioux nation, who chiefly reside within the
British territory. The Rocky Mountain and Thickwood " Stoneys " are, again, detached
branches of the Assiniboines. At one time the Plain Stoneys (or Assiniboines) were a powerful
198 TiiE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
tribe, and the terror of the neighbouring tribes. Small-pox, however, during the last fifty
years, almost exterminated them; but the remnant still bear the tribal reputation of being
the greatest rogues and horse-thieves of the northern prairies. The Thiekwood or Rocky
Mountain Stoneys, though a branch of the Assiniboines, are now, owing to change of the
conditions of life, greatly modified, and in many respects very different from their kindred of
the prairies. They are, in fact, not plain but forest tribes, and only number a few hundred
souls. They live in the most precarious manner, and are often in a very wretched and destitute
condition ; yet they bear the reputation of being a quiet, respectable people, and hospitable to
an extent which their poverty-stricken tents can ill afford. Captain Palliser (whose experience
of these people I have, in the want of personal knowledge, drawn on) states that there is none
of the crowding amongst them for the purpose of forcing a ruinous trade on the hard-up
traveller, which is so often a source of great annoyance upon entering an Indian camp. If
accidentally anything is left about, there is no fear of its being pilfered — unless, indeed, there
is a possibility of its being eaten, when it is certain to become a prey to the all-voracious
dogs, whose digestion is of the most cosmopolitan character.
The Crees, or Knistineaux — another branch of the widely-spread Alonquin family — also
entirely inhabit the British possessions. The Thick wood or Swampy Crees frequent the country
from Hudson's Bay to Lake Winnipeg, and get their name from hunting, during the winter,
moose and reindeer in the morasses covering the country, while in the summer they live
on the lakes and rivers. They use — at least to the east of Lake Winnipeg — no horses for
transport, but travel by canoes in summer on the lakes or on the rivers, which wind like
silver threads through the dark woodland (p. 200), and in winter with dogs, or on snow-shoes.
The deer they catch in traps of the nature of the Eskimo fox-trap (p. 26), and in addition trap
mink, marten, fishers, and other fur-bearing animals ; in fact, they are the great trappers of
the country to the east of the Rocky Mountains. In their dress they are simple, and seem
to have none of the noisy, gaudy, superstitious " medicine-work " to which the plain Indians
are so partial. As a rule, they are hardworking and docile, except in the vicinity of settle-
ments, where the facilities for obtaining spirits have demoralised them sadly.
The Prairie Crees, though speaking the same language as those of the woods, and not
differing in appearance from them, yet contrast markedly in disposition and mode of life. They
rove about the prairies from buffalo hunting-ground to buffalo hunting-ground, in camps of
from 200 to 400 tents, each containing at least one family, though often several — the average
number of people in a tent being six. Their sole occupation is buffalo hunting.
The Cree language is spoken by many different tribes, and is even understood among
the Kootainies to the west of the Rocky Mountains. At one time the Crees were a very
powerful nation, and they have a tradition that formerly they extended over the Rocky
Mountain* to the Pacific. Even at the present day they number about 12,000 souls, but
owing to small-pox and other diseases they are annually on the decrease.
Under the name of the Slave Indians the traders and Crees know a large family of
Indians who roam over the great prairies along the South Saskatchewan and Red Deer Rivers
in the summer, and in the winter retire to the north-west, where they tent along the edi;v
of the woods between Rocky Mountain House and Bow Fort. They also speak the Blackfoot
language. But, curiously enough, in this group are included the Sarsees, a branch of the
PRAIRIE TRIBES: THE CREES; THE BLACK FEET. 199
great Chippeway family, who inhabit the Athabasca district far to the north of the Sas-
katchewan, " having broken away from their own relatives and changed their habits of life
from that of wood to that of prairie Indians/'
Unlike the soft, flowing Blackfoot language, which they speedily learn, their language
is harsh and guttural, and is rarely spoken by their neighbours. In habits the Sarsees
agree with the Blackfeet, but bear marks of being a degraded, feeble race ; goitre, so rare
among other Indians, is almost universal amongst them. Though sometimes joining camps
with the Blackfeet, more commonly they live apart by themselves, especially while on their
summer hunting expeditions.
The Blackfeet tribe (so called from their dark-coloured mocassins) comprehends the Blood
and Piagan Indians, and extends on either side of the Anglo-American frontier. Though
trading chiefly with the Americans, as they share in the subsidies granted by the Indian
Department of the United States Government, yet they prefer articles of British manufacture.
They are always on the move, and encamp wherever there is buffalo to hunt or grass and water
for their troops of horses. They are the Bedouins of the plains, and live entirely on buffalo ;
they will even — marked contrast to the Digger and Goships — go hungry for a long time rather
than eat ducks, rabbits, and any kind of small game. They care little for flour, sugar, or coffee,
declaring that these things make them ill. Like the Sioux and Crees, they use the travaille,
but their wigwams are large, it being no uncommon thing to see forty or fifty buffalo-hides
sewn together so as to form one tent-cover, and tents composed of twenty or thirty robes are
very common. A tent requires thirteen poles. These are made of light wood, and are carried
by being trailed behind the horse. The tents are conical, with triangular lappets at the apex,
for the purpose of directing the smoke as it escapes.
The Blackfeet are fond of dress and gay trappings, and their chief men have robes of
ermine and other furs, besides medicine-dresses adorned with eagle feathers. The women, who
are often comely, dress neatly in tunics of dressed buck-skin and leggings of cloth or deer-skin,
ornamented with beads and porcupine quills.
Medicine dances and ceremonies — with all the paraphernalia of dresses, rattles, and shrill
whistles — are in vogue amongst them, and in these rites the Blackfeet seem to join with more
sincerity than the Crees. They are also of a wilder and more treacherous nature, but, unlike
many of the more southern prairie tribes, have a certain code of honour, to which they adhere
very rigidly. Like most prairie Indians, they are constantly at war, the Crees, Assiniboines,
and Crow Indians being their chief foes, horse-stealing on both sides (in which accomplishment
they are very proficient) being the main cause of their wars. In common with the Crees
they dry buffalo meat to make pemmican for sale to the fur companies. This pemmicaii — so
largely used by the travelling parties of fur traders — is simply the dried and pounded flesh of
buffalo mixed with its melted tallow, and poured into bags made of the hide of the same
animal. Sometimes it is mixed with a little flour or fruit, and though a coarse, it is far from a
nauseous or unhealthy article of diet. It is, moreover, about the best and most condensed
travelling food known. They are excessively fond of spirits, and this, added to the spread of
ous diseases amongst them, is going far to decimate them. Small-pox, however, they
e never suffered much from, but of late an obscure disease — apparently a form of typhoid
er — has made its appearance in the tribe, committing great ravages.
200
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Probably their comparative exemption from small-pox is owing to their wandering life on
their breezy prairies ; but they are not altogether exempt from it. It was first introduced
amongst them in the year 1828. At that time they numbered about 2,500 families. But in a
weak moment they stole a blanket from the American Fur Company's steamboat on the Yellow-
stone, which had belonged to a man who had died of small-pox on the passage up the Missouri.
The result I tell in the graphic words of Mr. Farnhain : — " The infected article being carried to
their encampment from the left-hand fork of the Missouri, spread the dreadful infection among
the whole tribe. They were amazed at the appearance of the disease. The red blotch, the bile,
AN INDIAN liUUIAL-GKOUXD.
congestion of the lungs, liver, and brain were all new to their medicine-men ; and the rotten
corpse falling in pieces while they burned it, struck horror into every heart. In their frenzy
and ignorance they increased the number of their sweat-ovens upon the banks of the stream ;
and whether the burning fever or the want of nervous action prevailed, whether frantic with pain
or tottering in death, they were placed in them, sweated profusely, and plunged into the snowy
water of the river. The mortality which followed this treatment was a parallel to the plague
in London. They endeavoured for a time to bury the dead, but they were soon more numerous
than the living. [This case is not exceptional. During the small-pox epidemic of 180:2 -'3, a
number of Hydahs, encamped on an island, were exterminated by an outbreak of the malady
before succour reached them.] The evil-minded medicine-men of all ages had come in a body
from the land of spirits, had entered into them, and were working the annihilation of the Black-
PEAIKIE TKIBES: THE BLACKFEET; A SMALL-POX EPIDEMIC.
201
feet race. The Great Spirit had also placed the floods of his displeasure between himself and
them. He had cast a mist over the eyes of their conjurers, that they might not know the
remedial incantation. Their hunts were ended ; their bows were broken ; the fire in the great
pipe was extinguished for ever ; their graves called for them, and the call was now answered
by a thousand dying groans. Mad with superstition and fear, brother forsook sister, father his
son, and mother her sucking child, and fled to the elevated dales among the western heights,
where the influences of the climate, operating upon the already well-spent energies of the
disease, restored the remainder of the tribe again to health. Of the 2,500 families existing at
THE BENCHES OF THE FllASER KIVEli, NEAR LILLOET, BRITISH COLUMBIA. (After Milton and Ch
the time the pestilence commenced, only 800 survived its ravages." To this day, on the
deserted village sites by the banks of the Yellowstone, lie the mouldering bones of some of
lose 7,000 or 8,000 smitten Blackfeet (p. 204).
Though friendly towards the British, the Blackfeet have long been very ruthless enemies
the Americans, and their name figures, not very meritoriously, in all the stories of trapping
mgers which, at one time more than now, formed the staple traditions and history of the Far
rest. In a report, politely sent me by the United States Commissioner, of Indian affairs, one
the agents, after summing up their character, in righteous indignation at their conduct,
L'marks : " They are the most impudent and insulting Indians I have ever mot. The whole
26
202 T-HE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
tribe from the most trustworthy authority I can get, numbers fully 350 lodges. They live
entirely in the British possessions, and never come this way except to trade, get their annuities,
or commit some depredation, such as pilfering from emigrant trains, stealing horses, or fighting
with other tribes, and then run back to their northern home with their booty, defying pursuit.
They were indignant because their annuities were so small ; and on leaving showed their resent-
ment by killing and leaving on the prairie, some four miles from Fort Benton, an ox and a cow
that were quietly grazing as they passed. I look upon this tribe as being one of the worst in
or near the agency ; would recommend that their next annuity be paid them in powder and ball
from the mouth of a six-pounder, and that they be turned over to the tender mercies of the
British Crown, whose subjects they undoubtedly are." They (Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans)
number 7,200.
The Crows, Omahas, Ottoes, Pawnees, &c., are the names of the other prairie tribes ; but
there are numerous smaller ones. The Pawnees (Plate 7) now on the Indian Territory
have ceased to be warlike. Among them linger still, more so than among most of the
tribes in their old neighbourhood (Platte River), some of the belongings of the Indians in
names ; for instance, March is "the war moon/'' April, "the plant moon;" May, " the flower
moon;" August, "the sturgeon moon;" September, "the corn moon;" October, "the travelling
moon;" November, "the beaver moon;" December, "the hunting moon;" January, "the cold
moon;" or, in reference to its phases, the "dead moon," "live moon." As among nearly all
Indian tribes, days are counted by " sleeps " or " suns," and years by " snow." The Crows
are about the most arrant rascals in the country. No trader trusts them, and they bear the
reputation of never doing an honourable act — oi', rather, of never avoiding the chance of
doing a dishonourable one — or of keeping a promise. Like the Ottoes, Winnebagoes (Puans),
Omahas, Poncas, lowas, Osagas, and other tribes, they are of the great Dakotah stock.
CHAPTER XI.
INDIANS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN STATES : DELA WARES, CIIEROKEES, CHOCTAAVS, AND
OTHER TRIBES OF THE INDIAN TERRITORY.
WHEN the Europeans first arrived in America, they found in the region now divided into the
comparatively thickly - populated Atlantic States and Canada proper a large aboriginal
population, in a savage condition, it is true, but in character vastly superior to that of any of
the tribes we have yet described, unless the Pueblo Indians be taken as an exception. They
lived in stationary villages, and cultivated maize and tobacco, and though cruel and relent-
less in war, they were yet- capable of many generous acts. In physique they were also line,
and until recently were taken as the types of their whole race. With a few exceptions, all
these tribes have been removed — sometimes peaceably, but more often after much bloodshed —
from their old homes, and located beyond the Mississippi, on what is called the Indian Territory,
certain annuities being paid to them by the United States Government as compensation
for the loss of their former lands. Some of the tribes, by war and pestilence, have become
"X
PAWNEE INDIANS.
INDIANS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN STATES : DELA WARES. 203-
entirely extinct; all of them are more or less civilised, and in some cases white blood pre-
ponderates over the red in their veins : a few of them are in their pristine condition. Some
of the leading American statesmen have aboriginal American blood in their veins, and several
gentlemen filling respectable positions at the bar and elsewhere are of pure or mixed Indian
blood. Among the extinct British peerages is one conferred by Queen Elizabeth on Manteo, a
Virginian chief. The titles of " Lord of Roanoke and Baron of Dassamonpeach " died with the
aboriginal holder of them. But more than two centuries later John Randolph " of Roanoke/''
an eminent American statesman, bore the dignity in a simpler fashion, so as to distinguish
him from his kinsmen of the same name. It is also not a little interesting1 to find that
O
the " Pocahontas Randolphs " claim to be descended from Pocahontas, " La Belle Sauvage,"
daughter of Powhatan, " the great Emperour " of Virginia, who, as all readers of Captain
John Smith's narrative know, married John Rolfe in the year 1613. Most of these tribes
belonged to the great Alonquin, Iroquois, and ( ' Appalachian " families.
Some of the Mississippi tribes, Latham considers, are not allied to what he calls the
Paducas, among which nearly all the North- Western Indians are placed, but are more referable
to the Mexican races. The Natchez on the Mississippi, for instance, practised human sacrifice
on the death of their chief. They worshipped the sun, and like most barbarous or savage
people in modern times, and among the Romans formerly, kept a sacred fire continually
burning. They had a caste system connected with their religion, the principal chief being
called the great sun, and his children suns ; while that portion of the tribe not supposed to
be descended from their solar dignitaries had no civil power. Rank was transmitted through
the females, and so on. The Attacapacas, another tribe bordering the Mississippi, differed
so far from the rest of the race as for their language to yet remain in its monosyllabic condition,
not having yet become " agglutinate" like the rest of the American tongues.
It would be beyond the province of a work like the present to follow ethnologists into an
inquiry regarding the philological connection, distribution, and origin of these tribes, though
much could be said on this subject. A few words about the chief of the Eastern States' tribes
now removed beyond the Mississippi, and about the Canadian ones, still to some extent living
in their former homes, or in " reserves," will suffice.
DELAWARES.
This tribe we have already mentioned. Few have been so celebrated in song and story ;.
it has been the stock subject of border romances. At one time the Delawares occupied a great
portion of Eastern Pennsylvania and the States of New Jersey and Delaware, but no tribe has
been so much jostled about by the progress of civilisation. First a paternal government moved
them from the banks of the Delaware to the Susquehanna, and to the base of and over the
Alleghany Mountains to the Ohio River ; then to the Illinois and the Mississippi, and now the
handful which remain are located on lands to the west of the Missouri, guaranteed to them and
their descendants in fee simple for ever — the phrase signifying, as it has been proved to mean
over and over again, until their lands become sufficiently valuable to tempt the white settlers.
Every footbreadth of this western retreat they have keenly and bitterly fought, and a tribe
which once numbered 15,000 does not now count over 1,100 souls on its census roll. They are
now living in the Indian Territory peaceful, prosperous citizens.
2U4
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOELD.
Their " war-path " and hunting parties once extended even to the shores of the Pacific,
for the Delawares were irreclaimable in their determined vagabondism. They have been
known to visit tribes 2,000 miles from their home, be feasted by them, and in their turn cajole
PORTRAITS OF PETOHPEEKIS, A BLACKl-'OOT, AX1) TALLEE, AN OSAGE. (After Cutlui.)
them, and yet not bid farewell without bringing off as tokens of remembrance a few scalps ;
then they would go to another tribe and repeat the transaction, and yet would manage to fight
their way home again out of the enemy's country. Nowadays their very name has all but
departed. In the Indian Territory they mostly are incorporated with the Cherokees. There arc
a few on the Kiowa and Comanche reservation, while those on the Wichita agency have united
with and adopted the Caddos' tribal name and organisation.
INDIANS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN STATES: MOHICANS; SIX NATIONS. 205
MOHICANS.
The Mo-hee-con-neughs (or Mohicans) are not yet extinct, though the " last of the
Mohicans," as far as purity of blood is concerned, may be said to have expired some years ago.
They are a remnant of the celebrated tribe of Pequots, in Massachusetts, having separated from
them, owing to quarrels arising out of their wars with the whites. They live civilised in
Wisconsin.
THE Six NATIONS (OR IROQUOIS).
These were originally a powerful confederation, composed of the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onondagas, Senecas, Cayugas, and Tuskororas, and could, in the time of their greatest
prosperity, muster fully 2,500 warriors. They lived in those days in New York State, but
their power was broken by siding with the British in the Revolutionary War, and they
are now scattered about New York State, Indian Territory, Wisconsin, and Canada, as a rule
prosperous farmers and citizens, numbering about 14,000.
The Senecas are, for the most part, living on reservations in the State of New York* along
with the Tuskaroras, Onondagas, Cayugas, and the remnants of a few other tribes. Most of
them are of mixed blood, and,all partially civilised. They are good farmers, and some of their
young men have adopted various civilised pursuits. In one of the last reports, sent me by their
agent, I find that at their meetings various gentlemen belonging to the learned professions
spoke as members of these tribes, and that " Henry Silverheels, Esq.," is " President of the
Seneca nation, Irving, Chautauque County, New York.'"
At one time they lived on the banks of the Seneca and Cayuga lakes, but as civilisation
advanced they repeatedly bargained away their lands. When first known to the civilised world
the Senecas numbered 8,000 or 10,000, and from their position in the centre of the State of
New York hold an important place in history. As one of the confederacy of the Six
Nations, which was the most powerful native American alliance ever known, they
* Some removed to Canada some eighty or ninety years ago, while others emigrated, " under treaty," to the
westward of the Mississippi. That these people have not yet altogether abandoned their ancient customs may he
inferred from what a western paper published at St. Louis tells us in regard to their dances : — " These dances
occur four times a year at stated periods, and are unlike anything of the kind to be found among other civilised
tribes. The four dances are called the ' dog-dance,' the ' strawberry dance,' the ' green corn-dance,' and the ' bread-
dance,' each one lasting from a week to ton days. The dog-dance occurs in January, and is the grandest dance of
the year. A white dog, as near spotless as can be found, is first carefully fattened and then hanged to some con-
venient tree. The whole tribe then assemble round the suspended animal and offer up the sacrifice to the Great
Father. It is a matter of etiquette that the chiefs and dignitaries of the tribe should appear in ' full dress '
on the occasion. After the dirge is finished, the chief adorns the dog's nose, ears, and joints with gaudy ribbons.
The people then disperse, but the dog hangs on the tree three days longer, when the whole tribe again assemble
round him ; fires are lighted to heal the sick and afflicted, and the time is beguiled by dancing, singing, and
smoking. After a while the first chief cuts the dog down, and then each member of the tribe comes forward and
throws a bunch of ribbons on him until he is completely covered. This done, they build a fire over him, and
when that dies out everybody goes up and snuffs the smoke from the ashes to ensure future prosperity. The
ceremony completed, all solemnity disappears, and jollity is the order of the day. There are always a goodly
number of white spectators — men and women— who join with the Indians in their feast and dancing as wildly as
any of the redskins."
20 G THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
carried victory, terror, and dismay wherever they warred — even into Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Virginia, and the Carolinas. But a greater than they came with the white men. They soon
got decimated and powerless before whisky and small-pox, and nowadays the remnant arc
civilised and have only nominal tribal relations.
SHAWNEES (OR SHATVANOS).
This tribe is closely connected with the history of the United States, and especially
with that of the revolution. They once inhabited parts of the States of Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Indiana, but are now living in the
Indian Territory, alongside the Delawares. They were once a brave and powerful people. The
celebrated Tecumseh was a chief of this tribe. He had purposed, had not death cut short
his plans, to have enlisted in one great army, powerful enough to drive back the whites, all
the Indian tribes from Mexico to the great lakes. Had he been successful in forming this
confederacy, doubtless for a time it would have inflicted great carnage, and added another to
the many sickening chapters of Indian warfare in the United States. The Shawnees have
made considerable progress in the arts of civilisation, and I am presented with some copies
of a monthly periodical published in their language, called the S/tanwanone Kesaut/twan
(Shawnee Sun). They have for thirty years almost entirely abandoned tribal relations.
THE CHEBOKEES.
The name of this people is sometimes, among those unacquainted with the history of
the Indian race, looked upon as synonymous with savagedom. "As uncouth as a Choctaw
or Cherokee," is a phrase used not uncommonly in English journalism. Unfortunately,
however, for the truth of this idea, the people mentioned are now, perhaps, the most
civilised of all the tribes in North America. Originally they inhabited the State of Georgia,
but they are now located not far from Fort Gibson, in Indian territory. They numbered by
the last census about 20,000, exclusive of 1,700 still in North Carolina, and 800 scattered,
but civilised, and prosperous through South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. They own a
large tract of land, and are well advanced in the arts of civilisation; some of them are
even wealthy. Numerous salt springs are owned and worked by them, and two lead mines are
(or were recently) the property of the same people.
Their cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep are numerous, and of good quality, while on their
farms are the best agricultural implements. Several have as many as 500 or 600 acres under
cultivation, and until recently they held a great many negro slaves. Numbers of looms
are owned by them, and all are now clad in articles of civilised manufacture. Their houses
are well built of wood, and furnished plainly but well — quite equal to those of the white
people in their immediate neighbourhood. Hotels of a comfortable character are to be found
throughout their territory. They have also a regular though simple form of government,
modelled on that of the United States. When first the Indians were visited by Europeans
none of them had any written language — unless, indeed, we accept the hieroglyphics known as
picture-writing, which we shall presently notice ; but now they have also one or more printing-
presses, in which various books and newspapers are printed, not only in the Cherokee language,
but in the Cherokee character, which was invented some years ago by a Cherokee Indian — or
INDIANS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN STATES: CHEROKEES; CHOCTAWS. 207
rather half-breed — named Sequoyah, alias George Guess. This man did not, until a year or
two before he conceived the notion of his alphabet, understand a single letter. He was a poor
man, living in a retired part of the nation, and accordingly when he told the chiefs that he
could " make a book/' he was severely reprimanded for his blasphemous vanity. " It was
impossible/' they said ; " the Great Spirit at first made a red and a white boy ; to the red bey
he gave a book, and to the white boy a bow and arrows ; but the white boy came round the reel
boy, stole his book, and went off, leaving him the bow and arrows, and therefore an Indian
could not make a book." George Guess was of a different opinion, the sages and the traditions
notwithstanding. "He shut himself up to study; his corn was left to weeds, and he was
pronounced a crazy man by his tribe. His wife thought so too, and burnt up his manuscripts
whenever she could lay her hands on them. But he persevered. He first attempted to form a
character for every word in the Cherokee language, but was forced to abandon it. He then set
about discovering the number of sounds in the language, which he found to be sixty-eight, and
for each of these he adopted a character, which forms the alphabet, and these characters
combined like letters form words. Having accomplished this, he called together six of his
neighbours and said, ( Now I can make a book/ They did not believe him. To convince
them he asked each of them to make a speech, which he wrote down as they spoke, and then
read to them, so that each knew his own speech, and they then acknowledged he could make a
book ; and from the invention of this great man the Cherokees have become a reading people."
Such is the account given us by one of themselves. The Cherokee language contains twelve
consonants and six vowels, with a nasal sound, iing. Multiplying, then, the twelve conso-
nants by the six vowels, and adding the vowels which occur singly, he acquired seventy-seven
characters, to which he added eight — representing the sounds, s, ka, hna, nah, ta, te, ti, tla —
making altogether eighty-five characters. This alphabet is superior to the English one, though
not applicable to other languages. Though the characters in this alphabet are more numerous
than in the Roman one, yet a Cherokee boy will learn to read by means of it in two months ;
while if ordinary letters were used he would take two years to do so.* The Cherokees thus
stand alone among modern nations in having invented an alphabet. The only approach to
this feat of George Guess is in the invention of the stenographic code of signs, which, indeed,
is something very similar in idea to the Cherokee alphabet. Can civilisation commence from
within; must it not always come from without? has been a hotly-contested question among
philosophers. Does the story of George Guess, the Cherokee Cadmus, and his alphabet, add
anything to the solution of the problem ?
CHOCTAWS.
This, like the former tribe, is practically civilised. They have well-cultivated farms, large
quantities of live stock, several flour-mills, cotton-gins, looms, and abundance of farming
utensils. The " Choctaw Nation," as the tribe styles itself, has, like the Cherokees, a written
constitution, very similar to that of the United States. Into the Choctaw nation have become
merged the Chickasaws, who may now be ranked as members of the same nation. White
men, who have married Choctaw or Cherokee women, are eligible for admission into this.
* Lubbock: " Origin of Civilisation," p. 332.
208 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
confederacy, supposing that their characters will bear investigation. Many have availed them-
selves of this privilege (sic), but exercise by no means a controlling influence over the people,
who, rightly remembering the somewhat dubious character of the frontier whites, keep these
admirers of an aboriginal form of government at a safe distance from the public treasury. Like
the Cherokees, the Choctaws were, during the late Civil War, divided in their allegiance to the
United States. The nation numbers 16,500, of whom 11,000 can read.
CREEKS (OR MUSKOGEES).
Until lately this tribe occupied a large portion of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida ; but
their present lands are near the Canadian River, adjoining those of the Cherokees. They are
also semi-civilised, but have not so perfect a government as the Cherokees or Choctaws. The
Creeks are good agriculturists, and also owned slaves, and were divided in their views during
the late Civil War. They at present number 14,500.
SEMINOLES.
The people composing this powerful tribe originally inhabited Florida, but were only
removed beyond the Mississippi after a most sanguinary struggle, costing the United States
Government some thirty-six million dollars and an infinitely greater amount of dishonour.*
Since then small-pox has thinned their ranks, and they are now united with the Creeks, of
whom they were originally a section. Indeed, the word signifies " a runaway."
The Seminoles since the war, which lasted fully seven years, have almost been forgotten
by the world, and in the peaceful agriculturists of to-day it is difficult to recognise the warrior.s
who waged such a courageous fight for land and liberty with their powerful neighbours forty
years ago. The leader in this desperate struggle was a half-breed known as Powell, or Osceola,
who, in addition to the claims of patriotism, found in it an opportunity for glutting private
vengeance. Catlin, who painted his portrait shortly before his death, a prisoner in Fort
Moultrie, was much impressed with his remarkable character. An Indian in general appear-
ance and action, and conversing only in his own tongue, he was "polite and gentlemanly/'
rather good looking, but with a somewhat effeminate smile. When first the Seminoles broke
off from the Creeks to overrun the Florida Peninsula, they displaced the Euchees, who after-
wards incorporated themselves with the invaders. There are said to be still a few Semiuoles in
the Everglades of their old home (p. 209).
The Kiovvas, Wichitas, Kaws, Quapaws, Nez Perces, Wacos, Towaconies, Keechies, Caddos,
Peorias, Miamis, Wyandots, or Hurons, Ottawas, Sauks, Foxes, Kickapoos, and Potowatamies,
:ire the names of some of the numerous other tribes so heterogeneously collected in the Indian
Territory, as much to keep them out of harm's way as with any higher aim.
Does the condition of these semi-civilised tribes hold out much hope of the eventual
civilisation of the remnant of the aboriginal American races still existing ? With
* The Government actually hunted them with bloodhounds imported for the purpose, a course adopted by
the Minnesota State Government a few years ago against the Sioux, for whose scalps rewards were given,
just as rewards were given for the heads of wolves. France also hunted the negroes with bloodhounds in the
Isle of Huyti, and the atrocities of the Spaniards against the wretched Indians are a disgrace to that gallant
nation. Comment on the facts stated in this note would be useless, even if called for; the nineteenth century
is of course an " enlightened and humane age." The Seminoles now number about 2,oOO.
INDIANS OF THE NORTH-EASTERN STATES: INDIAN TERBITOKY.
209
regret I am compelled, after studying the question anxiously and thoughtfully, under
peculiarly excellent circumstances for arriving at a sound conclusion, to give an answer
OSCEOLA, LEADER OF THE SEMINOLES DURING THEIR WAR AGAINST THE UNITED
STATES. (After Catlin.)
in the negative. Independently of the fact that more than one-half of these semi-
barbarian Indians are half-breeds, they are in their habits entirely different from the
vast number of the Indians of the plains and north-west. The north-eastern tribes have
always been a stationary people, and have from time immemorial cultivated maize and
27
210 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
other vegetables to a small extent. The other tribes have done no such thing-, and
any attempts to make them take to agriculture only show, by the paucity and barren-
ness of the examples of success, how utter is the failure. The prairie Indian must
hunt the buffalo, or die; the salmon or fish-eating Indian must spear the salmon, or die; a
nation of hunters must hunt, or become beggars on the bounty of the Government or their
neighbours — either of which milch cows will soon run dry; at any rate, that is not civilisation.
Yet an Indian will work, and work well ; but not at agriculture. Both pride and that laziness
innate to the human race prevent him. He will commence erecting a log cabin one year, get
the walls up in a second, and not roof it over before a third season.
Next to the moral aspects of negro slavery, and the concurrent problems, the Indian
question has been the cause of more controversy and political experiments than probably
any other within the range of the great Republic. There is, perhaps, not an Indian tribe
in the United States with which the Government has not repeatedly been at war, or made
endless treaties of " eternal peace and amity/' only, however, to be broken over and over
again. The Indians are destined for destruction; civilisation will not sit easily on them,,
and even when they make a start at agriculture, long experience has taught them that
they will be removed, time after time, farther into the wildest regions, as their " reservations"
(the term is a mockery) are required by the advancing tide of immigration. The Indian
is, to use the apt phrase of Wendell Holmes, a " provisional race." He is the red crayon
sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before the colours for the real manhood were ready.
He is "a few instincts on legs, and holding a tomahawk, who exhaled carbonic acid for
the use of vegetation, kept down the bears and catamounts, enjoyed himself in scalping
and being scalped, and then passed away, or is passing away, according to the programme."
CHAPTER XII.
CANADIAN INDIANS : OJIBWAYS.
THE Dominion of Canada now stretches right across the American continent, from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, but the greater part of the Indians inhabiting it are included in that region
which until recently was known as the Hudson's Bay Territory. These Indians may be con-
veniently divided, according to Mr. A. C. Anderson, into (1) the Cree or Knistineau, including
the Sauteux, or O jib way, the Alonquin, and other subdivisions; (2) the Chippewayan
embracing the Takali,* or Carriere, of British Columbia, &c. ; and (3) the Sacliss, or Shew-
hapmuch.f The Crees stretch from Labrador up the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal, through
the Ottawa country, and along Lake Superior north-westward to Lake Winnipeg and Manitoba ;
hence west towards the head of the Saskatchewan as far as Fort Edmonton ; then north to the
Athabasca river, bending afterwards to the east and continuing along the line of the Mississippi
or English shores to Fort Churchill of Hudson's Bay. Northward of the Cree line, almost to
* Literally people who navigate deep waters, from tah-kali, deep.
f This classification differs slightly from the usually accepted book one, but the difference is more in name than
in reality.
CANADIAN INDIANS: CLASSIFICATION. 211
the Frozen Ocean, and from Churchill westward nearly to the Pacific, lies the broad band
roamed over by the Chippewayans. Crossing the Rocky Mountains to the heads of the northern
branches of the Columbia, and the southern tributaries of Fraser River, we find the Sacliss, or
Shewhapmuch race, whose limit may be defined by the Rocky Mountains eastward, on the
west the line of Fraser River from below Alexandria to Kequeloose, near the Falls, eighty-five
miles above Lang-ley, in about latitude 4<9° 50'; northward by the Carriere offset of the Chip-
pewayans, and south by the Sahaptins, or Nez Perces, of Oregon and Idaho.
From the " falls " of Fraser River nearly to the sea-coast the banks of the river are inhabited
by branches of another tribe, called Haitlin, or Teets.*" Taking these as forming the southern
range, Mr. Anderson remarks, that a fringe of tribes borders the continent, hence round by
Behring Strait to the banks of the St. Lawrence. The breadth of this fringe varies with the
nature of the country which it divides ; bounded generally on the larger streams by the extent of
unobstructed canal navigation, elsewhere probably by the limit of the coast range of mountains,
whence the smaller streams originate. For example, upon the Columbia River, the limit is
the vicinity of the Cascades, about 120 miles from the sea; upon Fraser River, the falls, or first
rapids, about 110 miles from the sea. "Nature, it would hence appear, herself places a barrier
which alike checks the further extension of the nations on the lower part of these rivers
seaward, and prevents invasion of the coast tribes beyond the limits easily accessible with the
canoes, in which, from habit or necessity, all their excursions, whether of peace or war, are
performed. The Eskimo are the solitary exception to this general rule. Frequenting the
islands and coast from the vicinity of Cook's Inlet to the southern point of Labrador, they do
not penetrate Hudson's Bay beyond a very limited distance from either point of the Straits.
The Chippewayans succeed them for a short space on the Churchill shore, the Swamp Crees
occupy the rest of the circuit." f
In former chapters we have, in greater or less detail — in accordance with the plan of this
book — described the habits, &c., of most of the tribes comprised under the three heads mentioned.
Let us, merely as a type of the Indians of the British territory east of the Rocky Mountains,
describe in somewhat greater detail the extensive tribe of the O jib ways.
OJIBWAYS.J
This tribe, or " nation " as it is often called, is found scattered in small bodies from the
River St. Lawrence, along the southern shores of Lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron, both
•sides of Lake Superior, and so on to what was once the Hudson Bay Territory and the head-
waters of the Mississippi. A few are also intermingled with the Ottawas and others on the
* Called by their neighbours " Sa-chinco," or "strangers." The Teets, again, call the others "T'saw-
meena" ("up-river;" hence the title of the village of that name on the Cowichan River, in Vancouver Island),
and so throughout. The term " Atnah," given by Sir Alexander Mackenzie to the Shewhapmuch, and now
extensively adopted into our maps and other publications, is not used by themselves, but their neighbours, the
'Takali, and means " stranger-tribe." Tribes west of them, the Takali call " Atnah-yoo."
t Anderson, New York Hist. Magazine, vol. vii., p. 74.
% The late Rev. Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) , an Ojibway chief, whose account of his own tribe is one
of our chief authorities for the statements which follow, informs us that the word Ojibway is only a corruption
of Chippeway (or Chippewa, as it is sometimes spelled). In this respect he differs from Mr. Anderson, who makes
the Chippeways a separate people from the Ojibways. See also George Copeway's account of his race.
212
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
south shore of Lake Huron, and in the vicinity of Lake Michigan. Within their limits, as already
stated, are those of other tribes of Indians, such as the Six Nations, the Ottawas, the Delawares
(the Canadian branch), &c. They probably entered America from Asia by way of Behring Strait,
but were intercepted from the coast by the southward extension of the Eskimo. The Sarsees-
CANADIAN* INDIAN".
(From West's Picture of the Death of General Wolfe, in Hampton Court Palace.)
and Klatskanai are two isolated tribes of Chippeways, the former inhabiting the plains of
I'pper Saskatchewan, the second at one time living south of the Columbia, east of the
Killimocks of the coast, and both speaking a dialect of Chippeway, though, it must be
confessed, among the Klatskanai the Chippewayan words were few* (p. 198).
* It may he mentioned that the Kootainies of the west of the Rocky Mountains are also an isolated tribe,
their language having no connection with that of any of their neighbours. This manly race is getting, year by
year, decimated by the Blackfeet, whom they fall in with in their visits to the buffalo grounds east of the
Rocky Mountains.
CANADIAN INDIANS: OJIBWAYS.
Of their own origin, like all the Indian race, the O jib ways know nothing. They believe
that the Great Spirit (Keehe-munedoo, or Kezamunedoo) originally placed all the tribes just
where they are ; in fact, they believe in the plurality of the origin of the human race, and that
all the people speaking different languages were separate creations; they know nothing of
Mr. Max Miiller. The northern Chippeways, near the Coppermine River, have a tradition
that they came from a country inhabited by very wicked people, and had traversed a great
lake, shallow, but full of islands, where they suffered great misery. It was always winter, and
the ice and snow were never away. At the Coppermine River, where they first landed, the
ground was covered with copper, over which earth to the depth of five or six feet has since
accumulated. In those halcyon days their ancestors lived until their feet were worn out with
walking and their throats with eating. The Ojibway tradition of the creation of the world
INDIAN* HUNTING ON SNOAA'-SHOES.
(The Snow- Shoes are shown on cither side).
is peculiar, and as it is substantially the same through most of the north-eastern tribes,
we may quote it. The stoiy, however, is too long to be given in full : — " Before the general
deluge which once covered the earth, there lived two enormous creatures, each possessed of
vast power. One was an animal with a great horn in its head; the other was a huge
load. The latter had the whole management of the waters, keeping them secure in its own
body, and emitting only a certain quantity for the watering of the earth. Between these
two creatures there arose a quarrel, which terminated in a fight. The toad in vain tried
to swallow its antagonist, but the latter rushed upon it, and with his horn pierced a hole
in its side, out of which water gushed in floods, and soon overflowed the face of the earth.
At this time Nanahbozhoo* was living on the earth, and observing the water rushing
higher and higher, he fled to the loftiest mountain for refuge. By aid of the musk-rat
(p. 220) he got up a little earth, out of which the world was gradually made." The Coppermine
* Sometimes spelt "Anina Booj6," under which pronunciation he is known among the Hudson's Bay
Indians (p. 103). He is supposed to have been a great man endued with the spirit of the gods, but what the
name means has now been lost.
214 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
River Chippeways have a tradition somewhat different. This Nanahbozhoo now sits at the
North Pole, overlooking all the transactions and affairs of the people he had placed on the
earth. The northern tribes say that he always sleeps during the winter; but previous to
his falling asleep fills his great pipe, and smokes for several days, and that it is the smoke
coming from the mouth and pipe of Nanahbozhoo which produces that short spell of bright
weather just before the commencement of winter which is known as the " Indian summer."
They always believe that the souls of the dead go to a good country near the setting
of the sun, and it is just possible that this belief may have arisen from a faint remembrance
of their having come originally (as their traditions say) from that direction. Few, if
any of the civilised Indians believe in their Jewish origin (see pp. 14, 15), though it is curious
that in their drunken brawls the Muncey tribe used frequently to reproach the Iroquois in
an " epithet of derision identical with that of circumcision, for having practised it in old
times."
They are revengeful, indolent, and stoical under the eye of strangers or of their enemies.
The stories of this are almost endless. Here is one as a specimen. "War-cloud/' aChippeway
" brave," in a foray on the Sioux villages in Minnesota had his leg broken by a bullet. He
told his companions to leave him, and he would show the Sioux dogs how a Chippeway could
die. At his own request he was seated on a log with his back leaning against a tree. He
then commenced painting his face and singing his death-song. As his enemies approached,
brandishing their scalping-knives and yelling demoniacally, he chanted his song the louder,
otherwise showing not a sign that he was conscious of their presence. Rushing upon him they
tore his scalp from his head. They then commenced shooting arrows at him — through his
cheeks, ears, arms, neck, &c., always avoiding a vital part, until he was absolutely pinned to
the tree. Next, they flourished his bloody scalp before him, but still the warrior sang his death-
song, and sat unmoved in every muscle under the terrible torture he was enduring. At last,
out of all patience, one of them rushed upon him and buried his tomahawk in the warrior's
brain, as the last strain of his song was still upon his lips. He had taught them how a
Chippeway could die; his comrades very soon taught them how a Chippeway could be avenged.
They are hospitable but reserved to strangers. Among themselves they are, however,
great gossips. They are not averse to a full meal at any time, but at the same time believe
that if a man can fast long enough, there is almost nothing which will not be vouchsafed to
him. They have traditions of men who fasted so long that they became immortal — no doubt,
after they had starved to death. There are tales also of paJigaks (or flying skeletons), bein^
the corporeal remnants of those spare-living folk who had nearly solved the problem of living
on nothing, though, unfortunately for the benefit of posterity, they died just before they had
accomplished it. The robin (oleche] was an Indian female who had fasted a long time, but just
before she was turned into a bird she painted her breast red and sang for joy as she flew away.
Now she said, " I will return in the spring to my people and tell them what is to happen during
the year; if peace and plenty, then I will sing f che-che-che ' in merry laughter; but if war <>r
trouble, then ' lih-nwoh-che-go/ I prophesy evil things." It is probably owing to their
accustoming themselves to fast from early youth, that the Indian has the power of doing
"svithout food for such long periods.
The young people are taught by the old men the virtues of hospitality and silence in
CANADIAN INDIANS: OJTBWAYS. 215
presence of their parents and aged people, modesty, not to interrupt conversation, and so on ;
hence Indians are naturally a polite people. There is really, however, on the other hand, little
or no family discipline, and the children, being untaught by their parents in the way they
should go, decidedly do not depart from their own devices; they are self-willed and disobedient.
Yet for old age their reverence is great. None are more looked up to than the uhkewaihzees, or
long-dwellers 011 the earth. Their counsels are listened to ; they are the instructors into pow-
wowism (or oratory), in medicine and tradition — in a word, they are the teachers and sages. No
doubt we have all heard tales of the old having been abandoned by their family and tribe, but
these cases are exceedingly rare. The old people will, however, often expose themselves when
they get old and useless, preferring to die rather than be a burden on their friends.
Cannibalism, even in the direst necessity, is looked upon by them with the utmost
abhorrence. Yet some, in accordance with a custom which we have already seen is not
uncommon among savages, and even among civilised people like the Chinese (p. 108), will
boil their enemies'' hearts in a kettle with corn, and, in bravado, drink ladlefuls of the
soup. This is called " drinking the heart's blood of the enemy." The cannibal — when
known as such — even though he may have been driven to it by dire hunger, is a Cain in
the laud, hunted down mercilessly until the tomahawk-blow puts an end to him.
Women* are badly treated, having to do all the work ; they get all the kicks, and few of
the pleasures of savage life. The coarsest food, the harshest words, and blows on the slightest
provocation, fall to her lot. In a word, she is treated as all savage women are — as an
inferior being. Yet the wife is expected to love, honour, and obey her lord, and, strange to
say, in most cases she does so, after her own slavish, unsentimental fashion. " Fire-water "
is, however, undermining in them, as in every other Indian people, every small virtue which
they possessed, and women have been known to sell their children for whisky, though, as
a rule, they are very fond of them, and spare the rod to an extent which, if I might express
an opinion on such a delicate question of aboriginal domestic affairs, is decidedly detrimental
to the young Ojib ways' morals. The women, I may add, are infinitely more industrious than
the men, being generally busily employed in fetching meat from the woods, dressing skins,
planting corn, making clothing, belts, mocassins, mats, canoes of birch bark (their only mode
of travel, with the exception of dog-sledges during the winter, and their own feet), maple
sugar, baskets, brooms, &c. They are shy before strangers, but have the womanly fondness
for trinkets developed to an inordinate extent. The average height of the men is about
five feet ten inches, and that of the women five feet. They are well formed ; yet the women,
owing to their more laborious life, are more muscular and well-knit together than the men,
and, on the whole, are rather better looking. The men, however, excel in running and
walking, forty or fifty miles a day being thought nothing of by an Indian. f The head of
the woman is also larger than that of the man ; it is round, and rather broad at the top ; the
cheek-bones are high, and, as among all the race, the eyes and hair are black. Among the
* The word squaw, universally used all over America to an Indian woman, ia a corruption of the Ojibway
word equa, woman, and is looked upon by them as a term of reproach.
f Indians have been known to walk from Niagara to Toronto, a distance of eighty miles, in one day.
and that, too, when there was only a narrow trail.
216
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
Ojibways, as amongst the North-Eastern Indians generally, " Roman " noses are common
(pp. 212, 221). The mouth and lips are large, and the teeth good. They have little or
no beard, having been in the habit from time immemorial of plucking out what little makes
its appearance; the result is that the appearance first produced artificially has now become
hereditary. A bearded man is not looked upon as an Adonis in an Eastern tribe. Their
skin is reddish-brown, and generally particularly dirty. The occupation of all the nation
is hunting in the woods and fishing in the rivers and lakes ; to these occupations the boys
are early trained by their fathers. Any little leisure they may have is occupied in incul-
cating a love of war, by a relation of the exploits of their forefathers. They are also
VIEW IN A CANADIAN FOREST.
early taught the mysteries of religion, religious songs, mysteries, and dances, the virtues of
fasting, as well as the proprieties to be observed in feasting.
" They have no set time for eating, but leave it to the duration of their craving appe-
tites. During the absence of a hunter, the portion of meat which he would have eaten is
carefully saved for his return, and on it he makes a hearty repast. When he is successful
he will make a feast and sing his hunting chants to his munedoo for a whole night, and by
dawn of day he will be off again. If on this day, by uncommon perseverance, he has the good
luck to kill a deer or a bear, it is attributed to the virtue of the songs or medicine employed
for the occasion. The Indians who live within the boundary of the English settlements
depend, in a great measure, for their livelihood on making baskets, brooms, wooden bowls,
ladles, and scoop-shovels, which they sell to the white people in exchange for provisions."
CANADIAN INDIANS: OJIBWAYS ; MARRIAGES.
217
Some of the old men still have the hair of their heads closely cut or plucked by the roots,
with the exception of the ' ' scalp-lock " on the top. To this tuft is often fastened a silver or
leaden tube three to four inches in length. Many of the older men also adopt the fashion of
slitting their ears from top to bottom, at the same time fastening weights of lead, wampum,
and other trinkets, so as to cause them to hang down in loops. In a few years these strings of
ear stretch on to the shoulders, which appearance is accounted very venerable. But they
rarely enjoy such dignity long, for in the first drunken brawl the loop is usually broken. They
also wear shells and other " jewels " through the septum of their nostrils (p. 90) .
Marriages among the Ojibways are usually arranged by the parents in childhood, without
t'
VIEW ON THE ST. LAWKEXCE, CANADA.
the consent or even knowledge of the young1 people, who are frequently betrothed before they
have even seen each other. If the young man has not been provided for in this fashion he sends
a friend with some present to the lady whom he fancies. If the present is accepted, then it is
understood that his offer is favourably received, and after a courtship of tv/o or three months
(during which time the affianced is expected to conduct herself with the utmost modesty — even
to prudishness), the husband takes her off on a hunting trip for a few days, during which time
she steers the canoe. On their return the product of the chase is laid at the feet of the bride's
parents, with whom the young couple reside for a time, her parents considering that they have
a claim on their industry until they have a family of their own. Notwithstanding the drudgery
and often ill-usage to which the wife is subjected, husband and wife seem to be very true
to each other, and ' ' get along " tolerably smoothly — the little episode of an occasional
beating being excepted. If for some heinous marital offence — such as infidelity or intolerable
28
218 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
laziness — divorce is necessary, this is accomplished by the husband biting off the woman's nose.
The children are then equally divided, and if there is an uneven number the wife gets the
benefit of the odd one.
Polygamy is permitted, but few have more than three wives. They generally endeavour
to marry sisters, under the belief that they will live more peaceably together — a theory not
always confirmed in practice.
As to religion, they all believe in one great spirit and many minor ones, )r munedoos*
good and bad, who have charge of game, fish, winds, stones, and trees. To these they pray,
and even offer sacrifice. This munedoo may be a pine-tree, and to it food and other articles are
equally offered. An Indian on going on a canoe voyage will kill a black dog and throw it into
the lake as a sacrifice to propitiate the storm or water, gods, of which latter especially there
are many. Sun, moon, and stars are also worshipped. On the north-east shore of Lake Huron
is an island on which is a large and curiously-shaped rock, something like a large turtle, to which
the Indians offer devotions and sacrifices, such as tobacco, &c., in order to propitiate and save
them from disasters whilst travelling in the direction the god is supposed to overlook. The
praises of the sun are chanted by the old chiefs and warriors as the sun rises, and at his setting
he is thanked for the heat and light he has afforded during the day. ' An eclipse is the " death
of the sun," and great anxiety is felt for his safety. Bits of live coal are fixed to the points of
arrows, which are shot up into the air, so that the dying sun may be relighted. The children
are enjoined never to point their finger at the moon, else it will be bitten off. Certain animals
such as the wolf, toad, fox, and all venomous snakes, are supposed to possess supernatural powers,
and places distinguished for natural scenery, waterfalls, or other peculiarities, are held in awe,
and the mimed oos who preside over these lonely places are propitiated by the awe-stricken
traveller with tobacco or other offerings. The Falls of Niagara, before the white man frequented
them, was such a sacred place, to which the Indians used to resort to offer gifts. Thunder is a
god in the shape of a large eagle which feeds on serpents, which it takes from under the earth
and the trunks of hollow trees. Lightning is the fiery arrows which the thunder has shot at a
serpent and caught it away in a second. The thunder, they say, has its abode on the top of a
high mountain in the west, and there it lays its eggs and hatches them like an eagle, and from
whence it takes its flight all over the earth in search of serpents. The reader will remember
that almost exactly the same idea is held on the same subject by the Indians of the north-
west coast (p. 131). They are also said to make figures of their gods, to which they sometimes
offer up sacrifice, but I cannot get any exact information on this subject. They believe, like
the western Indians, greatly in the virtues of the medicine-bag (p. 109), and how it has made
chiefs and warriors invulnerable in war. The Indian is essentially a religious man, but, like
some people with paler faces, knows a great deal more than he ever attempts to practise. They
place great store by feasts and sacrifices, and to these many guests are bid by a young man
going to a lodge with a number of porcupine quills, which he distributes to those invited, with
the general announcement, " You are bidden to a feast." These quills are of three colours, rod
for the aged, or medicine-men, green for the middle class, and white for the common people.
They are delivered up on arriving at the festive lodge, and the guests are served in accordance
* Generally written manitou.
CANADIAN INDIANS: OJIBWAYS ; BURIAL. 219
with the rank expressed by the colour of the quill. They have no regular priests, the duties of
this class being performed by the pow-wows, conjurers and gifted speakers — offices to which
any ambitious Indian of good abilities can attain.
In burial, the body is interred in the ground with the head towards the west, and alongside
the corpse are placed his former hunting and warlike implements. The grave is covered over
with a sort of penthouse of wicker-work, mats, or birch bark. Meat, soup, and other food is
then offered to the dead, some being reserved for a burnt offering. The widow will jump over
the grave and run behind trees, so as to avoid the spirit of her husband, who otherwise might
" haunt " her. A hole is left in the end of the penthouse or wigwam over the grave through
which, after dark, on the night of the burial, the men fire their muskets. Strips of folded birch
bark are hung round the grave to scare off " the spirits that haunt the night ; " and as a
further precaution against " ghosts " the children's faces and necks are brushed with a singed
deer's tail before they go to sleep. As the soul is believed to linger about the body after death,
these means are also supposed to expedite its departure. Mourning is publicly denoted by
blackened faces and the most ragged and filthy clothes, which they wear for a whole year.
After this time the widow or widower may again marry without insulting the memory of the
deceased or his or her relatives, which otherwise they undoubtedly would. During the whole of
this period of mourning, at every meal a little food is offered to the dead, and the grave is
often visited, when food and other articles — and particularly tobacco — are also offered. Mr.
Jones informs us that it is always the custom for a widow to tie up a bundle of clothes in
ihe form of an infant, frequently ornamented with silver brooches. This she will sleep with
and carry about for twelve months, as a memorial of her departed husband. When the days of
her mourning are over a feast is prepared by some of her relatives, at which she appears in her
best attire. As her body has been washed for the first time for twelve months she presents an
unwontedly smart appearance.
Their future place of bliss does not differ materially from that believed in by the other Indian
tribes. Between this world and the next flows a deep, dark, Stygian river, over which the souls of
men must pass on a pole. Good men have no trouble in this passage, but the wicked fall over and
are carried by the swift current into the region of darkness. The northern Chippeways, on
the other hand, have a modification of this belief. The souls of men are ferried down the dark
river which divides this world from the one beyond the grave, in a stone canoe, which bears them
to a lovely lake, in the midst of which is an isle of transcendent bliss, and here, in sight of it, they
receive their final judgment. If their good actions predominate, they land on the island, there
to enjoy a never-ending bliss of sensuous enjoyments ; but if the balance is borne down by their
evil deeds, then, instanter, the stone canoe sinks, and leaves them up to their chins in water, to
behold, with unavailing longing and struggling to reach it, the blissful land from which they
are for ever excluded. Cold is what these northern people have ever to dread, and hence it is
made a means of eternal punishment. In the warm sweltering South, heat, on the contrary, is
what is to be dreaded, and it accordingly figures as the torment of the wicked. They are very
liberal in their ideas of immortality, granting it also to all animals, the spirits of which have the
power of punishing any one who despises or makes any unnecessary slaughter of them. Green
trees are seldom cut down, under the belief that they feel pain ; there are men who even declare
that the tree has been heard groaning under the blows of the axe. Some of the Lake Superior
220
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
tribes even worship trees, and present votive offerings to them, a religious custom common to
various savages, and among Indians to the Crees, Mexican Indians, Nicaraguan Indians,
Patagonians, and others.
The chiefs are hereditary, but the war-chiefs are elected. The former, with the aid of a
council of old men, administer the government, and mete out punishment, each offence having
a well-understood expiation. Blood for blood is their law, and the executioner is always next
of kin to the murdered person. So Spartan are their chiefs — or so under the control of public
opinion — that a chief has been known to order the execution of his own favourite daughter, who
THE MVSQL'ASH, OR MUSK-HAT (Fiber zibethicus).
had, in a fit of rage, murdered her husband, and to stand by with a sad countenance while the
murdered man's brother plunged the sharp scalping-knife into her bosom. In a few instances
payments have been known to be taken in expiation of a murder. The vendetta, common among
some tribes is not in vogue amongst them, but there are rare cases in which vengeance has been
taken in this manner.
Captives in war are either held as slaves or adopted into the family of some one who has
lost a relative in the war. In the latter case the captive enjoys perfect freedom. But if his lot
is neither this nor the other alternative, he is certain to be doomed to a painful death by being
burnt at the stake, or tortured while the war-dance is proceeding. Yet it is a mark of bravery
on these occasions never to betray the slightest emotion, but to sing his death-song, and to
CANADIAN INDIANS: OJIBWAYS ; SEASONS; TOTEMS.
221
upbraid his tormentors with being1 only a parcel of old women, who do not know how to give
pain. Sometimes this abuse is to the advantage of the tortured warrior, for then some one, cut
to the quick by the language used, will rush upon him and bury a tomahawk in his brain.
Dancing, foot-races, shooting with bow and arrows, running, swimming, wrestling,
jumping, &c., are their favourite amusements.
They divide the year into four quarters, which they call the seegwun (spring), or the sap
season, when they catch the sap of the sugar maple to extract sugar from it ; neebiu (summer),
or the abundant season; tahgwuhgin (autumn), the fading season; va&peboor (winter), or the cold,
freezing season. January is the Great Spirit moon ; February, the mullet-fish moon ; March,
the wild goose moon ; April, the frog moon ; May, the blooming moon ; June, the strawberry
moon; July, the red raspberry moon; August, the huckleberry moon; September, the fading leaf
CIIIPPEWAY INDIAN'S FISHING IN BIRCH-BARK CANOES, SAULT DE ST. MARY*8, LAKE SUPERIOR. (After Catlin).
moon ; October, the falling leaf moon ; November, the freezing moon ; and December, the spirit
moon. They have no idea of weeks, or the number of days in a year. The day they divide
into morning, noon, and afternoon; hours, irinutes, and seconds, it is almost unnecessary to
add, are to them not even abstractions. Their ages they reckon by "snows," or winters, and the
time of their birth by some particular circumstance which they had been told was characteristic
of the time — such as hoeing, gathering corn, croaking of frogs in the spring, and so on. Few
Indians know their exact age. Mothers, in the pride of maternity, will attempt to keep a record
of the age of their child by cutting a notch each day on some part of its cradle, but the record
is rarely kept up more than a month or two, afterwards they reckon by moons and snows.
Their food aims, or totems, we have already sufficiently described (p. 86), and I only touch
upon them here to mention Mr. Jones's ingenious idea, that totems might have originated in
this manner. " Coming into a vast wilderness originally, and fearing that in their wanderings
they might loose their relationship to each other, they probably held a general council on the
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
subject, freeing that the head of each family should adopt certain animals or things as their
toodaims, by which their descendants might be recognised in whatever part of the world they
were found, and that those of the same tribe should ever be considered as brethren or rela-
tions/' How far this agrees with the speculations of ethnologists we have seen.
Their belief in medicine-men, or pow-wows, witchcraft, necromancy, and such-like, is all-
potent. Endless quarrels arise out of this supposed "bewitching" of persons. It is said that the
conjurer will often threaten to exert his power to induce the object of his threat to marry him,
and in revenge for some supposed disease inflicted by the necromancer the relatives of the sick
man — or the sick man himself — will secretly put him to death.
They have, in addition, a pretended knowledge of the virtues of various plants and other
medicinal substances, which is, however, more or less imaginary, and applied in most cases
merely empirically. They believe in a medicine to enable the hunter to be successful in the
object of his pursuit ; it is made up of various roots, and is placed in the track of the first
game animal he meets. If aided by the "hunter's song" it is accounted all-sovereign.
The " warrior's medicine " renders the body invulnerable to spear, bullet, or arrow ; and the
love-medicine (made up of roots and red ochre) with which they paint their faces, brings a
backward lover to the point. It is not, however, without its drawback, for if it is withdrawn
the person who before was almost frantic with love, hates with a hatred equally powerful !
If a person is to be bewitched, the necromancer sets up a little wooden image supposed to
represent the person against whom there is an evil design. Arrows are then shot at it, and
immediately an arrow strikes, the person whom the image represents is seized with violent
pains in the same part. This belief has its counterpart among other Indian tribes, and various
nations (p. 112).
Fairies (tuamagwasewug) — mischievous little folks, no better behaved than their European
cousins — and giants (or waindeyoos), tall as pine-trees and powerful as munedoos, are familial-
subjects of belief to the Ojibway.
Indians are named after their relatives ; and these names, again, relate to the heavenly
bodies or natural objects. Sometimes names are given to the children by the old men, whose
familiarity with ancient names renders them peculiarly fitted for such an office ; while in other
cases new names will be assumed under extraordinary circumstances. " For instance, if a rich
person or his friends suppose that Death has received a commission to come after an Indian
bearing a certain name, they immediately make a feast, offer sacrifices, and alter the name.
By this mano2uvre they think to cheat Death when he comes for the soul of the Indian of such
a name, not being able to find the person bearing it." So much for the information of
Kalfkewaquonaby, the Ojibway chief, who tells us that the " pleasant wind," " the blown
down," " the scattering light of the sun and moon," " the pleasant stream," " the roaring-
thunder," " the cloud that rolls beyond," " the god of the south," " the blue sky woman," &c.,
are common names in his nation. As among all barbarous and semi-barbarous people,
nicknames are given to the children, which they often retain after they arrive at the adult
state. Husbands and wives never mention each other's name — etiquette forbidding this — and
Indians will rarely or ever give their own names, but request a bystander to mention it, from
impressions received when young that by so doing they will grow no more.
Mr. Jones expresses his belief that in Canada there are only two distinct Indian languages
CANADIAN INDIANS: OJIBWAYS; ELOQUENCE. 223
— the Ojibway and the Mohawk — the first of which is the most extensively spoken.* Like all
Indian languages of the agglutinative type, polysyllables abound, and, owing to the prefixes
and affixes, some of the words are enormously long. A whole sentence is sometimes expressed
by a single word, e.g., Kiknweiintootumaugalumowaunautik (we will desire to ask alms for
these persons), a somewhat more than sesquipedalian word, which is matched by the Eskimo,
Savekenearreatore'sooaratlaromarouatetok (you must try and get me a good knife). These lan-
guages have been reduced to writing by the missionaries, and several publications are printed in
them, in the ordinary Roman characters. The earliest method of conveying thought otherwise
than by word of mouth woiild seem to be by pictures, such as the Egyptian hieroglyphics, or
the famous Mexican picture-writings. Such, in a rade form, have existed among the Ojibways
from a very early period, as well as among other tribes, painted on birch bark, or on buffalo
robes (p. 128) or lodge-skins. These are read with the utmost facility by any Indian
acquainted with the signs used, and are commonly employed in the form of rude pictures,
painted with lampblack, or scrawled with bits of burnt stick on smooth-barked trees, or on
the wood when the bark is peeled off. In this manner the Indian will present petitions to
Government, make out census-rolls, or narrate hunting or warlike exploits, as explained by
Schoolcraft and Kohl.
For music many of the Indians have considerable taste. In 1845 there was published in
New York a book of Indian melodies, to the number of 120 new tunes, by an Indian named
Thomas Commuck. These are named after celebrated Indian chiefs, Indian names of places, &c.,
and are spoken highly of by connoisseurs in music. In eloquence, humour, and shrewdness, the
north-eastern Indians excel both the north-western and plain Indians, as much as they excel
them in many other points, social and public. As a specimen, I might quote the famous
speech of the Mingo chief, Logan, made after the war of 1774, but it must be familiar to
most of my readers, as it has been widely published as a specimen of impassioned eloquence.
So much sickly romance has been attached by the novelists to the " red men of the forest/'
that of late years a reaction in a contrary direction has set in, and it is now the fashion
among a certain class of superficial tourists to pronounce the accounts of the older writers
to be little better than fiction. In reality, the picturesque aspects of Indian life have been
made the most of; but there is much difference in this respect, while the Indians who inhabited
the eastern parts of America, at the period of their settlement by the whites, were vastly
superior to the degraded races with whom later travellers have come in contact. Still, there
is no denying that there is much wearisome repetition in their orations, and that the parrot-like
twaddle about the " Great Father/' " Great Spirit/' and so forth, which so plentifully be-
sprinkles their speeches, is altogether foreign to their manners.
Shrewdness and pathetic eloquence are combined in the following address of another Indian
chief, exhorting his people to take to agriculture : — " See ye not that the pale-faces feed on
grains, when we feed on flesh ? that the flesh takes thirty months to grow up, and that
it is often scarce ? that every one of those wonderful grains which they strew into the earth
yields to them a thousand-fold return ? that the flesh on which we live has four legs to flee
from us, while we have only two to run after it ? that the grains remain and grow up in
* The Ojibways belong to the Alonquin family. The Mohawks are like the Wyandots (or Hurons), members of the
Iroquois connection, allied in race to the Alonquins, but, according to Morgan, linguistically to the Dakotahs.
2i4 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the spot where the pale-face plants them ? that winter, which is the season of our toilsome
hunting, is to them a season of rest? No wonder, then, that they have so many children,
and live longer than we do. Therefore I say to every one of you who will listen, that
before the cedars of our village shall have died of age, and the maples of the valley ha\v
ceased to give us sugar, the race of the corn-eaters will have destroyed the race of the
flesh-eaters, unless the hunter should resolve to exchange his wild pursuit for those of the
husbandman." An Indian at home is talkative, and fond of broad jokes.
The humour of the Indian is displayed in the following anecdote : — Two chiefs who had
come to a city on business were invited to dinner by a gentleman interested in their race.
One of them seeing a yellow-looking stuff (mustard) took a spoonful of it, which he swallowed
NOKTH-AMEKKAX INDIAN TYPE OF FACE (OJIBWAY). '!!'* j
whole. Tears soon ran down his cheeks. His companion, noticing this, said, " Oh ! my
brother, why do you weep ? " The other replied in a mournful voice, " I am thinking about
my poor son who was killed in such and such a battle/' Presently the other chief took a
spoonful of the same stuff, which caused his eyes to weep as did his brother's, who in return
asked him, "Why do you cry?" upon which he replied, "Oh! I weep to think that you
not killed when your x<>n I'-as ! ''
.Morals are so much a matter of sky that it is useless discussing the red man's I'thics.
But as the following reply, addressed to a white who challenged an Indian, demonstrates,
he is not without a grim shrewdness : — " I have two objections to this duel affair ; the on-
lest I should hurt yon ; and the other is, lest you should hurt me. I do not see any u
that it would do me to put a bullet through your body — I could not make any use of you
wlii-ii dead; but I could of a rabbit or turkey. As to myself, I think it more wise to aroit/
than to put myself in the way of harm: I am under apprehension that you might hurt me.
CANADIAN INDIANS: VARIOUS TRIBES; CIVILISATION.
225
That being the case, I think it advisable to keep my distance. If you want to try your
pistols, take some object — a tree, or anything about my size ; and if you hit that, send me
word, and I shall acknowledge that had I been there you might have hit me."
Their feelings are exceeding kindly to the British Government, but full of implacable
hatred to the people of the United States, whom they call kitche nookomon (or big knives),
from the American revolutionists having, during the War of Independence, massacred many
of them with cutlasses and dirks. They look upon them as their natural enemies, and
entertain but a poor opinion of their honesty. Negroes they consider a very ill-used people,
A CHEEK IN NEWFOUNDLAND — INDIAN WIGWAM.
in this respect only ranking next to themselves ; but most tribes have a strong aversion to
intermarry with them.
In the preceding pages we have spoken mainly of the Ojibways, but in reality of Canada —
stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific — the greater number of the tribes already mentioned
being to some extent found within the territory of the Dominion. The habits of the Ojibways
have likewise been described, though it must be understood that — as must often happen in
the course of these volumes — their past rather than their present condition has been illus-
trated, our business being to sketch primitive customs more than the social or political status
any people. In the older provinces of Canada the natives have long ago been gathered
into settlements, under the care of superintendents, by whose efforts, and the gradual effects
education, they have, in the majority of cases, become civilised and Christianised, and
lay be fairly compared with the lumbermen and farmers among whom they live. Clergymen
the Indian race are not uncommon, and it might be easy to point to other individuals
29
226 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
occupying excellent positions in Canada and the United States, who are either of the pure
or the mixed aboriginal nationalities. A pure-blooded Indian is nowadays rather rare in
the older provinces ; but as we travel farther and farther west, we find the tribesmen less
and less civilised, though few of them, until we reach British Columbia, can be pronounced
absolute heathens. Missionaries have generally settled among them, and if, in the majority
of instances, the new faith is merely in the form of a veneer over the old one, it has, at all
events, covered from the eyes of the visitor, who resides for only a brief period in their
midst, the grosser aspects of their pristine paganism. Even on the head waters of the
Peace River, and along the banks of the Mackenzie until the land of the Eskimo is reached,
devoted pioneers of Christianity may be found. But how many Crees, Blackfeet, Sioux, Chippe-
ways, or that vaguely-named people, the Tinne,* are comprised within the Dominion can
only be loosely stated. In all the Provinces they did not, by the latest estimate, exceed
80,000, and at the present hour the chances are that they are fewer. The Micmacs have
so rapidly decreased that they have disappeared from some of their old haunts, and are
nowadays found in only scattered numbers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and other parts
of Lower Canada. The Etchemens of New Brunswick and Maine are only remembered by
name, for, like the numerous small tribes who within comparatively recent times had their
homes in all the States and Provinces east of the Mississippi — and are so carefully catalogued
in the lists of book ethnographers — they have either entirely vanished, or been absorbed
either among the whites, or with the tribes whose vitality enabled them to live on, until in
the fulness of time they were transported either to distant reservations or to the " Indian
Territory." At one time the Micmacs extended into Newfoundland, but from that colony they
have long ago disappeared. They are, or were not long ago, divided into two parties, under the
respective leadership of Sam Soap and Peter Basket. Peter once voyaged as far as England
on an embassy to the Queen regarding the affairs of his tribe, and made so many friends
in this country that he remained for fifteen years. At last, his longing for the smoky
wigwams and free life of the Bay of Chaleur was too much for him. Accordingly, he
returned, and arrived safely at the well-remembered lodge. His old squaw was engaged
at her household duties when he entered ; but she was not at all hysterical. She simply
handed him his pipe from the chimney-corner, and remarked to her daughter, as he puffed in
silence, "Nancy, here is the old man come back with a new hat;" and a day or two
afterwards Peter might have been seen in front of his camp making himself a new canoe,
as stolidly as if he had never left Chaleur for a single day.f
But though much might be said regarding these and other tribes, we must content
ourselves with this account — too brief for the merits of the subject, and yet too long for
the space at our disposal — and now bid farewell to the 340,000 aborigines of the United States
and Canada — Alaska excluded — in order to briefly survey those who have fallen under thrall of
a Latin race.
* This people are sometimes known as the Athabascan family, and comprise a series of tribes more widely spread
thiin :iny other in North America, stretching, as they do, from Alaska to Northern Mexico, and far on either side ef
tin liocky Mountains. What little we know about their distribution may be gathered from the researches of Kenni-
cott, 1'etitot, Ball, and other recent writers. But our knowledge is still ^n-imcr. :md is likely always to be vague.
f Rowan : " The Emigrant and Sportsman in Canada," p. 249 ; Dawson : " Fossil Man" (1880) ; &c.
227
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MEXICAN AND CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS : AZTECS ; MOSQUITIAN AND OTHER TRIBES.
PASSING from the cold and often sterile regions of the north southward to the warm and
rich lands of Mexico, we still find an uninterrupted spread of the great family of Americans, and
so onward through the narrow isthmus which connects North and South America — and in
South America itself, in even greater numbers, live numerous tribes of Indians in the forests,
on the pampas and savannahs (prairies), on the sea-coast, or along the banks of the great
rivers. In Mexico, when it was first explored by the hordes of Cortes, existed the wondrous
civilisation of the Aztecs — the remnant of whom we have already described as the Pueblo
Indians. If we are to believe the conquerors, the magnificence of the Aztec Empire almost
transcends imagination. The city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan) was built on an island in the midst
of a lake. In the centre of 20,000 houses was the Emperor Montezuma's palace, reared of
marble and jasper, adorned with fountains and baths ; and the walls of the prodigious number
of rooms it contained covered with beautiful pictures made of feathers. Menageries were
attached to the emperor's and chiefs' houses ; articles of gold and silver were of the most common
occurrence — gold and treasures were " drugs " in the land, mosaic work of the most beautiful
type covered the most common utensils. The land was full of large and most beautiful cities,
and the fragments which still remain to us (p. 228) show how noble were the public buildings
and monuments. The chronicles of the nation were preserved in a vast series of painted
tablets, a few only of which escaped the Vandals who destroyed this civilisation, and whose only
thoughts were of gain and sensual gratification. Animal worship was found amongst them.
The horse, when they first saw it, they looked upon as a deity, and one which was captured was
stabled in a gorgeous apartment, and attempted to be fed with chickens and rich food. It is
unnecessary to say that under this regimen the animal died. Fire was worshipped, and yearly a
human victim — solemnly killed by a magnificently handled obsidian knife — was offered up to it.
Whether it was, as Miiller* has thought, because both in Mexico and Peru the people were not
softened by the possession of domestic animals, or from innate religious superstition, certain it
is that among both the Aztecs and the Peruvians human sacrifices were frightfully common in
their temples. It has been calculated that 2,500 victims were on an average offered up every
year ; but in one year the human sacrifices are known to have exceeded 100,000. Some of
these human sacrifices were attended with great pomp. In honour of their goddess Texcatlipoca,
a beautiful youth — usually a captive — was taken, treated for a whole year as a god, attended by
trains of pages, everything that he could wish was provided for him, and during the last month
four beautiful girls were given to him as wives. When the fatal day came he was placed at
the head of a solemn procession, and arriving at the temple was sacrificed with much ceremony,
and his flesh eaten by the priests and chiefs. The end of the Mexican Empire is soon told.f
Montezuma, after being tortured on the fire and rack, yielded to the Spaniards, and was, on
lis account, slain by the people who loved him. Gradually his successors were defeated, until
" Geschichte der Americanishen Urreligionen," s. 23. f " Countries of the World," Vol. II, pp. 234—240.
228
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the Aztec Empire fell under the yoke of Castile ; and the only trace of it now to he seen is in
the remains of the great aqueducts and other puhlic works, ruined cities and forts, which
exist throughout the country, particularly in Yucatan, and ever startle the traveller amidst
the luxuriant tropical vegetation of Central America. We shall see by-and-by that a culture
equal in degree and akin in kind existed prior to or contemporaneous with the Aztec civilisa-
tion of Mexico, 2,900 miles to the south in Peru, and that there were in the interspace other
more or less refined communities. A few tribes still exist in the less inhabited parts of Mexico,
•V
AZTEC RUIN IN YUCATAN.
but most of them arc very mixed, and nearly all more than half civilised — as civilisation goes
in Mexico. Indeed, the Mexican nation may be said to be a mixture of Spaniard and Indian
with an infusion of negro blood, the result of which is not sufficiently enticing for us to dwell
upon them, or that mixture of pronunciamentos, revolutions, assassinations, and robberies which
is dignified with the name of government in that ill-starred country.
At present we know so little of these broken races that it would be useless to attempt
their classification. Most probably there are many distinct tribes scattered among the
mountains and forests of Mexico, speaking tongues radically distinct, though in the course of
four iviitunrs the habits and even the language of these ethnic types have to a great extent
MEXICAN INDIANS: GENERAL CHARACTER; JALISCANOS. 229
been amalgamated or effaced. The empire overthrown by Cortes was ruled by the Aztec race
who had conquered the tribes inhabiting the valley of Mexico. But at that date there were
many tribes living throughout the country who did not acknowledge the Aztec, as they had not
acknowledged the Toltec or preceding imperial yoke, and shared in the civilisation of neither
the one nor the other. There were — and according to Buschmann are still — the Tarahumara
in the States of Sonora and Chihuahua, the Cora of Jalisco, the Cahita of Sinaloa and Sonora,
the Opata of the same region, the Acaxee of Durango, and the Tubar of Chihuahua, who, under
the name of Niquiran, and Tlascaltec,* may extend into Nicaragua and San Salvador. The
Miztec, Zapotec, Tarasco, Matlalzinca, Ceres, Cochita, Tepecano, Zacatec, Tamulipec, and
Otomi, are also enumerated by Mr. Keane, who notes the curious fact that though most of the
other Mexican languages are highly polysynthetic, the latter speech, which is current in the
mountains surrounding the Mexican table-land of Anahuac, is still almost in the mono-
syllabic condition. The general condition of the Mexican Indians I have indicated in a former
place,f so that it is needless treading the same ground again. Suffice it to say that they are
a poor, thriftless, dully intelligent, thoroughly cowed, and, as a rule, harmless race. In the
desert lands of Sonora they are little better than the "diggers" of Nevada; in the cooler table-
lands and mountains they are more industrious and capable ; but in the low, damp, hot country
bordering the Atlantic coast they again sink in the mental scale, and become what the haughty
Spaniard has not inaptly designated them, yente sin razon — a race without reason. That they
seem scarcely to exercise. They act or refuse to act, seemingly without being influenced by
any motives applicable to ordinary human beings, and in brief, to parody Wendell Holmes3
characterisation of the red man in general, are little more than a bundle of instincts on two
legs. The Jaliscanos of the Western Sierras are one of the few tribes who still maintain a
semblance of independence. High up on the mountains they have their rude wigwams, their
pastures, and their orchards, and refuse to permit any white man to settle among them unless
he promises not to tax them for roads and <: diezrnos " (church tithes) . They do not number
more than four thousand, but they keep all Christendom at bay. Thus this handful of Mexican
Indians have accomplished what the gentle Waldenses attempted in vain. They have made
the rocks of their mountain home the bulwarks of personal and religious liberty, for the
Mexican Government, which permits the Comanches and Apaches to defy its authority on the
plains of Sonora, has never even attempted to beard these warlike mountaineers in their own
fortresses. The priests have also left them alone. Like the Pintos in Yucatan and the
Cocharcos of Peru, the Jaliscanos adhere to the faith of their forefathers. They do not pay
any direct taxes, and are privileged from civil and military duties. "Their homes, in the
literal sense, are their castles, for the tribe, which once was scattered over a territory of
fourteen thousand square miles, has been isolated by its chiefs on the most inaccessible plateau
of the highest mountain range, though there are valleys at their feet where they could raise
abundant crops with one-fourth of the labour which now only wins them a bare living. They
are hated and envied by their priest-ridden neighbours, but men deserve their liberty who are
3ady to purchase it at such a price." J In the Valley of Oaxaca the natives are, on the other
land, a poor, spiritless race, whose chief ambition in life is to get drunk on the decoction of a
* Squid- : "Nicaragua," Vol. II., p. 308. t "Countries of the World," Vol. II., pp. 262—277.
I Oswald: " Summerland Sketches " (1880), p. 130.
5>;jO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
kind of water hemlock which they gather in the swamp. Like pulque, which is made from the
aloe juice, it is disgusting in taste, and to a foreigner a glassful of it is all but certain death.
But in time the taste of it grows on these poor wretches, until they prefer it to wine, or even to
rum and pulque. The Pintos of Yucatan are another very lowly people. In the Delta of the
Sumasinta they lead a haggard life, and have practically relapsed into paganism. The priests
did their best, but the passive resistance of the Indians wore their patience out. They neither
came to church, kept the ordinances and feasts, nor attended to their corn-fields. As fast as the
boys were capable of walking, the " Mission Indians " smuggled them away, permitting the
Padres to support the young squaws during their age of uselessness, after which they managed
to follow their brothers. Then the Franciscans abandoned them, and the graceless barbarians
returned to the mission and emphasised their satisfaction by a three days' bonfire that
lighted up the midnight sky for many miles around. Among themselves they have
discarded the Spanish language, and burlesque the Sabbath by mock masses, and other
contemptuous parodies of the religion of the Cross. Their lot is, however, not improved
by the neglect of their corn-fields, which are now covered with weeds, and of the irriga-
tion ditches which the priests taught them to construct. A few maniocs and plantains
form the bulk of their vegetable food, but the greater part of their dietary is animal flesh.
So long as they obtain this they are not particular as to the brute whence it has been
derived, and among other vile game the oily, semi-transparent, musky flesh of the boa-
constrictor is in special favour amongst them. Indeed, despite the theories of Liebig, the
natives of the tropics — unless when the artificial restraints of their religion interpose a
barrier against this lust — eat all the meat they can, and, as we shall see by-and-by, suffer
so severely from the want of it, that in default of more legitimate comestibles they will
sometimes feast on one another. In some instances the priests have skilfully interwoven
the old rites with the new, and thus kept up a continuity in the religious observances of
the neophytes. For instance, in Yucatan, Dr. Oswald describes them celebrating the
Holy night with a gran fiincion of bonfires, music, and chants, which are perhaps an
echo of the old Mexican sun feasts, which ushered in the winter solstice for centuries
before the golden astrum of the teocallis was superseded by the wooden cross. But what
the troopers of Grijalva and Montejo attempted in vain the legionaries of St. Francis have
thoroughly accomplished. From Sisal to Cape Vigia the agricultural Yucatecos have
accepted the Catholic yoke, which has been imposed by the converts with such intolerance
on the pagan Ustecs and Tabascanos — or bat-eaters — that the result has been frequent
tribal wars. After visiting tribes such as these, one lights, in the depths of the forests of
Yucatan, on such ruins as the casas granges of Uxmal with something of the wonder
which Eastern fable ascribes to the wandering princes who came on the cities which genii
had reared by magic in the recesses of Indian jungles.
In various parts of America we found the ruins of gigantic edifices. But Chichen,
Izamal, Macobn, and Uxmal far surpass anything- which exists in the more northern parts of
the Continent or even in Peru. Eighty years ago the ruins of Uxmal were unknown.
Though situated not far from the town of Merida, the district was a wild jungle, trodden by
none save the Indian hunter. The Jesuit missionaries of Yalladolid had recorded an Indian
story about the vestiges of a great city in this neighbourhood, but their vague descriptions
MEXICAN INDIANS: THE " CASAS GRANDES" OF UXMAL. 2ol
were supposed to refer to the large Aztec (t teocalli " near the Convent of Sacrificios ; so that
the re-discovery of the casas grandes by Dr. Mitchell, a Scotch surgeon of Sisal, and Baron de
Waldeck was fifty years ago as complete a surprise to the citizens of Merida as the exhumation
of Pompeii to the burghers of Nola and Castellamare. The only trace of Old World life found
around the place was a decrepid horse, which still grazes the Uxmal herbage. He might have
been the charger lost by Balboa in the battle of Chiapas, though he looks venerable enough to be
one of those steeds that were rewarded with immortality for having carried the Prophet. Since
1830, Uxmal has been the Mecca of American antiquaries, and the haunt of endless searchers
after undiscovered treasure; but though ils general character is now tolerably well known,
any interpretation of the ruins is still a desideratum in science. The walls are for the most
part overgrown by trees, or interlaced by the exuberant vegetation under the shade of which
they stand. Some of the houses yet intact are marvels of architecture, and of florid sculpture,
belonging to what Southey wrould have called the " Satanic school." They would still tax the
ingenuity of the most skilful masons to rear, while the problem of how they were erected in
this spot, or by whom, is one which cannot fail to excite the imagination of even the dullest of
visitors. In the building known as the Palomal there are, for instance, countless chambers,
and all the cornices and window-sills of these rooms, and all the balustrades of the long
galleries, and the balconies overhanging the court, are ornamented with bas-relief figures,
coloured stuccos, and sculptured mosaics, carved, to use the words of Dr. Oswald, one of
the most recent explorers, " with an unravelled richness and variety of detail." Some of the
black marble used must have come from at least as far as Cuba, demonstrating the treasures
of a wealthy empire to have been lavished on the Casa del Enano, the Palomal, and the
Casa de las Monjas, as the Indians have named the principal buildings. Seiior Escalante,
a Mexican architect, has calculated that even with the raw material used in their construction
at hand such a building as the Casa de las Monjas would cost over four million dollars,
and that the carving of some of the pillars might employ a hard-working statuary for
at least six months. It is, indeed, difficult to exaggerate the extraordinary character of
the Uxmal. But still in vain we come back to the question of who built it ? Yet we have
sufficient materials ready, if only some one could strike on the key to that wonderful
corpus of hieroglyphics which have so long defied the ingenuity of scholars to decipher that
the attempt has almost been given up. A second Champollion does not arise every day.
That they are in the Maya language, as has been recently affirmed on very insufficient grounds,
is unlikely, for this would at once indicate them to have been cut by the progenitors of the
present race of Indians, a conclusion which to those familiar with the miserable tribes who
wander through the neighbouring forest, unacquainted with almost any art, and oblivious of
any tradition regarding the great ruins, seems well-nigh incredible. The Maya or Mayan is a
class name for many languages of Central America and Yucatan, and one of those best
understood, but it is exceedingly doubtful whether the Yucatan or other Indian tribes had
any hand in rearing these astonishing monuments. They exist in one form or another all
through Central America, particularly in Peten, and seem as little connected with the present
aborigines of these regions as are the equally remarkable ruins of Cambodia with the natives
of that country, or the Lake Superior Copper Mines and the Ohio Valley Earthworks with
the Chippeway and Choctaw tribes, who, when the whites first came into the country, were
232 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
found roaming through the forest unconscious of any story which linked them with the
people who had constructed these colossal works of bygone days, and of whom not even the
nominis umbra remains. Mr. Lewis Morgan's idea that the mound builders were Pueblo
Indians is a mere conjecture.
The structure, sculpture, and system of hieroglyphics are conclusive against the Peru-
vians, the Toltecs, or the Aztecs having had anything to do with them, for they are as widely
different from those of Central Mexico as the latter are from the monuments of Luxor or
Nineveh. Moreover, the traditions of Mexico extend back to remote centuries of the
Christian era, and are as silent about a vast and wealthy city in Western Yucatan as are
the chronicles of the Conquistadores. Uxmal is a corruption of Huasacmal, "the main
city," and hard by, in the Sierra de Macoba, is a plateau named "The Field of Defeat,"
where, if not closely watched by the priests, Dr. Oswald tells us, the Indians still celebrate
a festival known as the "week of deliverance." Who were the people from whom they
were delivered ? The Indians talk of a time when their fathers used to dig up iron swords
and spear-heads from the debris, and have even a dim tradition that once — long before
the Spaniards came — "a body of armed men landed at Cape Penasco, twenty miles south
of Campeche, marched to Uxmal by following the ridge of the mountains, and removed a
great mass of plunder from one of the buildings, where it had lain concealed under the
stone slabs of the floor." Were these the foreign conquerors who built this city in days
long before Cortes and his mail-clad warriors landed? Were they Egyptains — though the
architecture is not Egyptian — who left here carved gods like those of Heliopolis, and
brought back the maize and the dahlia, the introduction of which into Northern Africa
has so often puzzled geographers? On pages 228 and 233 are figured some of the Aztec ruins
of Mexico. But those in Palenque (p. 233) were as much ruins at the date of Cortes'
invasion as they are at the present day, and nearly as obscure as to their origin.
It is impossible, with the space at our disposal, to discuss the origin of the ancient
civilisation of Mexico. But it may, we think, be taken for granted that it was native —
or in other words that the race whom Cortes conquered, though far advanced beyond the
rest of the American nations, was of the same general stock. Buschmann has shown that
the tribes of New Mexico, and the northern part of Mexico proper, which he names the
Sonora family, have many common features in their language, and that all of them have
more or less adopted a vocabulary from 'the Nahuatl, or tongue spoken by the Aztecs.
The Moqui has also similar linguistic elements, and the Utahs, the Californian Diggers,
the Shoshones, and other tribes, are allied by their tongue to the same ancient people.
Even the Comanches have, like the old Mexicans, a year of eighteen months, each month
consisting of twenty days. There are traces of their tongue in the names of places, not
only about the lake district of the Mexican Highlands, but in Guatemala, in Honduras,
and in Nicaragua, but not farther south than Costa Rica. Yet, curiously enough, the
Pueblo Indians, who are in civilisation about the only modern representatives of the
Aztecs, do not speak a language in any way approximating to theirs, though in lat. 35°
north, in Cibola, or "the Seven Cities," Maryo and Coronado described a people identical
with the Aztecs (p. 151). It is probable, as Dr. Peschl thinks, that the. traces of
the Nahuatl tongue among the Northern barbarians prove that the Aztecs came from a
MEXICAN INDIANS: THE AZTECS AND TOLTECS ; THEIR ORIGIN AND RANGE. 233
country in the north, where they lived in close union with the Shoshones. We know
that after the fall of the Toltec empire Mexico was continually overrun by savage hordes,
among whom were the Tlascaltecs and the Aztecs, who either developed or improved
their civilisation in the south. When the Toltecs first took up their abode in Mexico, in
Guatemala, in Honduras, or in Nicaragua, it is now impossible to say. In Guatemala the
Quiche civilisation grew and attained proportions almost equal to that of the Aztec itself,
and in this region and in Yucatan, where the Mayas were situated, there was a culture of
AZTEC HVIXS AT PALEXQVE, MEXICO.
equal extent.* It is therefore probable that the Aztecs came into Central America from
the north, adding to and taking from the civilisation already existing there. It may be
accepted as true that the civilisation of the northern and southern parts of the continent
originated independently, since the Aztecs were as little aware of the existence of the
Incas of Peru as the Incas were of them, until the conquerors of both brought the facts
to light. The former had no knowledge of any country farther south than the Lake of
Nicaragua, while the Incas, if we are to believe the story that Huayna Ccapac heard of
Balboa's landing on the Isthmus, must have possessed relations with countries as far north
as the present State of Grenada in the Republic of Colombia. It is not improbable, as
* "Countries of the Wirld," Vol. III., pp. 1C, 50—51, G" et seq.
30
234 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
lias been suggested by Mr. Keane, that the Pueblo Indians in the north, the Aztecs in
-Mexico, the Mayas of Yucatan, the Dorachos of Veraguas (p. 244), the Chibcha or Muisca
of Bogota, who still possess a wonderful skill in manufacturing gold ornaments, the
Quichuas (or Incas people) of Peru, and the Aymaras of Bolivia, were the links in the
ohain of civilised nations who extended at the time of the Conquest right through the
length of the American Continent. In Central America and New Grenada (Panama) the
number of tribes are bewilderingly numerous. It would be vain to attempt a barren list
•of their names, nor after what we have said would the result be veiy instructive. Mayas,
Zendals, -Zotzils, Mams, Pokomans, Huastecs, Melchoras, Chorontegas, Chondals, and so forth
— pages might be filled with lists which have been so industriously compiled. But when we
mention that in one of the southern provinces of Colombia (Popayan) ninety-four languages
were prevalent at the date of the Conquest, one can imagine the fragments which have de-
scended to our day. I shall not, however, inflict such a burden of words on the reader.
"When speaking of the Mexican tribes, it was mentioned that most of them were in
some degree civilised, and had in a greater or less extent accepted a veneer of the culture,
and even the language, with which the fortune of war brought them in contact.
In Central America very much the same has happened, though the semi-independent
tribes of Indians are more numerous, less civilised, and more powerful than in Mexico. Still
there is a great mixture of blood, and a Spaniard of the sanyre azul, or blue blood of Castile, is
a rare phenomenon, even though the contrary is asserted with carajas and carambos innumerable.
The leaf-thatched circles of poles which serve as huts for them may be often seen as the
steamer slowly sails up the coast, and the natives, who seem an athletic if somewhat villainous-
looking set of individuals, may be seen lolling about in front of their huts ; or, if the vessel halts,
•coming off in their rude " dug-outs," laden with fruits, shells, monkeys, parrots, and other bright-
pi umaged birds, inhabitants of the glorious tropics in which their lot has been cast. Yet they
iire by no means a very mild race, and though now almost all nominally converts to the
Catholic religion, and citizens of the republic in which they live, they resisted the Spaniards
long and manfully. Rumours even yet speak of large and powerful tribes of disciplined Indians
existing in the interior, but I am not aware that anybody has ever yet visited them, though I
have frequently met in my journeys across Nicaragua and New Granada with people who
declared that they knew somebody else who was well acquainted with another calallero — a
most perfect gentleman, who Avouldn't lie (unless under great provocation), who had heard that
the facts were so (p. 243). We have devoted so much space already to the Indians, that if we
are to say anything at all about those of South America, we must spend no more time in
inquiring into these little bits of Central American romance, with which we are favoured by
Seiior Don Guzman Miguel Pedrillo, as we lie swinging in dolce far nlenlc languor in a grass
hammock under tamarind-trees in San Juan del Sur. A very few words upon the aboriginal
inhabitants of Central America must therefore suffice.
The Indians in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec are by far the most numerous portion of
the inhabitants, and are not without intelligence, though only partially civilised. They are
very fond of music, every village possessing a musical baud. When absolutely forced to work
they are capable of enduring great fatigue, but under ordinary circumstances are like all
their kinsmen, north and south, lazy and indolent. They are peaceful in disposition,
CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS: TRIBES OF THE MOSQUITO TERRITORY. 235
and give little trouble to the Government of Mexico, which has on its hands all-sufficient
dolours from within and from without, without being pestered by the " Indian Question/'
They are very dark in complexion, though well formed. Most of them dress somewhat after
the European fashion, but either go barefooted or wear sandals. The women, however, in many
cases wear a more national costume, viz., plaiting their hair in two folds and winding it round
the head, often decked with flowers after the ancient Greek fashion. From the back of the
head descends a white flowing robe reaching to the shoulders, and called guaypul. Around
the chest they throw a slight garment called yuaypilote, which reveals the well-moulded
arms and bosom. Around the waist is wrapped a piece of home-made cotton-stuff, called
inagna, fastened with a girdle and reaching to the feet. They are fond of jewellery. Their
bearing is stately and composed, but their morals will not bear criticism. They are lazy,
not over cleanly in their habits ; they eat insects from the bushy heads of their children and
other kindred, and their ideas of good housekeeping are limited to preparing the dish of
black beans which form the staple food of the country. The universal cakes of maize-
called tortillas are also their bread.
The Indians of the Mosquito Territory do not exceed 10,000 or 15,000, the majority of
whom are Waiknas or Mosquitoes. They are a fine athletic set of men, full of intelligence,
liveliness, and high spirits, but corrupted much from their association with English and
American sailors. They are violent and quarrelsome, terrible drunkards, addicted to plundering-
and ill-using the neighbouring tribes, and though kindly to strangers, are avaricious and
grasping in their intercourse with one another, often exacting a debt even though two genera-
tions have passed since it was contracted. Nothing can induce them to work steadily for
any length of time, the leisure saved from the slight work required to provide them with
the necessaries of life being devoted to sleeping in their hammocks. Yet though they will
scarcely take the trouble to clear away the weeds which choke up their houses, they will make
a tedious voyage of a hundred miles in a small canoe to sell a couple of turtles worth two-
dollars. They are full of contradictions. War and sickness they dread, yet they will not
hesitate to face the jaguar in the woods, go through the wildest surf, over the most dangerous
rapids, and swim in places swarming with sharks and alligators. Grossly superstitious,
they are yet deficient in veneration. Though the duty of chastity is almost unknown, the-
Avives are affectionate and kind, often in spite of the worst treatment. Truthfulness and
honesty are at a discount among them. They are excellent canoemen, and cultivate a little
cassada * and plantains along the beach and river-side. Those in the interior also raise India n
com and plantains, sugar-cane and tobacco, and a few of them chocolate, which they drink
mixed with Chili pepper. They plant cotton round their houses, and manufacture coarse cloth
dyed with various bright colours. They trade with the interior tribes for articles which they
cannot produce themselves, getting in this manner their rough canoes, paddles, gourds, &c. &c.,
for English goods, salt, turtle-meat, &c. In the month of May a large fleet of canoes
proceed to the hawkVbill turtle fishery on the coast southwards of Greytown in Nicaragua,
when some watch the beach at night and catch the turtles as they crawl up to lay their eggs,
while others spear them at sea with a heavy palm- wood staff, at the end of which is a notched
iron peg, with twenty fathoms of strong silk-grass line attached. Shooting them with
* The Spanish name for the bread made from the root of the cassava plant (JatropJia manUiot}.
236
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
arrows is also occasionally practised by some tribes. The bows are made from the soupar-
palin (Guilielma speclosa), and the shafts of the arrows from the dry stalks of the cane
(Saccharum officiiianini) tipped with hard wood, though more frequently with iron. Others
resort to the mahogany works of Honduras for employment. During these temporary
absences the villages are often left without a single man, except such as are too old to
travel; and as they rear no stock, the women and children are often sorely pressed for food,
RACK TYPES OF YUCATAN, MEXICO.
but they eke out their fare with crabs, oysters, a few fish caught with the line, alligator and
tortoise eggs, till their natural protectors return, when they are regaled to surfeiting with
dried turtle meat and abundance of turtle eggs.
It is said, with what truth I cannot learn, by those long resident in the country, that they
neither practise nor profess any religion, though they have a general idea of a great presiding
spirit, or god, and a vague belief in a future state ; but regarding the duties required in order
to attain future happiness they have no clear idea. Beyond some observances in honour of
the dead and other superstitious ceremonies, they observe no religious rites of any sort. Like
all the Indians, however, they believe in the medieine-men and medicine-women, who are here
known as sookias. The devices adopted by the aookias to drive away the evil spirits, to
CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS: WAIKNA TRIBE; RELIGION, ETC.
237
which they attribute sickness, are much the same as "those we have described amongst other
tribes. In addition, they fence round the sick person whom they are called in to attend to with
charmed and painted sticks, and forbid the approach of any woman with child, and on no
AZTEC (OR TOLTEC) RUIX IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
condition permit any person to pass to windward. The breach of these injunctions is often
accepted as a convenient loophole to escape the consequence of a failure to cure, which, as
might be expected, occurs very often. " For a long time after the recovery of the patient his
food is brought to the sookias, who whistle for about twenty minutes some plaintive strains,
with incoherent mutterings over it, till it is purged from the influence of the spirits. If a
village is attacked by sickness, a consultation of sookias is called, who, having maturely con-
238 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
sidered the matter, and after having1 slept a night in order to inform themselves of the nature
and disposition of the spirits, erect each a little hut removed from the village, and there sit up
the oreater part of the night, muttering their incantations and invoking all sorts of terrible
animals, real and fabulous. After they have performed these and various other ceremonies1,
they plant a lot of painted sticks, with grotesque little figures in wood or wax on each, round
the windward side of the village, and announce the expulsion of the spirits. But should the-
sickness be very obstinate, the sooldas, after a consultation, inform the people that the spirits
are not to be expelled, whereupon the inhabitants remove immediately, burning the infected
village to the ground. The Indians believe that all game and several birds have an owner,
and several sookias pretend to have seen the master of the warree, as he is called, whom they
describe as a little man, not taller than a child, but terribly strong. He superintends and
directs the various droves, drives them to their feeding-grounds, and if they are much disturbed
leads them to remote parts of the forest. He lives in a large cave in the side of a mountain,
and is attended by a guard of white warree, which cannot be approached within hearing, on
account of their excessive fierceness. Living in dark and gloomy forests, of which they do not
know the extent, the ideas of the Indians naturally turn towards the mysterious and won-
derful, and for want of any 'known inhabitants they people these unexplored tracts with
fabulous monsters. The heads of several dark and shady creeks, blocked up by a mass of
fallen trees and bamboos, are regarded as the »bode of the great wowlos (a huge species of
serpent). On paddling some distance up these ci*eeks, presently a rumbling as of thunder
is heard at the head, and, strange to say, the stream immediately begins to flow upward
with irresistible force ; a fierce wind tears through the trees, and the unhappy victims
are carried without hope of rescue to the terrible jaws that await them."
Up some of the streams nothing will induce the Indians to go, though they are said
to swarm with the fattest game, the private preserves of the spirits and monsters. In like-
manner several mountain ridges are the dwelling-places of a terrible monster called a toikwin,
like a horse, but with " jaws fenced round with horrid teeth/' whose native place is the sea,
whence he issues from time to time to his summer residence in the hills, and at night
roams through the forest in search of human or other prey. The Indians sit round the fire at
night, listening to tales of the dreadful havoc this monster made in villages long ago ; for
curiously enough — fortunately too — these occurrences never happened in the lifetime of the
narrator. Not content with the real horrors of the rivers, in the shape of alligators and sharks,
they assign to various circling eddies and dark pools a nod less formidable tenant, whom they
call leewa (or water spirit), which sucks down the unlucky bather and devours him unseen.
This spirit also inhabits the sea, and occasions waterspouts and hurricanes.* If even space
permitted, it would be tedious to go at any great length into a description of their customs. A
* Bell : Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XXXII., p. 254 ; " Countries of the World," Vol. III.,
pp. 39—46 ; Von Reden : " Das Mosquito — Gebiet " (Petermann's Geograplnsche Mittheihtngen (1856), p. 250 et seq.} ;
Schcrzer : "Wanderungen durch Nicaragua, Honduras, und San Salvador" (1857); Levy: " Notas Geograficus \
Economicas sobre la Republica do Nicaragua" (1873); Wickham: "Rough Notes of a Joiirney through the Wil-
d.Tiicss" (1877) ; and Times, Oct. 17th and 21st, 1879. In the Parliamentary " Papers respecting the Interpretation
"!' ( Vrtain Articles of the Treaty of Managua, signed on the 28th of January, 1860 " (No. 1, 1881), will he found an
i.'xai-t statement of the political relations of the Mosquitoes and their " King" to the Nicaragua!! Republic. In this
document their numbers are under-estimated at 6,000.
CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS: WAIKNAS ; THEIR CHARACTER, ETC. 239
few of the more remarkable may, however, be noted. Among the Mosquito Indians we find
the separation of the women at child-birth, already observed so frequently among other Indian
tribes ; and on many other occasions if unwell this exclusion is- insisted on. At such times a
small hut is built for the invalid in the outskirts of the village, a few hundred yards in the
woods, and usually one or more girls will go and sleep with her to keep her company ; or if the
nights are dark, and jaguars are known to be about, the husband will take his gun and bow and
sleep in a hammock near at hand, so as to be ready to guard his property if necessary. When a
child is born the sookia-ties a pew (or charm) around its neck. This charm consists of a little
bag containing some small seeds, which are intended to be used as payment to the Charon
who ferries the souls of the dead over a certain river which separates this world from the next.
\Vhen a person dies they bury along with the body a calabash and various other implements,
and erect over the grave a little hut, which is always kept in repair. Here are also deposited
from time to time various little offerings, such as a yard or two of cloth, a bottle of rum, &c.
Like the northern Indians, they also have the custom of destroying all property belonging to
the deceased, even cutting down his fruit-trees ; and no greater offence can be given than to
mention the name of the dead. The women at the season of mourning cut off their long
tresses, dash themselves on the ground until they are covered with blood, cast themselves into
the river, or the fire, and not unfrequently in the depth of their grief will go into the dark
recesses of the wood and hang themselves. In their attachments they are also very passionate,
and suicide from jealousy or disappointment is by no means unfrequent. Unfortunately,
becoming a wife does not by any means confine their errant affections, but often still further
complicates matters.
At their drinking bouts of fermented cassava, sugar-cane, or pineapple juice, which,
•especially at Christmas, are often prolonged to a frightful extent, one family often preparing
.six or eight casks of this liquor, the young men will dispute who is the strongest, and therefore
most worthy of the regard of the fair sex. Unlike some of the Indians already described,
or even some semi-civilised people, instead of settling this point by a fight or wrestling
match, they try which can endure most pain. In order to put this to the test, one of them
stands exactly as an English boy does in playing at leap-frog, when hi.s challenger strikes him
on the back with his fist or elbow with all his might, and it is considered a mark of bravery and
endurance never to utter a groan or sigh during this " punishment/' which is sometimes so
severe that death will ensue from it. Sad to relate, during this torture, endured on account
of the fair sex, the men are not even inspirited by their presence, but must trust entirely to
what uncertain rumours may reach their ears respecting their doughty deeds. So inherent in
this people is the desire to test their manhood in this manner, that men long past middle life,
and who could have no stimulus to do so, being already in possession of " the persons if not the
affections " of a harem of women, enter into the strife with great gusto, and return therefrom
covered with glory — and bruises. This trial they call lowta, and no young man is considered
worthy of a wife until he has subjected himself to the ordeal without evincing the slightest
sign of pain. To emulate each other in enduring torture seems characteristic of this people,
for little boys may be seen sitting round the fire and trying which can longest endure the
application of small lighted sticks on the arms and legs. They are very much addicted to
drunkenness, especially at high feasts and festivals. Their drinks are generally prepared from
210
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
tlit' cassava in the following fashion. The miakla (or cassada mixture) is prepared "by
boiling a quantity of the roots, of which about a third is chewed by the women and spat into
the casks, the rest is pounded in a mortar and mixed with the chewed part. Ripe plantains,
pineapples, and cocoa-nuts ai*e sometimes added, and some cane-juice and hot-water poured
INDIAN WOMAN OF THE TIERBA CA.LIENTE, MEXICO.
into it. It is then covered with leaves, and left to ferment for two days, when nearly all the
neighbours are invited to come and partake, and the entertainment generally lasts two or three
days. As fast as it is finished in one house the company adjourn to another, till they have
made the round of the village. The guests are sometimes invited from a distance of sixty
mill's, and in their turn they invite their hosts. The drink resembles buttermilk; it is sour,
and very strong. The other drinks, made of fermented cane juice or pineapple juice, are
delicious, and make those who indulge too freely furiously drunk. The drinking scenes never
CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS: SMOO INDIANS OF MOSQUITIA.
241
pass off quietly ; as soon as the Indians get excited old quarrels are renewed, old grievances
raked up, and very soon high words are followed by blows. The women fly to hide all
the weapons they can find, and then lend their kindly aid to separate the combatants ; but
in the state in which the men are their mediation is too often repaid by savage blows ; yet
the devoted creatures pay little heed to their own wounds so long as any one dear to them is in
danger, and they generally succeed in restoring peace, which is again and again interrupted
until their most potent enemy — drink — has laid them all in the dust together. In these brutal
exhibitions all the bad propensities of the Indians are displayed in their worst lights, and it is
not till their own healths are on the point of giving way that they cease from their wild
debauch and resume the quiet possession of their faculties.
Their religion chiefly consists in efforts to propitiate an evil spirit — Wulashi — and a water
INDIAN OF THE MEXICAN COAST.
sprite — Liwaia — both of whom are continually warring against them. They seem to have little
idea of a beneficent being.
The Smoo Indians are, next to the Mosquitoes, the most numerous tribe in the territory,
id are distinguished from them by a custom we have already noted as existing in some
lorthern tribes, viz., that of flattening the foreheads of the children. They are a simple,
>od-natured people, easily imposed on, and held on that account in great contempt by the
)ast Indians, than whom they are very much fairer in complexion. In their customs they
similar to the tribe already described. They also observe the same rights in honour of the
dead, and on this latter occasion especially the men paint their faces most elaborately with
red and black paint, though otherwise they dress themselves with a gaudy elaboration not
common on ordinary occasions, when a waist -cloth of their own manufacture, bright with
many colours, and interwoven with snowy down of the muscovy duck and eagle, constitutes
Cium total of their wardrobe. The women are industrious and ingenious in the manufacture
idia-rubber cloth, yarn, hammocks, bead-ornaments, &c. ; while the men are skilful and
31
242 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
laborious hnnters, pursuing the game — chiefly with the bow and arrow — through the tangled
tropical jungle by signs unrecognisable to the white man's eye, and amid the myriad noises
ever resounding through these great primeval forests, distinguishing the sound of the
particular animal they may be following up.
Polygamy prevails amongst them, as among all the other uncivilised Central American
tribes, though few of them have more than two or three wives. A man whom I heard of as
living some years ago had no less than twenty-two, an amount of matrimonial happiness,
however, unprecedented. This Mosquito potentate might well say, with honest Launcelot,
" Alas ! fifteen wives is nothing/'
Among them there is no marriage custom, nor indeed anything approaching to it. A
man takes a fancy to a girl, and goes to her father and proposes. If his suit is agreeable, the
girl is never consulted, but is sent off with her limited wardrobe to the palm-thatch cabin
of her future husband. She does not often resist, but even if she did it would not make much
difference, for her opposition is only looked upon as a device of the evil one, to be cast out
by a few words and many blows of a pimento stick. The price is paid for the wife, but the
widow is looked upon by the relatives of her husband as part of his property, and accordingly
she is not allowed to marry again until she has paid over to them a sort of ransom fee, or as
they call it piarka-mana (or widow-money) .
In addition to the two tribes named, and some West Indian Caribs in the Mosquito
Territory, there are the Towkas, Toonglas, Poyas, llamas, and Cookras. The Ramas are very
wild, living secluded from all mankind in the depth of the forest, or on the banks of the
Rio Frio, Susannah, Rama, &c. They bear the reputation of being cannibals, a mistaken
opinion, probably originating in the terror which they inspired in the minds of the whites
and the other Indian tribes. The Cookras are most likely now extinct. They lived perhaps
in a lower state of savagery than any other Central American tribe. Their axes and other
weapons were of stone ; their bed a few leaves, and their only shelter from the tropical rains
the leaves of a palm piled on leaning branches. With the exception of a little maize and
plantains, which they raise, after tilling the ground by thrashing down and pulling up the
long grass on the banks of the creeks and rivers, they derive most of their subsistence from
the game which they killed with their flint-headed arrows ; though now and then a few eboc-
nuts, bread-nuts, and mountain-cabbage (the terminal bud of the mountain-cabbage palm)*
eked out their miserable existence. Their only clothing was the inner bark of the india-
rubber tree, and their utensils pots of clay and calabashes. Canoes they had none. Among
this tribe a woman might not speak to any one out of the tribe.
In the town of Blewfields, and in the forest around, are numbers of huge mounds, containing1
thousands of tons of shell-fish, mixed with broken implements and bones of edible animals,
which are the refuse heaps of these Cookras, who once lived here; it must have taken
centuries to accumulate such mounds. The roads in the vicinity of Blewfields are " metalled "
with the shells from these heaps, which are identical in their nature with those found 0:1
various portions of the American and other coasts, and which are known on the coasts of
Northern Europe us kjdkJccn-miiddinga, or " kitchen refuse heaps." Though in the neighbour-
hood of Spanish States — but particularly in that contiguous to Honduras — ruins of towns
* Euterpe montana.
CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS : LACONDAS ; DORACHOS ; SAVANERIAS. 243
showing a former high state of civilisation have been found, nothing has been seen in the
Mosquito Territory to show that the native tribes had ever attained a higher civilisation than now.
They were ever savage marauders, plundering the settlements of Nicaragua and Honduras,
just as nowadays the Tehuantepec barbarians make inroads on the British settlements of
Honduras. All these tribes are rapidly dying off, children are fewer than formerly, and
sickness is more prevalent. " The land," say the sookias, " is possessed by legions of evil
spirits," which they have not the power to resist as their fathers had, and they are not perhaps
far wrong when they say that the day will come when there will not be a native inhabitant in
all the land. The tribes mentioned all belong to the group speaking dialects of the tongue
called " Melchora," who from time to time have received emigrant Carib elements from the
West Indian Islands, and in 1796 a large number of this race were forcibly removed from
St. Vincent by the British Government.* Up to the year 1860 Mosquitia was an independent
territory, ruled by a king under the protectorate of Great Britain, though his authority was
denied by the Nicaraguan Government. But at that date the country was made over to the latter,
and though the Indian sovereign still maintains a semblance of authority, any influence of his,
either for evil or for good, has long ago fled. During the system of the semi-independent
kingdom it was under the supervision of the British Consul, and it is extremely to
be regretted, for the sake of the natives themselves, that their country was with such
scant justice bestowed on Nicaragua. Mosquitia has always been the prey of adventurers.
There was a certain " McGregor, Cazique of Poyais," whose history may be found elsewhere, f
and during the short-lived Indian monarchy all kinds of adventurers flocked to the new
El Dorado, and to this day behind tavern bars all along the Pacific coast may be seen
posted up commissions as captains in the militia, justices of the peace, and so on, signed by
" We, George, by the Grace of God, King of Mosquitia and its Dependencies," &c. &c. The
real king was understood to be the British Consul. What is the character of his present
majesty I cannot say, but a former one I had the pleasure of meeting on one of his many
visits to Grey town — in Nicaragua — and he seemed an affable, if somewhat dusky individual,
in no way disinclined to vinous hospitality. Indeed, it was hinted, this was his Majesty's
weak point. " George," an American friend of his once remarked to me, " George wouldn't
be a bad sort of a fellow if only he didn't labour under the idea that while-faced rum is good
both for meat and drink!"
The foregoing description may, with some modification, apply to the Indians of the
Isthmus generally, those in most cases having felt the iron rule of the Spaniards, they are
either more broken in spirit or more civilised. In some cases the inaccessibility of their
country has kept them more in their pristine condition than when an open country has allowed
the conqueror to reach them. Between San Salvador and Honduras are the Laconda Indians,
who have maintained a perfect independence. The mountain tribes of Nicaragua, as described
by Mr. Squier, are also partially independent. On the shores of the lake of Nicaragua once
existed a Mexican settlement, and to this day a remnant of the old Aztec language lingers
among the Indians in the vicinity. " In Costa Itica and Veragua we have the Indians of the
Isthmus — Western Veragua being the country of the ancient Dorachos, which is rich in
* " Countries of the World," Vol. Ill , pp. 60, 72 ; Times, Oct. 17th and 21st, 1879.
t " Countries of the World," Vol. III., p. 39 ; and Mulhall : " English in America," p. 277.
244 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
archaeological remains. The tombs are of two kinds ; one consists of flat stones, put together
in the fashion of coffins, and covered with soil, the contents being earthen vases, rounded
agates, and small images of birds in stone — eagles most probably — such as are found in Mexico
and on the Mosquito shore. It seems to have been the custom to wear them round the neck as
ornaments. The more frequent form, however, of tomb is the cairn, a rude heap of pebbles, in
which we find no eagle, no ornaments, but only one or more stones used for grinding corn. At
Caldera is a rock covered with figures. One represents a radiant sun : it is followed by a series
of heads, all with some variation, scorpions and fantastic figures. The top and other sides have
signs of a circular and oval form, crossed by birds. The Dorachos are extinct, accordingly it
is only in Northern Veragua that Indian tribes still exist. There are the Savanerias, who are
most numerous near the village of Las Palmas. One of their chiefs considers himself the
descendant of Montezuma, and to a certain extent his successor and representative, since he
sends every year a legate to Santiago to protest against the occupancy of the Spaniards
and to assert his own territorial right. They hunt and fish — at least they poison the water
with the pounded leaves of the barbasco. When a dead body is to be disposed of, it is wrapped
in bandages, dried over a fire, laid on a scaffold, with meat and drink beside it, and when
dry interred."*
The Indians of the Isthmus of Panama or Darien furnish examples of both the dependent and
unsubdued races. On the discovery of the country it was well peopled, and had numerous villages
belonging to the Indians of the Carib race, who stoutly resisted the Spaniards, but in most cases
had to succumb, except where they took refuge in the Choco Mountains. As far as the Indians
are concerned, they may repeat, mutatis mutandis, the Eastern proverb in reference to the
Turks : " Grass never grows where the Spaniard's foot has touched." Most of the remnants
of the tribes on the Pacific slope are of mixed race, either mestizoes (issue of whites and
Indians) or zambos (issue of Indians and negroes), and here Spanish is the only language
spoken. They carry on a little trade with Panama in indiarubber, tajna (or vegetable ivory),
bananas, pineapples, timber, dried meat, vanilla, balsam of Tolu, sarsaparilla, &c. ; but are
so insufferably lazy that they prefer to be robbed and swindled in every way by middlemen,
rather than exert themselves sufficiently to take the trade into their own hands. Still they
are frequently in debt, and their ankles are not unfamiliar with the cepo (or stocks), which,
in this primitive portion of the world, are the very convenient instruments for the punishment
of defaulters. Their dwellings, which are unclean, are constructed of trunks of trees connected
by bamboo, either planted in the earth or placed crosswise; the roof being thatched with
leaves of the macaw-tree. In them pigs, poultry, dogs, and naked children roll about
pell-mell on the damp ground. The game afford abundance of food, and in addition they
have rice, potatoes, and fruits of various kinds. They have firearms now, and have lost the
art of using the bow and arrow. Catholicism is their religion, but only nominally ; so far
as my observation went — and I regret to say that it is confirmed by every traveller —
the examples set them in the matter of morals is such that it would have been a matter of
indifference whether they still remained in savagedom. To eliminate from an Indian every
* Scemann's " Voyage of the Herald," vol. i., p. 313 ; for the Arhuaeo, Motilones, Goajira, and other warlike
tribes of Colombia, sec Simona : Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (1881), p. 70n.
CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS: ABORIGINES OF THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 245
trace of independence, all the savage virtues of courage, hospitality, and frankness, and cause the
residuum to wear a tin cross, put on a tolerably clean waist-cloth, and go to a whitewashed
MEXICAN INDIANS WORKING IN A SILVER MINE AT SAN PEDRO.
chapel in the evening to listen to what he cannot understand, but knows well enough in the
persons of his own family that the teacher does not live up to, is not highly conducive to the
improvement of the species, either in Central America or elsewhere.
Beyond the Cordilleras is the territory of the Carribees-Cuna, who have not subjected
2 1C THE TEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
themselves to the foreign yoke, and possess an organisation entitled the " Confederation of the
Indians of the San Bias Coast/' which is recognised by the Republic of the United States of
Colombia. They are governed by a cazique, or groat captain, whose word is law. Under him are
village caziqucs, whom he summons in council when required. They know nothing of the foreign
.government of the country in which they live, and beyond the remembrances of Bolivar, under
whom they fought in the War of Independence, the only recollection of their former subjection
is their traditional hatred of the Spaniards. The people are robust and well made, the men
wearing their hair long and the women short, thus reversing what we see in civilised life, though
the fashion mentioned generally prevails among savages. They are a patient, industrious,
faithful, and courageous people, and remarkably sober, indulging in no intoxicants except cJtieJiu,
which is made from maize-seed and the juice of the sugar-cane. Perhaps the reader would like
to know how it is made ? A number of old women squat round an empty gourd, munch and
•chew with their half -toothless gums the maize-seed, and expectorate the result into the vessel in
their midst until it is filled. The product is left to ferment, and is used as the chief ingredient
of chicha! Theft is unknown among the Cunas, but taught by long oppression to refuse
assistance to any one entering their country, you can adopt no surer way of getting no
information than by asking for it, particularly with eagerness. They have various
" association " signs, by which the Indians of one village will know those of another, and also a
peculiar kind of tattooing. Despite their many good qualities, they are deadly enemies, and
skilful at using their weapons — viz., the lance, bows and arrows, and a heavy sort of knife
(or machete], which serves the purposes of a hatchet, tomahawk, or sabre. Their lances are
either of cut flint or of iron. They are said not to poison their arrows.
Their laws are Spartan. For instance, a case is related by M. De Puydt in which a man
was put to death for assisting at the accouchement of a woman whose life was in imminent
clanger. On another occasion a female who became insane was hung from a tree and burned,
and the Indian who acted as M. De Puydt's interpreter was likely to suffer the same penalty
for having taken service in that capacity without the permission of the cazique.
Most of them dress in a pair of drawers reaching to the knee, and leave the rest of the
body exposed. Some, however, wear a kind of loose smock-frock or shirt of European shape. The
head is generally bare, but at times enveloped in a narrow girth made of the fibres or bark of
plants. Some of the women wear broad gold or silver rings through the septum of the nose ;
some are pretty, and all are beautifully formed. On high holidays men wear girdles of the
plumage of birds, and a sort of cap covered with plumage and surmounted by long red, blue,
.green, or yellow feathers plucked from the tail of the arras bird. Polygamy is followed by them
— a man's wives being only limited by the number of plantations which he may require them to
superintend. There is a division of labour among them; one superintends household affairs,
cooks, and attends to the children ; another looks to the banana and maize cultivation ; a third
sees to the cocoa-nut trees ; and so on. Four is, however, about the limit of wifely bliss to
which any of them attain. The Christian religion is unknown among them. They believe in
the supernatural potency of grotesque fetiches which are suspended in their houses, and worship
trees, though also acknowledging a supreme celestial being. They are very hospitable. "NVhen
the cazique, Nus-alileli, of Tancla, was offered payment in return for his kindness lie instantly
refused it, and exclaimed reverentially, "The Great God on high commands his children to
SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: THEIR APPEARANCE. 217
receive kindly the guests he sends to them." They are unacquainted with Spanish, and speak
a language of their own — the Cuna — which is soft and sonorous.
Looking back in memory over a hurried visit to the Isthmus of Panama, apart from our
notes there hangs about it a hazy dream of the exuberance of a tropical life — the odour of
spices wafted off the shore, the dank atmosphere, the hum of life, the wave after wave of
blossoms borne on the surface of a sea of rich vegetation which stretches far as the eye can see,
from the top of the Cerro de los Buccanerros. There steals over one a sleepy remembrance of
hammock-swinging idleness — a vision of bright-coloured birds screaming through the groves of
indiarubber and cocoa-nut trees — of bananas, and guavas, and pineapples, and monkeys, and
parrots, and all the other things pertaining to the land of the sun ; and ever starts up before
one a green savannah, with leaf-thatched hut, where Indians, shy of the stranger, seem ever
washing their scanty wardrobe by beating it between two stones, or where tall, sinewy boatmen
are launching their "dug-outs" to sail to the Pearl Islands. Here is a land where men speak
softly and move quietly, because it is too great an exertion to do anything else; where in
somnolent villages the sigh of the fresh, boisterous, loud-laughing stranger is as refreshing to
his expatriated countryman as is the sea-breeze which at midnight wre drink in on the walls of
Panama. When I desire the peace which is found in an absence of energy or action — utter
unmoving stagnation, in which years roll on without varying, and almost without note — where
the water-melon breakfast is only varied by the banana and pineapple dinner — where the only
wish which shall disturb my passionless life is the languid desire for a little — just a very little
— more air, and a little — just a little — less heat, I shall seek it in a Central American hamlet
which I know of. But as I am not just yet ready to flee to this pictured Elysium, I shall be
selfish enough to keep the name of it to myself, and for the time being bid good-bye to tho
Central Americans.
CHAPTER XIV.
SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS : CARIES ; ARAWAKS ; WARAUS ; ACAWOIOS.
THE reader need not, of course, be told that between the South and Central American Indians
there is no hard-and-fast line of demarcation ; the division is only one of convenience. Still
}tween the Indians of North and South America, the traveller, passing from one to the other,
in never fail to notice some marked differences. The South American Indians are more olive
)r yellowish than reddish in complexion than the northern ones. Their face is usually heavier,
ind their nose not so prominent, while their heads are also of less length than those of North
Lmerica, and though the eyes of the Pacific coast tribes are sometimes inclined to slope,
this peculiarity is by no means common in the North, while in the South it is almost the
nle among many families. To enumerate all the South American tribes — even supposing
us possible — would not be a task for the performance of which the reader would be inclined to
248
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
thank the author. Page after page could be filled with more or less unpronounceable names —
names and nothing more — which, while it might give a semblance of learning where instruction
is the object, would assuredly convey no information whatever. Take every river in that river-,
intersected continent of South America, and multiply each by from five up to one hundred and
fifty, according to its length and breadth, and you might arrive at something like an approxi-
mate idea of the seemingly almost endless subdivisions among the American races, a contrast
CONIBO INDIAN (MALE).
to the compact character of the political organisation of some other races we shall have
occasionally to touch upon. We cannot enter into such lengthened details regarding the
South Americans as we have respecting those of the northern part of the continent ;. nor,
even did space admit, would this be advisable, these tribes being in general of less interest
to Europeans than those which daily come in contact with the whites in North America.
We shall, however, present some particulars in regard to the chief families of the aborigines
of that section of America, classifying them, by means of their language and other character-
istics, into certain broadly-marked divisions (pp. 248, 249, &c.) .
THE CAEIBS: THEIR GENERAL APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER.
•219
CARIES.
Suppose we take our stand in some shady place in Georgetown, Demerara, and watch the
people as they move along the street, cautiously and lazily, in the coolest possible attire,
and in the place least affected by the scorching sun overhead, as is the manner of the tropics.
The steam-ship has brought hither men of all nations, intent on gain, and active in the pursuit
of the commerce which the rich lands of the sun afford. Here are Anglo-Saxons, ruddy in
complexion, pushing, loud-talking, and energetic ; dolce far niente Portuguese and Spaniards,
CONIBO INDIAN (FEMALE).
lounging about in cigaretto-smoking listlessness ; and coolies from Calcutta and Madras, dis-
tinguished by the graceful turban and robes which they have brought from the East, and the
dark, polished skins, and bright, snaky eyes which gleam from beneath their suspicious eyebrows.
Chinese, sloping-eyed, industrious, and patient like all their race, and, so long as dollars are to
be got, careless of the abuse which the overbearing European thinks fit to inflict on this yellow-
skinned representative of a worn-oat civilisation, trip along at their silent trot, with their bamboo
pole, on which is suspended on either end a laden basket. Among these and other nationalities
are mingled the negroes and mongrel Creoles who form the great body of the population.
But before all these varied nationalities which we have mentioned, the ethnologist will at once
32
250 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
be arrested by another group, smaller in number and less pretentious in appearance, but still
strikingly different in many respects from any of those by whom they are shouldered in the streets
of this intertropical town. They are shy -faced and seemingly bewildered. At a glance you see the
strangers are from the rural districts, and that everything they perceive around them is unfamiliar
to them. " By the bright copper tint of their skins, their long, glossy, straight, black hair, and
too frequently by their very scanty clothing, may be recognised the aborigines of the country.
They usually bear in their hands little articles of their own manufacture for sale, such as baskets
of various shapes, bows and arrows, models of canoes, Indian houses, &c. ; frequently parrots,
monkeys, and other animals are added to their stock, the price of which will supply the family
with axes, cutlasses, hoes, and other necessary implements, with perhaps a gun, and a few other
articles of European manufacture for the ensuing year ; " perhaps — indeed most likely — with
more than the proper quantity of the rum which is the bane of their race, and under the influence
of which some of these children of the forest most decidedly are. They have only visited the
city and the coast for the purpose of obtaining such articles as we have mentioned. Their
homes are in the vast forests and on the banks of some of the rivers which intersect the country.
Hither let us follow them. We are now in what, nearly 300 years ago, Sir Walter Raleigh
called "that mighty, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana/" but now divided by political
exigencies into Venezuela — drained by the great Orinoco — Dutch Guiana (Surinam), French
Guiana (Cayenne), and British Guiana, which we shall more especially take as the type of
the region, a sketch of the aborigines of which we propose to give in the few pages which
follow. Over a vast portion of the country. the gorgeous tropical jungle spreads its leafy shade,
full of all the wondrous and beautiful things which the sunlight of equatorial lands brings fortlu
As we stand on an eminence and look forth over the large expanse of country, our eye is charmed,
yet after a time almost wearied with the various objects which call for its attention. Trees of
varied foliage and species, laden with gorgeous flowers and fruit such as only these lands
produce, are on every side ; the ground is carpeted by under-brush scarcely less lovely in
its clothing, while from tree to tree climb and interlace an inextricable network of orchids,
lianas (climbing shrubs), and an endless variety of twining plants, which intermingle their
foliage and blossoms with those of the trees which they embrace in their leafy folds. As we
look out on the endless undulation of forest country, we seem but to behold a sea of vegetation,
the waves of which are crested with flowers.* Our ears, hitherto accustomed to the solitude
of the pine forests of the North, are dinned by the many sounds which assail them on all sides.
Birds of gay plumage dart, screaming, from the bushes, where we have surprised them devouring
the luscious fruit ; the long-tailed monkeys swing themselves from branch to branch as if to
survey their degenerate descendant, who is doomed to walk on terra fr ma, and chatter to them-
selves as they pitch a nut or two at the object of their study. Towards nightfall the jaguars
come out of their lairs, and their cry may be heard in the wood mingled with affrighted
* It is, however, a mistake to suppose that the tropics are distinguished by an exuberance of flowers. On
the contrary, the heat and moistness of the air are especially conducive to the production of foliage, while flowers
are accordingly rather rare. This mistaken idea regarding the floral richness of the tropics has arisen from
eeeing tropical flowers gathered from every region grouped side by side in our conservatories. Though the
tropics are rich in fine flowers, yet in the number of individuals which the observer sees at one place, an English
meadow is more abundantly supplied.
THE GUIAXAIANS: THEIR COUNTRY; THE FABLES ABOUT THEM. 251
"beasts alarmed by the dreaded cry; screams of birds of names unknown to us resound, and
around us and over all is the ceaseless sound of the myriad insect life, ever singing a paean of
praise unto its Creator. Reptiles — slimy, many-coloured creatures — crawl away as our feet disturb
the fallen leaves, and leave us shuddering at the unseen terrors which this fair scene hides in its
sickly recesses. The dank air of the tropics is over all, the beauteous something which words
cannot express, the fragrance which the evening breeze wafts seaward, laden with spices and
odours, with which in our mind are associated things fair and pleasant, yet in sad remembrance,
completes the picture which the name of Guiana calls up. Suddenly the sun goes down, and all
is darkness ; here twilight is unknown, and we swing into our hammock, suspended between two
cocoa-nut trees, wearied it may be with the endless objects we have examined in our day's
journey, or simply as a "diversion from the listless watching of the tide ebbing and flowing
past the open door ; or listening to the parrots flying high overhead in pairs to their nests, and
telling by their cries that another weary day is drawing to a close." Happy even then if we
see the sun rising without being disturbed by the many creatures whose deeds love the dark-
ness. Yet, after all, these glorious forests, beautiful rivers, and green savannahs go to form
" enchanting scenes }> which made Charles Waterton, whose name is so enduriugly bracketed
with that of Schomburgk in the exploration of the natural history of this country, " overflow
with joy, and roam in fancy through fairy-land," as it has that of many subsequent explorers.
The aboriginal inhabitants of this wide area are now only the feeble remnants of what
were once powerful tribes before the whites supplanted them in their fair heritage.* They
early came into contact with Europeans. For here, in the sixteenth century, rumour located
the famous land of " El Dorado/' whose riches exceeded those of Peru. "A branch of the
royal race of the Incas, flying from their conquered country with as much wealth as could
be saved from the Spanish invaders, was said to have established in Guiana a new empire.
As Manco Ccapac, the founder of that dynasty, had first reigned on the shores of Lake Titicaca,
so his exiled descendants were believed to have fixed their abode near a lake named Parima,
the sands of which contained immense quantities of gold. The city of Manoa, on its banks,
had houses covered with plates of that precious metal; and not only were all the vessels
in the royal palace made of the same, but gold-dust was so abundant that the natives often
sprinkled it over their bodies, which they first anointed with a glutinous substance that it
might stick to them. Especially was the person of their sovereign thus adorned by his
chamberlain." Oviedo, an old Spanish writer, whose work, however, Las Casas is conipli-
* The origin of the Caribs is a question regarding which we are never likely to be able to furnish a satis-
factory answer, though numerous theories have at different times been propounded. A view held by some American
ethnographers is that their original home was the ancient Province of Confachiqui, in the north of Florida, and
that after a long war with the Apalachites, the latter yielded a fertile district to and coalesced with the fierce
conquerors. After a time the two peoples fell out, and the Caribs migrated to the South, overrunning the \Wst
Indian Islands, then inhabited by Arawaks, and finally penetrating to the mainland, where the principal remnants
of their race now exist. The Caribs themselves declare that they came from the Orinoco River— an idea probably
more correct than any other. Humboldt relates that the Caribs of South America call themselves Carin(y)a, Calina,
Callinago, Caribi, and that the word " Carib " is derived from Calini and Carifoona. Mr. Ober mentions that the
term Carifoona is the one given him both by the St. Vincent and Dominican Caribs, as the ancient name of the
tribe. Mr. im Thurm considers that there are four groups of languages spoken in British Guiana, viz., (1) The
AVarau and Arawak, (2) Wapiana, (3) Atorais (Atures), (4) Carib, the first being confined to the coast region, the
second and third to the Savannah country, while the fourth is widely scattered over the whole country.
252 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
mentary enough to hint in the broadest manner contains as many fictions as pages, even
goes the length of saying that e ' as this kind of garment would be uneasy to him while he
slept, the prince washes himself every evening, and is gilded anew in the morning, which
proves that the empire of El Dorado is infinitely rich in mines." This absurd story probably
originated with the fact that on the banks of the Caura and other wild parts of Guiana the
natives anoint themselves with turtle fat, and stick spangles of mica on the skin.* At all
events, there were few sceptics as to El Dorado at the time when Queen Bess reigned over
England, and many of those who made her reign, and those of her contemporary sovereigns,
so glorious, but once or oftener tried their skill at the discovery of this fairy-land, with which
the delightful pages of Charles Kingsley's " Westward Ho ! " have familiarised many a reader.
What a long list we could make of them ! Prominently there stand before us the conquis-
tadores Belalcazar, Queseda, and Federmann ; Orellana, Ordaz, and Herrera, Philip von Huten,
and a score more — first and most famous of all of whom was Walter Raleigh. None of
them ever found it, but all of them met with many a misfortune. Some of the adventurers
had been companions of Cortes in Mexico, or of Pizarro in Peru, and " great must have been
their disappointment on finding that they had exchanged regions of wealth and comparative
civilisation, where fair cities, surrounded by beautiful gardens and fruitful fields, abounded,
for wild interminable forests, swamps or plains; where only assemblages of rude huts were to
be met with, and they few and far between. Nor could it have been more gratifying to those
veterans to have exchanged, as antagonists, the bold and gorgeously equipped Aztec warriors,
who met them in the open field, each chief —
'In golden glitt'rance, and the feathered mail
More gay than glitt'ring gold,'
for the naked, spangled savages whom they encountered in Guiana. Some of the latter, especially
those of the Carib race, were indeed formidable from their headlong ferocity; while the others,
launching their poisoned missiles from the shelter of trees or rocks, have been, as enemies,
equally dangerous and still more unsatisfactory." (Brett.)
Herrera, indeed, went mad from the effect of a wound with a poisoned arrow, and though
Raleigh escaped, yet scarcely less fortunate, he here laid the foundation for those charges
which in after years brought him to the scaffold. Everywhere the searchers for El Dorado felt
the power of the natives, in the determined courage with which they attacked the mail-clad
invader. Disappointed in their efforts to discover the land they were in search of, the
adventurers established a settlement in the country, which proved too formidable for the brave
Guianaians, who were gradually reduced in numbers and power until they were in a perfect state
of slavery. The natives were encouraged to capture each other in war, as from time im-
memorial they had been in the habit of doing, but instead of keeping their captives in slavery
themselves, selling them to the whites. Francis Sparrow, whom Raleigh left to explore the
country, bought, we are told, " to the southward of the Orinoco, eight beautiful young women,
the eldest not eighteen years of age, for a red-handled knife, the value of which was in
England, at that time, but one halfpenny." In these more enlightened times, the Indians are
* Humboldt's " Personal Narrative," chap. xxv.
254 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
in no way oppressed, but they are only a fragment of the people as the}' once existed. In the
region described there are several tribes, the chief of whom are the Carib, Arawak, and "VVarau.
The Acawoio is another important tribe, and the Macusi, little seen by the whites, inhabit,
to the number of about 3,000, the distant interior. The Caribs, once held in such awe by
the surrounding tribes, are now verging on extinction, only a few hundreds maintaining an
existence. At one time Trinidad and the Antilles, in part at least, were overrun by this now
feeble race, and on every coast, north and south, for several hundred miles, their savage canni-
balistic expeditions were the terror of their less warlike neighbours.
The Indian in the forest is a very different being from what we have seen in the streets of
Georgetown. He is no longer stupid 'with amazement, bewilderment, and possibly rum. He
is, in his native forest, the superior of the white man ; his " foot is on his native heath/'
The white man stumbling, over fallen logs or slipping as he makes his way across a tangled
swamp, must appear to him an individual awkward and stupid in the extreme.
In stature the Guianaian is not over five and a half feet in height, and many are much
shorter, but they are stout in proportion. His skin is of a copper tint, a little darker than
that of the natives of the South of Europe. A cloth round his loins, and in which he carries his
knife, is his only dress. A necklace of beads, peccary teeth &c., is superadded. Some of them
wear a small cord around their waists and ankles. They also make tiaras of the feathers of
parrots, macaws, and other birds, set off with the scarlet breast of the toucan, and surmounted by
the scarlet and purple tail feathers of the macaw. These head-dresses are, however, only worn on
very festive occasions.* The dress of the women in their primitive condition consists simply of
a beaded apron, and necklace of beads, silver coins, teeth of the jaguar, shells, &c. Their houses
are built near the water when the soil is fit for the growth of cassava and other vegetables. The
Indian is very shy, and, like the wild animals around him, will soon desert his particular portion
of the country if he is much disturbed. His dwelling is a very primitive structure, consisting
as it does of a few posts driven into the ground, the roof thatched with palm leaves or other
foliage, and the sides partially open. The women and children live and conduct the cooking
operations in a small hut apart from that in which the men live. One or two hammocks are the
chief articles of furniture, and in these at all hours of the day there is sure to be somebody lolling,
half or wholly asleep. A few rough baskets, pottery, arms, and a few domestic trifles, make up
the sum total of the Carib's wealth. Many years ago Dr. Pinckard gave such a graphic sketch
of a Carib family in a canoe on the Berbice river that it is worth quoting. ' ' The canoe was
large, and loaded with cedar, or other kinds of wood for sale or barter. On the top appeared a
ferocious-looking animal, setting up his bristles like the quills of a porcupine, f A small monkey
was also skipping about the canoe. On one side sat two very fine parrots, and on the other was
a very large and beautiful macaw, exhibiting all the splendour of his gay plumage. On the
canoe arriving at the landing-place, the bow and arrows, clay cooking vessels, calabashes, and
crab baskets were all brought into view, forming a very complete and striking specimen of
original equipage and accommodation. The whole family, with the apparatus, furniture, and
implements for cooking, sleeping, shooting, fishing, and travelling, were here moved in one
* The Caribs are said to flatten their heads, but on what ground this statement is made I have been unable
to learn. It was, however, a practice among those of the West Indies.
f Probably a young peccary — a pet of the family.
CARIES: INTELLIGENCE ; DRESS; ENDURANCE; BURIAL. 255
complete body/' The Guianaian Indian, like his brothers elsewhere, seems untamable, at least
so far as his vagabond instincts are concerned. Take one in early youth, bring him (or her) up
as carefully as possible, until all the savage seems to have been effaced ; give your protege a
chance to take to savage ways, and speedily you will find the semi-civilised Indian squatted, half
naked, in his native forest — Carib of the Caribs, Indian of the Indians. I could quote a dozen
instances of this which have come within my own knowledge. Cases indeed are not wanting
where a half-breed has been highly educated, and yet the mother's blood was too powerful for
the education of his father's race. Little by little they have relapsed, until, in a case I have at
present in my mind's eye, they have sunk into barbarism, and have even become more ruthless
against the whites than the Indians themselves. Renegades are almost always the most bitter
enemies of their race, as is proved by the white men who at different times have been known to
join the Indians. Most of the Guianaian tribes have a vague idea of a God, but their religion
deals more with evil spirits, to guard against whom, their sorcerers or medicine-men are
implicitly believed in.
The Caribs, or Carinya, are a wild people, painted a bright vermilion colour with arnotto.
The women have a custom — probably peculiar to those of this tribe — " of wearing round each
leg, just above the knee, a light strap of cotton, painted red, and another above each ankle. They
are fastened on while the girl is young, and hinder the growth of the parts by their compression,
while the calf, which is unconfined, appears in consequence unusually large. All the Carib
women wear these, which they call sajj/tr/t, and consider as a great addition to their beauty.
But the most singular part of their appearance is presented by the lower lip, which they
perforate, and wear one, two, or three pins sticking through the hole, with the points outwards.
Before they procured pins, thorns or other similar substances were thus worn. Should they
wish to use the pin, they will take it out, and again replace it in the lip when its services are no
longer required." The cloth round the waist of the men is sometimes sufficiently long to allow
of it being disposed in a graceful manner over the shoulders, " so that part of it falls on the
bosom, while the end hangs down the back." It is often ornamented with tassels, and when the
owner mounts his coronal of feathers, and gets his body painted in various patterns with
vermilion, they are, if not elegant after our ideas of beauty, yet sufficiently picturesque — as
savage picturesqueness goes.
They are obstinate and fearless, and proud in the remembrance of their former deeds;
when they were probably the most warlike and powerful of Indian nations. Endurance has
been held in high respect amongst them. In former times a chief who aspired to the honour of
commanding his brethren was, in order to test his power of enduring torture and fatigue,
exposed to the biting of ants for a certain time. If he sustained this ordeal without flinching,
he was chosen as captain, and the bows and arrows of his tribesmen laid at his feet in token
of obedience to his orders.
Their method of disposing of their dead is peculiar. If the deceased has been a person of
consequence, or held in great regard, his bones, after a certain period, are dug up and carefully
cleaned by the women, or the body is sunk in the river until the fishes have performed that
office ; after this they are tinted pink with arnotto and carefully preserved, suspended to the
roof of the huts.
The chieftainships are now considered of small value, but at one time this was very
256
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOKLD.
different — when the Caribs were a numerous and aggressive race. It is said that the war-
councils of the island Caribs were held in a secret dialect known only to the chiefs and elders
MESAYA INDIAN OF THE RIVEK JAFURA, ONE OF THE TRIBUTARIES OF THE AMAZON.
of the tribes, and warriors who were initiated into it, but the women were also always kept
ignorant of it, the woman's language being probably the traditional tongue of the Arawaks,
who originally occupied the islands.
In my opinion, there can be no possible doubt that, though the people themselves do not
care nowadays to talk on the subject, the evidence is conclusive as to the fact of the Caribs
\
u
10
TJ1K FIRST STKAMKK ON THK ORINOCO.
THE CARIES: CANNIBALISM; SLAVERY; ARAWAKS.
257
being cannibals of the deepest dye and eating their enemies, whose flesh they tore and devoured,
to use the language of an old writer, "with the avidity of wolves/' The same author
(Stedman) mentions obtaining a flute from them, which he figures in his work, made of the
thigh-bone of one of their victims. They do not now enslave each other as at one time they
did, and it is said that the discontinuance of this traffic was chiefly owing to the discountenance
which the British Government gave to the traffic. "A Carib chief, indignant at the refusal
of the Governor to accept of a fine slave, immediately dashed out the brains of the slave, and
declared that for the future his nation should never give quarter." This cruel act was done
MIRAXHAS IXDIAXS, FROM THE RIO NEOHO.
with one of the huge short-handled clubs, called potii, a single blow from which was sufficient
to scatter the brains of the person struck. A stone was sometimes fastened in it, by being
fixed in the tree when growing ; after which the club, with the stone firmly imbedded in the
end of it, was fashioned as the designer thought fit.
nnd
ARAWAKS.
The Arawaks — or, as they call themselves, Lokono, the people* — are now the most peaceful
and civilised of all the Guianaian tribes. It is probable that they originally came from Florida
long anterior to the Conquest. They are very different in language and general character from
the Caribs, who have a tradition that when they first conquered the West India Islands these
islands were inhabited by Arawaks. If this were so, then the Guianaian branch is the chief
remnant of the race, those who formerly inhabited the islands having been long ago extermi-
In the same way the Carihs call themselves " Carinya," the people.
33
258 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
nated by the Spaniards. We are told by Mr. Brett, who has given us the most perfect history
of these tribes which we possess, that they still have indistinct remembrances of the cruelties per-
petrated by the Spaniards, clothed, and armed with sipari (or iron), who hunted their forefathers
through the forests with ferocious dogs. The language of the Arawaks is soft and their manner
timid. Yet, they are sometimes compelled to take up arms against the bush negroes and
aggressive Indian tribes. Their weapons are chiefly the bow and arrows, but one weapon which
they still make more as a curiosity than for use is sufficiently formidable. In its construction
the hardest and heaviest wood is used ; it has a broad blade, thick in the middle, but with sharp
edges. The handle is covered with cotton, wound tightly round it to prevent the hands from
slipping. It has also a loop of the same material which is placed round the wrist. This weapon
they call sapakana, and some were at one time made so large that both hands were required
to wield them. Their dress does not differ from that already described, except that the women
decorate their heads with the glittering elytra, or wing-cases, of various beetles. The tribe is
divided into families, and — as in many other tribes — relationship goes with the mother. When
the children are young they show little filial regard, but when they grow up they are almost
invariably very kind to the aged parents, who have shown such affection for them. They are
betrothed by their parents in infancy, and the contract is binding. The young couple often
remain with the father-in-law until the increase of the family compels them to set up house
for themselves; but the wife's father expects the son-in-law to assist him in clearing ground, &c.,
a service always cheerfully rendered.
A curious custom prevails amongst these tribes, and indeed is more or less common among
the Abipones, Brazilian Coroados, Kamschatkadales, Koravans, Yunnan Chinese, Dyaks, and
people of the North of Spain; it also prevailed at one time in Greenland, and does at the present
time in the South of France. In the latter country the custom is called fuire la couvadc.
It consists in either the husband undergoing medical treatment, special nursing, or in his
taking to bed when the wife is delivered of a child. Among the Arawaks the father takes
to his hammock after the child's birth, and remains some days as if he were sick, and then
receives the congratulations and condolence of his friends. "An instance of this custom,"
Mr. Brett says, " came under my own observation : where the man, in robust health and
excellent condition, without a single bodily ailment, was lying in his hammock in the most
provoking manner, and carefully and respectfully attended by the women, while the mother of
the new-born infant was cooking — none apparently regarding her ! " Various reasons for this
extraordinary custom have been given, but at all events the true one, so far as the Indian is
concerned, is that given by the Caribs and Abipones themselves to Lafitau, who, however,
rejected this explanation, and believed that it arose from a dim recollection of original sin.
" The Indians say that the reason of their adopting it is, if the father engaged at that time in
any rough work or was careless in his diet, the child would participate in all the natural defects
of the animals which the father had eaten.* We have already noticed the superstition about
the father abstaining from particular food at the same period. Were it not for drunkenness,
the Arawaks would lead a simple life, but their knowledge of the preparation of paicari,
the native intoxicating drink, from cassava (in much the same manner as we have already
* " Mcrurs dcs Sauvages Americains," i. p. 259; Lubbock: " Origin of Civilisation," pp. 10 — 13; Tylor : "Early
History of Man," p. 296; Orton : " The Andes and the Amazon" (1S71) ; Camilla: " El Orinoco illustnulo," &c.
ABA WARS: ASTRONOMY; WARAUS: FOOD. 259
described the preparation of a similiar liquor among the Mosquito Indians, p. 240) in no
way conduces to their moral or physical elevation. The chiefs are now appointed by the
Government, but offences are still punished after their own customs. The law of retaliation
thoroughly prevails among- them. If any one is killed, his nearest relative takes upon himself
the duty of vengeance, and sooner or later the murderer pays with his life for his crime.
With them it is blood for blood.
Mr. Brett gives us an account of their astronomical views. They have some rude know-
ledge of the stars, which was probably acquired by the experience of their ancestors on former
voyages. One of the constellations they called Camudi, from the fancied resemblance to that
snake. They call the Milky Way by two names, one of which signifies " the path of the tapir ;"
and the other is waie onna/clci alonaha (the path of the bearers of icaie] — a species of whitish
clay, of which their vessels are made. The nebulous spots are supposed to be the track of spirits
whose feet were smeared writh that material. Venus is distinguished by the name of
" Warakoma," and Jupiter is generally called " Wiwakalimero" (the star of brightness). The
compass they believe to be alive, but a comet, which terrified the negroes 011 the coast and the
Indians in the interior,* they did not think anything more portentous than simply " a star
with a tail." They knew nothing of geography or history before the whites arrived. The only
name of European fame which had ever reached their ears was that of the first Napoleon.
The only other custom among these people which I shall notice is the maquarri dance,
generally given in honour of a dead relative. At these festivals old and young vie with each
other in standing up in pairs and lashing each other over the legs with heavy whips more
than three feet in length, until their limbs are bleeding. Yet, all is conducted in perfect
good humour, each being anxious to show no sign of pain while the eyes of the women are
bent on them.
WARAUS OR GUARAXIS.
This tribe is the lowest of the Guianaians in point of civilisation, yet they are a hardy
race ; dirty and slovenly in everything, but merry and cheerful, though reckless and im-
provident. They are stoutly built, but so careless about clothing that "even the females
frequently content themselves with a small piece of the bark of a tree, or the net-like covering
of the young leaf of the cocoa-nut, or cabbage palm." Their appearance is squalid and filthy to
a proverb. They cultivate a few vegetables, but chiefly depend on what they can obtain by
fishing in the sea, their home being in the swampy region close to the coast. In times of
scarcity they betake themselves to the ita palm (Mauritia}, which, in addition to supplying them
with planks, used for various purposes, affords, in its starchy central portion, a nutritious material
for bread. The " Mauritia palm," wrote Humboldt, many years ago, " yields numerous articles
of food. Before the tender spathe unfolds its blossoms on the male palm, and only at that
particular period of vegetable metamorphosis, the medullary portion of the trunk is found to
contain a sago-like meal, which (like cassava root) is dried in thin bread-like slices. The sap of
the tree, when fermented, constitutes the sweet inebriating palm wine of the Waraus. The
* Sir Robert Schomburgk tells us that his Indians, when they witnessed the comet as they were encamped on
an island in the Essequibo, called it, in terror, " the spirit of the stars," a "fiery cloud," or in the knguage of the
Macusis, " wee inopsa " (a sun casting its light behind).
200
THE 1'EOPLES OF THE WORLD.
narrow-scaled iruit, which resembles reddish pine cones, yields different articles of food,
according to the period at which it is gathered, whether its saccharine properties are fully
matured, or whether it is still in a farinaceous condition. Thus in the lowest grades of man's
development we find an entire race dependent upon almost a single tree, like certain insects
which are confined to particular portions of a flower." They are not, however, deficient in
art, and are celebrated for their huge canoes, or ivoibakas, which they supply, not only to the
settlers, but to all the neighbouring tribes ; some of them are fifty feet long and six feet broad,
PILE VILLAGE OF MARACAIRO.
and will hold fifty persons, and are made either of the Cedrela odorala, or of a tree called It si,
The gain, however, made by them is soon squandered in gluttony and dissipation, until hunger
again compels them to exertion. It is, however, on the Delta of the Orinoco, which must
be considered the proper territory of these people, that Warau life is to be seen to the
greatest perfection — in all its peculiarities and rudeness. In this region the lands are
annually inundated by the overflowing of the river,* and, accordingly, for some mouths in
the year the Warau has to construct his hut above the level of the flood among the trees
from which a large portion of his food is derived. He uses, when possible, upright trunks us
posts ; thatches the roof beneath their leafy crowns, previously docked to the requisite height,
•To the hi-ight of from throe to five feet, according to Schomburgk ; but other travellers declare that
twenty-five to thirty feot is nearer, the mark. It is different in various localities.
WARAUS: PILE DWELLINGS; THE LAKE DWELLINGS OF MARACAIBO INDIANS. 261
with the fronds of the Manicaria palm ; fixes the lower beams a few feet above the
highest level of the water, and lays thereon the split ita or maneca-tree trunks for flooring1.
Clay is laid on the floor, and a fire kept burning in the day. Here the culinary operations go
on, while from the upper beams the hammocks are slung. The ever-ready canoe enables the
men to move about from hut to hut, or to fish, until the land again appears above the water.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in his famous El Dorado expeditions, came in contact with the Waraus,
whom he describes under the name of Tivitavas — "a goodly people, and very valiant. In
summer they have houses on the ground, and other places. In winter they dwell up in the
MAKACAIBO IMHAXS EM15AUKING.
trees, where they build very artificial towns and houses ; for between May and September the
river of Orinoco riseth twenty foot upright, and then these islands are overflown twenty feet
high above the level of the ground, saving some few raised grounds in the middle of them :
and for this cause they are enforced to live in this manner." The Warau has even been
described as an arboreal man, living by choice in trees ! He is very migratory in his disposition,
building a temporary hut wherever he finds a tree to suit him, and then floating it off when the
rainy season floods the low grounds. Pile dwellings, we shall find, before we have concluded
our survey of the human family, are by no means confined to the Waraus. Even in the same
region — on a large shallow lake* off the Gulf of Maracaibo, in Venezuela, are a tribe of Indians
who, to avoid the mosquito, dwell in several villages built on iron- wood piles (Guaiacum arloreum] .
ho\vi
i
Wild fowl abound on this lake, but naturally, owing to its human occupants, are very shy. The Indians,
however, adopt an ingenious method of capturing them. A number of large hollowed gourds are set afloat on
262 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Hence the Spaniards applied the name of Venezuela (or Little Venice) to the whole country.
They are pagans, pure and simple, and believe that all men were created exactly as they are
now — black, red, and white — that each man is best in the state in which he was created — a
philosophically simple creed. The white men's religion is good enough, they say, for icJiile
men, but not for the red, otherwise they would have followed it from the beginning — the truth
or error of which piece of sophistry does not, as Sir Thomas Browne would have said, " admit
of a reasonable solution." Polygamy is universal among them, but, curiously enough, here for
the first time we find a faint trace of the institution of polyandry, or a woman with more than
one husband, an institution which we shall find, by-and-by, is of common occurrence among
certain nations, and is even more remarkable than polygamy, the explanation of which does
not require to be sought very far afield. A "VVarau man on being asked why a man should
have two wives, and a woman not be allowed two husbands, replied, that for his part, he did
not consider either practice bad, for he knew a Warau woman who had three. Still the custom
is exceptional ; but I am not aware that it is found, even in this slight and exceptional form,
among any other American tribe.
The "Waraus are very dark skinned, and might even be taken for negroes. Their language
is different from that of all the surrounding peoples, but it is not isolated, for the Guarani
have many connections all through Brazil and the neighbouring regions. Indeed, if Dr.
Latham's opinion, founded 011 philological grounds, is correct, the greater number of the
Brazilian inland tribes of Entre Rios, Corrientes, Paraguay, La Plata, part of Peru (Santa
Cruz Province), including the Mundrucu of the Amazons, are all Guaraiiis. In a word, they
extend north to the Island of Mara jo, south to Monte Video, and westward to the head-
waters of the Amazon — all speaking dialects of what has been called the Tiqn language.
The Botocudo, the Canecran, Coroado, the Coropo, the Machacari, the Pamacan, Penhami,
Kiriri, Sabuja, the Gran, Goya, the Tinibryra, and an immense number of other Brazilians,
are not 2W/?/-speaking people.
ACAWOIOS, OR KAPOLIN.*
Mr. Brett, from whom we take our description of this tribe, describes the Acawoios as
having grave, even melancholy, though not unpleasing features. They paint themselves with
the arnotto dye, but at the same time they take great delight in streaking their bodies and
faces with blue lines. " They wear a piece of wood, or a quill, stuck through the cartilage
of the nose, and some individuals have similar ornaments through the lobe of the ear. They
formerly distinguished themselves by a circular hole, about half an inch in diameter, made in
the lower part of the under lip, in which was inserted a piece of wood of equal size with the
hole, which was cut off even with the outer skin, the inner end pressing against the roots of
their teeth. The latter ornament is now but seldom seen, but the others are general." In the
•engraving on p. 92 these peculiar ornaments, to which the reader will have become somewhat
the lake until the wild fowl become accustomed to their presence. The hunter then covers his head with one,
which has had holes for seeing and breathing made in it, wades into the shallow lake, his head only appearing
above the water, and, unsuspected by the birds, grasps one by its legs, twists its neck, and silently fastening
it in his girdle, repeats the process until he has obtained all he can carry.
* Literally, the people ; the Carib name for themselves (Carinya) signifles the same.
ACAWOIOS: LIP AND NOSE ORNAMENTS; OURALI POISON; BLOW-PIPE. 263
accustomed, are shown, and on pp. 256 and 272 the usual feather ear and nose appendages are
portrayed.
The Arecunas, of the Orinoco, also wear long- sticks through the cartilage of the nostrils,
and still larger ones, ornamented with tufts of black feathers at the extremity, through their
ears. These Indians are also exceedingly fond of tattooing, especially of drawing a broad
line around the mouth, so wide that each lip looks as if an inch broader than it really is,
giving the appearance of an enormous mouth — possibly a mark of extreme good looks among
those primitive people. None of the North American tribes can, however, equal the
Mundrucus, whom we shall have occasion to touch upon by-and-by, in their extraordinary
patterns of painting and tattooing. What, however, is most remarkable about the Acawoios
is the use — in common with the other interior tribes — of the ourali poison and blow-pipe,
which we have used with some success, though not in Guiana. The best description of these
instruments is that given by Mr. Brett : — The ourali * poison is now well known. The
arrows or spikes anointed with it are made of the cocorite palm. They are usually about one
foot in length, and very slender. One end is sharpened and envenomed with ourali, and around
the other is wound a ball or tuft of fleecy wild cotton (Bombax celba), adapted to the size of the
cavity of the blow-pipe, through which it is to be discharged. To preserve these delicate and
dangerous spikes, and to guard himself from the death which a slight prick from one of them
would convey, the Indian hunter makes a small quiver of bamboo, which he covers with deer-
skin and ornaments with cotton strings. To this is usually attached the under jaw-bone of a
fish called jrirai (Serrasalmus piraya) . That is used for partly cutting off the poisoned part of
the arrow, which is done by rapidly turning it between the teeth of the fish jaw, so that when
the game is struck, the envenomed point may break off in the wound, while the shaft, which
falls on the ground, can be recovered by the Indian, and sharpened and poisoned for further
use. The blow-pipe is a reed or small palm, about nine inches in length, which is hollowed and
lined by another smooth reed.f The Indians are very careful of them, and frequently turn
them when placed in their houses, lest they should become in the slightest degree bent or
warped by remaining in one position. They sometimes even cover them with handsome
peyall work and sell them as curiosities to the colonists. There are several varieties of these
blow-tubes. The small poisoned arrows are, by a single blast from the lungs, sent through the
cavity of the reed, and fly for some distance with great swiftness and accuracy of aim, conveying
speedy and certain death. The tribes which use these weapons are accustomed to them from
their infancy, and by long practice they acquire a degree of dexterity which is inimitable by
strangers, and would be incredible were it not for the fact that they depend upon them for
most of their animal food. An Indian said to one of our countrymen : " The blow-pipe is our
gun, and the poisoned arrow is to us powder and shot/' The poison is fatal when mixed with the
blood in the smallest degree, but has no effect on an unbroken skin. The blow-tube is only used
to kill small animals, or their enemies when silence is necessary, but for the slaughter of the
forger animals, a bow and long poison-tipped arrows, made of a reed (Gynecium saccJiarlnum] six
feet long, are used. The animals killed with it suffer no great pain, though they die in convul-
* Written, also, " wonrali," " nrali," " nrari," " curare," &c., according to the pronunciation of the various tribes.
t The Arundinaria Schomburgkii, a single joint (internode) of which is sometim.es sixteen feet in length.
264 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
sions. Ourali does not belong to the class of tetanic poisons : therefore it is difficult to under-
stand how the juices of different species of strychnine plants (Strycknos toxifera, &c.) are
its chief ingredients. It produces a cessation of the voluntary muscular movements, while the
functions of the involuntary muscles, as the heart and intestines, remain unimpaired.
" I know," said an Indian to Humboldt, " that you whites can make soap, and prepare the
black powder which has the effect of making a noise while killing animals ; but this poison is
superior to anything you can make. It kills silently, so that no one knows where the stroke
comes from." The same celebrated savant and traveller tells us that the Otomacs on the Orinoco
frequently poison their thumb-nails with the ourali. The mere impress of the nail proves fatal
should the poison mix with the blood. In its composition, the Macusis use more than a dozen
different plants, but the active ones, according to Sir Robert and Dr. Richard Schomburgk, are
several species of the nux-vomica plant, the bark of which is boiled down until the juice gets thick.
From the Rio Negro, the Orinoco, and even from Amazon, troops of Indians come to buy the
powerful Macusi ourali. An arrow-poison is also prepared in Chili and Peru."* The Acawoios also
poison fish with the havarri-root, a custom common to various South American tribes. Some of
the pieces of the root are bruised, and then washed in an enclosed water, or in a stream at the
turn of the tide, when there is little or no current. In a few minutes the fish will float, belly
up, perfectly intoxicated, when they are shot with barbed arrows, or struck with knives. Fish
so poisoned are perfectly wholesome, as is also the case with the flesh of animals killed with the
ourali poison. The Acawoios, in addition to their various other indifferently good qualities, are
great vagabonds, peddlers, rovers, and newsmongers, and combine with these traits a propensity
to live upon their more honest (?) neighbours' portable effects — which they acquire in a manner
which is usually styled robbery — but, perhaps, with such independent individuals, had better be
styled marauding. They are not, however, altogether given over unto loot, for they practise a
little agriculture, and make a few of the rough-and-ready canoes which are known to the
Demerara colonists as "wood-skins." A wood-skin is made as follows: — The bark of the
mariwayani, or purple heart, is peeled off in one large piece, "forcing it open in the middle, and
fixing sticks across it, downward slits being near the extremities, which are supported on beams
till the bark be dry, to give them a slight spring above the surface of the water/' Yet in these
frail crafts, the bold canoemen of South America will descend and ascend thousands of miles
of great rivers and their tributaries. The Acawoios are scarcely entitled to be styled a very
amiable race. They have, doubtless, quite as many bad qualities as most of their kinsmen in
red skins, but, unlike many of these, they have some admirable qualities to counterbalance their
dubious ones. Polygamy is unknown among them ; early marriages are forbidden ; the women
are virtuous ; old age is respected, and sick people are attended to. They are quiet, orderly
(after a sort), little addicted to intoxication, though not particularly honest, if they can get a
good opportunity to be the contrary. (They are not singular in this.) They have good teeth,
which are preserved in fine condition, and hunger allayed at the same time, by keeping in the
mouth a quid of tobacco, prepared by baking green tobacco-leaves with alternate layers of
suit. They are fond of animals, and have many pets. Indeed, these Indians seem to have a
peculiar aptitude for attracting and taming wild animals, a trait in which they entirely
differ from some of their northern brethren, who abuse every domestic animal within reach.
* Kichard Schomburgk : " On the Urari, the deadly arrow-poison of the Macusis" (Adelaide, 1879).
34
2 GO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
their worst trait is their implacable vengeance. Kanaima is with them a religion. Natives
have been observed in the streets of a Demerara town watching with keen, treacherous eyes
some other natives, who would soon after depart for their native wilds. Hundreds of miles
from the busy scenes of civilisation the vengeance-hunter would be seen, bent like a sleuth-
hound on the track of the fugitives, deterred by no toil, no danger, no obstacle, until his deadly
ourali-tipped arrow, club, or knife tasted the blood of the victim of kanaima.
In addition to the tribes enumerated, there are many other smaller tribes scattered through
the forests of the region the ethnology of which we have been describing. The names of these,.
Kamarokotos, Quatimko, Yaramuua, Etocko, Passonko, Komarani, Koukokinko, Skamami,
Wabean, Atorais, Kenons, Mianko,Maiongkongs, Boucouyennes, Emerillons, Aramisas, Oyampis,
Wapisianas, Tarumas, Woyawais, and so on, convey no idea to the reader, and indeed little more
information than this can be given about them. In general habits and character they differ
but slightly from those we have already described. More romantic, but with an airier
foundation, is the oft-repeated tale of the nation of the Amazons, or women living separate
from men, " though receiving their visits at certain seasons, and only rearing female children."'
Many an old traveller, and not a few modern ones, and all the Indians, repeat this tale, though,
no two agree as to the exact locality of this wondrous female community, where women's rights
are so full-fledged ; but all agree that to reach it the adventurous knight-errant must pass-
through the land where the wild mountaineers guard the passes of land and river, armed with
the deadly blow-pipe and ourali-poisoned arrow, which speeds so certain but so silent a death.
From time to time negroes, during the old days of slavery, and subsequently of their owns
accord, have taken to the bush, and established themselves in communities, which have relapsed
into nearly all the pristine ferocity and barbarism of their African brethren, mingled with
something copied from the Indians by whom they are surrounded, and many of whose habits,,
as well as dress and ornamentation, they have adopted. Under the name of Yahuas, Bonis, &c.,
these " bush negroes " have established strongholds in various parts of the country, and carry
on pillage and rapine whenever they have an opportunity. With many of the Indian tribes
they are frequently at war, but their numbers being continually recruited by negroes from
Demerara and elsewhere, they are enabled to increase, while the Indian, feebler in his vitality,,
decreases so rapidly that of late years many tribes have become extinct, or have merged in
others more powerful. The plantation negroes they regard with immense contempt, and the
" Massa Buckra " (white man) is in his eyes scarcely less despicable. They are all pagans. M.
Leprieur, a French naturalist, who explored this region in 1836, fell in with a party of these
bush negroes near the Aroua, who compelled him to mingle his blood with theirs, and to drink
the mixture as a covenant of peace, after which they stoutly defended his person against
another party of their countrymen, who, however, pillaged the traveller's baggage. Offering
to tutelary deities in the shape of rocks, fetichism in all its hideous African forms, &c., pro-
vail among these negroes, who have from comparative civilisation, again degenerated into-
barbarism. Two of these " bosch negurs," as the Dutch call them, are figured on p. 2G5.
In concluding our remarks upon these Indians, we may briefly summarise a few points of
character and custom common to all of them. In intellect they are sharp, and reason acutely,
and their senses are trained by their forest life to a degree rarely, if ever, found among civilised
THE GUIAXAIAN INDIANS: SOME OF THEIR HABITS. 267
races. They are conservative in politics and in religion. To the missionary the cry always is,
" My father knew not your book, and my grandfather knew not your book ; they were wiser
than we. We do not wish to learn anything- which they did not know." Naturally indolent,
a bountiful country, in which life can be sustained with the least possible exertion, goes far to
nurture this weakness. " They will spend hours in their hammocks, picking- their teeth, or
meditating some new and striking pattern in daubing their faces with arnotto ; at other times
they may be seen eradicating the hairs of their beards and eyebrows, in room of which some
tribes tattoo lines, according* to their own ideas of beauty."
The Guianaian Indian is hospitable according to his means ; every visitor gets the best he
has in his house. In his turn he is fond of paying visits ; indeed, a full fourth of the year is
•occupied in gadding about, so that in course of time he gets well acquainted with the country.
'Time to him is nothing ; such a commodity wras " made for slaves," or white men ; like
Falstaff, to the Indian it is "superfluous to demand the time of the day." Yet, though
punctuality is with him a virtue so minute as scarcely to be taken count of, yet when he goes
off on a journey, and requires to be at home on a certain date, he will leave a kind of calendar
with his friends, consisting of a knotted string, each knot representing a day. A knot is
\mtied on the morning of each day he is absent, and if he is well he will arrive on the day
the last knot is untied. Theft is unusual among themselves, though each tribe accuses the
•other of being addicted to pilfering. It is a will-o'-the-wisp kind of peccadillo which flits
ill ways ahead of the traveller ; it is unknown in the tribe he is in, but obtains in full perfection
in the very next one he will come to. They are fond of liberty and independence ; slavery has
never been brooked by them as by the Africans. They are all addicted to fearful outbursts of
drunkenness, though systematic dram-drinking is unknown amongst them. Wild dances of all
sorts are very popular with them, while at their great merrymakings and feasts wrestling and
trials of strength are popular amusements of the younger men. A favourite feat is for two
men to put a kind of shield in front of them, and then to push each with all his might against
the other shield, so as to endeavour to overturn his opponent. This is known by the Warau as
the game of tsa/ii. Polygamy is common in most of the tribes, and it is very usual for a man
to bring up a young girl from childhood to be one of his wives in due course. The first wife
by no means approves of this too muck marrying, and not unfrequently she rebels, and wins the
day, against any rival being introduced into the family lodge. The woman is not a free agent in
marriage, and if a man elopes with her, the betrothed or the husband can demand payment from
the seducer for the loss of the wife, and even for the loss of the children which may hereafter
be born to his rival, an amusing instance of which Mr. Brett gives. Among- the Macusi, in
the distant interior, Dr. Hancock tells us that " when a man dies his wife and children are at
the disposal of his eldest surviving brother, who may sell or kill them at pleasure." Some of
the tribes bury their dead in a standing or sitting posture, and if the death of the deceased is
supposed to have been brought about by unfair means, his knife is buried with him, in order
that he may have an opportunity of avenging his death in the land of spirits ; and many tribes
bury the dead man's bow and arrows with him, in order that he may be able to ward off malig-
nant fiends in the land of the dead. If a person dies by foul play, the avenger of his death
works himself, by fasting and privation to such a state that he supposes himself to be possessed
of an evil spirit. He then starts out in search of his victim, approaching him cautiously and
•2G8
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
unawares, when the blow-pipe and arrow do their silent but sure work, or he is struck down by
a violent blow across the neck. As he lies insensible, the fangs of a poisonous serpent are
forced through his tongue ; or, according to other accounts, a poison prepared from a plant
called iirupa, and which the avenger carries in the bone of a pouri concealed in his hair, is
forced down the victim's throat. In either case he dies in great agony.* If the relatives of the
slain man find him he is buried, but even then the kanaima (avenger) must keep near to discover
where he is laid. Knowing this, the friends of the victim bury him in some secret place
silently at night, but their vigilance rarely escapes the sharp-witted Indian trailer. He dis-
covers the grave ; then follow some horrible ceremonies, about the nature of which authorities,
COMBOS SHOOTING TVRTI.E.
aboriginal and foreign, differ. Most probably the truth is, that when he finds the grave, he
pushes down into it, and into the body, a long, sharp-pointed stick, that he may taste the
victim's blood. After this the evil spirit, with which the avenger is possessed, is allayed, and
the kanaima may return home again. If the friends of the murdered man find that, notwith-
standing all their care, the grave has been violated, then it is opened, and a red-hot axe placed
over the liver. The grave is then closed, and the friends go off satisfied that, as the hot
axe burns into the vitals of the dead man, so will the entrails of the murderer be tortured and
destroyed, and he, in due course, die (p. 112). This system of revenge, with all its horrible rites
of pursuit, &c., is reduced to a perfect system ; taught by sire to son, as part of his national
education. Their religious beliefs centre in a fear of evil spirits, and a continual desire to allay
them, by means of the powers of sorcerers or medicine-men, who obtain their powers by fasting
* Bt-rnau's " ilissionnry Labours," p. 58.
THE GUIANAIAN INDIANS: SOME OF THEIR FOLKLORE.
269
and dreaming-, and abstaining from certain kinds of food, especially foods not indigenous
to the country. The chief tool of the medicine-man is a red-painted calabash, in which
are a few stones. This is regarded with extreme awe by the Indians. Another duty of the
sorcerer is to confer names on the children. They believe also in water-fiends, and, in addition
to their own superstitions, have derived several of African origin from the negroes with
whom they have come in contact. Tales — like the loup garou ones of France (p. 118) — prevail
CONIMOS PREPARING TURTLES EGGS.
among them ; stories of how certain animals are possessed by the spirits of men devoted to
cruelty and bloodshed, and their mythology abounds with legendary tales both of mirth and
superstition, while others are " myths of observation/' apparently invented to account for
natural phenomena. That men were converted into rocks for their evil deeds is among the
Guianaians, as among other Indian tribes, a general article of belief, and many rocks are
pointed out as having had such an origin. The Haytians — Carib tribes now extinct — believed
that their island was the first created land, and that the sun came out from one cave while
the men came from another ; but the Guianaian tribes acknowledge the work of a Creative
,
270 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD
Being. All created things, according to them, came from the branch of a silk-cotton tree,
cut down by the Great Creator, but the white men sprung from the chips of a tree, which
is notoriously of very little value ! All beasts were once endowed with the spirits of men
— an apparently widespread belief among the Indian tribes (p. 102). All the different pkints
on the earth sprang from one tree, on which grew all the different kinds of flowers and fruit.
In the centre of this great tree was a huge reservoir of water, in which were the fishes.
This water was let loose by the monkey, and drowned the world.
The Macusis believe that the world was peopled by converting stones into men and
women, while the Tamancas of the Orinoco declare that the world was, somewhat after the
Thessalian tale (p. 113), peopled by the only survivors, a man and a woman, throwing over
their heads the stones of the ita (Mauri/la) palm, which sprang into human beings. All
through this great region, away to the swamps of the Amazon and Orinoco, and even down
to La Plata, such tales circulate, though the young people now affect to despise them. It is
curious, as Mr. Brett has pointed out, that in many of their traditions, as well as in those
of other races of Americans — past and present — there ever figure personages, lawgiving founders
of institutions and benefactors of their species, who are said to have disappeared in some
mysterious way. Among these we may mention the various Hiawatha traditions (p. 103) ;
Quetzalcoatl, famous among the ancient Aztecs of Mexico ; Nemterequeteba, " the Messenger
of God/' of the Muiscas of New Granada; Amalivaca, once venerated throughout the broad
lands drained by the Orinoco; and others.
The occupation of these people we have already sufficiently described — canoe-making, a.
little agriculture, and a great deal of hunting and fishing. Cassava bread is their staple
farinaceous food. The juice of this plant, when unboiled, is a deadly poison, but when boiled it
becomes a deep brown colour, wholesome and nutritious, and is well known as the sauce called
casareep, which is the chief ingredient in the famous tropical pepper-pot. Sugar is made by
compressing the cane in a primitive but efficient press, of their own manufacture, and canoes
are made either by being hollowed out of the solid tree, or, like " wood-skins," out of bark,
while the paddles are made of the fluted stems of the yaruris-tree. Turtle is shot on the
coast with peculiar, heavy-pointed, barbed arrows, the points of which can " unship " from
the shaft. So skilful are they at this work, that the arrows are discharged upwards in such
a manner that they descend in a straight line on the turtle, while, if shot directly, they would
most likely glance over its horny covering. Turtle eggs are among their peculiar delicacies.
The great shell mounds scattered over certain portions of Guiana are not, as has been
supposed, remains of a race anterior to the present inhabitants of the country, but are,
most probably, only analogous to the kjdkken-mddding* of the Danish coast, and the shell
mounds found on the American and other shores, the refuse-heaps of long generations of
defunct mollusk-eating aborigines. Once great nations, the Guianaians have sunk into
comparative insignificance, and will before long become extinct. The cruelties of the French
and the Spaniards were the first commencement of their decimation. " Extermination " was
their watchword, and on the islands this was soon accomplished. The natives would leap into
the sea, preferring death by their own hand to slavery or Spanish bullets, until Dominica and St.
Vincent were the last islands retained by them. There, secluded and harmless, the remnant of
the race still live, though, owing to marriages with the negroes and the whites, the Carib type
\
;
INDIANS OF THE ORINOCO: CAYENNE AND SURINAM. 271
is rapidly disappearing. Their colour is almost yellow, and their long purple-black hair finer
and more beautiful than that of the North American tribesmen. They do not now flatten the
forehead by compression as was at one time their practice. Hospitality is of the most marked
of Carib virtues, though, as Mr. Ober remarks, in making you free of his house he takes it for
granted that you will be equally obliging. Formerly they buried their dead in a sitting
position, so as to be " ready to jump when the spirit came for them," but since they have
adopted Roman Catholicism in Domiuica, and Protestantism in St. Vincent, such customs have
been abandoned. In the former island they talk a corrupt French ; in the latter an equally
corrupt English. In Dominica there are twenty families of pure Caribs, and in St. Vincent
six ; but few of these can speak their original tongue, which differs in the two islands. The
islands, when the Caribs first burst into them, were probably inhabited by Arawaks : hence to
this day the women speak a dialect somewhat different from the men, owing to the conquerors
having intermarried with the females of the vanquished race, who used a different tongue,
which fashion has led them to perpetuate. It may be interesting to remember, as a bit of
literary history, that Robinson Crusoe's man " Friday" must have been a Carib, for the reader
does not require to be informed that the famous isle described by De Foe was not Juan
Fernandez, but one of the Caribbean group, probably Tobago.*
In French Guiana the Caribs are represented by the Galibis, a feeble folk scattered among
the various rivers, by Ernerillons who live between the Aprouague and the Oyapok, the
Aramisas at the head of the Aroua, the Oyampis of the Upper Oyapok, the Nurague and the
Rucuyennes of both sides of the mountain range of Tumuc-Humac. In Dutch Guiana
(Surinam) there are also numerous tribes, but like their kinsmen in Venezuela, and in the
neighbouring parts of Brazil, their habits are much the same as those described. More than
twenty tribes mentioned by the early explorers of Cayenne (French Guiana) cannot now be
traced, and in British Guiana, among others, the Maopityans and Aniaripas have entirely
perished.
In contact with the Carib area, on the line of the drainage of the Orinoco, are the May-
puris, the Saliva, the Achagua, the Taruma, and Otomaca divisions, all of which are again
subdivided into numerous tribes, or subdivisions (see pp. 273, 270, &c.)f Some of these tribes
are now extinct. The familiar story of Humboldt finding a parrot among the Maypuris,
which spoke the language of an extinct tribe, the Aturis, and was unintelligible to anybody,
may be quoted as an example of the decay of these races. The same illustrious traveller
describes a burial -cavern belonging to a Saliva tribe, which he observed at Ataruipi, near the
cataract of the Aturis, on the Orinoco. The cavern was a natural excavation, and was filled
with nearly 600 prepared bodies, well preserved and regularly arranged, each in a basket made
of the leaf-stalks of the palm-tree. These baskets were each in the form of a bag, somewhat
ess than the size of the body which they enveloped. Accordingly, some were only ten inches
ong, others three feet, according as they held infants or adults. The bones, more or less bent,
were so carefully placed inside them that not a rib, or even any of the smaller bones, was
wanting. ' ( The first step in the process of preparation was to scrape the flesh from the bones
* Ober : " Camps in the Caribbccs " 1880, pp. 90—111 ; Brown : "Life in British Guiana," p. 78.
t Wallace : " Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro," p. 481 ; Spence : "Land of Bolivar," vol. i., p. 92, &C,
MAYORUNAS INDIANS, FROM THE UPPER AMAZON.
INDIANS OF THE ORINOCO: BURIAL CUSTOMS; CLAY EATING.
273
with sharp stones; the second, to prepare the bones themselves. There were three ways of
doing this. One was, simply to dry and whiten them by exposure to the sun and air;
another, to stain them with arnotto, or the Bixa orellana ; a third, to varnish them with
odoriferous resins. Besides these bags (or baskets), there were found in the cavern earthen
vases, half baked, containing bones. These vases were greenish-grey in colour, oval in form,
MTTVDRUCU INDIAN FROM THE AMAZON.
ind as much as three feet in height and four in breadth. The handles were made in the
shape of crocodiles or serpents, the edges bordered with meanders, labyrinths, and real yrecques,
straight lines, variously combined."
Some of the Orinoco tribes (Ottomacs) have a custom, in time of scarcity, of stopping
the pangs of hunger with a greasy earth, which can give no nourishment — unless, indeed,
)me is derived from the infusoria, which Ehrenberg declares are found in it. Probably it
is only the development of a depraved appetite, not uncommon among these Indians. Still we
must remember that this strange habit is not peculiar to the Ottomacs ; the Indians of the
Amazon eat a kind of loam even when other food is abundant. The Peruvians eat a sweet-
35
274 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
smelling clay ; and in the markets of Bolivia is regularly sold a mixture of talc and mica as an
article of diet. In Guiana, even, the Indians mix clay with their bread, and the Jamaica
negroes devour earth when other food is deficient or not procurable. The inhabitants of New
Caledonia also appease the pangs of hunger with a white friable clay, composed of magnesia,
silica, oxide of iron, and chalk ; and in Java a cake of ferruginous clay is eaten by women in
pregnancy. Siam, Kamschatka, and Siberia may also be mentioned as countries where clay-
eating- is not unknown.*
CHAPTER XV.
THE BKAZILIAN, BOLIVIAN, AND PAMPEAN INDIANS.
To enumerate all the tribes of Brazil would be a task beyond our power, even were it desirable.
They must number hundreds, but their general character and habits are not dissimilar to those
we have described in the preceding chapter, though their languages are very multifarious, as
the large work of their best historian, the late celebrated botanist, Carl Philip von Martins,
shows. The races inhabiting the Upper Amazon are but little known, while those of the
lower reaches of that great river and its tributaries are semi-civilised. They are generally
known under the name of Tapuyas, from a nation of that name which, in former times, is said
to have inhabited the coast, from whence they were driven westward by the interior tribes, more
savage than themselves. A late writer remarks that, regarding these tribes terrible accounts
have been handed down to us. " They have been represented as devouring every prisoner they
could capture, as a sacred duty, and a sacrifice acceptable to the manes of their fallen brethren.
They are also said to have practised a refined cruelty, similar to that of the Aztecs of ancient
Mexico (p. 227), in cherishing and fattening their victim, giving him wives, &c., until an
appointed day, when, after many tedious and revolting ceremonies, in which old women were
the chief actors, he was put to death — not, however, with the prolonged tortures inflicted by the
North American tribes, but by a single blow of a sacred club. The offspring of such captives,
without regard to the mother's feelings, are said to have been inexorably reared for a similar
fate. The ancient Tapuyas are reported to have been less cruel, sparing the captives' lives, and
selling them for slaves. A strange custom of eating a portion of their dead relatives, as the.
last mark of affection, is said, however, to have existed among them in their former wild
condition/' The Jesuits, who early laboured among them, took the Tupi- Guarani (or lingoa
geral) and made it the common language of the missions. The Indians of the more rent nil
districts of Brazil are protected by special laws, made in their favour, but the remote tribes
lead an independent life ; and when not strong enough to resist, are terribly oppressed, and
hunted down in the barbarous detcimento* of unprincipled Brazilian traders and others. The
remote tribes still retain all their former ferocity, resolutely defend their territories, and allow no
strangers to enter them, under pain of being made a meal of — cannibalism being still found in
* Burdach: " Traite de Physiologic," t. ix., p. 2GO.
BRAZILIAN INDIANS: BOTOCUDOS ; TUPI-GUARANIS ; PARAGUAYANS. 275
all its former vigour. Altogether, in Brazil, there are about 240 tribes, most of whom belong
to the widespread Guarani-Tupi family. A few of these septs may be noticed.
The Botocudos are at once the most savage tribe in Brazil, and, probably, one of the most
repulsive looking on the American continent. Naturally hideously ugly, they seem absolutely
to revel in " improving nature," in the direction of imparting additional ugliness to themselves.
Their under-lips and ears are slit to allow of the insertion of pieces of wood, which
render the men of this tribe even more hideous than the Queen Charlotte Islands women (p. 90),
who are naturally pretty. M. Beard, a French traveller, mentions a novel use made of
the tablet of wood inserted in the lower lip. He noticed a Botocudo take a knife and cut
a piece of meat on it, and then tumble the meat into his mouth. The reader will remember
a somewhat similar use made of the lip-ornament of the Hydah women. Mr. Bigg- Wither
also figures a Botocudo lip appendage shaped like a fir-cone.
Under the name of the Warau, or Guarani family, we have already mentioned that there
are numerous tribes scattered from River Plate to the Caribbean Sea, comprising most of the
tribes of the great region drained by the Amazons. All of them speak dialects of the same
language. The Guarani family embraces a few of the most civilised, and some of the most
utterly savage tribes of South America. Take, for example, the Mundrucu, of the Middle
Amazon. This powerful tribe is noted for the elaborate tattooing in which they indulge, the
whole of the body, both of men and women, being covered with it (pp. 273 and 276) in peculiar
eheckwork patterns. Feathers and paint are also greatly in favour with them as ornaments. In
feather-work they are particularly skilful. Like all the American savages, more particularly
those of South America, they set great stress on the power of enduring pain, and no man can
attain to the dignity of a warrior before giving proof of his manhood by suffering the most
excruciating tortures. One method of testing this is to put on the hands of the aspirant two
instruments like gauntlets or gloves, made of the joints of a bamboo, and in which a number
of the fiercest biting ants of the country are confined. The bite of these venomous insects
has been described as like putting a red-hot needle into the skin ; but the warrior bravely
endures, and joins with drum and song in the dance made in his honour. Like the Antis,
the Mundrucu take snuff made of the powdered seeds of a species of Inga, by an apparatus
almost exactly the same as that used by the men of that tribe (p. 280). But the most
extraordinary custom of the Mundrucu is one in regard to their dead. When a Mundrucu
has killed his enemy, he cuts off the head, extracts the brain through i\\Q foramen magnum,
at the base of the skull, and filling the skull with cotton, preserves it in a mummified condition
outside of his hut. On high occasions he elevates it on the top of a pole or spear. The heads
of friends and relations are preserved in the same manner, though with some differences of
detail. Thus on certain days a widow will produce the head of her deceased husband, and sit
before it, talking to it in tones of melancholy lamentation, or indulging in encomiums of his
greatness and his goodness. Meanwhile, her sympathising friends are dancing wildly around
her. Yet, from the description given by Bates, Clough, Smith, Martius, and other explorers
of the Amazons, the Mundrucu are not a people deficient in intelligent curiosity, and a certain
amount of courtesy among themselves.
The Paraguayans, who have established a regular government, and under the command of
the late President Lopez so heroically defended their country against fearful odds, until it
276 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
has been reduced to a state of almost complete prostration, are Guaranis. All of them, however,
are not civilised, for in this country various tribes, who have buried themselves in the woods,
still exist in a more or less perfectly savage condition. These are known as the Payayuas,
from which, probably, the name of the country, Paraguay, has been derived. At one time
they stoutly resisted the conquerors, but cannot now number more than 200 men. Even they
are, however, now beginning to experience the universal spread of civilisation, and are
abandoning many of their old customs. For instance, you now rarely see either the lip-
ornament or the little silver rod through the lower lip which these tribes use, in common with
MUXDRVCr IXDIAV WOMAN'.
the Hydahs, whom we have already described. Only in this case it is not the women alone, but
the men also who adopted these hideous barbettes. On festive occasions they still paint their
bodies in fanciful patterns, and ornament their heads with long tufts of feathers. They are
skilful eanoemen and fishers, and are not less fierce in war against their hereditary enemies,
the athletic Indians of the Gran Chaco. They are entirely independent of the Paraguayan
Government, which attempts to exercise no control over them. The Paraguayan country
supplies many rich commodities, but none so celebrated as the famous yerba, or mate,
which yields the " Paraguayan tea/5 extensively drunk among much of uncivilised and all
civilised South America, and even in Europe. It is derived from Ilex Paraguayensis, various
other species of the same genus yielding a similar beverage. Among others, the Chilians are
PARAGUAYAN INDIANS: MATE TEA, ETC.
277
passionately fond of it. " Before infusion the yerba has a yellow colour, ana appears partly
ground, and partly chopped : the flavour resembles that of fine tea — to which, indeed, many
MACHICl'Y INDIAN OF THE GRAN CJIACO.
people prefer it. The mate is made in an oval-shaped metal pot, about twice as large as an
egg-cup, placed, nearly full of water, on the hot embers of the brazier, which always stands in
the middle of the parlour, and, when the water begins to boil, a lump of sugar burnt on the
outside is added. The pot is next removed to a filigree silver stand, on which it is handed to
27H THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the guest, who draws the mate into his mouth through a silver pipe, seven or eight inches in
length, furnished at the lower extremity with a bulb pierced with small holes. The natives
drink mate almost boiling hot, and it costs a stranger many a tear before he can imitate them
in this practice. However numerous the company be, or however often the mate-pot be
replenished, the tube is never changed ; and to refuse taking mate because the tube had been,
previously used, would be thought the height of rudeness."
PAMPEAN AND BOLIVIAN INDIANS.
In the great Pampean family are included the Tobas, Lenguas, and Machieuys, who are
known as the Gran Chaco, or Great Desert Indians. They r.re, however, by no means on very
good terms with each other. The Lenguas live north of the Pilcomayo "River, amalgamated
with the Emmeges and Machicnys, but are much harassed by the Tobas, in alliance with the
Pitiligas, Chunipis, and Agulots, who live on the other side of the same river. Among other
customs found amongst them, which we have not as yet noticed as being common to other
tribes, may be mentioned the custom, common, though not general, of girls tattooing them-
selves, with immense rejoicing, not without intoxication, on attaining the years of woman-
hood. Piercing the ears for the insertion of pieces of wood is an invariable practice. These holes
are constantly enlarged for the admission of larger and larger pieces of wood, until they will
sometimes attain a diameter of two inches and a half, if not more. Sometimes, by this means,
the ears will reach down as far as the collar-bone. Their desire for personal adornment
seems to end here; for they are said — and the phrase must express superlative unwashed-
ness — to be about the filthiest of the Indian race. They are all excellent horsemen, a man,
his wife, and children, if the family are not too numerous, all riding one animal, and all,
males and females, sitting in the same way. The Tobas, physically and otherwise, do not differ
widely from the Lenguas. The Machieuys, though speaking a different language from the
Tobas, are only a tribe of them. They have, like many of the American tribes, both north
and south, the unsightly barbette, or under-lip ornament (?), though this is now being rapidly
abandoned by most of the tribes that have come into contact with the whites. Even the
Brazilian Botocudos, who, in repulsive attachment to this are only equalled by the Hydahs, are
gradually giving up its use. This ornament, it may be remarked, is not peculiar to the
American tribes, but is used, among others, by some of the African tribes — the Nuehrs, for
example — a nation inhabiting the Sobat, a tributary of the Nile, who insert in the lower lip
a piece of crystal about an inch in length.
The Moxos and Chiquitos are inhabitants of the central regions of South America, lying
north of the Chaco ; hence these tracts are known to the Bolivians as the " Provinces of the
.Moxos and Chiquitos." They are nominally Christian, and all partially civilised — though the
men have a somewhat inconvenient habit of going stark naked ; but to make up for this offence
against social prejudices the women clothe themselves in a flowing ornamented cotton gar-
ment. They are a cheerful, happy race, devoted to fiddling and dancing, but not unendowed
with intellectual qualities. Their heads are large and rounded, their eyes full of men-mess
and vivacity, and their hair does not whiten with age, but is said to grow yellow. Before their
oonvenrion to Christianity the Moxos were addicted to some horrible customs. If his wife
miscarried, the husband sacrificed her; and if twins were born to him, the two infants were
PAMPEAN INDIANS: MOXOS; PUELCHES ; CHARRUAS. 279
slain. Parental affection was no barrier to a mother killing her offspring, if she was wearied
with nursing it ; while polygamy was permitted, and marriage only binding so long as it suited
the convenience of both parties. Add to all this that they were cannibals, and a not very
inviting picture is presented of them before the Spanish friars first penetrated into their
country.
The Puelches south of the River Plate, the Charruas of Uruguay, the Metaguayos, and the
Alipones are all close allies of the tribes we have mentioned j we must, however, pass them
over without more than naming them. The Charruas only now exist as fragments. Up to the
year 1831 they were the Ishmaels of the race inhabiting the great pampas. Their hostility was
as determined against the other aborigines as against the Spaniards, until, in the year men-
tioned, Rivera, the President of Uruguay, destroyed them root and branch. At the present time
only a few individuals exist in an enslaved condition. They were an heroic, independent race,
and their character is that of the Araucanians, Patagonians, and Gran Chaco Indians. So fierce
are the latter people that no civilised nation has succeeded in seizing any of their territory.
The Portuguese and Spaniards have attempted it, but have only been able to hold an uncertain
tenure on the extreme western frontier. But east — the Paraguay River forming the boundary
— no white man has ever attempted to molest them in their native wilds. To use the graphic
words of a writer — in this case as graphic as truthful — " On its eastern side, coinciding almost
with a meridian of longitude, the Indian of the Gran Chaco does not roam ; the well-settled
provinces of Corrientes and the dictatorial Government of Paraguay presenting a firmer front
of resistance. But neither does the colonist of these countries think of crossing to the western
bank of the boundary river to form an establishment there. He dares not even set his foot on
the Chaco. For a thousand miles, up and down, the two races — European and American — hold
the opposite banks of this great stream. They gaze across at each other, the one from the
portico of his well-built mansion, or perhaps from the street of his town, the other standing by
his humble toldo (or mat-covered tent), more probably on the back of his half -wild horse,
reined up for a moment on some projecting promontory, that commands a view of the river.
And thus have these two races gazed at each other for three centuries, with little other inter-
course passing between them than that of a deadly hostility/' The Gran Chaco Indian is a
freeman on a broad land, for his territory is about three times the size of Great Britain, and
,the tribes which inhabit it are different in some respects from each other. He pulls out his
eyebrows and eyelashes, as well as every scanty vestige of facial hair, and shaves his hair from
the front portion of his head. In complexion he is fairer than most of the American tribes,
and eschews entirely any of the hideous nose or ear ornaments so common with the tribes in his
immediate neighbourhood. Unlike other American Indians, they wear (when fighting with
each other) a kind of defensive mail, made of the skin of the jaguar and the tapir placed over
one another, but it is clumsy, and though proof against arrows, is no protection against bullets,
n attacking a village they shoot at it arrows, to which are attached lighted tufts of cotton,
e result of which is that the village is soon in flames. Retaliation is what such a roaming,
omeless vagabond least fears. He has no domestic animal except dogs and horses, and though
e takes plunder, does not incommode himself with slaves. Any prisoners which he takes are
adopted into the tribe and treated kindly.
Under the name of Ant is are comprised a variety o£ tribes, who find their kerne in
I
280
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
the valleys, and along the river-courses of the Bolivian Alps. M. " Marcoy/' who visited these
people, describes them as being stout in person, though less bulky than some of the Peruvian
tribes, lightish in complexion, and rather effeminate in the face. Not, however, content with
the complexion which Nature has given to them, they paint the cheeks and the circle round
the eyes red, and the other parts of the body exposed to the air black, the colours being
AXTIS SXVFF-TAKEUS.
in both cases derived from the juices of plants. They dress in a loose shirt-like garment,
and are assiduous — beyond aboriginal wont — in combing their hair, which they cut short in
front, and wear in long tresses on either cheek, and down their back. The Antis Indian is
moreover somewhat of a fop. His toilet requisites he never parts with, but carries in a bag
slung over his back. Here is an inventory of them : — A comb made of the thorns of the
chonta palm ; the paste (rocon] with which he paints his dusky cheeks ; half of a gempa apple,
which supplies the dark pigment for his limbs ; a bit of looking-glass ; a ball of thread ; a
little bit of wax ; two mussel-shells, which he uses as pincers to extract any unruly sign
of beard or whiskers which makes its appearance (like all Indians, he looks upon facial hair
ANTIS INDIANS OF EASTERN BOLIVIA.
BOLIVIAN INDIANS: ANTIS ; THEIR HABITS.
281
as a disfigurement) ; his snuff-box, composed of a snail's shell ; an apparatus for taking the
snuff, made of the ends of reeds, or two of the arm-bones of a monkey, fastened together with
black wax at an acute angle, and used in the manner shown on the preceding page, with a
few other trifles, probably of European manufacture, such as scissors, knife, needles, &c. A
silver coin stispended through the septum of the nose, a necklace of beads or berries, the
skins of bright-plumaged birds, the claws of birds or wild animals, and such like, go to make
up the Antis Indian's personal ornamentation. They are savages of the ordinary American
type — hunters and fishers — living in open sheds in the summer, and in closed huts, almost hid
by vegetation, and built on the banks of streams, in the winter. Both kinds of houses are
ANTIS INDIANS SHOOTING FISH.
equally filthy, and, when the air cannot circulate through them, smell like the dens of wild
beasts (Plate 9, and pp. 280, 281).
The Antis Indians are skilful with the bow and arrow, which they use as shown above.
They also poison the stream with the Menisjaennwm cocculus, which speedily intoxicates the
fishes, when they float belly up and are easily captured. In social position these Antis are
very low, having absolutely no organisation into societies, but live separately or in com-
panies, just as it suits their own convenience. They have no chiefs, but elect one if they
require to go to war. The wife, in addition to all the hard work which invariably falls
to the lot of the Indian woman, must follow her lord to the chase and to battle, picking
up the arrows which he shoots, and sharing in all his triumphs and his perils. They
are, however, so far advanced in the arts as to make a rude kind of earthenware, painted
and glazed. Yet their method of treating the dead — generally a test of the character and
civilisation of the nation — is barbarous in the extreme. When an Antis Indian dies one of
36
282 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
his nearest relatives, in the presence of the assembled people, seizes the body, attired only
in the ordinary frock which the deceased wore during life, and tosses it into the nearest river,
where the fishes and other water denizens soon make short work of it. These are caught
and feasted on, so that the dead are not altogether lost, but only transformed, in a sort
of roundabout way, into the bone and muscle of the survivors. After this summary mode of
sepulture, the dwelling of the dead man, with his weapons and domestic utensils, is de-
stroyed, his crops are devastated, his fruit-trees cut down, and, finally, the whole consumed
by fire. The place is henceforward shunned as impure and unholy, the rank vegetation of
the tropics soon reconquers its former sway over the cleared ground, and in the depth
of the forest the home of the dead Indian is forgotten, and his name blotted out from
the memory of man. The aged are also cruelly treated, receiving only the refuse of the
food and the worst places at the fireside, covering their nakedness with a few rags which
their children have cast oft'.*
CHAPTER XVI.
CHILENO-PATAGONIANS : AKAUCANIANS ; PATAGONIANS ; TIERRA DEL FUEGIAXS.
UNDER this title we include a variety of people, differing from those which have preceded as
well as those which are to follow. They extend over Chili, the country south of the Rio Xegro,
the islands of the Chiloe Archipelago, and Tierra del Fuego. They comprise the following
subdivisions : (a) the Chileno (or Araucanian) Indian ; (fj) the Patagonians ; (c) the Fueginns.
Perhaps it might be proper to include under Chileno-Patagonians the Pampa Indians, whom
we have already noticed as living on the frontier of the Patagonians, and with whom they
intermarry and intermix on their respective southern and northern frontiers. But it is doubtful
whether they are of the same origin. Indeed, even as it is, it is not without hesitation that
races so dissimilar as the Patagonians and their near neighbours, the wretched Fuegians, are
classed under one division. We have, however, ethnological authority for it, and the reader
being already apprised of the author's doubts, is in a position to share with him his appreciation
of the convenience of the classification, which is probably its main recommendation.
ARAUCANIANS.
The Araucamans, or as they call themselves collectively the Alapuche, or " people of the
country /'f though divided into various tribes, are yet a very homogeneous race, shaking one
language and having much the same customs over a great portion of Southern Chili, or rather
\r;nicaiii;i, for they claim to be independent of any civilised government, and are a wild and
* Bigg- Wither : "Pioneering in South Brazil" (1878); Matthews: " V\i the Amazon and Madeira Kivers''
(1879), &c. ; "Paul Marcoy" (Lorenzo St. Criq) : " Voyage a Travcrs L'Ameriquo du Slid;" Burton: "Highlands
>f Brazil;" ('lough: " The Amazons," (187:'); Bates: "The Naturalist on the Ama/ons ;'' Keller: "The Amazon
and Madeira" (1874), &C.
t The Patagonians call them the warriors (or chcuna). They are also known as Manzaneros, from their
head-quartet!, Las Man/anus, so named from the groves of ai>ple-t:-ees. It was once a station of the early .Jesuit
whose customary success in taming the savage soul having failwd them, they left it in disgust.
ARATJCANIAXS : THEIIl CHARACTER AND HABITS. 283
warlike people, provided with abundance of horses, originally, of course, obtained from the
Spaniards. The dress of the men consists of an under garment — half -breeches, half -frock, called
the cheripa, and the pone/io, an elegant garment, extensively used by the Hispano- Americans —
consisting of a blanket or a piece of their own home-manufactured cloth, with a hole in the cen-
tre through which the head is thrust; the rest of the material falling in folds over the shoulders.
They also possess boots of horsehide, and the "upper ten" among them are distinguished
by bracelets of coloured wool. The dress of the women does not very materially differ from
that of the men — -the poncho in their case being replaced by a kind of cloth mantle. Hed and
black paint, in various patterns, is the universal skin ornamentation of both sexes. The
children go naked, and in infancy are bandaged in little cradles, which are carried behind the
mother on horseback, or hung to the branch of a tree or a lodge-pole, until such time as
the children can walk. These people are magnificent riders — the females, who ride after
the male fashion, like the female Indians of all horse-tribes, being quite equal tc the men
in this respect. Their houses are mere frames of wicker-work, plastered with clay, and are un-
comfortable dens — crammed at night and in bad weather with an odorous litter of men, women,
children, and dogs. Polygamy is common amongst them, and as each wife has her own fire,
their wifely wealth is enumerated by the number of fires which a man possesses. They are full
of politeness, and value etiquette highly. Forms they are very particular about, especially in
exacting tribute, no matter how small, from travellers passing through their territory. Oratory
as among most Indians, is held in high repute by them. Their government is by chiefs,
whose power is absolute, in so far that they can demand the services of any one in time of war,
but in ordinary affairs of state, such as in matters of life and death, their power is nil. A
council of superior chiefs is selected from the subordinate chiefs, and these again select one of
their number to be " Grand Toquin," who presides over the council, and in cases of emergency
can sometimes act without it. His power only lasts, however, in times of peace ; for during
war another Grand Toquin is elected, who has absolute power under a sort of martial law as
long as the war lasts, after which he retires, and the Peace Toquin again resumes power. The
Araucanian is a skilful mechanician, and all his horse and other accoutrements are manufactured
by himself in a solid, workmanlike manner, for the Araucanian despises all " make-believes "
of every type, including electro-plated spurs, bit, or saddle accoutrements. Nothing but.
solid iron or silver pleases him ; he even despises gold — a useful metal to procure rum or other
necessaries of life with, but valueless for any really industrial purpose.
His chief weapons are the lolaz, lazo, and long lance. The bolas is a peculiar South
merican weapon, used universally over the pampas. It consists of a ball of iron, stone, or
pper, about the size of a cricket-ball, covered with hide, and attached to a plaited rope of
•aw hide. These are either used singly in hand-to-hand combats, after the fashion of the
merican " slung-shot," or united into twos or threes, when, in the latter case, they are flung-
t the game with such force that they whirl through the air, and either brain the animal on
he spot, or twine themselves around its body until it is strangled or disabled. So skilful are
hey with this weapon, that to be aimed at with it at from thirty or forty yards is certain
death. It is said that with it they can fasten the rider to his horse. The lazo — or, as it is usually
written in English, lasso, we have already mentioned as being used in North America, and,
indeed, in all the open prairie or pampas country of the continent — is also of Spanish origin, and in
284 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
skilful hands is scarcely second to the lolas in importance. The name signifies a slip-knot or
noose. " It consists of a rope made of twisted strips of untanned hide, varying in length,
from fifteen to twenty yards, and is about as thick as the little finger. It has a noose or
running-knot at one end, the other extremity being fastened by an eye and button to a ring in
a strong hide belt or surangle bound tightly round the horse. This coil is grasped by the
horseman's left hand, while the noose, which is held in the right, trails along the ground,
except when in use, and then it is whirled round the head with considerable velocity, during
which, by a peculiar turn of the wrist, it is made to assume a circular form; so that, when
delivered from the hand, the noose preserves itself open till it falls over the object at which
it has been aimed. The unerring precision with which the lazo is thrown is perfectly
astonishing, and to one who sees it for the first time has a magical effect. Even when
standing still it is by no means an easy thing to throw the lasso ; but the difficulty is vastly
increased when it comes to be thrown from horseback and at a gallop, and when, in addition,
the rider is obliged to pass over uneven ground, and to leap hedges and ditches in his course.
Yet such is the dexterity of the gauchos (or countrymen), that they are not only sure of catching
the animal they are in chase of, but can fix, or as they term it, place their thin lazo on any
particular part they please, either over the horns or the neck, or around the body, or they can
include all four legs, or two, or any one of the four ; and the whole with such ease and cer-
tainty, that it is necessary to witness the feat to have a just conception of the skill displayed.
It is like the dexterity of the savage Indian in the use of the bow and arrow, and can only
l)e acquired by the arduous practice of many years. It is, in fact, the earliest amusement of
these people, for I have often seen little boys, just beginning to run about, actively employed
in lassoing cats, and entangling the legs of every dog that was unfortunate enough to pass
within reach. In due season they become very expert in their attacks on poultry, and afterwards
in catching wild birds ; so that, by the time they are mounted on horseback, which is always
at an early age, they begin to acquire that matchless skill, from which 110 animal of less speed
than a horse has the slightest chance of escaping." I quote this description of the late Captain
Basil Hall for the sake of its graphic truthfulness ; but, at the same time, I am able from
personal observation to confirm to the fullest extent his testimony as to the skill which the
American Indians and Hispano- American population have attained in the use of the lazo. I
have seen a man send coil after coil around a grizzly bear — perhaps the fiercest animal on
the American continent — until the powerful brute was swaddled in ropes, and as helpless as
a mummy. Supposing that the creature had the ability to roar, even that was denied it by
an adroit coil of the lazo round its jaws.
The eighteen feet lances of these people are powerful weapons. To place one against a
lodge is looked upon as a declaration of war. When not carried, they must be laid on tho
ground. The Araueanians are of the boldest and most untamed of all the aborigines of America.
For three centuries, under their own leaders, they fought, often with signal success, against the
Spaniards. Lautano, a youth of seventeen, who became their Grand War Toquin for two years,
held at bay, or defeated, the picked soldiers of Spain, and only fell at last through being
surprised by his enemies. Strange to say, however, after contending so long against Spain,
they have — probably unable to distinguish between them by their acts — fought quite as bitterly
against free Chili, either under their own leaders, or under renegade leaders like Benavides, cf
PATAGOXIAN WOMAN AND MAX DAXCING.
286 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
whose villainous career Basil Hall gives such a striking account, or lately, under a Perigonl
attorney, who claimed to be monarch of the Araucanians, and, indeed, visited Europe with a
view to having his authority in this capacity recognised by the civilised powers. The very
name of Spaniard they hold in abhorrence; and these Ckrittianoa, as they call them, are
enslaved whenever an opportunity offers. They are passionately fond of freedom, and jealous of
any one "prospecting," writing, sketching, or even picking up stones in their country.
Marriage amongst them is a very primitive ordinance. The bridegroom, after bargaining
with the bride's father as to a quid pro quo, accompanied by several of his friends, seizes the bride,
and throws her on his horse. The girl, perhaps only for form's sake, screams lustily, and
her relatives mount and pursue in hot haste, the bridegroom's friends endeavouring to*
keep them back. Meanwhile the bridegroom, having gained the nearest wood, is supposed,
by etiquette, to have Avon his wife, and is free from further annoyance. After a couple of days-
ilu> happy pair emerge from the wood, make over the necessary presents to the father, and are
henceforward looked upon as husband and wife. The mother-in-law, however, makes a show
of keeping her resentment, and will sometimes not address her son-in-law for years; all of
which must, if Araucanian sons-in-law are like those of more easterly longitudes, be a source of
poignant anguish to the unfortunate man.
This running away with the bride is one of the most primitive forms of marriage, and is
practised by many tribes. It is said that the daughters of Araucanian. chiefs are not, however,
wedded after this rough fashion. Polygamy is allowed and practised. Mutton, of which they
have abundance, is their chief article of food, and, in addition to water, cluca and niidai are
their drinks. The former is a kind of cider, and the latter is made from fermenting wheat or
maize meal. They are also said to brew in intoxicating Honor from the beans of the ali/iirrol^i.
It is neither very nice to look at it. nor delicious to drink. Nothing has ever illustrated
the maxims, that "taste is everything/' and that "one man's meat (or drink) is another man's
poison," more than the intoxicating drinks of different races. Small plots of wheat are gathered,
by the hand, the reapers going in pairs — a young man and a young girl together — and rubbing
out the heads of grain as they pluck them. Large quantities of corn are, however, threshed out,
after the Eastern fashion, by trampling it on the granary floor under the hoofs of a number of
mounted horses, ridden round and round in a circle, after which the unthreshed ears get a further
manipulation by hand. They are a merry race, but excessively superstitious, and on the
slightest provocation from such a motive, undergoing the rite of Lacx, or exchange of names.
Like the Arabians, they have a great belief in omens, and, though they have some skill in
medicine and surgery — like all their race — place great confidence in the nidcfi'i (or medicine-
men), and in the power of people to "bewitch" them. Like many of the northern Indians,
they have an antipathy to tell a stranger their nameSj supposing that if this is known, they
may be bewitched by them. Of books and writings they have also an immense fear. They
have, however, no regular priests, no temples, and no religious ceremonies, but have a vague
belief in good and bad deities; to propitiate the one, and guard against the other, they sacrifice
animals, and occasionally a prisoner taken in war. AVhen taking food or drink they always
throw a small piece of the one or a few drops of the other on the ground, as a meat
ollVring, or drink offering, to propitiate the fjnnf if/in (or evil spirit). Their dead arc buried by
being borne on a stretcher, accompanied by shouting horsemen, and weeping and howl ing
1'ATAGONIANS : THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 287
women, to their last resting-place. The knees of the dead are tied up to the chest, a lance is
placed over the grave, a horse is sacrificed, its flesh eaten, and its skin laid over the place,
.and a few weapons deposited along with the body. The same rites are observed over the body
•of a woman (if she is of high rank), but instead of weapons, cooking utensils are placed in the
.grave along with the body. Over the grave of the common people no horse is sacrificed. They
believe that the dead can come to life again, and when they see the thunder-clouds they think
that the spirits of their dead countrymen are trying to keep off the enemies of their country, in
the shape of evil spirits. It is said that no division of the Araucanians put wooden figures over
their graves. On the whole, looking at the Araucanians as a nation, from their courage,
their intellect, their mechanical skill, and their partial progress in the arts of peace, there
seems some hope they will survive, and that in time better things may be expected of such
.a people, who still number 21,000.
PATAGONIANS.
On the other side of the Strait of Magellan lies a wide-stretching country, very different
in many respects from dreary Tierra del Fuego, to which our attention will soon be directed.
The so-called pampas of the region, to the inhabitants of which we propose to direct the reader's
attention, are in several points different from those great grassy plains of the Argentine
.Republic to which the term pampas is properly applied. Though in places there is a tolerably
even succession of rolling plains covered with coarse grass, the surface is more frequently
broken by hills and yawning ravines, and is sterile, with a sparse veg'etation of round thistle
•clumps and stunted bushes, or even bare patches of clay and gravel, or is strewn with huge
boulders, or rugged, confused heaps and ridges of bare, sharp-edged rocks, many of volcanic
origin. Over all this sweep biting, cutting winds, which blow unimpeded from the ice-fields
-of the Antarctic region, while in winter all the country is enveloped in one broad sheet
of snow. In 15:20 Magellan first saw the inhabitants of this land — "larger and taller
than the stoutest men of Castile ;" and from the fact of their having shoes of guanaco-
liide, which made huge footmarks, they were nicknamed by the Spaniards " Patagones " (or
large feet) ; whence the name Patagonia has to this day been applied to their country.
They call themselves Tsonecas, though the name Tehuelches is commonly applied to them
by the Araucanians. The Putagonians have been described by the old navigators — and the
idea has descended in popular literature to this day — as a gigantic race of men.' The truth
is that, though they are taller than the surrounding races, and very much so compared with
their neighbours the Fuegians, yet their average height is not over 5 feet 10 inches,
though individuals measuring C ieet 4 inches have been seen, both by Dr. Cunningham
and by Captain Musters, who has furnished us with the best account we have of these
people. Their instep is high, but their feet are naturally rather smaller than those of the
average European. Though essentially horsemen, on occasion they can prove themselves
admirable pedestrians, and their power of abstaining from food is also remarkable ; forty-eight
hours' abstinence seems to inconvenience them but little. Their strength of arm and log is
{'•rent, and their faces are ordinarily bright and good humoured, though in the presence of
strangers, or in the settlements, they assume a sober and even a sullen demeanour. Their
teeth are excellent, the pearly white being due to the gum of the incense bush which they
are always chewing. Their long, course hair is confined by a strip of guanaco-skin, and their
288 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
clothing consists of a mantle of the same fur, confined at the middle by a strap, so that
when riding, or engaged in any other active exercise, the upper portion can be thrown off,
so as to leave the arms unimpeded. The hair of the women is hardly so long as that of
the men, but on gala-days the two plaits into which it is divided are artificially lengthened
and garnished with silver pendants ; this practice, however, is almost entirely confined to tke
married women. Their boots are made from the raw hide of the guanaco, or sometimes from
the skin of a large puma's leg, and is worn in the soft condition until it has taken the shape
of the leg, after which it is sewn up. Soles are not always worn, though sometimes in
snowy weather hide overshoes are put on — thus conveying the idea of " large feet/' and hence
the name the Spaniards applied to them. The women wear a mantle similar to that of the
men, but secured at the throat by a very broad-headed silver pin, the whole garment dis-
playing a little more ornamentation than that of the men.
Paint is worn both on the face and on the body, as a protection against the effects of
the wind and sun, and on high occasions the men adorn themselves with white paint, made
from pounded gypsum and marrow. They are, however, cleanly in their person, bathing every
morning, men and women apart, the men's hair being afterwards carefully brushed by their
wives, daughters, or sweethearts, great care being taken to burn any which may be combed
out, in case evilly-disposed persons might work spells on the original proprietor of the hair.
For the same reason, the parings of the nails are carefully burnt.* Their toldos, or houses
made of guanaco-hides stretched on poles, are scrupulously clean, as are also their domestic
utensils — something very different from what is the case with most other Indians. Yet, as
Captain Musters tells us, owing to their mode of life, food, and materials of clothing, they
are usually afflicted with vermin, to which, however, in time — evperto crede — they became
accustomed. " Lice never sleep/' was the philosophical remark of a Patagoniau chief, after a
thoughtful scratch to which he had treated himself.
Like the Araucanians, they use the lolas and lance to capture animals, chief of which are
the guanaco, a kind of llama, and the ostrich (R/tea Darwiitii). It is doubtful whether even
before the introduction of the horse they used the bow and arrow, the lola perdida — or single-
stringed " slung-shot " lola — being the weapon which in all probability they used to kill animals.
The introduction of the horse has, however, added immensely to their comfort. Without it, it
would be only rarely that they could approach the timid and swift guanaco. The introduction
of firearms has also to a great extent superseded the use af defensive mail, but still occasionally
hide and chain surcoats, thickly studded with silver, are seen amongst them. War is, how-
ever, rare nowadays, territory being no object, and, unlike nearly all Indians, military renown
is scarcely at all valued by them. Their skirmishes are only for the sake of plunder, and
on these occasions they will sometimes put on "their coats of mail," or pad themselves like
cricketers, or German student duellists, with corconillas (or saddle-cloths) and ponchos, the folds
of which turn a sword or lance thrust aside. Their saddles are very slim, and made of two bits
of wood ; but a Patagonian can just as easily ride barebacked. " The stirrups are suspended by
.-traps of hide from holes bored in the foremost saddle-tree; they are generally made of a piece
* Such superstitions are by no means confined to Patagonia. A threat many people in Europe, who ought
to know hotter, burn the parings of nails, and throw a tooth which has come out into the tire with some salt,
repeating at the same time some mummery, &c. &c.
290 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of hard wood, fixed in a raw hide thong', or sometimes of wood bent into a triangular shape.
The ( swells/ of course, sport silver stirrups, but they are frequently not used at all. . . The
spurs are made of two hard pieces of wood, with nails filed to a sharp point fixed in their ends,
and secured to the heels by thong's." Their pipes are made of wood or stone, fitted with a silver
or metal tube, and frequently ornamented with silver, and great care is taken to keep them free
from tobacco oil or juice by constantly cleaning them with an ostrich feather. The women are
industrious, and all are fond of music, the natives possessing several musical instruments. At
one time the men were in the habit of singing the traditions of the tribe, but this custom has,
to the regret of the white men, fallen into disuse. They have few traditions at all about their
ancestors, andean scarcely realise the time when they had no horses. They never eat except when
hunger warns them of the necessity for food ; and Captain Musters denies that they are glut-
tonous ; on the contrary, he believes that they are rather abstemious. Tobacco the}- are very
fond of, but always mix it with yerlia or mate — the Paraguayan tea — but never with dung, as
has been asserted by M. Guinnard, who professes to have passed three years in slavery amongst
them.* The women, and even the children, are as great smokers as the men. Gambling, with
dice, cards, &c., and various games and dances, are their chief amusements. Great rejoicing*
are always held at the birth of a child, to which, in its very infancy, horses and horse-gear are
allotted. These are henceforth looked upon as the exclusive property of the boy or girl, and can
never be resumed or disposed of by the parents. The names applied to the children are usually
taken from their places of birth, and patronymics are unknown among the Patagouians.
c' Nicknames are, however, universal, and parents are frequently known by the name of a child,
which usurps the place of their own." Marriage by force is unknown, the ceremony consisting*
in the interchange of presents of equal value on either side. In case of separation (a rare
event), the wife's property is restored to her. The consent of the damsel having been secured,
" the bride is escorted by the bridegroom to his toldo, amid the cheers of his friends and the
singing of the women. Mares are usually slaughtered on the spot, great care being taken
that the dogs do not touch any of the meat or offal, as it is considered unlucky. The head,
back-bone,, tail, together with the heart and liver, are taken up to the top of a neighbouring
hill, as an offering to the Gualichu, or evil spirit." A curious bit of etiquette is that a man is
not allowed to look at his father-in-law when in conversation with him. Polygamy is
allowed; the women are chaste, and the race, as a rule, good-natured, gentle, and hospitable.
On the death of a Patagonian all his horses, dogs, clothes, bolus, and other implements
are gathered in a heap and burned, after which his body, wrapped in guanaco-skius, or in his
coat of mail, if he has one, is buried in a sitting posture, looking to the cast, and the whole
covered with a cairn of stones large in proportion to the dignity of the deceased. Captain
Musters never saw the graves surrounded with horses' hides, and other remembrances of t he-
deceased, such as are sometimes figured in books, and doubts nuu-h whether such a mode of
sepulture is ever practised among these people, as their great desiiv is to forget the dead, and
* The title of this gentleman's book is an entire misnomer. It contains internal evidence, of tlie most
conclusive description, that he was never among the Patagonians at all, and that his experience was entirely
confined to the pampas north of the Rio Negro, which he rightly enough defines to be the northern boundary of
Patagonia.
PATAGONIANS: HABITS; CHARACTER. 291
to destroy all memorials which might bring- them to their recollection. In the case of the
death of a child, the horse he has been accustomed to ride, instead of being- knocked on the
head, is strangled by means of a lasso, and his property is burnt by the women, who are
allowed, as a reward for their services, to snatch out of the burning mass what they can get.
Sometimes a great amount of property and several horses are, in addition to those belonging
to the deceased, slaughtered on his death, as in the case of the northern Indians.
The Patagonians, like most of the neighbouring tribes, believe in a Supreme Being who
originally formed them, and in a multiplicity of demons of greater or less power. They think,
however, that the Good Spirit is rather careless of mankind.* They have no idols or objects
of worship, and it is most probable that they have no periodical religious festivals. Spirits
of malicious intent inhabit all sorts of out-of-the-way places, and produce disease and death :
to propitiate these is the work of the medicine-men, whose office is not hereditary, but, as in
other tribes, is acquired after certain ceremonies. Men and women are equally eligible for
this office. They are always in fear of being bewitched, and murders, in retaliation for this,
are of common occurrence. They have some knowledge of medicine and surgery ; bleeding
at stated seasons is regularly practised amongst them ; they also understand, and sometimes
employ, poisons, but do not poison their weapons.
The number of pui-e Patagonians does not exceed 900 souls, and beyond assortment
into Northern and Southern Tehuelches, there is no subdivision into tribes ; the so-called
tribes into which they are frequently divided being purely imaginary, or arising out of the
names of temporary leaders. Disease and- rum are, as elsewhere, rapidly decimating these
people. Their political organisation is very loose, they having no alliance with neighbouring
people, and, even among themselves, owing allegiance to no head chief, though they rntiy
voluntarily agree to obey one; with them "one man is as good as another/'' A Patagonian,
when dying, exclaimed, " I die as I have lived ; no cacique orders rne/' On the march
they are, however, under the command of a head man, and among the northern tribes there
ars several petty chiefs, whose office is often, but not invariably, hereditary. In regard to
the chase, the division of the prey, and all other points, they have set laws, which are always
kept, and so well devised that no disputes arise on these questions. They are very formal
and full of etiquette in their dealings with each other, and, contrary to what is u; ual
among the Indians, food is never set before a stranger until he has been questioned about
everything on which they are curious. Speaking of the character of the Patagonians,
Musters — and his opinion is supported by Mr. Beerbohm and Lady Florence Dixie — asserts
that they are neither ferocious brigands, nor the savages of the vile type commonly ascribed to
them by ignorant or unthinking travellers. They are kindly, good-tempered, and impulsive ;
full of likes and dislikes ; good friends and bad enemies. They are suspicious of strangers,
especially if of Spanish origin — as they have good reason to be. They are honest among
themselves, but when in the settlements will steal whatever they can lay their hands on. Ii.
small matters they will lie almost unconsciously, and will often invent the grossest falsehood,
* Pigafetta, who wrote the narrative of Magellan's voyage, mentions their god Setebos, which Shakespeare refers
in The Tempest, when Caliban says he could "command my dam's god, Setebos." I can find no mention of it
later narratives. Gualichu, the " Bad Spirit." is a most accommodating devil, now courted, anon ignc>red.
202
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
simply "for fun." It is looked upon as an excellent joke to report the death of a person, when
he is only slightly ill, and so on. They are fond of their children and wives, and display real
PARAGUAYAN WITH HIS MA1K-POT.
grief at their loss. They are far from unintelligent, and naturally moral, though when under the
influence of rum, to which they are very much addicted when in the settlements, they are loose
and depraved in their ideas and acts. We may conclude this brief account of this interesting
PATAGONIANS: RANGE AND CLASSIFICATION.
293
people with the following remarks by Captain Musters on their extent and tribal relations : —
" In the various maps and accounts of Patagonia extant, numerous tribes,^ with different
names, are marked and recorded. These accounts, so far as my observations enabled me to
judge, have arisen from the custom of parties of the tribe combining to travel or fight under
the leadership of a particular chief, and being described by themselves when met by his name.
The Northern and Southern Tehuelches speak the same language, but are distinguishable
by difference of accent, and the Southern ones appear to be, on an average, taller and finer
men, and more expert hunters with the tolas. The Northern range over the district between
the Cordilleras and the sea; from the Rio Negro on the north to the Chupat, occasionally
THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN
descending as far as the Santa Cruz river. The Southern occupy tne country south of the
Santa Cruz, and migrate as far as Punta Arenas. The two divisions, however, are much
intermixed, and frequently intermarry, always, notwithstanding, preserving their clannish
divisions, and taking opposite sides in the frequent quarrels. From the Rio Negro as far as the
Chupat another tribe, speaking a different language, is met with, having their head-quarters on
the Pampas north of the Rio Negro. These are the Pampa Indians, called by the Tehuelches
;Penek/ whence, I believe, the name Pehuelche has been corrupted. Several clans of these
latives extend over the plains of the Rio Negro, and make frequent inroads into the Argentine
settlements as far as the province of Santa Fe, and even, I believe, to Cordova and Mendoza.
Pamperos of the north of Patagonia sometimes keep sheep and cattle, but generally
ibsist by the chase."*
* "At Home with the Fatagonians " (1871), p. 188; Bcerhohm: " Wanderings in Patagonia" (1879), p. 84
scq.; Lady F. Dixie : "Across Patagonia " (1880), p. 62 ; Weisshach : "Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic," 1877, p. 8, &c.
291 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
TiERRA DEL Fl'EGIANS.
At the extreme point of South America, on the shores of the islands which form the
famous Cape Horn, are, probably — take them all in all — the most miserable race in South
America. Between them and the Digger Indians of the North there is indeed such a narrow
difference in the degree of wretchedness to which they have attained, that they may be
bracketed ethnologically with that degraded race. The people now under consideration are
known as the Picherays, or, from the name of their country, more commonly the Tierra del
Fuegians, and are doubtfully allied to the Araucanians described. The country which they
inhabit is wretched and bleak in the extreme ; but unlike the Eskimo land of the North, a few
dwarf trees and bushes enable the inhabitants to obtain some shelter from the storm, materials
to warm themselves, and means of building a canoe. Yet notwithstanding the superior
advantages in natural resources of country which the Tierra del Fuegian possesses over the
Eskimo, in comfort and physical and intellectual character he is not comparable to the fur-
clad denizen of the snow lands on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. In stature the Fuegian is
stunted ; his lower jaw projecting, and with long straight black hair hanging down his back
and cheeks. For this hair he has a superstitious veneration, and conceives that the possession
of a scrap of it by any one else will entail all manner of disaster on the original owner. Every-
thing about the Fuegian is disgusting, animal, and almost brute-like. The spectator turns away
from him in the belief that surely now man, created in the image of his Maker, has reached the
lowest type, or brute ascended to the highest stage. He moves about in a crouching, stooping
posture, his person is covered with the filth of generations, and his long mane-like locks, which
his vanity or superstition induces him now and then to rake out with a comb made of a porpoise
jaw, almost without any alteration, are crawling with a detestable insect, which though it
has family relations in the locks of people all over the world, is yet said to be of a species
peculiar to this race. Though living in a country where sleet, snow, rain, and frost are of
almost every-day occurrence, the male Fuegian wears no clothing, except a small piece of
sealskin thrown over his shoulders, and moved now and then so as to shelter his person in
the direction from whence the blast may be blowing. When in his canoe, or engaged in
any active exercise, he considers even this limited amount of wardrobe altogether superfluous,
and tosses it aside. The women have quite as little clothing, the claims of modesty being
satisfied by the presence of an apron of sealskin. Yet the country supplies abundance of
the fur-seal and various land animals, the hides of which would supply excellent materials
for clothing. The skins of this race seem, however, to be almost insensible to cold, and
though they seem to strangers to be always shivering and chilly, yet this must have become
sa second nature with them, for they may be seen moving about from place to place, or sitting
in their canoes, with the whirling snow beating against their naked persons, or gathering
about their limbs, seemingly without caring about it, or even being conscious of it. Boots of
sealskin cover their feet, but hat of any description neither sex has ever found the necessity of.
Their huts are on a par with their wardrobe, being merely a rude shelter of bent boughs .covered
with grass, the hole at the side which supplies the place of entrance being unclosed by anything
in the shape of a door, the only deference shown to the weather being to make this opening
•on the side from whence the prevailing winds do not usually come. Yet vanity is not frozen
TIERRA DEL FUEGIANS : THEIR HABITS, CHARACTER, ETC. 295
out of even the Tierra del Fuegian, as the rude necklaces of fish or seal teeth, and the patterns
in which he paints his body with earth, demonstrate. White paint denotes war, especially if
accompanied with white feathers on the head ; black, as all over the world, denotes mourning ;.
while, contrary to the usual custom, red is the sign of peace. The " struggle for existence"
docs not seem to altogether monopolise their limited energies, for the petty septs into which they
are divided are continually at feud with each other for the possession of the valleys and pieces-
of sea-coast which each inhabits. Both men and women are very strong — the women quite as
strong, if not stronger, than the men ; and all are exceedingly skilful with their favourite
weapon, the sling, with which, or with the hand, they can hurl stones with great precision.
They are skilful fishermen, jerking the fish out of the water without the aid of a hook, by means
of the bait and line alone. It is at once killed and disembowelled in an expeditious manner by
the fisherman biting a piece out of the belly with his teeth. Their rude tools are made of
shell, and shell-fish supply a large portion of their food ; but notwithstanding this fact we do
not find on the Fuegian coast any of those shell mounds so common elsewhere, where the savages
live on the same kind of food. The reason of this is that the Fuegian, afraid of offending the
shell-fish and thus causing them to desert the coast for ever, carefully throws the empty shells
into the sea again. A still more extraordinary method of fishing is adopted by these savages.
Dogs are not usually addicted to a fish diet, yet the Fuegians have trained their bushy-tailed,
prick-eared, fox-looking dogs to dive in the sea and capture fish, or to aid their masters by
driving shoals of fish into creeks and bays. After having done a fair amount of work, they
are humoured by being allowed to do a little on their own account. The Fuegians do not eat
their food raw, and are accordingly very careful to carry fire about with them on all occasions.
They even have it with them, built on a hearth of clay, in their canoes, so that they can
cook a meal without returning to land. Unlike the Eskimo and other tribes, they do not
produce fire by rubbing two pieces of stick rapidly together in the manner which we shall have
occasion to hereafter describe ; on the contrary, they produce it in a more direct manner by
striking sparks by means of a pebble and a piece of the iron pyrites (which is found in their
country) into some dry fungus powder and moss.
They resemble the Eskimo in this respect, that they are excellent imitators, and can mimic
the voice and gesture of any one to perfection. Two of them, of whom Mr. Darwin gave an
interesting account more than forty years ago,* were brought to England by the late Admiral
^itzroy, and though they readily picked up English phrases and customs, yet, from what
Captain Snow and others who subsequently visited them tell us, they soon relapsed into
Kirbarism, and were speedily lightened by their countrymen of all the presents which they had
jrought with them from England.
They are said to be a good-humoured race, but I cannot find that this reputation rests
>n any surer foundation than that a meaningless grin is for ever playing about the angles
their capacious mouths : the hyaena has a smile of about a similar character. On the
contrary, experience has shown them to be savage and deceitful in the extreme, and they are
1 known to have murdered the crews of several vessels which had been so unfortunate as to
some within their power. Cannibalism — a crime never imputed to the Eskimo — is also found
* "A Naturalist's Voyage- Round the World," pp. 213, 220.
296
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
amongst them. In times of scarcity they will dine off their aged relatives — in preference to
their fish-hunting dogs — reasoning very logically, if somewhat cold-bloodedly, that the one is
only an encumbrance to them, while the latter can at worst provide for their own maintenance.
Yet they only eat the extremities, and, unless very hard run for food, will throw the trunk into
the sea, owing to some superstitious idea attaching to it. Cannibalism, we have seen, is
unknown among the most miserable nations of the North ; even the despised Digger, to
whose larder nothing edible comes wrong, has never been accused of this propensity. No doubt
the " first instinct of savage man is not to love his brother, but to eat him '" but, curiously
FUEGIANS.
enough, this instinct is mostly displayed in the tropics, or in countries where there is an
abundance of food — not, as we might expect to find, in a land of starvation — for the Fuegiau
only resorts to cannibalism in times of extreme want.
The social organisation of the Piekerays is of the lowest type. They can scarcely be said
to have a form of government, and their possession of a religion is equally dubious ; if they
have any (Mr. Darwin denies that they have), it is only of the lowest form of fetichism, or
a grovelling belief in and dread of evil spirits. Marriage is with them reduced to about its
most primitive elements. As soon as a youth is able to maintain a wife by his exertions in
fishing or bird-catching, ho obtains the consent of her relatives, and having built (or stolen)
a canoe for himself, he watches for an opportunity and carries off the bride. If she is un-
willing, she hides herself in the woods until her admirer is heartily tired of looking for her,-'
* Fitzroy's " Voyage of the Adventure and Jicayli;'" vol. ii., p. 182.
TIERRA DEL FUEGIANS : THEIR HABITS, CHARACTER, ETC.
297
and has given up the pursuit ; but this seldom happens. This system of marriage by force
obtains among many American, Polynesian, and Asiatic tribes.
The women lead a hard life, assisting in every labour, and even plunging into the cold sea
after sea-urchins and other shell-fish. For them there is no season of rest, for, unlike the
Eskimo, their labour in procuring food is continued summer and winter without intermission.
Such are the inhabitants of that country which, from the fires which the famous explorer,
Magellan, saw lit on the shore, he so inappropriately named "Tierra del Fuego" (the land
of fire), but which the inhabitants believe to be the finest country on the face of the earth.
CAPE HORN.
During the surveying voyage of H.M.S. Alert in 1878 very little was seen of the Puegians
in the vicinity of the Strait of Magellan until January and February, when they returned from
their fishing grounds on the western rocks to the inner channels, and followed the Alert from
port to port with a view of obtaining provisions from her. The officers characterise them as
"quiet, but rather intrusive; one party, consisting of three families, attaching themselves to the
ship and congregating at meal-times round the sailors in what, considering the odours their skins
emitted, was unpleasant proximity/' This latest account describes the men as ugly, the women
uglier than the men, and both copper-coloured, with matted black hair and huge shark-like
mouths. Considering the struggles they have for existence, and the humidity of the atmosphere
they live in, they were more fully fleshed than was anticipated; but, like the trees of their
forests, they do not appear long-lived, no old individuals being seen among them. For some
time the manner of disposing of their dead remained a puzzle, but by dint of search a female
was found buried in a chink in a rock, from which they inferred that the dead are placed in splits
or caverns in rocks and covered with stones. Efforts were made to ascertain where they made
38
298 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
their canoes, but they were unsuccessful. "Corderoy portages" of trees were found, however, over
which it was evident canoes had been carried, and it was supposed that the canoes were made in
the interior and carried to the sea-shore. Those who followed the ship did so in bark canoes, and,
as each successive port was reached, went ashore, where they erected for themselves huts of
boughs with skins laid roughly over them. The huts are too low for a person to stand upright
in, and, like those occupied by Eskimo, are semi-globular. In spite of the coldness of the-
climate, the natives remain almost nude, even during the winter months, though occasionally
some throw sealskins over their shoulders. They rely upon coatings of dirt for warmth apart
from that they obtain by crouching over fires, but are always shivering with cold outside
their wigwams. So long as they were supplied from the ship with provisions — and these
frequently disagreed with them — they would not fish, neither would they work, being in
this respect closely akin to the Australian aborigines. Though they have fires, they were
too indolent to cook much, and frequently eat their seal flesh au naturel, even though it was
decomposed. Those on board the vessel were mild-mannered, but given to annexing articles
belonging to the sailors, and on this account a close watch was kept upon them. "Generally
the race arc suspicious of strangers, and until their confidence in them is thoroughly established
the women are always sent inland. When their suspicions are dispelled they mingle with
Europeans freely enough, but do not attempt to converse much with them. The white
sealers they regard as enemies who rob them of their livelihood, and when the two races
meet on the same hunting-ground a collision generally takes place." The Fuegians are armed
with well-made spears and light bows and arrows. The shafts of the spears are eight feet
long; the heads are of bone, and inserted into them in such a manner that they become
loose when they enter a body, though they remain connected with the shaft by means of
thongs of sealskin, made pliable by being drawn by the women between their teeth. Tin-
bows are small and light, being made of the native beech, and their strings are also of sealskin.
The arrows are neatly and curiously fashioned. They consist of smooth shafts, the thickness
of ordinary penholders, tipped with feathers, armed with glass heads, and are each about
two feet long. Their peculiarity consists in their heads. These were formerly made from
obsidian or volcanic glass ; but civilisation having advanced in the peculiar form of whisky,
which the sealers took to these low latitudes, in this shape it was quickly adopted by the
natives, who not only enjoyed the contents of the bottles, but ingeniously utilised the glass
out of which they were blown for making arrow-heads. For a long time it was a mystery
how they could be so well formed, but at length the secret was revealed by a Fueg-ian, who
took a piece of broken glass, laid it on a cloth in his hand, and, with a nail, pressed pieces
out of the glass until he had not only made the edges as sharp as razors, but produced a
head similar in form to that which painters place on the shafts of Cupid. The butts of
the heads are placed in slits in the shafts, and secured in them by means of light strips of
- -alskin. Although in these arrows and spears the men have very fair implements for
hunting, they seem to suffer from the want of food. They hunt seals when the weather permits
ihem, and they also catch cormorants, by taking hold of their legs when the birds are r.slcrp
in trees; and they also pursue fish in shallow waters, their dogs, trained for the purpose,
oasuting them. The Fuegians, as we have seen, are mimetic to a degree, which makes it
difficult for a stranger to acquire a knowledge of their language. Their powers in this
THE PERUVIANS: THEIR ANCIENT CIVILISATION". 299
direction are quite equal to those attributed to the Patagonians. For instance, if a white
man desires to learn what is Fuegian for nose, he will touch his own nose, perhaps, and
titter its name. The Fuegian will copy him in every particular, but will not attempt to
pronounce the name in his native tongue. It was in the hope of surmounting this difficulty,
and with the hope also of his acquiring a knowledge of English, and becoming useful as
an interpreter, a Fuegian was induced to reside on board the Alert. A suitable subject
was found in Picton Channel, who was christened Tommy Picton, and ranked on board
?.s cook's mate. The man was dressed and fed as a seaman, and worked like oiie, and hopes
•were entertained that in a short time he would be enabled to provide the officers with useful
information concerning the channels. But civilisation did not agree with the barbarian.
His constitution shrank before it, as do the constitutions of the Maoris or the Indians. A
high diet of biscuit and salt junk brought on repeated attacks of indigestion, and clothing
resulted in bronchitis, and after three months' battle with the combined influences of the
two maladies, and just as he was commencing to be useful, Tommy died.* For the last
thirty years the South American Missionary Society has succeeded in establishing mission
settlements among this dwindling people, with some success, though the lowness of the
Fuegian intelligence is a great obstacle in the way of their civilisation. f D'Orbignj's
assertion that the Fuegian tongue, though resembling the Patagonian and Araucanian in
sound, approximates in structure to the latter, has been doubted by the missionaries best
acquainted with it, though probably, nevertheless, the Fuegians are Patagonians or
Araucanians, who at some remote period have been driven to these dreary isles, and been
compelled to take to a new mode of life.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PERUVIANS : THEIR ANCIENT CIVILISATION ; THEIR PRESENT CONDITION AND CHARACTER.
IN Peru, as in Mexico, there was at the time of the conquest — and how long before cannot be
iccurately ascertained — a high though barbaric culture, which closely corresponded to the Aztec
civilisation of Mexico. This was the Empire of the Incas,J the gorgeous magnificence of
which dazzles the imagination of the reader, though sickened by the enormities which Pizarro
md his followers enacted in the country, the result of which was the utter wrecking of
* Sydney Horniny Herald, Feb. 14th, 1879.
t "Countries of the World," Vol. III., p. 2G7.
% Or properly, Yncas — said to bo founded by a mysterious being, named Manco Ccapac, some 400 or 500 years
before the arrival of Pizarro, and about 200 years before the foundation of the city of Mexico (Tenochtitl-lan). There
is, however, some belief that Manco Ccapac was a son of Kublai Khan, the Asiatic conqueror, and arrived on the
American coast about the year 1280. Montezuma is thought to have come from Assam about the same period. But
tins is mere hypothesis. (Prescott's " Conquest of Mexico" and " Conquest of Peru," &c.)
300 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOKLD.
this aboriginal commonwealth, and the scattering of the varied tribes which the Empire of the
Incas had welded together. Nothing but a name, or a ruined building, remains, to attest the
greatness of this extraordinary civilisation, in such contrast with the surrounding barbarism.
" The aboriginal races composing the empire were the Yncas, Curias, Quichuas, Chancas,
Huancas, and Rueanas, inhabiting the regions from the water partings between the basins
at the Huallaga and Ucayali at Cerro Pasco, to that between the basins of the Ucayali and
Lake Titicaca, at the base of the famous peak of Vilcanota, a distance of 380 miles." * All
of them were closely united, and seem to have had a common origin. The Quichuas con-
stituted, however, the bulk of the people of this ancient empire, and they still constitute
a large portion of the population of Peru and its borders. Alcide d'Orbigny, an eminent
naturalist who travelled in this country, describes them as a shade between olive arid brown,
and of: a rather diminutive size, their head, in shape and general characteristics, bearing no
resemblance to that of the Mexicans, who, Yucatecanos and Chibchas excepted, were the only
civilised people on the American continent. The forehead of the Incas, as usually figured, is
slightly rounded ; but is low, and somewhat retreating. The skull, however, in accordance with
the former high intelligence of this people, is often capacious, showing the large brain which
is possessed by them. The countenance of the men is serious, sad, and thoughtful, and with
that habitual suspicion engendered by the remembrance of the terrible wrongs their race has
suffered, and that even in recent times, and from conquerors inferior in worth to themsalves.
Even the faces of the women are not pleasing, and a pretty face is rarely seen among them. The
portrait of Coya Cahuana, wife of Huascar, the thirteenth Emperor of the Incas, shows a gentle
but not a handsome countenance. The Aymaras spread over a wide extent of country, and,
though separated from the Quichuas in language, bear a close physical resemblance to them,
and appear also to have been once possessed of a high civilisation. They are probably the
descendants of that race which in remote times built the strange monuments of Tiahuanuco,
and thickly inhabited the borders of Lake Titicaca. Perhaps my friend, Mr. Clements R.
Markham, the well-known Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, is the most learned
authority we possess in regard to these nations. f Volumes have been written on, and volumes
would be required to describe, the wonders of this ancient aboriginal civilisation of America —
the ruins of beautiful baths, roads paved with flat stones, extending for hundreds of miles,
furnished with resting-places, and pillars to mark the distances at regular intervals, great
aqueducts, bridges, &c. All these paths were intended for the armies of the Incas, and all lead
to Cuzco, the central point and capital of the ancient Peruvian Empire (lat 1-3° 31' S., 11,378
feet above the sea). The ancient Peruvians had no wheeled carriages, and accordingly their
roads were only constructed for footmen, and flocks of lightly-laden llamas. On the sides of
-ff.-p mountains are seen remains of long flights of steps to assist the soldiers in climbing, and
though the conquerors used these tracks, they found the steps a great hindrance to their cavalry.
On these wonderful highways the national energy of the Peruvians seems to have expended
itself, just as that of the Egyptians did on pyramids, the Chinese and Japanese on pagodas, &c.
* Markham: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XLI. (1871), pp. 281—338.
•: his " Travels in Peru and India," and various detached memoirs in the Journal of the Royal Geographical
fiociet/t. The llakluyt Society's publications, and Senior's "Peru," pp. 6, 568 et seq.
"t » V/Xy.
CONIBOS, FROM THE RIVER UCAYALI, A TRIBUTARY OF THE AMAZON.
302 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
These roads, and other public works of the Incas, the work of a people unacquainted with iron,
excited the wonder of the Spanish conquerors. " There are no such roads in Christendom/' wrote
Ilernando Pizarro. Yet they did not preserve them, but even destroyed them for the sake of
the dressed stones. The wealth of the Emperor of the Ineas was great. On the ruins of his
palace is still shown the traditionary mark which the Inca Atahualpa drew to show to what
height he would heap the room with gold, on the condition of being free from the cruel victors,
who afterwards strangled him. "Gold in bars, plates, and vessels should be piled up/' he said,
"as high as he could reach with his hand." The Indians still have wild traditions and tales
of the buried riches underneath these old ruins. They say that the golden sedan chair of the
Inca was sunk in the baths at Pultamarac, and that underground are yet concealed gardens
with artificial trees of the purest gold (which were affirmed to exist by many of the earlier
historians of the conquest), beneath the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco — and so on. Yet in all
their poverty they will not search for them; for they say the Inca will yet come back. And
even if they had the gold, as a poor lad, descendant of one of the Incas, told Humboldt, it
would not only be sinful, but their " white neighbours would hate and injure them. We have a
little field, and good wheat." And so the descendant of an emperor was content with his lot.
The court of the Incas was upheld with great grandeur and much absurd etiquette. The
Inca — who was the personification of a centralising despot — spat, not on the ground, we are told,
Ijnt into the hand of a lady ! Of this we may read in the remarkable commentaries of Garcilasso
de la Vega, and many other historians. All is of the past : the Inca empire was destroyed, and
the remnants of their descendants and subjects are now as nobody in the land. That the
natives were crushed under the oppression of the Spaniards during three centuries admits of no
doubt ; but it is equally true that this was not due to any harsh legislation on the part of the
King or the Council of the Indies. Their decrees in reference to the aborigines were generally
distinguished by the mildness and humanity of their tenor; indeed, as Mr. Merivale has truly
remarked, " had the legislation of Spain in other respects been as well conceived as that
respecting the Indians, the loss of the Western Empire would have been an unmerited visita-
tion." But it was impossible for the viceroys, even when, as rarely happened, they were men
«-f high principles and kindliness, to restrain or check the avarice and extortion of their sub-
ordinates. Yet had it not been for the exertions of the viceroys, the native population would
have beon either exterminated or reduced to a condition to which African slavery would
have been preferable. It was only after repeated rebellions against the followers of Pizarro,
who had parcelled out the native lands amongst them, that the life of the descendants of the
Incas became tolerable. Under the rule of Francisco de Toledo, whose reign as Viceroy of
Peru commenced in 1568, the chiefs called cttracax, in the time of the Incas, were ordered by
Toledo to be called cacique*, a word brought from the West India Islands,* and under them we:e
two other native officials — the pickea-pachacas, plaejd over 500 Indians, and the ].<!(•//<«• i*}
<>ver 100. These offices descended from father to son, and their possessors enjoyed several
privileges, such as exemption from arrast, except for grave offences, and a iixe>l salary. The
native caciques were often men of considerable wealth ; some of them were members of the
* Others say that the word cacique was brought from the Old World by the Spaniards, and that if is a
corruption of the Arabic sheikh.
THE PERUVIANS: THEIR TREATMENT BY THE SPANIARDS; THEIR CHARACTER. 303
royal family of the Tncas ; they were free from the payment of tribute and from personal
service; and they occupied positions of importance amongst their countrymen. They wore the
same dress which distinguished the nobles of the court, consisting of a tunic called MUCH, a
rich mantle or cloak of black velvet, called yacolla, intended as mourning for the fall of their
ancient rulers ; and those of the family of the Incas added a sort of coronet, whence a red fringe
of alpaca wool descended as an emblem of nobility. The head-dress was called mascapaycka.
They had pictures of the Incas in their houses, and encouraged the periodical festivals in memory
of their beloved sovereigns, when plays were enacted and mournful music produced from the
national instruments, drums, trumpets, clarions, and nutatns, or sea-shells. All these customs
were left unchanged by Toledo, and the system so far resembles that which now prevails in the
Dutch colony of Java. But in addition to the tribute, the amount of which was established by
Toledo was not excessive, and which was rendered still less objectionable to the Indians from
being collected by native chiefs, there was the mita (or forced labour in mines, manufactories,
and farms), which became the instrument of fearful oppression and cruelty. Toledo enacted
that a seventh part of the adult male population should be subject to the mita, and ordered that
the caciques should send these mitayos, as they were called, to the public squares of the nearest
Spanish towns, where they might be hired by those who required their services ; and laws
were enacted to regulate the distance they might be taken from their homes, and their pay-
ment. It appears, however, that this seventh part of the working men who were told off for
forced labour was exclusive of those employed in the mines, so that, even in theory, the mil a
condemned a large fraction of the population to slavery.*
In matters of religion no tolerance was allowed them by the conquerors. Every trace of
paganism was ordered to be effaced under heavy penalties. An Indian who married an idolatrous
woman, it was even ordained, was to receive 100 stripes, '• because that is the punishment they
dislike most/' But all these good intentions for the benefit of the Indians — temporal and
spiritual — were set at nought by the conduct of the corregidors, or officers charged with
their execution. When the mita proved insufficient for working the mines of Potosi, labourers
were kidnapped, when and how they best could, until the wretched people groaned under an
oppression they could not bear. Mothers maimed their children, so that they might thus be
delivered from a slavery which they abhorred, and while the land resounded with the melancholy
song of the women bewailing the sad fate of their husbands and brothers toiling in the silver
mines, the females were obliged to work in the fields like men. "They declared," Don Juan do
Padilla tells us, in 1657, "that when once a man was taken for the mita, his wife seldom or
never saw him again, unless she went herself to the place of his torments." The woollen
manufactories were as much instruments of oppression as the mines. " If they could not find
the particular men they were in search of, they took their children, wives, and nearest neigh-
bours, robbed them of all they possessed, and frequently violated the women and young girls."
Once in their clutches, the pretence of being in debt to them enabled the manufacturer to keep
the wretched labourers in perpetual bondage. Under such oppression, the country rapidly got
depopulated, but the tyranny grew more shameless and cruel than ever, until not even a
semblance of justice remained, neither with the subordinate officers of the Government, nor
with the Royal Audience at Lima — the highest court of justice in the country.
* Markham : "Travels in Peru and India," p. 121.
;3(j4 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
After one or two partial rebellions, the Indians, in 1781, rose as one man in revolt, under
one of the descendants of the Incas, Tupac Amaru. After a bitter resistance, they were
defeated, and punishment meted out to the vanquished with a savage cruelty, which is
probably unequalled in the annals of Spanish abomination in the New World. The Iiica " was
condemned to behold the execution of his wife, his son, his uncle, his brother-in-law, Antonio
Bastidas, and of his captains ; to have his tongue cut out, and afterwards to have his limbs
secured to the girths of four horses dragging different ways, and thus be torn in pieces. His
body was to be burnt on the heights of Picchu ; his head to be stuck on a pole at Tinta ; one
arm at Tangasuca, the other at Caravaya; a leg in Chumbivilicas, and another in Lampa. His
HUASCAK, THIRTEENTH EMPEROR OF THE IXCAS.
houses were to be demolished, their sites strewn with salt; all his goods to be confiscated; rJl
his relations declared infamous; all documents relating to his descent to be burnt by the
common hangman ; all dresses used by the Incas or caciques to be prohibited ; all pictures of
IK; Incas to be seized and burnt; the representation of Quichua dramas to be forbidden; all
signs of mourning for the Incas to be forbidden ; all Indians to give up their national
costumes, and dress henceforth in the Spanish fashion ; and the use of the Quichua lai -
guage to be prohibited."*
This hideous sentence was literally carried into effect. We need not give the horrid
details, or add a single comment, except to remind the reader, as an aid to the formation of an
opinion regarding the nature of Spanish character, at least as developed in the New World,
that this doom was devised, pronounced, and religiously executed only a century ago.
A war of extermination on the other side followed; no quarter was asked — certainly nun.'
was ever given. This bloodshed continued almost without intermission up to the period
* Markham : Lib. cit., p. 123. See also his " Cuzco and Lima" (1856).
THE PERUVIANS : THEIR CONDITION ; THEIR PRESENT CHARACTER.
305
of the War of Independence (1815-1825), when the Indians received greater justice under the
more enlightened principles which then began to permeate the country. Yet their lot is still to
be pitied. The Republic of Peru is not more admirable in its nature than similar Hispano-
American institutions. It has an immense liking for playing at the ugly game of war, and
the Indian population have to a great extent to supply the rank and file of the army. Villages
are surrounded, and all the able-bodied men caught are driven off to serve in the ranks ; yet,
notwithstanding all, their condition is immeasurably better than ever it was under the rule of
His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain. We need not enter upon the history of the condition of
the Indians of the other Spanish Republics ; without any material changes, the above description
sufficiently describes their social and political status. Spanish-American governments have
the habit of going in one groove. Arcades omnes is the verdict which might be written in
CCYA CAHTTANA, EMPRESS OF THE INCAS.
regard to them, and is indelibly engraved on the memory of any one who has ever lived under
their rule, or who has ever been unfortunate enough to have the most remote dealings
with them. I may conclude these remarks on the Indian population of America by the
eloquent and on the whole just conclusions which Mr. Clements Markham draws from his
intercourse with them. " I was thrown/' he writes in 1862, " a great deal among the Indians,
and at one time I had most excellent opportunities of judging their character, and I was
certainly most favourably impressed. They have now many vices engendered by centuries of
oppression and evil example, from which their ancestors were probably free. They are fond of
chicha and aguardiente, and are very suspicious ; but I found that this feeling disappears when
the occasion for it is found not to exist. They have but too good reason for their suspicion
generally. On the other hand, they are intelligent, patient, obedient, loving amongst each
other, and particularly kind to animals. Crimes of any magnitude are hardly ever heard of
amongst them, and I am sure there is no safer region in the world for the traveller than the
plateaux of the Peruvian Cordillera. That the Indians are not cowardly or mean-spirited when
once aroused was proved in the battles which they fought under the banner of the Tupac
Amaru in 1781, and a people who could produce men capable of such heroic constancy as was
39
306 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
displayed by the mutilated heroes of Asillo, should not be accused of want of courage. When
well led they make excellent soldiers. Although there is so large a proportion of mestizos (or
half-castes) in Peru, it is very remarkable how isolated the Indians still remain. They have their
separate language and traditions and feelings apart from their neighbours of Spanish origin ;
and it is even said that there are secret modes of intercourse, and even secret designs amongst
them, the knowledge of which is guarded with jealous care. In 1841, when General Gamavia
was at Pucara, on his way towards Bolivia, it was reported that certain influential Indians from
all parts of the country were about to assemble on the hills near Azangaro for the discussion of
some grave business, and that they were in the habit of assembling in the same way, though
in different localities, every five years. The object of these assemblies was unknown ; it may
have been merely to converse over their ancient traditions, but it was feared at the time that
it was for some far deeper and more momentous purpose. It is believed that similar meetings
have since taken pl'ace near Chayanta, in Bolivia, near Quito, and in other parts, but the strictest
secrecy is preserved by the Indians themselves. The abolition of the tribute has probably had
the effect of separating the Indians still more from the white and the mixed races, for they used
to have constant intercourse, connected with the payments to the authorities, which brought
them into the towns, while now they live apart in their solitary huts in the mountain fast-
nesses or in distant villages. It may be that this unhappy people, descendants of the once
mighty race which, in the glorious days of the Incas, conquered and civilised half a continent,
is marching slowly down the gloomy and dark road to extinction — the fading remains of a
society sinking amid storms, overthrown and shattered by overwhelming catastrophes. But
I trust that this may not be so, and that a fate less sad is still reserved for the long-suffering,
gentle Children of the Sun/'
The Inca Empire never stretched much beyond the uplands of the Andes. Many
a time and often the warriors of Cuzco looked with longing eyes at the great forests which
clothed the eastern slopes of the mountains, and stretched, as they stretch in our days, in an
almost unbroken sea of trees, far away to the lowlands through which the Amazon
pours its waters into the Atlantic. But, with all their skill, the Incas never invented an
implement so powerful for the subjugation of continents as the little American axe ; and so
the wild tribes of Eastern Peru, or what we now know as Bolivia, were permitted to remain in
their pristine state of savagedom. It is true that the Peruvians waged perpetual warfare with
them, but even in the plenitude of their power they were unable to carry their conquest much
more than sixty miles to the eastward of their capital. In these savage forests they encountered,
as the traveller of to-day encounters, the fierce " Antis" creeping through the dense thickets,
and launching unseen their poisoned arrows against the Children of the Sun, who protected
themselves by the massive fortresses of Paucartambo, Pisac, and Ollantaytambo, from
an enemy whom they could not see, and whom it would be vain to pursue. " They nevertheless
succeeded in securing the upper portions of some of these valleys, with their wealth of
tropical products, the cocoa and cotton, the skins of wild beasts, the gorgeous feathers of
the birds, and many other articles of use, luxury, or beauty, which rigorous nature denied them
in their native eyries."*
* Squier : " Peru, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Ineas'; (1877), p 13.
THE BOLIVIAN TRIBES: THE BENT RIVER; THE ATACAMA DESERT. 307
Of these wild tribes we know very little, even at this day, as indeed we do of the wild
people of Bolivia (p. 278), who for ethnic purposes must, with Ecuador, be classed as
part of Peru. In Ecuador, at the period of the conquest, there were said to exist forty nations
speaking 300 dialects and languages. Of these, the remnants linger on the head waters
of the North- Western Amazon under the names of Jivaros, Zaparos, Anguteras, Orejones,
Colorados, Capanes, and Capayas. The eastern slopes of the Bolivian Alps are occupied by
the Yuracares, Mocetenes, Tacanas, Maropas, and Apolistas, who are generally known under
the collective name of Antis (pp. 280, 281), though, as Mr. Keaiie very justly points out,
these tribes have no distinct unity, and must be regarded as simply a geographical
grouping. As we descend the Bolivian Lowlands we come among a vast conglomeration
of the fragments of tribes, and of the names of tribes who have disappeared in comparatively
recent times.* But with the barren names of these septs, many of whom, along the highways
of the Amazon and Madeira, have adopted a kind of Christianity and a veneer of civilisation,
it is not necessary to weary the reader. Dr. E. R. Heath, who succeeded the late Professor Orton
in his self-imposed task of exploring the little-known Beni River, reports that in the course of
his journey he met with " a white race, but possessing the Indian physiognomy. A tribe of
cannibals occupies a portion of the Beni valley, and makes yearly incursions into the
neighbouring districts for human flesh. Many of the tribes of thi? section are entirely nude,
while others are provided with but little clothing. Traces of formar occupancy are numerous
in many places, and hieroglyphics are abundant along the rocky walls of some portions of
the river, and in some places he observed that certain characters occurred at high-water-
mark, showing when it was dangerous to navigate the river. Among these devices, of
which drawings were made, are a number strongly resembling anchors, though the general
character of them is the same as the ancient picture writings found on the rocks in some
sections of the western United States. Ruined stone structures are abundant at many points."
In that portion of Bolivia which until recently intersected Chili to the Pacific live the
remnants of a fast decaying tribe, the Atacamenos, of the Atacama desert. f There is, perhaps,
no drearier spot on the face of the earth than this dry, nitrate-covered waste, which, within late
years, has attracted so much attention owing to its having proved rich in mines. A very recent
traveller, Dr. Aquinas Reid, attached to the army during the Chileno-Pcruvian War, describes
it as an " extensive plain where you see no vestige of life — where you see neither birds
nor insects, where no plant grows, where the silence of the grave is disturbed only by the
roar of the wind ; where the face of the land is lime and the fine dust and the always bright
sun pain the wearied eyes ; and where, lastly, you see the skeleton of a quadruped and often
the remains of a human being. Four days' travel from Cobija brings us to Calama, a little
village situated in the centre of a great marsh, and where the traveller rests his beast
and also his wearied bones, and gives the animals water. This village must be seen to form an
idea of what it is ; one can imagine nothing more sad and desolate. The village is surrounded
by great ponds, and the water one gets has nothing in common with running water than that
of being liquid, and its taste is very disagreeable to the palate, but it must be drunk. It
causes attacks of diarrhoea, especially in strangers. This marsh forms to the coast what
* Matthews : " Up the Amazon and Madeira" (1879). t Philippi : " Reise durch die Waste Atacama " (I860).
308 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
is called the River Loa, which is the boundary between Peru and Bolivia. Two days more
bring us to Chiuchiu, an ancient Peruvian cemetery, it is said. Here 500 to 600 bodies of
men, women, and children are crouched in a half-moon, most of them in the same attitude,
that of sitting, with the eyes fixed on space. Many have fallen and are covered with sand.
We feel transported to another world, and imagine that these fantastic figures are looking at tha
traveller and saying, ' What do you seek here ? ' The general opinion is that these beings
were buried alive, but my opinion is that they buried themselves, because there is no settlement
in the neighbourhood where they could have lived, because many of the women have
their children at the breast, and because in the disfigured faces there is still to be observed
the sad expression of terrible sufferings, as though, pursued by some terrible enemy, they
had preferred to die together rather than yield their bodies up to the conqueror."*
In Bolivia and in Peru, Captain Musters remarks that the races are distributed more or
less according to the climate. For example, in the valleys there is a large admixture of negro
blood, mixed descendants of Indians and slaves liberated at the establishment of independence.
In the temperate regions Quichua Indians appear to predominate, and Aymaras in the frigid
zones. It is, however, only partially true that the Quichuas inhabit the south of the Republic
and the Ayrnaras the north, for the races are very widely scattered. The Atacamenos
constitute a large proper ion of the muleteers whose long trains of pack animals cover the
road between Potosi and ' alama. The Quichuas and Aymaras have many habits in common.
For instance, they both chew the coca-leaf for support,f both weave ponchos and coarse cloths,
and both are equally fanatical and superstitious. They are, however, when they cannot obtain
liquor, a hard-working race, and either bury their earnings or spend them in religious
feasts, which are always an excuse for a debauch. In some of the retired communities the
" Quipos/' or language of Knots used by the old Incas, is still understood. They are, as
might be expected, very reticent regarding their traditions, as well as to showing mines,
although undoubtedly possessed of the secret of very rich deposits. J So much might be said
regarding these people, both in ancient and modern times, that it is impossible, within the
space at our disposal, to record one tithe of what is extremely interesting in the habits and
condition. It may, however, be noted in conclusion, as possessing some bearing on the origin
of these people, that the American Consul in Canton asserts positively that the Quichua method
of opening cotton and hemp, so extensively practised throughout the region of the Andes, is
identical with that in use in the interior districts of China. A small tapering spindle with a
large rim or stay, which is likewise the balance-wheel, is the only machinery used. The motive
power is the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, the other hand being the distaff.
The Indian woman of the plateaux will thus spin and reel her household fabrics as she
trips along, barefoot and merrily, to some neighbouring parish or market town. Yet it is
well known that the aborgines of the Andes did not get this from the Spanish conquerors. §
* Anglo-Brazilian Times, Nov. 1, 1879.
t "Countries of the World," Vol. III., pp. 187, 188.
J Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XLVII. (1877), p. 212.
§ "Reports of the United States Consuls," No. 9, July, 1881, p. 13; Orton : "The Andes and the Amazon"
(1876); Stiibel: "Peruvian Antiquities" (1880); Tschudi : " Antiguedades peruanas" (1851); Tschudi:
"Travels in the Andes " (1860) ; references in " Countries of the World," Vol. Ill , &c.
AMERICA UNDER THE SPANIARDS: THE NEW GOVERNMENTS; THE RESULT. 309
Finally, we may remark that both in the northern and the southern regions of the Continent
the civilised races are found on the western slopes. This must be greatly, if not entirely,
owing to the dense forests which cover so much of the eastern declivities of the Andes, and
clothe most of the Eastern States and Canada. For while the former tribes, with the exception
of those of Eastern North America, knew of no cultivated plant, the South- Western Indians
cultivated that beneficent cereal the maize, which played so remarkable a part in the civilising
influences of both the Mexicans and the Peruvians.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HISPANO- AMERICAN LIFE : THE MIXTURE OF THE CONQUEROR AND THE CONQUERED ;
THE RESULT.
THE sketch in the preceding chapter will have shown what monstrous abuses prevailed in
Peru during the Spanish occupation ; how the conquistadores destroyed a nobler civilisation
than their own ; how a people who commanded their respect were, for the lust of gold,
oppressed, massacred, and degraded. But the same is true of all the other Spanish-American
colonies. They were governed by the same laws, and by men with similar ideas, so that
what was true of one of the provinces of "the Indies " was true of the whole. In every
one the Indians were equally oppressed, though in some they were more warlike than in others,
and therefore managed to defend their rights a little better than the weaker races could. But
if the officials in America oppressed the Indians, the Government in Spain equally oppressed
the colonists in their turn. I have called them colonists, but in reality the American provinces
were looked upon as integral parts of the Spanish Empire, and were ruled by the King, aided
by the " Council of the Indies," under a separate code of laws. Their direct government was by
means of viceroys and various other minor officials, who soon multiplied to a prodigious extent ;
the system being that each official was checked by several other officials — in fact, it was a
system of espionage, so that whenever a new office was created a dozen more were instituted in
order to watch it. This abominable system prevailed from the viceroy downwards, but tin
former official had practically inordinate powers, subject to really very little check. The result
of this was that in course of time the Government machine became so unwieldly as to be beyond
all control; it was clogged with placemen. Every office was publicly sold in Madrid; worth
and talent were items that had no place in the reasons for a man being appointed to the most
responsible post in the gift of His Catholic Majesty and the Council of the Indies; doubloons
alone were the recommendation, and accordingly every official did his best to get good interest
for his investment in American official stock. What was more — no native American could hold
an office in America. Everything was reserved for men born in Spain. There were exceptions,
but these exceptions were so rare that they only proved the rule. Out of a list of 180 viceroys,
captains, generals, and governors of the American provinces, only eighteen were born in the
country. Even the humblest clerkship was denied an American. The moral effect of this
was deplorable. Forced to be idle, denied every stimulus to exertion, and with the social baa
310 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
of inferiority ever placed upon him, the Creole-Spaniard grew apathetic, dispirited, and useless
to himself and the country he lived in. He was even shut out as much from participating in
commercial as he was from literary or political pursuits. He was not allowed, under pain of
death, to trade with any foreigner. No Spaniard was even allowed to set foot in the country
without special permission, and others only for a time, unless they had bought the right to reside
there in an official capacity. Intercourse between the different colonies was even stopped as-
far as possible, in case intercourse should lead to enlightenment and discontent. Any foreigner
who entered the country committed a capital crime. Nor was this law a dead letter, as any
one may see who reads — and it will be with boiling indignation — of the cruelties exercised
towards unfortunate foreigners, Englishmen in many cases, who were caught contravening this
law.* Torture, chains, and a convict's fate, if not death itself, were the penalties they paid for
their enterprise. The object was simply that the colonies should be solely reserved for the
enrichment of Spain and her sons. The increase of the population by natural means was even
discouraged, while every obstacle was put in the way of agriculture, and indeed everything but
the search for the precious metals. In 1803 the vines were ordered to be rooted up in Mexico,
because, forsooth, the Cadiz merchants complained that the consumption of Spanish wines had
been lessened by the manufacture of American ones. The cultivation of flax, hemp, saffron, to-
bacco, olives, and other vegetable products, was at different times prohibited for similar reasons.
Colleges, and even schools, were discouraged; ""reading and writing are enough for an American"
was the opinion of one of the viceroys of that period. The importation of books was forbidden.
In addition to all this, taxes the most iniquitous and grievous crushed the people. "Bulls"
of all sorts were sold at high prices to the people, who were forced to buy them. Take, for
instance, the Bula de Confesion. Any person not in possession of this expensive luxury, in the
shape of a Papal scroll, lost all rights as a citizen, in so far that without it he could not obtain
absolution ; his will was null and void, and his property was confiscated. The administration
of the laws was cumbersome and expensive, and justice as venal as justice in Spanish America
is to this day. The highest bidder had the justest case, and the man with most family influence
was sure to win his suit before a "righteous judge/' to whom the sneering Castilian proverb,
" He whose father is alcaldef need have no fear about his trial/' applied only too correctly. A
man who had no money was thrown into prison — prisons the most horrible that the " bloody
Spaniard " of the English schoolboy of eighty years ago could devise. The door was shut upon
the wretched being — he was forgotten for ever. When the revolution opened the doors of the
dungeons in Lima, men were found there against whom no crime could be imputed or found
charged on the record. "Among us/' writes a Chilian author soon after this period, "a man was
imprisoned, not that he might be improved, but that he might be made to suffer; not that he
should work, but that he should learn idleness ; not as a useful warning to others, but to shock
their feelings. On visiting a prison, we beheld several hundreds of men in rags, or entirely
naked, their countenances withered away, so that they were more like spectres in chains than
m_Mi. They trembled at the presence of the insolent alguazils, who struck and insulted them.
We examined the food of these miserable wretches, worn to skeletons, and it proved such as the
lowest beggar in the streets would have rejected with scorn." The prisons were crowded, and
* Robinson : "Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution," vol. i., p. 313, &c.
t A judge corresponding somewhat to the stipendiary magistrate in England.
AMERICA UNDER THE SPANIARDS: OPPRESSION OF NATIVES; THE REVOLT. 31)
the miseries of the captives aggravated beyond all conception. But the ordinary prisons were
not the worst. Under the rule of a viceroy named Abascal, something- more horrible still was
<levised. " These were subterranean dungeons, constructed in such a manner that a man could
not place himself in any natural position whatever. Many persons, victims of despotism, were
confined in these holes for years ; and when at length let out, it was only to bewail their own
•existence, being rendered useless and helpless for the rest of their lives, crippled and liable to
acute pains and diseases of an incurable nature." No wonder that the people of Lima styled
these dens of torture infernillos (little hells) ; yet they were allowed to exist for more than
a year after Spanish authority fell — a fact which speaks volumes for the state of demoralisation
which had overtaken the people.
No foreign ships could trade with the colonies, and vessels in distress were even seized as
prizes, the crews thrown into prison, and the ship and cargo confiscated as if it had been a
capture from an armed enemy. Need it be said that in the hands of daring men of all nations,
but chiefly English, and afterwards Americans, a lively contraband trade was carried on, even
under the eye of corrupt officials, who winked at the colours of the ship as their palms felt the
touch of that magic something which threw a daze betwe?n their eyes and the laws of the
Council of the Indies? Everywhere there was bribery, everywhere oppression, everywhere
injustice and unwisdom indescribable. Under such a system nesd it be related that a priesthood
of the most iniquitous type flourished ? Religion was in their hands only a system of debase-
ment, moral and physical, and the priests were only too admirable tools in the hands of the
•civil functionaries. The Inquisition was in full working order, and many a seaman, in those
helpless days of England, after being imprisoned, and probably tortured as a punishment for
having been wrecked on the sacred shores of America — or navigating her waters — was put on
the fiery rack, or bound with the red-hot chain of the Chief Inquisitor in Lima.
Such a system could only last for a time ; the cup of misery by-and-by became full, and
•overflowed in one general revolution from Mexico to Chili. Long* and bloody was the struggle,
but freedom came at last, and at the present day, with the exception of Cuba and Porto Rico
— even now falling from her nerveless hands — the once-powerful Hispano-American empire is
broken up into half a score of so-called republics, represented, in the case of Chili, Peru, and
Mexico, by exactly what constituted the former vice-royalties of Spain — living by the sufferance
of their neighbours, and with scarcely an exception the continual scene of anarchy, revolution,
civil war, or petty quarrels with their petty republican neighbours. The revolution, no doubt,
did something for Spanish America. It swept away some of the more crying abuses, but still it
kept up much of what was most objectionable both in the spirit and letter of the old Spanish
institutions. The result disappointed many doctrinaires; it disappointed nobody who knew the
:state to which the " laws of the Indies " had brought the population of the Spanish colonies in
America. The people had been too long debased to rise at once to the level of free men and free
institutions — which even at the best were foreign to the feelings of the race. Public spirit is
unknown, justice is venal, politicians frothy, unstable, and corrupt. Slavery was, certainly,
abolished, but the bull-fights, which degraded and demoralised the people, and probably for
this very reason were encouraged by the viceroys, though stopped by some States, in many
Spanish- American towns can still be seen in all their worst features, even more grossly brutal
than in Old Spain.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Private morality is as low as public — education is at zero, while public improvements
and the introduction of foreign capital are prevented, or at least much impeded, by the
endless revolutions. Don Jose Maria del Grandes Dolores finds his promotion in the army
too slow for his soaring- ambition. There has been absolutely a government in power for a
year; the thing is preposterous, a revolution is needed; the land is groaning under a despotism.
Don Jose knows his country. In any Spanish colony there are always a sufficiency of men
NEGIIO HALF-CASTE GIHL.
much in fear — as they are much in need — of axe and rope, and ready to join anything which
sets order at defiance, or in which there is a chance of plunder. He issues a pronunciamento, a
frothy proclamation full of fine phrases about the freedom of man, enslaved peoples, iron heels
of tyrants, &c., and the shirtless flock to his standard ; the army (a cut-throat crew to whom
Falstaff's mob was the impersonation of discipline, virtue, and clothing*} fraternises with " the
* In most of the Central American States cotton trousers, a shirt of the same material (very dirty), a straw hat,
?md a flint-lock musket form the very common accoutrements of a soldier — a uniform of which the " blue tie and pair
of spurs" — in proverbial language said to be the full dress of certain Hispano- American regiments — is a modification.
A IIISPANO- AMERICAN GOVERNMENT: THE WAY THEY LIVE NOW.
313
people/' a weak government is overthrown, and another weak one takes its place. The land is
free once more, viva Libert ad! His Excellency the new President, having a lively sense of the value
of coins, and sufficiently sensible of the propensities of the mongrel crew who are his ministers
and aides, as a precaution, confiscates the treasury — if unluckily his predecessor before going out
of office has not done so — for his own behoof (and that of liberty) , puts on a few new taxes,
issues another fresh proclamation or two, and winds up by confiscating the property of all who
opposed him (under the belief that he would be unsuccessful) ; shooting half-a-dozen prominent
men of the last government, including the ex-President if he can lay hands on him, though the
probability is that this wily official has taken care to early retreat across the frontier with hie
YOUNG MESTIZA V.OMAN.
1 under, and there he will remain until he in kin turn can issue a pronunciamento, and play the
Id, old game over again. If Don Jose is unsuccessful, the chances are that nothing will be done
to him ; he will at worst retain his new title of " General," and will most likely be bought up by
e Government as a dangerous man useful to be out of harm's way. In this way a premium is
ffered to revolution. The only obstacle to the trade of government in Spanish America is that
)he new President has a nasty habit of shooting the old one. This, it must be confessed, is
drawback ; otherwise, I know of no region where a gentleman cunning of speech, liberally
imaginative in promises, skilful with the knife, and with just about the statesman-like capacity
of a member of the common council of an English provincial town, has a finer career before
him. " It's a lively country," a shrewd " Yankee " once remarked to me of a Spanish American
republic which may be nameless, as the remark applies equally well to all of them ; " it's a lively
country, but if you trust to their promises you will most certainly come out at the small end
of the horn!" Chili is the best. In 1880 it was at war with Peru, though in 1866 it
40
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
and Peru, not satisfied with leaving well alone, had to be ambitious enough to go to war with
Spain, as if to mark their superiority over their sister republics, which can only afford to knife
and lasso, tinder the name of " war," the citizens of a neighbouring republic. Under these
governments, black, white, and red,* all are alike free and equal, but these races hate each
other, and are the antipodes of each other in nearly every respect.
In some of the Central American States revolutions go by blood. At one time it is the
negroes, another time the Indians, a third the Spaniards along with the priests, who aim at
power. In a certain Central American town the writer was one evening roused out of bed by
the firing of musketry. Next morning, on inquiring the cause of the unusual disturbance, he
was informed that there had been au unsuccessful attempt at revolution on the part of
the negroes. We found that they had divided the offices as well as the fair ladies of the city
amongst them. Among other offices was that of Minister of War, which, had the revolution
been successful, was to have fallen to the black cook at the hotel. Beyond a few scratches, and
a perpetual " chaff" whenever he made his appearance, I could never learn that anything was
ever done to his sable excellency.
In addition, there is a vast amount of mixed bloods ; indeed, purity of blood is the
-exception, mongrel the rule, the "cholos," or those in whom the blood is mixed in more
complicated proportions, f generally combining as mixed breeds do all over the American
continent, the bad qualities of all the races which contribute to form the man in his lout-
Among this conglomeration of nationalities, during these long centuries of oppression, a
race has arisen and a set of manners which, though with the air of the Prado of Madrid about
* The late President Juarez of Mexico was a pure or almost pure Indian, though a man of good education
and immense knowledge of the art of government a la Americaine.
t Nothing could perhaps better ilhistrate the mongrel character of the Spanish-American population than
by saying that twenty-three crosses can be determined, and have received names. They are as follows : —
PAEEXTS.
CHILDKEN.
"White
father and negro mother
mulatto.
M
,t ,, Indian ,,
mestiza.
Indian
,, ,, negro ,,
chino.
White
,, ,, mulatto ,,
cuarteron.
,,
., „ mestiza ,,
creole 'pale - brownish
complexion).
„
„ „ chino ,,
chino-blanco.
,,
„ „ cuarteroua ,,
quintero.
„
„ ?• quintern
white.
Negro
., ., Indian „
zambo.
.,
,, ., mulatto „
zambo-negro.
„
ii ,i mestiza ,,
mulatto-oscuro.
„
M ,. chino ,,
zarnbo-chino.
„
,, ,, zamba ,,
zambo nf gro (perfectly
black).
CHILDREN.
Negro father and quintera mother mulatto (rather dark).
Indian
Mulatto
mulatto
mestiza
chino „
zamba ,,
chino-cola ,,
quintera „
zamba .,
mestiza ,,
chino ,,
chino-oscuro.
mestizo-claro (fre-
quently very beau-
tiful).
chino-cola.
zamto-claro.
Indian (with frizzly
hair).
mestizo (rather brown).
zambo (a miserable
race).
chino (rather clear
complexion).
chino (rather dark).
In America the terms mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon arc commonly used to express the possession of a half, a fourth,
• i an eighth of black blood, and the nomenclature goes no further, but experienced observers can detect much m<nv
minute quantities. A person with one half of Indian blood is usually styled a half-caste, or more commonly a half-
breed. The term is used, however, very vaguely to denote the presence of a greater or less amount of white blood.
Thu subject is fully discussed in Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind."
;
HISPANO- AMERICAN LIFE :" CHILIAN AND PERUVIAN SOCIETY. 315-
them, are yet something peculiar — something essentially Spanish-American. A few salient
features strike the stranger. One is the listlessiiess and indolence of the people. With them it
is always manana (to-morrow). To-morrow is always better than to-day; it is better to walk
than to run ; better to sit than to walk, and to lie on your back swinging in a grass hammock,
lazily smoking cigarettes, is much better than either. Everybody must take his or her siesta in
the middle of the day, and nothing annoys a Spanish- American so much as to be disturbed in
this midday sleep. Villages, or even towns like Panama or Bogota, seem asleep, as in reality
the inhabitants are at this time of the day. A shopkeeper will hiss a carambo through his teeth
if he is asked for anything at this unseasonable hour ; and if the order is small the likelihood
is that he will turn on the other side and leave to his own devices a contemptible gringo
who can be so foolish as to want anything at the hour of siesta. A passion for gambling,
cock-fighting, bull-fighting (when they can raise enough to buy a bull and the State will
permit it), and a general readiness to put a knife under the rib of another caballero who has
offended his dignity, are the chief characteristics of a Hispano-American gentleman of modern
times. What is his ambition beyond the particulars aforesaid it would be difficult to say.
Perhaps it consists in a general desire to appear as white as possible. The possession of a little
of the gentleman in red or in black is the bete noir of the Hispano- American's existence. A
photographer who has lately established himself in Panama with a patent which gives a very
pale photograph is, I am told, doing a fine business among a population not blessed with a
great deal of sanyre aznl. Lima society is probably the most peculiar of all in Castilian America,
as Lima was, probably, originally the centre of the greatest pomp and magnificence during the
Spanish rule, of any part of "the Indies/'' "Instead of meeting at balls, concerts, lertuHas (or
parties), as in Chili, the women associate very little with one another. There are few dances,
very little music, and except at the bull-fights and the play, and sometimes in the country, the
ladies seldom assemble together. But they are all extremely regular in their attendance upon
mass; indeed, the women in these countries form the congregation almost exclusively. At the
houses where we called in the morning, we usually found the ladies dressed very gaily to receive
visitors — that is, male visitors, for we seldom met any but the ladies of the house on these
occasions. In the evening, the same thing generally takes place ; and our chance of meeting
the gentlemen of the house, had we wished it, was always least at their own home. In the
cool part of the day, for about an hour and a half before sunset, the ladies walk abroad, dressed
in a manner, so far as I know, unique, and certainly highly characteristic of the spot. This
dress consists of two parts, one called the saya, the other the mania. The first is a petticoat
made to fit so tightly that, being at the same time quite elastic, the form of the limbs is
rendered distinctly visible. The mania (or cloak) is also a petticoat, but instead of hanging
about the heels, as all honest petticoats oug-ht to do, it is drawn over the head, breast, and face ;
nd is kept so close by the hands, which it also conceals, that no part of the body, except one
ye, and sometimes only a small portion of one eye, is perceptible. A rich-coloured handker-
chief or a silk band and tassel are frequently tied round the waist, and hang nearly to the
ground in front. A rosary, also, made of beads of ebony, with a small gold cross, is often
'astened to the girdle, a little on one side, though in general it is also suspended from the neck,
he effect of the whole is exceedingly striking; but whether its gracefulness — for with the fine
gure of the Lima women and their beautiful style of walking this dress is eminently graceful
316
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
— be sufficient to compensate for its indelicacy to a European eye., will depend much upon the
stranger's tastes and his habits of judging of what he sees in foreign countries. To us, v/V>
took all things as we found them, the say a and the mania afforded much amusement, and
LIMEXO "SWELL."
sometimes not a little vexation. It happened occasionally that we were spoken to in the street
by ladies, who appeared to know us well, but whom we could not discover, till some apparently
trivial remark in company long afterwards betrayed the Tapadas, as they called themselves.
Ladies of the first rank indulge in this amusement, and will wear the meanest say a or stoop to
HISPATSTO-AMERICAN LIFE: THE SAYA AND THE MANTA.
.317
any contrivance to effect a thorough disguise. I myself knew two young ladies who completely
deceived their brother and me, though we were aware of their fondness for such pranks, and I
had even some suspicions of them at the very moment. Their superior dexterity, however, was
LIMENA BELLE.
more than a match for his discernment or my suspicions, and so completely did they deceive
our eyes and mislead our thoughts, that we could scarcely believe our senses, when they at length
chose to discover themselves."
It is now about sixty years since Basil Hall wrote this description, and with the exception
318 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of the fact that the fair Limenas are now rather more fond of French millinery than in his day,
yet the description generally holds good of female society in the city which has been styled "the
heaven of women, the purgatory of men, and the hell of jackasses." The saya and mania still as
before hold sway to the annoyance of husbands, who sometimes bargain before marriage that they
are to be laid aside. The promise, however, if given, is often broken, and the morality of " the
City of Kings," at no time very high, is not thereby a gainer in any respect. The mania and saya
no man dare profane by his touch. He may follow if he likes the muffled-up figure, but woe to
the rash wight who dares to pull aside the mania of a gay intriguante, even though she should be
his own wife. The gallant crowd would assuredly resent the affront on the fair Limenas, and
he would be the laughing-stock of all his acquaintances. If the Lima lady is remarkable, the
Lima male " swell " is a wondrous creature to behold. We could never think of describing him ;
our artist will sketch him (p. 316) in all his grandeur of cloak, long hair, and general tout-ensemble
— a widely different being from his forefather, the swarthy mail-clad conquistador of Pizarro, A.D.
1534-.* Yet the Spanish- American has many good qualities. He is polite as any gentleman of
Castile, and hospitable far beyond his inhospitable ancestors of Old Spain. Passing by an open
door in a Spanish-American village, especially In Central America, you have only to peep in at
the snug family party swinging in hammocks. You bow and say lonos dios, or nuchos, as the
case may be, and without a thought of your having infringed any rule of etiquette, you can
walk in, exchange cigarettes, and soon be on terms the intimacy of which would require at least
a year, and in some places a good many years, to cultivate to the same extent in Europe. The
olive black-eyed seiioritas at first modestly look down, but soon they lose their reserve and laugh
merrily at the broken Spanish of seiiores los estrangeros Ingleses. Most likely they will present
you with a flower at parting — a gift valueless in itself, but as a courteous expression of kindly
good-will exceedingly appropriate. The Spaniards are of all the races of Europe the most cere-
monious— absurdly ceremonious, yet Spanish- America is one of the pleasantest countries for a
nicely-mannered. Englishman to pass a short time in ; when he is longer there the sleepiness
of the country is apt to affect him as the novelty wears off. In that country a man's house is
scarcely his own. A family may be at dinner, when a loud-talking, impudent fellow will enter,
nod all round, and, seating himself unceremoniously at a vacant corner of the table, will pull out
a handful of charque (or jerked beef) and a great lump of cheese. The beef he will send out to
be pounded between two stones in the road, and while the meat is undergoing this primitive-
cookery, he will hand round the cheese with the air of a man at his own table. He is only
exercising the privileges of all travellers, to associate with and assist each other on the road
without regard to distinction or rank. If you hinted that he was not a caballero of the purest
Castilian water, the likelihood is that with the most " stately Spanish air " he would introduce-
to you, via your intercostal muscles, that glittering knife of his which he carries in his prunella
leather leggiugs. It is a pleasant country, but it has its drawbacks. Like Hudibras, we must
say in reference to this matter of edged lethal weapons —
" Ay mo ! what troubles do environ The man that meddles with cold iron."
Yet such a life suits the people infinitely better than the more active existence of the
• " Illustrated Travels," Part XXVIII. ; Gallenga : " South America" (1881) ; Duffield : " Peru " (1877) ; Squier :
"Peru" (1877); Spix u. Jlartius: " Beitrage zur Ethnographic Amerikas" (1867); D'Orbigny: " L'Homme
Americain" (1839); Burton: " Paraguay " (1870) ; &c.
HISPANO- AMERICAN LIFE: ITS PLEASURES; VENAL RULERS. 319
English-speaking race. It had its charms even in Anglo-Saxon eyes, as the writer ought to
be the last man to deny. In California, for instance — California of days gone by, before a
Philistinish race overspread it, eating up every green thing, biped or otherwise — the people
led a simple life, but a quiet, peaceful, and pleasant one. There was a good deal of sleepy ease
and barbaric plenty ; not a little guitar twanging, and a vast amount of fiddling and dancing.
'There was the grizzly bear to be hunted by the bold caltallero ; the buried fowl to be plucked
out of the sand on the many feast days, in honour of a favoured seiiorita ; and the royal elk to
be hamstrung by the tuna in the joyous chase. Then there was the yearly rodeos, when the
swift vaqucros (or cattle-herds) gathered in the stock — which the rancher o& enumerated by
thousands — to be separated from that of their neighbours, when
" Yearly down the hillside sweeping, came the stately cavalcade
Bringing revel to vaqu-ero, joy and comfort to each maid ;
Bringing days of formal visit, social feast and rustic sport,
Of bull-baiting on the plaza, of love-making in the court.''
When the Spanish rancher o remembers the days of old when he was somebody, he sighs —
curses the gringos, and would go to war with them if he thought there was the remotest
chance of winning.
I might have spoken of Mexico, and the people of the Tlerra Caliente, in this brief
sketch of Spanish -America, but I should have been simply going over the same ground
again. With, perhaps, the exception of Chili, they are all much the same. In Mexico are
the same pleasant people, probably a trifle more hopelessly miscegenated than in South America,
and with a rather larger percentage of irreclaimable scoundrels, whose countenances, as they
walked in the chain-gangs in Acapulco, were ever to me a physiognomical study. Official
corruption, and want of all public spirit, are even more apparent. A man who had the honour
of knowing General Santa Anna, Liberator, Dictator (and more) of Mexico, may perhaps
speak with knowledge on such a subject. A Mexican colonel is in the habit of drawing
stores for a battalion — no matter how small may be his ragamuffin following ; it is the
•custom of the country — has been, is, and will be to the end of Mexico, which is not far
off. Her custom-house officers are notoriously open to bribes, and the duties are so enormously
high that no merchant paying them can thrive. The result is that they compromise, by
not paying them, but make arrangements with the officials of the government. An officer
will sell the stores in his charge, and regard the proceeds as perquisites of office. A mining
superintendent was accosted in the street by an officer with whom he was intimately acquainted,
and upbraided with ingratitude and unfriendliness. The man was astonished, and begged to
know wherein it lay. " Why, in not buying your powder from me. I have plenty in the
arsenal, when a friend wants to buy; I would have sold it to you at half price." And the
soldier walked off, leaving the mining superintendent under the belief that in Mexico there
were more things than had been dreamt of even in his philosophy. A governor of a place on
the coast actually offered to sell to the master of a merchant ship the brass guns of the
fortress which he commanded. But why multiply examples ? We have said enough to show
that the result of blood mixture in Spanish America is not more favourable than an ethnologist
would suppose it would be, or than the latest observer — Signor Gallenga — declares it is.
320 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
We have concluded what we can find room for regarding- the aborigines of America, and
that race which first displaced them from their fair heritage. Much more could have been
said in regard to them, but to obtain sufficient space for the races yet to be described we
must be brief, even though we have spent on them more than we can in proportion devote
to the other divisions of the human family. The American races are, however, peculiar and
interesting in many respects. On their borders are crowding great civilised nations, and even
yet many of the tribes retain their pristine freedom. Nearly every footbreadth of their land
is fit for the white man's occupation in one way or another, and it is only a question of time
when the aborigines of this great continent shall become extinct. For the writer of these
pages they have an interest so keen that he may be excused if he has dwelt at some length
upon them, for among them some of the brightest and earliest years of his life were spent,
and with them is associated many things of fair and good report — days of freedom and
independence — mingled with anxieties and dangers, which only brought out the joys in
bolder relief. He lived and travelled amongst them in friendship and peace, when others were
less fortunate ; and though his connection with them was not always one of quietude, yet he
hopes that Yakapis is still remembered in many a wigwam of the Western land now so
strangely revolutionised since he first penetrated so many of its silent seas of forest.
CA33ELL, PETTEII, G.VLWN & Co., BELLE SAUV.VCZ TFor.K.;, LO:TD?S, E.C.
•
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
THE
PEOPLES OF THE WORLD:
KEING
A Popular Description of the Characteristics, Condition, and Customs
of the Human Family.
BY
EGBERT BROWN, M.A., PH.D., F.L.S., F.R.G.S.,
AUTHOR OF " THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD," ETC. ETC.
Jliustratefcu
CAS SELL, FETTER, GALPIN & Co.
LONDON, PARIS & NEW YORK.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE OCEANIC GROUP : THEIR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION ; ORIGIN ; LANGUAGES, ETC.
CHAPTER II.
THE POLYNESIANS: THEIR ISLANDS; THEIR CUSTOMS; THEIR WOMEN; THE AREOI SOCIETY, ETC 11
CHAPTER III.
THE POLYNESIANS: THEIR WAR CUSTOMS; RITES CONNECTED WITH WARFARE 51
CHAPTER IV.
THE POLYNESIANS : THEIR MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION . . .
59
CHAPTER V.
THE PAPUANS : THEIR RANGE ; CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITS
78
CHAPTER VI.
AUSTRALIANS, TASMANIANS, AND OTHER PAPUAN RACES ...
106
CHAPTER VII.
THE MALAY RACES : THEIR RANGE ; CIVILISED MALAYS ; FORMOSANS ; MALAGASY
127
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AFRICAN STOCK; PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION; ARAMAEANS; ABYSSINIANS ... ... ... ... ... 156
CHAPTER IX.
THE EGYPTIANS, BERBERS, AND NILOTIC PEOPLE; THEIR ORIGIN, CONDITION, AND CUSTOMS 196
CHAPTER X.
THE KAFFIRS, AND ALLIED TRIBES 224
CHAPTER XI.
IIOTTKNTOTS, BUSHMEN, AND ALLIED TRIBES: THEIR ORIGIN AND RANGE ... 275
CHAPTER XII.
THE NEGRO AND NEGROID RACES ; GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
294
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
A Tribal Fight on the River of the Ponerihouens
(New Caledonia) ... ... ... Frontispiece
Papuans of Huniboldt's Bay (New Guinea) Alarmed
at the Steam Launch of the Challenger ... 4
Papuan Native of New Guinea ... To face page 5
Native of the Admiralty Isles (Papuan) ... ... 5
Hova Spies of the Queen of Madagascar (Malagasy) 9
Maori Chief " Heki " and Wife, from the Bay of
Islands, New Zealand ... ... ... ... 12
View on the Shores of Tahiti 16
A Valley in the Interior of Tahiti 17
The " Flax Plant " of New Zealand 19
Young Women of Tahiti 20
Engraved Chests of the Maoris of New Zealand.
(After Cook) 21
Plan of a Great Canoe, or " Outrigger," of Archi-
pelago of Santa Cruz. (After Labillardiere)... 24
Canoe of the Bay of Vanikoro, Santa Cruz ... 25
View of the Isle of Tahiti, with Native Canoes ... 28
Tools and Ornaments of the Aborigines of the
Marquesas Islands. (After Dumont D' Urn lie) 32
Arms and other Implements of the Tahitians ... 33
A Young Tahitian Male. (After Cook) ... ... 36
A Young Tahitian Female. (After Cook) ... 36
Male and Female of the Island of Tanna, New
Hebrides. (After Cook) 37
Bay of Kealakeakua at Owhyhee, or Hawaii
(Hawaiian or Sandwich Isles), where Cook
was Killed 40
View of a Valley in the Isle of Huahine (Georgian
Islands) ... ... ... ... ... ... 41
Natives of Santa Cruz (Papuans), showing the
Head-dress ... ... ... ... ... 44
New Zealander being Tattooed ... ... ... 45
Tattooed Savage of the Marquesan Islands ... 48
Specimens of Marquesan Tattooing ... ... 49
Interior of a New Zealand " Pah " 52
Weapons of the New Zealanders. (After Cook)... 53
Maori War-Dance, New Zealand ... ... ... 57
" Pah," or Fort, New Zealand. (After Cook) ... 60
of a God and Altar at Huahine, Georgian
Islands. (After Cook) 64
iman Sacrifices at Tahiti. (After Cook) ... 65
Corpse and " Corpse- Pray ing Priest" at the
Funeral of a Chief. (After Cook) 68
Ancient Tomb at Matavai, Tahiti. (After Dumont
£' Urville) 69
Otoo, King of Tahiti. (After Cook) 72
Potaton, a Chief of Tahiti in Cook's Day... ... 73
A Native of the Sandwich Islands... ... ... 76
Native Fruit-Sellers of New Caledonia (Papuans) 81
Weapons and Ornaments, New Caledonia... ... 84
The " Piiou-Pilou " Dance of New Caledonia
To face page 85
Kanak (New Caledonian) Fishing from a Raft ... 85
Modes of Dressing the Hair Practised by the
Inhabitants of New Guinea ... ... ... 88
House of a Native Chief, New Caledonia, and
Group of Natives (Papuans) ... To face page 89
Alfuros of Gilolo, one of the Molucca Islands ... 89
Double Canoe of a New Caledonian Chief ... 92
Young New Caledonians ... ... ... ... 93
New Caledonian Flute-Player ... ... ... 97
The Village of Aiambori, New Guinea ... ... 100
New Caledonians of the South- West Coast ... 101
Through the Mangroves, New Caledonia ... ... 104
Kangaroos at Home : An Australian Scene ... 105
" Representative " Australians, New South
Wales 108
Australians of Victoria .. ... ... ... 109
Natives at the " Aboriginal Station," or Reserve
of Coranderrk, near Healesville, Victoria ... 113
A South Australian ... ... ... ... ... 116
Encampment of Australians ... ... ... 117
The Nardoo Plant (Marsilea macropus) ... ... 120
Squatters' Station on the Darling Downs, New
South Wales 121
Malay Opium-Smokers ... ... ... ... 128
Bamboo Bridge in Borneo ... ... ... ... 129
A Woman of the Isle of Rotti, West of Timor
(Mixed Race, with much of the Hindoo Type) 132
Dyak Women of Borneo ... ... ... ... 133
A Dyak Forge, Borneo ... ... ... ... 136
Dyak Warrior from the Island of Borneo (Malay)
To face page 137
A River Scene in Borneo ... ... ... ... 137
Malay Chief. (After a Dutch Photograph] ... 140
The Sultan of Soloo (Malay) 141
The Sultan of Jokkjokkarta, Java (Malay) ... 144
The Sultana of Jokkjokkarta and her Son ... 145
Vlll
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
PAGE
A Javanese Palanquin ... ... ... ... 148
The Chieftainess of Mohilla, one of the Comoro
Islands 149
Rice Storehouses and Pigeon Cots in Madagascar 152
Natives of Madagascar Pounding Rice 153
Jews of Babylon ... ... ... ... ... 157
Bedouin of Sinai ... ... ... ... ... 160
Arabs Bringing Skins to Market ... To face page 161
Bedouin of Sinai 161
Hamran Arabs Capturing Hippopotamus 164
An Arab Fishing-boat on the Red Sea (Bahr el
Ahmar) ... ... ... ... ' ... ... 165
Arabian Camel and Driver 169
Abyssinian Girls ... ... ... ... ... 172
Abyssinian Horse-Soldier ... ... ... ... 173
Abyssinian Foot-Soldier ... ... 176
Abyssinian Fusileer ... ... ... 177
River Berhan, Abyssinia ... ... ... ... 180
Abyssinian Priest and Monk ... ... ... 181
Boat of Bullock's-Hide, Abyssinia ... ... ... 184
The Late Prince Alamayu, Youngest Son of
Theodore, formerly Emperor of Abyssinia
(1868) 185
Abyssinian Tailor ... ... ... 188
The Late Emperor Theodore giving an Audience 189
Crocodile-Hunting by the Hamran Arabs in an
Abyssinian Tributary of the Nile ... ... 192
An Abyssinian ... ... ... ... ... 193
Egyptian Fellah Girl with Pigeons 197
Egyptian Archway with Hieroglyphics (Temple
of Kranah) ... 200
Egyptian Lady 201
Fellah (Arab) Donkey Boy 204
A Berber Family Crossing a Ford : A Scene in
Algeria ... ... ... ... To face page 205
Fellah (Arab) Woman and Children 205
Kabyle Woman 208
The Chief of the Lira Tribe. (After Baker) ... 209
Girl of the Mittoo Tribe, Upper White Nile
Tributaries 212
Man and Women of the Nuehr Tribe on the
White Nile 213
Joctian, Chief of the Nuehr Tribe. (After Baker) 216
Takrown (Nubian) Soldier ... ... ... ... 217
The First Cataract of the Nile, Assouan 221
Female Slave of the Soudan 224
Baautos, from Basutoland, South Africa
To face page 225 /
Zulu Chief 225
PAGE
Zulu Chief in Full Dress 229
Hottentot "Kraal" 232
Kaffir Family 233
Camp of Kaffirs 236
Bushman Hunting Ostriches ... ... ... 237
Zulu " Doctor " 240
Kaffir Servants in European Dress... ... ... 241
Cape Bullock- Waggon ... ... ... ... 244
Kaffir Seer Engaged in Divination ... ... 245
Dr. Moffat's Kaffir Attendants 248
A Kaffir Warrior 249
Zulu "Prophet" 252
Zulu Taking Shelter from a Hailstorm ... ... 256
Dabulamanzi, Cetewayo's Brother and Leader of
the Zulus at Insandlwhana and Ginghilovo
To face page 261
The " Hottentot Venus " 257
Kaffir Huts 260
Zulu Blacksmith Forging an Assegai ... ... 261
Zulu Fop — showing Mode of Dressing the Hair... 264
Zulu Women at their Toilette 265
A Night Surprise in the Kalahari Desert... ... 268
The Zulu Ceremony of " Ukuncinsa," in which
the Chief Exhorts his Men before Battle ... 269
Zulu Women Selling Pumpkins ... ... ... 272
Camp of Bushmen ... ... ... ... ... 273
Zulu Girls in Dancing Dress ... ... ... 27G
A Zulu Lad 277
Zulu Kraals under Zwart Kop, near Pietermaritz-
burg 280
A Zulu Belle 281
Zulu Dandy, showing a Mode of Dressing the Hair 289
Interior of a Zulu Kraal on the Tugela River ... 292
Zulu Chief, showing Head-dress 293
Free Town, Sierra Leone ... ... ... ... 296
Forest of Fan -leaved Palms in the Western
Soudan... ... ... ... To face page 297
Native Types of Futa-Jallon, near the Head
Waters of the Senegal and Gambia Rivers ... 297
Native Negro Huts and Baobab Tree at Kouround-
ingkoto, Western Soudan ... ... ... 300
Krumen of West Africa ... ... ... ... 301
A Griot, or " Holy Man " of Senegambia ... 304
Talibe in War Dress (Senegambia)
Typical Tribes of the North-West Coast of Africa 309
Young Girl of Soninke ... ... ... ... 312
Chief of the Somonos of Yamina ...
Joloff Marabout, or Priest from Senegal 316
Girl of Makhana, Upper Senegal ... ... ••• ;;!^
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
THE OCEANIC GROUP: THEIR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION; ORIGIN; LANGUAGES, ETC.
AILING westward from the great American Continent, with its numerous tribes,
we come to a group of islands situated in mid ocean ; and with little interval
these islands continue, singly, in twos and threes, or in groups, until we approach
the Asiatic shore, and even the desolate Antarctic regions, or the opposite coast
of Africa. Widely separated as these islands are from one another, their inha-
bitants have yet much in common, and, accordingly, for convenience sake,
they may be styled, distinctively, " the Oceanic group " of peoples. Their language is
agglutinate rather than monosyllabic (Vol. I., p. 10), and they are — nine hundred and
ninety out of a thousand — islanders. Their distribution is most remarkable. Take, for
instance, the peninsula of Malacca. Geographically, it is a continuation of Siam; but
ethnologically it is very different, viz., Malayan, or, in other words, the people belong to
the Oceanic group. Indeed, with the exception of a small patch of country on the coast
of Cambodia, this is the only continental portion of the " Oceanians " which belongs to
Asia. When we cross over to Madagascar, we find that the people of that island (p. 9),
though so near to the Mozambique shores of Africa, are not allied to the negroes, but to
the Malays, who might, however, have displaced an aboriginal race, the ruling class, or
Hovas, being evidently different from the other tribes of the island. In like manner, Easter
Island, now inhabited by Polynesians, bears evidence, in its rude stone monuments, of
having been the home of another race anterior to the arrival of the one which now occupies
it.* New Zealand, again, is not the home of Tasmanians and Australians, but of a vastly
superior race, closely allied in language, customs, and appearance to those of the Sandwich
slands, Tahiti, and neighbouring groups. When we examine the endless archipelagos of
le Pacific, the problem of races becomes singularly complex. Black, woolly-headed, negro-
)oking people, live in close proximity to straight-haired, brown-skinned, or even almost
lir-eomplexioned races, speaking totally different tongues. Again, while the straight-haired
people, though different in different islands, are evidently all of one common origin, the
jlack ones are very varied, and speak numerous tongues, showing that they had lived long
* These monuments are figured in " Countries of the World," Vol. IV., p. 44, and Plate 32.
41
2 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
apart, and in the localities they now occupy, while the strangers who possess the other islands
came from a part of the world where they had lived in unison until a comparatively recent
date, and thus never had time for their language to get broken up into many very distinct
dialects. There has no doubt been a mixture of races in many places. For instance, Captain
Markham* notes that in the New Hebrides the handsome brown races dovetail among the
black ones. Several islands which, according to the maps, sketching in broad outline the
distribution of the Pacific nationalities, are assigned to the black (or Papuan) people, are
really inhabited by the brown (or Polynesian) races. Cherry Island is one example, Tecopia
is another, and the Duff Isles are a third instance. Lom-lom, if not all of the Swallow
Islands, is, on the other hand, Papuan, while the late Bishop Patteson describes the inhabitants
of Nukapu as speaking a dialect of the Maori language, and, therefore, in tongue at least allied
to the New Zealauders, who are Polynesians. Yet people living so closely together are
inveterate enemies, and are as different as light is from darkness. However, without vouching
for its accuracy in minute details, it may be said in general terms that the AVestern
Islands, from the east end of New Guinea and Australia eastward, including the Fijis,
are the home of the nearly black, frizzled-haired tribes, while all the eastern islands,
including New Zealand, are inhabited by a large, brown, straight-haired people. Finally,
there is a third group, closely allied to, but by most writers treated as distinct from, the
latter, who people the western islands north of the Equator. The first group are the
Papuans,"!" or Melanesians, which expresses their complexion, while the more common term
takes cognisance of their woolly hair. The second is variously termed Polynesians, Malay -
Polynesians, Sawaiori, or Mahori ; while the third group are called Micronesians, or Tarapon.J
In many respects they are so like the Polynesians proper that for the sake of convenience
we shall describe in the ensuing chapters the habits of the two groups under that general
heading.
The physiognomy of the Papuans is unmistakable, though it varies in different regions
of Papua. On some of the islands the men collect their hair into small bunches, and
" carefully bind each bunch round with fine vegetable fibre, from the roots up to within
two inches from the head," and all of the race have hair more or less frizzly. In other
physical features these " Oceanic negroes " approximate to the African stock. Their lips
are usually thick (p. 5), and the nose, though often arched and high, broad and coarse.
Their stature is usually low, unless when they have mixed with other races ; and the projecting
jaws, and thin limbs, point to a race intellectually poor and physically weak. Their moral
characteristics are cruelty, bloodthirstiness, and inveterate cannibalism. Their isolation
has broken them up into a number of tribes, none of them individually powerful, and
too jealous of each other to unite for any common enterprise. Mr. Whitmee tells us that
in two valleys of the same island two Papuan tribes will sometimes live for ages without
having the slightest intercourse with each other, except during their frequent treacherous
wars. Women hold humble rank among them. Arts they have few; and in commercial
aptitude and domestic polity they cannot be compared with the intellectual Polynesians.
* Journal of t he Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XLII., j>. 242 ; and " The Cruise of the Rosario " (1873).
t Paptnvah, friz/led, woolly-headed (Malay).
% Whitmee : "Ethnological Map of Polynesia" (1873) ; Cooper : " Coral Islands," vol. i., pp. 1—8.
THE OCEANIC GROUP: PAPUAN AND POLYNESIAN CHARACTERISTICS. S
The head of the Polynesian is brachycephalic, or short and broad; that of the Papuan
dolichocephalic, or long (Vol. I., p. 7). The facial angle of the Papuan is more obtuse, i.e.,
indicative of a lower grade of intellectual development than that x>f the Polynesian. The
Polynesian is undemonstrative, and has some notion of gratitude ; the Papuan is an impetuous,
noisy, merry, loud-laughing savage, with little idea of the meaning of gratitude or sym-
pathy. Wherever the Polynesian is found, from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand,
he speaks a language pretty much the same. For instance, in Samoa a man is Tangata, in
New Zealand, Tangata, in the Friendly Islands Tangata, and in the Sandwich Islands Kanaka,
the name by which the people of that group are generally known. In like manner Faftne
and Wahine are the words for a woman in the respective groups mentioned. On the other
hand, the Papuan dialects are very numerous, and contain very few words traceable to the
Polynesian.* Mr. "Whitmee points out that the chief characteristic of the Papuan language is
that consonants are freely used, and that many of the syllables are closed. Except in Fiji, there
is no difference between the definite and indefinite article, and nouns are curiously divided
into two classes, one of which takes a pronominal affix, while the other never takes an affix,
the first division being those which are connected with a person, as the parts of his body,
&c. For example, in Fijian the word Inve means either a son or a daughter, one's child,
and it takes the possessive pronoun before it ; as nona ngonc, his child — i.e., his to look after
or bring up. " Gender is only sexual. Many words are used indiscriminately as nouns,
adjectives, or verbs, without change, but sometimes a noun is indicated by its termination.
In most of the languages there are no changes in nouns to form the plural, but a numeral
indicates number. Case is shown by particles which precede the nouns. Adjectives follow
their substantives. Pronouns are numerous, and the personal pronoun includes four numbers,
singular, dual, trinal, and general plural, also exclusive and inclusive. Almost any word may
be made into a verb by using it with the verbal particles. The difference in these particles
in the various languages is very great. In the verbs there are causative, intensive, fre-
quentative, and reciprocal forms." New Guinea may be regarded as the home of the
Japuans. From this centre they have spread over New Ireland, Admiralty Isles, New
Iritain, the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, the New Hebrides, the Loyalty Islands, New
Caledonia, and the Fiji group, and may be roughly divided, according to the islands they
occupy, into an eastern and a western group. (Plate 11, and pp. 4, 5.)
The Polynesians — to use the familiar term — are markedly different from the Papuans,
though in a few places where the}' have come in contact there is a slight intermixture of
the two races. As a rule, they are tall, well-proportioned, and, unless when much exposed
to the sun, brown rather than black. Their hair, instead of being frizzly, is straight,
or wavy, with an inclination to curl. Their features are tolerably regular, the eyes blaek and
glistening, lips rather thicker than those of European races, foreheads moderately high,
but rather narrow, and noses short and somewhat broad at the base (pp. 12, 20). They
are a polite, amiable race, and women amongst them occupy a place scarcely inferior to
that of men. For instance, in the Sandwich and other islands, rank descends, not through
the males, but through the females, and female chieftains are numerous. Queen Emma,
at the time when Lunalilo and David Kalakaua were elected kings, was a favourite candidate
* Anderson : " Fiji and New Caledonia " (1880), p. 252.
4 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
for the Hawaiian throne, and women still govern some of the islands. The Polynesians
are, moreover, very tenacious of rank and hereditary titles, and in addressing people of position
a different set of phrases must be used from those employed in speaking to the vulgar
herd. In Hawaii a chief's dog is, for example, called by a different name from the same
quadruped belonging to a common man ; and in Samoa there are four different words ap-
propriated to four grades of people — sa*i} for a member of the proletariat; malm mat, for
a person of some consequence; susu mai, for a titled chief; and ajlo mai, for a member of
the royal family.* The Polynesians have an elaborate code of land laws, and hold property
PAPUANS OF HUMBOLDT'S BAY (NEW GUINEA) ALARMED AT THE STEAM LAUNCH OF THE CHALLENGER.
or. tenures often as intricately minute, and quite as reasonable, as those prevailing among
the most highly civilised nations. Until the whites taught them the use of letters, they
were, of course, without literature. But in place of this, all of the islanders possessed elaborate
traditions, in prose and poetry, which preserved their history and religion with the greatest
accuracy through many centuries. Mentally, the Polynesians are in most respects superior
to other savage races. They have a decidedly good opinion of themselves, are religious, but
not moral, and have proved to be more easily influenced by Christianity than almost
any other people with whom the missionaries have come in contact, so that few of them,
nominally at least, retain their primitive pagan faith. The Polynesian islands proper may be
considered New Zealand, the Kermadecs, Easter Island, Tonga (or Friendly Islands), Samoa
* Cooper : lib. cit., vol. i. p. 4.
\
vV-
PAPUAN NATIVE OF NEW GUINEA.
11
THE OCEANIC GROUP: LANGUAGES; MICRONESIANS. 5
(or Navigator Islands),, Phoenix Islands,, Cook Islands, Society Islands, Austral Islands,
Marquesas and Tuaraotu Groups, the Hawaiian, or Sandwich Islands, and a few of the Papuan
group, where — e.g., in New Guinea (p. 4) and the New Hebrides — they have managed either
to coalesce with the natives, or to inosculate among the blacker race. In the Polynesian
tongue, with one exception, all the sounds found in them may be expressed by the Roman
letters, with their ordinary values. The exception pointed out by Mr. Whitmee is the sound
which he calls a break — " a kind of pause in the breath, which is between an aspirate and a k"
NATIVE OF THE ADMIKALTY ISLES (PAPUAN).
This sound is usually represented by an inverted comma, as in Hawai'i, if properly written.
Every syllable is open, and so soft is the tongue that some words are entirely made up of vowels.
The people known as Micronesians, or Tarapons, are found in the Gilbert or Kingsmill
Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands, and the Marianne, or Ladrone group,
in the western portion of Polynesia, north of the Equator, their home being chiefly atoll
or lagoon islands. In colour and general appearance they resemble the people just described,
but, as a rule, they are smaller and less robust. But, unlike the Polynesians, the Micronesians
differ considerably in different islands. Mr. Cooper — who has written one of the latest and
best general accounts of the Pacific coral islands — notes that the natives of the Carolines are
larger and finer men than those of the Gilbert group, and are yellower in colour. There are
C THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
good grounds for believing that the Micronesians are a mixed race, in many respects resembling-
more the Malays than the races to whom they are akin in manners and customs. Their
language — to draw again on Mr. "VVhitmee's admirable account of Polynesian linguistics —
is distinguished by the use of more consonants than that of the people last described, and
in some points of construction resembles the Papuan. In some of the dialects there is
no true article; gender is sexual only, and number in the noun is either gathered from
the requirements of the sense, or is marked by pronominal words or numerals.* And here,
before leaving the subject of languages, which it is beside the object of this work to
discuss, except in the briefest manner, and then only as bearing on the classification of the tribes
described, it may be again remarked how numerous are the tongues spoken in the Papuan
islands compared with those in use in the Polynesian groups. The Fijians on the sixty
islands of the archipelago speak closely-allied dialects, mixed with Polynesian words, learned
either from the Tongans, with whom they have come in contact by conquest, or owing to
some earlier and now unknown miscegenation. But in New Caledonia, Mr. Anderson, who
has written so valuable an account of these islands, notes that in each day's march a fresh
vocabulary was required to make himself understood. In the little volcanic island of Tanna,
in the New Hebrides, at least six languages, all mutually unintelligible, are spoken.f In
like manner the Polynesians closely resemble each other. But there is never any difficulty
for any one very moderately acquainted with the Papuan race to decide at a glance whether
a particular " boy " among a crowd of labourers on a Fiji plantation has been imported
from the Solomon Islands, from Ambrym, Mallicollo, Tanna, Api, or any other of the
New Hebrides group. The shade of colour, the shape of the head, the character of the
hair, and the physical build, are all so distinct that they mark races of this widespread and
ancient family of mankind.
The Malays and Australians, whom we have included as the other members of the
Oceanic group, need not be further alluded to in this place, as they will be sufficiently described
in subsequent chapters. Neither need we venture into the wide field of speculation regarding
the origin of the Polynesians and Papuans, over which alluring subject such floods of ink
have been shed. A common belief among ethnographers — and there is nothing serious to be
said against it — is, that all the brown Oceanic people, including the Malagasy of Madagascar,
who are undoubtedly Malays, are of common origin, and that the country from which they
poured forth to overrun the Papuan and other islands, inhabited and vacant, was the region of
the Indian Archipelago. Doubtless, there have been several successive waves of emigration, and
it is not at all impossible, as ingeniously argued by D'Urville, and latterly by Mr. Anderson,
that the migration from island to island took place over land now submerged, though we
may dismiss, as altogether out of unison with geological and physico-geographical facts, the
hypothesis of the Africans having peopled the Papuan islands, by roaming over a lost continent
at one time extending between these two widely dissevered parts of the world. J It is also
* For a fairly complete hibliogruphy of Papuan Island tongues, see Cooper: lib. eit., vol. ii., pp. 334 — 353;
Anderson: lib. cit., pp. 250—288.
t (Jabelcntz : "Die Melaneisehen Sprachen nach ihron Grammatischcn Bu'i und Polyneisehen Sprachcn"
(18GO— 1873).
J The whole sul»jcct is fully discussed hy Fomnndcr in his work on the " Origin of the Hawaiians " (1870 — 75) :
l>y .Tarvis in " History of the Sandwich Islands" (1873) ; and in other works 01 Polynesia.
THE OCEANIC GltOUr: ORIGIN; ALTERED CONDITION IN MODERN TIMES. 7
not improbable that on many of the Polynesian islands, where there is at present no sign
-of unmixed Papuans, an extinct aboriginal people existed when the Polynesians arrived, or
had left before they landed. At Ponape, in the Caroline group, in the Marianne Islands,
and at Maiden Island, are wonderful ruins, the nature of which is still a mystery, while
the extraordinary sculptures of Easter Island, already referred to, attest the long residence
•on this isolated spot of a race very different from the one which now occupies it. It is even
affirmed that on Paumotu, the most south-easterly of the Pacific Islands, is spoken a language
which seems to be different from any other in the world. Yet, in the course of half a century,
the Polynesians and Papuans have altered more strangely than they did in as many previous
centuries. Scarcely one of the islands has not been reached by the missionary and civilisation
of some kind. The Fijis constitute an English colony, New Caledonia is a French penal
settlement, Tahiti has been formally annexed by France after having been long a Protectorate
of that country, the Sandwich Islands is one of the most civilised of monarchies, and the
•sovereigns of Tonga and Samoa (who appear in the " Almanach de Gotha "}, are so thoroughly
inoculated with advanced ideas of their kingly rank, that the former potentate considered it
proper, on the outbreak of the Franco-German war, to issue a proclamation of " strict
neutrality." It must, therefore, necessarily follow that in the ensuing pages we shall describe
manners and customs which once existed, or which are now rapidly disappearing. That the
Polynesians have been and are a nation of reamers we know.* Indeed, all the Oceanic
people seem to have been great navigators, as they are at the present day, moving about
from island to island, occasionally blown by the winds or by storms to the distant groups
which they inhabit, there either to miscegenate with the aborigines or dispossess them, or,
when the islands were uninhabited, to colonise them in due course, until in time their
appearance and habits get somewhat altered from those of the mother country whence
they came. The Maoris of New Zealand migrated from a country known in their tradi-
tions as Hawaiki, a name which occurs in the Hervey and Marquesas Islands legends also,
and means " the region below." Probably in this case it may be identified with Sawai,
in Samoa, 1,000 miles away, whence they brought the sweet potato, the taro, and the yam,
or with Raratonga, as Sir George Grey argues. In New Guinea Moresby found an isolated
Polynesian colony, and, according to De Rochas, the Polynesian element of the Loyalty
Islands is due to an emigration passing, in 1770, from Wall's Island to New Caledonia.
If we are to accept the data to which various students of Polynesian mythology attach
importance, the Tongas arrived at Marquesas Island about the year 417 of our era, the
Tahitians in their country about 701, while Raratonga was colonised about 1207, and the
Gambler Islands in 1270. The Maori chiefs have preserved their genealogy with such care,
that from the verbal narrations of the " Arepos," or Keepers of the Archives, Sir George-
Grey was able to fix the date of the migration to New Zealand as happening about 1480.
We have seen that the great group of people which we have included under the
Oceanic group are in complexion either black or brown. The black division has frizzly hair,
and appears to have been the first to spread from the mainland, or elsewhere, over these
islands, while the brown or higher race seems to have come afterwards as conquerors : for,
* Numerous facts bearing on this subject have been accumulated by Quatrefages, in his treatise on the
Polynesians and their migrations, and in his lectures on the " Human Species," pp. 185 — 198.
8 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
wherever we find the black and the brown races of Oceanica together, we are sure to find the
former occupying the interior, to which they have been driven by the more powerful or war-
like brown people. This is the case, for example, in Borneo. On the Kingsmill Islands we
find an admixtiire of the black or Papuan blood; yet the points of resemblance in customs
among- the different people are so striking that one can scarcely doubt but that originally the
Oceanians were of one stock. For instance, as Mr. Ellis points out, men and women among
the Battas, of Sumatra, eat separately, as do the Polynesians proper (Tahitians, &c.). Canni-
balism prevails in both groups, and divination on the entrails of animals (unknown among the
Americans) prevails all over the isles of the Pacific. In many widely-separated islands the chief
portion of the marriage ceremony consists in the bridegroom throwing a piece of cloth over the
bride, or the friends throwing it over both. The bodies of the dead are kept by the inhabitants
of the Caroline Islands in a similar manner to the same rite among the Tahitians; and in the
Ladrones, as in the South Sea Islands, they feast around the tomb, offer food, &c. The legends
of the Ladrones and the Tahitians also agree in many particulars. At one time, in the
Ladrones, a licentious society existed very similar to that of the Areoi society, which we
shall have occasion to speak about as prevalent in the South Sea Islands. The Malays, like
the Marquesans, are in the habit of ornamenting the tops of walking-sticks with locks cut off
from the heads of dead enemies.
"Between the canoes and the language of, these islands and the southern groups there is
a more close resemblance. Their language has a remarkable affinity with that of Eastern
Polynesia. There are also many, points of resemblance in language, manners, and customs
be 1 ween the South Sea Islanders and the inhabitants of Madagascar in the west ; the inhabitants
of the Aleutian and Kurile Isles in the north, which stretch across the mouth of Behring
Strait, and form the chain which connects the Old and New Worlds ; and also between the
Polynesians and the inhabitants of Mexico, and some part of South America. The general cast
of feature and frecpient shade of complexion, the practice of tattooing, which prevails among
the Aleutians and some parts of America, the process of embalming the dead bodies of their
chiefs and preserving them uninterred, the form and structure of their many pyramidal stone
temples and places of sepulture, some of the games among the Araucanians, the word for God
being trie or t>'>:} the exposure of their children, their mode of dressing the hair, ornamenting
it with feathers, the numerous words in their language assembling those of Tahiti, &c., their
dress, especially theponc&o, and even the legend of the origin of the Incas, bear no rude resem-
blance to those of Tii(m the South Sea Islands) who was also descended from the sun." It is just
possible that some of the South Sea Islanders may have originally come from the American
continent ; or, more probably still, that some of the South Americans are sprang from the crews
of Polynesian canoes, cast adrift on the opposite coast, a voyage in length for which we have
maii\- parallel instances in the stories of canoes picked up with their living freight far from
their homes. Still, the origin of both races is involved in much mystery, which we shall not
waste spar.- in speculating over. There is, however, strong evidence to show that the Sand-
wich Islanders originally came from the Georgian Islanders, and thai probably the tribes of most
of the Pacific Islands are of Malay origin. " The natives of the eastern part of Australia and the
intertropical islands within twenty degrees east, including New Caledonia, the New Hebrides,
and the Fijis, appear to be one nation, and in all probability came originally from the Asiatic
THE OCEANIC GROUP: THEIR ORIGIN .VND CLASSIFICATION.
islands to the northward, as the skin is black, and their hair woolly or crisped, like the
inhabitants of the mountainous parts of several of the Asiatic islands. Bat the inhabitants of
all the islands of the east of the Fijis, including the Friendly Islands and New Zealand,
HOVA SPIES OF THE QUEEN OF MADAGASCAR (MALAGASY).
iough they have many characteristics in common with these, have a number essentially different,
le natives of Chatham Island and New Zealand in the south, the Sandwich Islands in the
north, the Friendly Islands in the west, and all the intermediate islands as far as Easter Island
the east, are one people. Their mythology, traditions, manners and customs, language and
lysical appearance, in their main features, are, so far as we have had an opportunity of
jcoming acquainted with them, identically the same, yet differing in many respects from those
42
10 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of the islands to the westward of Tongatabu. The dress of the Fijians, &c., is not the same
as that of the natives of New Zealand, Tahiti, and the other islands of the Pacific, and tlu-v
also differ in their mode of war, instruments, gymnastic games, rafts, or canoes, treatment of
their children, dressing their hair, feather head-dresses of the chiefs, girdles, and particularly
the tiputa of the latter, which in shape and use exactly resembles the poncho of the Peruvians.
Their circumstances seem to favour the conjecture that the inhabitants of the island west of
Tongatabu have an Asiatic origin only ; but that the natives of the eastern islands may be a
mixed race, who have emigrated from the American continent, and from the Asiatic Islands ;
that the proximity of the Friendly and Fiji Islands may have given both a variety of words
and usages in common, while the people to which the former belong may have remained
in many respects distinct. The nation inhabiting the eastern parts of the Pacific has
spread itself over an immense tract of ocean, extending upwards of seventy degrees north
and south from New Zealand and Chatham Islands to the Sandwich group, and between
sixty and seventy degrees east and west from Tongatabu to Easter Island. The last is not
farther from the islands adjacent to the continent than some of those groups are from any
other inhabited island. The Sandwich Islands are above twenty degrees from the Marquesas,
and thirty-six from Tahiti, yet inhabited by the same race."*
We may, therefore, for ethnological purposes, divide the Oceanic group into four great
families or divisions, the characteristics of which will be described in greater or lesser detail
in the chapters which follow. These are, as forming the most widely spread, and in many
respects most important race — (1), the Polynesians, comprising also the people of Micronesia,
so called.
(2) The Papuans, as already defined, embracing also the now extinct Tasmanians, who
were, perhaps, the most widely dissevered of all the component members of the Papuan
division.
(3) The Malays, or natives of Borneo, Celebes, Formosa, Madagascar, Malacca, Sumatra,
Java, Philippines, and the islands leading to the Philippines, and the chain ending in Timor
and Rotti, and the islands between Timor and New Guinea.
(4) The Australians, who constitute one of the most degraded of Oceanic nationalities
now existing. Under this head may also be included — though their near relationship is
doubtful — the Andaman and Nicobar Islanders.
* Ellis: " Polynesian Researches," vol. iv. p. 315.
11
CHAPTER II.
THE POLYNESIANS : THEIR ISLANDS ; THEIR CUSTOMS ; THEIR WOMEN ; THE AREOI SOCIETY, ETC.
MOST of the islands inhabited by the Polynesians are small, and, with the exception of New
Zealand, scattered in mid ocean, dotting singly or in groups the bosom of the Pacific*
They are the familiar " South Sea Islands " of our boyish dreams. Most of them are reared
up from the bottom of the ocean by the minute coral animals, and though on some of them
there are volcanoes, which pour out huge masses of lava (such as that of Mauna Loa on
Hawaii, the chief of the Sandwich group), on the vast number of them there is no stone of
any description, except that made from the lime gathered from the sea by the labour of the
>ral polypes. Indeed, on some of them so scarce were stones, that before the introduction of
ron, the pebbles found fixed in the roots of floating trees, which had been wafted to the islands
rom distant shores, were part of the revenue of the king, and sold at high prices, as materials
r knives, spear-points, &c. The climate is warmer than that of Europe, but the cool sea
veezes ever wafting around them prevent the air being disagreeably hot, and in some — the
andwich Islands for instance — the atmospheric conditions are about as near perfection as
ible. As we sail along the shore we behold either low islands — just raised above the
ace of the water ; green patches of verdure, surrounded by a fringe of cocoa-nut trees, or
the larger ones every diversity of broken mountains and rocky precipices, clothed in a
lightful verdure, from " the moss of the jutting promontories on the shore, to the deep and
;h foliage of the bread-fruit tree ; the Oriental luxuriance of the tropical vegetation, or the
avy plume of the lofty and graceful cocoa-nut grove. The scene is enlivened by the waterfall
in the mountain's side; the cataract that chafes along its rocky bed in the recesses of the
vine, or the stream that slowly winds its way through the fertile and cultivated valleys, and
e whole is surrounded by the white-crested waters of the Pacific, rolling their waves of foam
splendid majesty on the coral reefs, or dashing in spray against its broken strands/'
Iveiything is beautiful here — " all save the spirit of man is divine " — and it is with this
hich, in the majority of cases, is rather the antipodes of divine, that we have to deal.
The Polynesians are, at the present day, a people by no means numerous in proportion to
e immense area over which they spread, and, like some savage nations, bear every appearance
being a decaying people, soon to be numbered with the past. The monuments on Easter
land point to a race more powerful than those at present inhabiting any of the Pacific
lands, if not to a people antecedent to the present, and everywhere the signs of decadence
e apparent. Indeed, what with infanticide, the horrible prevalence of war, and human
rifice, it is probable that, in some of the islands at least, the septs would have become extinct
a few years if the Europeans had not arrived amongst them. But though civilisation has to
great extent stopped this, we must remember that in its train have come diseases and vices
unknown before, and a long catalogue of disasters, which are undermining the race so rapidly
that before long — as in the Sandwich Islands — the native element will be in a minority to the
European.
12
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
In appearance the Polynesians, as a whole, are rather pleasing, and in most cases superior
to the Indians of America. They are rather above the middle stature, and their limbs are
finely formed and muscular. The inhabitants of each group of islands, though agreeing in
MAORI CHIEF " HEKI " AND WIFE, FROM THE BAY OF ISLANDS, NEW ZEALAND.
general with the Polynesian characteristics, have yet minor peculiarities special to themselves.
For instance, the " Kanakas " (or Sandwich Islanders) are more muscular in limb than the
Tahitians, who, in their turn, are more fleshy than the light and agile Marquesans. In size
and power the Tahitians are inferior to the Maoris of New Zealand, resembling in this respect
the Friendly Islanders, but possessing neither the gravity of the latter nor the brightness
THE POLYNESIANS: THEIR VARIED APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS. 13
and vivacity of the Marquesans. They are generally active in their movements, but many of
them are inclined to corpulency as years advance, which naturally does not add to their agility.
They are stately and lithe in gait, and perfectly frank and unembarrassed in their address
— a characteristic which they scarcely share, the reader will remember, with the Americans.
The mountaineers, or inhabitants of the interior of the islands, from their constant habit of
using their naked feet in climbing precipices and trees, are apt to turn in their toes in walking,
so that their movements are scarcely so graceful as those of the coast natives; yet all will
acknowledge that in models of perfection of the human figure (presenting all that is beautiful
in symmetry and pleasing in action) the sweet South Sea Islands abound to a degree found to
the same extent in probably no other part of the world. Some of the men will attain a stature
of six feet four inches ; six feet is by no means uncommon, though the chiefs are generally the
tallest men. Their hair is straight, long, and black — not wiry and lank like that of the Indians,
nor, except in a very few instances, woolly like that of the Australians or Papuans generally.
It is often soft and curly, especially in the women. The latter are often very beautiful; but,
as a rule, like the females of many other savage nations, they do not equal the men in good
looks.
The Tongan women have, probably, less physical beauty than their sisters in other
parts of Polynesia. The women of these islands (the Friendly Islands) powder their
hair with fine lime, made by calcining coral, which has the effect of giving it that reddish-
purple hue which the kaid ton of Tonga consider the perfection of fashion. Among all the Poly-
nesians the hair is an object of assiduous attention, and the modes of dressing it vary in almost
every island. The complexion of the Polynesians varies, though in general it is olive or reddish-
brown ; but a darker shade of complexion is considered by them as a sign of strength and
vigour, and accordingly coveted. To accomplish this they are, therefore, fond of exposing their
persons to the action of the sun. A fair complexion is looked upon as presaging the exactly-
opposite. When they searched the battle-field for the bones of the slain, out of which to
manufacture chisels, gimlets, or fish-hooks, they always took care to select dark-skinned men —
supposing that their bones would be stronger than those of fair-skinned persons. Taata ra
e, te ereere ! ivi maitai tona (" the man how dark ! good his bones are ") was in former times
a common exclamation of the natives when looking at a very dark-skinned man. The most
handsome European they look upon as inferior in beauty to themselves, and the utmost extent
of praise they can extend to such a one would be — that he would be a fine man if he were only
a South Sea Islander. At one time they looked upon the white skin of the European with pity,
supposing it to be the effect of a disease with which they are sometimes afflicted — a kind of
leprosy, which turns the skin white ; and though this idea has now been dissipated after their
more familiar acquaintance with Europeans and Americans, their old standard of beauty, which
has a black skin for its pivot, is still the same. The New Zealanders (p. 12) are, perhaps, the
fairest of all the family under consideration ; some of the higher class women who have been
less exposed to the action of the weather being quite as fair as Spaniards. In New Zealand,
however, there appear to be two varieties, the one darker than the other ; probably the darker
variety may be the remains of the aborigines of the islands before the Maoris conquered them.
The toes and fingers are in all of them wonderfully elastic ; the two classes of digits being able
to be used with almost equal facility. In mental capacity the Polynesians are far from con-
14, THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
temptible. They have an elaborate mythology, which in itself is a sign of a certain vigour of
imagination : some of the songs and legends, of which they have an infinite variety, are very
beautiful. Their civil polity shows forms of government far removed from the rude or
primitive systems prevalent among most of the Indians, or even among the Africans. Their
religious rites, if horrible in their cruelty, are yet arranged in all their details with a precision
and elaborateness that strike the inquirer with astonishment. No Indian or African can tell any-
thing of his pedigree, and would, in most cases, grin with scorn at the idle question of who was
his grandfather. But the Polynesian chiefs have kept traditionary narratives of their genealogy,
mythical in some respects they may be, but still not more so than some in the British peerage,
extending back from long periods. They are all fond of figures, and, unlike some rude tribes-
which cannot count more than five, or at the outside more than twenty, the collective number of
their toes and fingers, the Polynesian can enumerate to an extent as great, or greater, than an
uneducated European. The Sandwich Islanders, like the Mexicans, reckon by fives, but the
Tahitianshavea decimal method of calculation. The precision and regularity of their arithmetical
calculations were the astonishment of the early missionaries who visited these people. They
are full of inquisitiveness, and, therefore, soon acquire information on many points which the
stolid Indian cares nothing whatever about, and accordingly remains ignorant of. All of them
excel in wood-carving, their primitive tools being mere stones and sharks' teeth. Some of the
Xe\v Zealand carving is especially remarkable for its careful and intricately beautiful execution,
but all of that done by the Polynesians has a character of its own which enables the ethnologist
to at once recognise it (p. 21). There is some proof to show that the original idea of it was
obtained from the sculpture of the ancient Mexican Aztecs. Strange to say, however,
though their houses, their weapons, and even the most common of their domestic utensils, are
carved in the most laboured manner, the figures of their gods are among the least artistic
of those of savage races, being throughout most of the Polynesian isles little more than
rudely-shaped blocks of wood.
Their hospitality is great to strangers as well as to friends. A Polynesian will divide
everything among a lot of strangers who visit his hut, and leave himself foodless and chattelless.
Yet, on the other hand, the stranger is not fed all the time he remains among them, but is given
a quantity of food, which he can eat up all at once or husband as he thinks fit, for he will get
no more, no matter how long he stays. After this he must provide for himself. I am inclined
to look upon the Polynesian's hospitality as consisting more in keeping up an old custom than
proceeding from any innate generosity. It must also be remembered that for every such enter-
tainment the host expects to be reimbursed in kind whenever he visits the abode of his guest.
Their ancient laws also commanded them to bring forth the produce of their fields and gardens to
entertain the chiefs and the licentious Areoi society whenever they halted at their residences. A
refusal to do so was a frequent cause of banishment or death, by the person neglecting this duty
being selected at a future time as a sacrifice to the gods. To withhold food from the king or his
servants was ranked in iniquity as next to resisting the royal authority, or even declaring war
against the sovereign. In this manner the people got accustomed, almost by second nature, to
provide supplies for any one who might come along. On the contrary, the inhabitants of
many islands — more particularly the Tahitians — extended their hospitality to the friendless
wanderers either landing by choice or by necessity on their shores, to such an extent that they
:
THE POLYNESIANS: MORAL CHARACTERISTICS, ETC. 15
literally and physically ate them! Indeed, the Tongans are about the only islanders who are
free from suspicion of dining upon the stranger who attempted to sojourn within their gates,
or even upon their own countrymen who had been sufficiently long from home to have acquired
a sort of brevet rank of foreigner.
In disposition, for a race addicted to such questionable victuals as nearly all the Polynesians
were at former times, and many of them, as well as the other Oceanic families, are still, they
bear the reputation of being a cheerful, good-natured people in their hours of ease, though
demons when the spirit of revenge or slaughter is upon them. They are full of humour, and
fond of their little joke.
Their raillery is not limited to individuals, but extends to whole neighbourhoods. The
inhabitants of Tahaa, one of the Leeward Islands, were, especially among the Tahitians,
a subject of great mirth, because one of these people supposed that the first European he
ever saw with long boots on had iron legs. The inhabitants of Huaheine were generally
known as the people who baked the scissors — a simple-minded aborigine of that island having
taken this method to sharpen a pair of scissors which had come into his possession. The
Huaheineans, in their turn, ridicule the Tahitians as the feia uumi honu — (the people that
strangled the turtle) , a party of Tahitians from the interior having once on a time attempted to
kill a turtle by pinching its throat, or strangling it, when the neck was drawn into the shell,
on which they were surprised to find they could make no impression with their fingers.
The morals of all this race hardly allow, however, of an adjective sufficiently expressive of
the utter state of degradation into which they have fallen, if, indeed, they were ever anything
else. The seventh commandment, in all its phases, connections, and relations, is in letter and
precept an unknown order. Among themselves their conversation is licentious in the extreme,
and filthy to an extent which cannot be described. Their self-esteem is immense, especially
among the New Zealanders. A Maori will kill himself rather than suffer disgrace. Perhaps
there is no more fertile cause of war than hurt vanity and wounded feelings. In addition, they
are all fickle and revengeful, though affectionate in their family relations. They are strange
contradictions. For instance, though hospitable, they are very covetous. To keep a secret is an
utter impossibility with a Polynesian, even should death to himself or anybody else connected
with him be the consequence. All of them have very retentive memories. The Samoans bear
the reputation of being the most gentle and — if we can use the expression — refined of the
Polynesians, and next to them would rank the Tongans ; though the New Zealanders are
rhaps the noblest and most intellectual of them all.
We have already spoken about their hospitality being, to a great extent, only habit and
custom. Their great feasts are equally so, tinctured, doubtless, with a large portion of vanity and
love of ostentation. Compared with those the grandest Indian potlatch (Vol. I., p. 76) On record
inks to insignificance. The New Zealander's feasts will be given on such a scale of magnificence
that the potatoes to be eaten are specially planted a year in advance. Provisions for these great
feasts are collected from far and near, and while writing I have before me notes of a feast in
which the provisions were built up in the form of a wall a mile in length and seven feet high,
this extraordinary sideboard being surmounted at intervals with roast swine ! It is, however,
at the great £«v«-drinking feasts of the South Sea Islanders that the pomp and circumstance of
the Oceanic people come out in their brightest colours. This kava is made from the roots of a
16
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
variety of Macropiper methysticum, and at the stated feasts at which it is drunk the people
are set in circles according to their rank, the chiefs and other high dignitaries being in front,
and the rest graduating away behind according to their social position. The king or head
chief, with a councillor on either side, presides over this high ceremonial. The kava is brewed
with an amount of fuss and deep consultation regarding the proportions — the amount of squeezes
of the material, the proper quantum of water — and so on, that would be ludicrous were it
not for the extreme solemnity with which it is gone about. The whole affair is under
the direction of careful and experienced masters of the ceremonies, who are familiar with all
the etiquette to be observed on the occasion, the relative rank and status of every man in the
nation, and consequently the position which he should occupy at the feast. The chiefs are, of
VIEW ON THE SHOIIES OF TAHITI.
course, in the front rank, but should the master of the ceremonies observe an elder relative of
a young chief in the front rank, it is a part of the rigid etiquette observed on the occasion that,
though otherwise his position would have entitled him to such a place, he must, under the
circumstances, take a position in a row behind.
The Samoans have the credit of being, perhaps, the most rigidly courteous of all the
Polynesians. A Samoan would be shocked beyond measure if he did not address his nearest
neighbour even by a title of courtesy ; and as a German considers it only etiquette to address
people by a title higher than they have a right to, so is there also in Samoa an exactly
identical custom. The smallest shopkeeper in Germany expects to be addressed as " Mr. Court-
Councillor," though he and everybody else know that the Court never troubles him for his
counsel ; so the Samoan, if he does not know the title of a stranger whom he is addressing will,
as a safe course, style him " chief." These Samoans are in every respect the best of the
Polynesians, in so far that they are honest and cleanly, graceful in costume, tall of stature, and
THE POLYNESIANS: FONDNESS OF CHILDREN.
17
so polished in manners that etiquette seems not, as it too often is, a mere ornament, but
an essential of life. Nearly all the Polynesians are fond of their children, and some are
)t inimical to their neighbours' offspring as articles of diet ; but the Samoan carries this
ty passion almost to excess, playing with them and petting them on all occasions. The
itrast between the Polynesians and the Papuan race, their near neighbours, is shown by
le way the Tongans use the Fijians, or, at least, did so in former days.
43
]8 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The Tongans, though so courteous to strangers, are a warlike race, and treat their black
Papuan neighbours of the Fiji Islands as a conquered tribe. There is generally a small
colony of Tongans in these islands. Indeed, to make a voyage to the Eijis in search of fortune
or an easy life is looked upon as quite legitimate amongst them. The superior race bullies
and orders about the inferior in every way. One will enter a house, take up the best position,
and order and superintend — for which he considers that he has peculiar talents — the
Fijians who are building him a house or a canoe, and altogether behave after the manner
with which we have already been familiar in the " big Injun " of the western continent.
Among a people so widely scattered as the Polynesians we need not be surprised to find a
great variety in the style of dress. Indeed, nothing varies so greatly among the tribes of men
as this, even in a limited area, as witness the multiplicity of costumes in Europe and in the
Russian Empire. One thing is, however, remarkable in the clothing of the Polynesians, and that
is that, like everything else found among them, their dress, though varied in form, colour, and
texture, is always light and loose, and often even elegant. Until the introduction of European
civilisation, wool, cotton, and silk were equally unknown amongst them, and all classes, from the
highest to the lowest, were clad in one fabric, hammered ingeniously out of the bark of trees.
The head was uncovered, except when adorned with flowers, and the brow was occasionally
shaded by a wreath of cocoa-nut leaves. Both sexes wore folds of cloth round the waist, but the
dress of the men differed from that of the females in the fact that the former wore the moro (or
girdle) and the tipu-ta (or poncho), while the females wore over their shoulders a loose, light
scarf or shawl called the aa/uipu, or akut iapono. The tijmta of the Tahitians to which we have
referred was a peculiar garment, differing little (if anything) from the poncho of South America.
It is rather longer than that garment, but is worn in the same manner. A hole is cut in the
centre, through which the head is passed; the garment then depends in graceful folds over
the shoulders, breast, and back, and reaching down as low as the knees. The altufara is
another article of dress almost as common as the tijjuta. It is larger than the tijjitta, and is
more like a counterpane than a shawl. It is always splendid in a variety of colours. This
native cloth, made by beating the bark of certain trees with wooden mallets, constitutes in
some of the islands the wealth of the chiefs, many of whom owned at one time numerous
large bales of it. Of late years, however, little of it has been made, the imported calicoes of
Europe and America having almost entirely taken its place. It was dyed by the women in
elegant patterns, in the execution of which every Polynesian woman, from the queen down-
ward, strove to excel. All the cloth, as well as the sleeping-mats, the pillows of hard wood,
the cups of cocoa-nut, and the quaintly-carved wooden dishes are made by the women. In
New Zealand the universal upper garment of all classes and both sexes is a square mat made
from the fibres of the New Zealand flax (PJinriti'iinii feintx,-^. 19), which it will sometimes take a
woman eighteen months or often two years to weave. These mats are of different qualities
and kinds, and there are also others made of the hair of dogs and other domestic animals.
The New Zealanders are also fond of earrings, which are not in great favour with all the
Polynesians. These earrings are sometimes of the most peculiar character, — even the skin*
of small birds stuffed, or the tail-feathers of larger birds, particularly the e-rli.n (Neomorpk*
GoiilJii), which, when not in use, are kept in elaborately carved boxes. They are also foud
THE POLYNESIANS: DRESS; HAIR-DRESSING, ETC.
19
of ornaments of the green jade, out of which they make their clubs, and look upon an earring
consisting of the tooth of a tiger-shark as a mark of rank; but take him all in all, the
Maori has rather a weakness for earrings, and is not particular what object is employed to
•constitute these. The gnatoo of the Tongans is also made of beaten-out bavk (as is the
•cloth, indeed, of all the South Sea Islanders), and is equally worn by men and women, the men
THE "FLAX PLANT" OP NEW ZEALAND.
lally folding it round the waist, and tucking the ends into a belt of the same material, so
to be easily detached and thrown over the head and shoulders, while that of the women is
arranged about their persons in graceful folds. There are, however, an infinite number of ways
in which the gnatoo is worn, and we accordingly find that though high and low, rich and poor,
must wear clothing made of the same fabrics, there are peculiar ways of putting it on, which,
in the eyes of the initiated, denote the rank of the wearer. Among the Tongans, as among
most of the Polynesians, ornaments made of the sperm whale's teeth are valued at more than
THE POLYNESIANS: THEIR DRESS. 21
their weight in gold is with us ; but by far the most graceful of these ornaments is a flower-
ing creeping plant, which is twined round the neck or waist of both the men and women,
and has an exceedingly pretty effect. Though the Tongan children run naked until they
are two or three years old, the grown-up people are not only exceedingly fastidious about
their dress and the arrangement of every fold, but are morbidly particular in regard to the
nudity of their person on eveiy occasion. When bathing, they even go aside and put on
a kind of apron in place of the ordinary robe, and even to such an extent is this delicacy
carried, that it is the custom of the men, if they should be obliged to undress near the burial-
place of a chief, to save exposing themselves by putting on this apron already spoken of.
ENGRAVED CHESTS OF THE MAORIS OF NEW ZEALAND (After Cook.)
The ordinary dress of the Samoan men is only a small apron, but on state occasions they
wear a loose flowing robe gathered round the loins, and reaching down to their ankles. The
dress, however, varied according to the rank of the wearer ; but the elaborate care with which
Samoan is tattooed will not allow of anything but a very scanty wardrobe, in case the artificial
charms of his person should be concealed from the admiring eyes of his countrymen. It is,
however, in the head-dresses worn on state occasions that the Samoan chiefly excels. In
addition to their own hair they construct of their cut hair huge wigs, frizzed out and dressed,
which they ornament with plumes of feathers two feet or more in length, so that when the
whole of this towering superstructure is in situ, the wearer has a most martial and dignified
appearance. The women, on the contrary, wear their hair rather short, and as red is the
fashionable colour in Samoa, they stain it as near that colour as they can with powdered
ime, made by burning coral, after which flowers are twined in it.
In the Kingsmill Islands the chiefs wear in battle a cap made of the spiny skin of the
22 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Diodon, or porcupine fish, ornamented with a goodly bunch of feathers. The Marquesan
Islanders wear their hair in a great variety of fashions, a very common method being to shave
it all off except a lock at either side of the forehead, which is brushed in the form of what
looks like little horns. The resemblance is, however, purely accidental, as these islanders were,
until the advent of the whites, entirely unacquainted with any horned animal. Among the
Marquesans a peculiar trade — profession shall we call it ? — prevails, viz., cultivating ringlets and
long white beards for sale. The ringlets are used for ornamenting spears, clubs, and the ankles;
while the beards, valued at a very high price, are looked upon as one of the most graceful
ornaments imaginable for the head, or for the shell trumpet. For earrings the same islanders
use an ornament not unlike a large-headed nail, made of a section of a long spiral shell, filled
with a kind of cement, through the midst of which a carved ivory stem is passed, the head of
this nail-like ornament being worn uppermost. But, perhaps, the most scanty dress worn by
any of the Polynesians is that of the Pelew Islanders. Beyond a most elaborate tattoo, which
almost looks as if they were covered with some dark, tight-fitting fabric, these primitive folk
wear no dress. Still the reader must not suppose that on account of their lacking this
conventional covering they are deficient in modest}-. On the contrary, their laws prohibit
men passing the bathing-place of the women ; a refinement which one has some difficulty in
clearly understanding, unless it is that the -women are, when out of the water, possessed of a
trifle more wardrobe than their lords. In addition to the tattooing, which we shall have
occasion to speak about shortly, the New Zealanders bestow on their persons, as well as on
their houses and mats, a plentiful supply of paint ; while in the Tonga, Caroline, and other
islands, a liberal coat of yellow turmeric is looked upon with especial favour.
The Polynesians, owing to the absence of wild animals on their islands, are essentially a
race of fishermen, or, on a small scale, agriculturists. Their cultivation is of the most
primitive type; but, thanks to the richness of the soil and the splendid climate, the scratchings
with a pointed stick which their little patches receive are sufficient to produce crops abundant
enough for their simple wants. The bread-fruit tree, the taro, the sweet potato, the fern root,
and a hundred other wild plants, enable them to eke out the supplies of vegetable food which
their agricultural labours enable them to raise. Pigs have now been introduced in nearly all
the islands, and have increased so abundantly as to supply plenty of fresh pork for their
owners. * Shell-fish, fish, and other products of the sea, are found plentifully around the^e
shores; so that want is almost unknown in these fortunate isles of the South Sea. But,
perhaps, the most extraordinary article of diet used by the South Sea Islanders is the marine
worm, called palolo, and known to naturalists as Palolo nridix* used by the Samoans.
Mr. Consul Pritchard, who resided so many years on these islands, thus describes it, and the
method of cooking it :— " It appears only in certain strictly defined and very limited localities
in each group (i.e., in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa); a month earlier, about the first week in
.November, in Samoa, than in the two other groups. It rises directly from the bottom of the
sea to the surface, appearing about four o'clock in the morning, and continuing to increase in
number until about half an hour after sunrise, when it begins to dissolve, and gradually
disappears. By eight o'clock not a trace of theyalolo remains in the sea. They look just like
* Transactions of the Linnean Society, vol. xxii , p. 237.
THE POLYNESIANS: THEIR FOOD; MODE OF FISHING. 23
so many worms, from an inch to a yard in length, showing- every conceivable colour as they
Wriggle about, and are soft to the touch. The time of their appearance is calculated by the
old men of the various tribes, and is known by the sun, moon, and stars having a particular
bearing towards each other. A month before the great appearance, a few are found in each of
the localities where they rise. Parties go out in their canoes to watch for this first appearance,
for by it the calculation as to the second and great appearance is verified. When that comes,
whole villages — men, women, and children — crowd the scene ; by two o'clock the sea is covered
with canoes, the outriggers getting foul and breaking adrift without distracting the attention ;
as by four o'clock all are busied scooping up the palolos, and pouring them into baskets made
for the occasion. The noise and excitement from four to six o'clock is something astonishing-,
O O'
and the scrambling most amusing. And when, with canoes loaded, the crowd disperses, the
next thing is to prepare the ovens to cook the palolos, which are merely wrapped in bread-fruit
leaves. They are sent round with much formality to friends at a distance, and sometimes
kept three or four weeks, by being occasionally warmed in an oven." So regularly does this
little annelid make its appearance, that the Fiji Islanders know October and November by the
term of the "Little Palolo" and "Great Palolo." In appearance it is repulsive, but it is
greatly relished by the South Sea Islanders, and even by Europeans — one of whom, a -lady,
Dr. Seeman tells us, devoured thepalolo with extreme gusto.
Among a people so dependent for animal food on the sea, and so ingenious in many arts,
there is, as might be imagined, many methods of capturing fish. Perhaps the most interesting
is that adopted for capturing them in enclosures in the inland lakes. The enclosure is used
for taking a number of small and middling-sized fish, and is called by the Fijians aua ia
(or fish-fence). Mr. Ellis describes it as a circular space, nine or twelve feet in diameter,
enclosed with a stone wall, built up from the bottom of the lake to the edge of the water ; an
opening four or six inches deep and a foot or two wide is left in the upper part of the wall.
From each side of this opening a stone wall is raised to the edge of the water, extending fifty or
a hundred yards, and diverging from the aperture, so that the wall leaves a space of water within
of the shape of a wedge, the point of which terminates in the circular enclosure. These walls
diverge in a direction from the sea, so that the fish which enter the lake are intercepted only
in their return. They are so numerous through the whole extent of the shallow parts of the
lake, that it seems scarcely possible for a fish to escape. These enclosures are valuable ; fish
are usually found in them every morning, which furnish a means of subsistence to the
proprietors, who have no other trouble than simply to take them out with a hand-net. They
are also excellent preserves in which fish may be kept securely till wanted for use. Each
enclosure has a distinct owner, whose right to the fish enclosed is always respected. Most of
the fish from the lakes are taken in this way.* They have also a singularly ingenious way of
capturing a needle-shaped fish called au. They surround a moderately-sized space with large
rafts, round each of which is a fence of poles four or five feet in height. The fish are then
driven by other natives in canoes towards the rafts, by drawing long white sticks with great
noise through the water. In attempting to spring over the raft, the au strikes against the
raised fence on the outer side, and falls on the surface of the horizontal part, from which they
* " Polynesian Researches," vol. i., p. 117 (American edition).
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
are gathered into baskets or canoes on the outside. Not only is this fish taken in this manner,
but many others also which are in the habit of springing out of the water when alarmed.
Among the reefs on shore many fish are taken by impregnating the water with an intoxicating
mixture made from the nuts of the hora, or of the hula (Belonica splend'ula) .
The nets used in capturing fish are of many varieties, and numerous ceremonies are used in
making them as well as in the first wetting of them, so that the gods who preside over the
finny tribes may be propitiated. To make nets is, among the South Sea Islanders, an honourable
occupation. Even the chiefs make their own nets. " As is customary on all occasions of
public work, the proprietor of the net required the other chiefs to assist in its preparation.
PLAN OF A GREAT CANOE, OK " OUTRIGGER," OF ARCHIPELAGO OF SANTA CRUZ. (After
Before he began, two large pigs were killed and baked. "When taken from the oven they were
-cut up, and the governor's messenger sent with a piece to every chief. On delivering, the
quantity was stated which each was desired to prepare towards the projected net. If the
piece of pig was received, it was considered as an agreement to furnish it; but to return it was
in effect to refuse compliance with the requisition." Fishing in the South Sea Islands is not
only an occupation for all classes, but is also eagerly followed as an amusement by the great
chiefs, who strive to excel each other in this pursuit. Fish are also speared, and caught
with hooks made by these people out of shell, which they much prefer to the imported
European manufactured article.
Most of the nails which they formerly used, and out of which they manufactured
hooks and other articles, were procured from the shipping, and highly prized. Perceiving that
these nails were shaped somewhat like the shoots of the bread-fruit tree, entirely ignorant as
THE POLYNESIANS: DOMESTIC ANIMALS; CANOES.
25
they were of the nature or even the existence of metal, they at first imagined that such
articles must be the shoots of some hard- wooded plant; and accordingly a brilliant idea
struck these Polynesian philosophers. The nails were very well, but had the sore fault of
being very scarce and dear. Why not increase them by cultivation? No sooner was this
happy thought devised than acted upon. Part of a bag of nails was carried to the temple
and deposited upon the altar; the rest they actually planted in their garden, and with the
highest expectation and hopes of an abundant crop watched their growth, a result in which
it is needless to say they were sadly disappointed ; but in course of time they learned
sounder lessons in metallurgy. They have no domestic animals except dogs, fowls and pigs,
CANOE OF THE BAY OF VANIKORO, SANTA CRUZ.
d these have been introduced by ships within the last century. In the more civilised
nds, however, horses and most of the European domestic animals have been naturalised,
d are increasing to a great extent. In the Fiji, Sandwich, and other islands wild pigs
d cattle are abundant, and a great nuisance to the plantations of the natives.
Many pages would be required to describe, even in outline, the various canoes used by the
Polynesians. In navigating their frail craft they have no equals in any part of the world,
and their taste for maritime adventure is proved by the long voyages they will make from
island to island, and by their wide distribution over such an extent of island-dotted ocean.
They are a nation of sailors, and in no part of the civilised world is the tahua tarai vaa (or
uilder of canoes) held in such great respect.* Some of those used by the principal chiefs are
The word " canoe," now used by the English-speaking nations to designate the boats employed by uncivi-
:d natives in every part of the world, is the name given to their boats by the natives of the Caribbean islands
in their intercourse with Columbus, and since then generally adopted.
44
2fi THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
as much as fifty, sixty, or even seventy feet in length ; about two feet wide, and nearly three
or four in depth. The sterns are remarkably high, being often raised fifteen or eighteen feet out
of the water, and ornamented with carved hollow cylinders, square pieces, or grotesque figures,
called tils. The embellishments and size of a canoe in some manner bespeak the dignity of a
Polynesian chief, as the elegance of a yacht is a sign of the wealth of a civilised " canoeman."
The stern of the war canoes is low, and covered so as to shield the occupants from the stones
and darts of the enemy, and a grotesque carving of the human head, or some such figure,
is usually carved on each The bow, often shaped like the neck of a swan, is terminated by
the carved figure of a bird's head (p. 28). The war-canoe is also much more compact and
solidly built than those used for fishing and voyaging. At one time all the Polynesian tribes
possessed large and magnificent fleets of these canoes, which the diminution or entire discon-
tinuance of war, since the advent of civilisation, has almost entirely caused to disappear in
favour of the clumsier but more convenient vessels of Europe. There is another curious
arrangement characteristic of the Oceanic canoes. This — which is not found on all of them —
is a rude sort of grating, made of the light but tough wood of the bread-fruit tree, covering
the hull of the canoe and the intervening space between the sides, and projecting a foot or
eighteen inches over the outer edges. On this the paddlers usually sit, and attend to the
sails with greater convenience than they could from the narrower edge of the canoe. Sails
were early in use among the Sandwich Islanders, even before the arrival of Europeans, but in
calms the paddle made of the tough wood of the Hibiscus was the universal means of
propulsion. When a chief leaves or approaches the shores these paddles are beat against the
canoe-side with a sound like the smacking of a whip at the starting of a coach. There is a
neat and very safe double canoe in use among them, called inaihi (or twins), each made out of
a single trunk of a tree, and shaped exactly alike. The stem and stern are sharp, though
occasionally there is a small board projecting from each bow. The smaller canoes, like those in
us 3 among the north-western Indians and other savages, are hollowed out of a single tree, but
the larger ones are carefully built of hewn planks, after the civilised fashion. A single canoe
is, however, never used without the " outrigger/' so associated with the vessels of the Oceanic
people. This ama, or outrigger, is usually formed by a light spar of the Hibiscus or
JSrythrina on account of its combined lightness and strength. It is always fastened to the
left side, and fastened to the canoe by two horizontal poles, from five to eight feet long ; " the
front one is straight and firm, the other curved and elastic. It is so fixed that the canoe, when
•empty, does not float upright, being rather inclined to the left ; but when sunk in the water,
on being laden, it is generally erect, while the outrigger, which is firmly and ingeniously
fastened to the sides by repeated bands of cinnet, floats on the surface. In addition to this,
"the island canoes have a strong plank, twelve or fourteen feet long, fastened horizontally across
the centre, in an inclined position, one end attached to the outrigger, and the other extending
five or six feet over the opposite side, and perhaps elevated four or five feet above the sea. A
small railing of rods is fastened along the sides of this plank, and it is designed to assist the
navigators in balancing the keel, as a native takes his station on the one side or the other, to
counteract the inclination which the wind or sea might give to the vessel. Sometimes they
approach the shore with a native standing on the extremity of the plank, and presenting a
singular appearance, which it is impossible to behold without expecting every undulation of
the
THE POLYNESIANS: CANOES; FISH-GODS; HOUSES. 27
sea to detach him from his apparently insecure situation, and precipitate him into the water"
(pp. 24, 25, and 28). This kind of canoe is chiefly used to make voyages to detached islands at
some distance. In navigating the double canoe they use two sails, but one only is used with
the single canoe. The ropes are not visually fastened, but held in the hands of the natives. The
rigging is made from the twisted bark of the Hibiscus, or the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk,
or coiar. In building their canoes, not only is care taken to make them strong, safe, and
suitable in every part, by their great skill exercised in this branch of architecture, but the
blessing of the gods — and especially of Tuaraatai, the Tahitian protector of sailors — was, in
former days at least, invoked in this as in every other pursuit of their lives. Costly presents were
made at every stage of the munufacture to this " cherub aloft," who " takes care" of the Tahitian
Jack. "When the keel was laid presents had to be made to the god (or to his priest, which was
the same thing), when it was finished douceurs had to be made to win his favour, and when
it was launched his countenance had to be secured in a similar manner.
Valuable canoes are among the gifts offered up to the sea-gods, and ever afterwards
consecrated to the service of the idols. In their sea voyages sharks are their chief dread, for
if they fall into the water there is gi-eat risk of these monsters attacking' them. If armed with
a knife, the Polynesian is often more than a master for the fish, but if unarmed he has little
chance of escape. On one occasion some Tahitians were overtaken by a storm while passing
from one of the Society Islands to another. As a last resort, they gathered together the frag-
ments of their canoe and bound them into a large raft, on which they set out for their home.
Their number, thirty-two, was much too great for the raft, the result of which being that it was
under water the whole time. The sharks then gathered around them, and snatched off one after
another of their number, until the sea was red with blood, and only a few were left. The raft,
now lightened of its load, rose to the surface, and the survivors landed in safety to tell the talc
of their terrible passage. The danger is further aggravated by the fact that, though they
will eat the flesh of most of these voracious fishes, yet the large blue shark is not only not
killed by them, but being defied, its anger is attempted to be appeased by prayers and offerings.
Temples are erected in its honour, at which priests officiate, and gifts are offered to the sacred
monsters, and where fishermen and others who are much at sea seek its favour. The people
thoroughly believed that the shark respected the priests of its temples, and paid them great
regard when at sea. These fish-gods are not unknown among other nations, and the reader
acquainted with Assyrian history may remember that Dagon — one of whose temples Samson
overthrew — was the fish-god whose priests officiated in a dress made of the skin of a fish, and
surmounted by its head.
The canoes of the New Zealanders are even larger, more elegant in form, and more
elaborately carved than those of the South Sea Islanders. The carving on their vessels is often
exceedingly intricate and beautiful. The paddles are of the ordinary shape, but without a
" crutch" head formed by a cross-pin, and are used not only to propel, but in the case of the
Indians and most other canoe-using people to steer the vessel also.
The houses of the Polynesians are often large, and built in the form of a parallelogram,
round at either end, and situated in the midst of an enclosure. Those of the New Zealanders
are even finer and more ornamented than the dwellings of their cousins in the Pacific.
28
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Everything about the New Zealander's architecture, and even the most common domestic
implements, show the same intricate elaborate carving, which is a laborious work at any time, but
more especially before the introduction of European tools of iron, when everything was executed
by implements of jade. The houses of the Samoans look at a distance, and as they appear in
sketches like large mushrooms, consisting simply of a thatch of the leaves of the sugar-cane
supported on three or four long upright posts, the place of the walls being supplied by a piece
of matting drawn round the posts. The floor is a hard pavement of gravel, and the general
apartment is divided into chambers at night by partitions of cloth. The pillow of these people,
VIEW OF THE ISLE OF TAHITI, WITH NATIVE CAXOES.
like that of most of the South Sea Islanders, is only a sort of stool, consisting of a carved piece
of wood supported on four legs. On this the head is placed when the Samoan retires to rest.
Musical instruments of a rude type are common amongst them, particularly drums and
flutes, which are in great request at their high festivals. Trumpets formed of shells (a species
of Murex) were used to summon the combatants to battle ; to blow when a procession walked to
the temple ; at the inauguration of the king ; during worship, or when a tabu (or restriction)
was imposed in the name of the gods. The sound is loud, but dismal and monotonous beyond
imagination. Another noisy instrument was the ihara (of the Fijians), which was made of a
single joint of the bamboo. In the centre a long aperture was made from one joint to another.
The i/iara, which appears to be almost identical with the toponazlli of the ancient Aztecs, when
used was placed on the ground and beaten with sticks. Songs, often of a plaintive air and
poetical sentiment, are also much in favour with the Polynesians ; indeed there are, probably,
few nations of uncivilised men that have a more extensive repertory of compositions than the
'
THE POLYNESIANS: GAMES AND OTHER AMUSEMENTS. 29
light-hearted children of the Isles of the Pacific. Freed to a great extent from continued
harassing toil to obtain a subsistence, living in a climate which wants nothing to make it
perfection, they spend much of their time in committing their traditionary songs to memory, or
in composing new ones in celebration of their famous warriors, their lovely isles, the greatness
of the gods, or the charms of their swarthy dulcineas.
Athletic games are in much favour with them, a skilful wrestler obtaining great honour
and renown throughout a long area of islet-dotted sea, though such Polynesian champions
are not long permitted to enjoy their honours undisputed, for if it is once known that a
chief, who may come to visit another on a distant island, has a celebrated wrestler in his train,
numerous challenges to a trial of skill are speedily addressed to him. Boxing was an equally
popular amusement in former times ; even chiefs and priests were ranked among its most
eminent patrons and champions. Foot-races, in which the bodies of the runners were anointed
with oil and their heads bound round with garlands of flowers, were also common amusements ;
while the martial games of throwing the spear or javelin at an opponent, who skilfully caught
it in his hand, or parried its thrust with his spear-handle, throwing stones from slings,
archery with the bow and arrow, mock naval or military combats, &c., were indulged in by the
young and middle-aged men of all classes. Lighter games were football, ball-throwing, and a
game very like the English " bandy," or the ball game so common among the North and
South American Indians. In all these amusements the women were not neglected ; for them
there was the game of haru raa puu, or " seizing the ball," which was especially consecrated to
the fair sex, the men taking no part in it. " An open place was necessary for all their sports,
and the sea-beach was usually selected. The boundary mark of each party was fixed by a stone
on the beach, or some other object on the shore, having a space of fifty or one hundred yards
between. The ball was a large roll or bundle of the tough stalks of the plantain leaves,
twisted closely and firmly together. They began in the centre of the space ; one party seizing
the ball, endeavoured to throw it over the boundary mark of the other. As soon as it was
thrown, both parties started after it, and, in stooping to seize it, a scramble often ensued
among those who first reached the ball ; the numbers increased as the others came up, and
they frequently fell one over the other in the greatest confusion. Amid the shouts and din and
disorder that followed arms or legs were sometimes broken before the ball was secured. As
the pastime was usually followed on the beach the ball was often thrown into the sea ; here it
was fearlessly followed, and, with all the noise and cheering of the different parties, forty or
fifty women might be sometimes seen up to their knees or their waists in the water, splashing
and plunging amid the foam and spray after the object of their pursuit." Dances of many
kinds, performed in quaint dresses, to the sound of drum and flute, and often — especially in
the Sandwich Islands — of the most indecent character, made up the sum of their principal
recreations. Many games — such as archery — were held sacred, and before indulging in them
the performers repaired to the temple, where they performed several ceremonies to procure the
favour of the gods, or which the rites of religion enjoined on such occasions. No sport was
held in higher esteem than archery. The king and the great chiefs usually attended to witness
.t, and as soon as the exercise was over, the bow and the quiver of arrows, which were wrapped
in cloth and held sacred, were committed to the charge of the person appointed to keep them.
The archers repaired to the temple, and were obliged to change their dress and bathe their
30 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
persons before they could take refreshment, or enter their dwellings. The archers had even a goJl
— Paruateta\ ae— for this, like almost every occupation of their lives, was intimately interwoven
with their religious beliefs and ceremonies. Curiously enough, however, the bow and arrow
were never used by the Society Islanders in war, or for any other purposes except as articles of
amusement. Hence the arrows are not barbed or feathered, for they did not shoot at a mark,
the only object of competition being how far the arrow could be projected in a straight line.
In the Sandwich Islands rat-shooting was in vogue; but neither the sling nor the bow was
among the warlike accoutrements of these islanders. Among the natives of the Papuan Islands
— the Fijis — the bow is, however, a regular implement of war. Since the introdution of
Christianity, archery and many other similar amusements have fallen into disuse, the natives
having an idea that, on account of their former intimate connection with idolatry, they are
immoral and ought to be stopped. The substitutes which have taken their place are hardly
improvements in any sense of the term.
Take them as a whole the Polynesians are a very ingenious people. A well-known
voyager — Dr. Pickering — speaking of the Tahitians, remarked that he had never seen a people
so serviceable to the traveller, for they seemed able to command at all times the principal
conveniences of life. " Half an hour of daylight was sufficient for building a house of the
stems and leaves of the /<?/// banana, and fire was produced by rubbing sticks. In one place
the running water was deeply sunk among stones, but by working in banana leaves they
brought it to the surface. The capture of eels (AngniUd), which in these dripping mountains
become almost amphibious, offered another instance of their ingenuity. They also tore off
with their teeth the fibrous bark of the purau (Hibiscus tiliacens), and a moment after applied
it to noosing small fish. If one was sent for fruit, he would usually make a basket on the way,
by plaiting the segments of a cocoa-nut leaf. A mat was manufactured with almost equal ease.
Clothing was always at hand, and a banana leaf served for an umbrella ; or, in fine weather,
they would weave garlands of flowers. Tumblers and bottles were supplied by single joints of
the bamboo, and casks or baskets by the long stems ; and whether we asked for a hatchet,
knife, spoon, tooth-brush, or wash-basin, we never found our guides at fault/'
Cock-fighting has always been — since the introduction of fowls, which the traditions of
the natives say have existed in these islands since they were first colonised, and that the fowls
were made by Taaroa, the Polynesian supreme being, at the same time that men were made— a
popular amusement among the South Sea people. But aquatic amusements were above all the
most generally practised of the sports of these islands. Living all their life in the close
vicinity of the sea, and accustomed to be much on it, the Polynesians have a great fondness for
the water, and seem indeed to lose all dread of it before the time they are old enough to
know the danger to which they expose themselves — at least after our way of thinking.
There is, however, little danger to the South Sea Islander. Men, women, and children are
almost amphibious, and spend much of their time in the sea, diving, swimming, bathing, and
sporting in the foam of the surf and great breakers which roll in upon the coral strands of
these islands. The wilder the sea the more is the South Sea Islander in his element. Mam
of their sports are connected with the sea. One common amongst the islands is known to
the Tahitians as the /write or fnaltcr, and is followed by individuals of high rank and of both
sexes. The following is a graphic description of their amusements by an eye-witness : — "They
THE POLYNESIANS: SURF SWIMMING; THEIR WOMEN. 31
usually select the openings in the reefs or entrances of some of the bays for their sport, where
the long1, heavy billows of the ocean roll in unbroken majesty upon the reef or the shore. They
use a small board, swim from the beach to a considerable distance, sometimes nearly a mile,
watch the swell of the wave, and when it reaches them, resting- their bosom on the short,
fiat-pointed board, they mount on its summit, and amid the foam and spray ride on the crest
of the wave to the shore ; sometimes they halt amid the coral rocks, over which the waves break
in splendid confusion. When they approach the shore they slide off the board, which they
grasp with the hand, and either fall behind the wave or plunge towards the deep, and allow
it to pass over their head. Sometimes they are thrown with violence upon the beach or among*
the rocks on the edges of the reef. So much at home, however, do they feel in the water, that
it is seldom any accident occurs. I have often seen from fifty to a hundred persons, of all ages,
sporting like so many porpoises on the surf, sometimes mounted on the top of the wave and
almost enveloped in spray; at other times plunging beneath the mass of water that has swept
in mountains over them, cheering and animating each other ; and by the noise and shouting
they make, rendering the roaring of the sea and the dashing of the surf comparatively imper-
ceptible. Their* surf-boards are inferior to those of the Sandwich Islanders, and I do not
think swimming in the sea — as an amusement, whatever it might have been formerly — is now
so much practised by the natives of the South as by those of the [more] Northern Pacific.
Both are exposed in this sport to one common cause of interruption, and this is the entrance
of the shark. The cry of a mao among the former, and a mano among the latter, is one of
the most terrific they ever hear ; and I am not surprised that such is the effect of the approach
of one of these voracious monsters. The great shouting and clamour which they make are
principally designed to frighten away such as may approach. Notwithstanding this they are
often disturbed, and sometimes meet their death from these formidable enemies."
Huarouri was among the Tahitians the god of t\\efaahee, or surf-swimming. In addition,
there are various other aquatic sports indulged in even by the children. The children are
also fond of swings, a kind of kite flying, and of a singular amusement which consists of
stretching open the eyelids by fixing a piece of straw or stiff grass perpendicularly across the
«ye, so as to force open the lids in a most frightful manner. The earlier voyagers were
astonished, and later ones infused with feelings of great amusement, to find the South Sea
Island women swimming alongside their ships like so many mermaids, only with this difference,
that while the latter aquatic damsels declined the nearer approach of terrestrial bipeds, the
Polynesian ladies show a decided desire for further acquaintance by seizing ropes' ends, chains,
•&c., and climbing on board in a condition as to wardrobe which can only, in the most polite
manner, be designated as scanty.
THE POLYNESIAN WOMEN.
Though, perhaps, the hackneyed axiom, that " the condition of a people may be judged by
the way the women are treated," is more trite than true, yet at the same time it cannot be
denied that the chai-acter of a people is to a great extent displayed by observing the position
Avhich the women hold in the community. The Polynesian woman, we find, occupies a higher
place in the social scale than the Indian squaw. She is not so hard worked, nor so abused ;
* Tahitians.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
her lot is in every respect better. Still, the intricate religious superstitions which are inter-
woven with Polynesian every-day life assign her a position which is an isolated and unsociable
one. From her birth upwards she is unworthy — or rather is not permitted by their religion —
TOOLS AND ORNAMENTS OF THE ABORIGINES OF THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS. (After Dumont D'Urcilk.)
to eat her food with the males ; she must partake of it in a hut apart by herself. She cannot
even eat of the same food, and that must also be of an inferior character to the men's. Her
meals are cooked at a separate fire — held in separate baskets to the men's — for the food and
baskets used by the men were sacred, and defiled by the women using them. All men—
especially those who wait on the gods — were ta, or sacred, while the women Avere noa, or
common, by whom nothing presented to the gods could be eaten. A woman was even a term of
THE POLYNESIANS: CONDITION OF WOMEN AMONG THEM.
contempt among most of the Polynesians. The most offensive imprecations which the
Tahitians, for instance, could hurl against each other referred to this degraded condition of
the women : " Mayest thou become a bottle to hold salt water for thy mother ; " " Mayest
AHMS AND OTHER IMPLEMENTS OF THE TAHITIANS.
thoa be baked as food for thy mother ; " " Take out your eyeball and give it to youi
mother to eat ; " were all phrases by the use of which to an enemy the utmost contempt of
him was intended to be expressed. Yet, notwithstanding all this, women can attain to posit
tions of honour among nearly every Polynesian nation. In all the South Sea Islands women
can be chiefs equally with the men.
45
34- THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
In New Zealand, also, women can become arilds (or chiefs of a district), and are fre-
quently, even when of inferior rank, taken into the husband's council. In some places — in
Hawaii and Kingsmill Islands — 'the women followed the warriors to battle, and shared
the savage conflict as wildly as the men. The Samoan women also accompany their lords
to war in order to supply them with food, and nursing, if wounded, and are said to be
heedless of danger in the discharge of these duties.
Among the same people — Mr. Pritchard informs us — as among the ancient Hebrews,
no male captives are taken in fight, the women becoming the property of the conquerors,
who generally marry them, but allow them to afterwards visit their relatives, and even in
times of war to carry to them intelligence of the movements of their enemies, even though
these happen to be their own husbands. Many of the Polynesian women are exquisitely
formed, the frequent bathing giving their limbs that beautiful moulding and litheness
characteristic of the whole race, and their faces and general forms are often very beautiful.
The Tongan women — who are perhaps better treated than any of the Polynesian females — -
are, however, scarcely equal in good looks to the men ; while those of New Zealand are in
most cases decidedly inferior in personal attractions to the males.
The South Sea women, it may be remarked, are not tattooed on any portion of the body
except the hands and wrists ; but in New Zealand their lips are stained blue, rosy lips not
being admired by the Maori beaux. In New Zealand the women are early developed, and
though after marriage they certainly become faithful wives, up to that period the most
unrestrained and licentious intercourse is allowed between the sexes, with a result entirely
prejudicial to the physical and moral beauty of the women. Indeed, all over the Pacific Islands
the utmost licence prevails, and whatever the introduction of European civilisation may have
done for the amelioration of the condition of the lot of the Polynesians, and especially of
the women, it has, most assuredly, been unable, however willing, to put any check upon the
frailties of the fair Polynesian which may be classed under this head.
In Polynesia marriages are unusually early, especially among the higher class of the
people, who are generally betrothed in early life. The passions of the people are strong, and
suicides arising out of love disappointments are by no means uncommon. Among the lower
and middle classes there is rarely any betrothal, the contracting parties making their own
arrangements without the aid of parents or guardians, though perhaps with a result not par-
ticularly distinguished in its favour from that made by the elders for the young couple.
Unlike marriage among the Indians, there is no buying the wife from her parents. The wife,
on the other hand, brings no dowry to her husband, unless indeed she is of much inferior
rank to him ; and the husband, in a similar case, is usually prudent enough to make a few
presents to the parents of the girl, in order to conciliate them. We have already mentioned
that the girl is, among the higher classes, as a rule betrothed in early youth — even in child-
hood. The female thus betrothed is, in Tahiti, called a vahine paliio. As she grows up, a
railed-in platform of considerable height is erected for her in her parents' home. Here she
lives as long as she is within doors. Everything is done for her — her food is brought to her
cooked, and if she has occasion to go abroad she is attended by one of her parents, so that
she has no chance of being alone until she is married. It is even probable that in earlier
times all females, whether contracted for or not, were thus treated until they were married.
THE POLYNESIANS: POLYGAMY; THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY. 35
When the time for the marriage arrives great rejoicings are made — dances, music, and
festive entertainments being the order of the day. Dances, pantomimic exhibitions, and other
amusements usually precede the nuptial day. On the morning of the wedding day a temporary
altar is erected in the house of the bride's parents. On this altar are displayed relics of her
ancestors, such as their weapons, and even their skulls and other bones, and here the bride
receives the marriage presents — usually pieces of white cloth — from her parents and other
relatives who attend on the occasion. If the parties are connected with the reigning family,
the blessing of the gods is asked in the public temple of Oro or Tane — the two chief national
idols of the Tahitians. If of inferior rank, this part of the ceremony can be performed in the
family marae. On entering the temple the bride and bridegroom change their dresses and put
on their wedding garments, which ever after are accounted sacred, and take the places
assigned to them. Then ensues a ceremony which is very little different from our marriage
service — the bridegroom being asked, " Wilt thou cast away your wife ?" to which he answers,
'•'No;" and the bride is similarly questioned, and answers in like manner. After this a
blessing is given them, and a prayer offered up for the favour of the gods. "The relatives
now bring a large piece of white cloth, which they call aTiu vauvau (' spreading cloth') ; it is
spread out on the pavement of the temple. The bridegroom and bride take their stations upon
this cloth, and clasp each other by the hand. The skulls of their ancestors, which are carefully
preserved by survivors, who consider the spirits of the proprietors of these skulls as the
guardian spirits of the family, were sometimes brought out and placed before them. The
relatives of the bride then took a piece of sugar-cane, and wrapping it in a branch of the sacred
iniro, placed it on the head of the bridegroom, while the new-married pair stood holding each
other's hand. Having placed the sacred branch on the bridegroom's head, they laid it down
between them. The husband's relatives then performed the same ceremony towards the bride.
On some occasions the female relatives cut their faces and brows with an instrument set with
sharks' teeth, receiving the flowing blood on a piece of native cloth, and deposit the cloth,
r sprinkled with the mingled blood of the mothers of the married pair, at the feet of the bride.
By the latter part of the ceremony, any inferiority of rank that might have existed is removed,
and they are considered equal. The two families also to which they respectively belong are
ever afterwards regarded as one. Another large piece of cloth, called the tapoi (covering), is
now brought, and the ceremony concluded by the relatives throwing it over the bridegroom and
bride. The cloth used on these occasions (as well as the dress) is considered sacred, and is
taken to the king, or appropriated to the use of the immoral society called the Areoi. The
parties returned to their habitation, where sumptuous feasting followed, the duration of which
is according to the rank or means of the families united." Such is — or was — the marriage
ceremony of the South Sea Islanders, which in many points shows a dignity and significance
which we could hardly have expected to find among a people rude and uncivilised in many
other respects, and which is so infinitely more ceremonious than any similar rite found among
the Indians, or any savage race which we will have occasion to speak of.
In the Sandwich Islands the marriage ceremony, before the introduction of civilisation,
was much more summary. It consisted principally in the bridegroom casting a piece of native
cloth over the bride in the presence of her friends and relatives. This simple ceremony
probably refers to the husband endowing the wife with his goods.
K:
36
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
In Ne\v Zealand, again, contending for a wife by physical force, which in various forms
exists among so many savage people, and which was probably one of the most primitive
modes of wooing, is found. Among the Maoris it consists in a pulling match, the victor
winning the damsel ; but this is only put in force when there are two suitors rivals for the
girl. Yet, after all this ceremony, the marriage tie is of the loosest and most brittle type
imaginable, the wife and husband leaving each other on the slightest cause of quarrel. In
most islands the husband has the right of dismissing his wife on any occasion.
The disproportion of sexes is not so great now as in former times; but at the period
A YOUXG TAHITIAX MALE. (After Coofc.)
A YOUNG TAHITIAN FEMALE. (After Cook.)
when the whites first visited the South Sea Islands the females were much fewer than the
males, owing to the female children being more frequently destroyed in infancy than the males,
who were more useful in war, fishing, &c. ; but since the abolition of infanticide, the numbers
of the sexes are about equal. We must, however, remember that even in Europe there is a
natural preponderance of boys over girls in the proportion of about 106 to 100.
Polygamy is only practised — and then in moderation — by the higher chiefs, though
strangely enough, such is the power of women among the Polynesians, notwithstanding their
social degradation in other respects, and the aristocratic character of the national institutions,
that if the rank of the wife be higher than that of her husband, she has — among the Tahitiana
at least — the power of marrying as many husbands as she pleases. The legends of New
Zealand* also hint at polyandry once prevailing there, so that I cannot understand why Sir
John Lubbock has doubts that this polyandry, the prevalence of which among many tribes is
* "Sir George Grey's "Polynesian Mythology," p. 81.
THE POLYNESIANS: POLYGAMY; AREOI SOCIETY; VICE.
37
well known, exists among the Polynesians.* In Samoa, and to some extent in Tonga also,
the chiefs — as was the custom in Europe in former times among similar dignitaries — also wooed
by proxy, and after the girl's consent had been obtained by the most elaborate exaltation of
the suitor's virtues by his friendly ambassadors, an exchange of presents between the bride-
groom and the bride's parents constituted betrothal. On the bridal morn the girl, richly attired,
oiled, and painted yellow, is led into the open space in the village, escorted by matrons, who
chant in lofty cadence her virtues, beauty, and other good qualities. If the multitude jurlgc
her fit for a chief's wife, a dance — first by the men, then by the women — concludes the day's
ceremonies, and completes the marriage; if a contrary verdict is given — a rather rare occurrence
MALE AND FEMALE OF THE ISLAND OF TANXA, NEW HEBRIDES. (After Cook.)
(my informant never heard of one, the appeal to the vox pop nil being a more courteous ceremony
than anything else) — the enraged relatives, often led by her father and brothers, fall upon her
and beat her to death with clubs, in expiation of the disgrace brought upon their family.
THE AREOI SOCIETY.
This association is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary social or political features of
the South Sea Islands. It is at once a society of actors, public entertainers, and, like every-
thing else, a religious organisation enwrapped with the life of the nation, among whom it has
existed from a period so remote that it is said to have been established by their gods. It is one
of the most abominably immoral institutions which it is possible to imagine to exist among
any people, but does not seem, in modem times at least, to have existed out of the Society
Islands. At all events, it is unknown in the Marquesas and Sandwich Islands, though a
* M'Lennan's "Primitive Marriage," p. 180. He does not, however, give Tahiti, which I have added to
the list on Mr. Ellis's authority.
3S THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
privileged fraternity, whose practices were in many respects similar to those of the Areois of
the southern islands, existed at one time in the Ladrone and Caroline Islands. This was
called the Uritoi, which may only be a variation of the Tahitian Areoi. The cardinal rule of
the Areoi brotherhood is that they are supposed to remain in a state of celibacy; and as this
condition is on their part more theoretical than actual, their devotees are required to destroy
their offspring. The founders of the association are supposed to be two brothers of the god
Oro, who remained in a state of celibacy, and are ranked with the minor Tahitian deities.
The Areois were privileged players and libertines, who wandered from island to island ex-
hibiting their acting, and living bountifully on the industry of the people, among whom they
spread an immoral contagion which threatened to ruin the whole national existence. Before
they set out on one of their expeditions many religious ceremonies were performed, and great
feasting held in their honour or for their own gratification.
In their canoe was erected a miniature temple for the worship of the two brothers — their
founders and tutelary deities : they then set sail. How powerful was this fraternity, and how
huge these expeditions were, even as late as the days of Captain Cook, may be inferred from
the fact that we are informed by that celebrated navigator that on one occasion he witnessed
the departure of an Areoi expedition of seventy canoes. On landing at any island where they
proposed making a stay, they proceeded to the house of the king and to the temple, at both
places making offerings — in the one case to secure the favour of the monarch, in the other
of the priests ; though the ostensible reason given was a thank-offering to the gods for pre-
servation on the voyage which they had so far concluded. These preliminaries concluded,
preparations were made for their dances and other semi-theatrical performances, which consisted
of wild, weird dances, or of songs and recitations in honour of their deities, or of some
distinguished Areoi. Speeches were also sometimes delivered, accompanied by every variety of
gesture, action, and histrionic display ; the bodies of the actors being blackened with charcoal,
and their faces especially stained with scarlet dye. Sometimes they wore a girdle of yellow
leaves, at other times a vest of ripe yellow plantain leaves ; while their heads were ornamented
with wreaths of the bright yellow and scarlet leaves of the Jiutn (Barringtonia) . Over all
these dances their gods were supposed to preside, and to countenance and patronise every form
of vice which was perpetrated during these seasons of festivity. The amusements often con-
tinued for several days and nights successively at the same place. The upaupa (or performance)
then finished, they took their departure to the next village or chief's residence, where the
same ceremonies and round of festivities ensued. All through the country are erected spacious
and often ornately elegant houses for their accommodation and exhibition of their performances.
" Sometimes they performed in their canoes as they approached the shore, especially if they had
the king of the island, or any principal chief, on board their fleet. When one of these
companies thus advanced towards the land, with their streamers floating in the wind, their
drums and flutes sounding, and the Areois, attended by their chief, who acted as their prompter,
appeared on a stage erected for the purpose, with their wild distortions of person, antic gestures,
painted bodies, and vociferating songs, mingled with the sound of the drum and flute, the
dashing of the sea, and the rolling and breaking of the surf on the adjacent reef, the whole
must have presented a ludicrously-imposing spectacle ; accompanied with a confusion of sight
and sound, of which it is not easy to form an adequate idea."
THE POLYNESIANS: AREOI SOCIETY; ITS EFFECTS OX THE PEOPLE. 3D
Such were the principal occupations of the Areoi Society, in the performance of which
they wandered from island to island, and from the house of one chief to another, who were
always glad to see them, and spared nothing — which belonged to their neighbours — to gratify
the sensuality and greed of their guests. Messengers were sent out on their arrival to plunder
the gardens and plantations in the neighbourhood of the chief's house ; and as this method of
providing an entertainment was adopted as long as the " strolling players " remained, the
neighbourhood soon presented a scene of desolation, for which, but for the immense influence of
the chiefs, dire vengeance would have been taken on the perpetrators.
Among these Areois there are seven different grades, distinguished externally by different
forms of tattoo or paint upon various parts of their bodies, the laborious work of the dances,
&c., generally falling on the lowest grade — viz., those in their novitiate. In addition to
these seven classes there were a large number of camp followers, who attended on the Areois,
cooked their food, and performed other menial offices, for the sake of witnessing the amuse-
ments, or of sharing in the feasts. The Areoi fraternity was made up of members recruited
from all ranks of society ; their novitiate was attended with many ceremonies, and advancement
through the different grades was slow. Admission into the Areoi ranks was eagerly sought,
from the fact that the members were held in the greatest respect by all parties ; and, though
licentious to the last degree, were treated by many of the more ignorant of the people as
something more than human.
Mr. Ellis, to whose graphic account we have been indebted for many of the foregoing
facts, after recounting the various ceremonies novices had to undergo before being admitted
into the brotherhood, or elevated to a higher rank, remarks : — " These, though the general
amusements of the Areois, were not the only purposes for which they assembled. They
included
' All monstrous, all prodigious things ; '
and these were abominable — unutterable ! In some of their meetings they appear to have
placed their invention on the rack to discover the worst pollutions of which it was possible for a
man to be guilty, and to have striven to outdo each other in the most revolting practices. The
mysteries of iniquity, and acts of more than bestial degradation to which they were at times
addicted, must remain in the darkness to which even they felt it sometimes expedient to
conceal them. I will not do violence to my own feelings, or offend those of my readers, by
details of conduct which the mind cannot contemplate without pollution and pain. In these
pastimes, in their accompanying abominations, and the often-repeated practices of the most
unrelenting cruelty, these wandering Areois passed their lives, esteemed by the people as a
superior order of beings, closely allied to the gods, and deriving from them direct sanction, not
>nly for their abominations, but even for their heartless murders. Free from labour or care,
they roved from island to island, supported by the chiefs and the priests ; and often feasted on
plunder from the garden of the industrious husbandman, while his own family was not unfre-
quently deprived thereby, for a time, of the means of subsistence. Such was their life of
luxurious and licentious indolence and crime. And such was the character of their delusive
system of superstition, that for them, too, was reserved the elysium which their fabulous
mythology taught them to believe was provided, in a future state of existence, for those pre-
eminently favoured by the gods/'
40
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD,
An Areor's corpse was received with a ceremony little short of that reserved for a chief, in
the precincts of the temple sacred to the dust of kings and nobles. In the other world their
glory was not even at an end ; a king among the Areois was still a king in the world to which
he had gone. There, as on earth, he was employed in an endless succession of amusements
and sensualities, and often even perpetrating crimes the most unnatural, under the sanction of
their tutelary deities. In this Noanoa Rohntu, or " perfumed paradise," the followers of
Mahomet might have found themselves at home. Though celibacy was the cardinal rule of
their order, yet there is no concealment of the fact that each Areoi had his own wife, of whom
BAY OJF KEALAKEAKL'A AT OAVHYHEE, OR IIAWII (HAWAIIAN OR SANDWICH ISLES), WHERE COOK WAS KILLED,
he was exceedingly jealous, improper conduct towards her on the part of any of the brother-
hood, or even of members of any other class in the community, being sometimes punished
with death. All their offspring were, however, destroyed; the only exception to this rule
being in the case of their followers, whose children (not belonging to the order) were per-
mitted to live. There could not, perhaps, be imagined any institution which better bespeaks
the licentious, sensual disposition of the South Sea Islandei's, and which has done more to
degrade them morally, and even physically, than this extraordinary brotherhood of the Areoi,
the main features of which we have sketched in the foregoing paragraphs.
INFANTICIDE
Intimately connected with the Areoi rites, and a natural sequence of their example and
teaching, was the horrible practice of child-murder, which, until recently, prevailed to a
THE POLYNESIANS: INFANTICIDE; ITS CAUSE AND EFFECT.
41
frightful extent in the Polynesian Islands. It was practised more or less in all of them, but
perhaps nowhere to such an extent as in the Sandwich group. There women would talk
calmly and resolutely about their determination to murder their offspring, even before the child
was born ; and so innately was the custom interwoven with their lives, that they would inform
the early missionaries' wives of this intention of theirs without a blush on their countenances —
or even an idea that such a sign of shame need present itself. This prevalence of infanticide
was not due to want, for this was scarcely known in these bounteously-provided isles; and,
even if, as was invariably the case when they heard of such an intention, the missionaries would
VIEW OF A VALLEY IN THE ISLE OF HUAHINE (GEORGIAN ISLANDS).
offer to provide for the infant, its murder would still be persisted in. It was simply one of the
strangely horrible customs of the country. Not only would these unnatural mothers — mothers
in whom the ordinary maternal love was crushed out by their slavery to custom — persist in
their murderous plan, but would often come to the missionaries' houses, almost before their
hands were cleansed of their children's blood, speaking about the deed with worse than brutal
insensibility, and with exultation at the triumph of their old custom over the new-fangled
teachings brought from over the sea. It was not the lowest or any particular class who
practised this custom ; from the highest chiefs to the humblest Polynesian wife, the mothers'
hands were equally imbrued in their infants' blood. When the missionaries first came to
Tahiti they calculated that two-thirds of the children were thus sacrificed. The first three born
were generally murdered, and if twins, one always fell a victim. * This murder, instead, however,
of decreasing the number of children borne by a woman, only increased her offspring, and
* A custom also prevalent among the Vancouver Island Indians
46
42 THE TEOrLES OF THE WORLD.
necessitated, in her eyes, the repetition of the crime of infanticide, on account of hev not
requiring to nurse the murdered children. A woman has been known to murder ten or even a
greater number of her own children. At the time we speak of there was probably not one
wcman in the South Sea Islands who had not committed this appalling crime — if she had been
a mother. The reader's feelings need not be outraged by dwelling on this point, or detailing
the various ways in which this murder was committed. We have related as much as the
ethnological interest of the custom demands. Suffice it to say that in the Sandwich Islands the
infant was, immediately after birth, buried in a hole in the floor of the parents' dwelling, a
piece of cloth placed over its mouth, and the earth trodden down to the firmness and level
of the surrounding floor. This deed was always perpetrated before the child had seen the light,
for if it was once allowed to survive for any length of time its existence was assured, and
thenceforward it was nursed with all due tenderness. The infants disposed of in the manner
described were called taiuarll halkia, or tahikia, children stabbed or pierced with a sharp-
pointed piece of bamboo, strangled by placing the thumbs on the throat, or stamped upon.
There were still more barbarous methods of taking the child's life than this comparatively
mild one — the fact of which need only be mentioned. " The parents themselves, or their
nearest relatives, who often attended on the occasion for this express purpose, were the
executioners, often almost before the new-born babe could breathe the vital air, gaze upon the
light of heaven, or experience the sensation of its new existence, that existence had been
extinguished by its cruel mother's hand ; and the ' felon sire/ instead of welcoming with all a
father's joy a daughter or a son, has dug its grave upon the spot, or among the thick-grown
bushes a few yards distant. On receiving the warm, palpitating body from its mother's hands,
he has, with awful unconcern, deposited the precious charge — not in a father's arms, but in its
early sepulchre ; and instead of gazing with all that thrilling rapture that a father only knows
upon the tender babe, has concealed it from his view by covering its mangled form with the
unconscious earth, and to oblitarate all traces of the deed has trodden down the yielding soil,
and strewn it over with green boughs, or covered it with verdant turf. This is not an
exaggerated description, but the narrative of actual fact; other details, more touching and
acute, have been repeatedly given to me in the islands by individuals who had been themselves
employed in these unnatural deeds." *
It must, however, be mentioned in justice to the Polynesian mother, that instances are
sometimes seen where the agonising struggle of a mother's natural feelings, strong to save her
child, and the efforts of the father and the relatives to destroy it, are seen in action ; though
too often a false pride has smothered her better impulses. To search for the cause of this
custom among the Polynesians, we have to enter upon the discussion of a complicated series of
psychological and social problems, and to go back to a time when the race was in even a more
primitive condition than the time we are speaking of. No doubt the example of the Aivoi
brotherhood had much to do with it; so had irregular amours, and those where the contracting
parties were of unequal rank. Laziness played its part, we may be sure, and we must not forget
that for its continuance the natives took still higher ground. " If the population is allowed to
increase naturally, by-and-by," these Polynesian disciples of Malthus argued, " there will come
Ellis, " Polynesian Researches," vol. i., p. 200.
THE POLYNESIANS: SOME PECULIAR CUSTOMS. 43
a time when these small islands will not produce food sufficient for the population on them."
It was curious,, however, that it was the females who were most often killed ; this selection of
the woman-child for death may be taken as indicating- the long* course of debasement to which
she was subjected, when she was allowed to survive, all her life long-. The result was that in
some of the islands where infanticide was much in vogue there would be five men to one
woman. In New Zealand slaves often kill their offspring, so that they may not, like their
parents, be subject to a life of servitude; and, in the same country, as in many other savage
ones, a wife will destroy her offspring in a fit of jealousy and rage with her husband.
Female infanticide is by no means confined to the Polynesians, but is prevalent among
nearly all savages ; and if we are to look to one broad explanation of its general prevalence,
we may see it in the fact that in times of scarcity and war women-children were a nuisance
and encumbrance to the tribe. They ate food, and could not take wild animals ; they could
not fight ; but they were a temptation to the tribes in the vicinity to make raids upon the
village they were in for the purpose of stealing them for wives.
SOME PECULIAR CUSTOMS.
When a child is born to a chief — if its life is intended to be spared — the parents take it to-
the public marae (or temple), where it remains for five or six days, and undergoes many cere-
monies in order that the favour of the gods may be secured. The smaller chiefs are not allowed
this favour, but imitate their superiors by performing similar ceremonies in their private family
tamples, but these rites receive no attention except from their relatives and dependants. At
on-3 time various other ceremonies, in addition to those at the temple, were performed on the birth
of a child which was intended to live. After the mother had put herself into a profuse
perspiration, she bathed in the sea, the infant was taken to the water almost as soon as it was
born, and in the Hervey Islands, after the child was taken to the temple, the priest caught the
god in a snare made of human hair, so that he could not escape listening to the petitions
which were offered to him, praying that the child just born should be an honour to the nation,
and be more famous than any of his ancestors. Soon after this, the child was invested with the
name and office of its father, who was henceforward considered as its inferior ; but during the
time the child was in its minority the father exercised his rights as its guardian, and in the
name of his son.
We have seen (Vol. I., pp. 87 — 91) how the custom of deforming the head is common'
in many American tribes ; but we are not prepared to find this habit amidst a people so much
higher in the savage scale as the Polynesian. Nevertheless, in Tahiti at least, it was at one time
universal among the free males. " The forehead and the back of the head of the boys were
pressed upwards, so that the upper part of the skull appeared in the shape of a wedge. This,,
they said, was done to add to the terror of their aspect, when they should become warriors."
Hospitality is not the feature which is least prominent or pleasant in the savage, and we have
already intimated that in the Polynesian Islands this virtue is exceedingly marked, though
whether from the best of motives, we will not hazard an opinion. At all events, among the
paople whose habits we are now sketching, hospitality is carried to a great extent, and performed
in the most graceful manner. At one time, before the grasping ways of civilisation had
entered into their souls, it was the custom when a foreign ship arrived at any cf the islands
44
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD
for each native, so far as the supply of guests would go, to select each a seaman as his
friend, and during his stay to attend to all his wants on board and on shore, often refusing
to accept anything in return, though in most cases it was expected that on leaving the
" friend " would make a present to his attentive entertainer. Among themselves they are
equally hospitable. If a man is in want of anything — cloth, a house, a canoe, a net, anything,
in fact — all he has to do is to roast a pig, cut it into pieces, and send them round by a
messenger to certain of his friends. Each man who accepts a piece is bound to the utmost
of his ability to supply the wants of the donor ; if he is either unable or unwilling to do
NATIVES OF SANTA CRUZ ( PAPUANS), SHOWING THE HEAD-DKESS.
so, he declines the roast pork, which is offered to another, until the messenger effects his
purpose. Generally speaking, it is a rather expensive meal which is then eaten.
Tattooing is by no means confined to the Polynesians, but this " dermal art " is
certainly carried by them to an extent which is unequalled among any other people.
It pervades all the principal groups of islands, and is practised by all classes, though to
a greater extent by the Marquesans and New Zealanders than any other. By the vast
number of them it is adopted simply as a personal ornament, though there are some grounds
for believing that the tattoo may, in a few cases and to a small extent, be looked
upon as a badge of mourning, or a memento of a departed friend. Like everything else
in Polynesia, its origin is related in a legend, which credits its invention to the gods,
and says it was first practised by the children of Taaroa, their principal deity, and for purposes
the most immoral. The sons of Taaroa and Apouvaru were the gods of tattooing, and their
images were kept in the temples of those who practised the art as a profession, and to them
THE POLYNESIANS: TATTOOING; ITS ORIGIN, CHARACTER, AND DEITIES.
petitions are offered, that the figures might be handsome, attract attention, and otherwise
accomplish the ends for which they submitted themselves to this painful operation. The
colouring- matter was the charcoal of the candle-nut mixed with oil, and the instrument
used was a needle made of fish-bone, and a thread which was drawn through the skin, after
which puncturing the black colouring matter was injected with instruments made for the
purpose. To show any signs of suffering under the operation is looked upon as disgraceful,
NEW ZEALAXDER BEING TATTOOED .
d accordingly, in some of the islands, while the operation is going on the young man
dergoing it will lay his head on the lap of his sister, or of some young relation, while a
number of female friends will keep up a song, so as to drown the murmuring which the
torture may draw from him inadvertently, and that, therefore, he may not be demeaned in
the eyes of his countrymen, who are present as spectators.
Tattooing is practised by both sexes, and its performance marks an important era in the
life of the youthful Polynesian. The tattoo of the Marquesans and New Zealanders is the
most artistic; that of the Sandwich and Pallisei Isles the rudest of all. The designs are often
very intricate (see the engravings on pp. 48, 49), but they vary immensely. Sometimes
figures of animals, plants, and other natural objects are tattooed. A cocoa-nut is a favourite
46 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
object. " I have often/' remarks Mr. Ellis, " seen a cocoa-nut tree correctly and distinctly drawn,
its root spreading at the heel, its elastic stalk pencilled, as it were, along the tendon, and its
waving plume gracefully spread out in the broad part of the calf. Sometimes a couple of stems
would be twined up from the heel, and divided in the calf, each bearing a plume of leaves. The
ornaments round the ankle and upon the instep make them often appear as if they wore the
elegant Eastern sandal. The sides of the legs are sometimes tattooed from the ankle upwards,
which gives the appearance of wearing pantaloons with ornamented scams. From the lower
part of the back a number of straight, waved, or zigzag lines run in the direction of the
spine, and branch off regularly towards the shoulders ; but of the upper part of the body the
chest is the most tattooed. Every variety of figure is to be seen — cocoa-nut and bread-fruit
trees, with convolvulus wreaths hanging around them, boys gathering the fruit, men engaged
in battle, in the manual exercise, triumphing over a fallen foe ; or, as I have frequently seen,
they are represented as carrying a human sacrifice to the temple. Every kind of animal-
goats, dogs, fowls, and fish — may at times be seen on this part of the body ; muskets, swords,
pistols, clubs, spears, and other weapons of war are also stamped upon the arms and chest.
They are all crowded upon the same person, but each one makes a selection according to his
fancy; and I have frequently thought the tattooing on a man's person might serve as an index
to his disposition and character. The neck and throat were sometimes singularly marked.
The head and the ears were also tattooed, though among the Tahitians this ornament was
seldom applied to the face. The females used the tattoo more sparingly than the men, and
with greater taste. It was always the custom of the natives to go barefooted, and the feet,
to an inch above the ankles of the chief women, were often neatly tattooed, appearing as if
they wore a loose sandal or elegant open- worked boot. The arms were frequently marked with
circles, their fingers with rings, and their wrists with bracelets. The thin, transparent skin
over the black dye often gave to the tattoo a tinge of blue. The females seldom, if ever,
marked their faces ; the figures on their feet and hands were all the ornaments they exhibited.
Many suffered much from the pain occasioned by the operation, and from the swelling and
inflammation that followed, which often continued for a long time, and ultimately proved
fatal. This, however, seldom deterred others from attempting to secure the badge of dis-
tinction, or embellishment of person/'
In the South Sea Islands the tattooing is in dotted lines ; in New Zealand the lines are
continuous, and are made in the most painful manner by driving little chisels through tlu>
skin. This operation is even more painful than the corresponding one just described in the
South Sea Isles, and will sometimes take years. Especially was it tedious in former years,
when the only tools they had were the blunt ones of jade. The tattooer in good practice is
generally a wealthy man, for the best paying "patient" gets the best tattoo; and accordingly
the person operated on is careful to act liberally to the "dermal artist," in case he inadvertent Is-
lets the chisel slip, and so inflicts an indelible disfigurement instead of the elegant pattern
desired. Slaves in New Zealand are not allowed the honour of the MO/CO (or tattoo) — a right
reserved for freemen; and though in our European eyes the custom is more honoured in the
breach than in the observance, yet whites long accustomed to see the elegantly- frescoed native.-
say thai an untattooed one looks bare and unnatural to their acquired and perhaps corrupted
tastes.
;
THE POLYNESIANS: TABOO; ITS VARIETIES AND STRICTNESS. 47
The Marquesans, who are among the most handsome of all the Polynesians, and are
distinguished for their liveliness of disposition and the ease and quickness of gait and ges-
tures, especially of the women, also surpass all the South Sea Islanders in the extent and
varied character of their tattooing. Many of the men cover the greater part of their bodies,
and often they divide their faces into compartments, each of which receives a tattoo of a
different hue. At other times it is covered with broad stripes, crossing each other at right
angles. Some more artistic still, crowd their countenances with figures of lizards, sharks, and
other animals, often with their mouths represented as open, which gives a most hideous and
repulsive aspect to the otherwise handsome faces thus tattooed. Among them, formerly,
in times of scarcity, the chief, if he was provided with sufficient provisions, would invite a
number of poor tattoo artists to a feast, and as long as he kept them they were bound to give,
gratuitously, a few strokes of tattoo to all who might seek them. These artists were also bound
to support each other, in case one might be short of provisions at any time.
We have a word now thoroughly naturalised in the English language, signifying, when we
apply it to a person or a thing, that he, she, or it is ostracised, shunned, " left in the cold,"
"sat upon," or "sent to Coventry," to use three well-understood "slang" phrases. This is the
word taboo. It originated about the time when the brilliant discoveries of Cook and the
navigators of his period first attracted attention to the Polynesian Islands, and has reference to
one of the most peculiar customs of the people we have now under consideration: — viz., the
taboo, or, as it is properly written, talu, in the South Sea group, and tapu in New Zealand,
e meaning of the word is really "sacred," though it implies no moral quality in the person
>r object " tabooed," but only that he, she, or it is set apart from ordinary purposes, and is
Delusively appropriated to persons or things considered sacred ; sometimes it means devoted, as
•y a vow. Perhaps nothing in connection with Polynesians has been so long familiar, in name
,t least, to Europeans as this tab a, but few facts of ethnology are less thoroughly understood,
t is nothing rare to find the most erroneous descriptions of it in works even authoritative on
'ther points. Therefore, before adding some further remarks on the subject, it may be well to
ive Mr. ElhVs account of it, even though the passage is long, as it is by far the most trust-
orthy statement regarding the custom which we possess — a statement for which I have the
uthority of an intelligent Sandwich Islander, to whom I read it some years ago : — " The talu,"
his late eminent missionary remarks, " separating whatever it was applied to from common use,
hough it prevailed with some slight variations in the different groups in the Pacific, has not
been met with in any other part of the world. Although employed for civil as well as for
sacred purposes, the talu was entirely a religious ceremony, and could be imposed only by the
priests. A relig'ious motive was always assigned for laying it on, though it was often at the
instance of the civil authorities; and persons called ki a I mokti (island keepers), a kind of
police officers, were always appointed by the king to see that the talu was strictly observed. The
antiquity of the tain was equal to the other branches of that superstition of which it formed so
component a part, and its application was both general and particular, occasional and permanent.
.ie idols, temples, persons, and names of the king and members of the reigning family — the
persons of the priests, canoes belonging to the god, and the heads of men who were devotees of
any particular idol, were always talu (or sacred) . The flesh of hogs, turtle, and several kinds of
fish, cocoa-nuts, and almost everything offered in sacrifice, was talu to the use of the gods and
4-S THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the men ; hence the women were, except in cases of particular indulgence, restricted from using
them. Particular places, as those frequented by the king for bathing, were also rendered
permanently tabu. Sometimes an island or a district was tabued, when no canoe or person
was allowed to approach it. Particular fruits, animals, and the fish of certain places were
occasionally tabu for several months from both men and women. The seasons generally kept
tabu were — on the approach of some great religious ceremony, immediately before going to
TATTOOED SAVAGE OF THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS.
war, and during the sickness of chiefs. Their duration was various, and much longer in
ancient than in modern times. Tradition states that in the days of Umi there was a A/4
kept thirty years, during which the men were not allowed to trim their lx?ards, &c. Subse-
quently, there was one kept five years. Before the reign of Kamehameha, forty days \va<
the usual period; during it ten or five days, and sometimes only one day. In this n^
the tabus (or seasons of restriction) in the Sandwich Islands appear to have exceeded th-
in the islands farther south. The longest season of prohibition in Huahine known to the
natives was the tabu of Mohono, which lasted ten or twelve years. It was during this
period that the hogs became so numerous and large that they destroyed all the felt is (or
mountain plantains) excepting those growing on the summits of the highest mountains.
THE POLYNESIANS: TABOO; ITS VARIETY AND STRICTNESS.
49
" The lain seasons were either common or strict. During a common tabu, the men were
only required to abstain from their ordinary avocations, and attend at the heian, where the
prayers were offered every morning and evening. But during the season of strict tain, every
fire and light on the island or district must be extinguished ; no canoe must be launched on the
water, no person must bathe, and except those whose attendance was required at the temple, no
individual must be seen out of doors; no dog must bark, no pig must grunt, no cock must crow,
or the tain would be broken, and fail to accomplish the object designed. On these occasions
they tied up the mouths of the dogs and pigs, and put the fowls under a calabash, or fastened a
piece of cloth over their eyes. All the common people prostrated themselves, with their faces
SPECIMENS OF MARQUESAN TATTOOING.
II
uehing the ground, before the sacred chiefs, when they walked out, particularly during the
In; and neither the king nor the priests were allowed to touch anything — even their food was
t into their mouths by another person. The tabu was imposed either by proclamation, when
e crier or herald of the priests went round, generally in the evening, requiring every light to
extinguished, the path by the sea to be left for the king, the paths inland to be left for the
gods, and so on. The people, however, were generally prepared, having had previous warning,
though this was not always the case. Sometimes it was laid on by fixing certain marks, called
i'nu nun, the purport of which was well understood, on the places or things tabued. When the
ih of a certain part are tallied, a small pole is fixed in the rocks on the coast, in the centre of
the place, to which is tied a bunch of bamboo leaves, or a piece of white cloth. A cocoa-nut
leaf is tied to the stem of a tree when the fruit is tabued. The hogs which were tabued,
ving been devoted to the gods, had a piece of cinnet woven through a perforation in one of
their ears. The prohibitions and requisitions of the tabu were strictly enforced, and every
47
50 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
breach of them punished with death, unless the delinquent had some very powerful friends who
were either priests or chiefs. They were generally offered in sacrifice, strangled, or dispatched
with a club or a stone within the precincts of the lieiau, or they were burnt. An institution so
universal in its influence, so inflexible in its demands, contributed very materially to the bondage
and oppression of the natives in general. The king, sacred chiefs, and priests appear to have
been the only persons to whom its application was easy; the great mass of the people were at
no period of their existence exempt from its influence, and no circumstance in life could excuse
their obedience to its demands. The females in particular felt all its humiliating and degrading
force. From its birth the child, if a female, was not allowed to be fed with a particle of food
that had been kept in the father's dish, or cooked at his fire ; and the little boy, after being
weaned, was fed with his father's food, and as soon as he was able sat down to meals with his
father, while his mother was not only obliged to take hers in an out-house, but was interdicted
from tasting ihe food which he ate/'
The tabu was thus a source of great degradation to the women, and oppression to the
people ; yet it was not an unmitigated evil. In New Zealand, for instance, the tapu was, in its
influence, more useful and good than evil. It acted as a guardian of property and morals,
though it must be confessed that terror and superstition were its principal aids. In that
country a woman is tapu when she has a child. The man who is tattooing another is tapu,
(a most necessary precaution against disturbing the artist when engaged in such a delicate
operation) ; a field of potatoes is tapned by the priest (or tohunga) ; a canoe which has the
tapu mark on it is safe from injury or disturbance ; a tree, if a strip of bark is removed from it,
is tapu for the purpose of the discoverer of it making a canoe — none else will touch it. A girl
as soon as she is betrothed is tapu ; a married woman is tapu to all but her husband, and the
breakers of this tapn must pay the penalty of the breach. A chief (as well as everything which
he possesses) is tapn ; if his blood falls on anything, it is tapu ; if a man falls overboard from a
canoe, that canoe is tapn, and can never be used again ; if even a pig touch a piece of ground
which has been tapued, that pig is tapn. Men going into battle are tapn; they can do no more
work, excapt what relates to the labours of war, until, with much ceremony and elaborate rites,
the tapu is taken off them. The house in which a person dies is painted Math red ochre and
tapued; hence every care is taken that a person never dies in a house, for in such a case the
house could never be used again. He is accordingly removed for this purpose, if his relatives
are sufficiently alive to his speedy dissolution, to some temporary erection, the disuse of which
is of little moment. " The tain" to use the words of the celebrated missionary, Williams. " is
the secret of power and the strength of despotic rule. It affects things both great and small.
Here it is seen tending a brood of chickens, and there it directs the energies of a kingdom. Its
influence is variously diffused. Coasts, islands, rivers, and seas; animals, fruit, fish, and
vegetables ; houses, beds, pots, cups, and dishes ; canoes, with all things that belong to them,
with their management, dress, ornaments, and arms ; things to eat and things to drink ;
the members of the body ; the manners and customs ; languages, names, temper, and even the
gods also, all come under the influence of the tabu. It is put into operation by religious,
political, or selfish motives, and idleness lingers for months beneath its sanction. Many are
thus forbidden to raise their hands or extend their arms in any useful employment for a loni-1
time. In this district it is tabu to build canoes ; on that island it is tabu to erect good houses.
THE POLYNESIANS: THEIR WAR CUSTOMS AND RITES.
51
The custom is much iu favour among1 chiefs, who adjust it so that it sits easily on themselves,
while they use it to gain influence over those who are nearly their equals ; by it they supply
many of their wants, and command with it all who are beneath them. Precedent is all that
need check such a dignitary in getting a tabu established; let ancient customs made and
provided for be infringed, and he will immediately feel that even his power is in danger."
In most of the islands the progress of civilisation has done away with the tain — or at
least robbed it of its more prominent characteristics. The missionaries very properly, in this
respect at least, exercised on the whole a sound judgment in making the abolition of the tabu
a necessary accompaniment of the new order of things which they introduced into the islands.
The natives, however, still call Sunday La tain (day sacred), and if the attentions of frolicsome
mariners, who have just been landed in the latest batch of " liberty men " from Her Britannic
Majesty's ship Pinafore are not agreeable to the dusky damsels, among whom they have
been set ashore, as types of that well-known dignity, politeness to foreigners, modesty, and
general amiability characteristic of our nation, an awe-struck whisper of " tabu" informs
the gallant cap'n of the foretop that his course had better lie in another direction.
CHAPTER III.
THE POLYNESIANS : THEIR WAR CUSTOMS ; RITES CONNECTED WITH WARMUE.
THE customs under this heading must always bulk largely in the history of any savage people.
But in a people so abominably addicted to war as were the Polynesians before they learned
better manners, a volume would scarcely suffice to give a fairly exhaustive account of the
various rites and customs which are observed on the occasion of one set of islanders indulging
in this " game of kings " with another. They are, however, too important to be altogether
passed over in silence. Accordingly let us, as far as space will permit, sketch in outline a
few of their more prominent features as regards war. In Tahiti, as, indeed, in all the islands,
there were many gods specially presiding over war and fighting men, who, before going to
battle, propitiated them by many ceremonies and rites. As the time approached there was much
cleaning of weapons (which had, however, rarely opportunity of rusting much), and a human
sacrifice was offered up to procure the favour of the gods. War was then declared, councils held,
and impassioned, wild, exciting, and withal eloquent addresses, delivered by the principal chiefs
•or orators. While the men hastened to the field, the women, children, and aged people remained
in the village, or were conveyed to some place of safety. Though the warriors, as among the
Indians, and indeed most savages, were freemen, and only compelled to follow their leaders as long
as they chose, the constitution of their limited society rendered their fidelity almost a matter of
course. The summons to war was never disobeyed. Each chief led his own dependents or
subordinates, and after arriving at the general encampment of the head chief, reported his presence,
and encamped with the rest. If, as was generally the case, the expedition was by sea, the priests
52 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
made long and earnest intercessions to the gods to leave their enemies and enter their canoe,
and wield the spears and clubs of the nation to which the petitioners belonged. In the sacred
canoe a temporary erection, in the shape of a temple for the god to dwell in, was built.
Generally, however, only a red feather from the idol was taken into the canoe along with the
expedition, and the images of the gods themselves were left in a specially-built house ashore.
This house required to be built in one day, and during the time it was being built no one must
eat, no canoe must be launched, no fire lighted. All these things were lain for that day. The
building of the house of the gods finished, a man was offered in sacrifice, and buried at the
foot of the central pillar.
INTERIOR OF A NEW ZEALAND " PAH.
The men marched to battle to the martial sound of conches and drums, with flags flying.
Eat they took good care, after leaving their encampment, to leave no food on the altar, in case
the gods whose images they had deposited in the house, instead of coming along with the
warriors and assisting them in the fight, should stay behind to enjoy the good things their
provided ! When the contending armies met there was much bravado, a vast amount of abuse
and general swagger — challenges, casual encounters, then a spear or club was thrown, and
finally came the savage onset — after which all politeness or insult was equally gone. Death
to the most in the shortest space of time, and in the most cniel manner consistent with speed ,
were the only thoughts of the frenzied combatants. At other times matters were conducted
with a dignity which we can hardly believe could be exhibited among a savage people. Before
the battle commenced the chiefs of the contending armies walked about arm in arm in sight of
both hosts, on, I suppose, the same principle that, as we used to read in the newspapers, gentle-
THE POLYNESIANS: WAR CUSTOMS; ARMOUR.
53
men of the prize ring used to grimly " shake hands " before they commenced the edifying
amusement of battering each other's countenances. After the chiefs had behaved in this polite
manner, picked combatants would engage on either side, but as either side began to waver it
was reinforced by the onlookers of its nation, who were sitting on the ground watching the
combat, after which the contest soon became general. Bards (or rautis] also accompanied the
troops to battle, and excited the men to valiant deeds by relating in heroic verse the mighty
acts of their fathers, the greatness of the chiefs, the weighty issues of the cause they were
upholding. Doughty songsters were these rautis, for often without intermission, as long as
the battle raged, they would continue their lays, and have been known to expire from sheer
exhaustion.
WEAPONS OF THE NEW ZEALANDERS. (After Coofc.)
In Tahiti the men used to carry a red shield or target, and were generally armed with
elubs — rtcl-e every local museum in Great Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere — which they aimed
at the heads of their antagonists. It was supposed that the gods wielded them, though, if
so, they always took particular good care to supplement the deities' efforts by using all their
ncn muscular power to effect their purpose : a belief in Providence in Tahiti does not differ
ridely in nature from that entertained in more civilised places. The first warrior who fell was
sized on,, and offered as a sacrifice to the god. Round his body there was always a terrific
combat, and once secured the man was laid, often not quite dead, on a number of spears and
rand to the temple, where the priests, from the writhings of his body and other signs,
leduced auguries as to victory or defeat. If a chief was slain, a number of his friends and
young warriors would make a desperate rush to avenge his death, or, as they called it, vaere
toto (to clear away the blood). Often brothers fought side by side with a constancy and
51 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
affection worthy of better things. If one was killed, the survivor dipped his hands in the blood
of his slain relative, and besmeared his person with it to manifest his affection, alleviate his
sorrow, or to stimulate his revenge. There was no discipline among these savage warriors,
though of late the Tongans fought as united bodies, and hence the victories over the Fijians
and neighbouring islanders. With this exception, every man fought to his own hand — like the
bandy-legged smith who contributed so materially to the victory in the great clan battle at
Perth in 1392, but, unlike that worthy, each was perfectly aware which side he was fighting
on. The slingers in all these battles were powerful auxiliaries to the side they were on. When
one of them appeared in any of the islands, even in time of peace, he was treated with great
respect, and received afar off with cries, " Take care, take care, he is an adhering stone/' and so
on. Sometimes quarter would be given, if the vanquished asked it in the king's name, but
more often a cry for mercy was met with an insult and a death-giving blow. We have already
mentioned that women in some of the islands attended the men to battle, in the capacity of
nurses and vivandieres, but in Tahiti it not unfrequently happened that the women went into
the fight with the men, and fought alongside of them — it is true, not with the same weapons,
but with their hands and nails ! In many of the islands it was almost as bad to be a friend as a
foe during war-time. If you were unfriendly your property would be sure to be wasted ; if a
friend, then it would be seized or destroyed to prevent it falling into the hands of the other side.
Of course the unfortunate neutral was most to be pitied of all, for he was harassed on both sides.
The Society Islanders are a milder race than the Tahitians, but the Marquesans, and especially
the New Zealanders, are fierce warriors, as the whites knew to their cost in the frequent " Maori
wars" in that antipodean dependency of Great Britain. "With all the Polynesians, however,
war is a war of passion, in the gratification of which mercy entered not. Their wars were most
merciless and destructive. Invention itself was tortured to find out new modes of inflicting
suffering, and the total extermination of their enemies, with the desolation of a country, was
often the avowed object of the war. The design, horrid as it is, has been literally accomplished ;
every inhabitant of an island, excepting the few that may have escaped by flight in their
canoes, has been slaughtered ; the bread-fruit trees have been cut down and the fruit left to rot ;
the cocoa-nut trees have been killed by cutting off their tops and leaving the stems in desolate
leafless ranks, as if they had been shivered by lightning. Their wars were not only sanguinary,
but frequent; yet from a variety of ceremonies which preceded the expeditions, they were seldom
prompt in commencing hostilities. What they were prior to the first visits of foreigners, we
have not the means of correctly ascertaining; but since that time, the only period during which
correct dates can be affixed to events in their history, the short and simple annals of Tahiti arc
principally filled with notices of destructive wars, and the effects of desolation still visible prove
that they have been not less frequent in the other islands. The occasions of hostility were also
at times remarkably trivial, though not so their consequences. The removal of a boundary
mark, the pulling down of the king's flag, the refusing to acknowledge the king's son as their
future king, speaking disrespectfully of the gods, of the king, or the chiefs, the slightest insult
to the king, chiefs, or any in alliance or friendship with them, with a variety of more
insignificant causes, were sufficient to justify an appeal to arms, or an invasion of the offender's
territory with fire and spear. Although there were no standing armies or regular troops in the
South Sea Islands, nor any class of men exclusively trained and kept for military purposes, war
THE POLYNESIANS: INCENTIVES TO AVAR; WEAPONS, ETC. 55
was followed as a profession as nmeh as any other, and considered by many as one to which
every other should be rendered subservient" — an opinion in the unwisdom and barbarism of
which the Polynesians do not stand alone. Talking of the causes of war, we ought to include
in the incentives to war in Polynesia love of power and " glory," disputed succession, abduction
of women, and infringement of territory. But a cause no less fertile in war relates to one chief
taking the cast-off wives of another. It is in Samoa that this mainly prevails. In this island
the lords of creation consider — and law allows them the claim — that they can take as many wives
as they please, and turn them off after appropriating any property they may bring to their
unworthy spouses. They cannot, however, be divorced, being still his property — in name
at least — and if once they marry any one else, it is war to the club with the unfortunate
spouse of the " grass widow." The cast-off wife may lead as immoral a life as she likes, and
as she in reality does, being usually an attache of the " stranger's house," the husband is in no
way dishonoured or disconcerted thereat. But let her once marry another, and he is in arms at
an infringement of the rights of property. The weapons used in war were many, and always
terrible instruments, being often set with sharks' teeth, which lacerated the flesh in a horrible
manner, and even disembowelled the victim at one blow. In the Sandwich Islands a dagger
was in use, and in Tahiti the serrated backbone of the sting-ray took its place. The natives of
the Palliser Islands vised a javelin, or short spear, and the South Sea Islanders proper a polished
dart three feet in length, which was cast from their hands in their naval engagements, but was
also occasionally used on land. The instrument used for cutting — or rather sawing off the
heads or cutting the throats of their vanquished enemies was, before the introduction of iron, a
shell of the pearl oyster. Some of them went into battle bareheaded, but the Hawaiian
(Sandwich Islander), wore a slight helmet woven of fibre, and shaped exactly like a Greek
helmet. It was worn more as an emblem of rank than for any protection it afforded the head
of the warrior. The Tahitians wore a fillet or bandage, and others an immense turban of cloth,
which not only served to give an appearance of greater stature to the wearer, but also to turn
aside the thrust of a spear or the blow of a club.
In some of the Austral Islands, Tubuai and Rurutu, for example, a more extraordinary
head-dress still was worn. In Tubuai, it is like a cocked-hat worn with the ends projecting
over each shoulder, the front beautifully ornamented with the green and red wing and taill
feathers of a species o£ parroquet. Other head-dresses are in the form of tight-fitting caps
with light plumes depending from their summit. The Rurutuian helmet was more handsome
still. It was made of thick native cloth on a framework of cane, and fitted tight to the
lead, reaching down to the ears ; birds' feathers profusely ornamented it, and behind flowed
mg human hair, said to be from the beard. On each side above the ears, numerous pieces of
lother-of-pearl were placed, depending in a bunch, and attached to the helmet by a small
trong cord, similar to those passing under the chin, by which the helmet is fastened to the-
lead. The wild waving of the plumes and mass of human hair, combined with the rattling
:>f the shells, as the wearer's head shook about, produced a noise which added fresh horrors to
the din of savage warfare. Various other head-dresses were used in different islands, but the
O . *
above may suffice as types. The Samoans used to wear a sort of coat of mail made from
vegetable fibres ; other tribes, breast-plates composed of the teeth of fish ; both have been
long discontinued, being useless against firearms, which have now taken the place of the
56 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
original weapons of war, though at first, as might be expected, their introduction to them
was productive of sufficient wonder. Ships they thought floating islands, and when they
heard the cannon fired, they regarded the reports as the noise of thunder.
When the victory is won, and the vanquished are either slain or have fled in wild disorder,
the victors either return home with what prisoners and plunder they have, or they turn to
plunder the island, if they have not already had an opportunity of so doing. The vanquished
meanwhile seek security in flight, or in the naturai strongholds in the mountains, if such
exist. Woe betide the helpless aged, the women, and the children, in the savage days of
Polynesia. The victors would repair to the villages, and either make them prisoners, or take a
merciless pleasure in torturing and slaughtering their victims. Everything valuable was either
destroyed or carried off. No age or sex was spared. The females were treated with infinite
brutality, and were often murdered, while the aged were happy if once despatched ; more often
they were disembowelled, and every horrid torture practised on them. " The tenderest
infants," writes an eye-witness present in the islands while these atrocities were in full sway,
"were perhaps transfixed to the mother's heart by a ruthless weapon — caught up by the
ruffian's hands, and dashed against the rocks or the trees, or wantonly thrown up into the air,
and caught on the point of the warrior's spear, where it writhed in agony, and died. A spear
was sometimes thrust through the infant's head from ear to ear, and a line passed through the
aperture, and then the horrid carnage has been applied to the dwellings, while the flames
crackled, the dense columns of smoke ascended, and the ashes mingled with the blood from the
victims, the' cruel warriors had retired with fiendish exultation, some bearing the spoils of
plunder, some having two or three infants hanging on to the spear they bore across their
shoulders, and others dragging along the sand those that were strung together by a line
through their heads, or a cord round their necks. This cruelty was not confined to the slain ;
the living captives, adults and children, were sometimes thus strung together by eords passed
through the head from ear to ear, by holes made with spears." A part of the plunder was
given to the priests of Oro, partly in gratitude for his favour in the past, the Rochetoueuuldian
definition of gratitude being in this case partly applicable — "a cense of favours to come;"
last of all, a human sacrifice was offered up.
This system of offering up human sacrifices resulted in the existence of a number of wild
men inhabiting the mountain fastnesses of Tahiti, who had in early life fled thither in terror
of being seized as a sacrifice to the gods. Several were caught during Mr. Ellis's residence on
the island. One that was caught is described as wild and agitated, with his hair and beard
uncut for years. Another appeared to have been enfeebled by recent illness, otherwise lie could
not have been caught or retained. Terror seemed to have dominated every other feeling. ISO
assurances of his safety served to calm him. Wildly he cried, " Ye are murderers ! ye are
murderers! Do not murder me! do not murder me!" Even after he had been treated
kindly, and received food and clothing, the only words he would utter were, " Do not kill me !"
Noise distressed him, and though he appeared somewhat interested in what he saw around him,
he yet took the earliest opportunity of again fleeing to the mountains. He was under :i panic
of bein^ sacrificed to the gods. Some of the captives were reserved for slaves, while the de;id
bodies were left to be devoured by the hogs and crabs. The lower ja\vs of the most dis-
bnguished men were, however, taken away. Often the bones of the arms and legs were also
53 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
preserved in order to manufacture out of them tools for making canoes, or as material for fish-
hooks. The skulls were made into drinking-cups, or piled in great mounds around the temples.
Sometimes they would heap the bodies in rows on the shore, or use them as rollers over which
they would launch their canoes into the sea, to save them from grating on the coral beach.
An instance is related in which the living captives were used for a similar purpose.
In New Zealand the victors used to (and do still to a small extent) feast on the dead
bodies of the vanquished, and a similar disagreeable custom prevailed in the Hervey Islands-
up to 1823, when it was abandoned, with the abolition of idolatry, and until very recently
by the Marquesans and the inhabitants of the Dangerous Archipelago. In New Zealand
a warrior, after having killed his foe, would sever the head from the body, and scoop up the
warm life blood which was flowing from the dying trunk, and turning to his enemies would,
with fiend-like triumph, drink it before them. The Tahitians, though not addicted to this
custom of eating their slain enemies, would now and then, out of mere bravado, eat a few
mouthfuls of a vanquished foe — generally the fat which lines the ribs. If they did not eat
their enemies, the Tahitians practised a custom scarcely less horrible. This was the tiputa
taata. After a man had slain his enemy he would cut a hole in the body, through this hole
he would push his head, and so carry the corpse along in this manner resting on his shoulders,
and even again march into battle with his terrific burden ! This by no means exhausts
the list of brutalities which were practised on their fallen foes. Some were of a still worse
kind, but even the necessities of ethnological description does not allow of their being
described, especially in a work of this nature.
To be thanked by the chief in public was the greatest honour which a young warrior
could attain to. To boast or his deeds, among most of the Polynesians at least, was accounted
very contemptible — a contrast to what we find generally in savages, and notably amongst
their nearest neighbours — the Papuans — who are braggarts of the vilest type. In a country
where war was almost the normal condition of the people, it could not be expected that
fortified places — erected to check the progress of an enemy or to prevent surprises — would
not be devised. These are found, especially in the Hervey Islands, composed of trees in the
form of an enclosure, in the midst of which the village is placed, and called pahs. The New
Zealand pah (pp. 52, 60) is a much more elaborate affair, being, from its natural advantages of
position, impregnable on three sides. Since the introduction of firearms, rifle-pits and other
civilised modes of defence have been adopted to make the natural strength of the pa /is still
more formidable. How strong they are our troops and the New Zealand volunteers are pain-
fully aware. In the Sandwich Islands, in addition to various naturally strong places, artificial
fortifications of a somewhat similiar character were erected, until guns, embrasures, and stone
walls replaced the old savage fortifications, which, in comparison to the force which they had to
resist, were stronger than their modern substitutes, still known by their old name of pa/is.
With the exceptions mentioned, the courtesies of war were little respected after the
passions of the warriors were excited. The battle ended only when the weaker party gave way.
In some cases, however, ambassadors were used to arrange a cessation of hostilities by settling
the cause of dispute, but these instances were rare, and only when both parties were equally
matched. If the enemy surrendered, their lands and property were divided among the con-
querors, and the captives either murdered, reserved as slaves, or offered up as sacrifices to t
THE POLYNESIANS: THEIR MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION. 59
•gods. The bodies of those slain in the forts were treated with equal indignity to those slain in
the field. Their bodies were, in part, at least, eaten by the priests, and the rest piled up in
heaps along the shore, where the odour from their decomposition became so offensive that
the natives would forbear to fish on that part of the coast for seme time.
In war time the chiefs sat in council under trees, boughs and garlands of flowers acting in
Polynesia a very significant part in all negotiations. In New Zealand the head of a fallen
foe is taken off and preserved with the skin upon it. These heads were sold to the colonists, or
to any other purchaser, so that murder became so rife that these purchases had to be prohibited
by the Colonial Government. War was the chief object of a Maori's life, and the club (or merei)
was his chief weapon, though the rifle has now — as elsewhere — taken the place of the aboriginal
weapons. The Maoris are a brave, manly race, so far as the phrase can be applied to a savage
who is deficient in so many of the virtues which ought to be associated with true manliness.
Even the children have mimic fights among themselves, in which they rehearse the deeds which
they hope afterwards to share in, though the 43,000 now remaining are powerless for evil.*
Vengeance is with the New Zealander — as with all the savage or uncivilised world — a
sacred duty. Once let the blood of a relation be spilled, and his nearest of kin takes a
vow (or rather is bound by law) to take no food except what is indigenous to New Zealand
until he has seen the blood of a slain man. He sallies forth from the pah — and as he
must slay somebody, he would murder his father or mother, supposing either of them was
the first person he met. It must be somebody. If a foe, so much the better; but his own
relatives and friends are not exempt from danger. If he fails to find anybody, then he
must apply to the priest, who, with elaborate ceremonies, acquits him of the necessity of a
further effort to satiate his vengeance. The war-dance of New Zealand is one of the wildest
which we have yet had occasion to notice. Our illustration of it (p. 57) saves the neces-
sity of a detailed description.
CHAPTER IV.
THE POLYNESIANS : THEIR MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION.
POLYNESIAN mythology is perhaps one of the most voluminous in the whole range of savagedom.
They are a people of fertile and even poetical imagination, and a collection of their tales about
their gods and the stories which they have interwoven into their religion would fill a volume ;
indeed, it has supplied part of several, and has two special ones devoted to it. Most of their
tales are confused or childish, and few of them do not exhibit the cruel despotism and low
morality of the race. Yet curiously, though they have " gods many and lords many," few of
them — unlike those of Greece and Rome — have immoral attributes attributed to them ; a
remarkable fact, when the licentious character of the nation is taken into consideration. The
Hayter: "Australian Statistics" (1881).
60 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
ocean had many gods assigned to it, not including the Dli minores, there were upwards of
twenty chief gods ; these were probably originally celebrated seamen, or men who had excelled
in nautical pursuits, and from being the subject of many tales in which their deeds were
celebrated they became, in course of time, deities. The same process of canonisation and
deification can be traced among other nations. We have alluded to the shark-gods. Sharks
were not, as is often stated, really worshipped as gods, but only as messengers of the gods,
and ministers of their vengeance. They were supposed to recognise a priest in a canoe, and
to retire at his bidding, and to spare him in case of a wreck. Theoretically, at least, this
was so; practically, they were in the habit of swallowing the ecclesiastic, if he was so
" PAH," OH FORT, NEW ZEALAND. (After Cook.)
foolish as to endanger the truth of the maxim he taught by putting himself in the shark's
way. In one island, only a few years ago, a temple was constructed for a shark, and in
the enclosed piece of water inside he was regularly fed by the priests. In other places
they used to feed in the bays until they got quite tame.*
There were other aerial gods, who were worshipped under the figures of birds. But
these were not the only ones. " By their rude mythology each lovely island was made a
sort of fairyland, and the spells of enchantment were thrown over its varied scenes. The
sentiment of the poet —
" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep "
was one familiar to their minds; and it is impossible not to feel interested in a people who
* It is a tradition in naval circles that, in former times, the British Government also used to subsidise a
shark in the harbour of Port Royal, but for a very different purpose, "Port Royal Tom" receiving his daily
offering of salt junk in order to bribe him to remain in the vicinity of the war-ship, and so frighten the seamen
from swimming ashore after nightfall, as they were in the habit of doing.
THE POLYNESIANS: DEITIES; TEMPLES; SACRIFICES. 61
\vore accustomed to consider themselves surrounded by invisible intelligences, and who recognised
in the rising sun, the mild and silver moon, the shooting star, the meteor's transient flame,
the ocean's roar, the tempest's blast, or the evening's breeze, the movements of mighty spirits.
The mountain summit and the fleecy mists that hang upon its brow, the rocky defile, the
foaming cataract, and the lonely dell, were all regarded as the abode or resort of these invisible
beings." The moon in an eclipse was under the control of some evil spirit, and prayers were
offered up in the temples for its release. Others — for there are no canons of Polynesian
mythology — believed that the moon had been swallowed by the irate god which it had offended.
Then so much the worse, and so many more the presents to persuade the angry god to abate
his anger and eject the orb of night, or of day (for the same happened with the sun when it
was eclipsed), from its stomach. The mechanical arts had their gods; and, while yEsculapius
alone presided over the art of the Roman physicians, medicine among the Polynesians had
many gods, who saw to its interest and to that of its practitioners.
In addition to all these deities there were certain spirits who also played a part in the
religious rites of the islesmen, and were supposed to be intermediate between gods and men.
These spirits were, however, mostly demons, to calm the ire of whom the aid of the priests had
often to be invoked. The images of the gods were rough, unpolished logs, rudely carved into
something like the image of a created being, and wrapped in many cloths, and bound round
with cinnet of finely braided network of cocoa-nut work, ornamented with red feathers. Into
these images the gods at certain seasons were supposed to enter ; and though the images were
among their most sacred things, yet after the gods had departed out of them they were
comparatively powerless in themselves. There were, in addition to these hideous, inartistic
wooden images, others consisting of silicious or calcareous stone, or of rude uncarved angular
columns of trap, and only ornamented with native cloth. The idols were in most cases
ornamented with feathers ; or, if the images were hollow, then the inside was filled with them.
These feathers were supposed to possess all the attributes of the gods, who had infused into
these objects their supernatural influence.
At one time lizards were held in reverence in the Sandwich Islands, and in one of the
temples was the figure of one. The Tahitians, in addition to the respect they paid to certain
fish (such as sharks), reverenced the heron, kingfisher, and other birds. The Sandwich
Islanders, like so many other people, regarded the raven with religious, or, at least, superstitious
feelings ; and the New Zealanders looked upon a species of tree-creeper as a kind of divinity.
The Tongans, according to Mariner, respected lizards, porpoises, and a species of water-snake,
under the belief that the deities entered the bodies of these animals The Maoris also believed
that the gods selected the bodies of lizards as their favourite abodes.*
The Polynesian temples (or maraes) were either national, local, or domestic. On certain
days in the year the gods were taken out, painted and "dressed" anew by the priests, who
revelled in intoxication during the process, though the women were prohibited under pain of
death from witnessing the operation. In New Zealand, anything which a Maori cannot
understand is atua (a god), to which respect — even though the object is invisible — is paid. In
New Zealand it is doubtful whether there are any idols, properly speaking, the carved figures
* Bishop of Wellington, in Transactions of the Ethnological Society, 1870, p. 367.
62 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOKLD.
seen in thej)a/ts being only works of art, and viewed with no sacred feelings. The priests of
the national temples were a distinct class, and the priesthood, in all its departments, was
hereditary, while the heads of the families were priests in their own families. The king was
sometimes the priest of the whole nation, and, as in the case of Tamatoa, at one time King of
Raiatea, the prayers of the people were presented to him, and by him again to the gods direct.
It is not true, however, as I have seen it asserted, that Tamatoa was ever deified during his life
and worshipped as a god. He was only, at best, the substitute for the god whose high priest
he was. It may also be noted, that the highest sacerdotal dignity was not unfrequently held by
some member of the reigning family — so intimately blended was the political and religious life of
the Polynesians. To avert the anger of the gods, and to secure their sanction in the commission
of the grossest crimes, was the only motive or instigating principle in the piety of these people.
The priests led no idle life ; to the gods they had to offer many prayers, and often many human
sacrifices. They were by no means the least intelligent of their class, and in New Zealand, at
least, they were among the first to adopt Christianity ; hence the travesty of that faith which
is now the religion of a large number of the Maoris. Animals, fruits, &c., were all presented to
the idol, but these were not the only things.
In the priestly language — apparently intended to shroud the horrible deeds from direct light
— there were Jisk presented to the gods. Thejis/i were in reality human victims. They were
offered upon altars at great national festivals (p. 65), during the illness of their rulers, and on the
erection of their temples. " I have been informed," writes the author whom we have already so
frequently referred to, " by several of the inhabitants of Maeva, that the foundations of some of
the buildings for the abode of their gods were actually laid in human sacrifices ; that at least
the central pillar supporting the roof of one of the sacred houses at Maeva was planted upon
the body of a man who had been offered as a victim to the sanguinary deity afterwards to be
deposited there. The unhappy wretches selected were either captives taken in war, or indi-
viduals who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the chiefs or the priests. When they were
wanted, at the request of the priest a stone was sent by the king to the chief of the district
from which the victims were required. If the stone was received, it was an indication of an
intention to comply with the requisition. It is a singular fact, that the cruelty of the practice
extended not only to individuals, but to families and districts. When an individual had been
taken as a sacrifice, the family to which he belonged was regarded as talu or devoted ; and
when another was required, it was more frequently taken from that family than from any other,
and a district from which sacrifices had been taken was, in the same way, considered as
devoted ; and hence, when it was known that any ceremonies were near, on which human sacrifices
were usually offered, the members of talu families, or others who had reason to fear they wriv
eelected, fled to the mountains, and hid themselves in the caverns till the ceremony was over.
In general, the victim was unconscious of his doom, until suddenly stunned by a blow from a
club or stone, sometimes from the hands of the very chief on whom he was depending as a
for the rights of hospitality. He was usually murdered on the spot, his body placed in a
basket of cocoa-nut leaves, and carried to the temple. Here it was offered, not by consuming it
with fire, but by placing- it before the idol. The priest, in dedicating it, took out one of the
eyes, placed it on a plantain-leaf, and handed it to the king, who raised it to his mouth, a.-
if desirous to eat it, but passed it on to one of the priests or attendants, stationed near him for
THE POLYNESIANS: HUMAN SACRIFICES; CANNIBALISM.
63
the purpose of receiving it. At intervals during- the prayers some of the hair was plucked off,
and placed before the god ; and when the ceremony was over, the body was wrapped in the
basket of cocoa-nut leaves, and frequently deposited on the branches of an adjacent tree. After
remaining a considerable time, it was taken down, and the bones were burned beneath the rude
pavement of the marae. These horrid rites were not unfrequent, and the number offered at
their great festivals was truly appalling." A net of cocoa-nut leaves which had been dragged
through the sea, was also at certain seasons offered to the gods, along with fragments of coral
which had been torn up, so as to induce them to cleanse the land from pollution, and make it
as pure as coral. Without this rite having been performed, it would have been unsafe to have
smained on the land.
The Polynesians are, or were — for I fancy they do not now go with such fervour into their
lew faith as they did into the old — an eminently religious people — that is, if we look at
sligion as something apart from morals, or unconnected with any peculiar belief or dogma,
[nto every act of life religious observances entered. They prayed before they ate food, tilled
ic ground, launched their canoes, built their houses, cast their nets, planted their gardens, and
)mmenced or ended a journey. The first fish taken and the first fruits grown were sacred,
and these in addition to a number of others regarded as sacred were taken to the altar. The
king publicly acknowledged the supremacy of the gods, and celebrated the act with great
feasting and rejoicing. In the " ripening of the year," there was also a great thanksgiving to
the gods for their favour in the year gone by. They believed in a land of after-bliss, and in
New Zealand a tree used to be shown at Cape Maria van Diemen, which was said to be the
Ine by the aid of which the souls of dead men climbed up to heaven.
AXTHROPOPHAGISM.
Perhaps if there is one feature in the history of the Polynesians better known than another,
^pularly and widely, it is the reputation they have long borne of preferring the human
subject as an article of diet to any of the inferior mammalia. In song and story, this
culinary weakness of the " king of the Cannibal Islands " and his dusky subjects has been
celebrated. " Cannibalism," however, is a word suggestive of feelings intensely disagreeable
to people whose tastes are prejudiced on the question of " the food of the people." Accordingly,
to cater to the delicate sensibilities of such persons, the objectionable term is commonly eschewed
amiable writers, in favour of the one which heads this paragraph. Modern mildness does not
d here. There is nobody too vile not to find by-and-by an apologist for him, or even some
e who will undertake to make his hero or heroine of dazzling purity, a, wronged and upright
ividual in the midst of a perverse generation. Richard — he of the crooked back and
sworth fame — has long ago undergone this whitewashing process ; there is also a good
eal to be said for Nero and Caligula. Mary of England was an amiable lady, though possibly
her perfervid piety was disagreeable to Messieurs the Bishops Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley,
whose followers no doubt maligned her ; while all the world knows — though perhaps does not
believe — that her namesake the Queen of Scotland was an ang-el of light and purity,
accordingly, it would be surprising to find that the good services of the literary whitewasher
d not been applied also to the Polynesians. Not content with thrusting the ugly word
erred to into a corner, and bringing out a genteel one of Greek origin, causing " man-eating, })
64
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
under another name, not to " smell as sweet/' but to appear less disagreeable than before, it has
even been attempted to affirm that cannibalism never existed among the Polynesians, and that
people whose friends underwent that process were prejudiced against the natives, and so
traduced them ; or, that if the Polynesian did eat his brother instead of loving him, he
loved him (gastronomically) not only wisely but well — for the custom was conducive of great
good, kept down the price of pork, yams, and fowls, saved funeral expenses, thinned the
population of an insular country, &c. &c. &c. Moreover, was it not a religious observance,
only allowed to certain individuals of high piety and stout digestion, and therefore to be
encouraged and praised, instead of being imprecated in a chorus of seamen's oaths and
HOUSE OF A GOD AND ALTAK AT HUAHINE, GEORGIAN ISLANDS. (After Coofc.)
missionary hymns ? It was all very amusing, but jest aside, it is almost too ridiculous to find
any one, in the face of the abundant facts to the contrary, gravely asserting that cannibalism
never existed among the Polynesians. No doubt their neighbours — the Papuans — are still
greater adepts at cooking their fellow-men, but still man-eating — plain, unmistakable, and vile-
existed in these islands up to a very late period, though, if the natives aie now questioned on
the subject, they affect not to believe it. When a man is introduced to you, dressed in such
Civilised garments as a frock-coat, kid gloves, and a tall hat, it is not, to say the least of it,
pleasant for him to be asked if he or his respected father ever " dined off missionary."
Though at no time was cannibalism rampant to anything like the extent it was, and is, amoii^
the Papuans, yet it did prevail among the Polynesians, as the most irrefragable facts proved.
n their gods were styled " man-eaters/' and the king, when he personified the god, ate (or
pretended to eat) the eye of the victim sacrificed, and the priests part of the body, apparently
THE POLYNESIANS: CANNIBALISM; ITS RANGE AND LOCAL PECULIARITIES. 05
in reference to this attribute of their deities. The birds which descended to devour the victims
on the open-air altars where human victims were sacrificed were supposed to be the gods in
that form, indulging in their love of human flesh.
The Marquesans and Palliser or Pearl Islanders were known to be cannibals, and among
other horrible tales of this practice it is related that a captive child, famished with hunger,
on begging some food from the savage conquerors of her native isle, received a piece of her
father's own flesh !
The Hervey Islanders also ate their enemies in order that they might imbibe part of their
courage. And it is probable that some such stimulus as this has led to the practice of man-
HUMAX SACRIFICES AT TAHITI. (After Coofc.)
eating, rather than simply a desire to feast on human flesh, though a tribe of Papuans, who
have been only recently discovered, in the vicinity of Sumatra, absolutely fatten up the captives
they have taken in piracy for this purpose — no religious rite being apparently connected with
it. It was even looked upon as an honour to be eaten. " Kill and eat ! " the chief cried to his
men in battle; and the warriors hurled the threat of "Kill and be eaten " at the enemy. When
they were preparing for battle the cry always was, "Clear away well, that we may kill and eat,
and have a good feast to-day." In the island of Rarotonga they cut off the heads of the slain,
piled them in the temple, and finished by eating the bodies. At other times they would
be forced to resort to cannibalism to satisfy hunger. It is known that persons have been
stolen at midnight from their homes and killed and eaten before morning. Indeed, in some
of the islands in times of scarcity, we are told by Mr. Bourne, who visited Maute and
49
•66 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
neighbouring isles in 1825, that members of the same family are scarcely safe from their
famished relatives. Instances of depraved appetite are also not uncommon ; but both this and
the previous cause of cannibalism are not without counterparts in civilised society.
Tradition — lying, let us hope, in this case — relates that in former times if a corpulent man
went to the Island of Tapuaemanu, or was seen on the lowland on the reef, he was seldom or
never seen again. The inference is patent. The Sandwich Islanders never seem to have been
particularly addicted to what is politely known as " long- pig," while the Tongans and Savage
Islanders (Nuians) are reported never to have indulged in it. In the course of the white-
washing process a case of non-cannibalistic propensities has been attempted to be made out for
the Marquesans also, but only at the expense of facts. As these respectable islanders have
lately awoke to the error of their ways, and discovered that a coat of tattoo and a cotton
umbrella is scarcely wardrobe sufficient to satisfy the wants of Trans-Pacific civilisation
(especially on Sundays), we have no desire to rake up old failings. Still there is no getting
but of the mazes of the fact repeatedly vouched for by natives of other islands, missionaries who
have resided amongst them, and voyagers of undoubted veracity — such as the Russian Admiral
Krusenstern — who have visited them, who state that in times of famine the men butcher their
wives, children, and aged parents, stew their flesh, and devour it with "the greatest satis-
faction." Even females will, if permitted, join in this horrid repast.
Human bones constitute part of the furniture of their houses, and human hair is used as an
ornament on most of their implements of war. The European missionaries who have lived on
the islands declare that they devoured most of the bodies of the slain, and though we cannot
always place implicit dependence on the " fo'c's'le " tales of seamen, yet it may be noted that
Langsdorff was told by a Frenchman who had long resided on one of the islands, that the
priests often regaled themselves on human flesh, simply from the delight they took in it. " For
this purpose they act as if under the influence of inspiration, and after varied contortions of the
body, appear to fall into a deep sleep, before a multitude of spectators. When they awake, they
relate what the spirit has said to them in their dream. The communication sometimes is that
a woman or a man, a tattooed or untattooed man, a fat or lean man, an old man, or a young
man from the next valley, or border of the next stream, must be seized and brought to them.
Those to whom this is related immediately conceal themselves near a footpath or river, and the
first person that passes that way bearing any resemblance to the description given by the
priest, is taken, conveyed to the marae, and eaten by the priests. Conduct more diabolical
l han that here described cannot easily be conceived of. I have always been reluctant to admit
the cannibalism of any of the Polynesian tribes, but the concurring testimony of foreigners of
every nation by whom the Marquesans have been visited, and of the native teachers from the
Society Islands, who have resided for a long time among them, forces upon my mind the belief
that they perpetrate this unnatural crime to as great an extent, and under circumstances
aggravating, as has been met with in any age of the world, or among any portion »f
mankind." Finally, it may be noted that as an article of apparel necklaces of human teeth
were unbecomingly popular in some of tho islands. In New Zealand cannibalism has 1
denied, but. 1 think there cannot be the shadow of a doubt that it existed there at one tin:
and to some extent still exists — in some of its most horrible features.
I will not disgust the reader with the details, but those curious in this and other equally
THE POLYNESIANS: SORCERY AND KINDRED PRACTICES.
67
repugnant habits of the New Zealander will find them stated with all circumstantiality in various
publications.'35'
SORCERY, ETC.
"Witchcraft" and "sorcery" were, and are still to a great extent, implicitly believed in
in the Polynesian Islands, and are understood to be the province of an inferior order of beings — •
irritable and implacable in the extreme — who dwelt in the skulls of departed warriors, or the
images made from them, but also resorted to various sea-shells, particularly the beautiful Murex
ra mods. To accomplish their purpose of bewitching the person against whom an evil design
was cherished, it was necessary not only to pray and perform certain rites, but to procure
something connected with him (or her), such as the parings of the nails, a lock of hair, saliva
from the mouth, secretions from the body, or else a portion of the food from which the
person was to eat. This was supposed to be the medium through which the demon was to enter
the body of the person who was to be bewitched, through means of prayers and incantations
offered up at the temple. The fear of any one getting saliva, &c., so as to bewitch another, prevails
all over Polynesia, and is the reason why the Sandwich Island chiefs used to have a portable
spittoon carried about wherever they went, by a confidential servant, and buried every morning.
The Tahitians scrupulously burn the hair which is cut off,f and furnish each person his food in a
distinct basket. The power of the sorcerer was implicitly believed in — even by themselves — and
the fear of being bewitched often brought on illness, which resulted in death. Even the king
was not safe from the sorcerers. " Give up, give up," was the language of Meitia, a celebrated
prophet of Oro, on one occasion to his sovereign ; " give up, lest I bend my strong bow ; " in
ther words, " lest I use my power as a sorcerer upon you." The same facts are true regarding-
the whole of Polynesia. Speaking of the district of Urewa, in the northern island of New
Zealand, between Taupo and Hawke's Bay, which, like Lapland in Europe, is supposed to be the
special abode of witches, Dr. Dieffenbach has the following remarks in his well-known work
m New Zealand : — " They [the inhabitants of Urewa] are much feared, and have little
)nnection with the neighbouring tribes, who avoid them if possible. If they come to the
>ast, the natives there scarcely venture to refuse them anything for fear of incurring their
lispleasure. They are said to use the saliva of the people whom they intend to bewitch, and
risitors carefully conceal it, to give them no opportunity of working evil. It is a curious fact,
mt many of the old settlers in the country have become complete converts to the belief in
lese supernatural powers. . . . Witchcraft has been the cause of many murders. A few
lys before I arrived at Aotea, on the western coast, three had been committed in consequence
of people declaring on their death-bed that they had been bewitched. It is another curious fact,
which has been noticed in Tahiti, Hawaii, and the islands inhabited by the great Polynesian
race, that their first intercourse with Europeans produces civil wars and social degradation, but
that a change of ideas is quickly introduced, and that the most deeply- rooted prejudices soon
become a subject of ridicule to the natives, and are abolished at once. The grey priest (or
tohunga), deeply versed in all the mysteries of witchcraft and native medical treatment, gives
* See, for example, Polack's "New Zealand," pp. 1—18, and " Official Handbook of New Zealand," p. 22.
t In most parts of Great Britain a tooth which, is extracted is carefully burnt in the fire along with salt, and
the superstition about hair is too well known to need mention.
68
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
way in his attendance on the sick to every European who pretends to a knowledge of the science
of surgery or medicine, and derides the former credulity of his patients." The European?,
however, being under the protection of a being more powerful than the spirits over whom the
sorcerer had influence, were proof against his incantations, the Polynesian wizards always
declared, and accordingly did not attempt to compass their destruction by this means. It is
shrewdly suspected that a knowledge of the action of poisons had not a little to do with the
power of these Polynesian sorcerers — and the frequent deaths which followed their maledic-
tions. Oracles — as mysterious as that of Delphi — were found in Polynesia, and divination was
also practised. On the whole, the more we look at the religious life of the Polynesians, the
CO1.PSE AND " COlirSE-FHAYIXG PRIEST " AT THE FUNERAL OF A CHIEF. (After CooL)
more are we astonished at the singular complexity and completeness of their mythology and
faiths, so high above what we find in any other people destitute of letters, or even hieroglyphics
• — isolated from all the rest of the world — and in a condition scarcely elevated above the rudest
barbarism. They had also prophets who predicted future events. Even before Captain Cook
arrived one of these (Maui by name) prophesied that some day there should come from a far-off
land an " outriggerless canoe," which appeared to the Polynesians, who are so much accustomed
to see the outrigger* attached to all canoes that they could not believe that a canoe could
float without it, far less live in a stormy sea, as the height of improbability. To this day, on
some of the more remote islands, the greatest wonder is the European boats without outriggers.
When Wallis's and Cook's vessels arrived, the prophecy of Maui was supposed to be fulfilled,
and ionu; afterwards, as the natives saw vessels sailing in and out of their harbours, they would
• The New Zoalanders, probably owing to the rougher Southern Sea, have no outriggers to their canoes.
THE POLYNESIANS: PROPHETS ; MYSTERIOUS BEINGS OF THE HIAWATHA TYPE.
be heard to say to one another, " Te vaa a Maid el Ta vaa ama ore!"" ("Oh, the canoe of
Maui ! the outriggerless canoe.) Another prediction was the return of Rono — a god who once
dwelt in the land, and when Cook appeared, by many he was believed to be Rono. It was the
revulsion of feeling on seeing his blood run (and therefore showing that he was no god) that
made the natives fall upon him and kill him. Cook, however, like the seamen of his day
generally, appears to have been far from blameless in his intercourse with the simple-
minded people, who welcomed him as a loved god returned to them.*
In Samoa, and in some of the neighbouring islands, it is believed, by a curious metaphysical
reasoning, that to injure a person's property is the same as injuring the person who owns it.
II
ANCIENT TOMB AT MATAVAI, TAHITI. (After Dumont D' Urville. )
n these islands it is " love me, love my dog " decidedly ; to shoot a man's dog is a heinous
>ffence, while to eat it in addition is cannibalism of the vilest type. In Tonga they used to
* It is among the kindlier traits of human nature to hope that the loved are not lost to us for ever. In Scotland,
it was long believed that James IV. never fell at Flodden, and in England that Monmouth survived Sedgmoor. In
Germany, Barbarossa still sits on his throne in the Kyffhauser ; in Denmark, Holgcr Danske sleeps — he and all
his men in mail — in the vaults of Kronberg Castle, and in Norway popular tradition assigned to King Olaf a less
warlike death than being slain in the great sea-fight with Forked-Bearded Svend of Denmark. Charlemagne and his
enchanted army slumber in many places — in the Desenberg near Warburg, in the Castle of Herstalla on the Weser,
in the Karlsburg on the Spessart, and so forth, and Henry the Fowler is entranced in the Sudemerberg near Goslar.
In Portugal, King Sebastian was long firmly believed not to have perished in Africa, and Arthur, when he disappeared
with the weird women to the " island- valley of Avalon," promised to return again. Taotl of the Mexicans was one of
those departed heroes, whose expected return aided the Spaniards in their designs, and Montezuma is to this day
looked for by the Pueblo Indians. Finally — though the list could be much extended — there is the Hiawatha class of
Indian legends (Vol. I., p. 270). See also Gill's " Myths and Songs from the South Pacific " (1871).
70 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
have a feast called Inachi (or the feast of the first-fruits), when on a specified day the people
hied from far and near to lay their offerings before the gods, on the grave of the last dead
Tooi-tonga, king or representative of the gods. There were also solemn feasts on the death of a
king, and in Tonga we are informed by Mariner, who wrote the best account of these islands
(indeed, the source of all our information), that there was a sort of thanksgiving for the bounty
of the deities during the year. There was also a curious custom of a woman cutting off her
little finger, if in a serious illness, probably as an offering to the gods in the light of a minor
human sacrifice. This custom is apparently copied from their neighbours the Papuans, but it is
curious that among some of the Indian people (in Mysore, and also the Nicobar Islands) a similar
custom prevailed. After the birth of the first child the mother amputated the first joint of
one of her fingers. All diseases they considered were caused by the direct agency of the
gods, and in such case they either neglected to attempt the ordinary means of curing or
alleviating them, or consulted the priests with great ceremony, in order that they might
alleviate their troubles.
Their ideas of a future state were vague and undefined. In the mysterious land of after-
bliss resided the gods and deified spirits. As regards the future life, there was no difference
between the good and bad man, but all men did not reach this fairy land. The Tongans, for
instance, who called the heavens Bolotoo, believed that it was reserved for the higher classes.
The lowest order of the people had no souls, and therefore could not be expected to go there ; it
was even doubtful whether the middle classes enjoyed the Polynesian elysium.
BURIAL CUSTOMS, ETC.
The modes of disposing of the dead were very elaborate. The bodies of the lower orders
were buried with very little more ceremony than a dog would receive, but those of the chiefs and
higher orders were ceremoniously preserved. The body was not laid out horizontally, but placed
in a sitting posture, the face pressed down between the knees, and the hands tied beneath the
legs. The whole was then repeatedly bound round with cord or cinnet, and deposited at a
shallow depth in the earth. The bodies of the chiefs were, however, generally preserved above
ground, in a temporary shed, and placed on a kind of bier, and carefully embalmed after a
process which seems to have been long familiar to them. This process of embalming seems
also to have been practised by some of the South American tribes. Special priests, called
" the corpse-praying priests," were employed on these occasions, whose duty it was to intercede
with the gods, not for the dead man, but for the living, that they might be protected from any
anger which the deceased had aroused within the deities for his past sins (p. G8). Those who
engaged in the process of embalming, or who had in any way touched the bodies, were carefully
avoided by everybody, as the guilt of the deceased, for which it had pleased the gods to cause
his death, was supposed in some degree to attach to the person who had touched the body.
Their food was brought them by others, who also fed them, for they did not care to touch it
with their polluted hands, lest such contact should cause their death. The priest duo- a hole
in the ground of the hut, where the sins of the deceased person were deposited by him,
after which those who had assisted at the ceremony of burial, or who had touched the 1
or the garments of the deceased (which were buried), fled precipitately into the sea to
cleanse themselves, also dashing into the sea the clothes they had worn while employed in
THE POLYNESIANS: BURIAL RITES: MOURNING FOR THE DEAD, ETC. 71
the work. They then gathered pieces of coral, and, returning to the house, addressed the
corpse, saying, " With you may the pollution be/' and then threw the pieces of coral on the
top of the hole that had been dug for the reception of the sins of the deceased, and every-
thing contaminating connected with the dead person. In New Zealand the body was laid in a
shed, and there the mourning took place. At one time in some parts of the country the boxes
containing the dead were suspended in trees, as is the custom in some parts of America. In
some cases the bodies were allowed to decompose, causing a fearful stench, in the midst of thepa/t.
After this, the remains were taken out, and deposited in a tomb, often gaily ornamented and
carved with that elaborate care for which the Polynesian is so remarkable. In the Kingsmill
Islands the skulls of the dead are carefully dried, oiled, and preserved as heirlooms, and at
stated seasons taken out, oiled afresh, and ornamented with flowers. These skulls, like the
preserved heads of the Mundrucus (Vol. I., p. 275), are looked upon with great pride, and
are carried about from place to place with the owners when they have occasion to remove. In
another portion of these islands the following extraordinary ceremony prevails : — The body,
after being washed and oiled, is laid on a large tray of tortoise plates, and supported on the
knees of several persons sitting on the floor of the house. These are relieved by others, and so
on, for the space of two years ; after which the skull is preserved, as described above, and the
rest of the bones buried. All the time a continuous fire is kept burning in the house. In
Savage Island, the body is either set adrift in a canoe, and allowed to go wherever the winds
and the tides may drift it, or it is laid out in the woods until the flesh has rotted off the bones,
'ter which it is interred in a cave or other burying-place. In many portions of Polynesia,
he dead being held in little respect by other tribes, the bodies have to be deposited in secret
r almost inaccessible places during war-time, to prevent them being carried off by the enemy.
n Tonga, especially, at the death of a chief, and still more of the king, ceremonies very
laborate, often lasting for weeks, are performed.
Their grief — in public at least — is of the usual ceremonious and ostentatious description,
prevalent among most savages or barbarous people. In New Zealand, for instance, the women
t themselves with sharp shells, and in Tonga blister their cheeks with hot leaves, after
hich they rub into the tender places thus caused the pungent juice of a particular plant. In
'ahiti also they cut themselves with sharks' teeth or knives, tore their hair and rent their
rments. The laceration by cutting instruments was never omitted. Every female provided
erself on marriage with such an instrument (a small comb four inches long, with five or six
eth on either side), which on every occasion of death in her family she used unsparingly. Not
>nly did the women cut themselves on these occasions, but the men did so also, and came to the
ouniing with club and other lethal weapons. The wailing was deafening, and while under the
infatuation which the conduct of the others inspired, they tore their hair, lacerated their bodies,
or even fought with clubs until some were killed. The scene round the house wherein a dead king
or chief lay was something little short of demoniacal. In the Sandwich Islands horrible enormities
were practised on these occasions. Nothing was tabu then which ought to have been tabu on
all occasions — and chief of all the king's wives. The curtain may be drawn over this episode in
the savage history of the Sandwich Isles. The females, at these seasons of mourning, would
sometimes saturate with blood a little apron which they wore, and give it to the nearest
relative of the deceased as a proof of the profundity of their grief for him. In addition to
72 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
all these manifestations of mourning, ballads laudatory of the numerous virtues of the dead
person were related by the comforters for the consolation of the family. Some of those
which have been preserved possess considerable merit. They can still be heard occasionally
in the island, notwithstanding the introduction of the graver productions of the Reverend
Doctor Isaac Watts (which, however, are not so popular as might be wished) .
Their medicine and surgery are both somewhat heroic — straightening crooked backs,
&c. &c. Abscesses they open with a shark's tooth, and practise the steam-bath, which we
have seen is common among the North- West American Indians (Vol. I., p. 145) .
Insanity is not uncommon in the islands, and those so afflicted are treated with great
OTOO, KING OF TAHITI. (After Coofc.)
respect, as being holy people endued with the spirit of the gods. Sometimes the sick are
buried alive, to save their friends the trouble of looking after them.
Their astronomy, as might be expected, is of the rudest description. The stars are children
of the sun and moon. The earth is stationary, and is borne on the shoulders of a god fixed on
a rock. In the Hervey Islands the god of thunder is worshipped : thunder is produced by the
flapping of his wings. The ignis-fatuus, or will-o'-the-wisp, is also looked upon as one of the
most popular tutelary deities.
GOVERNMENT.
In all the Polynesian Islands the government was an absolute monarchy — the head of
which was a king — whose office was hereditary in his family ; but in the Marquesan Islands
and New Zealand there was no supreme ruler, each chief governing his own district, and being
quite independent of the others. In New Zealand there are twelve main tribes and some
THE POLYNESIANS: GOVERNMENT; BANK; SLAVERY.
73
subordinate ones, the head man of each of which is called ariki. He is respected by hostile
tribes, and, instead of being eaten, is released if captured. The governments of Polynesia,
though necessarily rude, are yet arranged with great attention to the forms of statecraft and
the mode of controlling and organising men. The religious and civil governments were much
interwoven. The high priest was often the king, who again traced his descent from the gods.
The person of the ruler was sacred. His authority and that of the gods were identical ; it was
essentially a " Church and State " government. In the Sandwich Islands, where the sover-
eign was even more despotic than in any of the other islands, the grades of society were also
more distinctly marked out. The higher ranks were exceedingly tenacious of their dignity and
POTATON, A CHIEF OF TAHITI IN COOK S DAY.
privileges. Taking Tahiti as an example, society was divided into three distinct ranks : —
1, the royal family and nobility ; 2, the landed proprietors (or gentry) and farmers ; and, 3,
the common people, each of these again including some minor subdivisions ; and beneath all
the slaves, who were captives in battle, or who, in consequence of the defeat of the chiefs
whom they had been attached, had lost their liberty. Slavery existed among them from
le immemorial ; but there was never any traffic in slaves, and at worst this description of
servitude was of a mild type, the captives often regaining their liberty after a short term of
slavery. In New Zealand it is of a more oppressive character, the slaves being often very cruelly
treated, and even killed and eaten. In all the islands, however, as long as they continued
slaves their lot was by no means an enviable one. At any moment they were liable to be
sacrificed at the whim of their master, to satiate his revenge, or as an offering to the gods.
50
74, THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
In New Zealand especially does slavery reach its maximum. The Maoris are fond of slaves, and
many of their intertribal wars arose out of a desire to obtain them. Captives in war were,
according to Mr. Ellis, who saw the New Zealanders more than sixty years ago, either
sacrificed to satisfy the vengeance of their enemies, or doomed to perpetual slavery. " On
these occasions little children, whose feeble hands could scarcely hold the knife or dagger, have
been initiated in the dreadful work of death, and have seemed to feel delight in stabbing
captive children, thus imbruing their infant hands in the blood of those whom, under other
circumstances, they would have hailed as playmates, and have joined in innocent and mirthful
pastimes. . . . This revolting manner of destroying, in consequence of being captured,
was rendered more horrible from the brutal manner in which it was performed. Sometimes
they chopped off the legs and arms, and otherwise mangled the body before they put the captive
to death."
The custom of abdicating on the birth of an heir, to which we have already referred,
also extended to the king. Henceforward the young prince was treated as ruler, his father only
acting as the regent. Perhaps the origin of the custom was in the desire to secure the son
undisputed succession to the throne, the lower ranks of the people only adopting it out of
imitation. If so, the design was admirably accomplished. The respect shown to the sovereign
transcends anything with which we in Europe are familiar, either from observation or from the
records of history. In the most abject period of kingly tyranny on the Continent no petty
German despot was ever treated with a tithe of the homage which a Polynesian accords, or did
accord, to his sovereign. The description of it reads like a fairy tale. " Whether, like the
sovereigns of the Sandwich Islands, they were supposed to derive their origin by lineal descent
from the gods, or not, their persons were regarded as scarcely less sacred than the personification
of their deities. Everything in the least degree connected with the king or queen — the cloth
they wore, the houses in which they dwelt, the canoes in which they voyaged, the men by
whom they were borne when they journeyed by land, became sacred — and even the sounds in
the language composing their names could no longer be appropriated to ordinary significations.
Hence the original names of most of the objects with which they were familiar have from time
to time undergone considerable modifications. The ground on which they even accidentally
trod became sacred; and any dwelling they might enter must for ever afterwards be vacated
by its proprietor, and could be appropriated only to the use of these sacred personages,
individual was allowed to touch the body of the king ^>r queen ; and every one who should
stand over them, or pass the hand over their heads, would be liable to pay for the sacrilegious
act with the forfeiture of his life. It was on account of this supposed sacredness of person that
they could never enter any dwellings excepting those that were specially dedicated to their
and prohibited to all others; nor might they tread on the ground in any part of the island but
their own hereditary districts. "When they appeared in public, they wore borne aloft on n
shoulders — their bearers being, on account of their oilier, viewed also as sacred. On a journey.
relays of these bearers relieved one another, and bore along their sacred burden with -
swiftness. Their majesties were never allowed to touch the ground, but were adroitly rom<
from mi.- bt-arer to another. To the borne this mode of conveyance could not be comfortable,
but dignity must be secured at any risk, and there were no other beasts of burden in the
islands then. [Horses are now abundant, and pigs, when they were first introduced into some
THE POLYNESIANS: HOSPITALITY; RESPECT FOR RULERS; KING'S CIVIL LIST. 75
of the islands, were ridden to death, under the belief that they were a species of horse. So it
is said ! Credat .] To the bearers it was very laborious, but they were exempt from all
other labour, and in honour ranked next to the bearers of the gods."
In Rurutu they have a pleasant custom when a canoe with strangers arrives ; every
islesman, so far as the supply will allow, endeavours to seize one, and having obtained the
object of his emulation, he hoists him on his shoulders, and bears him inland to his residence.
"When his neighbours see him, a struggle ensues for the possession of the prize. If the man
who first obtained possession of the stranger succeeds in retaining him, he is received by his
immediate friends and neighbours as a benefactor ; if not, a coward's fate is in store for him —
viz., contempt. It may be as well to remark, in case the reader, from his knowledge of the
peculiar propensities of our Polynesian friends in the way of animal food, may suppose that
sinister designs are intended to the striven-for guest, that the only object is to entertain him,
in accordance with the South Sea Island system, of hospitality.
In the Sandwich Islands the people would bend their heads to the ground when the king
walked abroad; and in Tahiti, at the approach of the king, the sight of the images of the
gods, or equally of the temples, the people bared their shoulders and breast to the waist. If
unexpectedly the king came upon any one covered, the garment would be instantly rent asunder,
and an atonement made, and if any one objected to remove his or her upper garment, death,
or selection as a sacrifice to the gods, would most likely be the result to the unfortunate
republican. This mark of respect was even rendered to the king's dwellings, which, with the
ground on either side for some distance, were looked upon as sacred. Even his own father and
mother were expected to show the same respect, and indeed they were the first to do so.
By-and-by he was in his turn superseded by his own son, and when he came of years fit to
rule, the old king entirely lost his power. The king can even alter the language spoken as he
chooses, and in some of the islands the chiefs were accustomed to speak in a dialect only
partially understood by the common people. The king was spoken of as the " rainbow/' and
his house — differing little from that of the humblest of his subjects — was styled the "cloud of
heaven." No one was allowed to stand before him, and when he went from island to island
he sailed, not like ordinary people, but was in their metaphorical language said to " fly."
In Tahiti he was called " Tamatoa," in Tonga " Fiuow/' and so on, just as in Egypt the
hereditary title of the monarch was Pharaoh, and in Rome Caesar. At the installation of the
king there was an immense display of ceremony, feasting, and pageantry. Yet his dress was
the same as that of the common people, and he wore no crown. He had certain hereditary
estates, but as these were seldom sufficient to supply his wants the deficiency was made up by
chiefs bringing in, generally at stated times, stores of provisions, &c.
In some of the Coral Islands, where there was no stone, we have seen that at one time the
jf portion of the king's Civil List was supplied by the pebbles found jammed into the roots
trees drifted up on the shores of the island, being wafted by the current from distant isles,
or even from the mainland of America.* In the absence of iron, or any hard substance, these
les supplied the material for knives, and various other tools, and were sold at high prices
their thrifty Polynesian majesties. In addition, the teeth of the sperm whale were valued
* Firs from Oregon are occasionally washed up on the shores of the Sandwich Islands.
76
THE KEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
at enormous sums, and before the Sandwich Islanders got so civilised, the whalers who visited
Honolulu used to pay their expenses by the sale of these whales' teeth to the natives. Finally,
the minor chiefs governed districts under a sort of feudal system.
When war was to be declared in Tahiti, the king sent round leaflets of the cocoa-nut to
the subordinate chiefs : a symbol of a somewhat similar nature was at one time sent round
by the Scottish Highland chiefs in the form of the "fiery cross." To receive it was to
bind the receiver to do all he could to advance the king's object, but to refuse it would be
a mortal offence. If the king felt himself strong enough he would dispossess the refractory
chief of his land — that is, unless he found that the other chiefs agreed with the rebel in his
A NATIVE OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.
disobedience — in which case, like a prudent ruler, he would compromise matters as best he
could, and endeavour not to be so arbitrary or urgent in his demands in future. AH rule was
despotic, from that of the king over the chiefs to that of the chiefs over the people.
They had no oral laws, but yet certain offences were well understood to have certain
punishments due to them. Rebellion in any form against the government, and speaking evil
of the king or his administration, were crimes liable not only to punishment and forfeiture of
life, but a human sacrifice had to be offered, to avert the anger of the gods from the district
in which such heinous iniquity had been committed. Adultery was sometimes punished with
death. People of the middle and higher classes in Tahiti who practised polygamy also allowed
their wives other husbands, and it is said that "brothers or members of the same family some-
times exchange their wives, while the wife of every individual was also the wife of his taio (or
friend"), a state of matters to our ideas fearful to contemplate, but which to the ethnologist is
THE POLYNESIANS: THEFT; PUBLIC WORKS; LAND TENURE, ETC. 77
interesting, in its being only a remove from the system of " communal marriage/' or wives in
common. Yet, notwithstanding this, any — even the slightest — familiarity with the wife,
unauthorised by the husband, is viewed with the most furious jealousy.
Theft is more from strangers than from themselves ; yet thieves had a god — Horo, a son
of Oro. To pilfer from strangers is hardly looked upon in the light of a disgrace ; a chief of
considerable rank has been known to steal. Among themselves a thief is treated with no
mercy; if caught in the act he is often killed on the spot, or towed to sea in an old rotten
canoe and set adrift, until he becomes a prey to the sharks. Often retaliation for theft is made
by seizing all the property of the delinquent, and the same law prevails in New Zealand.
Public works are made by the whole body of the people. When the king is travelling
supplies are brought in to him, but his rapacious followers commit, in addition, many robberies,
often perpetrating these thefts in the name of the king under whose protection they are.
Another way the king had of punishing an individual suspected of disaffection to the
government or to the chiefs was to get him selected as a victim to be sacrificed to the gods.
This always operated as a powerful incentive to obedience on the part of the people.
The eldest son, as with us, inherits the property of his father, but among the New
Zealanders if the eldest dies, then the j'oungest is the heir. A right in land exists all over
Polynesia. In New Zealand, especially, every inch is owned by some individual ; so that since
the country has been settled by Europeans serious disputes have arisen on this point. We are
informed by Dr. Dieffenbach that at one time it was common that " the fat of the native rats
killed on such lands should be given to t'.e principal proprietor, and in many cases a title to
land seems to have been derived from the fact of having killed rats on it. Thus, a chief will
say, ' This or that piece of land is mine : I have killed rats on it/ Generally, however, land
descends, as with us, by inheritance." In New Zealand, we are told by Mr. Taylor (in
general a trustworthy authority), that there are three distinct tenures of land, viz., by the
tribe, the family, and the individual, but that the common rights of a tribe were often much
complicated by intermarriage; the children had also a right to a share of the family property.*
Perhaps in no uncivilised country is the law more favourable to the woman than in New
Zealand. Accordingly, though the life of a woman committing adultery is, as well as that of
her paramour, at the disposal of her husband, yet, on the other hand, if the husband is the
offender, the wife's relatives can, and do, demand that he should be exposed naked in public.
This disgrace is so dreaded, that cases are known in which, rather than submit to it, the
offenders have committed suicide. In the Kingsmill Islands each chief has a mark (generally
of paint on face and forehead) peculiar to himself, and when a stranger is placed under
his protection the "brand" is also affixed to the protege as well as to the protector. Another
feature in the civil policy of the Polynesians is, that among one section of them — viz., the
Pelew Islanders — there is a decoration of rank corresponding to our orders of knighthood. This,
in intrinsic value, is nothing more than a bone armlet, fastened tightly around the wrist, and
which is conferred by the king. No honour is so highly valued, or has so many privileges,
as being a rupack— the name applied to the insignium, and also to those so honoured. f
* Taylor : " New Zealand and the New Zealanders," p. 384, quoted in Lubbock, "On the Origin of Civilisation,"
p. 311 ; and Thomson's " Story of New Zealand" (1859).
t For the present condition of the Polynesians, see p. 7, and " Countries of the World," Vol. IV., pp. 22 — 127.
78
CHAPTER V.
THE PAPUANS : THEIR RANGE ; CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITS.
LYING in close proximity to the Polynesians — indeed, their nearest neighbours — and not un-
frequently intermingling with them, is another race widely different in personal appearance, in
character, and as we have seen (p. 2) in other particulars. These are the Oceanic negroes,
or Papuans. It is hardly possible to conceive two people, situated so near to each other,
that differ so thoroughly and remarkably. The Fijians, who comprise the section of the
Papuans that lies nearest the Polynesians, illustrate this dissimilarity. They are less graceful
than this people, their limbs arc less rounded and swelling, the neck is too short for due
proportion, the skin is harsh to the feeling, and the whole figure wants elegance of outline.
The Fijian physiognomy differs from that of the Polynesians, not so much in any particular
feature as in a general debasement of the whole, and a decided approximation to the charac-
teristic form of the negro race. The head is usually broad in the occipital region (which they
consider a mark of beauty), and narrows towards the top and in front, the forehead, though
often of good height, appearing compressed at the sides. The eyes are black, and set rather deep,
but never obliquely. The nose is not large, and is generally a good deal flattened; the nostril-
are often larger laterally than forward, and the nose is then much depressed at the upper part
between the eyes. The mouth is wide, and the lips, particularly the upper one, thick. The
chin varies, but is most commonly short and broad. The jaws are large, and the lower part of
the face more prominent than in the Malay face. The cheek-bones also project forward as in
the negro, but not laterally as in the Mongol variety ; notwithstanding which the narrowness
of the forehead at the temples gives a greater width to the face at the molar region than else-
where. The whole face is longer and thinner than among Polynesians. The hair is neither
straight nor woolly, but may be properly designated as frizzled. When allowed to grow without
interference, it appears in numerous spiral locks, eight or ten inches in length, spreading out <m
all sides of the head. Sometimes these curls are seen much longer, falling down to the middle of
the back. It is, however, very seldom allowed to grow naturally. The young girls have it cut
very close, and sometimes shaved to the skin, like the Tahitians. In girls, before marriage, it
is allowed to grow long, and is bleached white by washing it with a solution of lime, except a
portion round the crown, which is plastered with a black pigment; after marriage, it is either
cut to the length of one or two inches, or frizzled out like that of the men; in both cases it is
frequently soaked in colouring liquids, either red or black. The men in general have their hair
dressed so as to form an immense semi-globular mass, covering the top, back, and sides of the
head. The arrangement of this chcvclure is performed for the chiefs by professional barlnTs,
and is a work of great labour; six hours are sometimes occupied in dressing a head, and the
process is repeated at intervals of two or three weeks. It is probably to guard jigainst dis-
arranging this work that the piece of bamboo, which is placed under the neck in sleeping, is
employed, instead of the ordinary pillow. For the same purpose, the natives wear during the
day a sola (or kerchief) of very thin gauze, like paper-cloth, which is thrown over the hair, and
tied closely around the head, so as to have much the appearance of a turban.
COLOUR AND APPEARANCE: NATIVES OF NEW GUINEA.
The colour of the Fijians is a chocolate- brown, or a hue midway between the jet-black
of the negro and the brownish-yellow of the Polynesian. There are, however, two shades very
distinctly marked, like the blonde and brunette complexions in the white race, beside all the
intermediate gradations. In one of these shades the brown predominates, and in the other the
copper. They do not belong to different castes or classes, but are found indiscriminately among
all ranks and in all tribes. The natives are aware of this distinction, and call the lighter-
' O
coloured people Vlti Ndamundanui (red Fijians), but they do not seem to regard it as anything
that requires or admits of explanation. These red-skinned natives must not be confounded with
the Tongaviti) or individuals of mixed Tongan and Fijian blood, of whom there are many in some
parts of the group. So much for the account given by the American Exploring Expedition.
Like the Polynesians, the Oceanic negroes are widespread, and may be classed, for the purpose of
the somewhat succinct account which we shall give of them, into (1) the Papuans proper,
comprising the Fijians already described, inhabiting the islands of the same name ; the natives
of New Guinea, and islands to the west of it (Louisiade Archipelago) ; those of New Caledonia,
New Hebrides, New Ireland, &c., and chain leading to the Philippines ; (2) the Australians ;
(3) the now extinct Tasmanians, who were closely allied to them; and, perhaps- (4) the Nicobar
and Andaman Islanders ought to be looked upon as belonging to the same great division of
people. The New Caledonians (p. 81) are sooty black, like negroes, are medium-sized, but
sometimes, as shown in our engraving, rather tall, but not well proportioned, though not of
unpleasing aspect. They wear little or no clothing, their wardrobe being reduced to the
rimitive fig-leaf, or a kind of drawers made of bark-cloth, while the women wear a girdle
round the loins. Their hair is short and woolly, but being often lengthened by straight
artificial locks of bats' hair and grass, which hang down the back, their cranial covering
ooks longer than it really is. Some of them have their hair confined in a wide-meshed net,
hile the chiefs wear a sort of hat as a mark of rank rather than as a covering for the head.
hey also wear masks in battle or in the dance. Ear-ornaments, weighty enough to
Irag the ear down to the shoulders, are also in favour amongst them. The Caledonians do
not tattoo themselves, but paint lines of deeper black than their own skin with charcoal
ross their breasts.
It is, however, in New Guinea that the typical Papuan is found. Here he is a fine
powerfully-built man. His hair is harsh, frizzly, crisped, but longish, and the general mode of
dressing it is to make it stand out like a mop by continual combing with a peculiar utensil
devised for the purpose, until the owner of this extraordinary head of hair looks as if he were
topheavy (p. 88). It grows in little tufts or curls, and he glories in a similar beard. The arms,
ogs, and breast of the New Guinea native are to a greater or less extent clothed with hair of a
imilar nature. His skin is sooty black, but never gets that jet-black colour characteristic of
some of the negro race, and it varies in tint more than does the complexion of the Malay. His
legs are generally long and thin, and his hands and feet larger than those of the Malays. His
face is somewhat elongated, the forehead flattish, and the brow very prominent. The nose is large,
rather arched, and high, the base thick, the nostrils broad, with the aperture hidden, owing to
the tip of the nose being elongated, a feature which is also portrayed on the figures which they
use as charms or carve as house-ornaments. The mouth is large, and the lips thick and pro-
ubenint ; but the face has altogether a more European aspect than that of the Mala}-, owing to
80 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the larger nose and protuberant forehead, characteristics which even in infancy well distinguish
the two races.* It is, however, the hair of the Fiji section of the great Papuan race that is
the most remarkable feature in the physical characteristics of this people. We have already
alluded to it, but may mention a few additional particulars in reference to it, for which we are
indebted to Mr. Williams's work on " Fiji and the Fijians." Most of the chiefs keep a
professional hairdresser, who devotes several hours, often daily, to his labours; the operator
being tabu from all labour, except working in his garden, during this important duty. The
strong wiry hair is so dressed that it will retain the position in which it is put for many hours
afterwards, projecting at a distance of six or eight inches from the head. " Whatever may be
said about the appearance being unnatural, the best coiffures have a surprising and almost
geometrical accuracy of outline, combined with a round softness of surface and uniformity of
dye, which display extraordinary care and merit some praise. They seem to be carved out of
some solid substance, and are variously coloured. Jet-black, blue-black, ashy-white, and
several shades of red prevail. Among young people bright red and flaxen are in favour.
Sometimes two or more colours meet on the same head. Some heads are finished, both as
to shape and colour, nearly like an English barrister's wig. In some, the hair is a spherical
mass of jet-black hair, with a white roll in front, as broad as the hand ; or, in lieu of this, a
white, oblong braid occupies the length of the forehead, the black pressing down on either side.
In each case the black projects further than the white hair. Some heads have all the
ornamentation behind, consisting of a cord of twisted coils, ending in tassels ; in others, the cords
give place to a large red roll, or a sandy projection, falling on the neck. On one head all the
hair is of uniform length, but one-third in front is ashy or sandy, and the rest black, a sharply-
defined separation dividing the two colours. Not a few are so ingeniously grotesque as to
appear as if done to excite laughter. One has a large knot of frizzy hair cut away, leaving
three or four rows of small clusters, as if his head were planted with small paint-brushes. A
third has his head bare, except where a black patch projects over each temple. One, two, or
three cords of twisted hair often fall from the right temple, a foot or eighteen inches long.
Some men wear a number of these braids so as to form a curtain at the back of the neck,
reaching from one ear to the other. A mode that requires great care has the hair wrought
into distinct locks, radiating from the head ; each lock is a perfect cone, about seven inches in
length, having the base outwards, so that the surface of the hair is marked out into a great
number of small circles, the ends being turned in, in each lock, towards the centre of the
cone. In another kindred kind the locks are pyramidal, the sides and angles of each bein:
regular as though formed of wood ; all round the head they look like square black blocks, the
upper tier projecting horizontally from the crown, and a flat space being left at the top of the
head. When the hair, however, is not more than four inches long this flat space does not exist,
but the surface consists of a regular succession of squares or circles. The violent motions
* Wallace : "Malay Archipelago," ii., 446. The Papuans arc often called the Oceanic negroes. The term is.
however, very misleading, for the likeness is mainly superficial. The Hottentot's hair is in some degree not in
tli- Papuan's, but it grows neither so long nor so thick, while the abundant growth of their beard and general liuiri-
ness still further distinguish them from the aborigines of South Africa. Any similarity tiny may havo to the
negroes proper must be sought in their black skins — though the negro and Papuan shades are different— and
their tendency to thick lips. (" Nieuw Guinea ethnographisch en natuurkundig onderzocht en beschreven," 1862).
51
NATIVE FRUIT-SELLERS OF NEW CALEDONIA
(PAPUANS).
82 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of the dance do not disturb these elaborate preparations ; but great care is taken to preserve
them from the effects of the dew or rain." In order to protect their hair from the elements,
the Papuan dandies cover it with a dried banana leaf, which acts effectually as a waterproof
covering. In addition to these enormous heads of hair the Fijians will even wear wigs, in
the manufacture and dyeing of which they are very skilful. Tattooing is not much practised
by them; though some of the Papuans imprint deep scarification on their bodies, after a
manner similar to the Australians. The Brumer's Islanders, lying considerably eastward of New
Guinea, effect this kind of epidermal decoration in rather an elaborate manner; they also,
instead of dressing, shave off their hair from their foreheads.
The character of the Papuans is widely different from that of the Malays, close to and
even intermingled with whom they live, and even from the Polynesians, their nearest neigh-
bours in another direction. The Papuan is an impulsive being — demonstrative in speech
and action. His feelings of joy or surprise are expressed in yelling and frantic leaping. Mr.
Wallace, in characteristically truthful and graphic terms, describes this phase of their character,
as exhibited in a party who visited a vessel he was on board of in the Malay Archipelago.
They " came up singing and shouting, dipping their paddles deep in the water, and throwing
up clouds of spray. As they approached nearer they stood up in their canoes, and increased
their noise and gesticulations ; and in coming alongside, without asking leave, and without a
moment's hesitation, the greater part of them scrambled up on our deck, just as if they were
come to take possession of a captured vessel. Then commenced a scene of indescribable
confusion. These forty black, naked, mop-headed savages seemed intoxicated with joy and
excitement. Not one of them could remain still for a moment. Every individual of our crew
was in turn surrounded and examined, asked for tobacco or arrack, grinned at, and deserted
for another. All talked at once, and our captain was regularly mobbed by the chief men, wh
wanted to be employed to tow us in, and who begged vociferously to be paid in advance.
A few presents of tobacco made their eyes glisten ; they would express their satisfaction by
grins and shouts, by rolling on deck, or a headlong leap overboard. Schoolboys on an
unexpected holiday, Irishmen at a fair, or midshipmen on shore, would give but a faint idea of
the exuberant animal enjoyment of these people." A Malay could never have behaved in this
manner; he is much too dignified. Another trait, showing the contrast between these
natives, is related by the same traveller. One day, when in the forest, he noticed an old
Papuan man watching him catching an insect and stowing it safely away. " He stood very
quietly until I had pinned and put it away in my collecting-box, when he could contain himself
no longer, but bent almost double, and enjoyed a hearty roar of laughter. Every one will
recognise this as a true negro trait. A Malay would have stared, and asked in a tone of
bewilderment what I was doing, for it is but little in his nature to laugh, never heartily, and
still less at or in the presence of a stranger, to whom, however, his disdainful glances or
whispered remarks are less agreeable than the most open boisterous expression of merriment
The women here were not so much frightened at strangers, or made to keep themselves so ;
much secluded as among the Malay races ; the children were more merry, and had the ' ni.L
grin/ while the noisy confusion of tongues among the men, and their excitement on i
ordinary occasions, are altogether removed from the general taciturnity and reserve of the
Malay." The women and children share in every discussion, and are little, if at all, alarmed at
th<
.
M
V,ic
THE PAPUANS: INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER; MORALITY, ETC. 83
the sight of Europeans. Yet, notwithstanding that the Papuans — we are speaking at present
of those of New Guinea and neighbouring islands — have made few advances in civilisation, their
intellect is higher than that of the more polished Malays.
The Papuan has a greater taste and more feeling for art than the Malay. This he
displays in the decoration of his canoe, his house, and almost every domestic utensil, which he
beautifies with elaborate carving and other ornamentation — a habit not found among the
Malays ; wherever there is a plank the Papuans carve it, or cover it with rude yet charac-
teristic figures. The high prows of their boats are covered with a mass of open filigree, carved
out of a solid block of wood, often with great taste as to the design and general execution.
The floats of their fishing-lines, the beaters of wood used in making their pottery, their tobacco-
boxes, &c., are all equally ornamented. Though it is curious to find a taste for art co-existing
with such a rude state of civilisation, yet it is still more surprising to find that these people,
whose tastes are so (comparatively) refined, live in miserable, crazy, and filthy hovels, and are
utterly wanting in all sense of decency, order, or comfort. Their houses have no furniture
deserving of the name, and the clothes they wear are — as at Dorey in New Guinea — often filthy
bark, rags, or sacking. Their food is wholly roots and vegetables, with fish or game only as
an occasional luxury. The paths to their provision grounds are never repaired — a characteristic,
however, of most savages. An Indian, for instance, will pass, generation after generation, along
the same trail from one village to another, or daily to his salmon weir, and yet never dream, or
at all events, only dream of improving the path. He will climb over the same boulders and
huge trunks of fallen trees as his father did, while a few hours of labour would lessen his toil
and that of all his tribe for generations yet to come. The New Guineans are often, owing to
the miserable conditions of their life, wretched-looking objects — the children especially — being
blotched all over with eruptions and sores. "If these people are not savages, where shall we
find any ? Yet they have all a decided love for the fine arts, and spend their leisure time in
executing works whose good taste and elegance would often be admired in our schools of
design."
On the other hand, the Papuan is deficient in affection and moral sentiment. His treat-
ment of his children is often violent and unnatural — a trait of character entirely different from
that of the Malay. The latter is kind and yielding to a degree bordering on over-indulgence,
rarely interfering with, and often sharing in all their pursuits and amusements, and giving
them perfect liberty at whatever age they choose to claim it. This gentleness to children,
d natural peacefulness of disposition, is to a great extent due to the natural apathy of the
alay, while the contrary qualities found in the Papuan may be, on the other hand, referred to
his greater vigour and energy of mind. The distinction between the two races may be succinctly
summed up in Mr. Wallace's words : " The Malay is of short stature, brown-skinned, straight-
haired, beardless, and smooth-bodied. The Papuan is taller, is black-skinned, frizzly-haired,
bearded, and hairy-bodied. The former is broad-faced, has a small nose and flat eyebrows ; the
latter is long-faced, has a large and prominent nose and projecting eyebrows. The Malay is
bashful, cold, undemonstrative, and quiet ; the Papuan is bold, impetuous, excitable, and noisy.
The former is grave, and seldom laughs ; the latter is joyous and laughter-loving. The one
conceals his emotions, the other displays them."
Yet, as might be expected, there are various of the islands with populations that do not
84 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
exactly agree with the foregoing description of either the Malays or Papuans, being apparently
intermixtures in various degrees of these two nations ; such as the " Alf uros " * of Sahoe and
Gilolo (p. 89) — some of the people of Ceram, Borneo, Timor, &c. These mongrel races do
not, however, in any way alter the truth of what we have related in regard to the two races
when found pure.
The characteristics of the Papuans of New Guinea are to a great extent true of the rest of
the true Papuans. The Fijian is ingenious and clever, but bad, boastful, and vindictive in
the extreme. Until he takes vengeance on the man who has, or whom he believes to have,
wronged him, the Fijian allows nothing to interfere with his all-engrossing pursuit. He waits
his time, believing that unto the patient man all things come; and as there are few Fijians with
WEAPONS AND ORNAMENTS, NEW CALEDONIA.
a thoroughly clear conscience, the result is that they are ever apprehensive of the avenger being
on their track. The slamming of a door, the sight of a stranger in the wood, the appearance
of a strange canoe, or other common trifle which to most people would be only an object of
indifference, or at most curiosity, is to a Fijian often the signal for alarm and retreat to a
place of safety. This system of determined revenge has made the race a nervous and timid
one in private life, though in battle, where they know that they can only look for the worst,
they are sufficiently courageous.
The weapons of the Papuans (p. 84) are numerous and ingenious, and their design has
been copied by various of their neighbours, more particularly the Polynesians, The New
Caledonians, for instance, employ the sling and a long spear, which is not, however, used
* Alfoers, Alforas, or Haraforaa— all of these terms are only corruptions of the Portuguese term signifying
outcasts or separated tribes.
THE PAPUANS: WEAPONS; WAR CUSTOMS, ETC.
85
close quarters, but is thrown from the hand with great force by means of a curious and most
ingenious loop-thrower, called the ounep. Others prefer clubs of various forms, in addition to
the almost universal bow and arrow. Without the aid of numerous figures and lengthened
description, which the press of other and more interesting matter will not admit of space being
devoted to, it would be a waste of time to enter into an account of these ; we will only mention
a curious hollow tube, which is used for throwing a mixture of sand and wood ashes as a signal
when enemies— supposed or real— are approaching the coast. This mixture gives a smoke like
that emitted after firing a musket, and accordingly the early navigators mistook these signals
for actual fire-arms, their vivid imagination adding the report and the light which were
non-existent. At one time they had a great dislike to weapons of steel, preferring to use
KANAK (NEW CALEDONIAN) FISHING FROM A RAFT.
their own bamboo knives, but that this objection was not insuperable the prevalence of iron
and some rather skilful smiths amongst them are the best proofs.
War is among nearly all the Papuans the occupation of the men, and the object of their
rliest training. A black stone is laid on the region of the New Caledonian boy's heart, when
e is consecrated to the god of war, to show that his heart must be as hard as stone. Wars are
very common in all the uncivilised islands, but the customs relating to this portion of their
social science need not be particularly described, after what we have written in regard to the
Polynesians. The slaughter — especially if one of their strong places is captured — the cruelties,
and the ferocity displayed on such occasions are not less than among that division of the Oceanic
people. Human sacrifices, selected from the captives taken, are offered up by the Fijians with
all the horrid rites peculiar to such occasions. If a man kills his enemy in war, he is entitled
to take a new name. In their battles there ai-e, however, in general, very few slain, as many do
not, as a rule, engage at a time, single combats being common. Sometimes a man will boast
• *VU, c
80 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
that he will kill a person named, belonging to the party of the enemy, and will do so and
BO with his skull after he obtains it. It is not long before the boast is carried to the person
who is the object of it, and who is, in his turn, using every effort in his power to capture
the truculent braggart. If so, woe betide him ! Crestfallen, he is dragged amid his cheering
and insulting enemies, who are ever reminding him of what he boasted he would do. He is
not likely ever to have a chance of accomplishing his intention, however. His hands are tied
behind his back ; a large bundle of dried cocoa-nut leaves are fastened on his back, and then set
on fire, and the wretched man set at liberty to run about frantic with torture until death relieves
him. Captain Head describes the way the New Caledonians treat the bodies of the dead.
They are brought home with great lamentation, and treated with great wailing and shrieking
from the appointed mourners, who remain unclean often for several years after burying a
great chief, and have afterwards to undergo various expiatory observances. " For weeks they
continue nightly to waken the forest echoes with their cries. After ten days have elapsed, the
grave is opened and the head twisted off ; and again in this custom resembling the Andaman
Islanders, the teeth are distributed as relics among the relatives, and the skull preserved as a
memorial by the nearest of kin, who daily goes through the form of offering it food. The only
exceptions are in the case of the remains of old women, whose teeth are sown in the farm patches
as a charm to produce good crops, their skulls set up upon poles being deemed equally potent in
this respect."
Marriage in New Guinea is a very simple operation. The couple are set down before an
idol. The man gives some betel-nut to the woman, and the ceremony is complete. In Fiji,
where betrothals in childhood are common, a betrothal is constituted by the mother of the child
offering a girdle to the man. After this the girl is looked upon as intended for him, and is under
his protection until she is of marriageable age. At this period the proper marriage ceremony is
performed. An interchange of presents takes place, and the husband sends to the house of the
bride some food prepared by him, which she, sitting in her gala apparel, painted with turmeric
and oil, is graciously pleased to accept. For four days she enjoys a complete holiday; after this
she is taken by a number of her female friends on a fishing excursion. They then cook the fisl
they have caught, to partake of which the bridegroom is invited. The bride and bridegroom
eat together, each being exceedingly polite in helping the other to the tit-bits — a species of
delicate attention which is more one-sided in after-life. The husband now commences to build
a house, and during this operation the wife is tattooed. All being completed, a great feast
is given, after which, with the usual kissing customary in more Northern latitudes, only here in
a more intensified degree, the bride is handed over to her husband, and when she next appeals
in public, has exchanged her maidenly for her matronly garments. Polygamy exists amongst
them, and the result is that there is much grumbling in a Papuan household.
Marriage by abduction also prevails. The woman is taken either by apparent or
actual force to the house of her husband, but if on arriving there she does not approve of the
match, she runs to some one who can protect her; if, however, she is satisfied, the mattei
is settled forthwith ; a feast is given to her friends next morning, and the couple are
thenceforward considered as man and wife.*
• Williams, "Fiji and the Fijians," vol. i., p. 174.
THE PAPUAKS: DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD; OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE, ETC. 87
Among the New Guinea people the dead are placed on platforms in the wood, a burial
custom something like what we have already seen among the North-western American Indians;
mid the Fijians and other nations have other customs, some not unlike what we have already
described as prevalent among the Polynesians in their vicinity.
Among the occupations of the Papuans fishing takes a high place. The Fijians are nearly
all fishers, while the natives of New Guinea and other islands are chiefly hunters. They are
skilful artists, and make excellent pottery, being in these pursuits much superior to the
Polynesians. The women occupy themselves in household duties, in making mats, &c., in all
of which they are very ingenious. Many of their mats are similar to those made by the
Indians, and by people in distant islands with which at present they have no communication.
The fishing for the trepang, a species of "sea-cucumber" (or Holothuria), in demand for the
Chinese market, is one of the great "interests'''' of the New Guinea coast natives. To engage
in this trade, they leave home for months at a time, wandering from island to island until
they have procured what they consider enough for a fair voyage. It is in trepangs that a
young man among the New Guineans pays the stern Papuan parent for his bride, for here as
elsewhere — though not among the Fijians — a dowerless bride and a dowered father is the rule.
The canoes of the Papuans do not differ greatly from those of the Polynesians. In New
Guinea they are constructed either out of a single hollowed log or of planks fastened together — •
the unfailing outrigger being always present. The double canoe, consisting of two large canoes
connected by a broad gangway on which is built a cabin, the whole propelled by a large sail, is
a peculiar Fijian piece of naval architecture. The Fijians are excellent canoe-builders, and do
a large trade in this branch of industry with the other Papuans, and with the Polynesians.
They are, however, poor sailors, rarely venturing on expeditions that take them out of their
own waters.
SLAVERY; RELIGION; AMUSEMENTS, ETC.
In a country where the climate is so mild domestic architecture can scarcely be expected
to attain any great perfection ; accordingly, we find the houses of the New Guineans consisting
of a number of posts in a circle, and thatched with leaves ; or in some cases of a somewhat
similar hut enclosed on all sides, but with sloping roof and pointed gables, the whole supported
on posts driven into the ground. In the same island (New Guinea) there are on a certain
portion of the coast houses built on piles a little way from the shore. These we may have
occasion to allude to when speaking of the old "lake dwellers" (p. 4). The Fijian houses
are sometimes very large, and the walls, which are composed of reeds, gaily ornamented with
different patterns, into which the cinnet used to bind the reeds together are woven by pro-
fessional house-builders, who travel about the country, proffering their services as required.
The conical houses of the New Caledonians are portrayed in Plate 14.
Slavery is an institution very rife among the Papuans. A slave with them constitutes the
standard of value, any article of value being described as worth so many slaves, or that it
requires so much of some particular kind of goods to buy a slave. Captives in war, when not
doomed to a worse fate, are devoted to slavery. These captives are not, however, badly treated,
and are readily exchanged for any of their own people who may be kept in durance by their
88
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
enemies, from whose ranks these slaves are recruited. Many of the Papuans are, again, held in
slavery by the Dyaks and other Malay tribes, and within the last few years an abominable
traffic has sprung up amid these islands, the ostensible purpose of which is to convey inden-
tured servants belonging to these tribes, chiefly natives of the New Hebrides, to the Australian
colonies, and more especially to Queensland, and to plantations on the Fiji Islands, but which is
in reality nothing less than a licensed system of slavery in its worst form. The "labour trade "
has now excited so much public attention, and is being so thoroughly scrutinised both by the
Imperial and Colonial Governments, that there is no need to enter into particulars in regard to
it. Though in a few cases, no doubt, the requirements of the law, as regards indenture, wages,
MODES OF DRESSING THE HAIR PRACTISED BY THE INHABITANTS OF NEW GUINEA.
bonds to return the native after a certain period to his home again, &c., were met, so far
written agreements with savages, who know nothing of writing or of legal forms, could be
fulfilled, yet in the vast number of cases the natives were simply entrapped on board, kidnapped,
the hatches shut down on them, and if they resisted — as they not unfrequently did — were
mercilessly fired on and murdered. In one notorious case the canoes were decoyed along-
side, and were then stove with heavy shot thrown into them ; boats were then lowered, and
the natives seized and dragged off into legalised bondage. An instance is recorded where
a heartless scoundrel in a vessel under the British flag decoyed some natives of the Solomon
Islands under the bows of his vessel. Then, after smashing their canoes, he murdered them, and
sold their heads to the chiefs of a hostile tribe in return for living human beings for deporta-
tion to the Queensland and Fiji plantations.* Heads, it may be mentioned, are highly valued
* In "The Cruise of the Itosario," among the New Hebrides and Santa Cruz Islands, &c., 1873, by Captain
A. II. Markham, R.N., or in a work on the same subject by Captain Palmer, R.N., the reader will find a fu
account of this atrocious system of kidnapping of natives in the South Seaa.
ippp
ft':
THE PAPUANS: THE OLD GODS AND THE NEW FAITH.
89
by some of these tribes as trophies of valour, even though they should come into the owner's
possession in the manner we have described.
The religion of the Papuans varies with almost every island, but all are pagans, especially
in New Guinea, where missionary efforts have only lately broken ground. At present we know
not much respecting the religion of the natives of New Guinea, but that they are polytheists
like the Fijians there can be but little doubt. The religion of all the Papuan Oceanic Islands
is, however, at present in a state of transition, and is rapidly changing. Especially is this true
in Fiji, where civilisation, after a sort, is gaining ground, and where the old religion will
soon be a thing of the past. It is, however, questionable how far a better one will take its
Pa
ALFUROS OF GILOLO, ONE OF THE MOLUCCA ISLANDS.
place, for the pure can scarcely be expected all at once — if ever — to take the place of the gross
ganism and disgusting rites which have for ages prevailed in these islands.*
Unlike most of the Polynesian gods, who are fairly moral, the Fijian gods are rioters,
murderers, and perpetrators of every sort of iniquity. Their names express their character.
Tunambanga is "the adulterer;"" Kumbunavanua is "the rioter;" Mbatimona, "the brain-
eater;" Ravuravu, "the murderer;" Mainatavasara, "fresh from the cutting up or slaughter,"
&c. They believe that in the next world people inherit the condition they were in when they left
this one : hence children strangle their parents lest they should die infirm, and the wives and
attendants of chiefs are similarly treated, in order that the latter may be provided with the
companions and surroundings they had been accustomed to. These attendants are laid at the
In a recent report it is claimed that 200 islands in the Pacific have received Christianity, and that about
300,000 people in these islands have, nominally at least, embraced it. See also Journal Anthropological Institute, 1881.
52
90 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
bottom of the grave, with arms in their hands, that they may enter the spirit-land in a condition
worthy of the great man whom they are escorting. In addition, a warrior is killed, so that he
may precede his master, and drive away the evil spirits which might attempt to impede his
progress into the land of the blessed. Yet the Fijians never believed in a system of rewards
or punishments. The death of a great chief is celebrated with much solemnity, and fasting and
privation on the part of his friends and dependants. The coast is tabu for a certain distance
from being fished upon, and the cocoa-nuts are likewise tabued from being pulled. These
ceremonies will be continued for ten days or a fortnight, each day having some peculiar
ceremony, gay or grave, appropriated to it, and all of them sufficiently curious and interesting.
Among their gods, one of the best known is Ndengei, who is the abstract idea of eternal
existence, being subject to no emotion or sensation except that of hunger. He is represented in
the form of a serpent. Some traditions represent him, according to Mr. Williams, as having
the head and part of the body of that reptile, the rest of his form being stone, emblematic of
everlasting and unchanging duration — at least according to Fiji geology. He passes a monotonous
existence in a cavern, enshrined in gloom, evincing no signs of interest in any one but Uto, his
attendant, and apart from the fact that he only answers his priest, and changes his position
from one side to the other, evincing no sign of life, or interest in the world in which he
lives, but of which he is not a part.
Offerings of food are also in the Fijis made to rude consecrated stones, and stones are
also used to mark the locality of some gods, and the occasional resting-place of others. Sacred
stones, we have seen, commonly figure in the religious ceremonies of other nations. The
following singular rite is described by Mr. Williams : — " Unbroken silence follows ; the
priest becomes absorbed in thought, and all eyes watch him with unblinking steadiness. In a
few minutes he trembles ; slight distortions are seen in his face, and twitching movements in
his limbs. These increase to a violent muscular action, which spreads until the whole frame is
strongly convulsed, and the man shivers as with a strong ague fit. In some instances this is
accompanied with murmurs and sobs, the veins are greatly enlarged, and the circulation of the
blood quickened. The priest is now possessed by his god, and all his words and actions are
considered no longer his own, but those of the deity who has entered into him. Shrill cries
of ' Koi au! koi au !' (It is I, it is I !) fill the air, and the god is supposed thus to notify
his approach. While giving the answer, the priest's eyes stand out and roll in a frenzy; his
voice is unnatural, his face pale, his lips livid, his breathing depressed, and his entire appear-
ance like that of a furious madman. The sweat runs from every pore, and tears start from
his strained eyes, after which the symptoms gradually disappear. The priest looks round with
a vacant stare, and as the god says, 'I depart/ announces his actual departure by violently
flinging himself down on his mat, or by suddenly striking the ground with his club, when
those at a distance are informed by blasts on the conch, or by the firing of a musket, thnt
the deity has returned into the world of spirits. The convulsive movements do not entirely
disappear for some time." This scene is not peculiar to the Fijians, for something very
similar occurs among the Indians and thg Eskimo, where it has got from ethnologists the naino
of " shamanism."
Yet, after all, the Fijians do not believe in universal immortality. The road to " Mbula*
— their heaven — is beset with so many difficulties that "few attain to immortality ." A einii
THE PAPUANS: AMUSEMENTS; CANNIBALISM, ETC. 91
belief — probably learned from them — is found amongst their near neighbours the Tongans, who
believe that the chiefs are immortal, and that the common people are certainly mortal, though
it is possible that the intermediate class may not be ; but regarding .this there is a difference of
opinion.
The amusements of the Papuan race are much the same as those of the Polynesian-
consisting of swimming, diving, and other water exercises, swings, mock battles, &c., and are
pursued by people of all classes and ages of both sexes with equal zest.
We cannot leave the Oceanic group of people without finding cannibalism cropping up
here, and certainly among the Papuans. Whatever defence or apology may be made for the
Polynesians, this somewhat disagreeable culinary taste was and is indisputably prevalent among
the people we are now describing. The "whitewashing" class of ethnologists have never
attempted to deny this. None of the Papuans are altogether clear of it.
Among the New Caledonians the priests obtained the hands of the slain as their perquisites,
and as those parts of the human body are said by anthropophagous connoisseurs to be the best,
war was frequently fomented by the priests in order to supply their larder more abundantly.
Among the New Caledonians the bodies of slain warriors were eaten by the enemy. If a
" complete cookeiy book " could exist among these people, many pages would be filled by a
description of the modes adopted to prepare the human body for food. Great skill was displayed
in the methods of serving it up 6y the women who act as cooks. Sometimes it was placed
before the men completely roasted, but in a sitting position, and equipped in war costume.
Even the children of our dusky friends were not exempt from cannibalistic propensities. When
the French voyageur, D'Entrecasteaux, visited New Caledonia — now a French colony and
convict settlement — the natives felt the calves and brawny arms of his men, their eyes sparkling,
and their mouths, no doubt, watering at the idea of the magnificent feast such muscular, well-
fed gentlemen would make. Yet these people do not, by any means, confine themselves to such
bipedal diet — probably for the reason that the supply is not equal to the demand — but, like all
the Oceanic people, depend for the main portion of their sustenance on cocoa-nuts and other
fruits, and various roots, shell-fish, and even a species of spider. They even stay the pangs of
hunger, like the Orinoco Indians (Vol. I., p. 274), by filling their insatiable stomachs with
clay, which, though it affords no nutrition, for the time being allays the cravings of their
appetite. The natives of the Isle of Pines roast the dead of their own people, and then serve
them up wrapped in banana leaves. A Polynesian is rather ashamed of his cannibalistic
ipensities, not so a Papuan, and least of all a Fijian. The people of the Fiji Islands were
much addicted to cannibalism, and excel in all the modes of preparing human flesh. Such zest
«ve they for this description of food that, unless they have much improved in their manners of
e years, they have to be rather sharply looked after, in case they indulge untowardly in their
rourite article of diet to the loss of their friends, and of the planter in whose employment
ese culinary victims may be for the time being. Here we find no religious or superstitious
feeling involved. The Fijian prefers "long-pig" to any other food, simply because he thinks
it tastes well. He will even boast of the number of bodies which he has eaten. A story is told
of one who at the close of his life reckoned up — roughly, I presume — the number of human
bodies which he had consumed, or at whose consumption he had assisted, and found that it
reached 900. The Fijian is so vain that, rather than not have something to boast of, he will
P-o,
92 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
commit the most atrocious act, so as to excel, if only in infamy. Accordingly, those who are
acquainted with this trait in his character will not be surprised — however shocked — to learn
that one man caused his wife to build and heat an oven, and then, after she had completed the
task, that he killed, cooked, and ate her. Yet every one cannot eat human flesh — not, however,
from any doubts as to the legality of it, but simply from a religious scruple. The Fijian
believes that many of the gods reside in or are personified by particular animals, such as rats,
sharks, dogs, and even the human person. Accordingly, he whose particular guardian-god
resides in any one of these animals — man among the number — refrains from eating the flesh of
this particular animal lest he might offend his god. Again, from some motive — selfish or
superstitious — no female children are allowed to eat human flesh. Every event of importance
IK)1'1!LE CANOE OF A NEW CALEDONIAN CHIEF.
in Fiji is, or was, celebrated by a feast of human flesh, and so important was this diet con-
sidered that a wooden fork was used to convey it to the mouth, instead of using the hands,
as they do in partaking of every other kind of food. The people of New Guinea and New
Hebrides, and neighbouring islands, rank next, if not equal to the Fijians, in their unnatural
liking for human flesh ; and only recently an account appeared in a Dutch paper of a tribe in
the former island who fattened up the captives they obtained by piracy and war for the purpose
of using them as food.
Etiquette, and a punctilious observance of certain conventional rules of good breeding, as
understood among them, one would think scarcely in keeping with a state of savagedom so
low as that indicated by an indiscriminate indulgence in the flesh of their own species ; but yet
it seems that it may be so, for no people are more particular in this respect than the Fijians.
For instance, it is equivalent to a challenge to fight if one man passes another without lowering
the club he may be carrying on his shoulder. Etiquette, in reference to the respect shown
THE PAPUANS: ETIQUETTE, AND OTHER CEREMONIOUS RITES.
93
chiefs, is carried to an extent scarcely imaginable in these less polite latitudes. It is not un-
common to find a chief coming out of battle unhurt — no one presuming to injure a man of his
exalted rank. To pass behind a chief is an offence so deadly that it can only be expiated by an
enormous fine, or by knocking out the limited amount of brains possessed by an individual who
could be guilty of such a heinous breach of good manners. It is hardly less an insult to pass a
man of high rank on the wrong side, or his canoe on the outrigger side. All these bits of
etiquette are, however, in reality, laid in a deep knowledge on the part of the chiefs of the
'eachery of their countrymen, and in a fervid desire to protect themselves from sinister designs.
A man of inferior rank on meeting a chief must not only lower his club from his shoulder, but
crouch to the ground until he has gone on. Courtesy still — but of a less degree — is due to a
man of rank not so exalted, or more nearly approaching his own. In such a case, he merely
steps aside, bends his body, and either rubs his left arm with his right hand, or holds his beard,
until the greater man has passed. The design of both these methods of showing respect is self-
evident, viz., to prevent an attempt at treachery. There is even a particular series of phrases,
or words, by which a chief is to be addressed. His clothing, his canoes, and all about him are
94 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
not called by the same names as those of common people, but are styled by high-sounding,
periphrastic, and hyperbolic names. In public he is received with the utmost ceremony, and
after a strict and well understood code of etiquette. No one dare stand in his presence, and if
he accidentally falls, it is etiquette — " imitation " here being, as elsewhere, "the most sincere
form of flattery" — for every one else also to fall. Yet this same potentate is, in his turn, one of
the most courteous of men, and would not, even in the houses of his inferiors, dream of touching
food until it was offered. If he did so, his name would be held in everlasting contempt, while
a man of less rank would, most likely, forfeit his life for his rudeness. At their great feasts
Fijian good breeding is seen to greatest perfection, and though on other occasions — as also
among the Polynesians — the word "cook" is a term of contempt, and the office one which could
only be delegated to slaves, or at best to women, yet at these times all classes, even the chiefs
and the king himself, will assist in preparing the edibles, which, in the case of feasts given
by the great chiefs, are gathered from far and near, and served up in such profusion, that for
some time previous a tabu is laid on any one killing pigs or gathering vegetables, lest there
should be a scarcity at the time of the great feast.
Every contract or present made for diplomatic or political purposes is made with immense
ceremony, much clapping of hands and plentiful shouting, a procedure necessary, in the
absence of writing, to cause the transaction to be held in the spectators' memory, just as
in "beating the bounds" of certain old-fashioned English towns the head of the nearest
of the procession of boys is " bumped " against some critical point of the boundary, which
generally results in keeping the line of boundary fresh in the memory of a goodly number of
witnesses for years to come.
PECULIAR CUSTOMS.
Among the most curious customs prevailing amongst the Papuans is the New Caledonian
custom of two people, when they meet, exchanging their katas (or little scarfs) — as much as a
matter of course as we would shake hands. It also prevails in South Asia. When a New
Caledonian drinks, he does not lap up th.2 water or convey it to his mouth with his hand, but
throws it into his mouth out of his hollow palm, in a manner which results in the greater
portion of it being splashed over him. The activity of the New Guinea Papuans among the
branches of trees is wonderful. They will climb and spring from one branch to another almost
with the agility of monkeys, and, indeed, like those animals, when attacked take to the trees
as refuges where they can defend themselves with the greatest chance of success. If any one
even touches a woman not his wife he is subject to a fine, and the same scrupulous regard to
rights of property extends to everything else — even among so rude a people as the Alfuros,
or Mountaineers, of New Guinea. Among the latter people no property can be inherited,
for on the death of any one everything which he or she possessed is destroyed. The friends
then assemble and have a celebration, which differs more in name than in anything else from tin
Irish " wake." Eating and drinking go on apace, and no food is partaken of without a portion
being offered to the dead person also. One of the most curious kinds of salutation found
among the Papuans is that of the inhabitants of Brumer's Island, north-east of the coast
of New Guinea. These primitive folk are not without all the Papuan etiquette. When they
meet a friend, or even a person with whom they arc not acquainted, they salute by pinching
THE PAPUANS: SALUTATIONS; "VASUS"; GOVERNMENT. 95
the stranger's nose while performing the same operation to their own stomach, and grunting
out a word of welcome — a custom which finds its counterpart in the Eskimo rubbing together
of noses on a like occasion.
But one of the most extraordinary customs found amongst the Papuans is that of the
vasu, which existed in full force in Fiji. Vasu means " niece " or a " nephew/' but becomes
a title of office in the male, who, in some localities, has the extraordinary privilege of appro-
priating whatever he chooses belonging to his uncle, or shares in his uncle's power. However
high a chief may be, if he has a nephew he has a master, one who will not be content with the
name, but will exercise his prerogative to the full, seizing whatever takes his fancy, regard-
less of its value or the owner's inconvenience at its loss.* To resist is rarely thought of, nor
would it be much use. Thakonauto, a Rewa chief, while at war with his uncle, carried this
extraordinary privilege to such an extent as to absolutely supply himself with ammunition from
his enemy's stores — that enemy being his uncle ; nor would the right be disputed even in such
an extreme case. " Fasus," writes Mr. Williams, " are of three kinds : — The vasus-taukei,
the vasu-levu, and the vasu. The last is a common name, belonging to any nephew what-
ever. Vasu-taukei is a term applied to any vasu whose mother is a lady of the land in which
he was born. The fact of Mbau being at the head of Fijian rank gives the Queen of Mbau
a pre-eminence over all Fijian ladies, and her son a place nominally over all vasus. No
material difference exists between the power of a vasu-taukei and a vasu-levu, which latter
title is given to every vasu born of a woman of rank, and having a first-class chief for his
father. A vasu-taukei can claim anything belonging to a native of his motherland excepting
the wives, home, and land of a chief. Vasus cannot be considered apart from the civil polity
of the group, forming as they do one of its integral parts, and supplying the high-pressure
power of Fijian despotism. In grasping the dominant influence, the chiefs have created a
power which ever and anon turns round and grips them with no gentle hand
Descending in the social scale, the vasu is a hindrance to industry, few being willing to labour
unrewarded for another's benefit. One illustration will suffice. An industrious uncle builds a
canoe, in which he has not made half-a-dozen trips, when an idle nephew mounts the deck,
sounds his trumpet-shell, and the blast announces to all within hearing that the canoe has that
instant changed masters." The vasu's power is not, however, unlimited. The vasu of a king,
for instance, acts as the viceroy, and collects the taxes — which are in produce, and paid with a
•cheerful alacrity and even pride to which we Northern barbarians are strangers — from distant
parts of the kingdom, but if, for his own enrichment, he attempts to collect more than the
correct amount, he is liable to be severely fined by the king.
Government among the Papuans, as among nearly all savages, is an absolute monarchy.
In Fiji the government used to be based on a sort of feudal system, the great chiefs
being dependent on the king, and liable to military service, the smaller ones, again, on
them, and so on downward for the six different grades into which the people are divided,
ihe last grade being the slaves, who are captives in war. We have already spoken of the
pride which the people have in paying taxes. The tax-paying day is a day of rejoicing,
and the scene is one of the most impressive and gay in Fijian life. The people come from
* Williams, "Fiji," &c., vol. i, 34.
96 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
far and near, and there is an exchange of much compliment and courtesy while the taxes,
consisting of property and labour, are made over to the king. The people are fond of working
on the land, and if they dispose of a piece of land always bargain that they are to be
allowed to till it for the new proprietor. The tenure of land is much the same as in New
Zealand. " Every inch of land in Fiji/' Mr. Pritchard remarks, " has its owner. Every
parcel or tract of ground has a name, and the boundaries are defined and well known. The
proprietorship rests in families, the heads of families being the representatives of the title.
Every member of the family can use the lands attaching to the family. Thus the heads of
families are the nominal owners ; the whole family are the actual occupiers. The family land
maintains the whole family, and the members maintain the head of the family. A chief holds
his lands under precisely the same tenure, as head of the family, and his personal rights attain
only to the land pertaining to his family, in which right every member of his family shares so
far as on any portion of the land. But the chief is also the head of his tribe, and, as such,
certain rights to the whole land of the tribe appertain to him. The tribe is a family, and the
chief is the head of the family. The families of a tribe maintain the chief. In war they give
him their services and follow him to the fight. In peace they supply him with food. In this
way the whole tribe attains a certain collective interest in all the lands held by each family,
and every parcel of land alienated contracts the source whence the collective tribal support
of the chief is drawn. From this complicated tenure it is clear that the alienation of land,
however large or small the tract, can be made valid only by the collective act of the whole
tribe, in the person of the ruling chief and the heads of families. Random and reckless
land transactions under these circumstances would be simply another seizure of Naboth's
vineyard, for which the price of blood would inevitably have to be paid/'
In Fiji offences were heinous or trivial, according to the rank of the offender. Murder
by a chief was not so bad as a petty theft committed by a person of low degree. Only a
few crimes are considered serious — such as theft, adultery, abduction, witchcraft, infringement
of a tabu, disrespect to a chief, incendiarism, treason, and so on.
Up to the year 1874 the Fijis were nominally governed by one of the leading chiefs,
who received, or assumed, the title of King Thakombau, or, as he signed himself — or was
signed for — "Cakobau Rex." The government was a ludicrous parody on civilised polity,
and resembled some of those which prevail in the Polynesian Islands — such as Samoa and
Tonga — during the present transition stage between their primitive state and annexation
by some civilised power. King Thakombau had a coach which was carried on the shoulders
of human cattle, a gorgeous crown, a ministry, a parliament, a postage-stamp, and the
usual paraphernalia of rule. But for all these, Fiji was rapidly drifting into anarchy, when
Thakombau, with a masterly appreciation of the situation, resolved to make the best of
the matter so long as he could do so with some credit. Accordingly, he abdicated in
favour of Queen Victoria (and a comfortable pension). Hence, since 1874, the islands,
which contain something over 100, QUO natives, have been a British colony, and the club of
Cakobau Rex is in Windsor. Rotumah was annexed in 1881.*
The only other peculiar habit of the Papuans which I will occupy space with describing is
* Cooper, I.e. : The works of Colonel and Mrs. Smythe and Dr. Scemun ; Miss Gordon Cummings' "At Homo
in Fiji," and ".Cruise in a French Man-of-war;" Ricci : "Fiji "(1875) ; Forbes: "Fiji" (1875), &c.
THE PAPUANS: PRODUCING FIRE BY FRICTION.
97
their method of producing1 fire by friction. Mr. Wallace describes it as follows: — "A. sharp-
edged piece of bamboo is rubbed across the convex surface of another piece, on which a small
notch is first cut. The rubbing is slow at first, and gradually quicker till it becomes very
rapid, and the fine powder rubbed off ignites and falls through the hole which the rubbing has
NEW CALEDONIAN FLUTE-I>LAYER.
in the bamboo. This is done with great quickness and certainty. The Ternate people use
bamboo in another way. They strike its flinty surface with a piece of broken china, and
produce a spark, which they catch in some kind of tinder." This is a modification of, though
less ingenious than, the method adopted by most savage people of obtaining fire by rubbing
:>wo pieces of wood sharply and quickly against each other until the friction causes sparks,
vhich ignite some tinder placed so that the sparks fall into it. The Eskimo method of using
his apparatus is perhaps as effectual as any. A piece of stick, about an inch in diameter and
)ut a foot long, is prepared so that it is rounded and somewhat pointed at each extremity.
53
98 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The sinew cord of a bent bow is then twisted in one turn around the stick, after which the
upper end is placed in the hollow of a concave bit of bone held firmly between the teeth, while
the lower extremity is placed on the flat bit of wood placed on the ground. The apparatus
being thus in position, the upright stick is twisted about while pressed down on the piece of
flat wood with great rapidity by a transverse movement of the bow, until heat is developed of
sufficient intensity either to light some dry moss or the fine tinder formed of the dust worn out
of the wood by the friction of the upright stick. I cannot better conclude this sketch of the
Papuan race than by briefly depicting one or two communities as types of the whole, and this
could not be done more effectually than in the words of Mr. Wallace, whose delightful volumes
we have already so frequently quoted. It is the Aru Islanders who are sitting for their
portrait. " There is," remarks this eminent naturalist, " a great monotony and uniformity in
every-day savage life, and it seemed to be a more miserable existence than when it had the
charm of novelty. To begin with the most important fact in the existence of uncivilised
peoples — their food — the Aru men have no regular supply ; no staff of life, such as bread, rice,
mandioca, maize, or sago, which are the daily food of a large proportion of mankind. They
have, however, many sorts of vegetables, plantains, sweet potatoes, and raw sago, and they
chew up vast quantities of sugar-cane, as well as betel-nuts, garnbir, and tobacco. Those who
live on the coast have plenty of fish; but when inland they only go to sea occasionally, and
then bring home cockles and other shell-fish by the boat-load. Now and then they get wild
pig or kangaroo, but too rarely to form anything like a regular part of their diet, which is
essentially vegetable — and, what is of more importance, as affecting their health — green, watery
vegetables, imperfectly cooked, and even these in varying and often insufficient quantities. To
this diet may be attributed the prevalence of skin diseases and ulcers in the legs and joints.
The scurfy skin disease so common among savages has a close connection with the poorness
and irregularity of their living. The Malays, who are never without their daily supply of rice,
are generally free from it ; the hill Dyaks of Borneo, who grow rice, and live well, are clean-
skinned ; while the less industrious and less cleanly tribes, who live for a portion of the year on
fruits and vegetables only, are very subject to this malady. It seems clear that in this, as i
other respects, man is not able to make a beast of himself with impunity, feeding, like th
cattle, on the herbs and fruits of the earth, and taking no thought of the morrow. To main-
tain his health and beauty he must labour to prepare some farinaceous product capable of being
stored and accumulated, so as to give him a regular supply of wholesome food. When this is
obtained he may add vegetables, fruits, and meats, with advantage. The chief luxury of the Aru
people, besides betel-nut and tobacco, is arrack (Java rum), which the traders bring in great
quantities, and sell very cheap. A day's fishing or ratan * cutting will purchase at least a half-
gallon bottle; when the trepang and birds' nests f collected during a season are sold they get whole
boxes, each containing fifteen such bottles, round which the inmates of a house will sit day ami
night till they have finished them. They themselves tell me that at such bouts they often tear
to pieces the house they arc in, and break and destroy everything they can lay their hands OIL"
» Calamus rotang— known to seamen as " Penang lawyers," from the use made of them in that scttlcmc
instruments of corporal punishment.
t Made of a secretion from Collocalia esculcnta, and used by the Chinese for concocting- the celebrated
nest soup.
THE PAPUANS: THE AftU ISLANDERS; WILD MEN OF JOHORE ; ETC. 99
And here it may be remarked that though Mr. Wallace in this place is speaking of the Aru
Islanders as if they were a race racially pure, in reality their little archipelago contains
an ethnic mixture which would sadly confound the stay-at-home <l anthropologists " who
from the study of a few skulls and a sheaf of vocabularies, construct a classification of the
human species. Many of the Aru Islanders have, for example, little of the characteristic
Papuan physiognomy, though dark as any of their unmistakable countrymen. They have,
on the other hand, quite as little likeness to the Malay, and though their delicate features,
of the European type, and glossy curly hair, might hint at a recent Dutch parentage, their
black faces belie that supposition. In reality, they are descendants of early Portuguese
traders who had settled here and intermarried with the natives, influencing, as several Lusi-
tanian words prove, the language and the features of the race. Malays, Chinese, and
Dutch traders can also be frequently detected. In one house Mr. Wallace saw " a Macassar
man with an Aru wife and family of mixed children/' In Dobbo he saw "a Javanese
and an Amboyna man each with an Aru wife and family ; and as this kind of mixture had been
going on for at least three hundred years^ and probably much longer, it has produced a decided
effect on the physical characteristics of a considerable portion of the population of the islands,
more especially in Dobbo and the parts nearest to it/' On the other hand, we light in Malaysia
on some curious races, stranded high and dry among the more familiar Papuans and Malays,
or the less easily deciphered tribes which we find in New Guinea.* For instance, in
the Sultanate of Johore in the Malay Peninsula, apart from the Chinese and the Malay
inhabitants, there are wild men known as Jakuns, whose exact position in " the scale " is
extremely obscure. They reside in the interior of the country, and some of the tribes even
construct their rude dwellings in the trees, and wherever land culture is adopted by them
it is of the most primitive description. As a rule, they are nomadic in their habits. Baron
Miklouho-Maklay, the Russian explorer, who visited these people in 1875, describes them
as thoroughly disinclined to improvement of any kind in their mode of life, intellectually
or otherwise, though this is not occasioned by want of opportunity or deficiency of brain.
The constant advance into the jungle of the Malays and Chinese, and the frequent inter-
rriages between the Malays and the <l Utan " women, are rapidly conducing to the
extinction of these aboriginal owners of the soil, or to their eft'acement as a distinct race,
aboriginal and non- Malayan, which they undoubtedly are. They are, however, probably
related to the Papuans, many individuals closely resembling the Papuan-Malay (or mixed)
e met with on the west coast of New Guinea. The " Orang-utan " or wild men, though
generally shrinking into the solitudes before the Malays and Chinese, sometimes live in
the neighbourhood of the former, and though rarely conforming to Islamism or deserting
their own traditional habits, are ready enough to sell to their neighbours the best-looking
and strongest of their daughters. f However, to return to the rude Aru Islanders, as
* These, according to our present knowledge, are: — (1) The true Papuans of the west and south-west coasts ;
The Alfuros, or hill-tribes of the interior; (3) The Brown Papuans (p. 126) ; and (4) The Papuan-Malays of the
north coast, suhject to the authority of the Sultan of Tidore, and professing Mohammedanism. Comrie : Journal of
the Anthropological Institute (187G], pp. 102— 119 ; D'Albcrtis : " Travels in New Guinea" (1881) ; Moresby: "Dis-
coveries in Eastern New Guinea " (1875), &c.
t Journal of Eastern Asia, July, 1875; Burbidge : "The Gardens of the Sun" (1880), p. 46, for figures of these
comfortably monkey -like people.
ma
A VIC
~
I
THE PAPUANS: THE ARU ISLANDERS; THEIR HABITS.
101
sketched by Mr. Wallace. Their house and furniture are on a par with their food. "A.
rude shed, supported on rough and slender sticks rather than posts, no walls., but the
NEW CALEDONIANS OF THE SOUTH-WEST COAST.
floor raised to within a foot of the eaves, is the style of architecture they usually adopt.
Inside there are partition-walls of thatch, forming little boxes, or sleeping-places, to accom-
modate the two or three separate families that usually live together. A few mats, baskets, and
cooking-vessels, with plates and basins purchased from the Macassar traders, constitute their
102 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
whole furniture; spears and bows are their weapons; a sarong (or mat) forms the clothing of
the women, a waist-cloth that of the men. For hours, or even for days, they sit idle in their
houses, the women bringing- in the vegetables or sago which form their food. Sometimes they
hunt or iish a little, or work at their house or canoe, but they seem to enjoy pure idleness, and
work as little as they can. They can have little to vary the monotony of life, little that can be
called pleasure except idleness and conversation. And they certainly do talk ! Every evening
there is a little Babel around me, and, as I understand not a word of it, I go on with my book
or work undisturbed. Now and then they scream and shout, or laugh frantically for variety ;
and this goes on alternately with vociferous talking of the men women and children, till long
after I am in my mosquito curtain and sound asleep." They were simple folk our naturalist
was among, with a strong penchant for his arrack -bottle, and a wondrous curiosity to learn
where he came from, but yet with a strong suspicion that they were being deceived when
"England" was designated as the country of his nativity. For the twentieth time they
would ask, but, as they could not pronounce it satisfactorily, would insist that it was a
name of his own invention, and that Mr. Wallace was deceiving them. One old man was
almost indignant. " ' Unglung ! ' said he, ( who ever heard of such a name ? Anglang —
Anger-lang ; that can't be the name of your country ; you are playing with us. My country
is Wanumbai. Anybody can say Wanumbai. I'm an orang Wanumbai ; but N-glung !
who ever heard of such a name ? Do tell us the real name of your country, and then when
you are gone we shall know how to talk about you/ '• Nothing would convince them they
were not being deceived. Then for what did he want all the birds and insects he preserved
with such care ? They would not believe it was for the purpose of stuffing and setting them
up so that they would appear as if alive for the people in " Unglung " to look at ! That
could not be. There must be in his country many things much nicer to look at than those
things. They — the orang- Wanumbais — did not want to look at them, and surely ice — we1
the wondrous people who make calico, and glass, and knives, and rum, and all sorts of delightf i
things, could not want things from Aru to look at ! — the thing was absurd. But they \
what was done with them — they knew ; they had been thinking it over, and the assemble
wisdom of Aru had come to the conclusion that the birds and insects were all made to come
life again on board ship. The theory was founded on what to the Wanumbaian logicians \vei
sound premisses, and the conviction was strong in accordance. " ' Yes, they all come to lif
again; that's what they do — they all come to life again/ " They had also formed the conclusion
that he could give rain or make hot weather to suit himself, and that, on the whole, this
pleasant English naturalist was a most miraculous personage, who will no doubt live in their
simple annals as a much better sort of person than the Bugis and Chinese, who sometimes
came to trade with them ; for he gave them things for nothing, and did not try to cheat them
— the universal test of a superior moral person among savages all the world over. Then would
commence a long wearisome series of interrogatories as to how long he was going to stay-
would he stay a month or two and finish all the goods he had brought, and then, after that,
s«-iid to Dobbo for more, and stay a year or two, and they would get plenty of birds and animals
for him ? " And then came the old story: — ' Do tell us the name of your country. We know
tin- liugis men, and the Macassar men, and the Java men, and the China men; only you, we
don't know from what country you come. Ung-lung it can't be. I know that is not the
THE PAPUANS: THE AKU ISLANDERS; THE TIMOR PEOPLE. 103
name of your country/ Seeing- no end to this long- talk, I said I was tired and wanted to go to
sleep ; so, after begging — one a little bit of dry fish for his supper, and another a little salt to
eat with his sago — they all went off very quietly, and I went outside and took a stroll round the
house by moonlight, thinking of the simple people and the strange productions of Aru, and
then turned in under my mosquito curtain, to sleep with a sense of perfect security in the midst
of these good-natured savages." These Aru savages are — as savages go — handsome people with
lithe, graceful forms, every limb getting fine play, unrestrained by the artificialities of clothing-.
The women are, however, by no means so good-looking as the men, their strongly-marked
features being very unfeminine, and what little beauty they may possess, hard work, privation,
exposure, and early marriage soon destroy. The men adorn themselves more than the women
do ; they wear necklaces, earrings and finger-rings, and delight in a band of plaited grass
placed tightly round the arm just below the shoulder, to which they attach a bunch of hair or
light-coloured feathers. The dress of all is generally filthy, and never changed until worn out.
Another of the Aru tribes — the natives of Kobror — wear a huge horseshoe-shaped comb over
their forehead, the ends resting on their temples. The back of this comb is fastened into a
piece of wood, which is plated with tin in front, and above is attached a plume of feathers
from a cock's tail. Among them Mr. Wallace saw no signs of any religion. They often bury
their dead, though their custom is to first expose the body on a raised stage till it decomposes.
Polygamy prevails, though a man has rarely more than two wives. A wife is regularly
purchased from her parents. The old people are killed, it is said, when they are no longer
able to work, but as Mr. Wallace saw many old and decrepit people pretty well attended to,
the probability is that this is not a law, but is optional if any one does not care to support
his aged relatives.
The natives of Timor, though intermixed much on the coast with Malay and, perhaps,
Portuguese and Hindoo blood, are yet of the Papuan race. They carry an umbrella made of an
entire fan-shaped palm leaf, carefully stitched at each fold to prevent it splitting. As all over
the East Indian Archipelago, the joints of the bamboo are used as buckets, water-vessels, &c.,
and small water-buckets are also made of the unopened leaf of the same palm-tree from
which the umbrella is improvised. Here prevails the custom of pomali, which is the exact
equivalent of the tabu found among the Polynesians and the Papuans of the Pacific Islands.
It is, however, used on the smallest occasions, and is often employed for police purposes. If
a .householder is from home a few palm leaves laid across his threshold, or stuck outside a
garden, form an effectual protection against all meddlers or intruders, whether for harmless or
criminal purposes. The dead are placed on a raised stag-e, and there remain until the relatives
can make a funeral feast, when the body is burned. The Timorese #re great thieves, but not
fierce, though they continually fight among themselves, and lose no opportunity of kidnapping
the people of other tribes as slaves. Yet Europeans may pass through any portion of the country
unharmed. It is well that they are so little disposed to mischief, otherwise the wretched
farce of a Portuguese Government which for three hundred years has prevailed in Timor
could not stand an hour before the natives. The only object of the officials seems to be to oppress
and rob the natives, and to neglect every attempt at public improvement, the island being,
so far as roads or settlements in the interior are concerned, little better than when the Europeans
first set foot upon its soil. The Dutch portions of the island are better governed, but
104
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
under the present system it is more trouble than profit both to the Portuguese and the Dutch.
To make it anything would require an outlay of capital which neither nation is inclined to
THROUGH THE MANGKOVES, NEW CALEDONIA.
incur, and, not less, a series of honest officials, which the Portuguese nation seems unable
to supply; so that, meanwhile, there is little hope for anything in Timor but "chronic
insurrection :m<l mi^overnment.'"
There seems every probability that the various shades of colour which we find among the
THE PAPUANS: THEIR ORIGIN AND FUTURE.
105
Oceanic people already described are not due to mixture — if at all to intermixture — but point
to all being modifications of the same original stock, whether brown or black — Papuan of
New Guinea, Fijian, or Polynesian. It is, however, possible that the brown Polynesians
originated, at some very early period, from a mixture of Malay and Papuan blood, but
nowadays all trace of the Malay spice in their composition has been lost or overspread by
the preponderance of the more vigorous Papuan element. Though the Papuans have much
in common with the African negroes, yet I agree with Mr. Wallace in believing that the
zoological, ethnological, and, above all, the geographical difficulties, are insurmountable, in the
way of accepting the theory of Professor Huxley that they are identical in origin. There is,
KANGAROOS AT HOME : AX AUSTRALIAN SCENE.
wever, little doubt but that the Malays are widely distinct from both the Polynesians and
.puans, though, as we have classed them, more nearly allied to those people than to any other
divisions of the human race. The distinct Polynesians are on the wane, and will soon disappear
before the vices and ways of civilised men, which are strange to them. The New Guinea
Papuan will go the same way, but the Fijian and the Malay, accustomed as they are to agri-
culture, may have a chance to survive in the battle of life, even when their county comes
entirely under the hands of European rulers, and all their old life is supplanted or displaced by
that brought from over the sea. Measles have, however, of late years decimated the Fijians.
In a few months about 50,000 natives succumbed under this — to us — comparatively mild
disease. When one remembers that one-third of the entire population was swept away by
one epidemic, the havoc which may be caused by more virulent maladies is saddening to
ticipate.
54
1UG
CHAPTER VI.
AUSTRALIANS, TASMANIANS, AND OTHER PAPUAN RACES.
THE Papuan race is a widespread one, being scarcely surpassed in the range of its migrations
by the Malays and Polynesians, who are its neighbours. But between the different tribes — or
nationalities, if you will — of the Papuans there is a wider breach and a broader line of demarca-
tion than between the different people who come under the broad designation of either Malay or
Polynesian. The Australians are an example of this. That they are more nearly allied to the
Papuans than to any other race scarcely admits of a doubt, but equally are they separated from
them by many characteristics — all pointing to the fact that many years must have elapsed since
they and the Oceanic Papuans were one people. In many respects the Australian races are about
the lowest of the Papuans, but there is a lower depth still to which the Oceanic negro can sink,
as we shall find when we read of the Andaman and Nicobar Islanders, and the Nigritos of the
Philippines, &c. The inhabitants of the great continental island of Australia are a race almost
as strange as the animal and vegetable products of the country. They are black, yet not of the
ih'HTO type — in the same manner as the Papuans proper are. Their hair is long, and disposed to
curl, but not woolly, and their foreheads are not retreating, nor their lower jaw "prognathous/1
or projecting. They take delight in profuse beards and moustaches, and, on the whole —
contrary to the descriptions sometimes given of them — are a finely-made, muscular race, of
average European height, 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches. The gins (or women) are not
so good-looking as the men, being early exposed to every hardship and brutally used from their
very infancy. None of them are particularly good-looking, and some of the old hags are
absolutely hideous (pp. 108, 109, 113, 116, 117).
They do not tattoo themselves, but both men and women mark their skins with scars,
particularly on the shoulders, by incising the flesh with a cutting instrument and filling up
the wound with clay or other foreign substances, so that, owing to the temporary inflammation
which ensues, permanent cicatrices remain. These marks are different on the members of
different tribes. Sometimes a piece of bone is placed through the septum of the nose, so that
the hideousness of their general appearance is complete. Their dress varies according to the
part of the country to which the individual under description may belong, though latterly the
cast-oil' clothes of the colonists have afforded them the bulk of their garments, yet in general it
consists of a circular mat, made out of a coiled rope twined out of the chewed roots of a s]>
of bulrush. This singular garment, placed on the back and fastened round the waist, is known
as the paing-koont. The rest of their wardrobe is made up of various kinds of cloaks, son*
them formed of the furs of animals, while a rather curious one is woven out of the sea-ir
/•'/). The women, and often the men also, wear a petticoat of leaves. The hair is dre<
in various ways, but in general little care is taken of it, and in no case is it attended to at'
the elaborate fashion of the Fiji or New Guinea Papuans, who in every respect, mental and
social, are beings much higher in the scale of humanity.
THE AUSTRALIANS: THEIR AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE; THEIR FOOD, ETC. 107
The character of the Australians is about the worst of any of the Papuan races. They are
acute thieves, treacherous in the extreme, greedy, capricious, cunning-, unreasoning, passionate,
and cruel to a degree which it requires a knowledge of the Papuan character generally to
believe the human race capable of. Their character has not, moreover, been improved by
contact with the stockmen and settlers on the " runs," who are, as a rule, by no means the
most polished of their species. Treacherous attacks upon the solitary hut in the bush are of
common occurrence, and, on the other hand, abominable outrages, which have not even the
excuse of being viewed in the light of individual retribution, are made upon the natives by the
colonists, notwithstanding the efforts of the magistrates and officials, whose duty it is to take
cognisance of such acts. The Australian " black fellows," as they are universally styled by the
colonists, are low in intelligence. They have no idea of giving a straightforward answer, but will
repeatedly contradict themselves in the course of a few minutes' conversation; so that a traveller
will be frequently driven to his wit's-end to arrive at the truth about the simplest matter.
" A native," writes Mr. Oldfield,* "once brought me some specimens of a species of Eucalyptus,
and being desirous of ascertaining the habit of the plant, I asked : fA tall tree?' to which
the ready answer was in the affirmative. Not feeling quite satisfied, I again demanded : f A
low bush ?' to which ' yes ' was also the response." The Australians are, however, not peculiar
in this; the same is true of nearly all savages with whom I am acquainted. Ask them a
leading question, and they will answer exactly as they fancy you wish them. The result is that
a traveller unacquainted with the art of cross-questioning a native will speedily obtain a vast
amount of entertaining information, confirmatory of any theory he may have in his brain on any
particular subject whatever. Witness, for instance, the wondrous stories " derived from the
Innuit," which the late Mr. Hall brought from the vicinity of Cumberland Sound, about Sir
John Franklin's expedition, all of which must be received with an infinite number of grains of
salt, owing to this inveterate habit on the part of the Eskimo of answering any question as
they think the interrogator desires. When we come to the Australians, we find that the artistic
faculty, which is so highly developed in the Papuan and Polynesian races, is almost entirely
gone. Beyond the ability to make their own weapons and rude garments the Australians' art
aspirations go not. They do not even understand a drawing, a deficiency of perception and
comparison common among some races not even so low in the scale and some which are very
high. On Mr. Oldfield showing some of them the coloured engraving of an aborigine of their
own country, one Australian declared the figure to represent a ship, another a kangaroo, and
on, not one of a dozen identifying the portrait as having any connection with himself. Yet
if they are shown a rude drawing, with all the lesser parts much exaggerated, they can realise
the meaning of it. " Thus, to give them the idea of a man, the head must be drawn dispro-
frtionately large." Many other facts illustrating this deficiency in the savage intellect could
mentioned. For instance, Denhamf tells us that a man of very considerable intelligence — a
ohammedan negro — could readily recognise figures, but could not understand a landscape. " I
could not make him understand the intention of the print of the sand wind in the desert, which
is really so well described by Captain Lyons' drawing ; he would look at it upside-down, and
•en I twice reversed it for him, he exclaimed : ' Why ! why ! it is all the same.' A camel or
human figure was all I could make him understand, and at these he was all agitation and
* Transactions of the Ethnological Society (new series), voL iii., p. 2,55. f " Travels in Africa," vol. i., p. 167.
108
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
delight. ' (jieb! gieb!' (wonderful ! wonderful !). The eyes first took his attention, then the
other features; at the sight of the sword he exclaimed, ' Allah ! Allah P and on discovering the
o-uns, instantly exclaimed, ' Where is the powder ? ' J Yet the Australian is not lowest in
the Papuan scale. He is not of bright intellect, yet his weapons and the various ingenious
ways he has devised to ameliorate his surroundings, show that he is far from wanting in
intellect. He is far above the Tierra del Fuegian, he is superior to what the Tasmanian was,
and he is of a higher degree of civilisation than the Nigritto and the Andaman Islanders.
What does the Australian eat ? To this I may answer, what will he not eat ? Anything
which contains nutriment, no matter how disgusting to our ideas, is in the eyes of the Australian
a tit-bit. Tadpoles, snakes, insects, as well as more toothsome articles of diet, are all fish to
his gastronomic net. With the exception of a few yams cultivated by some tribes, they have
" REPRESENTATIVE " AUSTRALIANS, MJSNV SOUTH WALES.
no artificial source of food. Here, again, they are infinitely beneath the Papuan people, who,
we have seen, are enthusiastic agriculturists. They use, however, many wild vegetable
products as food, including various roots, and the seed-like bodies (" spores " and " spore-cases "}
of Marsilea macropus (p. 120) known as Nardoo, which has, however, little nutritive properly.
The Australian explorers, Burke and Wills, died of starvation upon it. They are in the habit of
digging deep down for the lower part of the roots of the gum- tree (Vnculyjjfns}, and then ex-
tracting the water which they contain, and so quenching their thirst even when the surround-
ing country is devoid of the slightest trace of a spring, pool, or river. Fish of various species —
fresh-water and marine — and shell-fish also, supply a contingent to the Australian commissariat ;
while grubs on trees, and the Bugong moth (Enplaa /HI mufti}, collected in great quantities and
roasted, wings and all, all'ord no mean portion of the subsistence of this \\ivtehed people. A more
toothsome food is wild honey. To find out the localities where the wild bees have stored this,
the hunters capture a bee, and, by means of a little gum, attach a fragment of tow to the both
so that its flight through the air can be watched. Over rock and fallen timber, through In
AUSTRALIANS: THEIR FOOD, ETC.
109
and over cleared land, hill and valley, the eager honey-hunters pursue the marked insect until
they find it disappear into a hollow tree or cleft in the rocks. They then know that in such
position its nest is. Under cover of smoke they soon dig into the place and extract the sweet
stores, devouring with equal gusto the honey and the young grubs or bees scattered through
it. Turtle are also captured by them, and one species is said to be caught in an ingenious
manner by the Remora, or sucking-fish. The species of fish has a peculiar sucker on the back of
its head, by which it attaches itself to ships, other fishes, &c. The Australian accordingly keeps
AUSTRALIANS OF VICTOIUA.
his fish in a vessel of water, and when turtle are in the vicinity lets it go with a string attached
to it. The Rcmora soon fastens on one of the reptiles, and sticks so firmly that both it and the
turtle can be drawn into the boat before the fish will quit its hold. They cook all their food,
generally by roasting it over the fire. But they have also a method of baking their meat by
'lacing it in a hole in which a fire has been kept burning for some time, and then covering it ove*'
with ashes ; the result is that the warmth which remains in the earth cooks the food perfectly.
Snakes — even the most venomous species — are favourite articles of diet. The dugong and
the kangaroo (p. 105) are also eaten with avidity whenever they can be procured by the
HO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
hunters. They are, like most savages, enormous gluttons, and, though lazy and indolent on
ordinary occasions, on the hunt, under the stimulus of an empty stomach, are patient and
persevering to a remarkable degree.
Their weapons for offence, defence, or the hunt consist chiefly of the waddy, a club which
is made in various shapes, and hurled with their greatest skill and effect. It is the Australian's
constant companion ; without the waddy — even with a musket — the " black fellow " would not
consider himself armed. In the field he throws it at game — human or brute — at his enemies,
white or black ; and at home he requires the smallest provocation to hurl it at his wife or
children, laying them senseless or dead on the spot. With the prevalence of such domestic
discipline, one is not surprised to hear that contrary to what prevails elsewhere — a thick skull is
the highest ambition of an Australian to possess, and that no more opprobrious term of contempt
can be heaped on him than to hint that his skull is thin. When two natives quarrel they settle •
their differences by a combat with wad dies. Then, in the presence of spectators, they maul each
other over the head with these formidable clubs until one of them falls senseless, when accordingly
his rival is declared victor. The skull of an Australian is, therefore, generally quite a surgical
curiosity in the variety of osteological contusions, fractures, &c., which it exhibits. The use of
the iraddy is wide-spread among all the Australian tribes, but spears are also in use, made in a
great variety of forms. They are not hurled directly from the hand, but by means of a " throw-
stick." Bows and arrows are also in use, but most celebrated of all the Australian weapons,
and one which is most ingenious, is the famous boomerang. Briefly described, this weapon is in
the form of a hard, rather flattened, curved piece of wood, which, when hurled from the hand in
a peculiar manner, whirls through the air with inconceivable force, strikes the object, and
returns again by a rebound almost to the thrower's feet. A skilful boomerang-tikttGWGt can project
it round a corner, though himself unseen and under cover, and can hurl it so adroitly that, as it
whirls over and over, eddying through the air, it is difficult for the untrained observer not to
believe that this wonderful weapon is not endowed with life. It is the weapon which in its
universal use is only equalled by the waddy • but, unlike the club, it is entirely unknown
outside the Australian continent.* Finally, we may mention that the Australian usually carries
a light, oblong shield to protect his body from the effects of these weapons in the hands of
his enemies. Many of their weapons appeared to have been copied from the Papuans proper
or from the Polynesians. The Australian is never without some private squabble or vendetta
on his hand, but wars proper are unknown to him. They would require foresight and powers
of organisation of which these- savages are not possessed : his intellect is too low for this.
Disputes about territory, women, &c., are fertile causes of war ; but one, scarcely less common,
arises something after this manner. If a person dies without any marked cause, it is believed
that a bird called wun-(ilii<t comes to the sick person, and secretly squeezing him or her
round the waist, causes death. Now, if a person has a fend against another, and the latter
dies, it is believed that the bird is only a person of the hostile tribe, or a relation of the hostile
* It is, however, aflirmed — and Gen. Pitt-Rivers has lately established it almost beyond a doubt — that one of
ijions d'-pieted on the walls of the tombs of the ancient Kiryptian Kin^s of Iheln.s is a form of fan,..
and tin- sain*- anthropologist and Sir Walter Elliot, whose every opinion on such matters is to be reeeived with
say that it is still in use by the inhabitants of the wilder districts of India — the descendants of
aboriginal races (Dravidians).
u>
I
AUSTRALIANS : WEAPONS; WARLIKE CUSTOMS; DANCES; MARRIAGE. Ill
individual — if not himself — who comes in the disguise of the great bird, and so accomplishes
the destruction of his enemy. A challenge then ensues, and sanguinary recriminations on both
sides are the result. There is, however, no regular onset between the two tribes. The " war "
is more a series of duels or murders by one small party who may chance to surprise another
under favourable circumstances. When an enemy is killed, his slayer cuts open his loins and
tears out his kidneys, so that he may besmear his face with the fat as a trophy of his prowess.
By this means he imagines, in accordance with a similar belief among many other people (Vol.1.,
p. 196), that he will obtain a portion of the courage of the dead man. For one hostile tribe to
raise a smoke in the sight of another is accounted a challenge to fight, and doubtless the
early colonists, unaware of this custom, lost many valuable lives by their unwittingly doing so,
ignorant of the fatal interpretation which would be put upon it by the treacherous, suspicious
" black fellow" lurking in the bush. They are exceedingly tricky, and though apparently
unarmed, require sharp looking after, as they may have weapons trailing behind them, by means
of the point of the spear being secured between the great and first toe, and after these have been
hurled against the unsuspecting colonist, have others lying on the ground at a little distance,
which will be caught up as they retreat, and again thrown at their pursuing enemy. They
have long memories for injuries, and are revengeful in the extreme. If they cannot kill the
person who did them or theirs the wrong, they will kill somebody, if belonging to his family
or relatives so much the better, but at all events reprisal must be taken on some one.
As cannibalism is so marked a feature of the Papuan race, it would be remarkable if the
Australian, so low in type, was altogether free from suspicion in this respect. The par-
icipation in this loathsome practice is not, however, perfectly made out, though there is little
oubt but that in times of scarcity they will eat their relatives. One tribe is even said to
e in the habit of mixing the flesh of children with that of dogs, and eating the mixture
hen hard run for food. This cannot, however, be said to be cannibalism as an ordinary
torn, for even civilised races have been driven to the same extremity. A circumstance,
owever, more suspicious is the fact (for fact it is said to be) of their baiting fish-hooks
some places with the fat of boys. These stories may, however, be exaggerated by the
orant and prejudiced colonists. But that on certain occasions they eat part of the bodies of
eir slain enemies admits, I think, of little doubt. Before me are the particulars of such a
e by an eyewitness, which is, however, too long to quote. In this case it ought, however,
be mentioned, that only those who had engaged in the fight were allowed to partake of
e human banquet. That this was therefore looked upon in the light of a religious ceremony
ems certain, for it was out of no selfish motive that the prohibition mentioned was decreed,
there was more than enough and to spare for all, had the rites then enacted allowed any
t the victors taking part in the feast.
Their dances are numerous, and all wild and weird, most of them being performed either
by moonlight or by the fitful flame of the camp-fire. Some of these corruborees, such as the
uri and other dances, are not only strange, but even graceful.
Marriage among such a rude people cannot be attended with any religious ceremonies
mysterious rites. It is essentially marriage by force. The following is the method in
which the Sydney natives used to obtain wives, and the manners of the Australian natives
ve not much improved for the better since the time this was written. "The poor wretch
H2 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
is stolen upon in the absence of her protectors. Being first stupefied with blows, inflicted
with clubs or wooden swords, on the head, back, and shoulders, every one of which is followed
by a stream of blood, she is then dragged through the woods by one arm, with a perseverance
and violence that, it might be supposed, would displace it from its socket. The lover, or rather
the ravisher, is regardless of the stones or broken pieces of trees that may lie in his route,
being anxious only to convey his prize in safety to his own party, when a scene ensues too
shocking to relate. This outrage is not resented by the relations of the female, who only
retaliate by a similar outrage when they find an opportunity. This is so constantly the
practice among them, that even the children make it a play-game, or exercise."* Again,
Mr. Oldfield, an intelligent writer on these people, remarks that in Australia the men are in
excess of the other sex, and " consequently many men of every tribe are unprovided with
that especial necessary to their comfortable subsistence, a wife ! who is a slave in the strictest
sense of the word, being a beast of burden, a provider of food, and a ready object on which
to expend those passions the men dare not vent on each other. Hence, for those coveting such
a luxury, arises the necessity of stealing the women of some other tribe; and in these
expeditions to effect so laudable a design, they will cheerfully undergo privations and dangers
equal to those they incur when in search of blood revenge. When, on such an errand, they
discover an unprotected female, their proceedings are not of the most gentle nature. Stunning
her with a blow from the waddy (to make her love him perhaps), they drag her by the hair
to the nearest thicket to await her recovery. When she comes to her senses they force her
to accompany them ; and, as at the worst, it is but the exchange of one brutal lord for another,
she generally enters into the spirit of the affair, and takes as much pains to escape as though
it were a matter of her own free will." Between the wives and the husbands little real
affection can be expected. The husband avowedly looks upon his wife as a beast of burden ;
a slave to whom every labour is to be delegated, and who is to be brutally beaten and ill-used
on the most trivial provocation. Ex-governor Eyre, who was for some years one of the
Australian "Protectors of Aborigines/' declares that few women "will be found upon
examination to be free from frightful scars upon the head, or the marks of spear-wounds
about the body. I have seen a young woman, who, from the number of those marks, appeared
to have been almost riddled with spear- wrounds. If at all good-looking, their position is, if
possible, even worse than otherwise." So brutal, indeed, is the way in which these wretched
wives of wretched men are treated, that a recent eminent ethnological writer — Sir John
Lublx>ck — feels himself bound in respect to the feelings of a certain section of his readers,
translate into Latin the description of how they are treated. A man is, however, prohibi
from marrying a woman whose family name is the same as his own, and even who belong:
to the same tribe, though the parties may be in no way connected. Here again we see t!
" Roy;il Marriage Act" cropping up (Eyre's "Discoveries in Central Australia," vol. i., p. t)7
Another curious prohibition (which, however, finds its counterpart among other tribes, s
Y..1. I., p. 11)7) is that a man must not pronounce the name of his father-in-law, mother-
in-law, <>r son-in-law.
Diseases they cure like the North- Western American Indians (Vol. I., p. 110) by sucking th
* Collins, "New South Wales," p. 362.
55
NATIVES AT THE "ABORIGINAL STATION," OR RESERVE OF CORANDERRK, NEAR
HEALESVILLE, VICTORIA.
1 1 t THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
place from whence the pain proceeds. Another method of cure is to tie a string round the
forehead or neck of the patient. Meantime some friends rub the lips of the patient with the
other end of the string until they bleed. The disease is then supposed to come out of the
blood, passing along the string.
Hi'ligion they can scarcely be said to possess. It is merely a vague belief in evil spirits,
who are to be propitiated or guarded against. Priests, temples, or religious rites — proper — they
have none. Mrs. Thomson, a Scotch woman, who was kept captive amongst the natives of
the Eastern Prince of "Wales Island, and who lived with them in the capacity of the wife
of one of the men (all of whom behaved kindly, though the women were very jealous
of her and treated her with much cruelty), denied that they believed in any Supreme Being,
in the immortality of the soul, or in any system of reward or punishments. After death the
dead are changed into Europeans, " Fall down black man, jump up white man ! " was the
simple philosophy of this people. A native who was hanged at Melbourne a few years ago
consoled himself with the belief that he would "jump up white fellow and have lot-
sixpences." Mrs. Thomson was supposed to be the ghost of the daughter of a man named
Piaquai, and the children used to run after her crying, "Poor thing! she is nothing — only a
ghost!"* A similar idea prevails northward from the Torres Islands to New Caledonia, and
even amongst various negro tribes in Africa. The Australians have no belief in the creation of
the world. Like the Polynesians, they believed that everything existed as it is from the begin-
ning. The earth, however, at the beginning was covered by water, until Mawe drew up Xew
Zealand by means of an enchanted hook.f Of justice and equity in the abstract the Austral
have no idea. Their only idea in these matters is, that the man is right who is physically
or numerically strong enough to risk the vengeance which he has braved by his acts.
The Australians are divided in many oscillating, wandering, tribal divisions, differing in
some minor particulars, but all agreeing in the broad characteristics which we have mentionc
Yet they have no chiefs, and no idea of one man being superior to another in rank.
George Grey tells us that each family adopts some animal or vegetable as their crest, /<
(Vol. I., p. *7), or kolong, as they call it. A man never kills the animal which he has adopte.l
as his kobanrj when he finds it asleep, nor indeed at any time without allowing it a chance
to escape. Similarly a native who has a particular vegetable for his kobong will not
Bather it except at a particular time of the year, and apparently from a similar belief — vi/..
that some relative or friend may be an individual of the particular species of animal or plant
which they avoid destroying. Their laws, to use the language of Sir George Grey, "are
unfitted for the government of a single isolated family, some of them being only adapted for
the regulation of an assemblage of families. They could, therefore, not have been a series ot
rules given by the first father to his children; again, they could not have b vn rules given
by an assemblage of the first fathers to their children, for there are these remarkable feat
about them, that some are of such a nature as to compel those subject to them to remain in
a state of barbarism.-"^ Rude as they are, they are punctilious in the forms with which the;.
* Mocgillivray's " Voyage of the Rattlesnake," vol. ii., p. 29. See also Stephens, " South Australia," p. 78.
t Grt-y's "Polynesian Mythology," p. 1.
J " Journal of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-west and Western Australia," vol. ii., p. 222.
AUSTRALIANS: GOVERNMENT; DIVISION OF LAND; CONDITION, ETC.
receive each other, and in the general courtesies which they extend to the individuals of their
own people. Individual property in land, using the term in contradistinction to communal
possession, where the whole is held in common by the tribe, prevails amongst them. Each
male has some portion which he calls his own, and of which he can point out the boundaries.
A father subdivides his land, according to Mr. Eyre, during his lifetime, and the property
descends in hereditary succession. There is no particular privilege attaching to the eldest
son, nor can females inherit land. Certain tracts of land, rich in gum, &c., are claimed by
certain families as theirs, but only for the collection of these products at the proper season.
At any other period they could be debarred entering these tracts by the real owners of the land.
The rivers are, in like manner, claimed by certain tribes for fishing purposes, and so strict is
this law of the private rights in land that trespassers after game can be, and are whenever
possible, punished by death. The result of this division of land during the father's lifetime
that at the age of fourteen or fifteen a boy will point out the portion he will eventually
inherit. In the event of the males of a family becoming extinct, the male children of the
•daughters inherit their grandfather's lands (Eyre) . Mr. Eyre further informs us that when a
man's eldest child is named, the father takes the name of the child, Kadlitpinno, " the father
of Kadli/' while the mother is called Kadlingangki, or " mother of Kadli/' from tigangki (a
female). A similar custom prevails among some American tribes (e.g., the Kutchin of the
Mackenzie River region) and among some of the aboriginal tribes of the Malay Archipelago
(Sumatra) .
As a race the Australians are making almost no progress in civilisation. A few are
mployed as native police or as bushtrackers, for which they are well adapted. But as
the case of aborigines elsewhere, it must be said that the vices of civilisation seem
ore easily acquired by them than the arts. These and the rough discipline of the
lonists are doing their work, and in time the " black fellow " of Australia will have gone
e way of the " black fellow" of Van Diemen's Laud. The natives of Australia look in
me respects as isolated as the natural productions of the country, but even they, in other
spects than their features, have their connecting links with the people surrounding them.
Dr. Pickering pointed out many years ago, the throwing-stick is in use in Eastern
uinea, in New Britain, and, in a form, in New Caledonia; the oblong shield in the
uisiade Archipelago and around Dampier's Straits, &c. Some words appear to be
•mmon. Thus dtinda (the Australian word for the black swan) is also found in New
ritain, where it is applied to a species of emu or cassowary.
The Australian " black fellow " is an expiring race, and in Queensland, where he is
ill found in something like his old condition, he is disappearing with the rapidity which
overtaken the wild tribesmen in every other part of the world, where they have had the
evil fortune to come in contact with "civilisation." " Dispersed" by the ruthless native police,
poisoned by colonial rum, and — if all stories are true — by means even more potent, shot down
by the stockmen who live beyond the range of law and of public opinion, the strongest of the
" mobs " have been reduced until only a miracle can keep them alive. And yet, as a
recent writer remarks, their lot before the whites came amongst them was not an unhappy
one, especially in the coast districts, where game is more plentiful than inland. The kangaroos
and other wild animals were more abundant than nowadays, when they are killed wholesale;
]]Q THE 1'Knl'LES OF THE WORLD.
accordingly, they seldom suffered a day's hunger.* Each tribe was ruled by a chief, whose
influence depended on his fighting qualities, and was otherwise but slight over the rest of
his tribesmen. Nor was it safe for any tribe to venture outside its own district, which
indeed thev rarely did except in time of war, or to carry off a damsel from a neighbouring
camp. Each small group of families had, as we have seen, their own totem, or crest, and
scrupulously abstained from killing or eating the animal whose name they bore. Their
A MH'TH AUSTK.VLIAN.
moral character would then have compared not unfavourably with that of more civil
nations. The marriage laws were very strict, and no intermarriage was permitted betv.
members of the same family. They were polygamous, but adultery was almost unknown,
and surely punished by death. Honest to each other, pilfering was not one of their viees,
* The notes which follow are condensed, for the most part, from reports l>y Mr. AVisker in the Pall
: I).-c..ml>er 17th, 1881, and Fortn'ujlith/ Jtrrieir, ISs-j. pp. 712, 720. See also for other tri1>
uul Howitt: " Kamilaris and Kurnai " (1880); Dawson: "Australian AWitrinos " (1881); and the c>.\h;i:;
•• of Brough Smyth on the natives of the Colony of Victoria and the continent generally. In ! 'r
" Iti<|iiirirs into Australian Folk Lore," various works and papers are cited, and most of them described in
ue of the Grey Library at Cape Town.
Iv3"
118 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
and each tribe was almost a small commune. Living in a land of plenty, a very slight
exertion was enough to ensure them and their families an abundance of ixxxl. Kangaroo
and wallaby, opossum and bandicoot, turkeys and wild-fowl, are all plentiful and easily gut
at, and when, as in Queensland, yams and the large potato-like roots of the water-lily are
added to the list, it will be seen that their diet was by no means to be despised. Did
they wish for a change, they had only to take to their canoes to be sure of an abundant
supply of fish. Their nets, made by the gins, by hand, out of a species of hibiscus, were
of immense size and very strong, and were generally common property to three or four
families. Their canoes, made of bark and sewn together with thread made of hibiscus bark,
are light, easily managed, and wonderfully buoyant, though an inexperienced white man,
on stepping into one, will probably take a header into the water on the opposite side. In
addition to the universal boomerang, their weapons are stone tomahawks, spears of various
patterns — some of them barbed with great ingenuity — and mil las, or short clubs with a
knobbed head, which they use both for throwing and hand-to-hand fighting. A heavy
two-handed wooden sword and a shield complete the list of their offensive and defensive
weapons. The use of the bow and arrow is fortunately unknown to them, except in the
extreme north-east of the colony, where they have a considerable dash of foreign blood, and
are frequently visited by blacks from the south of New Guinea, which is only about ninety
miles distant. About Cape York, Macgillivray noticed that the heads of the children were
distorted into a conical shape by manual pressure. Only recently Miklouho-Maklay observed
the same feature among the natives at Mabrak, on one of the islands on Torres Strait, and
on the east coast of New Guinea the skulls of the adult women are cinctured by the continual
pressure of the band by which they carry loads. The only poison of which they have found
out the use is the' bark of a species of myrtle, which, being pounded up and then thrown
into the water, sickens the fish and brings them to the surface, where they become an
easy prey. Their knowledge of medicine is very slight, but then they are, or rather were,
rarely sick. The bite of a scorpion or centipede they cure by sucking and chewing the
spot that was bitten. The bite of any deadly snake they do not attempt to cure,
but quietly lie down, and, amid the howls of their relations, await the death that speedily
follows the bite. A severe flesh-wound they plaster up with mud and keep moist for a few
days, and cure in this manner some frightful-looking wounds. A broken bone they set t •>
the best of their ability, but the result is usually a crooked or shortened limb. Me;
they treat by getting into a water-hole, and sitting there with their heads out until they
recover — as they very rarely do — from this, to them, terrible scourge. As for cloth:
they content thcin-elves with the costume of our first parents in their days of inno-
cence, though occasionally on grand occasions the young gins wear a plaited loin-cloth.
During the short Queensland winter they use 'possum rugs, which they make very neatly.
Their houses consist of three or four sheets of bark put up in a semicircle on the windy
side of a small fire, round which they lie. Their only time of hardship is during the
season, when sometimes it rains incessantly for a fortnight, and they have some difficulty
in Betting about after the game, and cannot fish in the Hooded creeks. Their life, befi
the whites cmme, was as tolerable an animal existence as could be imagined. Plenty to
and drink, and little else to do, a genial climate, and few enemies, what more could a
AUSTRALIANS: THEIR PRESENT HABITS AND CONDITION.
119
savage desire ? They had laws, and they knew that if they broke them a blow on the head
from a nulla or a spear through the body would be the result so they wisely abstained.
Superstitious, like all ignorant races, they had a sort of idea of some evil power, who sent
snakes and crocodiles and similar troubles ; but they never went to the length of trying to
propitiate him by prayer or sacrifice. It is commonly affirmed that when the death of a
member of the tribe has been determined on by the elders, the unsuspecting victim is made
insensible by a blow on the head, and his kidney fat is taken out through a small slit
made between the ribs. He wakes with probably a headache, and certainly a sore side, but
recovers sufficiently to go about for two or three days, when he dies, vomiting incessantly.
Bat this story, after careful inquiry, I am inclined to class with many others of a similar
type. It is, however, always difficult to obtain anything like accurate information about
tribes like the " aboriginals " of Queensland. The "old settler" is ready enough to
volunteer his knowledge, and to deride the published accounts of every other person. It
is, however, rare that the data of these " eye-witnesses " are of any value, for they have not
been trained to observe and to weigh evidence, to eliminate what is simply an accidental fact
from what is general, constant, and not merely their own personal experience, under excep-
tional circumstances. Formerly they used to cremate their dead with considerable ceremony,
but now they bury like whites. That they were at one time cannibals there is no reason
to doubt; and in the older days, when white men were not unfrequently surprised and
killed, their cooked and half-eaten remains were repeatedly found in the blacks' carnp by the
avenging native police. Of cultivation they are innocent \ they get their food with little
trouble, so have no inducement to work. Now that they are half-civilised, their old
fstoms and laws are nearly forgotten; their marriage laws are no longer kept as of old,
d the few survivors are allowed to follow their inclinations regardless of relationship.
Half-castes are by no means uncommon, and some colonists have one or more gins con-
stantly about their stations. The boys have been now and then forcibly taken away by
settlers from a distance who want a slave, to whom they will have to pay no wages, and if
they tried to escape, were taught by corporal punishment that they were no longer free.
But such cases are very rare. However, civil rights they have none, and though occasion-
ly a settler has been tried for shooting an absconding or offending black boy, no jury has
ought fit in Queensland to find a white man guilty of murder for killing a "nigger/'
t civilisation has been to them anything but a curse it would be hypocrisy to deny,
ot allowed to wander over their old hunting-grounds, they are compelled to " loaf " about the
:owns and stations, doing odd jobs for any one who wants them, and seldom recover from
the diseases which are a gift from their more enlightened white brethren. The colonial
Government still keeps up the fiction of paying for their country by giving to each of them
the Queen's birthday a blanket worth five or six shillings. The vices of the whites
ey quickly imitate ; their virtues they rarely see, and never copy. Their hatred of work,
of any kind of steady employment is ineradicable. They are vagabonds, and vagabonds
iey insist on remaining. A few years hence and their land will know them no more ;
ieir utter destruction is only a question of time. The fate of the Australians, those who
ve read our account of the North American Indians will know, is not singular. The
Hottentots and the nomads of Siberia are vanishing, and the Bushmen will soon be an
120
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
extinct people. The Brazilian Portuguese, according to the testimony of Tschudi and the
Prince of Wied, deposited the clothes of scarlet-fever or small-pox patients on the hunting-
grounds of the natives. The Utah settlers poisoned the desert drinking-places with strychnine,
as an easy way of getting clear of the " Injuns ; )} and it is known — though I should be sorry
to look upon the incident as anything but an individual outburst of demoniacism — that in
Australia whites claiming the name of women have been guilty of mixing arsenic with the
meal which they gave to the starving blacks. Las Casas described the wretched Caribs of the
Antilles destroying themselves by rope and poison, and to save the children from their parents'
wretched lot, the Chontals and Mijes agreed to practise infanticide on a large scale. But of all
the painful stories of this character, the extinction of the Tasmanians is the worst. "We have
little to say regarding those people, the natives of Tasmania, or Van Diemeiv's Land, for the
THE NAKDOO 1'LANT (Mursilea mncropus .
A, Spore Cases or seed-like t>odies, of natural size.
simple reason that before they began to be studied in earnest they became extinct. They were,
indeed, subjects of the British Crown, but the ruthless barbarism of their neighbours was too
much for them, and the Government never lifted its arm to protect them until it was too
late ; and thus the experiment of keeping alive upon the earth the remnants of what had
numbered only a few years before several thousands of people failed. Civilisation might
have lost little by the extinction of the Tasmauians ; science might have gained a little l>y
their preservation, for what is known about thorn is only derived from the fragmentary
notes of voyagers, travellers, or the remnants that tradition has handed down. But humanity
suffered irremediably by their effacement. When the last Tasmauian was put under ground
the average morality of the British people fell sensibly.
TASMANIANS.
In appearance the Tasmanian was as ugly a specimen of humanity as could be
imagined. In stature he was small, but otherwise, both in character and custom, he greatly
T1IK TASMANIAXS: LOCOMOTION; GOVERNMENT; THEOLOGY.
121
resembled the Australian, from whom it is almost certain he was originally derived. Archi-
tecture amongst them was in its most primitive condition. In the mountainous parts of the
country he found shelter in caves and hollows, while on the plains the winds were broken by a
shelter of trees firmly wedged together and supported by means of stakes. This rude erection
was crescentic in form, the convex side being opposed to the winds. Tn this building, consisting
of half a wall and no roof, a fire was kept burning in the unenclosed space to the leeward. His
home had little furniture beyond the waddles, baskets of grass, large shells for carrying water,
and a few articles of personal adornment. They were not even acquainted with the art of raising
fire by rubbing two pieces of stick together, or by striking one stone against another. Accord-
SUUATTEKS STATION ON THE CABLING DOWNS, NEW SOUTH WALES
ly, fire was never allowed to go out, and it was the duty of the females, when the tribe (or " a
ob," as the colonists called them) moved about from place to place, to preserve this fire alive,
hen on laud they travelled on foot ; their locomotion by water seems to have been effected
>y catamarans, rather than by regular canoes. The planks of these were fastened together
means of rush bands, or thongs made out of the skins of wild beasts. To search for wild
imals or the natural productions of the soil were their only occupations, while rude dances
re the unfailing recreation of what seems, from our point of view, to have been a miserable
'e ; but, doubtless, on this subject they had a different opinion. Like the Australians, they
had neither hereditary, nor, indeed, elective chiefs, though while moving about, or in times of
extremity, they recognised the imperfect authority of the individual who had the greatest force
of character. It is said — but I doubt it much — that in all their rude theology there was no
pretension to divination, magical influence, or witchcraft, and that in sickness a patient was
56
122 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
relieved or tortured, as the case may be, by " non-professional advisers and the application of
an ordinary surgery. He was bled, for instance, with a flint, or a crystal sharpened for the
occasion ; and the friend who bled him was the first person that had an opportunity. No one
presumed to be specially qualified for such offices. The women watched over the dying, aud the
dead were usually buried." In religion they believed in a spirit who could, especially during the
night, hurt or annoy them, and beyond this their mythology was limited. They also believed
in a world beyond the grave, where they were better fed, and led a somewhat easier life than in
the present one ; where stockmen who set spring-guns for them were unknown, and where
neither mutton impregnated with strychnine nor flour with arsenic was put in their way when
they were hungry. They had great confidence in the power of amulets. The most valued of
these was a bone from, either the skull or the arm of their deceased relatives, to be sewn up in a
piece of skin ; this was sovereign against sickness or premature death. After their experience
of the convicts aud stockmen had enlarged they began to lose confidence in the power of this
osteological charm. Like the Polynesians, Americans (Vol. I., p. 10-1), and their nearest neigh-
bours— the Australians — they dreaded to pronounce the name of a deceased friend.*"
In appearance the Tasmanians were, as we have already indicated, ugly beyond the ugli-
ness of savages. Their hair was short, and rather inclined to curl, while the nose meandered on
either side into an expanse of nostril on their black faces. The story of their wrongs, as well as
of their life and extermination, has been truthfully written by Mr. Bonwick, and a terrible tale
he has to tell.f The details he unfolds are of a nature almost too horrible to transfer to these
pages, even did space permit of an outline being given. Pent up in a comparatively small island,
the war which the rough settlers and stockmen, mostly convicts, waged against them soon
completed their ruin. Their outrages were of such a nature that one is not surprised at the
determination of these injured people to drive from their land a race of men among whom were
people capable of such acts. To use the language of a well-known colonist, they were treated
" worse than dogs, or even beasts of prey ; hunted from place to place, shot, their families torn
from them, and the mother snatched from her children to become the victim of the lust and
cruelty of their civilised Christian neighbours ! " To slaughter a party sleeping around their
camp-fire, and then to fling an infant, who had escaped the general murder, into the fire, was
thought little of by these brutal settlers. A convict bushranger of Van Diemen's Land, executed
a few years ago for crimes committed against the Europeans, confessed that he had actually
}M3en in the habit of shooting the blacks to feed his dogs with their flesh. The wretched females
were even worse treated. Captain Stokes tells us that a convict servant kept a poor yin chained
up like a wild beast, and whenever he wanted her to do anything, applied a burning stiek — a
fire-brand snatched from the hearth — to her skin. The natives retaliated bitterly, and when
they raptured a settler, after mutilating him, would hand him over to the gins for torture. The
details of this are unfit for publication ; suffice it to say that the deep-rooted vengeance of the
blacks was exhibited in it. It was then war to the knife. Finally, after many failures, the It
of them were captured, or induced to come in, and were at last settled, to the number of ;2 in,
* " Moral and Social Characteristics of the Aborigines of Tasmania, as gathered by intcrcoirrse with
surviving remnant of them now located in Flintier'* Island." By the Rev. T. Dove, in TasmaitMH Journal
cience, vol. i.
t "Th«- Lust of tluj Tusmanians" (1870) ; Waitz : " Anthropologic der Xaturvolker," vol. vi. (1863).
ANDAMAN ISLANDERS: APPEARANCE; HABITS; STATUS.
123
Flinder's Island, under the protection of the Government. In 1876 the last of them died. I
need add 110 comment. If the reader cannot make his own, mine would be of little avail. The
extermination of a whole race of mankind is an astounding matter ; and when that race was
living- under the same Government as ourselves — subjects of the same benign and noble-hearted
sovereign — dark-skinned compatriots of that proud race on whose kinsmen the sun never sets
— proteges of a mighty empire — the question gets beyond the cynic's selfish sneer and becomes
•" too terrible for tears."
ANDAMAN ISLANDERS.
In the Bay of Bengal are situated the Andaman Islands, inhabited by a peculiar race —
a race low in the intellectual scale, inferior even to the Tasmaiiian, and altogether an anomaly
to the student of man. The Andaman Islanders are black, with bushy hair, not unlike the
Papuans, but, with the exception of their skin, having no relation whatever to the negroes.
So far as can be made out, they are pure Papuans,* who have lived isolated from the rest of
mankind, and the stock has, therefore, remained unmixed with the blood of alien nations or
tribes. Savages more pure and of a lower type it is hardly possible to conceive. A coat of
clay, to protect their skin from the bite of insects, is their only clothing. Law, religion, villages,
or government they have none. They wander about from place to place, herding promiscuously
together, and having no idea of marriage as it exists even among the lowest race. Mother and
daughters may be the wives of the same husband. Of all strangers they are suspicious, and
stoutly contest their landing ; hence the little we have known regarding this strange people
until the Indian Government established a convict settlement on the islands, and thereby
•enabled Dr. Mouatt, the Bengal Inspector of Prisons, to prepare his interesting account
of their habits, so far as could be observed. When Mouatt's party attempted to make their
first landing, though infinitely more powerful than the savages, yet they were furiously opposed
by the Andamaners, armed with long and powerful bows, from which, at a distance of sixty
or seventy feet, they discharged arrows with great accuracy and effect. The bow is the
favourite and almost constant weapon of the Mincopie, as these people style themselves. They
even use it to shoot fish in the sea, hauling in the fish by means of a cord attached to their
arrow-harpoon. They are skilful fishermen, canoe-men, a'nd canoe-makers : of late they have
adopted outriggers. Yet, with all their savage nature, the Andamaners are not cannibals,
though they mutilate the bodies of their enemies in their wild fury. They feed on roots, fruits,
fish, and the flesh of wild animals. The pig, now tolerably plentiful on the islands, affords them
a favourite dish. They cook it by placing it among a heap of smouldering ashes in a large
hole burnt in a standing tree.f Their huts are little better than a few crooked sticks
stuck into the ground, with palm leaves laid on their sloping sides as a thatch, to protect
the householder from the rain. Skulls and other trophies of the chase hang in the hut, while
the owner limits his idea of personal decoration to yellow ochre or a bit of glittering shell
or bone fastened to his person by a string around the middle. Mothers suckle their
children until in the course of nature they can supply them with no more milk, and it
scarcely consorts with the almost bestial social relations of the Mincopies to find that there
* By some ethnologists they are believed — erroneously, we think — to be Malayans.
t When first discovered they were said to be ignorant of the use of fire, though this is very doubtful.
121 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
is between the parents and children much reciprocal affection. The children are early
initiated into the mystery of archery, and swim with such facility that they capture fish in
the water and drag them ashore alive. They seem to have no religion, but have a festival on
the monthly appearance of the new moon, when grotesque dances, accompanied by salutations.
are made in its honour. So absolutely closely allied are the Andaman Islanders in their moral
as well as physical life to the lower animals, that it is said by an eminent scientific vovao-er
that the man and woman remain together until the mother ceases to suckle the child, after
which they separate as a matter of course, and each seeks a new partner.* Indeed, there is
every reason to believe that the women are looked upon as common tribal propertv, and that
any woman presuming to consider herself in any other light than simply as the temporary
partner of whoever took up with her would be severely punished. This is the "communal
marriage" which, in various forms, either prevails or did prevail among different nations,
savage and even civilised. The dead are buried in a sitting position, and after the bodv has
decayed the remains are exhumed, and the bones distributed among the relatives, each of whom
keeps one. The widow claims the skull as her right, and wears it round her neck for the rest
of her life. No grief is publicly exhibited at death, but at the bone distribution each
receiver of a fragment of the late lament ed's skeleton howls over the present to the extent
which he or she may consider proper under the circumstances.
NICOBAR ISLANDERS.
The inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands, lying about thirty miles south of the Andaman group,
are taller and stouter than those of the latter, wear their hair long, and divided down the
middle, and do not go entirely naked, the men having a sort of sash around their loins, one
end of which hangs loose and trails behind, while the women have a girdle made out of plaited
grasses, or, in some of the islands, of a " long piece of cloth, wound round the body, fastened
at the breast, and extending below the knees." Both sexes are atrociously ugly, the men
increasing their natural ill-favo\iredness by the dark-red colour with which the interior of their
large mouths is stained by betel-nut, which they are constantly chewing, and the women by
shaving their hair entirely off. They are by no means so wild and inhospitable to strangers as
the Andamaners, nor are they so warlike. Accordingly, most of their weapons are mere hunting
implements, such as spears, crossbows, &c., but the bow is by no means so formidable a weapon
as that of the Andamaners. The houses are constructed after the New Guinea fashion, and are
kept clean and in good order. Under the shelter of this airy hut the Nicobarian lounges away
a great portion of the day, smoking, drinking palm wine, and generally leading that <1olce far
)i'n' life, existence which is so congenial to his nature. Their canoes have the almost universal
Oceanic outrigger, a peculiarity, however, not found in those of Tasmania, Australia, or
Andaman. They are, moreover, not so skilfully made as those of the latter islands, though
large, capacious, and capable of being propelled with great speed by short, strong paddles.
The body of a dead person is placed, with arms, provisions, and other necessaries, in one
half of a canoe, and covered by the other half, then buried in the middle of the \ ill.;
they sup|>MM> that the body is decayed, it is dug up again, and the bones thrown into
* Sir Ivlwiml IVlrhrr, Transactions of the Ethnological Soc'utii, vol. v., p. 4">.
NICOBAR ISLANDERS: NEGRILLOS; ORIGIN; CHARACTER, ETC. 125
the bush, while the arms, &c., are distributed among the relatives, whose pious care for their
deceased friend's safety had provided these aids to his comfort and protection.
What their religion is we do not know, but in all probability it is only a vague belief in
evil spirits, for the Novara voyagers tell us that they noticed in these islands scarecrows
put up to frighten the ecwees away from their villages.* The Car Nicobar Islanders at least
have only one wife, are honest, not unintelligent, and with excellent memories, though, like
nearly all savages, much given to intoxication.
NEGRILLOS, on AETAS.
If the Nicobar Islanders are above the Andaman Islanders, the Negrillos are more upon
their level. The name is applied by the Spaniards to the aboriginal inhabitants of the Philippine
Islands, and signifies " little negroes/' In the Philippines there are also Malays, but, true to
what we find regarding most of the Papuan race when inhabiting the same island with the
Malay people, the Negrillo has taken refuge in the interior, while the Malay occupies the coast.
The Negrillos (or Negritos as they are also called) may be looked upon as the aboriginal inha-
bitants, while the Malays are colonists of a more recent date. In their general characteristics
they approach the Papuan type, but differ in the absence of beard, and in their exaggerated
negro features, projecting lower jaw, sloping profile, and in their hair being more woolly than
is usually seen in the true Papuan race. In stature they are small, and in character extremely
savage. They have no idea of house-building, or any form of government, excepting in so far
as each community recognises the authority of some old man. Age is respected among them,
and polygamy unpractised. Their marriage ceremony is simple. If the suitor receives the
parents' consent to his proposal, the girl retreats to the woods, followed by the young man,
who searches for her hiding-place. If she dislikes the match, she uses every effort to conceal
lerself ; but if the suitor is agreeable, the hiding and catching are both very much matters of
form. Their religion is also a very simple affair. Anything suffices for the Negrillo's god ;
a stone, a tree — any object, in fact, is worshipped for a time, and then after a day or two deserted
for something else, to which this degraded little Papuan offers up his prayers.
We have classed the Negrillos — or Semangs — as they are called in the Malay Islands,
with the Papuans. This is the view of almost every ethnographer except Mr. Wallace. f
It is also the opinion of Dr. Meyer, who has shown that the Negrillos of the Philippines
are pure Papuans,! though contrary to the impression which the Malay term " Aeta" would
convey, they are rather very dark copper-coloured than black, and possibly owing to some
admixture of Malay blood, are not quite so negro-looking as are their kinsmen on some of the
other islands. Indeed, it must have been evident to those who have read the preceding pages
that throughout Oceania there has been much intermixture of stocks. For instance, as already
lentioned, the island of New Guinea — the home of the Papuans — presents a wonderful variety
and commingling of races within a comparatively small area, though systematic writers often
* " Voyage of the Novara" vol. ii., p. 66 ; Distant, on the Car Nicobar Islanders, in Journal of the Anthropo-
logical Institute, 1873, pp. 2—6 ; and references in " Countries of the World," Vol. V., p. 162.
t Mallat's " Les Philippines," &c. (1846) ; De la Gironiere's " Vingt Annces aux Philippines " (1853).
J IVtermann's Gcograpliiscltc 3[itthcUit»r/cn (1876), p. 349. The various races of these islands are well described in
Jagor's " Travels in the Philippines" (1875). The German original is, however, preferable to the English translation.
126 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
find it convenient to speak of them as one homogeneous people (p. 10). Indeed, as Mr. Lawes
remarks, individuals may be seen comprising the characteristic's of several races, and this
extends even to the configuration of their skulls. To the west black natives are found, while
from Redscar Bay, eastward, a light brown race inhabits the coast. On the interior mountains
are people intermediate between these two in colour, and essentially different in all their
habits. These Mr. Lawes considers the true aborigines of this part of New Guinea — viz., Port
Moresby and Hood Bay — while the coast tribes, black and brown, are probably settlers or
invaders. Even the light-coloured people are so split up and divided that every few miles
of the coast brings the voyager to a people speaking a different language from those he
has just left. These are often dialects, but are quite as dissimilar as those spoken in the
various islands of Eastern Polynesia. Altogether, the missionary whose notes we are quoting,
knows of twenty-five languages spoken in the oOO miles of coast with which he is acquainted.*
Customs are also curiously local in Oceania. For instance, in Sandwich Island, near New
Ireland, patting the top of the head expresses friendship. This sign is also used on the north-
west of New Ireland, but not southward of Cape Givry, so far as known. In many others
of the Oceanic group the head is considered extremely sacred. In Samoa a native will never
use the ordinary word when speaking of the head of another person, except he does it in
abuse, and in war they always make a great distinction between the number killed and those
whose heads were got. If they once recovered the head of their slain relatives, they cared very
little what was done with the rest of the body. In that group, also, the most respectful way
of acknowledging/ any valued present is for the recipient of it to place the gift for a moment
on the top of his head. A Maori cannot insult an enemy worse than by telling him to go and
cook the head of his grandfather, or some other relative. In New Caledonia, many years ago,
a white man who had been adopted by a chief was killed by the people, owing to his having
once playfully patted his adopted father's head. Among the Kotei Dyaks, who are can-
nibals, it is the custom to preserve a victim's head for the chief, dividing the rest of
his body among the common people, though Mr. Carl Bock tells us that the Sultan of
Kotei is nominally at least a Mohammedan. On New Ireland and Duke of York Island
the skulls and lower jawbones of enemies are kept as trophies, and the skulls of their own
chiefs and principal men are hung up in the houses of their relatives for years. In the
Solomon group, the heads of the dead are carefully collected and placed together in rude stone
cairns, or in small huts, generally on some island off the mainland.f Again, on New Hanover
the men blacken one half of the teeth on both upper and lower jaw, leaving all the teeth
on the opposite side of the mouth perfectly white. This is done by only chewing the betel-nut
and lime on one side, and keeping the other side white with pumice-stone and earth. But were
we to enter into this inviting field, we should be tempted to tarry longer than, with so long a
journey ahead of us, we can afford to do.
» Proeeeditiffs of the Royal Geographical Society (1880), p. 608, where a very full account of the Tort }I
light-coloured natives will be found. See also Comrie in Journal of the Anthropological Institute (1877), pp. 102—119:
Moresby: " Discoveries in Eastern New Guinea " (187o) ; D'Albcrtis: "New Guinea" (1881); Stone: " A Year in
NVw Guinea" (1880); the Dutch '' XiVuw Guinea dhnographisch en natuurd kundig onderzocht en bcschreven"
(1862) ; Shortland: "Traditions and Superstition of New Zealanders" (1882), and " Maori Religion" (1882). ftc.
+ I '•>•••« i: </.v of the R(>>/«1 (;,;,in-ii)>liicul K,,ci<-ty (1881), p. 218; Journal of tin- Royal Geographical Sod
Vol. XLV11., p. 137 ; Powell: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (1881), p. 84.
127
CHAPTER VII.
TJIE MALAY RACES : THEIR RANGE ; CIVILISED MALAYS ; FORMOSAXS ; MALAGASY.
INHABITING either wholly or in part the great Islands of Borneo, Java, Ceram, Sumatra,
Celebes, &c., is the important Malay race, in its typical forms. But it spreads farther than
over the East Indian or Malay Archipelago, for the Madagascar people are also Malays,
though of an " aberrant " type, while the savage aborigines of Formosa, lying off th'j coast
of China, are also more nearly allied to the Malay race than to any other. Distinguishing,
however, the true Ivlalays from those which have only a Malay element in their language, Mr.
Wallace truly enough remarks that there is among themselves a great difference of civilisation
and of language, though all of them possess considerable uniformity of physical and mental
characteristics. " The Malays proper inhabit the Malay Peninsula, and almost all the coast
regions of Borneo and Sumatra. They all speak the Malay language, or dialects of it ; they
write in the Arabic character, and are Mohammedans in religion. The Javanese inhabit Java,
part of Sumatra, Madura, Bali, and part of Lomboek. They speak the Javanese and Kawi
languages, which they write in a native character. They are now Mohammedans in Java, but
Brahmins in Bali and Lomboek. The Bugis are the inhabitants of the greater part -of Celebes,
and there seems to be an allied people in Sumbawa. They speak the Bugis and Macassar
languages, with dialects, and have two different native characters in which they write them.
They are all Mohammedans. The fourth great race is that of the Tagalas in the Philippine
Islands. Many of them are now Christians, and speak Spanish as well as their native
tongue, the Tagala. The Moluccan Malays, who inhabit chiefly Ternate, Tidore, Batchian,
and Amboyna, may be held to form a fifth division of semi-civilised Malays. They are
all Mohammedans, but they speak a variety of curious languages, which seem compounded
Bugis and Javanese, with the language of the savage tribes of the Moluccas. The
savage Malays are the Dyaks of Borneo; the Battaks and other wild tribes of Sumatra,
e aborigines of Northern Celebes, of the Sula Island, and of part of Bourn. The colour
these varied tribes is a light reddish-brown with more or less of an olive tinge, not
.rying in any important degree over an extent of country as large as all Southern Europe,
e hair is equally constant, being invariably black and straight, and of a rather coarse texture,
that any lighter tint, or any wave or curl in it, is an almost certain proof of the admixture
some foreign blood. The face is nearly destitute of beard, and the breast and limbs are free
m hair. The stature is tolerably equal, and is always considerably below that of the average
European ; the body is robust, the breast well developed, the feet small, thick, and short, the
wds small and rather delicate. The face is a little broad and inclined to be flat ; the fore-
is rather rounded, the brows low, the eyes black, and very slightly oblique ; the nose
rather small, not prominent, but straight and well shaped, the apex a little rounded, the
nostrils broad and slightly exposed ; the cheek-bones are rather prominent, the mouth large,
Cps broad and well cut, but not protruding, the chin round and well formed,
n this description there seems little to object to on the score of beauty, and yet on the
128
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
whole the Malays are certainly not handsome. In youth, however, they are often very
good-looking, and many of the boys and girls up to twelve or fifteen years of age are very
pleasing, and some have countenances which are, in their way, almost perfect. I am i lie-lined to
think they lose much of their good looks by bad habits and irregular living. At a very early
age they chew betel and tobacco almost incessantly ; they suffer much want and exjwsure in
their fishing and other excursions; their lives are often passed in alternate starvation and
feasting, idleness and excessive labour, and this naturally produces premature eld age and
harshness of features."*
After this succinct account of the general ethnological features o? the Malay race, by one
than whom no traveller is better qualified to form an opinion, we will now proceed to give a
MALAY OPIUM-SMOKERS.
brief account of some of the more prominent traits or customs of the race, as observed 1>\
the most recent explorers, Mr. Wallace not being the authority whom we have least consulted.
The Malay is impassive, reserved, and even bashful, so that, until one knows the rare
better, one can scarcely credit their bloodthirsty reputation. The Malay is entirely
undemonstrative. If he has any feelings of surprise he never shows them. Perhaps he
experiences none, no matter how wonderful is the sight which meets his gaze. He is slou
and deliberate in speech, and circumlocutory in introducing a subject to be discussed. Even
the children and women are timid, and scream at the sight of a European, while in the
presence of the men they are silent and taciturn. Even when alone the Malay neither
talks nor sings, in this respect differing much from the Papuan, who has all the negro
traits of chattering and singing to himself for company. Overpay a Malay for some trifle,
* "Malay Archipelago," vol. ii., p. 442. Mr. Wallace also classes the Jakuns as Malays (p. 90).
THE MALAYS: INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CHARACTER OF THE RACE.
129
and his countenance betrays no sign of emotion ; a Papuan will be grave for a moment
out of perfect astonishment at the mistake made, and then burst into peals of grinning
laughter, while he bends in two, and finally rolls on the ground in ecstasies of merriment. The
Malays, when in company in a canoe, chant a plaintive, monotonous song ; at other times they
are silent. The Malay is cautious of giving offence to any one, and accordingly will hesitate
to quarrel about money matters, and rather abandon a just debt due to him than run the risk
of a feud with his equals. In his ordinary life he is as impassive as the typical Scot, into
whose head it does not require a surgical operation to insert a joke, and as fond of the nil
admirari line of conduct as the American Indian, though, unlike him, the Malay does not
dissemble his feelings or play a part. He has really little, if any, appreciation of humour, and
BAMBOO BKIDGE IN BORNEO.
oes not understand a practical jest. To all breaches of etiquette he is very sensitive, and equally
ealous of any interference with his own or any one else's liberty. To such an extent does he
carry this idea, that a Malay servant will hesitate to waken another, even his own master,
though told to do so. The higher classes are exceedingly polite, possessing all the repose and
quiet dignity of the best-bred Europeans. There is, however, another side to the character
I: the Malay. He is reckless, cruel, and careless of human life ; possesses but a poor intellect,
nd has neither taste for knowledge nor any indigenous civilisation, whatever civilisation is
found among them being confined to the Mohammedans and Brahmins.
Traders having for hundreds of years visited the islands of the Malay Archipelago, there
are now but few of the tribes unfamiliar with articles of civilised nianuf act lire. Indeed, at
some of the trading places, goods of European manufacture can be bought as cheap as, if not
cheaper than, in Birmingham or Amsterdam ; the trader calculating to make his profit on the
57
130 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
articles which he takes in barter, and ill the little expense to which he is subjected in dis-
posing of his wares. Still, the conservative character of the Malay shows itself in his clinging
to various aboriginal implements, notwithstanding the fact that he sees around him plentv
of far better ones, which are brought to his door by the Europeans who have settlements on
the shores of the Archipelago. Perhaps the cheapness of the native implements has something
to do with it. However, the conservatism of the Malay disposition was demonstrated by the
Dyaks long refusing to chop wood after the European fashion, and even imposing a line on
those who did, though well convinced that the V-shaped chop was superior to theirs. The
Malay anchor is formed out of a piece of tough forked timber, the nuke being strengthened by
being bound to the shaft by twisted ratans, while the place of the ring at the end to which
the cable is attached is supplied by a long flat stone, bound to the shaft in the same way.
These anchors are used by all the native prau* (or coasting- vessels), and are very serviceable.
The native wooden plough, which is drawn by one or two buffaloes, and guided by a stout
single handle, is but a rude affair, the coulter being made of a piece of hard palm-wood. The
maize-seed, which is sown broadcast, is harrowed in with an equally rude wooden harrow.
The occupations of the Malay population are much the same all over the Archipelago, except
in towns like Singapore, Batavia, &c., where they pursue various trades, &c. They are good
boat-builders, but in this art their neighbours of the Ke Islands beat them, the boats of the
latter people reaching every part of the Moluccas. They are not hollowed out of a tree, but
regularly built of " planks running from end to end, and so accurately htted, that it is often
difficult to find a place where a knife-blade can be inserted between the joints. The larger ones
are twenty to thirty tons burthen, and are finished ready for sea without a nail or a particle of
iron being used, and with no other tools than axe, adze, and auger. These vessels are hand-
some to look at, good sailers, and admirable sea-boats, and will make long voyages with
perfect safety, traversing the whole Archipelago from New Guinea to Singapore, in seas which,
as every one who has sailed much in them can testify, are not so smooth and tempest-free as
word-painting travellers love to represent them."
Sago-making, both with the Papuan and the Malay population, is, however, the great
occupation of their life. Sago is extracted from the interior of the stem of several species of
palm,* which grow in swamps or in " swampy hollows on the slopes of hills," even when
exposed to the influence of brackish or salt water. The midribs of the large leaves are used
in the place of the otherwise all-useful bamboo pole ; houses are built of them, and they form
i '\cellent poles for roof-match (or atap}; split, they are used for flooring; boxes are made
of them and the leaves combined, and they supply material to place between the chink -
in the walls of log-houses. The starch stored in the interior, under the name of '%s;i_
almost entirely supplies the food of thousands of people. A tree is selected just before it has
commenced to flower; it is cut down said split open, and with a heavy mallet the soft pith-like
interior in which the starch is stored is broken down into the shell formed by the split stem.
This is gathered up into baskets, until the whole is extracted, and only a mere skin, half
an inch in thickness, remains of the original solid trunk. The starch-laden pith is no\v
transferred, in baskets woven of the midribs of the leaves, to the washing-place, where by
fly from Metro.rylon Ruiuphii, the prickly sago palm, and Mctroxyloii l<cir, the spineless sago palm.
i: SAGO-MAKING; COCOA-NUT OIL MAKING; OTHER INDUSTRIES. 131
means of an apparatus also made of the sago-palm, the starch is washed out of the fibrous
mass with which it is mixed into a trough, where it settles down as a sediment. After the
trough is nearly full, the mass of starch, which is of a reddish-brown colour, is made up into
cylindrical masses, each weighing about thirty pounds, and neatly covered with sago-leaves.
These cylinders are known in commerce as " raw sago ; " we only see the refined article in
shops in Europe, and though then nice looking, it has lost much of its characteristic flavour.
Boiled sago is eaten by the natives with salt, lime-juice, and chillies, or made up into cakes,
which are very excellent, and extensively used in the Malay Archipelago. " It is/' remarks
Mr. Wallace, " truly an extraordinary sight to witness a whole tree-trunk, perhaps twenty feet
long and four or five in circumference, converted into food with a little labour and preparation.
A good-sized tree will produce thirty tomans (or bundles of thirty pounds each), and each toman
will make sixty cakes of three to the pound. Two of these cakes are as much as a man can
eat at one meal, and five are considered a full day's allowance : so that, reckoning a tree to
produce 1,800 cakes, weighing 600 Ibs., it will supply a man with food for a whole year.
The labour required to produce this is very moderate. Two men will finish a tree in five days,
and two women will bake the whole into cakes in five days more ; but the raw sago will keep
very well, and can be baked as wanted, so that we may estimate that in ten days a man may
produce food for the whole year. This is on the supposition that he possesses sago-trees of
his own, for they are now all private property. If he does not, he has to pay about seven
shillings and sixpence for one ; and as labour here is valued at fivepence a day, the total cost
of a year's food for a man is about twelve shillings. The effect of this cheapness of food is
decidedly prejudicial, for the inhabitants of the sago countries are never so well off as those
where rice is cultivated. Many of the people have neither vegetables nor fruit, but live almost
tirely on sago and a little fish. Having few occupations at home, they wander about on
itty trading or fishing expeditions to the neighbouring islands ; and as far as the comforts
if life are concerned, are much inferior to the hill Dyaks of Borneo, or to many of the more
rbarous tribes of the Archipelago."
Making cocoa-nut oil is also a trade in the Malay Archipelago, and the collection and
'reparation of betel-nut form a source of employment to some of the population. These nuts,
sliced, dried, and made into a paste, are much used by the betel-nut chewing Malays and
Papuans. At Matabello the very children, even such as could just run alone, were noticed by
Wallace carrying between their lips a mass of " nasty-looking red paste." These betel-nut
•parers were a poor race, afflicted with skin-diseases, the effect of their unwholesome diet of
•oa-nuts, sweet potatoes, an occasional sago cake, and the refuse nut after the oil had been
tracted. The common people were clothed in rags, yet luxury and extravagance were
erywhere apparent in conjunction with this. They are actually wealthy, the women wearing
vy gold earrings, and the chief men robes of silk and flowered satin, though their way of
ving is no better than that of the rest of the inhabitants. Palm wine — made from the
rmented sap of the flower-stems of the cocoa-nut — is a pleasant and slightly intoxicating
ink made use of by these people.
Among other arts the natives of Lombock especially are skilful in making guns, twisting
id finishing the barrels in a very workmanlike style with the rudest tools, and even inlaying
them with gold and silver.
132
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
A proneness to piracy forms, however, an element in the Malay character, which
is by no means of such a commendable nature. There are few of our readers who have
not heard of the Malay pirates ; how their murderous pmus crept alongside the becalmed
A WOMAN OF THE ISLE OF ROTTI, WEST OF TIMOR. (MIXED RACE, WITH
MUCH OF THE HINDOO TYPE).
vessel under the darkness of night, and of the bloody fight and horrible cruelties which
were perpetrated by the merciless robbers. The use of steamers and the vigilance of the war-
ships have now to a great extent rendered them powerless to attack large vessels, but still
\vli.-n occasion offers the smaller native boats fall a prey to them. They even attack the
1.34- T1IE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
native villages, particularly the Papuan ones, burn and murder, and carry women and children
a\vay into captivity. They are the scourges of the Indian seas, paralysing trade by preventing
the native or European traders visiting or residing at localities where they otherwise would.
Opposite and along the coast of Batchian stretches a TOW of fine islands, which are unin-
habited for fear of the Magindano pirates, who every year wander in one direction or another,
robbing, killing, or carrying into captivity all they can lay their hands on. The long, well-
manned jn'iniK escape by pulling away right in the wind's eye, and the smoke of a steamer
generally enables them to hide in some shallow bay, narrow river, or forest-covered inlet, till
the danger is passed. The only effectual way to stop their depredations would be to attack
them in their strongholds and villages, and compel them to give up piracy and submit to
strict surveillance. This was done by the late Sir James Brooke, who afterwards became
Bujah of Sarawak, in Borneo, and cleared the sea in his neighbourhood of these murderous
dark-skinned rovers.
The Dyalts, who, under various tribal names, inhabit both the interior and the sea-coast
of the great Island of Borneo, are Malays in a state of savagedom. In appearance the Dyak
bears a strik'ing resemblance to the other Malay people, and less so to the Siamese, Chinese,
and other allied races of Mongolian origin. But none of the Malays possess the oblique
Mongolian eyes, so common among the Chinese, Japanese, &c. They are under the average
stature of Europeans, and have small hands and feet, but are well made, agile, and very strong*,
being capable of enduring hardships which soon prostrate the European. Their character has
been rather dimmed by the addiction of the sea-coast Dyaks to piracy, and of all of them to
head-taking. Yet Mr. Wallace seems inclined to rank the character of the Dyaks above that
of the other Malays, whether barbarous or civilised. They are simple and honest, and are
therefore a safe prey for the Chinese and Bugis traders, who plunder them whenever they
have the chance. They are more lively and talkative, but less secretive and suspicious, than
the other Malays, and the children are fonder of play than is usually the case among the
sedate youngsters of the Eastern Archipelago. Head-hunting — the main, if not only stain
on their moral character — the traveller quoted thinks ought no more to be looked upon
as indicating a bad character in the Dyaks, than the custom of the slave-trade a hundred
years ago implied a want of general morality in all who took a part in it. Head-taking
(which we shall speak about presently) is a custom originating in the petty wars of villages,
and not in the cruel character of the people, as has not unfrequently been declared by
superficial writers on these people. To counterbalance this, they are very truthful, a
lie being almost unknown, while every article belonging to a European is perfectly safe
amongst them.
The gross sensuality of the Chinese and the other Malays is unknown amongst the
Dyaks. In food and drink they are temperate, though, like all savage or half-savage people,
they are apathetic and dilatory unless roused to exertion by some strong stimulus, mental or
physical. They follow agricultural pursuits to some extent, rice being cultivated in quantity
greater than suffices for the wants of the population. In addition, sugar-cane, maize, and
various other vegetables are cultivated. The Dyak gets two crops off the ground in succession,
'.n.- of rice ;md the second of sugar-cane, &c. ; after which the ground is allowed to lie fallow
nglit or ten years, when it becomes covered with bamboos and shrubs. They export a
V''
*
Ol
1
THE MALAYS: THE DYAKS; TIIEIIl HOUSES; THEIR DRESS; THEIR MARRIAGES. 135
deal of rice and other produce to Sarawak. In exchange, they get gongs and brass cannon
(which, though almost useless, are highly valued), ancient jars, and gold and silver ornaments.
All marry early, yet the Dyak population is small and widely scattered, while the greater
portion of the country is still covered with the primeval forest. The number of children born
of these early marriages is, however, small, never being more than seven, and commonly only
about three, and many die in infancy, so that the population is almost stationary, the births
being only about sufficient to replace those who die by natural causes.
Their houses are all raised on posts, and are often from 200 to 300 feet in length,
and forty or fifty feet wide, the floor being composed of strips of split bamboo, which form
a pleasant floor to walk upon, and, when covered with a mat, an elastic bed to lie upon.
These curious houses are reached by ladders, and the platform in front affords a favourite
lounging-place for the inhabitants in fine weather. The hill Dyaks, in order to reach their
cultivated ground, and to travel from village to village, construct long paths through the
forest, bridging over streams and gullies, with elegantly made hanging bridges of bamboo
(p. 137). In most Dyak villages there is, in addition, a circular building called the " head-
house," which serves as a lodging-room for strangers, the place for trade, the night-quarters
for unmarried youths, and the general council chamber.
The dress of the men consists chiefly of the ckawat, or coarse cloth of gay-coloured material,
sometimes of a handkerchief on the head, and great moon-shaped brass earrings, heavy necklace of
white or black beads, with a profusion of armlets and leg-ornaments of white shell. Besides
this each Dyak carries a pouch containing materials for betel-nut chewing, and a long slender
spear, and the young Dyak is in every-day costume. The dress of the women is more elaborate,
though on ordinary occasions a short petticoat and a profusion of rings of brass on the arms and
legs comprise the major part of their wardrobe. Marriage among the Dyaks is in general a very
simple affair. If a young man fancies a girl, he " shows her attentions " by assisting her in
her occupations, and in other ways best known to love-sick swains. If he considers that these
are received in a manner which promises better things, the youth steals at night into the
common sleeping-room of the family, rouses his lady-love, when the father, mother, and sisters
re supposed to be asleep. If his attentions are agreeable the girl accepts betel-nut and sirih
leaf from him, and the two sit chewing and talking the night through ; if, on the contrary, she
will have none of him, she signifies her wish to that effect by asking him to light the lamp or
stir up the fire, which is instantly accepted as a signal for him to be gone. If no obstacle,
owever, intervenes, a marriage feast is given, and the two are united in marriage. The forms
of this ceremony vary slightly among various tribes, but the following is the way the rite is
performed among the Sibuyan Dyaks of Lundu. Two bars of iron are placed in the middle of
he village, and on these the young people, brought from different ends of the village, are
eated. A cigar and some betel-nut are presented to each by the priest. Two fowls are then
waved over them, and blessings bountiful, but invoked in a very long-winded address, are
plentifully showered on them. After this the priest knocks their heads together three times,
and the bride inserts the betel-nut in her mouth, and places the cigar between the lips of her
lord ; he does the same by her, after which they are husband and wife in the eyes of the tribe.
The fowls are now killed, and their blood caught in a vessel, in which the priest divines the
future fortune of the married pair. A great feast finishes the proceedings.
136
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Among the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula marriage by force again crops up. It has
been thus described by M. Bourien : " When all are assembled, and all ready, the bride and bride-
groom are led by one of the old men of the tribe towards a circle, more or less great according
to the presumed strength of the intended pair; the girl runs round first, and the young man
pursues a short distance behind ; if he succeed in reaching her, and retaining her, she becomes
his wife ; if not, he loses all claim to her. At other times, a large field is appointed for the trial,
and they pursue one another into the forest. The race, according to the chronicle, 'is not t<>
the swift, nor the battle to the strong/ but to the young man who has had the good fortune t<>
please the intended bride."* In Sumatra there were in former times three kinds of marriage :
1, that in which the man purchased the woman ; 2, in which the woman purchased the man ;
3, in which they joined on terms of
* Tri'>,\iii-tiniin Cif tin- F.t]i»nloriirtil Society, 18G->, p. 81.
t M ir.sik-u's " History of Sumatra." p. 2ii2 (<-itt><l by Lublock, " Savap-." p
l.YAK WAUUIOK FUOM THE ISLAND OF BORNKO (MALAY).
THE MALAYS: DYAK MARRIAGES; OBSERVANCE REGARDING FATHERS-IN-LAW. 137
Usually the young1 man does not, until he has a family, commence housekeeping for
himself, but takes up his abode with his father-in-law, and throws the produce of his labour
into the common family lot. If the young husband be the support of his widowed mother or
of younger brothers and sisters, the bride in this case goes to his house, but in every case the
A KIVER SCENE IN BORNEO.
bride's father ranks before his, and must be treated with the most profound respect. His name
must never be mentioned by the son-in-law, and it would be a grave offence to eat from the same
dish, drink from the same vessel, or lie on the same mat. These customs find their counterpart
among other people in a barbarous or entirely savage condition (Vol. I., pp. 197, 286, and 290).
In Sumatra, Marsden tells us that the primitive inhabitants, in his day at least, scrupulously
138 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
from mentioning their own names, and if pressed, solicited the intervention of a
neighbour, s.» as to prevent them breaking through this custom. Among the more primitive
Indians on the north-west coast of America I have found the same hesitation in telling their
names. " Hi* name is So-and-so," one would repeat, and the friend would echo, "And hi*
name is So-and-so," — each being afraid to pronounce his own name.
Polygamy is not practised, but marriage by purchase is still in vogue, though the girl's
feelings are consulted in the matter. The husbands are, moreover, excessively jealou* of their
wives, and mark every conjugal offence with the most merciless punishment which wounded
vanity and jealousy can dictate. It is not often that married people part after they have
children, Imt before that period they will divorce each other on the most trilling pretext. The
lot of the woman is not a light one. All day she works in the field, returning at evening with
a heavy load of firewood, vegetables, &c., over the slippery mountain and forest path, or wearily
climbing the ladders which are used to facilitate the ascent of mountains. Arrived at her home
her wnrk is not ended. For the next hour she is occupied in laboriously pounding with a heavy
mallet the rice for the evening meal, and in preparing it for food. After this she may take her
ease, and chew her betel-nut in peace on the platform in front of her door. Meanwhile her
husband is lolling inside, though in justice to him it ought to be mentioned that he may, if a
coast Dyak, have only returned from a day's fishing, or, if a mountain Dyak, from a laborious hunt
in the forest ; so that, on the whole, the labours of savage life in Borneo are as equally divided
as they are among most people in a savage condition. Among some of the tribes female
morality is at a low stage — few women marrying before they become mothers, though if this
happens nothing more is thought of it. But if the father of the child for any reason declines
to marry the mother, she is driven from her home, an outcast or disgrace to her family, whose
lintels must be sprinkled with blood before their house can again be tit for habitation. Xot
unfrcqueiitly, under these circumstances, the poor woman commits suicide. Such ca>e-, as well
a- the causes of them, are, however, rare.
The Dyak voipo-nx are numerous, but our space will not permit us to even mention more
than two of the most remarkable — viz., the blow-gun and the famous /•/•/•*. The blow-gun (or
xti nt jii In a] is about seven or eight feet in length, but scarcely an inch in diameter. Through
this weapon is blown a tiny arrow, made of the thorn of the sago palm, but scarcely thicker
than a knitting-needle; it is, however, generally poisoned with the juice of the upas-tree
(.litt/iii-i* ln.,-',riir'i.ii], and inflicts a fatal wound, though the place where the point of the arrow
has struck can scarcely be noticed unless after careful observation. They are skilful swordsmen,
and use several kinds of swords (parang*, /crises) of marvellous temper, which are held in ^reat
e>teein even in the country in which they are made. It is said that a good one is worth 110 in
Borneo, and some are valued at even a higher figure. The hilt, scabbard, &c., arc- ornamented
with tufts of hair from their slain enemies, and with all sorts of charms warranted to ensuiv
victory to the wielder of the krit. The sword is used in some of its forms as an axe, and also
.1- a weapon in execution. Death in Dyak executions is not accomplished by beheading the
\irlim, but by sending the point of the kri* into the heart of the doomed man, by pushing it in
ju-t behind the left Collar-bone and instantly pushing coHoii-wool into the place out of which
the sword has been withdrawn, so that the execution is absolutely bloodless.
«\ >\\.inls, brings us to the habit which has given the Dyak Malays such a
i"
E
THE MALAYS: DYAK HEAD-IUM ING ; BLOOD-DKINKIXG, AND OTHER CUSTOMS. 139
bloodtliirsty reputation. This is "head-hunting-." To obtain heads, which are dried and
preserved, just as the Indians dry and preserve scalps, is the height of Dyak ambition. To
secure these trophies there are no dangers which a Dyak Malay will not risk, albeit on ordinary
occasions sufficiently cautious of that same swarthy skin of his. The tribes are always at feud
with each other, this mania for " heads " being- a continual cause of quarrel. To use the
language of Mr. Boyle, speaking of the great tribes of Sambas and Sakkarang, "Every
year a cloud of murdering' pirates issued from these rivers and swept the adjacent coasts. No
man was safe by reason of his poverty or insignificance, for human heads were the booty
sought by these rovers, and not wealth alone. Milages were attacked in the dead of the night,
and every adult cut off ; the women and grown girls were frequently slaughtered with the
men, and children alone were preserved to be the slaves of the conquerors. Never was warfare
so terrible as this. Head-hunting-, a fashion of comparatively modern growth, became a mania,
which spread like a horrible disease over the whole land. No longer were the trophies regarded
as proofs of individual valour ; they became the indiscriminate property of the clan, and were
valued for their number alone. Murder lurked in the jungle and on the river; the aged of the
people were no longer safe among- their own kindred, and corpses were secretly disinterred to
ncrease the grisly store. Superstition soon added its ready impulse to the general movement,
ic aged warrior could not rest in his grave till his relations had taken a head in his name ; the
aiden disdained the weak-hearted suitor whose hand was not yet stained with some cowardly
urder. Bitterly did the Malay Pangerans of Kuching regret the folly which had disseminated
his frenzy. They themselves had fostered the bloodthirsty superstition in furtherance of their
olitical ends, but it had grown beyond their control, and the country was one red field of battle
,nd murder. Pretexts for war were neither sought nor expected ; the possession of a human
ead, no matter how obtained, was the sole happiness coveted throughout the land."
After Sir James Brooke had gradually abolished this horrible custom in the district under
is jurisdiction, he was continually met by petitions for permission just to take one head,
metimes it was a young man whose suit was rejected with disdain by a maiden who was a
liever in the old test of manhood — viz., the possession of a head ; now it was a veteran who
found the absence of a head in hand an obstacle to his renewing for a second or third
time the matrimonial alliance. They cried for heads, to use Mr. Brooke's simile, like
children for sugar-plums. It was a system of legalised murder, most revolting to every
principle of humanity ; to get a head was the summit of Malay ambition, whether that of
aiden or warrior mattered very little indeed. " A head" was the panacea for every evil. If,
'or instance, the relative of a chief dies, he closes up a stream by building a bamboo fence
ross it ; this stream cannot be opened until a head has been obtained by the chief ; after which,
with appropriate ceremonies and feasting, the stream is again thrown open to the fishermen.
The ancient inhabitants of Sumatra are also said to have indulged in this amusement. They
had no other money, and, like the Battas, they drink out of them.* A somewhat similar
usiom prevailed among the Garrows, one of the hill tribes of India. Among other customs
f the Dvaks, when peace is made or friendship cemented, the contracting parties drink of each
ther's blood — a custom identical with what prevails among some African tribes.
* Leyden, " Asiatic Researches," vol. x., p. 217.
11-0
Jill-] PEOPLES OF THE AVORLD.
The Dyaks do not tattoo themselves, looking upon this custom with supremo contempt,
though the Malacca tribes indulge in this favourite form of skin ornamentation. Most of them
file their teeth to sharp points, and even use a preparation to blacken them, though, indeed, the
everlasting betel-nut chewing stains them naturally of a dark enough colour. Food is eaten
by them in a half-putrid state, and all classes indulge in an abominable intoxicating drink called
MALAY CHIEF. (After a Dutch Photograph.)
fuak. When guests arrive, the women never desist pressing this beverage upon them until
the male portion, at least, arc senselessly drunk. There are Delilahs in Borneo as elsewhere.
The Sumatrans worship trees, animals, and water, and whether this form of worship is
followed by the Dyaks is not known. "What the Dyak religion is, is a question probabU
• lillicult to answer by themselves as by the writer. They, however, believe in a Supreme
Being, in addition to a multitude of minor or inferior deities. The forest is full of hobgoblins
of wondrous shapes and malicious intent — immortals, who are ever warring against mortals.
Charms, divination by birds, ordeals, and all sorts of omens are held in dee]) ;i\ve. Whether
THE MALAYS: THE RELIGIOUS VIEWS OF THE SUMATRAXS; DYAK BELIEFS. 141
they believe in a place of eternal reward or punishment is not certain. The Sumatrans have
tales of a place where men are immortal ; but this land of bliss is reserved, not for f/ood but
THE SfLTAX OF SOLOO (MALAY).
for rich men ; the poor cannot be expected to enter it. The bodies of the common people
are burned or buried, while those of the chiefs are interred with their arms and other valuables,
accompanied by a long series of rites, games, and feasting-, which to the uninitiated partake
more of a festive than a mournful character. Some of the Dyak tribes place the box containing
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the body on stout posts in the open-air. To show that savage customs, though bound up with
their religion, may alter, it may be noted that at one time, when a chief or other wealthy
personage died, arms, provisions, &c., along with a female slave, were set adrift in a canoe
on the coast. The slave was bound to the canoe, and in course of time died, while the canoe
got lost, and so the dead was supposed to be supplied with all the goods it contained. However,
as it was found that this in reality only resulted in the neighbouring semi-civilised Malays
obtaining arms, canoes, and slaves gratis by capturing these floating spirit store-ships,
the custom was discontinued. The coast Dvaks are said, by some writers on them, to launch
a small bark laden with all the sins and misfortunes of the nation, which are imagined to
fall on the first unhappy crew that may be so unlucky as to meet with it. A somewhat
similar custom obtains in the Maldive Islands. The Maldiveans annually launch a small bark,
loaded with gums, flowers, and odoriferous wood, and turn it adrift at the mercy of the
winds and waves, as an offering to the -v/y//v7 of the wind*; and sometimes similar offerings
are made to the spirit whom they term the kiny of tlif sect. It would be curious to find
whether the Dy.ks practise a custom which prevails among the Sumatrans and various other
savage tribes — viz., that the father takes the name of his eldest child. Though the women
are by courtesy sometimes called by the name of their first-born — " the mother of such a one — "
yet they never really change the names they get at birth.*
CIVILISED MALAYS.
Civilised communities of Malays are found here and there over the Malay Archipelago, or
at such trading-places as Dobbo, of which Wallace has given such a wondrously graphic-
account. Some of these communities — like Acheen — are governed by sultans, who are
suffragans of the Sultan of Turkey, while others hold their office under the Dutch Govern-
ment, who, though now owning the island, tolerate the native laws, rulers, and religion,
\\hich is universally Mohammedan, the natives all believing Turkey to be the greatest country
in the world, and the Turks giants of strength and ferocity. It was with difficulty that the\
could be persuaded that during the Crimean war the Turks did not entirely rout the Russians
and convert them all (by the sword) to Mohammedanism. They are fanatical but hospitable :
"An Acheenese will curse a Christian and then invite him to partake of his bread and salt
is a Javanese proverb. Some of these sultans are remarkably shrewd fellows, and
to getting their tribute from their subjects with a keenness which the chancellor of a
European exchequer might envy. Witness, for instance, that admirable story of how the
Sultan of Lomboek collected his poll-tax of rice. It is too long to tell, otherwise we might
relate how this Malay potentate suspected that the chief men of the villages were either
lax in getting in their rice-tribute, or that a considerable portion of it stuck to their own
lingers. So the Sultan made a great pilgrimage to the top of a mountain, had an intercourse
with the Supreme Being, who ordained that he should make some krtxe* out of needles, one
needle for every person liable to taxation, and that the /vvV.v should be sent to any village
win-never sickness prevailed. If the tale of needles had been correctly rendered, then all
would be well ; but if any village had neglected to send the proper number of needles,
• Bock: " Head Hunters of Borneo" (1881) ; Burbidge: " Tin • dimlcns of the Sun" (1880).
THE MALAYS: THE SULTAN OF LOMBOCK AND HIS TRIBUTE; DUTCH RULE. H3
sickness would oppress the people. Then the story goes on to tell how the 'krixex were
made, and circulated, and how they performed their mission. If they were sent to any
village and the sickness stopped soon after — as in the course of nature it most probably would
— all was well, but if it did not, then it was clear that there had been some mistake
in the number of needles sent to make the /crises; so the chiefs instantly set to work
to rectify the error, and the sultan meanwhile chuckled in his sleeve, as the rice-tribute
doubled, and nobody suspected where the trick lay, or what was the secret of it all. The Dutch
system of government, notwithstanding the abuse of it in many Dutch as well as foreign works,
is really highly beneficial to the natives. In Java, for instance, the Dutch control the whole
scries of village rulers, from the village chief up to princes, who, under the name of regents,
are the heads of districts about the size of a small English county. With each regent is placed
a Dutch resident, or assistant-resident, who is considered to be his " elder brother/' and whose
" orders " take the form of " recommendations/'' which are, however, implicitly obeyed.
Along with each assistant-resident is a controller, a kind of inspector of all the lower native
rulers, who periodically visits every village in the district, examines the proceedings of the
native courts, hears complaints against the head-men or other native chiefs, and superintends
the Government plantations. The system introduced by the Dutch was to induce the people,
through their chiefs, to give a portion of their time to the cultivation of coffee, sugar, and
other valuable products. " A fixed rate of wages — low, indeed, but about equal to that of all
places where European competition has not artificially raised it — was paid to the labourers
engaged in clearing the ground and forming the plantations under Government superintendence,
produce is sold to the Government at a low fixed price. Out of the net profits a per-
intage goes to the chiefs, and the remainder is divided among the workmen. This surplus
good years is something considerable. On the whole, the people are well fed and decently
•lotlied, and have acquired habits of steady industry and the art of scientific cultivation, which
mst be of service to them in the future. It must be remembered that the Government
cpeuded capital for years before any return was obtained, and if they now derive a large
avenue, it is in a way which is far less burthensome and far more beneficial to the people than
tax that could be levied."
No doubt extortions are now and then practised by the native princes. A thousand years
of servility on one side and tyranny on the other cannot be at once abolished by any new system
of government. Still, on the whole, the much-abused Dutch government of their East Indian
possessions works well. Many of the native chiefs are now in exceedingly comfortable
ircumstances, and are even refined in life and manners, and — best test of all — the population
increasing.
To properly carry out their system of government the nutmeg and other spice trade had to
be monopolised, and the cultivation of these articles confined to a few spots by destroying the
trees in other places. This has been held up as an instance of commercio-political depravity
without parallel ; but in reality it is not so, and did we care to spend space over the question,
it could easily be shown that there was no hardship at all in it, and that the shrewd, practical
Dutch people were perfectly right in making the regulations they did.
The origin of the Malay population has been a question of some interest; there
in, I think, be but little doubt that a large Hindoo element enters into its composition.
144
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
In Bali and Lombock, indeed, the Hindoo religion still maintains itself, and various Hindoo
customs and rites are still found among the people generally, as well as the remains of
THE SULTAN OF JOKK.IOKKARTA, JAVA (.MALAY).
Hindoo stone bulls and other carvings. It may be mentioned, in passing, that in this same
bland marriage by capture is practised, and that a woman who bears twins is looked upon as
something akin to having disgraced the tribe; she, her children, and husband, being forced
g" "»it and live- by the sea-shore, in order that by this means they may be purified of the [
THE MALAYS: CU1UOUS BIRTH CUSTOM; CANNIBALISM OF THE BATTAS.
145
dishonour they have brought upon themselves and their tribe. Among the Battas of Sumatra
— who, however, belong more to the aboriginal race than to the Malay — anthropophagy exists
among them in its worst forms; prisoners in war and condemned criminals are always eaten, but
THE SULTANA OF JOK1UOKK.ARTA AXD HER S0N.
they do not confine their cannibalistic propensities to them alone. In Marsden's day their own
relatives were devoured, when aged and infirm — but this, however, not so much from a desire
to gratify their depraved appetites as to fulfil a religious ceremony. Thus, when a man became
infirm or weary of the world, he was said to be in the habit of inviting his own children to cat
59
14G THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
him — especially when salt and limes were at the cheapest. The old fellow then ascended a tree,
" round which his friends and offspring assembled, and as they shook the tree, joined in a funeral
dirge, the import of which was, ' The season is come, the fruit is ripe, and it must descend.' The
victim descended, and those nearest and dearest to him deprived him of life and devoured his
remains in a solemn banquet."*
Among the civilised Malays there are, as might be expected from people of the
Moslem faith, very strict laws in reference to women. A married woman is not
allowed, under pain of death, to accept a cigar or a sirih leaf (for chewing) from a stranger.
Even to accept a flower from a stranger is death ; and it matters not whether the husband
chooses to condone the offence or not ; by the laws of Malaydom the woman must suffer.
Such a case actually occurred in Lombock some years ago, when the native wife of a European
accepted at a festival a flower or some such trifle from a man. The woman was of high
rank ; but that did not shield her, and she was demanded for punishment. Her husband
refused to give her up, and it seemed that the point was yielded. But he was mistaken. Some
time afterwards, the rajah (to whom she was related) dispatched a messenger to her house while
her husband was absent, and while on some pretext she came to the door, the emissary stabbed
her to death, remarking, as he sent the knife into her bosom, " The rajah sends you this."
Serious infidelity is punished by the woman and her paramour being tied back to back and
then thrown into the sea, where the huge crocodiles, always on the watch for food, soon
devour them.
I may conclude this account of the civilised Malays by the description of one more
custom, and I cannot better do so than by quoting the words of Mr. Wallace, to whom we
have been already so much indebted for many facts. This is the custom of amok, or "running
a-muck," as it is better known in Europe. "One morning, as we were sitting at breakfast, f
Mr. Carter's servant informed us that there wras an amok in the village — in other words,
that a man was ' running a- muck/ Orders were immediately given to shut and fasten the
gates of our enclosure; but hearing nothing for some time, we concluded that there had
been a false alarm, owing to a slave having run away, declaring he would amok, because
his master wanted to sell him. A short time before, a man had been killed at a gaming-table,
because, having lost half a dollar more than he possessed, he was going to amok. Another
killed or wounded seventeen people before he could be destroyed. In their wars, a whole
regiment of these people will sometimes agree to amok, and then rush on with such
energetic desperation, as to be very formidable to men not so excited as themselves. Anioiii;-
the ancients they would have been looked upon as heroes or demigods who sacrificed them-
selves for their country. Here it is simply said that they made amok. Macassar is the most
celebrated place in the East for ' running a-muck.' There are said to be one or two a month
on the average, and five, ten, or twenty persons are sometimes killed or wounded at one of
them. It is the national, and therefore the honourable mode of committing suicide amoni1'
the natives of Celebes, and is the fashionable way of escaping from their difficulties. A
* These Battas of Sumatra have been described as the "last cannibals on tho earth." How far thi> N
true we have already seen, and in due course the reader will be introduced to some other aboriginal folk
equally addict !•<! to this objectional bimanal cuisine. Some of the Kotei Pyuks are also cannibals.
t In IxMnbock.
THE MALAYS: •• RUNNING AMOK;" NATIVES OF THE ISLAND OF FORMOSA. 147
Roman fell upon his sword, a Japanese rips up his stomach, and an Englishman blows out
his brains with a pistol. The Bug-is mode has many advantages to one suicidally inclined.
A man thinks himself wronged by society; he is in debt and cannot pay; he is taken for a
slave, or has gambled away his wife or child into slavery ; he sees no way of recovering what
he has lost, and becomes desperate. He will not put up with such cruel wrongs, but will
be revenged on mankind, and die like a hero. He grasps his £m-handle, and the next moment
draws out the weapon and stabs a man to the heart. He runs on, with bloody kris in his hand,
stabbing at every one he meets. ' Amok ! amok ! '* then resounds through the streets. Spears,
/crises, knives, and guns are brought against him. He rushes madly forward, kills all he
can — men, women, and children — and dies overwhelmed by numbers, amid all the excitement
of a battle. And what that excitement is those who have been in one best know, but all
who have ever given way to violent passions, or even indulged in violent and exciting exercises,
may form a very good idea. It is a delirious intoxication, a temporary madness that absorbs
every thought and every energy. And can we wonder at the £m-bearing, untaught brooding
Malay preferring such a death, looked upon as almost honoui'able, to the cold-blooded details
of suicide, if he wishes to escape from overwhelming troubles, or the merciless clutches of
the hangman, and the disgrace of a public execution, when he has taken the law into
his own hands, and too hastily revenged himself upon his enemy ? In either case he prefers
to amok." Captain Buckman was told of a Javanese who, while " running a-muck " in the
streets of Batavia, was run through the chest by a pike, but such was the desperation of the
infuriated man that he pressed himself forward on the pike, until he got near enough to stab
his adversary with a dagger, when both expired together.
FORMOSANS.
The Island of Formosa (or Tai-wan), though lying in the China Sea, about 110 miles to
the east of Fokien Province, is inhabited by savage aborigines, and the Chinese and other
residents there are only colonists. The aborigines are divided into a number of tribes, and on
the eastern side of the island, owing to the almost inaccessible hills and forest around, maintain
an independent existence — favoured also, it may be, by the timidity of their would-be masters,
the Chinese. These aborigines are of the Malay type, though differing somewhat from their
distant cousins in the Malay Archipelago. They seem to have reached this island in early
times, and to have been settled there for a period long enough to have altered considerably
their physical appearance. They are exceedingly savage, and, knowing that could the Chinese
Government send an army into their wilds they would be crushed out, their enmity to the
whole race of pig-tail wearers is bitter and undying. They have also until recently shown a
cruel animosity to all foreigners driven on their inhospitable shores, who, if not killed, were
kept in the most abject slavery by those barbarous people. Little is known about the Formosans
except that they live in hamlets surrounded by groves of bamboo, under the government of
chiefs, and that their houses are generally clean and well provided. They have got to some
extent mixed with Chinese blood, but the aboriginal type is still plain enough, especially in the
wilder portions. They live by cultivating a little rice and other vegetables, and by hunting.
* "Kill! kill!"
148
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
From the sweet potato they distil a kind of samsJioo (or coarse spirit). Betel-nut chewing is
universally practised among them, the old and young equally indulging in this custom.
When people meet it is the custom to open their pouches where the materials are kept, and
offer " a chew " with an offhand grace which would put many of our snuff-takers to the
blush. Before being placed in the mouth the nut is folded in a leaf smeared with lime formed
from calcined shells. They seem of a low intelligence, and in religion are pagans of a degraded
type ; but beyond this little is known about them.*
A JAVANESE 1'ALAXQt
PEOPLE OF MADAGASCAR.
The large island of Madagascar, though lying not far from the coast of Africa, is not
inhabited by negroes. There may have been an aboriginal people once with whom the conquerors
amalgamated, but there is no doubt that the Hovahs, who are now the dominant race of the
island, are of the Malay type. The language is closely allied to the Malay or the Malayo-
Polynesian. My old fellow-student, Dr. Andrew Davidson, now well known as the physician
to the Queen of Madagascar, informs us that in examining rather hurriedly a Malay
dictionary he found above a hundred words manifestly identical with the Malagasy, and
considers that it would be very easy to trace many more words to a common root, their
identity being obscm-ed by a change of inflection and phonetic substitution. The country, after
a varying course of paganism and Christianity, is now tolerably civilised, Christianity being
the prevailing and established religion, and the arts of civilisation being gradually introduced.
* Collingwood : Transactions of the EtJniolor/ical Society, N.S., vol. iii., p. 227 ; Hughes : Ocean Htghwayt,
piliti-J liy C. R. Markham, N.S., vol. i., p. 14; ('lunplicll : Ocean ]fi(/Jnrn>/x, January, 1874; and references in
"Countries of the World," Vol. IV., p. 29o, whore a fuller account of the island will be found.
THE CHIEFTAINESS OF MOHILLA, ONE OF THE COMORO ISLANDS.
150 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The Malagasy — as the inhabitants are called — are much lighter than the negroes, though
they differ in this respect among themselves. The hair of the whiter-skinned variety is long,
straight, coarse, and black ; while the darker-skinned natives have short, curly hair, which is,
however, very different from the tufty wool of the negro.
Even before the advent of European civilisation the people of Madagascar were not
savages. They had a stated form of government, and many institutions and laws which rank
them as civilised after a fashion, though probably still in a semi-barbarous condition. Many
-of their customs were, moreover, of an Asiatic character, pointing to the original home of the
race. The Malagasy are of middle height, with good regular features, the nose prominent, and
:somewhat aquiline, forehead broad and well developed, the mouth rather large, and the lips
thickish. There are two great races in the island — the Hovahs (or governing race), and the
Andrians (or hereditary nobility recognised as such). The last is very numerous, and
divided into six classes, according to the nearness of their relation to the reigning sovereign.
Excepting the monarch, who is above all law, the Andrians are forbidden to marry with the
Hovahs, though there is no ground for believing that the two races are of different origin.
The houses are collected into miserable little villages, of from ten to one hundred houses.
'These villages are only a disorderly collection of huts huddled together, and in most places do
not seem to have been built with any view to safety. A Malagasy house in the low country
is a framework of wood, the walls being usually composed of the leaf of the screw-pine
(Pandanus) woven into it. The door, which is separable and movable, is made of the same
material. The whole structure is raised above the ground on a few piles, to permit the rain
to pass beneath it during the wet season. This vacant space beneath the house is the nightly
resort of dogs and pigs, whose varied noises are not calculated to make the slumbers of the
traveller unaccustomed to them any sounder. These houses are about twenty feet long, and
are divided into two apartments by partitions, which do not reach to the roof. When a stranger
enters, a clean mat is spread for him to sit upon, or more frequently only the clean side of the
mat is turned up. Hence the Malagasy have a proverb applicable to hypocrisy. Dr. Davidson
tells us that it is a double word, but literally means " the turning out the clean side of the
mat." The house is a common place of promenade for pigs, fowls, and even sheep and cattle,
and is entirely without chairs, tables, or bedsteads. The smoke from the fire in the middle of
the floor escapes as it best can through the door or windows, for chimney there is none. The
roof accordingly soon gets covered with soot, but the heavier the flakes of soot on the roof of
a house the better they like it. " It is a proof of antiquity, and the phrase ' old sooty ' is
frequently applied as a flattering distinction to an old and well-tried friend."
The form of government in Madagascar is patriarchal ; the father governs his house-
hold as its head, the chief governs the village as a father his household, and the monarch
governs all in like manner : republicanism is unknown. The sovereign is God's vice-regent,
und until recently it was customary to salute him as a " god/' or " God seen by the eye."
When he walks abroad, armed messengers run before to clear the way. Among many other
privileges and feudal rights, the sovereign is entitled to the rump of every bullock killed in
the island. In ancient Greece and Rome this portion was appropriated to the gods, hence the
bone of that part of the body is called the sacrum (or "sacred" part of the skeleton) ; it also
figured in the Jewish economy (Lev. iii. G — 11). The king's guard consists of about a thousand
MALAGASY: THEIR MODE OF GOVERNMENT; THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 151
soldiers and numerous camp-followers, and as the roads are so bad he — or she (for a woman can
reign — indeed, the present sovereign is a female) — is carried in a palanquin. When
Radama I. seated himself for the first time in a carriage, which one of the European sovereigns
had presented to him, Dr. Davidson mentions the amusing fact that his simple-minded subjects
had so little idea of its nature that they instantly lifted it, wheels and all, and that he-
had the satisfaction of enjoying carriage exercise after a novel fashion. His palanquin is
preceded by attendants dancing, singing, and chanting. At the coronation silver money is laid
before him as a sign of submission, or a calf is killed and " its head, tail, and legs are cut
off and placed in the reverse position in reference to the trunk to that which they naturally
hold. The person taking the oath stands with a spear in his hand, while a judge administers
the oath, containing imprecations that he may be mangled like this bullock if he should prove
unfaithful to his oath. The oath is ratified by the person being sworn plunging the spear inta
the carcase of the animal. This is regarded as the most solemn of all ways of professing
allegiance. Another mode is styled Veli-rano (or striking water). After having thrown
various worthless substances into water, whether a lake or river, or water taken from these and
placed in a canoe on land, an oath is repeated, and the water is then struck by a spear." *
The belief in one Supreme Being was a part of the original Malagasy faith, and preserved
in many proverbs found among a proverb-loving people, but their real religion was a cruel
paganism. Human sacrifices, burning of widows, self-torture, or destruction, were engrained
parts of their religion. Witchcraft was thoroughly believed in, as well as lucky and unlucky
seasons. h.faditra was something — a fowl, a sheep, or even a bullock — which was destroyed
in order to avert evil, sickness, or death — an idea bearing a remarkable likeness to the Jewish
idea of a " scapegoat." Though now Christians, it is yet in the recollection of most readers of
these pages how long and bitterly the new religion was opposed by Ranavaloua I. and certain
of her courtiers, and what dire persecutions followed the converts to the foreign faith. Indeed,
the religious customs of the people are closely wrapped up with their social customs, so that, as
Dr. Davidson remarks, the latter might well enough be considered under the former head.
Their year is a lunar one of twelve moons, but their New Year's day does not correspond to-
ours. On that day the children, dependants, or inferiors bring a piece of money to the head of
the house, after which he sprinkles a little water on them, blesses them, and wishes that they
may live a thousand years, and never see the family broken up. In like manner the chiefs and
officers visit the queen, and a similar ceremony is gone through. This is called f and roan a (the
washing) . After sunset on that day the children tie up bunches of dry grass, which they set on
ire, so that after dark the whole country looks as if lighted up. This, as well as the bonfires
irhich in some parts of Scotland are lit upon New Year's night, and in England on Midsummer
eve, in both cases being accompanied by peculiar ceremonies, may be remnants of fire-worship.
" The next day," writes Dr. Davidson, "a number of bullocks, free from blemish, with symmetrical
markings and properly twisted horns, are taken into the palace-yard to be blessed and sprinkled
by the queen. These are then given away to the chiefs to be killed. The people generally
iroughout the country kill their bullocks, and it was formerly the custom to take reeds, and
dipping them in the blood, place them at the doorposts of their houses. No one can fail to be
* For an exhaustive account of the Malagasy, see, in addition to Dr. Davidson's papers, already quoted, Sibree's
" Tho Great African Island" (1880); the works of Grandidier, Pollen, and Van Dam, and Cowan; Proceedings of
the Royal Geographical Society (1882), p. 521.
152
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
reminded by this of the Jewish passover. The bullocks, having been cut up, are distributed
amongst friends/'
Among a race like the Malagasy, composed of divers elements not welded into one
nationality, we might expect to find the funeral rites not alike in all divisions of the island.
In the centre of the island the tombs are built of stone, partly under and partly above the
ground. A fine tomb denotes the rank and wealth of the surviving relatives, and is grand in
proportion to (and often above) the means of the dead man's friends. Indeed, Dr. Davidson
tells us that far more attention is paid to their tombs than to their houses. A tomb must be
built on a man's own land, on the border of the family possessions, and the ground on which it
is built can never be alienated — a custom prevalent over many portions of the East. A familiar
ICE STORF.HOVSES AND 1'IGEON COT* IN MADAGASCAR.
instance will occur to our readers, when Abraham bought from the sons of Heth a burying-
place for Sarah. If a soldier dies in a distant district, his body is brought back to be laid in
the family burying-place ; for to be interred anywhere but in the family tomb is regarded
as a calamity greater than death itself. They will even carefully preserve an amputated
limb for the purpose of laying this detached member in the grave appropriated to the
departed members of the owner's family. An amusing instance of this is related by the
intelligent observer to whom I am indebted for most of these notes on the people of
Madagascar. The first person supplied with a wooden leg in the island died a few years
afterwards of fever. Now, the wooden leg which he possessed was not a very elegant piece of
mechanism, but was of some interest as the first specimen of the kind ever used in Madagascar.
Accordingly, the surgeon was anxious to secure it ns a memento of early surgical progress in
that region. He was, however, put off in a polite way until after the funeral, when he was told
MALAGASY: DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD; CURIOUS IDEAS.
153
that it was considered as part of the body of the deceased, and that the relatives had buried it
with him. Away in the forests to the south-east of the capital live a tribe called the Tanala,
who have a different way of disposing of the dead. Like the North-Western American Indians,
they place the body, wrapped in mats, in a large box — often made out of a hollow tree — in the
•depth of the forest, and there leave it. " The Betsileo, again, more nearly resemble the Hovahs
in their mode of burial. They build cenotaphs pretty much like the tombs we have described,
NATIVES OF MADAGASCAR POUNDING RICE.
but they dig a winding subterranean passage, somewhere near the cenotaph, in the further end
of which they cut ledges, upon which they place the corpse. The most singular practice,
however, in connection with funeral rites, is that followed in the case of the Andriana (or princes
of the Betsileo) . No sooner does an Andriana die, than they kill bullocks and cut off their skin
into strips, and with these they tie up the body to one of the pillars of the house ; at the same
time they make incisions in the solws of the feet, and tightening the skin cords daily, they
squeeze out in this way a good deal of the fluids of the body, which they collect in an
earthenware pot placed beneath the feet. They say that this process goes on until a worm-like
creature, which they c&llfanano, appears. They kill a bullock, and give some of the blood as
60
154- THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
an offering to fhisfunano, which they say contains the spirit of the departed. The body, hy
this time probably pretty well mummified, is then laid in the family tomb/'
It was customary among all the tribes to kill a number of bullocks at a death, under the
belief that the spirits of the bullocks accompanied the owner into the next world. This
custom they called Monano A/ana. If the deceased was a person of consequence, then a
number of bullocks would be killed, and their heads transfixed on poles in the vicinity of the
tomb, a custom which we have seen finds its counterpart among other savage or barbarous
people (Vol. I., p. 94, &c.). They have also the widely-spread custom of placing articles of
value in the tomb. For instance, one dignitary — the Queen Rosoherina — had 11,000 dollars,
in addition to other valuable property, placed in her grave, while her coffin was constructed
of solid silver fashioned into the form of a canoe, and to obtain the bullion for the manu-
facture of which no less than 22,000 dollars were melted down. Circumcision is practised
among these people, but it is performed at any period which may be considered convenient.
Sometimes, to give greater eclat to the operation, a whole village will agree to have it
performed at one time, when a season of great rejoicing and extravagance follows, which was
formerly a time for a prolonged saturnalia, during which profligacy of every description had
full sway and sanction.
Before the introduction of writing all bargains or importance were made publicly before the
chief men of the city. " Covenants of blood " were solemn agreements between two or more
persons to stand by each other. The persons so covenanting cut the skin over the region of the
heart. Each of them then tasted the blood of the other, and repeated a formula containing
terrible imprecations on whosoever should break the covenant. So sacred are these blood
agreements that the children of the covenanting persons will consider themselves bound by
them. The Dyaks — a race belonging to the same Malay stock as the Malagasies — have a
similar way of ratifying an agreement. A kind of custom, similar to the Polynesian tain
(p. 47), prevails also in Madagascar. There the custom takes the form of affixing a bunch of
grass to a pole at the entrance to the house, field, or road, to notify that entrance there is
forbidden. Such a sign is known as thefarfy (or protector), and simply means that " trespassers
here will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law " — habit or custom suiting such cases.
Little more than sixty years ago Madagascar was in heathen darkness; pagan rites of the most
horrid description prevailed, and dark superstitions overshadowed all the fair land. Though
they were not ignorant of some of the primary arts of civilisation, such as weaving, carpentry,
and the working of iron, and therefore could not be said to be savage, their knowledge of
these arts was but meagre and rudimentary. On the other hand, they were debased, licentious,
and deceitful, but not to such an extent as some of the Papuan and Polynesian nations we have
already described. The Malagasy morals are even higher than those of the other Oceanic people.
Vet neither truth nor purity was to be found, and their customs were cruel and degrading. If
an infant was born at an " unlucky period/' it was exposed, and perished ; and thousands of
helpless babes met this fate. Persons accused of witchcraft underwent the ordeal of trial by
poison (or lav genet] * The accused person, as among some African tribes especially near the Old
Calabar river, had to drink the poisonous draught. If he or she escaped, then their innocence
* Tanghitria venenata, a plant "belonging to the Apocynacttf (or dogbane order).
MALAGASY: TRIAL BY ORDEAL; SUPERSTITIONS; SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY. 155
was proved ; if, as most frequently happened, the stomach failed to reject the drug, then the
accused met the just fate of a guilty person by dying. Slavery, but never in a severe form,
prevailed, and to a less extent prevails still. Snakes were looked upon with great superstition,
and never killed, even though they approached the houses. Crocodiles they believed to be
possessed of supernatural power, and rather than attack them invoked their protection and
forbearance by prayers or charms. Even to shake a spear over the waters would be an act of
sacrilegious insult to this ravenous sovereign of the flood, imperilling the life of the offender
the next time he ventured on the waters.* They had neither idols, temples, nor sacred
places, but worshipped unseen beings, to whom they made mysterious sacrifices. A belief in
charms prevailed to a great extent; they were considered capable of warding off the influence
of evil dreams, of the evil eye, and the endless unseen terrors which are for ever troubling the
savage mind.
To-day there are over half a million professing Christians, 20,000 scholars attending
schools, and between 600 and 700 churches. The Bible and other books have been translated
into their written language ; and Dr. Davidson informs us that about 150,000 different Malagasy
publications were sold in one year. This result has only been accomplished after much labour,
grievous persecution, and massacre. The tale has been so often told that we need not again
repeat it, interesting and instructive though it is. With the progress of a more enlightened
and humane form of religious belief than had for centuries prevailed in the island a more liberal
and civilised form of government has sprung up under the influence of European officers, chiefly
French and English, though the control of the former nation is now on the wane, and that of
our countrymen increasing. The arts of civilisation are progressing, and the old restrictions
being gradually removed. For example, at one time certain families from generation to
generation followed one occupation alone. There were, for instance, hereditary blacksmiths,
who could forge a spade, but were prohibited from using it. Yet this was a noble profession,
whose members behaved to other classes in a very arrogant manner, refusing to eat with them,
or to associate with them in any way ; to do so would have been defilement. They considered
themselves degraded by any work, and were accordingly poor. But they had their consolation
in the greatness of their position and their superior privileges. They alone could carry the
dead kings of Madagascar to the grave; and they alone not only forged the iron, but
also built the monuments over the departed monarchs. In concluding this brief sketch
of an interesting people it may be pointed out that the Malagasy afford an excellent example
of a rather rare condition of matters in the history of civilisation, namely, a people improving
by their own unassisted efforts, without aid from without. When first discovered, they
had a rude kind of semi-barbarous civilisation ; but, to use the words of Captain Oliver,
R. A., who has written an interesting account of the people, " it is evident that the Malagasy
have never deteriorated from any original condition of civilisation, for there are no relics of
primeval civilisation to be found in the country. Yet the Malagasy seem to have considerably
advanced themselves in the art of building houses, originating elaborate fortifications, which
they have themselves modified to suit their offensive and defensive weapons, previous to any
known intercourse with civilised people. They had domesticated oxen and pigs, and made
* Ellis, "Three Visits to Madagascar," p. 297.
156 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
advances in the cultivation of rice, yams, &c." The climate of Madagascar is good, but not
sufficiently suitable to European tastes to attract many foreigners to the island. Accordingly,
the Malagasy may long remain in an uncontaminated condition, and as they have already shownt
themselves capable of enduring civilisation, and possess an intelligence which is equal to better
things, there exist grounds for hope that they may escape the fate of other savage or barbarous
people, who have prematurely had the arts and laws — the advantages as well as the evils of
civilisation — forced upon them.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AFRICAN STOCK; PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION; ARAJLEANS; ABYSSINIANS.
UNDER this head. Dr. Latham — whose classification we have to a great extent followed, as the
one most generally useful to the plan on which this work is constructed — has placed the whole
of the African nations, with the exception of the people of the island of Madagascar, which
might have been originally inhabited by some of the African tribes, afterwards driven out
or absorbed by the Malay conquerors who now possess it, and who have no connection
whatever with the African continent. In addition, the African stock comprises the people
occupying parts of Persia, Syria, and Arabia. The characteristics of the people who are
included under the general designation at the head of this chapter may be described as having
their heads rather long than broad, the hair black, and rarely straight, and the skin almost
invariably black or very dark, in some cases — the negroes, for instance — attaining the maximum
of blackness. In the case of the negroes and other tribes, the hair is woolly or crisp, and the
lips thick. The languages are all agglutinate, and though we may have something to say on
this point by-and-by, for convenience of description we may divide the African stock into the
following great divisions : — 1, Arama3ans ; 2, Egyptians ; 3, Nilotic class ; 4, the Amazirg, or
Berbers ; 5, the Kaffirs ; 6, Hottentots, and 7, the Africans of the Northern Tropics, including
the negroes of Central, Eastern, and Western Africa, a provisional group containing various,
races, who will doubtless, as the progress of our knowledge extends, be found to have no
immediate ethnic connection.
ARAM.EAXS.
Tin's group is also known as the Syro-Arabian, or Semitic race. It gets its name from
the ancient appellation of Syria, and comprises people inhabiting the south-west of Asia and t he-
north of Africa. They even extend to the south of Europe, where they have got assimilated
with the population among whom they have settled. They possessed a very old civilisation
long before Europe had emerged from barbarism. Christianity has made but little way ainoi
them, the prevailing religion being Mohammedanism. The group comprises the Arabians,
Syrians, the Jews and the Ethiopians of Abyssinia — a class all distinguished not only by their
early civilisation, but by the monotheistic or "one-god" form of belief. From the Jews sprang
Judaism, and out of Judaism, Christianity; from the Arabs Mohammedanism has arisen; while
JEWS OF BABYLON.
158 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the alphabet was either invented or promulgated by the Phoenicians. The Jew's face is massive;
that of the Arabs of Arabia in most cases is Caucasian in form — that is, oval : the forehead, vaulted ;
the nose, straight or aquiline ; lips, generally thin — even when thick not projecting ; hair, wavy
or curled ; complexion, various shades of brown ; limbs, spare. With the Arabs of Africa the
colour is sometimes nearly black, the frame more massive, and the limbs more fleshy. In
Abyssinia, the country of the Ethiopian branch, the transition to the true African of Africa is
the clearest ; the Amharic and Gafat tribes graduating into the Agow, Kaffa, \Voratta, and
Yangaro sections (based on the affinities of language) of the Gonga division. There arc also
other points of contact — e.g., with Danakil and Galla tribes (Latham) .
The Jews, though now scattered through all the nations of the world, have preserved the
original type of countenance, owing to the fact of their remaining to a great extent unmixed
with the surrounding people, through conforming to their customs, but shunning their religion,
in this latter respect being true to their ancient faith. The Hebrew face can be generally
detected, no matter where it is seen, though it is not a little curious that though rarely mixing
with the nations among whom they have settled, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and white-skinned
Jews can be met with in Scandinavia (I have myself seen them) ; red-haired and red-bearded
Jews in Germany, and tawny-faced Jews in Spain and Portugal ; while in India (in Cochin and
on the Malabar coast) Buchanan affirms that Jews can be found so black as to be undistinguish-
able, except in features, from the natives. At Mattacheri, a town of Cochin, is a particular
colony of Jews, who arrived at a later date in that country, and are Jerusalem or white Jew*.
There is, however, no evidence in support of Buchanan's belief that the blackness of the Jews
spread through India is attributable to intermarriages with Hindoos : on the contrary, they
seem to have avoided all intermixtures with other nations. In China, the Jesuit missionaries
describe a colony of Jews settled in Honaii for many ages, who keep themselves distinct and
intermarry within their own community. It appears that the Jewish inhabitants of Cochin
were a people of the same migration with those of China, and it is very improbable that they
differ from their brethren in the particular above alluded to.* It is more likely that the fact of
Jews now and then being found agreeing in complexion, &c., with the people among whom they
are thrown is owing to the force of imagination acting on the mother, just as in the same way
the lower animals can be made to produce peculiarly marked varieties of offspring from contem-
plating during the season of pregnancy such marked forms. This fact is very familiar to
physiologists. The character of the Hebrew, as developed among the lower types of the race,
is everywhere much the same ; they are too often grasping and avaricious, following even-
pursuit where the greatest gain can be got, with little regard to the honour or dignity of the
occupation. They are always keenly alive to the " main chance," of excellent business capacity,
particularly when the buying and selling of money is concerned, " clannish " to their own race,
hospitable among themselves, dignified, and often benevolent. Property, except when it is
portable and easily realised, they do not care to accumulate. This habit of theirs is probably
owing to the fact that their chief occupations are as dealers in coin, bullion, jewels, &e., and also
to the persecutions and plunderings they suffered in Europe during the Middle Ages, and in the
• Duhalde, Astle's Voyage?, vol. iv., p. 227, cited in Pi-ichard's "Nat. Hist, of Man " (Norris' Ed.), I. p. 132.
ARAMAEANS: JEWS; ARABS; THEIR RANGE AND CHARACTERISTICS.
159
Mohammedan kingdoms — such as Morocco — at the present day. An estate in land cannot be
concealed, but the millionaire may hide his coin and avoid suspicion, as in Morocco, by crouching
in a hovel in rags. Yet the prejudice against the race — owing chiefly to the rancour which the
Christians in the more intolerant Midde Ages excited against them — is in many respects unjust.
The Jews, wherever you find them, have many excellent qualities — more, I might add, than the
people of any other race. They take charge of their own sick and poor ; they are merciful to
each other in their dealings ; and rarely do their wives excite scandal in the courts of law, or is
the spectacle seen of one merchant of that race calling in the help of the law to obtain his just
dues from another. These are but a few of their good qualities, and though they have others
not so admirable, yet the same or similar charges might be brought against almost any other
nation beside the .Tews.
The number of Jews in Europe alone is about 3,000,000, while Kolb computes the total
number all over the world at 7,000,000 ; though Pressel, another eminent writer on statistics,
estimates that this number is understated by no less than 2,000,000, making the Jewish
population to equal a sum total of 9,000,000.
The Arabs are for the most part inhabitants of Egypt, Nubia, Barbary, and the Sahara,
but extend also into Persia, and even India. Some follow pastoral pursuits to some extent,
others are cultivators, and therefore sedentary, but most of them lead a more or less wandering
life. The Bedouins are lithe and active — the wanderers of the desert, though pasturing a few
sheep in most of the better-watered valleys. Their main reliance is, however, on plunder and
pillage. Their very name in Arabic — Bedaween — signifies " men of the wilderness," whose
hands are against every man, and against whom is every man. Without houses, or cultivated
lands, living on plunder or the milk of the camels, and trusting to their horses and dromedaries
for safety or the convenience of travel, they can have little desire to accumulate property, which
would be only an encumbrance to them. To use the words of Mr. Palgrave, who has given us
the best account of the Arabs which we possess — " the Bedouin does not fight for his home, he
has none ; nor for his country, that is anywhere ; nor for his honour, he never heard of it ; nor
for his religion, he owns and cares for none. His only object in war is the temporary occupation
of some bit of miserable pasture land, or the use of a brackish well, perhaps the desire to get
such a one's horse or camel in his own possession. His dress is a loose robe, partly covering his
head. His arms are a long spear (and when he can obtain it) a long-barrelled musket ; whatever
arms he has are his constant companions as he roams over the desert. He is a robber, but not
brutal, and removed altogether out of the vulgar herd of highway thieves by the fact that it is
lot through avarice that he steals, nor is he aware that he is doing anything at all worthy of
Hinishmcnt, at all events of moral disapprobation. He will waylay the solitary traveller, or
whomsoever he can lay hands on with safety, deprive him of his goods and valuables, and then
'ntertain him hospitably, and with a certain degree of courtesy in his rude tent, give him of
the best he has, clothe him so far as he can afford to part with any of the traveller's wardrobe,
and send him on the morrow on his way." The unresisting traveller is rarely or never murdered.
Why should he murder him? the Bedouin asks. He has no enmity to the man. Allah is good,
and throws him in his way; and accordingly he looks upon the desert waif whom he has robbed
in much the same light as the old women on the coast of Cornwall used to thank " Providence "
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
for its goodness whenever a homeward-bound tea-laden East Indiaman was wrecked on their
shores. They had no enmity against the good ship, neither has the robber of the desert against
the traveller whom Allah has delivered into his hands.
His tent is rude, dirty, and uncomfortable, and his form of government primitive and
patriarchal. The Bedouins are divided into little tribes or clans, each tribe being under
KEDOUIN OF SINAI.
the rule of a sheik. In appearance the men are handsome, but the women by no means
approach in this respect to their lords. They are, moreover, by the accounts of those travellers
who know them best, and from what we might expect from their rough life, deficient in
gentleness and womanly softness. Their modicum of charms they endeavour to heighten by
tattooing, in a blue-coloured pattern of stars, &c., their arms and chins, and even the corners
of their eyes. Huge ean-ings they are immoderately fond of. Unlike their co-religionists,
they do not veil their faces, and the women's apartment may be entered by any one at
all hours of the day. Mr. Palgrave was not particularly affected by the charms of the
I
ARAMAEANS: ARABS; THE BEDOUIN WOMEN OF TOETRY AND PROSE.
161
Arab maid, celebrated as she has been in song and story. In the scale of Arab beauty,
he considers that the female Bedouin would be at zero — or at any rate not more than 1°,
while a degree higher would represent the female sex of Nejd ; then would come the
women of Shomer, next those of Djowf. The fair ones of Hasa are still fairer to look
BEDOUIN O? SINAI.
on ; still fairer those of Katar ; while by a sudden rise of ten degrees the beauties of Oman
would stand at 170 on the "kalometer" scale. "Arab poets occasionally languish after the
charmers of Hejaz ; I never saw any one to charm me, but then I only skirted the province.
All bear witness to the absence of female loveliness in Yemen, and I should much doubt whether
the mulatto races and the dusky complexions of Hadramaut have much to vaunt of. But in
Hasa a decided improvement in this important point is agreeably evident to the traveller arriving
61
162 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
from Nejd, and he will be further delighted on finding his Caljpsos much more considerable
and having much more, too, in their conversation, than those he left behind him in Sedeyr and
Aared." Unlike the Turk, the Bedouin has no great dignity in his manners, though he can
be stately and reticent on occasion when it so pleases him. Usually he is garrulous and loud
talking, and without a particle of what we style stateliness or dignity. Mr. Palgrave's
description of an Arab household is so graphic that I will quote it in full. " The chief, his
family (women excepted), his intimate followers, and some twenty others, young and old, boys
and men, came up, and after a kindly salutation, Bedouin- wise, seated themselves in a semicircle
before us. Every one held a short crooked stick, for camel-driving, in his hand, to gesticulate
with in speaking or to play with in the intervals of conversation ; while the younger members
of society, less prompt in discourse, politely employed their leisure in staring at us or in pinching
up dried pellets of dirt from the sand, and tossing them about. But how am I to describe their
conversation, their questions and answers, their manners, and jests ? ' A sensible person in this
city is like a man tied up among a drove of mules in a stable/ I once heard from a respectable
stranger in the Syrian town of Horns, a locality proverbial for the utter stupidity of its denizens.
But among the Bedouins in the desert, where the advantages of the stable are wanting, the
guest rather resembles a man in the middle of a field among untied mules, frisking and kicking
their heels in all directions around him. Here you may see human nature at its lowest sta^v,
or very nearly. One sprawls stretched out on the sand, another draws unmeaning lines with
the end of his stick, a third grins, a fourth asks purposeless or impertinent questions, or cuts
jokes meant fur wit, but in fact only coarse in the extreme. Meanwhile the boys thrust
themselves forward without restraint, and interrupt their elders (their betters I can hardly say),
without the smallest respect or deference. And yet in all this there is no real intention of
rudeness, 110 desire to annoy — quite the reverse. They sincerely wish to make themselves
agreeable to the newcomers, to put them at their ease — nay, to do them what good service they
can ; only they do not know how exactly to set about it. If they violate all the laws of decorum
or courtesy, it is out of sheer ignorance, not malice prepense. And amid the aimlessness of an
utterly uncultivated mind, they occasionally show indications of considerable tact and shrewd-
ness ; while, through all the fickleness proper to man accustomed to no moral or physical
restraint, there appears the groundwork of a manly and generous character, such as a Persian,
for instance, seldom offers. Their defects are inherent in their condition, their redeeming quali-
ties are their own ; which they have by inheritance from one of the noblest races on the earth —
from the Arabs of inhabited lands and organised governments. Indeed, after having travelled
much and made pretty intimate acquaintance with many races, African, Asiatic, and European,
I should hardly be inclined to give the preference to any over the genuine unmixed elans of
Central and Eastern Africa. Now these last-mentioned populations are identical in blood and
tongue with the myrmidons of the desert, yet how immeasurably inferior ! The difference
between a barbarous Highlander and an English gentleman in fRob Roy' or ' "\Yaverley ' is
hardly less striking."
The Arab's life is, nationally, not a peaceable one, and it is not made any the more tranquil
by the fact that he is continually at war with neighbouring clans. His daily existence is one of
uncertainty whether the ; un will set without seeing his tribe attacked by the wild desert men
of another petty sept. His food is rough — his cooking, if possible, more so. Boiled mutton,
AltAMJEANS: BEDOUIN LIFE; THE FELLAHEEN; THE HASSANIYEH. 163
served up in a dish in which the whole " tent-hold " plunges their not over-cleanly fists, is a
favourite dish, but the nutritious date supplies the bulk of the Arab's food. A rudely-made
cake, baked in the ashes of his fire, supplies him with bread, Religion, ho has scarcely any
idea of, though nominally the Bedouin is a Mohammedan. Letters he has none, and he is as
superstitious as he is illiterate. Yet his respect for written papers, and for the men who can
make them, is beyond bounds ; siich a man is thrice blessed of Allah.
In writing of the Arabs, Dr. Ansted says : " One of their peculiarities is their impassive-
ness. At the Arab market at Constantine, tall quiet figures stand about wrapped in their
long burnouses, or sit in a line on the edge of the hill, perfectly motionless, for hours together,
and presenting from below the appearance of a string of great white crows. Here and there
is a closer knot of people, listening to some blind singers, who are squatting on the ground
chanting in a plaintive tone verses from the Koran, inculcating the practice of works of
mercy/' When the Arabs travel, their camels are accompanied by their young, who run by
the side of their dams, and are extremely pretty little creatures, not being leggy and gawky
like the foals of mares, but the exact image of the full-grown animal in miniature. The sheep
and goats, however, are not allowed to travel with the tribe., since under the sense of necessity
even the Arab becomes economical.
The Agricultural Arabs, or Fellaheen, are rather moro robust than the wandering ones, and
are keen-witted, lively, and intelligent. In their work they are persevering*, and on the whole
form the finest type of the race. The colour of their skin varies from white to almost black,
though the general complexion of the coast Arabs is yellowish, bordering on browa. A few
words upon two of the most marked of the many wild tribes of Arabs may suffice to give an
idea of the characteristics of the race.
The Hassaniyeh Arabs inhabit the desert south of Khartoum. In complexion they are
fairer than the rest of their compatriots, and have many curious customs. For instance, when
a woman marries, she does not altogether, as is, nominally at least, the fashion elsewhere, merge
her identity into that of her husband. On the contrary, she considers that three-fourths of her
life is her husband's, but the other fourth belongs to herself. Accordingly every fourth day she
is freed from her marriage vows, and if she chooses she can accept the attentions of any man
without her lawful husband having the power, if even custom allow of his having the inclination,
to prevent her. In other parts of Arabia, after the wedding the bride returns to her mother's
tent, but again runs away in the evening, and repeats these flights several times, till she finally
3turns to her tent. She does not live in her husband's tent for some months — perhaps not for
jven a year from the wedding-day. * As is the practice among many barbarous or savage peoples,
stranger in the Hassaniyeh tribe meets with such hospitality that he receives the loan of
wife during his stay ! Otherwise, the women are virtuous and well-behaved. The Arab
lospitality is shown here in many ways, more particularly in an extraordinary dance with which
the stranger is received on first visiting these singular people. It is performed by the young
women, and is graceful in the extreme. They come, to the number of thirty or forty, clapping
their hands and singing a shrill piercing chorus, more like lamentation than greeting. " When
hey had arrived in front of me," writes the American traveller, Bayard. Taylor, " they ranged
* Burckhardt, quoted by Lubbock, p. 56.
164
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
themselves in a semicircle, with their faces towards me, and still clapping their hands to mark
the rhythm of the song. She who stood in the centre stepped forth, with her breast heaved
almost to a level vrith her face, which was thrown back, and advanced with a low undulating
motion, till she had reached the edge of my carpet. Then, with a quick jerk, she reversed the
curve of her body, throwing her head forward and downward, so that the multitude of her
long twists of black hair, shining with butter, brushed my cap. This was intended as a
salutation and sign of welcome. I bowed my head at the same time, and she went back to her
HAMKAX ARABS CAPTURING HIPPOPOTAMUS.
place in the ranks. After a pause the chorus was resumed, and another advanced, and so in
succession, till all had saluted me, a ceremony which occupied an hour. They were nearly all
young, between the ages of fourteen and twenty, and were strikingly beautiful. They had the
dark olive Arab complexion, with regular features, teeth of pearly whiteness, and dark brilliant
eyes. The coarse cotton robe thrown over one shoulder left free the arms, neck, and breast,
which were exquisitely moulded. Their bare feet and ankles were as slender as those of the
Venus of Cleomenes."
Lady Anne Blunt asserts that, with the exception of those who frequent the cities, the
Euphrates Valley Bedouins possess no religion save a belief in one God, and that, unlike the
Arabs, they have few superstitions.
Most of the Arab tribes believe in charms and in writing, which constitutes in itself a
ARAMAEANS: THE ARABS; THEIR SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS.
165
wonderful mystery. If they are ill it is enough for a physician to write a mystic cure on a
piece of paper. Then the patient washes off the ink and drinks the water containing it.
•AN ARAB FISHIXG-BOAT ON THE KED SEA (BAHR EL AUMAK).
Probably the cure is quite as efficacious as if he had attempted it by the orthodox method.
Genii (or jinns] they implicitely believe in, and take all care to guard against them. Like
witches in the Highlands of Scotland, they are not to be killed except by a silver bullet, and it
is dangerous to part with your hair or your headdress, for then the person getting possession of
1GG THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
cither can bewitch the former owner at his leisure. The mirage is to the Hassaniyeh Arab
the "water of j inns'3 and is seen to perfection in their country. " I had been riding1/ ' write;
Mr. St. John, "along- in a reverie, when, chancing to raise my head, I thought I perceived,
desertwards, a dark strip on the far horizon. What could it be ? My companion, who had
very keen sight, was riding in advance of me, and, with a sudden exclamation, he pulled up
his dromedary and gazed in the same direction. I called to him, and asked him what he thought
of yonder strip, and whether he could make out anything distinctly. He answered that water
had all at once appeared there ; that he saw the motion of the waves, and tall palms and other
trees bending up and down over them, and tossed by a strong wind. An Arab was at my side,
with his face muffled up in his burnous. I roused his attention, and pointed to the object of our
inquiry. ' Mashallah ! ' cried the old man, with a face as if he had seen a ghost, and stared with
all his might across the desert. All the other Arabs of the party evinced no less emotion ; and
our interpreter called out to us that what was seen was the evil spirit of the desert, that led
travellers astray, leading them further and further into the heart of the waste, ever retreating
before them as they pursued it, and not finally disappearing till its deluded victims had
irrecoverably lost themselves in the pathless sands. This, then, was the mirage. My companion
galloped towards it, and we followed him, though the Arabs tried to prevent us, and ere long
I could with my own eyes disceni something of this strange phenomenon. It was, my friend
reported, a broad sheet of water, with fresh green trees along its banks ; and yet there was
nothing actually before us but parched yellow sand. The apparition occasioned us all very
uncomfortable feelings, and yet we congratulated ourselves in having- seen for once the desert
wonder. The phenomenon really deserves the name the Arabs give it, of goblin of the desert ;
an evil spirit which beguiles the wanderer from the safe path, and mocks him with a false show
of what his heated brain paints in glowing colours. Whence comes it that this illusion at tirs1
fills with uneasiness — I might even say with dismay — those even who ascribe its existence to
natural causes ? On a spot where the bare sands spread out for hundreds of miles, where there
is neither tree nor shrub, nor a trace of water, there suddenly appeared before iis groups of tail
trees, proudly girdling the running stream, on whose waves we saw the sunbeams dancing.
Hills, clad in pleasant green, rose before us and vanished ; small houses, and towns with high
walls and ramparts, were visible among the trees, whose tall boles swayed to and fro in the wind
like reeds. Fast as we rode in the direction of the apparition we never came any nearer to it ;
the whole seemed to recoil step by step with our advance. We halted and remained long in
contemplation of the magic scene, until whatever was unpleasant in its strangeness ceased by
degreea to affect us. Never had I seen any landscape so vivid as this seeming one, never wat '<•
so bright, or trees so softly green, so tall and stately. Everything seemed far more charming
than in the real world; and so strongly did we feel this attraction that, though we were not
driven by thirst to seek for water where water there was none, still we would willingly have
followed on and on after the phantom, and thus we could well perceive how the despairing
wanderer, who with burning eyes thinks a< he gazes on water and human dwellings, will
straggle onwards to his last gasp to reach them, until his fearful, lonely doom befalls him."
Then, by-and-by the apparition becomes fainter and fainter, until it melts away, not unlike a
thin misl sweeping over the face of a Norwegian fjeld.
Ouc of the most celebrated superstitions of the Hassan i\ eh Arabs is the ink mirror. A
ARAMAEANS: ARABS; THE INK MIRROR; THE HAMRANS, ETC. 1G7
young boy — too young to have committed sin — is taken by the magicians, and, after many
ceremonies and fumigation, is told to look into a dish containing ink. If the boy is sinless,
then a vision breaks on his view. He sees a man sweeping the ground, and then a camp, with
the Sultan's tent, over which flies the sacred flag of Mahomet. Other views then follow. If
the boy sees nothing, then he has sinned, and is not allowed this privilege. As for the magician
himself, he does not pretend to be able to see anything ; he is too old a sinner altogether.
The last Arab tribe which our space will allow of any reference to are the ILamrans, or
sword-hunters, of the South of Cassala, whose habits and mode of life have been so well
described by Sir Samuel Baker in a work specially devoted to them.* They have two chief
weapons, a fineljr-tempered double-edged sword, and a shield. These weapons are their constant
companions, and with them they hunt the elephant, the lion, the baboon, the crocodile, and the
hippopotamus; in the pursuit of the last animal, however, the sword is exchanged for a
harpoon and lance. The following method is adopted in hunting the elephant. One of the
hunters rides ahead of the furious animal, so as to draw its attention from those who are
behind. AYhile the animal is thus occupied one of the Arabs swiftly dismounts from his
trained horse, and administers a heavy blow with the sharp sword on the lower portion of one of
the elephant's hind-legs, and then instantly springs on his horse again and is out of reach before
the animal can take vengeance on him. A couple of such blows disables the elephant, when it
easily falls a victim to its bold persecutors. It is needless to say that to hunt in this manner
the hunter must be a skilful rider. And this the Hamran Arabs are. There are probably no more
skilful horsemen in the world, not even among the Indians or Hispano- Americans. Centaur-
like, they seem a part of the horse. At full gallop over rough stony ground, they will swing
themselves like monkeys under the horse's belly, pick up stones, throw them into the air, and
catch them before descending ; or when the horse is galloping at full speed, they will spring to
the ground, flourish their swords, and without once checking the speed of the animal, with their
hand firmly clutched in the mane, will lightly vault again into their seats. Skilful horsemanship
is common to all the race, and also a love for the beautiful animals, which are not uncommonly
owned by them, though it must be acknowledged that, when irritated, they will abuse their
animals most unmercifully, though never to the extent which the savage Indians do. A tale
is told of an old sheik of the Bedouins which illustrates this. I heard it years ago from
an old officer of Ibrahim Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, but as Mr. W. C. Prime has again retold
it in his " Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia/' the reader will thank me for giving it in his graphic
.nguage : — " He was old and poor. The latter virtue is common to his race. He owned a
ent, a Nubian slave, and a mare ; nothing else. From the Nile to the Euphrates the fame of
.his animal had gone out, and kings sought in vain to own her. The love of the Bedouin for
O f O ~
his horse is not that fabled affection that we read of in books. This love is the same affection
that a nabob has for his gold, or rather that a poor labourer has for his wages. His horse is his
ife. He can rob, plunder, kill, and destroy ail lilituw, if he have a fleet steed. If he have none,
e can do nothing, but is the prey of every one who has. Acquisition is a prominent feature of
Arab character, but accumulation is not found in the brain of a son of Ishmael. The reason is
oovious. If he have wealth, he has nowhere to keep it. He would be robbed in the night.
* "The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, and the Sword-Hunters of the Hamran Arabs" (18G8), p. 167.
108 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
He would, indeed, have no desire to keep it ; for the Bedouin who murders you for a shawl, or
a belt, or some gay trapping1, will give it away next day. Living1 this wandering- life, the old
sheik was rich in this one mare, which was acknowledged to be the fleetest horse in Arabia.
Ibrahim Pasha wished for the animal, as his father had wished before him. He sent various
offers to the old sheik, but in vain. At length he sent a deputation with a hundred purses
(a purse is five pounds), and the old man laughed at him. ' Then/ said Ibrahim Pasha, ' I will
take your mare/ ' Try it/ He sent a regiment into the desert, and the sheik rode around
them, and laughed at them, and the regiment came home. At last the sheik died from a wound
received in a fray with a neighbouring tribe. Dying, he gave to his Nubian slave all that he
had — this priceless mare — and the duties of the blood revenge. The faithful slave accepted
both, and has ever since been the terror of the Eastern desert. Yearly he comes down like a
hawk on the tents of that devoted tribe, and leaves a ball or a lance in man or woman. No
amount of blood satisfies his revenge ; and the mare and the black rider are as celebrated in
Arabia as the wild huntsman in European forests, and much better known." In many other
respects the Arab resembles the prairie Indian, similar physical circumstances compelling a
recourse to a similar mode of life. The prairie Indian is a "trailer" (Vol. I., p. 166); so is the
Arab. Of the acuteiiess of his senses as displayed in this the tales are endless. Here is one told
me — if my memory does not deceive me — by the officer already referred to : — Some merchants
of Beyrout lost a camel in the desert, and while in search of it they met an old man whom they
interrogated in regard to it. " Had he seen a camel?" "No." As no information is likely to
bj got from this individual, they are starting again in pursuit, when the solitary desert wan-
derer calls them back. " Was the camel laden on one side with corn and the other side with
honey ?" " Yes — yes ! When did you see it ? " "I have never seen it. Was it lame on the
right fore-leg ? " " Yes ; where is it ? do not delay us any longer." " I have never seen your
camel. Was it blind on the right eye ? " " Yes — yes, give us our camel ! " " I know not where
your camel is ; but was it wanting a tooth in front ? " " Yes, it was." As he still protested his
ignorance of the whereabouts of the camel, he was dragged before the cadi, and to the cadi he
told his tale. "In the name of Allah I protest I know not where the camel of the merchants
is. I know, however, that a camel was ahead of me, for I saw its tracks on the sand. I know
it was laden on one side with corn and on the other side with honey, for I saw the one spilt on
one side of the path and the other spilt on the other, as it ran masterless along. I know that
it was lame on the right fore-leg, for I have all my life known the track of a camel, and I saw
by the footprints in the sand that this was lame in the manner I have told unto my lord and
unto the merchantmen. I know that it was blind on one side, for it ate the herbage alone at
one side of its path, while at the other side it was richer still ; and lastly, I know that it
wanted a tooth, for as it cropped the broad-leaved herbage I could see that it left always
in the centre of its bite a strip of leaf, unbit through. That is all I know ; the merchants
know as much. Let them seek the camel, and let me be gone." The revengeful dis-
position of the Arabs (ref erred to in the tale of the Nubian slave's revenge just told) the
Arabs attribute to their use of camels' flesh, a superstition which finds its counterpart among
various nations (pp. 161, 16 1, 165, 169, &c.).
Nominally, all the Arab tribes are Mussulmans, but their practice of their religion is very
corrupt. Up to the time of Mahomet they worshipped a black stone. Even to this day theii
ARABIAN CAJVIEL AXD DRIVER.
62
170 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
notions of morals and superstition are so mixed up that they believe that a broken oath brings
misfortune on the place where it was uttered.*
The Syrians are the remnants of an ancient race, absorbed in that which conquered them.
It is remembered through the Christian population of Mesopotamia and Chalda'a, who speak their
language. The Syriac language, the Chaldee of the Old Testament, was the original idiom of
the Hebrews, until the descendants of Abraham came into Canaan, and adopted from the
previous inhabitants the Canaanitish or proper Hebrew. The famous port of Beyrout is a
Syrian harbour. " Thither Libanus sends its wines and silks, Yemen its coffee, Hamali its corn,
Dvebart and Latakeah their pale-coloured tobaccos, Palmyra its horses, Damascus its arms,
Bagdad its costly stuffs, and all Europe the countless products of its industry/' The Marrouites
and Druses, who are Christians, and sadly persecuted by their Turkish rulers, belong to this
branch. Most of the Persians are not, however, members of it, and will be referred to in
another portion of this work.
ABYSSINIANS.
The Aliyssinians, or Ethiopians, comprise the people of the elevated plateau of Abyssinia.
Under this general designation are comprehended many tribes— speaking different languages,
but whose origin has long been a puzzle to historians. In stature they are rather below than
above six feet, and are fairer than the negroes, with an oval face, a thin, finely-cut nose, good
mouth, regular teeth, and hair generally frizzled. There is in Abyssinia, in addition to the
type just described, a second and coarser type, more negro-like in appearance. Abyssinia i>
interesting both in geographical and ethnological features. Here we see a rude form of
Christianity overlying a still older Judaism, and professed by a people speaking a tongue
more nearly allied than any living tongue to the Hebrew, and whose manners represent in these
latter days the habits and customs of the ancient Israelites in the times of Gideon and Joshua.
So striking is the resemblance between the modern Abyssinians and the Hebrews of old that
we can hardly look upon them but as brandies of one nation, and if we had not convincing-
evidence to the contrary, and knew not for certain that the Abramidae (descendants of
Abraham) originated in Chaldsea, and to the northward and eastward of Palestine, wo ini^ht
frame a very probable hypothesis which should bring them down as wandering shepherds
from the mountains of Habesh, and identify them with the Shepherd Kings, who, according to
Manetho, multiplied their bands in the land of the Pharaohs, and being, after some centuries,
expelled thence by the will of the gods, sought refuge in Judaea, and built the walls of
Jerusalem. f Such an hypothesis would explain the existence of an almost Israelitish people,
and the preservation of a language so nearly approaching to the Hebrew, in intertropical Africa.
It is certainly untrue ; but we find no other easy explanation of the facts which the history of
Abyssinia presents, and particularly of the early extension of the Jewish religion and custom-
through that country ; for the legend which makes the royal house of Meenalek descend from
•Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is " as idle a story as ever monks invented to abuse the
reverent ignorance of their lay brethren," or, it may be added, courtiers to flatter their royal
* For the Arabs generally, see Palgrave's "Arabia" (1866); Lady Anne Blunt's " Bedouin Tribes" (is'
and " Ncjd " (1881); Palmer's " Desert of Exodus" and " Palestine Exploration Eoports " (1SS1), pa.<-im.
f I'.y some Semitic scholars it is believed that it was one of these Shepherd Kings that Joseph v
when hia father and brethren camo " to buy cwn in Egypt."
ABYSSINIANS : ORNAMENTS; ARMS; DRESS; BIRTH-CUSTOMS. 171
masters, for the Abyssinian monarchy cling to this last tag- of respectability with a tenacity
unparalleled in the annals of heraldry. The fact is,, the basis of the population seems to be
Arabs,, intermixed with some of the negroid tribes, or with the Jews, and Greek or Portuguese
conquerors or visitors, who at various times overrun the country. Though naturally the same
description will not apply to all classes, yet the Abyssinians may be said to be far from
a handsome-faced race, the women even then being rather better looking than the men. Some
of the latter have wonderfully beautiful eyes, so large, indeed, as to look unnatural. The dress
of the people is shown in our illustrations (pp. 172, 173, 176-7, &c.). All are fond of silver
ornaments. A silver chain on a man's neck is a sign that an elephant has been killed by him.
Bracelets of silver, and various kinds of amulets to guard against ill luck, are also universal
amongst them. The weapons of the men are a sword, spear, and shield. Firearms are also
now almost universal, but are of a very inferior character, while artillery was introduced by
the late Emperor Theodore, who met his unhappy end by his own hand at the storming
of Mao-dala. The sword is contained in a sheath of red Morocco leather. The shield
O
is of buffalo-hide, and though serviceable against spear-thrusts or sword-cuts, is easily
penetrated by a bullet. In the case of rich men or chiefs the shield is often ornamented with
bosses of silver, and the scabbard of the sword is silver-plated. A lion's skin is also frequently
worn as a mantle by such dignitaries, and if the individual is a great chief, or a man of very
distinguished rank, he will in addition wear ornaments of silver about the head. On the
whole, the dress of the Abyssinian is not very picturesque, nor his arms particularly serviceable
even in his own method of warfare. The women's costume consists of a robe of cotton wrapped
about their person. They also sometimes tattoo themselves, generally on the upper joint of the
arm. They also wear many silver ornaments,, but are not very particular as to personal cleanli-
ness. Their clothes are only washed once a year — viz., on the eve of St. John ! The hair of
both sexes and all classes is arranged in a series of plaits. It was an old custom for an additional
plait to be added for every man killed in battle. To preserve such an extraordinary head of
hair they adopt a pillow of the same nature as that used by the Papuans — viz., a doorscrap^r-
like stool, on the cross bar of which the Abyssinian dandy leans his neck at night.
The birth customs of Abyssinia are sufficiently interesting to be noted. When a child is
about to be born all the men must leave the house. To remain at this interesting period under
same roof with the mother would be pollution so great that the offender could not enter
lurch for many days. After the child is born it is taken to a window and held there until
man thrusts through the open window a lance, the point of which is put into the infant's
louth, in order, it is believed, to make the future warrior brave in battle. The Abyssinian
lild may, therefore, be said to be born not with the proverbial silver spoon in its mouth,
it with a weapon much more warlike. The women then utter loud cries — twelve times
for a boy, three times for a girl, and engage in a chase after the men, who, if caught, have
to ransom themselves by making a present, generally of eatables or drinkables ; after which
the ladies, who are for the time being mistresses of the situation, indulge in a debauch of
a not particularly elegant character. The child is then circumcised, and afterwards bap-
tised— a curious mixture of Jewish and Christian customs — the former never having been
altogether eradicated from the country. The house is forthwith purified by many rites and
172
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
ceremonies, and a cord of red, blue, and white silk attached round the child's neck, which is
afterwards exchanged for the blue cord or "match" worn by all adult Abyssinians. A curious
custom provides that the godchild shall inherit all the property of the godfather, supposing
that the latter dies without issue. Again, if a man wishes to be adopted as the son of one of a
station and influence superior to his own, all he has to do is to take his hand, and, sucking one
of his fingers, declare himself to be his " child by adoption/' after which his new father is
ABYSSINIAN GIRLS.
bound by long custom, if not by law, to assist and protect his adopted son in every way in hi*
power.
The Abyssinians attach great importance to periods of forty and eighty days, from the idea
that Adam and Eve did not receive the "spirit of life" until they had been created for t!
periods. Accordingly, these intervals of time figure in many of their ceremonies. For instai
the child is circumcised on the eighth day after birth, the house purified on the twentieth, and
on the fortieth baptism is administered, supposing the infant is a boy; but if a girl, then the
eightieth day after birth is the period specified. Should the priest or the father miscaleu!
ABYSSINIANS: BIRTH CUSTOMS; BETROTHAL; MARRIAGE.
173
he is sentenced to a year's fasting — a punishment very heavy in any case, but to such
enormous eaters as the Abyssinians something severe beyond the demerits of the offence, even
in ecclesiastical eyes.
ABYSSINIAN HOUSE-SOLDIER.
As to marriage, after betrothal the bride remains in retirement, not being allowed even
to see her future husband. The marriage is preceded by a gluttonous feast, to which certain
guests are invited, but in reality all comers are welcome to it. They eat as much as they
possibly can, and then retire to give room for the next parcel of vagrant gormandisers
171 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
whom the odours of feasting have attracted from far and near. The whole affair is accom-
panied with licence and riot indescribable. The bridegroom is then curried on the back of a
man and summarily deposited in the house of the bride. The marriage — which is in reality,
however, a civil ceremony — is finished by a priest or elder giving- an address to the contracting
parties. The usual method of entering into such a union as we have described is as follows : —
If a man has taken a fancy to a particular girl, he sends a friend to her father to ask his
consent. If this is granted the suitor then visits the bride's house, and both take an oath
that they will be faithful to each other for life. The parents of the bride then hand over her
dowry — generally consisting of oxen, sheep, horse, or a sum of money, according to the
circumstances of the family — to the suitor. The bridegroom is, however, bound to find security
for the return of the goods, in case he should afterwards dismiss his wife, and be unable to
restore the dowry he has received. He is also obliged to secure upon the lady an additional
sum of money, or property, as a precaution in case he should choose to separate from her without
valid reasons. They then, after a period generally of twenty days, go to church and receive
the sacrament, after which affairs proceed in the manner we have already described. This is the
general plan of the marriage of the higher classes; but the poorer people content themselves
with celebrating their union by a feast of raw meat and intoxicating liquors, after which, if a
priest is at hand, he sprinkles them with holy water and repeats a hallelujah ; the company
join in the benediction, and the ceremony is then complete. When the marriage is that of
a prince or princess, the rites are much more elaborate and dignified. " The match having been
previously settled according to the views of the court, preparations are made for the festival,
which is generally held during the rainy season, while the country is secure and abandoned to
pleasure. The king being seated on his throne in the large hall of audience, the parties are
introduced into his presence with their respective attendants. After kissing his hand they are
all magnificently clothed in dresses of brocade or other rich stuffs. The crown is sometimes set
on their heads ; they receive the benediction of the Kees Hatze (or Royal Almoner) ; after which
they retire, clothed with the caftan (or marriage dress) . Having mounted horses, given them
by his majesty, they ride in great state in the midst of loud acclamations to the house of the
husband. A dinner is prepared, in the course of which many oxen are slaughtered at the door
in order to furnish brind (or raw flesh) , which is served up reeking and quivering from the body
of the animal. Deep drinking then commences, in which the ladies and gentlemen indulge
to a degree which to a European seems incredible. These marriages, it is added, are by no
means permanent ; many of the Ozoros (or princes) entering into new engagements as often as
they please, and dissolving the preceding contract at the suggestion of convenience or fancy/'"
During the marriage festivities the groomsmen enjoy many privileges — among others
that of going around to the friends or acquaintances of the bridegroom and asking presents
for him, and if these are not speedily forthcoming, of taking what they choose without being
liable to any punishment for this legalised robbery. As marriages among all classe- -
even among princes — are so easily dissolved, both parties are allowed to marry again, the
children being divided between the father and mother. The result is much domestic
disunion, and what in our eyes would seem impropriety. When Bruce, the famous
* Balugani, in Bruce's "Travels," vol. vii., p. 69.
ABYSSINIANS: DIVORCE; ROYAL MARRIAGES; BURIAL CUSTOMS.
175
Abyssinian traveller, was at Koscam, in the presence of the queen, he saw a woman of great
rank in attendance, and at the same time and in the same ciicle xercii men who had been
her husbands, no one of whom was the happy spouse at that time. Often in one family there
will be children by several fathers or mothers, all of whom are living and may have con-
tracted other alliances ; and yet, adds the traveller quoted, " there is no country in the world
where there are so many churches."
To such an extent is this system engrained in the manners of the people, that in the
distribution of the children at divorce there are certain well-established rules in reference to
it. The eldest son falls to the mother and the eldest daughter to the father. If there is but
one girl, however, and all the rest boys, then she is assigned to the father ; on the other hand,
if there is but one son, and all the rest of the children girls, he is the property of the mother.
If the members are unequal at the first division, then the remainder are distributed by lot.
" From the king to the beggar there is no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate
offspring; there being, in fact, no principle on which the preference could be made to rest,
3xcept in the case of the royal family, where the mother of the heir is previously selected and
sually crowned. In his order of marriage the king uses no other ceremony than the follow-
ing : — He sends an officer to the house where the lady lives, who announces to her that it is
the king's pleasure that she should remove instantly to the palace. She then dresses herself in
ler best and immediately obeys. Thenceforward the king assigns her an apartment in the
3yal dwelling, and gives her a house elsewhere in any place she may choose. There is an
ipproach to a regular marriage when he makes one of his wives Iteglie ; for on that occasion
orders a judge to pronounce in his presence that ' the king has chosen his handmaid for his
nieen/ The crown is then applied to her brow, but she is not anointed. The beautiful
story of Ahasuerus and Esther will occur to the recollection of every reader ; for it was when
she had found grace in his sight more than the other virgins, that he placed a gold crown on
ler head. This coronation in Abyssinia conveys a great political privilege, constituting her
lajesty regent during the nonage of her son ; a point of correspondence which history does not
lable us to trace in any of the mighty kingdoms that covered the banks of the Euphrates.""*
It is said that " ecclesiastical marriages," or those in which the ceremony is a sacrament
the church, are indissoluble, the law of the Roman Catholic Church intervening in these
ses, while in the civil marriages the Jewish custom maintains.
The burial of the dead is a public affair at which all attend who choose, and the grave is
Iways dug by volunteer amateur sextons, the act of digging a grave being looked upon as a
ither meritorious act. The burial follows death very speedily. The methods of denoting
mourning for the dead are various. A common method is to rub the skin of the forehead with
the dress until the skin is frayed. The result is that frequently in Abyssinia the face presents
unsightly scabs and scars, materially detracting from the good looks of the enthusiastic
lourner, though it is probable that the grief is looked upon as all the more meritoriously
2vere when it is attended with such a self-sacrifice. After the body is put under ground,
id before the company have left the side of the grave, eulogies are pronounced on the deceased
* Russell's " Nubia and Abyssinia/' p. 339.
170
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
— after the French fashion — and rude verses sung in his honour. Other ceremonies and masses
follow, often every forty or eighty days for a whole year after the decease of the person
mourned for. But the most curious custom connected with burials in Abyssinia is the
bringing of gifts (or devves) to the relatives of the departed.
AHY.-SINIAX FOOT-8OLDIEU.
Mr. Pearce, who many years ago resided in Abyssinia for a lengthened period, and \va<
married there, relates that when his son died the cries and shouts (which are kept up for hours
before the person dies, and are renewed the moment the death occurs) were scarcely over before
the people stood in crowds in front of his door and strove with each other who should be
the first to get in with their gifts, until the door was completely blockaded. The gifts were
ABYSSINIANS: BUR]
[ER
by no means formal in character. For instance, one brought twenty or thirty cakes of
maize ; another, a jar of some semi-cooked victuals ; while the richer people presented fowls
ABYSSINIAX FUSILEER.
and even sheep. In fact, in a short time Mr. Pearce's house was so stuffed with provisions
that he was forced to remove them into the yard. Among others, the head priest came with a
jar of maize and a cow, the giving on these occasions being confined to no particular class.
From this point of view a death in his family would not be altogether an unqualified loss.
63
178 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Unfortunately, however, these gifts are looked upon as common property, only stored in the-
house of the afflicted family in order to make a feast, to which every one who has contributed
expects to be invited. " Then they talk and tell stories to divert your thoughts from the
sorrowful subject ; they force you to drink a great deal ; but I have remarked that at these
times, when the relatives became a little tranquil in their minds, some old woman will make a
sudden dismal cry, saying, ' Oh ! what a fine child; and is he already forgotten?' This puts.
the company into confusion, and all join in the cry, which will perhaps last half an hour ;
during which the servants and common people drink out all the maize, and when well drunk,,
form themselves into a gang at the door and begin their cry." The elaborate ceremonials at
funerals, if they have not raised up a race of professional grave-diggers, have at least brought
to the front a race of rhymers and mourners, skilful in crying very loud, who attend at
funerals, and give their services in exchange for a certain quid pro quo. They are, if a.
Hibernicism may be allowed— noisy " mutes." At the funerals of persons of distinction they
will often receive large fees in corn, cattle, or other merchandise. Mr. Pearce knew a very
handsome middle-aged unmarried female, who declined many advantageous offers of marriage,
and devoted her time to attending gratuitously at funerals and other public ceremonials for the-
sole purpose of displaying her benevolence and extraordinary powers as a verse-maker— an art
she had studied from an early period of her life.
The religion of the Abyssinian is — as we have already hinted — a kind of corrupted Chris-
tianity, distinguished by the observance of great fasts, often of long duration; altogether
about two-thirds of the year are occupied by these fasts, so that the gluttony of the other third
may be to some extent excusable. Their churches are poor hovels, and contain in a small
compartment in the centre the "ark" — a wooden box containing the Decalogue. This ark is.
held in great veneration, and, as was the custom of the ancient Jews, is taken into battle with
them. Their whole religion is a curious jumble of Judaism and Christianity. The priests av&
neither very pious nor very learned. Many of them are unable to read, and few understand
what they teach to the mob. They possess written copies of the Bible, but their favourite-
books are the lives of various mythical saints, which are crammed with the greatest absurdities.
After our expedition to Abyssinia many of these books were brought to England, and are now
in the British Museum Library.
The superstitions of all classes in Abyssinia are endless ; indeed it is hard to say where
their religion ends and gross superstition begins. These superstitions are of a rude, almost negro-
fetich type. They believe in many different kinds of demons, some of which are peculiar to
different trades. Take, for instance, that of a blacksmith, which, in Abyssinia, strange to say,
is accounted a dishonourable calling, and made hereditary in certain families. Now as people
so often engaged in warfare are continually in need of a smith's service, the result is that,
if his trade is disreputable, the smith has his consolation in the fact that it is at least very
lucrative. Abyssinian superstition will, however, have it that a demon named Bmida haunts tie
brawny knights of the anvil, and gives them the power of transforming themselves into s«
of the lower animals, generally the hya?na. The stories told of the power of transforming them-
selves possessed by blacksmiths through the aid of this demon are endless ; we are told how two
brothers used to make a living by the one transforming himself into a splendid horse and the
id the
ABYSSINIANS: DEMONOLOGY ; BELIEF IN " BOUDAS," ETC.
179
other selling him, of course only to transform himself again into a man when unobserved, and
escaping to perform the same trick again and again, until finally a buyer, suspecting the trick,
sent his lance through the heart of the transformed equine blacksmith as soon as he had con-
-cluded the bargain with the brother. They can also change other people as well as themselves
into animals. They can enchant people also in peculiar ways. Mr. Mansfield Parkyns, to whoso
Avork on Abyssinia we are indebted for some of the particulars mentioned, thus describes a scene
that he himself witnessed. One of his servants complained of languor and headache, and finally
became hysterical. " It was at this stage that the other servants began to suspect that she
was under the influence of a Bouda. In a short time she became quiet, and by degrees sank
into a state of lethargy approaching to insensibility. Either from excellent acting or from real
want of feeling, the various experiments which were made upon her seemed to have no more
effect than they would have had on a mesmeric somnambulist. We pinched her repeatedly, but
pinch as hard as we could she never moved a muscle of her face, nor otherwise evinced the
least sensation. I held a bottle of strong sal-volatile under her nose and stopped her mouth,
and this having no effect, I steeped some rag in it and placed it in her nostrils ; but although I
<?ould wager any amount that she had never either seen, smelt, or heard of such a preparation
as liquid ammonia, it had no more effect on her than rose-water. She held her thumbs tightly
inside her hands, as if to prevent them being seen. On my observing this to a bystander, he
told me that the thumbs were the Bouda's particular perquisite, and that he would allow no
person to take them. Consequently several persons tried to open her hands and get at them,
but she resisted with what appeared to me wonderful streng-th for a girl, and bit their fingers
till, in more than one instance, she drew blood. I, among others, made the attempt, and
though I got a bite or two for my pains, yet either the devil had greater respect for me as an
Englishman and a good Christian, or she had for me as her master, for the biting was all a
sham, and struck me as more like kissing than anything else, compared with the fearful wounds
she had inflicted on the rest of the party. I had a string of ornamental amulets which I
usually wore, having on it many charms for various maladies, but I was perfectly aware that
none for the Bouda was among them. Still, hoping thereby to expose the cheat, I asserted
that there was a very celebrated one, and laid the whole string on her face, expecting that she
would pretend to feel the effects, and act accordingly ; but to my surprise and disappointment,
she remained quite motionless. Several persons had been round the village to look for some
talisman, but only one was found. On its being applied to her mouth she for an instant
sprang up, bit at it and tore it, but then laughed, and said it was weak, and would not
vex him. I here use the masculine gender, because, although the patient wras a woman,
the Bouda is supposed to speak through the medium of the sufferers ; and, of whatever
sex they be, they invariably use that gender. I deluged her with buckets of water,
"but could not elicit from her either a start or a pant — an effect usually produced by
water suddenly dashed over a person. At night she could not sleep, but became more
restless, and spoke several times. She even remarked in her natural tone of voice that she
was not ill, nor attacked by the Boitda, but merely wished to return to Adoun. She said this
so naturally that I was completely taken off my guard, and told her that of course she might go,
"but that she must wait till the morrow. The other people smiled, and whispered to me that it
was only a device of the Bouda to get her out into the forest and then devour her." Curiously
ISO
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
enough all night a hyaena was heard calling in the forest close by, and the girl had to be tied
and guarded closely, otherwise she would have escaped when the hyaena, or Bouda in the
shape of this animal, called. Indeed, she several times attempted to make her escape. For
three days she neither ate nor drank, but on the third she began to show signs of appetite and
ate a little. From that time she gradually recovered.
Of all the horrible things attributed to the Bouda, one of the most ghastly is their
reputation for rifling graves, consequently no one will venture to eat qiitinter (or dried meat) in
a blacksmith's home, though nobody has the slightest repugnance to sit down to a repast
of raw meat if it be cut from the ox at the door. These blacksmiths are excluded from the
KIVER BEHHAX, AHYSbl.MA.
more sacred rites of Christianity, but still profess great respect for religion, and are most
punctilious in observing the stated feasts or fasts of the Church.
To guard against the Bouda, numerous charms are held in great esteem, and much sought
after. One described by Mr. Parkyns consisted of any filth that could be found (of fowls,
dogs, &c.) and mixed up with a little water. This abomination the Bonda-\>Q witched individual
devoured with the utmost greediness, and after falling to the ground in a fainting-fit, recovered
after a few days.
The "Zackary" are another extraordinary set of beings believed in by the Abyssinians.
Though nominally Christians, they go roaming about the towns, torturing themselves with
whips, and sometimes cutting their flesh with knives. In the province of Tigre, where they
are very numerous, they have a church which is frequented by no other people. They call
themselves descendants of St. George, and assert that in their church is a light which burns:
without human aid, but they take particular good care to allow no one to put this assertion to
the test by extinguishing the light.
ABYSSINIANS: RELIGIOUS SUPERSTITIONS.
181
Among such a people, religion and morality are not necessarily inseparable. Their religion
is poisoned with gross superstition, and their superstition is often hideously immoral. Like
the Greek Church, they do not allow images in their places of worship, but paintings of the
ABYSSINIAN PRIEST AND MOXK.
ints are very common, their faces being always full to the spectator, no matter how their
Bodies are placed. These saints are numberless, and their reverence for them is such that while
a witness would not hesitate to invoke the name of the Almighty to a falsehood, he would
dread to take the same liberty with St. Michael or St. George.
182 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Perhaps the most curious of all their superstitions, and in some respects the most annoying
to others, is their belief in a kind of evil spirit which possesses people, and can be expelled in no
other way than by music. Persons so possessed are said to be afflicted with the complaint callec]
ilijrc-ter. It is more common among- women than among men, and is probably one of the
nervous affections to which the other sex are very subject. The patient is seized with a violent
fever, which, unless the proper (?) remedies are applied, turns to lingering sickness, which
reduces him or her to the greatest weakness and extremity. The power of articulate speech is
lost, and a stammering utterance takes its place, which can only be understood by those who
have been similarly afflicted. If the relatives find that the disease is firmly established, they
club together to defray the expense of curing it. First a priest is sent for, who solemnly reads
the Gospel of St. John to the patient, and in case this should not be effectual, he takes care
at the same time, and for the space of seven days, to drench the ^/'tv^y-afflicted person with
cold water — a heroic treatment which not unfrequently frees the patient from this and from all
other troubles. If he survives this hydropathic treatment, the next and more effectual stage
of the way to a cure is proceeded to. This consists in engaging a full orchestra of trumpeters,
drummers, and fifers, who, with a large supply of liquor and a crowd of youngsters, combine to
produce the utmost hilarity, not to say insufferable noise. At the same time the afflicted
relatives will borrow from all their neighbours their silver ornaments with which to load the
arms, legs, and neck of the patient — if a woman. The trumpets blow, the children yell, and the
mob, on whom the good liquor. is beginning to have its wonted effect, cheer lustily. This
continues for a short time. Then the hitherto lifeless-looking patient begins to move her
shoulders, and soon after, her head and breast, and in an hour — as in a case recorded by Pearce
— she will sit up on a couch, though reduced to a skeleton, and looking wild and ghastly in the
extreme. Finally, she will start up and stand on the floor, and begin to dance and jump about
until, as the music and noise of the singers increase, she will jump up three or four feet from
the floor, impelled by what seems an unnatural strength in any one, far less in a person so,
reduced. If the music slackens the patient will look sulky, but smile and be delighted as
soon as the wild mirth and noise are resumed. Let the musicians be as exhausted as possible,
the tigre-ter-TpomoaB&iL will show no symptoms of weariness, but manifest impatience and
discontent when the worn-out trumpeters take the least breathing-spell. The cure is, however,
not yet complete. The patient is next day taken to the market-place, where several jars of
liquor are provided for the performers. When the crowd has assembled and the noisy music
commenced, the patient advances into the centre, and begins to dance and throw herself into
the maddest contortions possible, and so continues to exert herself through the entire day.
" Towards evening," writes the author to whom we are indebted for the description of this
strange scene, " she was seen to drop the silver ornaments from her neck, arms, and legs, oiu1 at
a time, so that in the course of three hours she had stripped herself of every article. As the
sun went down, she made a start with such swiftness that the fastest runner could not keep
pace with her, and when at a distance of about 200 yards, she fell to the ground on a sudden
as if she had been shot. Soon afterwards a young man fired a matchlock over her body,
struck her on the side with the side of his large knife, and asked her name, to which she
answered as when in possession of her senses — a sure proof that the cure was accompli shed,
during this malady those afflicted will never answer to their Christian name. She was
ABYSSINIANS: THE TIGRfi-TER; SELF-MUTILATION; DESERTION OF SICK. 183
taken up in a very weak condition and carried home, and a priest (or dofter) came and
baptised her again as if she had just come into the world or assumed a new name."
No doubt much fraud is mixed with their superstitions, but still a great deal is real, owing
to a thorough belief in the superstition acting on the afflicted person's mind.
Such is the rude religion of the Abyssinian, which is monotheistic, but still mixed
up with the fetich superstitions of the former rude pagan rites which formed the religion of
the nation before Judaism and, still later, Christianity were introduced amongst them. In
former times they worshipped stones and trees, as do to this day some of the more pagan
tribes which make up the heterogeneous Abyssinian Empire.
Before dismissing this subject we may notice another strange custom of this strange people
— a custom which might appear fabulous had it not been witnessed by trustworthy observers,
and did we not know that it finds its counterpart among the people of other barbarous
nationalities. When a woman has lost two or three children by death, she is induced, in the
hope of saving the life of another just born, to cut off a piece of the tip of the left ear, roll it
up in bread, and swallow it. " For some time," Mr. Pearce remarks, " I was at a loss to
conjecture why a number of grown people of my acquaintance had one ear cut off; and when
told the truth I could scarcely believe it, till I went into the house of a neighbour, though
contrary to custom, purposely to see the operation. An old woman cut off the tip of the
ear, and put it into a bit of cold cooked victuals, called sherro, when the mother of the infant
opened her mouth to receive it, and swallowed it, pronouncing the words, ' In the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost !": When a child is dying similar ridiculous practices are resorted
to to save its life — rational medical science having no place in the theory of this " peculiar
people."*
In the Galla districts — which are not, however, inhabited by Abyssinian people, though the
superstitions of the people are much the same — the inhabitants (except those connected with
the Christian or Mohammedan religions) on the outbreak of small-pox burn their villages and
retire to a distance ; not only are the houses burnt, but as the diseased are unable to move,
the panic-stricken people will allow their nearest relatives to be consumed with the houses in
which they dwell. Nevertheless the natives conceive this a proper and rather humane method
of stopping the spread of small-pox, and reproach the Christians for not imitating them in this
barbarous practice. " It is better/' they say, " that a few lives should be sacrificed, than that a
disease so frightful should have a chance of spreading among the population/'
We have incidentally mentioned their houses. These erections are at best but wretched
drs, being little better than hovels. The knowledge of architecture which their various
iquerors introduced amongst them seems to have been speedily forgotten, or to have taken
ttle root among the native population. Their dwellings are varied in shape, but the circular
rin is the more popular one. Some are square, with a flat roof, and if the occupier is a
ilthy person, it may be divided into several rooms, one of which, with hardly the pretence
being separated from the eating and sleeping apartment of the family, is appropriated to
ie horses and mules of the establishment ; the " stabley " odour of the rooms is therefore
Pcarco, " Life and Adventures," by J. J. Halls, vol. i , p. 307.
184
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
rather strong. Add to the fact that the floor is strewed, in lieu of carpets, with grass,* which
is allowed to remain until it is in a rotting condition, and the flavour of an Abyssinian house
BOAT OF BULLOCK S-HIUE, ABYSSINIA.
may be imagined. The furniture consists chiefly of a low table and a few seats, and the walls
are hung with arms, accoutrements of the chase, &c.
In this country in former times the floors were strewed with rushes, and in Sweden at the present day it i>
common to see the floor of the peasants' cottages covered in like manner with twigs of the fragrant jumper.
ABYSSINIANS: GOVERNMENT ; OFFICERS OF STATE ; FEUDAL CHIEFS.
185
The government of Abyssinia was for ages in a very unsettled condition, the country
having long been in a state of chronic revolution, during which numerous petty potentates
rose to the surface, and for the time exercised an uncertain sway over the disturbed kingdom.
Until the death of King Theodore the nominal form of government, which at present is a kind
of absolute monarchy, was that of an Emperor (or Negus] , nominally hereditary, in the line
which tradition — lying undoubtedly — claimed to be descended lineally from Solomon and that
— .-.^ _; ^ ^P*^^<
THE LATE PRINCE ALAMAYU, YOUNGEST SOX OF THEODORE, 1'ORMERLY EMPEROR Op ABYSSINIA (18G8).
ueen of Sheba whose visit to the Israelitish monarch is narrated in the Bible. Each district
r province was governed by an absolute chief, called a Ras, who, though owing allegiance
and military service to the Emperor, was often, in the unsettled state of the country, his own
master, setting at defiance the authority of his sovereign, or even taking the field against him.
Under each ras there were again various minor dignitaries appointed by him, who had
various privileges, great or small, in accordance with their respective ranks — such as having a
drum beat before them when they were marching or engaged in battle, &c.
64
186 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
The throne is usually filled — after a bloody civil war — by the most active partisan or the-
most daring- or successful rebel, and, in former times at least, on account of the prevalence
of polygamy multiplying heirs to the throne to such an extent, it was the custom to shut up the
younger members of the royal family in a well-guarded palace on a high mountain, where,.
however, every deference was paid to their rank and possible prospect. It was on this custom
that Dr. Johnson founded his delightful, but, considering that he represents the most polished
manners as prevailing in barbarous Abyssinia, ethnologlcatty most absurd tale of "Rasselas."
When Bruce was in Abyssinia the choice of the sovereign rested with the army and
strongest party at court, without any reference to birthright and legitimacy — the only
requisite w:is that he should have sprang from the royal line, and was unmutilated in his
person, lie was then with great ceremony anointed in the presence of the priests, judges, and
nobles, after which the funeral obsequies of the deceased monarch were observed. At one time
it was the custom for the Abyssinian monarchs to remain much in seclusion, under the belief
that the mystery which thus surrounded them in the eyes of their subjects would add to the-
reverence with which they were treated. As in the Court of Persepolis, there was an officer
whose employment was to sea and hear for the king. The chief holding this dignity was
called the king's mouth or voice, and spoke as his deputy. Another officer — of high rank — put
on the king's dress when in battle, and ran all the risks which being mistaken for the monarch
would entail upon him.
Justice in Abyssinia is administered on the principle of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth — every injury being expiated by a similar injury inflicted by the strong arm of the law
on the criminal. It is generally administered by the king or chiefs or by the council of old
men. If a person is killed, then the nearest relative of the murdered individual must kill the
murderer in the same manner as his relative was slain. Theft is punished by severe floggings,
and at every blow of the whip the ill-doer must cry out, " All ye who see this profit by my
example." Other crimes are punished by various mutilations or tortures, such as cutting off
the feet, and either closing the blood-vessel by steeping the stumps in boiling oil or allowing
the poor wretch to bleed to death, &c. Like most savage or barbarous people, the Abyssinians
seem to be very little sensible to pain. At some of the little parties the ladies, for amusement,
will arrange bits of the pith of millet-stem, each about the thickness of a man's thumb, in
different patterns, on the arm of any gallant young man who chooses to volunteer, and then set
fire to them. No pain is evinced as the fire reaches the flesh and burns into it in a dozen
different places. The conversation flows on as smoothly as if no one was suffering what would
be to most people excruciating torture. The lady blows her fires to keep them going, and after
the pellets have completely burnt out, she passes her hand lightly over the burnt spots so as
to brush the ashes off, and displays the red sores, which, when they heal, assume a polished
black surface, said "to contrast very prettily with the surrounding skin."
AVhen a person is condemned it is looked upon as a great cruelty to remit him to prison to
wait his execution; it accordingly takes place as soon as his sentence is pronounced. The
capital punishments are various. Among others, crucifixion, though not common, is
occasionally resorted to, and malefactors have at times been flayed alive. For instance, in
1709 a celebrated Abyssinian beauty of high rank declared that nothing but this inhuman
ABYSSINTANS: CRUCIFIXION; LAPIDATION ; COURTS OF JUSTICE, ETC. 187
.atonement would satisfy her vengeance against the man who had taken the life of her husband.
» Stoning to death (" lapidation ") is also in vogue, and has been chiefly inflicted on strangers for
religious purposes, and especially on the Roman Catholic priests who have been detected there
since the time of the Emperor Facilidas (1632), when they were expelled on account of their
§ intrigues in civil affairs. In the streets of Gondar are heaps of stones which cover the bodies
of these meddlesome missionaries. Those who are taken in actual rebellion generally have their
eyes torn out, a punishment to which is sometimes added the additional one of being turned
adrift to grope their way blindly about in the desert until they die of starvation. The dead
bodies of criminals executed for treason, murder, or violence on the highway are seldom buried,
but left to rot by the roadside, or to become the prey of hysenas and other wild beasts. In the
madly savage state of the latter years of the Emperor Theodore he almost daily hurled from the
rock of Magdala those who had offended him, and piles of their rotting bodies lay at the base
of it when our army reached his stronghold.
Many of these Abyssinian customs, being identical with those of the Persians, may have
Tbeen learned from the latter nation when it was in possession of Arabia, and had therefore
frequent intercourse with the other side of the Red Sea. " In truth/' writes Dr. Russell, " the
•customs mentioned in several authors as peculiar to Persia, were at a certain period common to
all the East, and were only lost in other countries when they were overrun and subdued by
more barbarous tribes. As the laws, manners, and habits of Susa and Ecbatana were committee!
to writing and stamped with the character of perpetuity, they survived for a time the conquests
which changed the face of society in a large portion of Western Asia, and thereby acquired for
their authors the reputation of universal legislators. The accident of having been for many
ages excluded from the ingress of foreigners has secured for Abyssinia a corresponding
originality ; or, in other words, has enabled her to preserve, in a state more entire than they are
now found anywhere else, a set of usages both national and domestic, which we may presume
formerly prevailed from the Nile to the remotest shores of the Asiatic continent."
Unless the crime be parricide, sacrilege, or something equally atrocious, no one is condemned
to death for the first offence. All exculpatory circumstances are more carefully taken into
account than is usually the case in the rather sweeping judgments of barbarous monarchs, and
the youth and former good character of the prisoners are allowed to weigh in the consideration
of his sentence. Indeed, if in former years the culprit has rendered great services to the state,
he is frequently acquitted, it being considered that the offence of later times is more than
counterbalanced by the good service of years gone by.
The courts of justice in Abyssinia are somewhat primitive places. The advocates plead
tied together by their robes. While one is speaking no interruption is permitted, but as some
ioncession must be made to long-suffering human nature pent up under the agony of hearing
vituperations and allegations known to be false, the other advocate is allowed to grunt when
he considers some passage in his opponent's speech particularly objectionable. A case is often
settled by lets. For instancs, a man will wager so many cows that he is in the right, and the other
will do the same. The result is that the loser must pay his bet to the chief as a fine. In this
tanner a dispute about a matter of five shillings will cost a wordy individual, who has trusted
the " glorious uncertainty " of Abyssinian law, ten or twelve pounds. We had something-
188
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
not very widely different once amongst ourselves, when cases could be decided by a wager of
battle to an opponent in a court of law.
An Abyssinian is a quarrelsome and excessively vain personage, and his litigious
disposition is greatly owing to the possession of these dubiously commendable qualities. This
overweening vanity lay at the bottom of all the unfortunate Theodore's troubles. He imagined
himself the equal of any monarch on the face of the earth, and his diseased brain was ever
seeking for causes of offence in his mortified, over-sensitive vanity. Even after he rose, from a
ABYSSINIAN TAILOR.
humble position, to supreme power in Abyssinia, he resorted to all sorts of theatrical devices to
dazzle the vulgar imagination, and so elevate himself in their eyes. For instance, he
was accompanied on his expeditions by several ferocious looking lions, in the midst of which he
exposed himself to public gaze (p. 189). In reality, all travellers who have seen them agree
in saying that they were as tame as dogs. Mansfield Parky ns, who knew the Abyssinian
disposition well, has, in the following trenchant sentences, gone to the bottom of this failing of
tli« national character : —
r* Vanity/1 he writes, " is one of the besetting sins of the Abyssinians, and it is to this
^ when brought out by liquor, that most of their quarrels may be traced. I remember
190 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
more than once to have heard a remark, something like the following, made by one or two men,
who, from being ' my dear friends/ had chosen to sit next to each other at table. ' You're a
very good fellow, and my dear friend ; but (hiccup) you aint half so brave or handsome as I
am \' The ' very dear friend' denies the fact in a tone of voice denoting anything but amity,
and states that his opinion is exactly the reverse. The parties warm in the argument ; words,
as is usual when men are in such a state, are bandied about without any measure, and often
without much meaning; insults follow, then blows; and if the parties around them be in a
similar condition to themselves, and do not immediately separate them, it frequently happens that
swords are drawn. Dangerous wounds or death are the consequences ; or, as is not uncommon,
others of the party siding with the quarrellers, probably with the idea of settling the affair, are
induced to join in the row, which in the end becomes a general engagement. I have noticed
this trait of vanity as exhibiting itself in various ways in a drunken Abyssinian. I have
always found that the best plan for keeping a man quiet, when in this state, was to remark to
him that it was unbecoming in a great man to behave in such a way; that people of rank were
dignified and reserved in their manners and conversation. And thus I have argued very success-
fully with my own servants on more than one occasion — flattering them while they were tipsy, and
then paying them off with a five-foot male bamboo when they got sober again. I recollect one
fellow who was privileged, for he had asked my leave to go to a party and get drunk. On
returning home in the evening, he staggered into my room in as dignified a manner as he could,
and seating himself beside me on my couch, embraced me with tears in his eyes, made a
thousand protestations of attachment and affection, offering to serve me in any way he could,
but never by a single expression hinting that he considered me as other than a dear friend, and
that indeed in rather a patronising fashion, although the same fellow was in the habit of
washing my feet, and kissing them afterwards, every evening, and would, if sober, have no more
thought of seating himself — even on the ground — in my presence than of jumping over the
moon. With his fellow-servants, too, he acted similarly; for thoiigh he knew them all, and
their characters and positions, he addressed them as his servants, ordering them about, and
upbraiding them for sundry peccadilloes, which they had doubtless committed, and which thus
came to my knowledge. In fact, in eveiy point he acted to perfection the manner and language
of a great man; and so often have I seen the same mimicry, that it has led me to believe that
the chief mental employment of the lowest fellow in the country is building castles in the air,
and practising to himself how he would act, and what he would say, if he were a great man.-"
An insolvent debtor is punished severely. He is chained to the prison wall by one of
his hands being confined in shackles, which day by day are driven tighter and tighter until the
cruel iron eats into the flesh, and the hand is lost. So much for a private debtor, and if it is to
the state that he is a defaulter, the result is that soldiers are quartered on him until the del
paid. Most frequently half a village are behind with their taxes, and being unable to support
the soldiers billeted on them, escape, by fleeing their homes. In this ease the head man of the
village is responsible for the unpaid taxes, and accordingly is frequently beggared in the
operation of paying for his poorer or less loyal neighbours.
The Abys-mi;ms are hospitable and kind to strangers, but nevertheless hesitate to cat or
drink with them, and break any vessel which has been used by one not of their own race.
ABYSSINIANS; FOOD; COOKERY; CUTTING STEAKS FROM LIVE CATTLE. 191
This seems to have originated, as among- other nations, in the fact that certain animals were
worshipped by one tribe and killed for food by another, and therefore viewed alternately as
gods or as abominations. Bread is made by grinding grain between two stones. The
paste is allowed to get sour, when it is baked in an earthen vessel into a sour, soft, spongy
bread called teff.
A common dish — called dilliklt — is meat boiled with butter, ground capsicum-pods,
onions, ginger, pepper, &c. This forms a compound too hot for most European throats, but
which is, nevertheless, devoured with great relish and in large quantities by the Abyssinians.
Clotted milk is another favourite dish. Partridges, guinea-fowl, and other game are also
dressed in a similar manner, while the flesh of sheep and goats is boiled.
llorzy is another popular dainty. It consists of the paunch and liver of quadrupeds,
minced, and mixed with a little of the undigested food from the entrails, the whole being
seasoned with red pepper, salt, and a few drops of gall. Some prefer a sauce made from
cow's entrails boiled with butter, mixed with horzy and butter — this piquant relish being
generally eaten with raw beef.
Chickkiner is a dish seldom seen elsewhere than at the tables of the upper classes. The
tenderest portion of a cow is chopped in a raw state, then mixed with black pepper and
saturated with the lubricating substance (synovia) which runs from the joints of the knees
and other limbs during the cutting-up process.
In cooking, the Abyssinians are generally very cleanly, fowls and fish being washed in a
dozen waters at least before they are committed to the pot. They will eat no animal with
incisor teeth in the upper jaw, or which has not cloven feet. Hence the elephant, accounted
such a dainty by all the African people fortunate enough to possess it, is not eaten by the
people under consideration. The most extraordinary as well as the most celebrated of all
the Abyssinian dishes is raw meat freshly cut from the ox. The animal is led to the door,
and the meat skilfully sliced off and handed to the guests, who cram themselves with the
reeking flesh, streaming with blood ; or rather the lady of the house performs this office, forcing
the food, properly seasoned, into the guests' mouths with her own hands. To do otherwise, and
to eat lightly, would be accounted gross breaches of etiquette by both host and guests.
Accordingly, their feasts are scenes of the most beastly sensuality which it is possible to
imagine. After the men have satisfied themselves, they return the good offices of the ladies by
cramming their mouths full of meat in a like manner. They will even cut pieces of flesh from
the ox when alive, close the wound again, and allow the animal to go at large. It was Bruce
who first related this seemingly incredible proceeding, and his statement was received with
immense ridicule ; indeed, on this account his whole narrative was for long discredited. There
is, however, no doubt that this is a common practice of the Abyssinians, the procedure having
repeatedly observed by succeeding travellers. To go no further, in Brace's own country of
Gotland it has long been the custom, in the Western Islands, for the poor people, during seasons
scarcity, to bleed their cattle, and mixing the blood with a little oatmeal, use it as food : so
mt the Abyssinian practice is only a slightly more extended specimen of the same system.*
The Aliub tribe of the White Nile drive lances into the necks of their cattle, and boil the blood thus
lined for food. This operation is repeated periodically about once a month.
192
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
"When Bruce first observed this, he was in the neighbourhood of Axum, and had overtaken three
persons who were driving a cow before them. At certain points they threw the animal down,
and secured it by one sitting on her neck and holding her by the horns, while another made a
deep wound in the upper part of her body. " Then I saw," says Bruce, " with the utmost
astonishment, two pieces, thicker and longer than an ordinary beef-steak, cut out of the higher
part of the buttock. How it was done I cannot positively say, because, judging the cow was to
be killed from the moment I saw the knife drawn, I was not anxious to view that catastrophe,
which was by no means an object of curiosity; but whatever way it was done, it surely was
CKOCOinLE-HVNTING BY THE HAMKAN ARABS IN AN ABYSSINIAN TKIBVTAKY OF THE NILE.
a.lroitly, and the two pieces were spread on the outside of one of their shields. This, too, was
done not in an ordinary manner ; the skin that had covered the flesh was left entire, and flapped
over the wound, and was fastened to the corresponding part by one or more skewers or pins.
"Whether they had put anything under the skin, between that and the wounded flesh, I know
not; but at the river-side, where they were, they had prepared a cataplasm of clay, with which
they covered the wound. They then forced the animal to rise, and drove it on before them, t<>
furnish them with a fuller meal when they should meet with their companions in the evening."
We have spoken of their gluttonous feasts. They are enormous eaters ; indeed, they seem to
have a capacity for an unlimited number of meals, one succeeding the other in rapid succession.
A party of fourteen, at a little <l<:jfun<'r a la fourc/iette, disposed of a cow and two fat slice]),
des gallons of liquor, even thouirh they had been already at three or four similar feasts ..n
ABYSSINIANS : EATING CUSTOMS; BARBAROUS FEASTS, ETC.
193
the same day, and "assisted" at a similar number afterwards before the day closed. The same
celebrated traveller quoted gives a description of one of their fashionable feasts in Gondar, then
capital of Abyssinia. The company having taken their place at table, a cow or bull is brought to
the door, its feet strongly secured, after which the cooks select the most tempting portions first, s.»
that before the animal has been killed all the flesh on the buttocks has been stripped off in square
solid pieces, without the loss of much blood. .These pieces of brinde are handed to servants,
who lay them upon cakes of ^-bread, which are placed like dishes along the table, without
cloth or anything else between them. Each guest is furnished with a huge knife, curved ones
AN ABYSSINIAN*.
iing most generally preferred. The company are so ranged that one gentleman sits between
two ladies. After the former has cut from one of the blocks of meat on the table a goodly-sized
steak, one of the women takes it up, folds it, seasons it with pepper and salt, and drops it into
the gentleman's mouth, he meantime supporting himself with each hand resting on his
neighbour's knee, his body stooping, his head low and forward, and mouth open like an idiot.
The operation is performed at the risk of choking him, but as it would be a breach of good
manners to receive his food in any other fashion, or in smaller portions, grandeur must be kept
up at whatever risk. " The greater the man the larger the piece which he takes into his mouth ;
and the more noise he makes in chewing it the more polite does he prove himself. None but
beggars and thieves, say they, eat small pieces in silence/' Another lady takes up the task of
feeding her cavalier servant, and so alternately, until he has finished. He then feeds the lady
65
194 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
at either side of him with his own hand, stuffing a portion into the mouth of both at the same
time. The hands of the guests are always washed after a meal, and during its progress little
boys creep about under the table, snapping up any fragments which may drop. "While he is
eating the Abyssinian never drinks, but no sooner is the gorging over than the potations begin,
when enormous quantities of tedge and mead are gulped, the whole ending in a scene cf
licentiousness over which we may willingly drop the curtain.
Among a people eating so much raw meat we need not be surprised to h'ud that tapeworm
is one of the most common diseases, and it is no proof that tapeworm is not owing to this
habit of theirs that Pearce and Salt, who lived long in the country, but did not eat raw flesh,
were also similarly afflicted. Every one who knows anything of the manner in which the eggs
of these worms get admittance into the stomach will easily understand that those eating food
prepared by the Abyssinians would run almost as much risk as if they had devoured the raw
flesh of the ox, which is often infested with one stage of these troublesome parasites. The
native, and it must be acknowledged, effectual remedy to expel them, is the flowers of a
plant known as kousso* The tedge (or beer) already mentioned is a thick gruel-like fluid.
The mead made from honey is better. Both are largely consumed, one man having been
reported to have drunk twenty-six pints of it, after devouring fourteen pounds of meat and
seven cakes of bread. Even allowing that the amount of this " feed " was exaggerated, it
doubtless shows how enormous must be the appetites of a people who could imagine such a lie.
Agriculture is in a backward state, as might be expected from the disturbed condition of
the country. There is little effort to assist the natural fertility of the land, the ground, by
way of ploughing, being merely scratched over with the crooked branch of a tree pointed with
iron. Two varieties of wheat are cultivated, but flour is chiefly used only at the tables of tin-
rich. Two kinds of barley are also raised. Altogether, they have five harvests in the year, but
combined they are not equal to one in Egypt, while the labour is still greater in proportion.f
Of late years much more has been known of Abyssinia than in former times. The late
Emperor Theodore having imprisoned the British Envoy, M. Rassam, and his suite, in addition
to some German missionaries and workmen, and diplomacy having failed to procure their
freedom, an expedition, under the command of General Napier — afterwards Lord Napier of
Magdala — was dispatched in 18G7 to effect their release. After encountering many difli-
culties, the expedition succeeded in reaching Magdala, a strongly fortified place, and storming
it, without loss of life. The prisoners were recovered, and the Emperor fell by his own hand
when he saw that all was lost. The object of the expedition being accomplished, our army
returned by the way whence it came, and left Abyssinia again to its internal troubles, which,
we may be certain, were in no way lessened by the foreign invasion. The latest intelligence
which we have from the country is as follows, our authority being Mr. Clements Markham.
C.B., the geographer of Lord Napier's expedition. The coronation has been reported of
" Prince Kasa," as " King of Kings of Ethiopia ; " but the account which has appeared i>
calculated to give an erroneous idea of the state of affairs. Kasa is only an obscure individual.
* Jlniycrn anthclmlniica, B.C. Hooker's Journal of Botany, Third Series, vol. ii., plate 10.)
t liruct-'a " Travels," vol. vii.. p. 63.
AHYSSIXIANS: KING JOHANNES; PRESENT CONDITION OF ABYSSINIA, ETC. 195
the son of a petty chief, but by dint of treason to his master, and as the great men of
Tig-re were prisoners with the late Emperor, he succeeded in gaining possession of that province
just before the landing of the British expedition. Through the mistaken policy of the English
general he was presented with some arms when the expedition left the country, and the great
chieftains of Tigre, who had been Theodore's prisoners in Magdala, were delivered into his
hands. He requited this confidence, of course, by putting the chiefs in irons, as soon as the
English had departed. He followed up his advantage by defeating his former master, the
Wagshum Gobazze, and getting in his power the Abuna (or chief bishop), for whom all the
Abyssinians profess great reverence. Kasa was really only a petty chief, very deceitful and
cruel, and until recently, when the King of Shoa submitted, numerous chiefs defied him, and
maintained independent power, notwithstanding the ceremony of coronation which he caused
the bishop to perform. The legitimate King of Abyssinia was the Wagshum Terferri, who
•escaped from Magdala just before its capture, along with Theodore's son Mashesha (for it is a
delusion to suppose that Magdala was ever realiy invested) . Gobazze, his relative, who had ruled
during Terferri's imprisonment, was defeated by Kasa, by the use of the arms presented to him
by the English. We supplied 2,000 muskets and a battery of field guns to this upstart, to
use against his master, who had done us no harm, but who, on the contrary, had rendered
cvciy possible assistance to our troops during their march through his country. Terferri was
a wise, humane, and energetic prince. He was allowed to be the best horseman, the best
spearman, and the best shot in Abyssinia, and was a very popular, accomplished leader. It is,
therefore, to be regretted that a mistaken piece of meddling in the internal affairs of the
kingdom prevented us from acknowledging his just claims to the throne. But be that as it
may, King Johannes, as the ex-chief calls himself, is, if not the undisputed Negus-Negyest of
Abyssinia, the monarch of the country in a manner which Theodore never was. For a time the
Wagshum Terferri hemmed Kasa into the country round Adowa, and Menelek, King of Shoa,
-who defeated and imprisoned the wicked Galla Queen, Mastwat, defied the brand new sovereign
from Theodore's old stronghold of Magdala. The virtual victories he won over the three
armies which the Egyptians sent against him secured King John's power, and enabled him
to demand the good offices of the English Government for the purpose of recovering that
portion of the coast which lies between his dominions and the Red Sea. Now (1883) that
Egypt is more than ever under the control of the British authorities, it is possible that
this reasonable request may be renewed with more hope of success. Abyssinia is not a rich
country, but it has possibilities, and the development of these possibilities will not
only add to the wealth and comfort of its sorely tried people, but may open up a new market
to the depressed English manufacturer. The Court of Axum is said to be conducted after
an austere code of morals, and King Johannes has the reputation of ruling the country in a
fashion to which it has been a stranger for many generations. If so, he is not likely to long
tolerate the present condition of affairs, though, since Gordon Pasha visited him, the world has
heard little of the Negus-Negyest, and of his secluded kingdom. The only son of Theodore by
his favourite wife, and the sole legitimate one whom he acknowledged (p. 185), was brought
to England by the Napier Expedition, and at the period of his death, in 1879, was being
•educated in India. It is possible that had he lived he might have dreamed of wrenching
his sceptre from the usurping Ras of Tigre, or of introducing into his father's empire some
THE PEOPLES OF TIIE WORLD.
of the civilisation he had imbibed from his conquerors. But all these dreams are now at-
ari cud with the death of the youth who, for his own comfort, sleeps in St. George's Chapel.*
CHAPTER IX.
THE EGYPTIANS, BERBERS, AND NILOTIC PEOPLE; THEIR ORIGIN, CONDITION, AND CUSTOMS.
EGYPT was, as all the world knows, the scene of an early and, on the whole, noble civilisation.
Yet, though from time immemorial in close proximity to the Syro-Arabian races, there could be
no greater contrast than that which the two presented. The Syro- Arabians are full of energy
and of restless activity, frequently changing their mode of life, now nomadic, feeding their
Hocks in the desert, anon settled in populous towns and fenced cities, or spreading themselves
into foreign lands, impelled by the love of glory or the all-absorbing desire to make proselytes.
The Egyptians, on the contrary, have ever reposed, whether in wealth or in poverty, in
easy luxuriousness on the rich soil watered by the overflow of their slimy river, Father Nile,
displaying no desire for the acquisition of alien lands, unless forced, by a change in position or
habits of life. In mental and in religious character the two nationalities are also widely
different. The Syro-Arabians worshipped one god ; the Egyptians paid homage, in magnificent
temples, the splendour of which, even in ruins, is the admiration of the world, to foul and
grovelling objects — a snake, a tortoise, a crocodile, an ape — at best to a cat or a cow. The
destiny of the two nations has been equally different. Both exist — the one "in their living
representatives, their ever-roving, energetic descendants ; the other, reposing in their own land
— a vast sepulchre — where the successive generations of thirty centuries, all embalmed — men,
women, and children, with their domestic animals — lie beneath their dry, preserving soil,
expecting vainly the summons to judgment, the fated time for which is to some of them long
past, before the tribunal of Sarapis, or in the hall of Osymandyas."
The physical character of these nations is likewise different ; instead of the sharp features,
the keen, animated, and restless visages, and the lean and active figures of the Arabian, there
will be seen in the land of the Pharaohs "full, but delicate and voluptuous forms; with eyes
long, almond-shaped, half-shut, and languishing, and turned up at the outer angles, ns if
habitually fatigued by the light and heat of the sun; cheeks round; thick lips, full and
prominent; mouths large, but cheerful and smiling; complexions dark, ruddy, and coppery, and
the whole aspect displaying — as one of the most graphic delineators among modern travellers
has observed — the genuine African character, of which the negro is the exaggerated and
extreme representation/'' f
The greater part of the modern Egyptians are a mixed race. They are, perhaps, not
Arabic, but probably old Berber, modified by fusion with new elements. The remnant of the
Highwayt) August and Xov< mlicr, 1872 ; " Countries of the World," Vol. VI., p. 74.
t Denon, '• Voyage- en Egypte." cited in Pilchard's " Natural History of Man," Vol. I., p. 138.
EGYPTIAN FELLAH GIRL WITH PIGEONS
193 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
old race, remarkable not only for their likeness to the old Egyptians, as seen on monuments,,
but as preserving the Christian religion, when the rest of their countrymen became proselytes
at the period of the Moslem conquests, are called Kopts. Even they are not pure, but still,
owing to the fact of their intermarrying from very early periods with their co-religionists, they
are the nearest approach to the Egyptians of Pharaoh and Cleopatra. The nation has known
so many masters that it need not surprise us that the rest of the people have been much
mixed, first by the Arabs, then by the Persians, then by the Greek and Roman conquerors, and
finally by the Turks. The physiognomy of the Kopts is " hair, black and wisp or curled; cheek-
bones, projecting ; lips, thick ; nose, somewhat depressed ; nostrils, wide ; complexion, varied,
from a yellowish to a dark brown ; eyes, oblique ; frame, tall and fleshy ; countenance, heavy
and inexpressive." They have been Christians since the second century, but have greatly
decreased since that period. At the date of the Arab conquest of Egypt they nuinbc-ed
about 600,000; now they do not reach 150,000. They lead an austere life, but allow their priests
to marry. They are, to a considerable extent, mechanics, and are the chief mill-makers in
Egypt, and manufacture the machinery for irrigation. They are also skilful jewellers, but,
take them as a whole, they bear a bad name in the community. This may be owing partly
to the religious rancour excited against them, and partly to the fact that at one time they
were employed as tax-gatherers — never a popular class, but still less so in the East, where they
are almost invariably extortioners as well, or instruments of oppression of the conqueror.
We fear, however, that the multitude of Koptic thieves and idle monks (who swarm about the
Nile boats on begging expeditions) give only too strong grounds for the justice of the ill name
of their nationality.
The labouring agricultural Egyptians are known as fellahs (p. 197). They are the original
inhabitants, much mixed with Arab blood, and are in a miserable condition, through the long
course of ages of oppression, taxation, and forced labour to which they have been subjected
by the successive conquerors of Egypt. The fellahs were ever the prey of the conqueror.
Their last effort in the hewing-of-wood-and-drawing-of-water line of life, to which they have
always been degraded, was in constructing the Suez Canal — under a barely disguised system
of forced labour — in other words, temporary shivery. Two French travellers (MM. Gammas
and Lefevre) represent them as a downtrodden race, who give the cheek to the smiter, answering
kicks and blows with hardly a complaint, and making no attempt at retaliation or resistance.
Indeed, though they sometimes rebel, it is in a manner which only proves the unwarlike
character of the race. At times of conscription, they made a feeble effort against the
Khedive's soldiers, but in a way which demonstrated that they never hoped to win. A few
were killed, and the rest allowed themselves to be huddled on board the Nile boats, while the
women and children followed them along the banks, lamenting, with loud cries and many tears,
the fate of those they hardly ever expected to see again. Yet the Fellaheen are naturally cheerful,
and any excuse is sufficient to jxistify the whole village making holiday. Their villages resound
with song, and the dance is never wanting at all seasons of the year. The fellah is fond of
home — such as it is — but his nature has been ground down and degraded during centuries of
tyranny under Greeks, Arabs, Mamelukes, and Turks. The feudal system until recently
prevailed, the soil being partitioned out among the Sultans, Emirs, and Beys, the whole crop,
with the exception of a hare subsistence for the cultivators, passing into the barns of the lords
THE EGYPTIANS: TAXATION"; MARK I A ( ! K ; SLAVERY.
199
of the soil. This abuse the late Khedive — Ismail Pasha — abolished, and endeavoured to
introduce a system in which the fellah's right to the produce of his soil is assured in lieu
of his service to the state, and regular taxes, which are heavy enough. It is hard, however, to
revive in minds so long brutalised a sense of manhood and independence. Marriage among
them is simply a private affair, not a public rite, and the wife is very little better than
a purchased slave. When the purchaser is tired of her, he can send her back again to her
parents without the formality of a divorce, which she can only claim for some heinous wrong
on the husband's part. Of births, the state takes no official cognisance ; and accordingly a
child can disappear without any inquiry being made about it. The life of an infant until it
can look after itself is therefore precarious in the extreme ; indeed, children frequently perish
by the hands of their mothers' rivals.
Among the Nile sailors it is the custom to have two wives, one at Gizeh and the other
at Assouan, or wherever the starting-point and terminus of the voyage may be. The1
husband passes a month or shorter time with each, as his business may determine. " He brings
with him a few piastres, a piece or two of blue cotton cloth, or it may be a little seaman's
venture, which the wife disposes of on his arrival. In return he receives the products of the
place, which, on the return voyage, go to swell the profits of the other wife. From this point
of view polygamy is productive ; nevertheless, it daily loses ground, even among the rich, who
have usually only one wife." The real cause of polygamy in Egypt, and in Mussulman
countries generally, is tho premature old age of the women. The men many mere children,
who get very rapidly worn-out and old-looking by the fatigues of too early child-bearing and
the cares of life. When this habit is abandoned, polygamy, it is believed by those well able to
judge in regard to such matters, will practically cease to be an Egyptian domestic institution.
Under the sway of the present ruler efforts have been made to improve the condition of the
Nile Valley natives, and other Egyptian populations, by juster laws, and by the development of
the natural resources of a country which was once the granary of the world. Attempts have
been made to gradually abolish slavery, one of the curses of the country, by the abolition of
the slave-trade with Central Africa via the Nile. To accomplish this, Ismail Pasha, in 1869,
dispatched the celebrated African traveller, Sir Samuel Baker, with a considerable force, and
at immense expense, up the Nile, to annex the barbarous interior regions, being convinced
that until this was done, and the supply of slaves cut o*ff at the fountain-head, the slave-trade
would never cease. After many disasters and hardships, Baker partially succeeded in this,
but still much remains to be done before the purpose intended by the mission can be carried
out. All the ignorant and venal officials of Egypt are more or less interested in keeping up
this traffic in human flesh, and certain it is that no efforts on their part were lacking to
continue the trade and thwart the " infidel " governor of the Upper Nile regions of Africa —
for an Englishman, Colonel Gordon, of Chinese fame, was appointed to succeed Baker —
in his efforts to scotch the trade on which they fattened. Ages of brutality and ignorance
cannot be effaced in a day or in a reign, and we must look for the regeneration of Egypt to a
period even now indefinitely remote. Assyrians, Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians — their
blood relatives — have long ago disappeared, never again to rise among the family of nations, and
we can hardly hope for better things from the corrupt Egyptians. A nation is like an individual;
it has its term of life and its certain decay. One cannot put fresh life into the old man's body ;
200 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
history has shown no instance of the regeneration and revivification of a worn-out nationality. A
newer and nobler race than the present mongrel one may come into the country, and again contend
for and win the famous Delta of the Nile, to gain which for ages all the nations of the East
EGYPTIAN AHCinVAY "WITH HIEROGLYPHICS (jEMl'LE OF KK.VXAll).
fought; but if the following graphic description of Sir Samviel Baker is true — and its truth firm
independent sources, let alone the character of the man, I should never dream of doubting —
what can we expect from a country so governed? He is describing Khartoum, the head-quarteri
of the slave-traders of Egypt, and a hotbed of some of the vilest scoundrels of all nations < n
the face of the earth of which it is possible to conceive. " Khartoum is the seat of government
THE EGYPTIANS: GOVERNMENT OF THE OLD SCHOOL; K1IARTOOI.
201
the Soudan provinces being under the control of a governor-general with despotic powers. In
1861 there were about 6,000 troops quartered in the town; a portion of these were
Egyptians, and the regiments were composed of blacks from Kordofan, and from the White
EGYPTIAN LADY.
md Blue Niles, with one regiment of Arnouts, and a battery of artillery. These troops are the
iurse of the country ; as in the case of most Turkish and Egyptian officials the receipt of pay is
lost irregular, and accordingly the soldiers are under loose discipline. Foraging and plunder are
the business of the Egyptian soldier, and the miserable natives must submit to insult and
66
202 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
ill-treatment at the will of the brutes who pillage them ad libitum. In 1862 Moosa Pasha
was the governor-general of the Soudan. This man was a rather exaggerated specimen of
Turkish authorities in general, combining the worst of Oriental failings with the brutality of a
wild animal.* During his administration the Soudan became utterly ruined; governed by
military force, the revenue was unequal to the expenditure, and fresh taxes were levied on the
inhabitants to an extent that paralysed the entire country. The Turk never improves.
There is an Arab proverb that ' the grass never grows in the footprints of a Turk/ and
nothing can be more aptly expressive of the character of the nation than this simple adage.
Misgovernment, monopoly, exaction, extortion, and oppression are the certain accompaniments of
Turkish administration. At a great distance from all civilisation, and separated from lower
Egypt by the Nubian deserts, Khartoum affords a wide field for the development of Egyptian
official character. Every official plunders ; the governor-general extorts from all sides, he fills
his private pockets by throwing eveiy conceivable obstacle in the way of progress, .ml
embarrasses every commercial movement in order to extort bribes from individuals. Follov,
the general rule of his predecessors, a new governor upon arrival exhibits a spasmodic energy.
Attended by cavasses and soldiers, he rides through every street of Khartoum, abusing the
underlings for past neglect, ordering the streets to be swept, and the town to be thoroughly
cleansed; he visits the market-places, examines the quality of the bread at the bakers' stalls,
and the meat at the butchers'. He tests the accuracy of the weights and scales, fines ;m<!
imprisons the impostors, and institutes a complete reform, concluding his sanitary :i^l
philanthropic arrangements by the imposition of some local taxes. The town is comparativi
sweet, the bread is of fair weight and size, and the new governor, like a new broom, has sw<'
all clean. A few weeks glide away, and the nose again recalls the savoury old times when
streets were never swept, and filth once more reigns paramount. The town relapses into its
former state, again the false weights usurp the place of honest measures, and the only permanent
and visible sign of the new administration is the local tax. From the highest to the lowest
official, dishonesty and deceit are the rule, and each robs in proportion to his grade in the
government employ, the onus of extortion falling on the natives; thus exorbitant taxe.-i arc
levied upon the agriculturists, and the industry of the inhabitants is disheartened by oppression.
The taxes are collected by the soldiery, who naturally extort by violence an excess of the actual
impost ; accordingly the Arabs limit their cultivation to their bare necessities, fearing that a
productive farm would entail an extortionate demand. The heaviest and most unjust tax is
that upon the sageer (or water-wheel), by which the farmer irrigates his otherwise barren soil.
The erection of the sageer is the first step necessary to cultivation. On the borders of the river
there is much land available for agriculture, but from an almost total want of rain the ground
must be constantly irrigated by artificial means.
" No sooner does an enterprising fellow erect a water-wheel than he is taxed, not only for his
wheel, but he brings upon himself a perfect curse, as the soldiers employed for the collection of
the taxes fasten upon his garden, and insist iipon a variety of extras in the shape of butter, corn,
vegetables, sheep, &c., for themselves, which almost ruin the proprietor. Any government Imt
that of Egypt and Turkey would offer a bonus for the erection of irrigating machinery that
* He was originally a Circassian slave.
THE EGYPTIANS: MISGOVERNMENT ; RECENT EVENTS, ETC. 203
would give a stimulus to cultivation, and multiply the produce of the country ; but the only
rule without an exception is that of Turkish extortion. I have never met with any Turk i si i
official who would take the slightest interest in plans for the improvement of the country, unless
he discovered a means of filling his private purse. This is a country where Nature has been
hard in her measure dealt to the inhabitants. They are still more reduced by oppression.
The Arabs fly from their villages on the approach of the brutal tax-gatherers, driving their
flocks and herds with them to distant countries, and leaving their standing crops to the mercy
of the soldiery. No one can conceive the suffering of the country. The general aspect of the
Soudan is that of misery, nor is there a single feature of attraction to recompense a European
for the drawbacks of pestilential climate and brutal associations. To a stranger it appears a
superlative folly that the Egyptian Government should have retained a possession, the occupation
of which is totally unprofitable, the receipts being far below the expenditure, malgre the
increased taxation. At so great a distance from the sea-coast, and hemmed in by immense
'1nserts, there is a difficulty of transport that must multiply all commercial transactions on an
extended scale. . . . Upon existing conditions the Soudan is worthless, having neither
natural capabilities nor political importance; but there is, nevertheless, a reason that first
prompted its occupation by the Egyptians, and that is in force to the present day — the Soudan
supplies slaves."
Such is Sir Samuel Baker's account, and to add force to its graphic fidelity, it may be
remembered that the man who in 1867 wrote his scathing description is in 1883 a Turkish
asha, and was until recently the leader of an Egyptian expedition, to conquer the region of
ae upper Nile, with a view — in which let us hope the Khedive was in earnest — to cutting
off the supply of slaves, for the purchase or theft of which Khartoum supplies the funds and
the stimulus. And, moreover, it does not appear from his recent account of this expedition*
that he has in any way altered the opinion he so boldly expressed sixteen years ago.f
THE BERBERS.
The Berber (or Amazirgh) group is the general name applied by ethnographers of the
Prichard and Latham school to the native population of the Sahara desert of the country
north of it, and to the Gaunches (or extinct original population) of the Canary Islands. We
therefore find this section of the African stock on the oasis of Siwah or Ammon, near the
* Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, December 8, 1873, and " Isma'ilia " (1875).
f It is needless to say that since these words were written there have been great events in Egypt, which
may materially change not only our relations to it, but its own form of government. In any case, the rebellion
of Arabi Pasha and the English expedition of 1882 cannot make the lot of the fellaheen worse, even if they do not
improve the morals of the native rulers. Tewfik Pasha is said to mean well, though Sir Henry Bulwer's maxim
that in calculating the possible moves of an Oriental, every idea of straightforwardness must be eliminated, applies
him. Slavery in Egypt is, however, not on the increase, though a trade which has existed long before a
Turk or an Arab set foot on the Nile delta, or even before Mahommed conceived his new religion, is never likely
be wholly extinguished. But domestic servitude in the Khedive's dominions, as generally throughout the East,
very different from what it is in Cuba or was in the Southern United States. The slave is simply an unwaged
ervant, treated with great leniency, and frequently set free after a few years. He may, and often does, attain
to great fortune and position, since society makes no practical distinction between black and white, freedman and
eman, so long as they are within the all-embracing pale of Islam. — McCoan's " Egypt," pp. 315 — 330.
204 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Egyptian frontier in Fezzan, Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco. They descend from the ancient
Gajtulians, Numidians, and Mauritanians. In more modern times they have also receded
before populations more encroaching than themselves — at least, on their northern frontier,
e.g., before the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Mohammedan Arabs. The Amazirgh languages are
allied to the Hebrew and Arabic, and hence have been called «wi-Semitic.
The tribes bearing this name are very numerous — indeed, are said to be more than twenty
FELLAH (ARAB) DONKEY HOY.
iii number. They are always at war with each other, and, owing to hereditary feuds, village
is arrayed against village, and family against family, to such an extent that frequently whole
households are massacred in the midnight raids. The mountain tribes live from the month of
November to April in caves near the summit of the snowy Atlas. They are very poor, and
subsist by descending in plundering expeditions on the inhabitants of the plains, to whom they
are objects of terror. The exploits of the mountaineers form with them a never-ending
tale of wonder and dread. In person they are robust, active, and athletic, with strongly-
marked features; in disposition they bear the reputation of being patient and inured to
hardships in their precarious, poverty-stricken life. These plain -dwellers seldom move far from
s
THE BERBERS: THEIR DIVISION; THEIR APPEARANCE ; THE SHULUH.
205
their place of abode. They are distinguished by shaving the fore part of the head, but allowing
the hair to grow from the crown as far behind as the neck. Their only covering is a sleeveless
woollen garment, fastened round the waist by a belt. They differ from the Arabs and Moors,
FELLAH (ARAB) WOMAN AXD CHILDREN*.
who commingle with them in so far that they are the original inhabitants of the country, and
e, to a great degree, independent, living in their own villages, where they feed cattle, hunt
wild beasts, or, as did the Riffians until very recently, practice piracy.
The Shulnh are the mountaineers of the Northern Atlas, and are, perhaps, identical with
the Berbers of the plains. They, however, speak a different but cognate dialect, which they
Wl
I
th
206 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
called Amazirgh (or " the noble speech "). They live in villages composed of slated roofed stone
houses, and occasionally in tents and caves ; but for the most part are turbulent tribesmen.
The Kabyles (or Kabailis), like the other Berber tribes, are a remnant of the race on the
shores of the Mediterranean unsubdued by the Roman governors, having retreated to the
mountains. They are now under the rule of France, but are semi-independent. The Kabyles
inhabit the hills which form the Lesser Atlas. They speak the Berber tongue — called by them
Showua, and in the interior of the country are entirely unacquainted with Arabic. They
live in huts made of the branches of trees, and covered over with mud, which Dr.
Prichard compares to the magalia of the old Numidians, spread in little groups over the
sides of the mountains. They preserve the grains and other fruit of the earth, which they
cultivate in matmoures (or conical excavations in the ground) . Of all the Barbary tribes they
are the most industrious, being, in addition to agriculturists, tolerably skilful workers in the
lead, iron, and copper which their mountains yield.
Tuarik (sometimes written Tuarig) are a people made up of various tribes which are
scattered through the habitable parts of the Sahara. Their " social organisation/' writes Dr.
Latham, " is such as we usually find in similar localities. It is that of the Arab, the Turk, and
the Afghan, where the spirit of pedigree and the pride of blood operate upon the framework of
society, instead of tha possession of land or civic rights. Less an ocean of arid and inhospitable
sand than a rocky wilderness, sometimes stretching into vast flats, sometimes rolling out in
undulations, the western Sahara, though scantily supplied with vegetation in its less
favoured parts, has it oases, where there are springs of water, date-trees, corn and vegetables,
and shade. These are the occupancies of the more settled tribes, the Kel-ouees, who live in
villages. To these the Tuarik el badia stand in opposition ; for Tuarik el badia is the Arabic
name of the migratory tribes of the Sahara. The dark complexion of more than one of the
Tuarik tribes has been noticed — e.g., those of the Wadreag are stated by Mr. Hodgson to look
like negroes, so black is their skin and so crisp is their hair; yet he suspects no negro
intermixture."
Mr. Richardson considers that the Tuariks are a finer people than the Fezzanees, and are
of light olive complexion, with straight noses and thin lips ; but others — indeed, the greater
number — approximate to the negro features. They are very honest among themselves; the
same traveller having found quantities of dates packed up in the sand without any guard, and
their place indicated by a piece of wood. But had they been placed by the side of a well, and
a hundred caravans passed, it would have been the same, for among these rude children of the
Sahara it is a point of honour to touch nothing confided to the desert. Some of the women are
enormously corpulent, being fattened up as among some of the coast tribes. But the inosi
remarkable feature about the Tuariks is the possession of a peculiar alphabet of unknown but
very ancient origin; and yet there are no books amongst them, and hardly an attempt even has
been made to write it with a reed pen or other substitute. The only specimens the late
Mr. Edwin Norris — from whom we derive our information regarding it — had seen were merely
clumsy scratches, hardly decipherable. On the routes and highways in the desert may be seen
rocks and blocks of stone almost entirely covered with this character, and on the walls of the
houses which the Tuariks rent in the town are many specimens of it. They are very proud of
it ; the people do not appear to put it to any purpose of utility, but seem to use it only to amuso
THE BERBERS: TUAR1K ; THE GUANCHES OF THE CANARIES-, MOORS. 207
themselves, or to pique one another. Some Tuarik women one day pointed out to Richardson
a quantity of scribbling1 in this character, and without waiting for a reply, exclaimed, " It is
ours, it is better than yours ! it is better than the books of the Arabs ! " There are about
twenty characters in it ; four or five are like those of the Himyaritic alphabet in shape and
value, but the others are unlike the characters of any known alphabet.
Lastly, one very interesting fact in reference to the Berber people is, that the aboriginal
but now extinct inhabitants of the Canary Islands owed their origin to this race. These
lovely islands — the " fortunate isles " of the early Roman poets, the " Hesperides/' or
" islands of the blest/' of many a song- writer since, where the souls of the departed dead
rested, — a region lying beyond the then limitless sea, where the horizon was lit up by the ravs
of the setting sun — seem to have been peopled in comparatively recent times ; for when Juba
II., the African King of Mauritania, explored them — as narrated by Pliny — there seemed to
have been few inhabitants on the islands. In modern times they were first explored between
the years 1326 and 1334. Their history is the history of any country on which the Spanish
race ever set foot. Slaves were continually taken on different expeditions made to them by
this people, and in one of them the " King and Queen of Lanzarote " and seventy of the
inhabitants were captured and carried into slavery. In the year 1402 Messire Jean de
Bethencourt, a Norman knight, subdued the islands, in spite of the gallant resistance of the
inhabitants, who were called " Guanches." At that time there were about 9,000 people in
Canaria Grande, and 5,000 on Tenerife. The natives were said to have been tall, but of
simple habits and few arts, knew nothing of metals, and ploughed the land with the
horns of bullocks. They believed in a future state, and worshipped a supreme being called
"Achoron Achaman." They also believed in a malignant being, " Yruena," and that the abode
of the wicked was in a cavern on the side of Teyde. Marriage and various other moral and
social institutions were established amongst them. They embalmed the dead, and laid the
bodies in caverns or catacombs in the sides of mountains, where they have been found since the
depopulation of the islands. These mummies were placed erect, with their feet against the
sides of the cave ; the chiefs with a staff in their hands, and a vessel of milk by their sides.
The mummies were prepared by saturating the body with a kind of turpentine, and then
drying it before a slow fire or in the sun. In the tombs were laid aromatic plants, and the
corpses were decorated with laces, on which were hung little dishes of baked earth, and the
whole body wrapped in bandages of goatskin. The body was filled with a kind of grain
resembling rice. It was not, however, until 1496 that the Canarians were thoroughly subdued,
and in a few years the remnant, after being forced to be baptised, were either exterminated or
sold into slavery. It is a pretty tale of piracy, bigotry, sanctity, and murder, that Messire
de Bethencourt has to tell us — a tale, unfortunately, not alone in those days, nor for several
centuries since. *
The term Moor is applied to all Mohammedan inhabitants of Morocco, &c., though properly
speaking it should be limited to the inhabitants of the towns, who are perhaps of very
mixed extraction, and secondly to the tribes nomadic on the south-west of the Sahara, but
* "The Canarian, or Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canarians in the year 1402." By Messire
Jean de Bethoncourt, Knight (1872) ; Pegot-Ogier : "The Fortunate Isles " (1871), vol. i., pp. 258—292.
208
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
which are again of Berber or Arab origin. The Moors were once a powerful nationality,
carrying their victorious arms into Spain, and giving to that people the only good taste
KABYLE WOMAN.
they ever possessed in architecture, and leaving in their blood a large amount of courage
and enterprise, that, as we shall see by -and -by, raised Castile to a prominence she seems
unlikely ever again to reach. There are several Moorish powers on the shores of the
Mediterranean — e.g., Morocco and Tunis — but the governments are all of a wretched type, the
THE NILOTIC CLASS: THEIR TEMPORARY CLASSIFICATION, ETC.
209
maritime ones being until recently simply nests of pirates, the inland ones weak imitations
of the worst form of Moslem despotism, distinguished by every form of misrule, and unable
to check the inroads of the wild tribesmen — such as the notorious Kroumirs of Tunis.
I /'
THE CHIEF OF THE LIRA TRIBE. (After Baker).
THE NILOTIC CLASS.
Under this name may be bracketed a variety of nationalities — provisionally at least, for it
may be found hereafter that some of those included under this head are only remotely connected,
if at all, with the others. For our purpose, however, the classification given is sufficient. They
inhabit the valley of the Nile, but do not comprehend all the inhabitants of that region ; those
of the Upper Nile, for instance, being negro, or more closely allied to negro than any other
67
210 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
race, while the Egyptians and Aramaeans we have already noticed as natives of the lower reaches
of the same famous river. It includes (1) the Gallas (Ilmorma), Somauli, and Afer (Danakil);
(2) the Agows (Shohos), probably the aborigines of Western Abyssinia, " encroached upon by
the Ethiopians, occupants of the provinces of Damot, Lasta, and the parts about the Lake
Dembea," while the Gallas and allied tribes are pastoral tribes to the south-east and west of
Abyssinia ; (3) the Nubians of Nubia, and the people of Kordofan, Darfur, and Sennaar — i.e.,
of the Valley of the Nile between Egypt and Abyssinia, including the Bishari of the " desert
and mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea," which Latham considered to be either
Egyptian or Nubian.
The Gallas, who spread over eastern intertropical Africa, are a people formidable from their
number and warlike character. For ages they have been the hereditary enemies of Abyssinia,
and at one time they threatened to entirely overrun and conquer that distracted country. Their
character is expressed by the name which has been applied to them by the Abyssinians — the
word Galla meaning " invader." ' They have a tradition that in former times they came into
the country which they now inhabit from a distance — a statement most likely true, for to this
day they are a nomadic, equestrian race, with many flocks and herds, which pasture over the
highlands of Africa, while corn is cultivated by them in the lowland valleys. Their houses are
hardly so good as those of the Abyssinians, being mere conical thatched huts. The women are
better looking than the men, and are clothed in cotton garments, and a leather petticoat and
sandal of ox-hide, their whole dress being smeared and saturated with the castor-oil with which
they drees their frizzly locks. Their hair they wear in tresses, which fall over their shoulders.
In complexion the Gallas are brown, and in some of the warmer valleys the colour of their skin
approaches a negro hue. Riippell describes their countenance as rounder than any other of the
tribes which make up the Abyssinian nation ; their noses are straight, but short, and divided
from their foreheads by a depression ; their lips, though thick, are not like those of the true
negroes, but their hair is thick and almost woolly; their eyes are deep-set, but very lively, and
their persons are large and bulky. In fact, they are of the type which fill up the transition
from the Aramaean type and the Western and Central African negro. They are not divided into
tribes, all being governed by a hereditary monarch, the "crown" descending in the female line;
indeed, at the present moment the Gallas are ruled by a queen. Among some of the tribes
a kind of patriarchal government prevails. They call themselves " Orma," i.e., strong men.
Their religion is a rude paganism. They are said to have no priests — however, in respect
to this statement travellers differ — but each head of a house makes sacrifices of his own frc<-
will of cows or sheep to Wak, their chief divinity. A few have become Mohammedan, but
the greater number still remain in a state of paganism. "Their religion," writes Isonberg,
" resembles that of the Kaffirs. They worship a supreme being, termed by them Wak, whose
priests, called JcalifsJias, go about carrying a whip and bell with them, like public fools,
or zekarotoh, in Tugray, and with the intestines of goats twisted round their necks,
making portentous gestures, and uttering unintelligible sounds. Like the Shamunists
<>F the Kskimo, and the consecrated orders of more illustrious nations, they are wizards,
conjurers, soothsayers, augurs, haruspices, and physicians. Like the ancient Greek-,
l-ltruscMiis, and Romans, they divine by inspecting the entrails of goats. Occasionally — not
regularly — the Gallas pray to Wak, and expect from him the accomplishment of their benedictions
[ON ; THEIR WIDE RANGE ; THE
and anathemas. They have no distinct idea of what Wak is, but to his priests he reveals
himself in dreams. Their oaths are characteristic : they sit down upon a pit covered with a
hide, and imprecate upon themselves that, if they do not perform their vows, they may fall into
such a pit. They have funeral ceremonies, and believe in a future state, which is one of moral
retribution." Some of them have, however, adopted Christianity and Mohammedanism.
From all quarters, the pagan Galla tribes perform pilgrimages to a tree called wodanalv
on the banks of the Hawsah River, south of Shoa, to offer prayers to it for long life, riches,
health, and every other mundane blessing. Women are not, however, allowed to approach it.
Major Harris, who denies the statement that they have no priests, describes these ecclesiastical
dignitaries as divided into two orders, the hibahs and kalicka, who divide between them the task
of performing the sacred rites. Both are much dreaded, no one daring to kill either, from dread
of his dying curses. Even the Christians of Shoa employ the Galla sorcerers to " clear their
haunted houses from evil spirits, which is done by incantations, and by the blood of ginger-
coloured hens and red he-goats." Dr. Beke considers that at some early period the Gallas had
received some knowledge of Christianity, which in later times had faded away, or had again
got overlaid with paganism. They are skilful workers in metal, and manufacture their own
arms and implements. The Gallas having extended their predatory and conquering expedi-
tions over such wide stretches of country, it is not surprising to find traces of them even
on the White Nile. The Latookas of the banks of that river, whom Sir Samuel Baker*
describes as the finest savages he had ever seen, their average height being five feet eleven
and a half inches, and splendidly proportioned, are believed to be of Galla descent. The
formation of their head and general physiognomy are entirely different from those of any
of the other White Nile tribes, their forehead being high, eyes large, mouth moderately -sized
and well-shaped, and all possessing a pleasing cast of countenance. The eastern bank of
the Sobat is only fifty miles east of Latooka, and is inhabited by Gallas, who have frequently
invaded the Latooka country. Curiously enough, the Gallas during their incursions were
invariably mounted on mules, while neither horse, camel, nor other beast of burden is known
to any of the White Nile tribes. A description of this tribe may therefore be suitably intro-
duced here ; we shall chiefly depend for our facts on the eminent explorer just mentioned.
Sir Samuel describes the Latookas as a " fine, frank, and warlike race." Instead of the
usual morose character of the tribes lower down the Nile, they are excessively merry and
good-natured, equally ready for a laugh or for a fight. Their town, at the time of his
visit, was surrounded by a palisade, and every house had in addition a little stockaded court-
yard. Every night the cattle were driven into corrals, as they are called in North-west and
South America, or kraals, as they are styled in Africa, where fires were lit in order to
protect them, by means of the smoke, from flies, while sentinels perched on a high three-tiered
platform kept watch day and night to give the alarm. Their cattle number 10,000 or 12,000
in every large town, and though the v/ealth of the tribe, they are yet a source of great anxiety
to the owners, who live in daily dread of being on this account attacked by the neighbouring
tribes. Their houses are above twenty-five feet in height, and are " precisely like huge candle-
extinguishers." This circular style of architecture prevails among all the Central African
* "Albert N'yanza," vol. i., p. 192.
212
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
tribes, and among the Arabs of Upper Egypt, no tribe, however they may differ in the
form of the roof, having ever got far enough advanced to let light into the dark interior by
means of a window. Over the entrance to each c,o.ii\e-kraal is placed a bell, made of the
<l dolape " palm-nut, against which an animal must strike either its horns or back at entrance.
Thus, every tinkle of the bell announces the passage of an ox into the kraal, and in this
manner they are counted every night as they are driven home from the pastures. Within
a quarter of a mile of every village bones and skulls — some in earthenware pots, generally
GIHL OF THE MITTOO TRI11E, UPPEll AVHTTE NILE TRIBUTARIES.
broken — form a Golgotha-like heap. This is owing to an extraordinary custom prevailing
among the Latookas. Should a man be killed in battle, his body is left to be devoured by the
vultures and hyenas, but should he die a natui-al death, he (or she) is buried in a shallow
grave within a few feet of his own door, in the little stockaded courtyard which surrounds
every house. After funei-al dances, which are kept up for some weeks, the body, which has now
sufficiently decomposed, is exhumed, the bones cleaned and deposited in an earthenware jar
on the spot near the village where the mounds are seen. This cemetery is, however, by no
means regarded as sacred, for Baker notes that on the bones signs of nuisances were present,
that in civilised countries would have been regarded as insults.
Their toilet is a very simple affair; that of the men consisting, with the exception of tin1
head-covering, of nakedness. They are nude from the sole of the foot upwards. " It is
curious to observe among these wild savages the consummate vanity displayed in their head-
I
THE LATOOKAS OF THE NILE: THEIR MODE OF DRESSING THE HAIR.
dresses. Every tribe has a distinct and unchanging fashion for dressing- the hair; and so
elaborate is the coiffure that hairdressing is reduced to a science. European ladies would be
startled at the fact, that to perfect the coiffure of a man requires a period of from eight to ten
MAN AND WOMEN OF THE NVE1III TRINE ON THE WHITE NILE/
years. However tedious the operation, the result is extraordinary. The Latookas wear most
exquisite helmets, all of which are formed of their own hair, and are, of course, fixtures. At
first sight it appears incredible, but a minute examination shows the wonderful perseverance of
* In this illustration, which is chiefly taken from one of Sir S. Baker's, the artist has omitted to give the
peculiar labial ornament described in the text (p. 214).
214 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
years in producing what must be highly inconvenient. The thick, crisp wool, is woven with
line twine from the bark of a tree, until it presents a thick network of felt. As the hair grows
through this matted substance it is subjected to the same process, until in the course of year*
a compact superstructure is formed like a strong felt, about an inch and a half thick; this has
been trained into the shape of a helmet. A strong rim of about two inches deep, is formed by
sewing together with thread, and the front part of the helmet is protected by a piece of polished
copper, while another piece of the same metal, shaped like the half of a bishop's mitre, and a
foot in length, forms the crest. The framework of the helmet being at length completed, it
must be perfected by an arrangement of beads, should the owner of the head be sufficiently
rich to indulge in the coveted distinction. The beads most in fashion are the red and blue
porcelain, about the size of small peas. These are sewn on the surface of the belt, and so
beautifully arranged in sections of blue and red, that the entire helmet seems formed of beads ;
and the handsome crest of polished copper, surmounted by ostrich plumes, gives a most digni-
fied and martial appearance to this head-dress. No helmet is supposed to be complete without
a row of cowry shells stretched round the rim, so as to form a solid edge/'
The only weapons of the Latookas consist of the lance, a powerful iron-headed mace, a long
knife or sword, and " an ugly iron bracelet, armed with knife-blades about four inches long, by
half an inch l)road. The latter is used to strike with if disarmed, or to tear with when
wrestling with an enemy." In addition, they protect themselves with a square shield, made of
buffalo or giraffe hide, about four feet and a half long by two feet wide.
Though the men are remarkably handsome, the Latooka women are, on the contrary,
very plain-looking; being "immense creatures" — few under five feet seven in height, and
with " prodigious limbs." They are very strong, and carry with comparative ease ten gallon
water-jars from the stream, a mile distant from the town. Their chief ornament (sic] consists
of a very long tail, made of fine twine, rubbed with red ochre and grease, and shaped precisely
like that of a horse. Their dress is complete, if we add a large llap of tanned leather in
front. Polygamy of course prevails among the Latookas, and if all tales are true, is r.ol;
productive of great peace of mind to the happy patrons of this uxorious custom. If the
traveller gives one wife a necklace, in commiseration for the domestic happiness of the
unfortunate husband, he has to present the wives all round with one.
These women wear their hair short, and plastered with red ochre and fat ; and their faces
are slightly tattooed on the cheeks and temples. A lady who aspires to the lmul t<»> of fashion
extracts her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wears protruded through the lower lip
the long, polished crystal, the size of a drawing-pencil, which we shall sec- is a common
ornament among the African women, as something very similar is among the IlyJali
squaws (Vol. I., p. 91, &c.). The tube of a broken thermometer was looked upon as a
present of the highest value, to be worn through the lip in the manner described. "Lest the
piece should slip," writes Sir Samuel Baker, " through the hole in the lip, a kind of rivet is
formed by twine bound round the inner extremity, and thus protruding into the space left by
the extraction of the four front teeth of the lower jaw, entices the tongue to act upon the
• •\tremity, which gives it a wriggling motion indescribably ludicrous during conversation.
This extraction of the four front teeth of the lower jaw is a universal custom among the ^ hitc
Nile tribes ; and is the more remarkable considering that the beef of the Latooka country is
THE LATOOKAS: LIP MUTILATION; MARRIAGE; RELIGION, ETC.
215
none of the most tender. This peculiar labial " ornament " may be contrasted with the one
figured on p. 212 as used by the Mittoo tribes, and in a similar form by various savage
races. To " improve their beauty " still further, the Latookas gash the temples and cheeks
of men and women ; but, unlike the Arabs, do not rub into the wounds salt and a kind of
porridge (asida) to produce proud flesh, and so form a marked cicatrix.
Love, as among most savages, is an unknown feeling among the Latookas. A man buys
his wife as he would buy any other merchandise, and his wealth is reckoned by the number of
oxen and wives which he possesses. Probably the women are appreciated more than the cattle,
for they are more expensive, and, on the whole, more useful. They grind the corn, fetch the
water, gather firewood, cook the food, cement the floor, and propagate the race. But they are
only servants, and are looked upon and treated as such. A superior woman may cost ten cows,
so that a family of daughters is a source of wealth to the lucky father. The sale of the girls
produces cows, and the boys milk them, and as both go stark naked their wardrobe costs nothing.
Again, the multiplicity of wives produces a multiplicity of children, and the chance of a
corresponding profit to the father — in the daughter market. " A savage holds to his cows and
his women, lut especially to his cows. In a fight he will seldom stand for the sake of his wives,
but when he does fight it is to save his cattle." Though the best of savages, yet the idea of
good principle and justice as actuating motives never enters their mind. In this they are
not singular. It is difficult to persuade any savage that if you do not rob and murder it is
because you do not think it right, not that you are too weak or too cowardly to do so. The
upright man has but a poor time among them ; he must always submit to that most heart-
breaking, most heart-sickening of trials, being always misunderstood and misinterpreted as to his
motives. Pity, gratitude, love, self-denial, idea of duty, or religion have little or no place in the
heart of savages, at least in those of the White Nile, who have been brutalised by the Arab
slave-traders; but in place of these virtues are covetousness, ingratitude, selfishness, cruelty,
thievishness, idleness, enviousness, all uncharitableness, and a readiness to plunder and enslave
their neighbours whenever an opportunity offers.
What the Latooka religion is seems a puzzle, if travellers among them have gleaned all
that can be known. They have not even a " superstition on which to found a religious feeling."
They exhumed the bodies after burial for no particular reason, except that their fathers did it
before them. All men die, good and bad alike — how can they help dying? — and neither they
nor their spirits die again. There is 110 difference between the good and the bad after death,
[f a man is good in this life, it is because he is not strong enough to be bad. Most people are
)ad ; the good are always weak. This is the sum of their belief. There never was a more
practical, a more hopelessly prosaic race. Yet they are acute, and even in an argument on
subjects they have never considered before, will, by the very artless simplicity of their answers,
le the trained reasoner who is questioning them with a view to overpower them by argument,
to extract information from them as to their religious beliefs. This is well exemplified in
(he celebrated conversation Baker had with Comtnoro, a chief of the Latooka, but as it has
:en so often quoted I may content my readers with merely referring to it.*
Beyond a little cultivation, and the manufacture of rude tools from the native iron ore,
* "Albert N'yanza," vol. i., 231 — 235. For lip mutilation see Schweinf urth : "Heart of Africa," vol. i.,
pp. 138—192 : and Thomson : Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (1882), p. 211.
210
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
their arts are few. They are excellent blacksmiths, although their tools are confined only to
a hammer and anvil — both being stones — and a pair of tongs formed of a cleft stick of green
wood. For bellows they employ two pots, each almost a foot deep. From the bottom of each
of these pots is an earthenware tube about two feet in length, the nozzles of which are inserted
in the charcoal fire. The mouths of the pots are covered with loose, pliable, well-greased
JOCTIAN, CHIEF OF THE NTEHK TllIHE. (Jfter L'ufciT.)
leather ; in the centre of each cover is an upright stick about two feet long. This stick is
moved up and down by the bellows-blower, thus producing a strong blast.
Such are a few brief facts regarding the history of these far-off descendants of the warlike
Gallas, differing, it may be, widely from their forefathers, but still more closely connected with
them than with the surrounding purely negro tribes. How bold they are in war, and how
skilful in the acts of barbarism, we cannot afford space to describe. Nor need we regret it,
since abundance of information on these points will be found in the graphic work of " Baker
Pa-ha/' to which we have already referred.
THE DAXAKIL: THEIR ORIGIN; FORMER SPREAD; CHARACTERISTICS.
217
The Dandkil, calling themselves Afer, Ophir, and Ghiberti, the latter name being- a
complimentary one in allusion to their adherence to Mohammedanism, and meaning " strong
TAKKOWX (NUBIAN) SOLDIER.
in the faith/' are a widespread race. At one time their kingdom comprised, acccording to
the late Mr. Macqueen, an enthusiastic student of African geography, the whole Mohammedan
population of East Africa. There is a probability that they are a branch of the Amharic
race, who embraced the faith of the Prophet, and were, accordingly, both owing to religious and
political prejudices, the never-sleeping enemies of the Abyssinian empire.
68
218 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Closely allied to the Gallas are also the Somauli, who inhabit the African coast from the
equator northward to Cape Guardafui and the Straits of Babelmandeb. In habits they are a
pastoral people, but when there are seaports in their vicinity they follow commercial pursuits
:iml navigation. Their arms are light bows and arrows contained in a large quiver made out
of a gourd. Each arrow is almost a foot in length, and armed with a steel point, which is
poisoned, and easily removed from the shaft, owing to the latter being simply affixed to it by
a socket. A long-bladed knife completes the Somauli warrior's equipment. Their dress
is a waist-cloth (or fotaJi] and a robe (or sarree] eleven feet in length. It is generally
believed that the Somauli country is barren. This mistake has arisen from the fact that
the barren sandhills of the coast conceal behind them a country of no small fertility, which
supports a considerable pastoral population, who also cultivate some of the better places. Sir
Bartle Frere, who observed their customs, mentions that smoke signals by day and fire beacons
by night give notice along the coast when a vessel is in sight. If the vessel approaches near
the land, as if about to send boats ashore, groups of natives, generally armed, collect from all
quarters, and hie down to the beach over the sandhills. Magadoxo, Marko, Brava, and the few
other spots in the territory are centres of considerable commercial activity. The more opulent
inhabitants live in good masonry houses, so that the towns, when seen from the sea, have a very
imposing appearance. All these towns are well fortified, and capable of being defended against
the surrounding tribes and strangers, who are turned out of the town at sunset. Even where
there is an Arab governor and a garrison from Zanzibar (the Arab Sultan of which is the
nominal ruler of the territory), municipal affairs are generally managed by a sort of council
of elders. Round the walls to some distance are the tents and huts of the nomad population
who have come to trade. The chief articles of commerce are cattle hides, orchilla weed, small
timber, and oil seeds, and a few small horses, donkeys, and camels, with a few such articles
as ivory and ostrich -feathers from the far interior. The Somaulis are a hot-tempered, irascible
race, who know no law but blood for blood, and are prompt to revenge the slightest insult,
but to strangers, who do not offend their prejudices or excite their cupidity, they are by no
means inhospitable.* In religion they are Mohammedans — in name, at least — for a people so
rude can scarcely be expected to be free from savage rites, the ideas and practices of which
die so hard before civilisation.
The KabablsJt, Niam-Niam, Shangkattaw or Barias, &c., are among the other semi -barbarous
or savage tribes allied to the Gallas who surround or enter into the composition of the
Abyssinian empire. The real name of the latter tribe is Baza, the word baria meaning
' ' slaves " in the Abyssinian languages. One of the earliest accounts of them published was
that of Bruce. " They live," he wrote, " during the fair half of the year under the shade
of trees ; they bend the branches down and cover them with the skin of beasts. Every tree
i> then a house, under which dwell a multitude of black inhabitants, till the tropical rains
begin. It is then they hunt the elephant, which they kill by various devices, as well as the
rhinoceros and other large creatures. Where the river horses abound they kill them with
the same industry ; where the trees are thickest and the water in largest pools, there the
* Proceedings of the JRoyal Geographical Society. July, 1873, and February, 1882.
VA1UOUS UPPER NILE TRIBES : THE BARIAS ; THE DWARFS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 219
most populous nations live, who have often defeated the royal armies of Abyssinia/' Their
dress is very scanty, being1 merely a small piece of cloth and sandals, which are not used by
the Abyssinians. Their weapons are a small shield, a double-edged sword, and a spear.
Their religion is half paganism, half Mohammedanism. They are brave, strong1, active, and
hardy, and, what is much less common among their neighbours, are said to be honest
and trustworthy. They are skilful in concealing themselves in places even without shelter
from trees or rocks, in regard to which many tales — true or otherwise — have been told, but
with which I need not trouble the reader.
Perhaps this would be the best place to introduce an account of the races of dwarfs said to
exist in the interior of Africa, which have excited much attention for a long period, and are
likely to be more heard of and perhaps studied in due course. No one whose evidence can be
received as unimpeachable has yet seen the Dokos. Indeed, the whole story rests on the credit of
a Galla slave named Delbo, who had personally visited the country to the south-west of Kaffa,
where the Dokos — as these dwarfs are called — are said to have their dwelling. Much of the
story we must premise is apparently exaggerated and distorted, though it ought to be mentioned
that a traveller of the eminence of the late Dr. Beke regarded this Delbo, who was personally
known to him, as a man worthy of credit."* The word Doko means in the Galla language
only " savage/' and must not be received as the name of any particular tribe. The following is,
somewhat abridged, Delbo's account of this race of pigmies, as given by the well-known
missionary, Dr. Krapf : — " Delbo begins by stating that the people of Doko, both men and
women, are said not to be taller than boys nine or ten years old. They go quite naked. Theii
principal food is ants, snakes, mice, and other things which commonly are not used as food.
They are said to be so skilful at finding- out the ants and snakes, that Delbo could not refrain
from praising them greatly 011 that account. The Dokos are so fond of this food that even when
they become acquainted with better aliment in Enarea and Kaffa, they nevertheless frequently
incur punishment for following their inclination of digging in search of ants and snakes as soon
as they are out of sight of their masters. The skins of snakes are worn by them about their
necks, as ornaments. They also climb trees with great skill to fetch down the fruits, and in
doing- this they stretch their hands downwards and their legs upwards. They live in extensive
forests of bamboo and other wood, which are so thick that the slave-hunters find it very difficult
to follow them in those retreats. These hunters sometimes discover a great number of the Dokos
sitting 011 the trees, and then use the artifice of showing them shining things, by which they are
enticed to descend, when they are captured without difficulty. As soon as a Doko begins to cry
he is killed, from the apprehension that this, as a sign of clanger, will cause the others to take
to their heels. Even the women climb into trees, where, in a few minutes, a great number of
them may be captured and sold into slavery. The Dokos live mixed together ; men and women
unite and separate as they please ; and this Delbo considers as the reason why that tribe has not
been exterminated, though frequently a single slave-dealer returns home with a thousand of
them reduced to slavery. The mother suckles her child only so long as it is unable to find ants
and snakes for its food. She abandons it as soon as it can get its food by itself. No rank or
* Journal of ihe Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii.
220 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
order exists among the Dokos; nobody obeys, nobody orders, nobody defends the country,
nobody cares for the welfare of the nation. They make no attempt to secure themselves by
running away; they are as quick as monkeys, and they are very sensible of the misery prepared
for them by the slave-hunters, who so frequently encircle their forests and drive them into the
open plains like beasts. When thus pressed they are often heard praying. They put their
hands on the ground and stretch their legs upwards, and cry, in a pitiful manner ' Yer, Yer ! ' " *
Dismissing the palpable fables which the Gal la slave told about these Dokos, it may
be allowable to place some credence in his tale, since the pigmy Akkas, or Ticki-Ticki,
who live to the south of the Uelle have been described, and specimens even brought to
Europe, by the Italian explorers. The Akkas, indeed, appear, according to Dr. Schweinfurth —
from whom we derive nearly all our information regarding this race — to be one of a series
of aboriginal tribes who extend along the Equator entirely across Africa. They are not,
in common with the Obongo and Bushmen — to whom we shall be introduced by-and-by —
really dwarfs in the sense that they are in any way deformed, but only short-statured .
Battel, more than two centuries and a half ago, mentioned a race of dwarfs called the
Matimbos, or Dongo, to the north-east of the Sette River, and consequently in the same
region from which Du Chaillu describes the Obongo, in Schweinfurth's and Behm's opinion
closely allied to the Akkas. Indeed, wherever one goes in Africa there are either traces
of or stories about these pigmy peoples, which may be regarded as the last remnants of the
aboriginal substratum which existed on the Continent before the stronger race which now
overrun it had arrived or gained strength. There is even in Madagascar a dwarfish race
known as the Kimos, though their relation to any of the African races is very problematical.
The Akkas are a singular people. Their bodies are curved almost like the letter S, and
they walk with such a waddling lurch that it is next to impossible for any of them to
carry a full dish without spilling some of its contents. They are a cunning, elfish race,
low in intelligence, huge-eared, broad-shouldered, narrow-chested, and ape-like in their
gestures. The Monbutto, among whom some of them have settled, protect them as useful
in obtaining for them food supplies, the Akkas being a nation of hunters, much as the
Ashango enjoy the protection of the Obongo.
The Agows or Shohos are probably the aborigines of Western Abyssinia. They are
Mohammedans, and have a singular aversion to agriculture ; they are simply a pastoral people,
living for the time being in camps or little hamlets of rude huts, made from straw and the
branches of trees, rather neatly formed and thatched. The huts are so placed as to form a
circle, in the centre of which the cattle are penned during the night. One or two places
are left as entrances, but these are closed at nightfall by branches being placed before them.
They are friendly with the Abyssinians, who divide with them the means of existence. The
Abyssinians are an agriexiltui-al people — which, we have seen, the Agows are not. Accordingly,
the Abyssinians, after using their cattle in ploughing the land, entrust them to the care
of an Agow, who pastures them for the remainder of the year, receiving as his payment a
* Probably "God! God!" the work ycro meaning this in the Gall. a language. (Beke, Philological Society's
Journal, vol. ii., p. 97.) See also Krapf : "licisen in Ostafrika," vol. i., pp. 76-79.
THE AGOWS: THEIR PASTORAL PURSUITS; THEIR COSTUME; THEIR HABITS. 221
quantity of corn on their safe return. On the other hand, the rich Agow lends out some
of his superabundant oxen to the poor Christian, who cannot afford to purchase any for
himself. But he in no way interferes with the cultivation of the soil, though thus
continually brought into contact with agriculturists and agricultural affairs. Still, as before,
the Abyssinian hires the oxen, and the Agow shares the crop. In costume they differ as
widely from their neighbours, the Abyssinians, as they do in manners. No longer do we find
THE FIRST CATARACT OF THE NILE, ASSOUAN.
the hair arranged in plaited tresses ; the Agow delights in a bushy wig, his woolly hair
being arranged in two large tufts, one of which is on the top of his head, and the other behind.
" By way of ornamentation, a pin or scratcher is stuck through the front tuft. It is amusing
to see with what a careful air of self-satisfaction a young Shoho will draw out his long hair-pin,
and, after having passed it two or three times through his hair, replace it in the fore-bush
immediately over his forehead, with as much of it protruding as he can possibly manage
without its falling, at the same time smiling most contentedly at nothing at all, or giving vent
to a shrill whistle, as if driving his cattle, perhaps to let all the world know that he is the owner
•22:1 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
of a good herd. The Abyssinians wear breeches and large belts, instead of which the Shohos
sometimes substitute a kilt of cotton stuff, which falls a little below the knee, or content
themselves with the tolc (or cloth) alone, which, in this case, is made to answer the double-
purpose of coat and trousers. Being passed first around the body, so as to cover the lower
extremities, the ends are crossed on the breast and thrown over the shoulders. For convenience,
it is occasionally tied at the back of the neck.""* In character they are bold and energetic,
excellent horsemen and daring hunters, in this respect probably surpassing all the other African
tribes, unless we except the sword-hunting Hamran Arabs. Each settlement is governed by
a Sultan, who, however, true to the instinct of his race, does not inhabit any other house than
the rude temporary hut already described, distinguished, however, outwardly by the presence
of an ostrich shell. In appearance, the Shohos are fairer than any of the surrounding tribes,
and in their domestic manners mild and courteous. The women are accounted beautiful, though
not in the eyes of the negroes, who are never weary of celebrating the loveliness of a soot-
coloured skin. They, in their turn, despise the blacks, though at the present time tributary to
and a component part of the negro kingdom of Bornu.
Closely allied to the Agows are the T'thboos, an athletic race of horsemen, but supremely
ugly; though, unlike the rule among savage people, the women are better-looking than the
men. Ill-favouredness is, however, in no case an obstacle to vanity; nor is it in the case of the
Tibboo, who is fond of admiring his countenance in a pool of water, or still better in a
looking-glass, if this can be obtained. The habit of snuff-taking, to which they are addicted,
does not add to their personal attractions. The snuff is not taken after the usual manner, but is
stuffed up their nostrils until no more can be received. The result of this is that the nostrils
become much distended. Their cheeks are also disfigured, owing to a custom they have of
placing large quantities of snuff between the gums and the lips. They are not such a bold race as
the Agows, being robbed and maltreated by the Tuarik tribes 011 all occasions, without attempting
to retaliate. Of the Arabs they stand in great dread. Major Denham tells us that five or six <.t'
them " will go round a tree where an Arab has laid down his gun for a minute, stepping on
tip-toe, as if afraid of disturbing it; talking to each other in whispers, as if the gun could
understand their exclamations, and I dare say praying to it not to do them any injury, as
fervently as ever Man Friday did to Robinson Crusoe's musket."
Their weapons are the spear, a sword which can be thrown at an enemy, daggers of two
lengths, and the bow and arrows. To guard against attack many of their villages are placed on
the tops of high, perpendicular rocks, and can only be approached by means of ladders, which
are immediately drawn up on the approach of an enemy. Their character is far from amiable.
Cruelly and unmercifully treated, they ai'e themselves equally cruel and heartless. The slave
trade is one of their branches of commerce, and no Arab could pursue it more relentlessly, or
conduct this abominable traffic with more cruelty, than the Tibboos. It is rarely that more
than one-half of the gang of slaves which they start with reach the market, the rest dying of
hunger, thirst, and ill-usage on the way. The whole route they usually take is lined with their
bleached bones, among which the horses' feet crash with a sound which is startling in its
melancholy associations.
Parkyns, "Abyssinia," vol. i., pp. 126, 128.
THE NUBIANS: THEIR TRIBAL DIVISIONS; THEIR CHARACTERISTICS, ETC. 223
The Nubians are reddish-brown in complexion, in some cases even approximating to black,
but of a shade not so deep as the East African negroes. The hair is often frizzled and thick,
and in some individuals not widely different from the "wool" of the negroes. Under the
name of Nubians are comprehended two sections of people alike in physical character, but
speaking distinct languages. The one may possibly be aboriginal, the other foreign. These
are the Eastern Nubians and the Nubians of the Nile
The Eastern Nubians, or, as they are sometimes called, the Nubians of the Red Sea, are
made up of various tribes, such as the Ababbeh, Bisharis, Hadharebe, Souakiny (Bejawys or
Bejas), &c. In character they are savage and inhospitable, and in manners rude and barbarous.
They drink the warm blood of animals, but are not a race of hunters, but pastoral and nomadic.
They are a handsome people, with fine features and expressive eyes, and slender, elegant forms.
Their complexion is generally brown or chocolate colour. Their hair, which is very frizzly, is
arranged in a series of curls which reach below their ears, and of which they are excessively
proud ; but so matted with grease is this coiffure that it cannot be combed. Now, as the Nubian
scalp is occasionally in want of scratching, and for a similar reason to that which necessitates a
like operation on the heads of a variety of people, savage and civilised, that the set of their
coiffure may not be disarranged, they carry about with them a piece of wood resembling a
knitting-needle, with which this disagreeable but necessary act is performed. This pin is
generally worn by being fixed in a curly mass of hair projecting from the summit of the forehead.
The Nubians of the Nile, or as they are called Barabras, or Berberines, are divided into
three sections — the Nubas, Kenoos, and Dongolawi — and inhabit the valley of the Nile from
Egypt to the borders of Sennaar. They are an industrious race, and are found in Egypt in
numbers, owing to their custom of going to that country in the capacity of free labourers.
They plant date-trees and erect irrigating wheels, and sow grass and leguminous plants. In
their disposition they are far superior to the other sections of Nubians just described, being
honest and peaceable, though not slavish. Their dress consists of a white cotton robe, and
their arms of a dagger, spear, and shield of hippopotamus and crocodile hide, with a boss in the
centre. In addition, they frequently carry the straight Hamraii Arab sword (p. 167). The
girls wear nothing but a little apron, gaily dyed, a characteristic of dress which they possess
in common with the Latookas of the same Nile valley. This apron, among the more polished
Nubians, is, howrever, a much more elaborately-ornamented affair, being laden with ornaments
of gold and silver, heirlooms from generation to generation, the arms, neck, and ankles of the
girls being also in most cases ornamented in a similar manner. After she is married a loose
robe is added to this Eve-like garment. Both sexes wear amulets, sewn up in leather, either on
their arms or fastened into their locks, which are saturated with castor-oil.
Their houses are pyramidal mud huts, with a courtyard surrounded by a wall, and shaded
with palms. Though despised by the Arabs, the Nubians are proud of their country, and
are hospitable to strangers, and provident, in so far that they have in the vicinity of
their houses granaries, which are simply shallow pits covered with white plaster. Their
industry is, however, severely repressed by the galling taxes to which the Egyptian Govern-
ment subjects them, the frequent forced labour on public works, and the still more irksome
Iipressment of soldiers in the national army, the duties of which took them for long periods
r from their much-loved homes in the years prior to 1882, when the army was disbanded.
THE PEOPLES OF THE AVOHLD.
The origin of the Barabras seems to be the ancient Nobatae brought in the year 300 from
"an oasis in the west," by Diocletian to inhabit the valley of the Nile. They were then
Christians, but are now Mohammedans, and have altered in many other ways. For instance,
they shave the head, a custom common among some races of Mohammedans, and wear a white
cotton covering1 on it. It may be added that in addition to Arabic there are three dialects
of the Nubian tongue.
FEMALE SLAVE OF THE SOUDAN.
CHAPTER X
THE KAFFIRS, AND ALLIED TRIBES.
BEFORE turning our attention to the negro tribes which are popularly supposed to be charac-
teristic of the African continent, let us sketch in brief but comprehensive detail the great
South African races comprehended under the common name of Kaffirs, and the rude but
interesting nationalities of the Hottentots, and their neighbours the Bushmen of the same
region.
Under the name " Kaffir " are comprised many tribes, and even nationalities, all allied,
however, by common customs and similar dialects, pointing to a pristine origin common to all
<>!' them. The word "Kaffir" is considered by themselves as a term of contempt; but as
e:idi divi>ion of the nation to which it is applied has a separate name, their language supplies no
proper substitute, unless the general terms Sechuano, Bantu, or Zingian — all of which terms,
on various scientific grounds, have been applied to the Kaffir race by various ethnologists — be
lereived in its place. The word used is, however, very immaterial, so long as we know what is
meant by it . Originally the term " Kaffir" was of Arabian origin, and was applied by the voyagers
THE KAFFIR FAMILY; ITS VARIOUS NAMES AND SUBDIVISIONS.
225
that nation to all people when not of the faith of Mohammed. From them it was adopted,
though not with the same significance, by the Portuguese and Dutch, and has now become a
general appellation. In Central Asia are tribes also known as Kaffirs, and from exactly the same
reason, and not because they are, in the most remote manner, related to the African tribes of the
same name. At first, it was applied to the Amaxosa Kaffirs, but by-and-by the Dutch gave the
name of Kaffraria to nearly all the southern part of the continent, including in it the country of
the Hottentots, Bushmen, and, indeed, all the uncivilised nations of South Africa. We shall
scarcely use it in such a free significance. Yet, when we examine the different African
nationalities, it is surprising how widely the race has spread, stretching in some places from
ZULU CHIEF.
the eastern to the western side of the continent. Dr. Latham looks upon the coast of
Zanzibar — as did Dr. Prichard before him — as Kaffir ; " the valley of the Gaboon River, and
the parts north of Angola and Loango, are Kaffir ; southwards, the frontier of the Cape Colony
is Kaffir. Hence, the Kaffir area extends from the Cape to the equator, even beyond the
equator, and that on both sides of Africa.'" In popular parlance, the Kaffir country, Kaffraria
or Kaffirland, is the region on the south-east of the continent between the sea and the
Drakenberg Mountains. Ethnologically, we have seen that the Kaffirs extend much farther,
and are, indeed, one of the widest spread of the African families. The divisions of the race
are (1) the Southern Kaffirs (Amaxosas, Amathymbas, Amapondas, &c.) ; (2) the Amazulos
(or Zulus), Vativas, and other nomadic tribes — including those of Natal — noted for their honesty
md regard for their white neighbours ; (3) the natives of Delagoa Bay and vicinity, who are
lore negro-like than the other divisions of the race ; (4) the Bechuanas, and other tribes to
69
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
the north, who have been so lucidly described by Dr. Livingstone. These Bechuauas inhabit
considerable towns or villages, and live in well-built huts. They till the soil, are provident,
and, for Africans, well advanced in various rude arts and a lowly kind of civilisation.*
Among these offshoots from the Bechuanas are the Balakari, again divided into many
sub-tribes, who inhabit the Kalahari desert, which sterile region they share with the Bushmen, who
are but barely their superiors in degradation and misery. The Bushmen are, however — at least
in modern times — denizens of the desert from choice, while the Balakari are so by compulsion.
They are one of the oldest of the Bechuana tribes, and once possessed enormous herds of cattle,,
but in the vicissitudes to which nations — savage as well as civilised — are subject they were
dispossessed of their fertile land and riches, and driven out into the wastes by a fresh migration
of their own nation. Since that period they have been forced to live under the same physical
conditions as the Bushmen, and illustrate in a striking manner the views of those who consider —
rightly, we think — that locality, unless continued for incalculably long periods, is not in itself
sufficient to account for differences of race. The Bushmen are probably the aborigines of the
southern portion of the continent, and have been ousted from the more fertile portions of South
Africa by the incursions of the Kaffir race, coming from whence we can only guess. AVe shall have
occasion to speak of them more fully in due course. In the meantime, as showing the contrast
between them and the Balakari, I may quote the brief characterisation which the lamented
Livingstone gives of the former people. The Bushmen, he writes, are exceptions in language,
race, habits, and appearance. " They are the only real nomads in the country ; they never
cultivate the soil, nor rear any domestic animal, save wretched dogs. They are so intimately
acquainted with the habits of the game, that they follow them in their migrations, and prey upon
them from place to place, and thus prove as complete a check upon their inordinate increase as
the other carnivora.
" The chief subsistence of the Bushmen is the flesh of game, but that is eked out by what
the women collect of roots and beans, and fruits of the desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy
plains of the desert possess wiry forms, capable of great exertion and severe privations. Many
are of low stature, though not dwarfish. The specimens brought to Europe have been selected,
like coster mongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness ; consequently English ideas of
the whole tribe are formed in the same way as if the ugliest specimens of the English were
exhibited in Africa as characteristic of the entire British nation. That they were like baboons
is in some degree true, just as these and other Simla are in some points frightfully human.
. . . . The Balakari retain in undying vigour the Bechuana love for agriculture and
domestic animals. They hoe their gardens annually, though often all they can hope for is a
supply of melons and pumpkins ; and they carefully rear small herds of goats, though I have
seen them lift water for them out of small wells with a bit of ostrich egg-shell, or by spoonfuls.
They generally attach themselves to influential men in the different Bechuana tribes living
adjacent to their decent homes, in order to obtain supplies of spears, knives, tobacco, and dogs,,
in exchange for the skins of the animals they may kill — two or three species of jackal, a small
* The name "Bechuana," Livingstone thinks, is derived from the word chuana (alike, or equal), with
the personal pronoun Ba (they) prefixed; and, therefore, means " fellows," or " equals." Their language is called
Biehtaaut.
THE KAFFIR FAMILY : ITS DISTRIBUTION. 227
•ocelot, a lynx, wild cat, spotted cat, and other small animals, beside antelope of various
species, lions, leopards, panthers, and hyaenas. During the time I was in the Bechuana
country, between twenty and thirty thousand skins were made up into harasses — part of which
were worn by the inhabitants, and part sold to the traders ; many, I believe, found their way
to China. The Bechuanas bought tobacco from the eastern tribes, then purchased skins with
it from the Balakari, tanned them, and sewed them up into karosses (or blanket dresses), and
then went south to purchase heifer-calves with them, cows being the highest form of riches
known, as I had often noticed from their asking ' if Queen Victoria had many cows/ The
compact they enter into is mutually beneficial, but injustice and wrong are often perpetrated
by one tribe of Bechuanas going among the Balakari of another tribe, and compelling them to
deliver up the skins, which they may be keeping for their friends. They are a timid race, and
in bodily development often resemble the aborigines of Australia. They have thin legs and
arms, and large protruding abdomens, caused by the coarse, indigestible food they eat. Their
children's eyes lack lustre ; I never saw them at play. A few Bechuanas may go into a
village of Balakari and domineer over them with impunity ; but when the same adventurers
meet the Bushmen, they are fain to change their manners to fawning sycophancy ; they know
that if the request for tobacco is refused, those free sons of the desert may settle the point as
to its possession by a poisoned arrow."*
Ever in fear of the visit of unfriendly, or, what is just the same, stronger, tribes of
Bechuanas, the Balakari lead a life even more miserable than their wretched home affords
them. To avoid these marauders they live at a distance from water, and not unfrequently
conceal their stores by burying them in a sandpit, and making a fire over the spot to efface any
traces of the ground having been recently disturbed. The water is conveyed from the scattered
desert pools by the women in ostrich shells. Each ostrich shell has a hole in the end of it,
such as would admit one's finger, and each woman will carry for long distances twenty or
thirty of these primitive water-vessels in a net or bag slung over her back. " The women tie
a bunch of grass to one end of a reed about two feet long, and insert it into a hole dug as
•deep as the arm will reach, then ram down the wet sand firmly round it. Applying the mouth
to the free end of the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath, in which the water
collects, and in a short time rises into the mouth. An egg-shell is placed on the ground
alongside the reed, some inches below the mouth of the sucker ; a straw guides the water into
the hole of the vessel, as she draws mouthful after mouthful from below. The water is made to
pass along the outside, not through the straw. If any one will attempt to squirt water into a
bottle placed some distance below his mouth, he will perceive the wisdom of the Bushwomaivs
contrivance for giving the stream direction by means of a straw. The whole stock of water is
thus passed through the woman's mouth as a pump, and when taken home is carefully buried.
I have come into villages where, had we acted a domineering part and rummaged every hut, wy
should have found nothing ; but by sitting down quietly, and waiting with patience until the
villagers were led to form a favourable opinion of us, a woman would bring out a shellful of the
precious fluid from I know not where."
Before passing from this sketch of one of the Bechuana offshoots, let us remark that
* " Missionary Travels " (first edition), p. 51.
,
22 8 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
though styled a desert, the Kalahari is by no means one. In addition to affording a subsistence
for multitudes of wild animals, the skins of which have a visible effect on the peltry markets
of the world, and various regular inhabitants, it has at one time and another afforded refuge
to many a fugitive tribe. First the Balakari, and after them the unfortunate Bechuana
tribe, took shelter in it, as their lands were overturned by the Matebele, another Kaffir tribe.
In their turn the Backwains, Bangwatkze, and Bamangwato — all Kaffir tribes — fled hither,
hotly pursued by the Matebele marauders, hundreds of whom met a thirsty grave in their
attempts to follow through the desert paths. The Matebele had come from the well- watered
north-east, and unable to endure thirst for long periods they perished in the arid track,
into which a false guide, an emissary of one of the hunted chiefs, had led them for hundreds
of miles. On one occasion a party of these marauders entered a Bushman village, and
demanded water. They were calmly told that they had none, and never used any. Thinking
to compel them to bring it forth, the robbers watched day and night for several days ; until,
tormented by thirst they could no longer endure, they cried out, " Yak ! yak ! these are
not men ; let us go ! " and go they did.
Another of these branches from the great Bechuana tribe of Kaffirs are the Makololo, or
Baroze. More fortunate, however, than their compatriots the Balakari, they inhabit a com-
paratively fertile country, but are nevertheless an example of the vicissitudes we illustrated in
the case of the latter people. Originally a branch of the Bechuana, as we have already
mentioned, they were conquered and organised by the celebrated Basuto chief, Sibituano, into
a formidable people incorporated with the tribes whom he had conquered. During his life-
time, this Makololo kingdom survived in prosperity ; but under the reign of his son it began
to fall to pieces, and in 1861« entirely broke up into the varied tribes it was originally
formed out of. To a great extent they differ from the other Kaffir tribes, in the fact that
they are not nomadic, but, living on the banks of the Zambesi, are canoe-men and fishers. In
jjfi//xtr/ii(>, the Makololo are splendid, being of a light-brown colour, and speaking with a clear
deliberate intonation, different from the quick musical jingle characteristic of the language of
most of the other Kaffir tribes or nationalities. Their character is rather good, though they
have never shown themselves particularly courageous, either in war or in the hunt.
The Diiniiiiunis — a corruption of Da m up — "the people" is another, though remote
connection of the great Kaffir race. By some writers, such as General Sir James Alexander,
they are classed as negroes ; but though they are rather negroid in appearance, their language
shows that we must place them under the Kaffir wing. When they branched off from that
people is unknown; their own rather modest account of their origin — viz., that they are
descended from a Hottentot mother and a baboon father, though possibly agreeable to certain
theorists — having to be dismissed as a primitive anthropological myth. Of the Dammaras,
there are two divisions, widely different from each other. There are the Dammaras of the
plains, who are rich in herds of cattle, which afford a great temptation to the Namaquas, a
Hottentot tribe living to the southward of them, and between them and the Orange K
Accordingly, there are never-ending wars between these two people. The Hill Dammaras, 01
the contrary, own no cattle, and, like the Bushmen, subsist by the hunt and on roots. The
Hill Dammaras are, from their inferior food, less robust than those of the plains, many
of whom, nevertheless, live among the Namaquas as slaves. Sir James Alexander describes
ZULU CHIEF IN FULL DRESS.
230 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
both divisions of Dammaras as black, with woolly hair, small round noses, and thick lips.
Their huts are conical, and built of stakes driven into the ground covered with " wattle," i.e.,
branches plastered over with clay. The Plain Dammaras are circumcised, and extract two front
teeth of the lower jaw. With the exception of a piece of skin about the waist, reaching to the
knees, men and women are almost naked, though in war-time the men wear a plume of ostrich
feathers, and a leopard or lion skin thrown over their shoulders, with sandals of the Bechuana
type, which are, however, never worn by women. Bows, arrows, and a short javelin (or assegai]
are their weapons. It is probable that the Hill Dammaras are — as Prichard has pointed out —
like most outcast races, a mixed people, and more or less intermingled with the Namaquas
among whom they live.*
To describe all of these tribes, or national subdivisions in detail, would be a task which
would occupy space far beyond our limits, even were it necessary. They are all subdivisions
of the same race, and though, in course of time, they have taken up customs peculiar to each
division, yet, on the whole, there is a broad similarity in many of their habits. Accordingly,
we will sketch these out in general detail, adding, when necessary, a reference to the tribe or
nationality of which a particular trait may be specially characteristic.
APPEARANCE AND GENERAL CHARACTER.
In complexion the Kaffirs are not black, but blackish-red ; their hair is crisp, inclining to
woolly, but the nose is not so flat, nor the complexion so dark, as a rule, as that of the negro.
They liave also shown far more aptitude for civilisation than the black man. Where they
came from will ever remain a mystery. By some this region is believed to be the north of
Africa, or even Asia, but there is no good ground for the belief that they are Arabians. Many
of them are so negro-like that from whatever region they originally came, they seem not only to
have driven out the aboriginal population, but to have, to some extent at least, commingled with
them, or with some negroid people. In disposition they are cheerful, careless, and light-
hearted. Their wardrobe costs them (as it consists of) next to nothing, and living under a
despotic government, to which they have been accustomed from childhood to look up to as
allowing them their lives under a most unstable tenure — their lease of existence being liable to
}>e cut short at any moment, at the will or caprice of the king or chief — they became in time
indifferent to it, and free from the harassing care about death with which those enjoying
greater security of life are apt to be encumbered. That this is the reason I have little doubt, for
\\hen the Kaffirs come to live under the British Government, and become accustomed to look
upon their lives as their own, they get just as anxious and careworn as the rest of us. Their
intellect is good, and their mind subtle and keen at argument. Gil Bias never lay in wait with
more zest for the unwary traveller with whom to enter into a logical discussion, than does Bishop
Colenso's " intelligent Zulu." He is ever ready for an argument, and is skilful to the last degree
at the barren work of chopping words and splitting hairs. Unlike some savages, the Kaffir
is not only dignified in his bearing, but with a high sense of honour, and is far from revengeful
or ready to take affront at trifles. He is, moreover, fond of his little joke, even though this
savours of the practical, and is affectionate to his family, attached to his home and country,
* For an account of some tribes not described here, see Scrpa Pinto: "How I Crossed Africa" (1881);
Capello and Ivens : "From Benguella to Yacca," (1882); and Holub : "Seven Years in South Africa" (1881).
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: KAFFIR CHARACTER; HOSPITALITY; HONESTY.
sociable in all the relations of life, and hospitable so far as means will admit of ; so that the
tout ensemble of the Kaffir character is not a very unpleasant one.
Speaking of the hospitality of one of the allied Kaffir nations, the Makololo, Livingstone
writes : — " The people of every village treated us most liberally, presenting, beside oxen, butter-
milk and meal, more than we could stow away in our canoes. The cows in this valley are now
yielding, as they frequently do, more milk than the people can use, and both men and women
present butter in such quantities, that I shall be able to refresh my men as we go along.
Anointing the skin prevents the excessive evaporation of the fluids of the body, and acts as
clothing in both sun and shade. They always make their presents gracefully. When an ox
was given, the owner would say, ' Here is a bit of bread for you/ This was pleasing, for I had
been accustomed to the Bechuauas presenting a miserable goat, with the pompous exclamation,
' Behold an ox ! ' The women persisted in giving me copious supplies of shrill praises, or
' lullilooing;' but although I frequently told them to modify their 'great lords' and ' great
lions ' to more humble expressions, they so evidently intended to do me honour, that I could
not help being pleased with the poor creatures' wishes for our success/'
When Livingstone left the Makololos' land for the Cape, they made a garden and planted
maize for him, that he might, " as well as other people/ ' have food to eat when he returned. It
is the universal rule of the country that the chief should feed all strangers who come to him on
special business ; but though a present is usually given to him in return, nothing — unless the
aboriginal custom has been much modified — is asked in return. Livingstone complains that
Europeans — often with the best of intentions — by their conduct spoil the feeling that hos-
pitality is the sacred duty of the chiefs. On the contrary, under other circumstances it would
be laudable. No sooner do Europeans arrive in a village than they offer to purchase food ; and,
instead of waiting until a meal has been prepared for them in the evening, cook themselves,
and ever afterwards decline to partake of what is made ready for their use. A present is also
made, and before long the natives expect a gift without any equivalent having been offered. If
a stranger has an acquaintance among the under chiefs, they turn aside to his establishment,
and are treated quite as hospitably as among the higher civil dignitaries. Hospitality is so
engrained in their social economy, that one of their most cogent arguments in favour of poly-
gamy is, that a man with one wife is unable to entertain strangers in the manner he ought ;
and more especially is this a weighty reason, when the women are the chief cultivators, and have
control over the corn and other stores. It must, however, be added, that, among the Kaffirs,
as elsewhere, those who have no friends are very apt to suffer from hunger when travelling.
On the other hand, the honesty of the Makololo affords a brilliant but most exceptional
contrast to the dishonesty of other tribes. Thus, for instance, the Bechuanas are notorious thieves.
Dr. Moffat — the father-in-law of Dr. Livingstone, and little less celebrated as a missionary —
who resided for many years among this tribe, and who would scarcely be inclined to under-
estimate what virtues they possess, declares himself most unreservedly on this point. " Some
nights, or rather mornings/' writes this eminent man, " we had to record thefts committed in the
course of twenty-four hours, in our house, our smith-shop, our garden, and among our cattle in
the fields. These they have more than once driven into a bog or mire, at a late hour informing
us of the accident, as they termed it; and as it was then too dark to render assistance, one or
more would fall a prey to hyaenas or hungry natives. One night they entered our cattle-fold,
232
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
killed one of our best draught oxen, and carried the whole away, except one shoulder. We
wore compelled to use much meat, from the great scarcity of grain and vegetables ; our sheep
we had to purchase at a distance, and very thankful might we be if, out of twenty, we secured
the largest half for ourselves. They would break their legs, cut off their tails, and more
frequently carry off the whole carcase. Tools, such as saws, axes, and adzes, were losses
severely felt, as we could not at that time replace them, when there was no intercourse with
the colony. Some of our tools and utensils which they stole, on finding the metal not what
they expected, they would bring back, beaten into all shapes, and offer them in exchange for some
other articles of value. Knives were always eagerly coveted ; our metal spoons they melted, and
HOTTENTOT " KUAAL."
when we were supplied with plated iron ones, which they found not pliable, they supposed
them bewitched. " Very often, when employed working at a distance from the house, if there
was no one in whom he could confide, the missionary would be compelled to carry them all to
the place where he went to seek a glass of water, well knowing that if they were left they
would take wings before he could return. They would steal anything and everything — the put
that Dr. Moffat was cooking his food in, the meat out of the pot, the water out of the canals IK
was irrigating his garden with, the vegetables he raised, and would even rob the missionary's house
while he was preaching. Unlike most savage people, they do not spare their own race, pilfering
from other Bechuanas as readily as from the whites, and even the sacred person of the chief
forms no aegis to their thieving propensities, his property being as freely pilfered as that of the
meanest member of his tribe. Their mendacity, combined with a large amount of insolence and
knavish impertinence, seems to have no bounds. The worst of it all is, that, like the Spartans,
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: DISHONESTY; DRESS; ORNAMENTS, ETC.
they do not look upon theft as a crime, a trait of character they share with most savages, whose
only idea of the turpitude of sin consists in the grievousness of being found out, and the punish-
ment which ensues as a natural consequence. An idea of wrong, derived from innate moral
consciousness, seems nevev to enter into their mental organisation. The common dress of the men
— as well as the women — consists of the kaross, or cloak of the skins of wild animals, though of
late years they have to a great extent discarded it in favour of the European blanket. Feathers as
head-ornaments, a waistcloth, and an endless variety of bracelets, necklaces, leg-ornaments, &cv
KAFFIR FAMILY.
of beads, teeth, ivory, and various tags, complete the male ornaments. The women's dress
bears a considerable resemblance to that of the men. In early life neither boys nor girls weai
any clothing — unless, indeed, a shining coat of oil and paint, if the parents can afford it, is to
be looked upon in this light. After she has reached years of womanhood an apron is the girl's
first and almost only garment until she marries. This apron consists mainly in a series of
fringed cords suspended from a beaded belt, but varies in grandeur according to the wealth or
rank of the lady's parents or husband. After she is betrothed a petticoat of soft leather is
added to this apron, and her married costume is completed by the young wife shaving off her
hair, leaving only an upright, well-greased and well-painted tuft on the top of her head. A
piece of skin, beaded down the middle, and suspended from the chest as low as the knee, is also
a frequent addition to Kaffir female wardrobe. Bracelets around the arms, wrists, legs, and
70
234 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
ankles are as equally popular among the women as among the men. For their heads a much-
valued ornament is a circlet of beads, or a girdle of greased leather, worn gracefully around
the waist. Finally, we may mention that porcupine quills worn in the woolly locks of the Kaffir
belle on high occasions, such as dances, &c., are looked upon as diamonds and pearls are in more
civilised (?) society. Earrings are worn by both sexes, and are usually of great size, being-
enlarged yearly by larger and larger ornaments being forced through the original hole made in
the lobe until an ancient dandy is capable of wearing as an auricular ornament such elegancies
as a snuffbox, an ivory door-knob, or some equally appropriate bit of jewellery.
Their huts, like those of most African tribes, are circular erections thatched with reeds, and
sometimes plastered interiorly with clay (p. 232) . They have been likened most appropriately to
a beehive, or to the winter snow-house erected by the Eskimo. Of all the Kaffir tribes, the
Bechuanas are the most skilful architects, building really substantial and comfortable dwellings;
the bulk of the labour in this, as in nearly everything else, falling to the lot of the women, the
men simply looking on and suggesting improvements ; this employment being one in which
the Kaffir gentleman peculiarly excels. Hard work is hardly so much in his way. Outside
of the huts are few ornaments of any description, with the exception of the skulls of departed
cows slaughtered at feasts, and placed there to demonstrate to all passers-by the magnificence
of the indwellers, who can afford and are liberal enough to have beef at their banquets.
There is no chimney, the smoke escaping by holes in the roof as best it may.
Unwelcome guests are debarred entrance by a door of wicker-work. The interior is rude
but comfortable. To the roof is suspended a bunch of maize, all blackened by the smoke, which
hangs in the form of flakes of soot from the ears and leaves. Around are placed pots for
holding milk and beer. The floor is cleanly swept, and will, in some of those of the better
class, be made out of kneaded clay, taken from the white ant-hills or nests. No cooking is
done in the hut. In villages, at least, this is performed in a special hut set apart for the
purpose, and which, though common property, is a rather rude affair, being only built so as to
protect the cooks from the wind, but from no other inclemencies of the weather. It not
unfrequently happens that the pillars of the dwelling-hut are ornamented with beads, so thickly
laced on that the post seems as if cased in them. The huts are placed in groups or hamlets,
known to Europeans as kraals, surrounded by a general fence. Inside of this, and in the middle
of the village, is a second enclosure for cattle, in addition to a smaller fenced-off place for the
calves. The chiefs house and harem are at the other side of the enclosure, opposite to the gate.
This harem is guarded, not by eunuchs, but a troop of naked warriors, who are selected for one
qualification, and one alone — viz., their extreme ugliness. For this office, as well as that of
shutting the gates of the enclosure by night, the most deformed and ill-favoured of the
tribesmen are selected ; under the idea that they will be all the more inclined to perform their
duties in a stern uncompromising way, when their sense of allegiance to the chief is not
weakened by their being favoured in the eyes of the ladies of that dignitary's family.
Into the inner enclosure (or isa-baya as it is called) the cows are driven and milked every
night by the men, the women, curiously enough, not being allowed to enter the enclosure
under pain of death. This work of milking the cows is about the only household labour the
Kaflir male performs, but in this IK- takes great pride. While milking, he continually si-reams,
speaks in a loud voice, and whistles, to encourage the cow to give up her milk, so that
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: COWS AS WEALTH ; THEIR USE; HORN TRAINING, ETC. 235
Kaffir cows can only be milked by Kaffirs. Unless tins whistling, shouting, &c., go on
during the operation, the animal will refuse to yield her milk. Cows constitute the wealth of
all the Kaffir tribes. Everything is valued according to its equivalent in cows, up to a wife,
whose average vahie is well understood to be eight cows. Most of their wars are instigated by
a desire to increase their bovine wealth ; the consequence of every individual being in exact
proportion to the number of cattle which he possesses. In their herds they take great pride
and care. On certain days of the year they train their horns in peculiar fantastic forms.
The very proverbs of the people are mixed up with allusions to their pastoral pursuits.
Thus, while we say that "you cannot take the breeches off a Highlandman/' the Kaffir,
in allusion to a similar difficulty in getting payment where no assets exist, remarks regarding
the difficulty of getting tossed by a hornless cow. Without cattle the Kaffir would be helpless.
He eats its flesh, and consumes its milk mixed with maizemeal in the form of a porridge, or
drinks it after it has soured and begun to ferment. After this fermentation has set in, the thick
clotted substance which remains is eaten under the name of amasi. This constitutes a great
portion of the Kaffir's food, for it is only on high occasions that he can afford to eat meat.
Again, he uses his cattle as beasts of burden and for riding purposes, the place of a bridle
being supplied by a cord attached to the two ends of a stick through the nostrils of this somewhat
peculiar steed. He uses no saddle, and is far from a graceful rider ; a seaman on horseback
is an elegant object in comparison ; while a tailor indulging in equitation is absolutely a
pleasing sight when put alongside of the jolting, jerking, and rolling from side to side which
constitute the " cowmanship " of the Kaffir. Horses are now, however, gradually superseding
the ox as a riding animal, though some steady old conservative gentlemen stick with charac-
teristic pertinacity to the original beast of burden of their ancestors.
We have spoken of the annual training of the horns of the cattle. An early traveller
in South Africa — the celebrated French naturalist, Le Yaillant — has so graphically described
the process that we cannot do better than quote him — " I had not yet/' he writes, " taken
a near view of the horned cattle which they brought with them, because at break of day
they strayed to the thickets and pastures, and were not brought back by their keepers until the
evening. One day, however, having repaired to their kraal very early, I was much surprised
when I first beheld one of these animals. I scarcely knew them to be oxen and cows, not only
on account of their being much smaller than ours, since I observed in them the same form and
the same fundamental character, in which I could not be deceived, but on account of the
multiplicity of their horns, and the variety of their different twistings. They had a great
resemblance to the marine productions known by naturalists under the name of ' stags' horns/
Being at this time persuaded that these concretions, of which I had no idea, were a peculiar
present of Nature, I considered the Kaffir oxen as a variety of the species; but I was undeceived by
my guide, who informed me that this was only the effect of their invention and taste, and that
by means of a process with which they were well acquainted, they could not only multiply these
horns, but also give them any form that their imaginations might suggest. Having offered to
exhibit their skill in my presence if I had any desire of learning their method, it appeared to me
so new and uncommon that I was willing to secure an opportunity, and for several days I
attended a regular course of lessons on this subject. They take the animal at as early an age
as possible, and when the horns begin to appear they make a small vertical division in them
236
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
with a saw, or any other instrument that may be substituted for it, and divide them into two
parts. This division makes the horns, yet tender, separate of themselves, so that in time the
animal has four very distinct ones. If they want to have six, or even more, similar notches
made with the saw produce as many as may be required. But if they are desirous of forcing
one of these divisions in the whole horn to form, for example, a complete circle, they cut away
from the point, which must not be hurt, a small portion of its thickness, and this amputation,
often renewed, and with much patience, makes the horn bend in a contrary direction, and the
point meeting the root, it exhibits the appearance of a perfect circle. As it is certain that
incisions always cause a greater or less degree of bending, it may be readily conceived that
every variation that caprice can imagine may be produced by this simple method. In short,
CAMP OF KAFFIRS.
one must be born a Kaffir, and have his taste and patience, to submit to that minute care and
unwearied attention required for this operation, which in Kaffirland can only be useless, but in
other climates would be hurtful/' for cattle could not protect themselves from wild animals.*
Before concluding this sketch of one phase of Kaffir domestic economy, we may
mention another peculiar custom connected with it, as found among the Backwains, a sub-
division of the Bechuanas, namely, the custom of men of little consequence attaching them-
selves to the household of greater ones. Among the chiefs of this tribe it is customar
Livingstone tells us, as among other people, savage and civilised, to cement their powiT
marrying the (laughters of sub-chiefs. The government is patriarchal, each man being, by
virtue of paternity, the chief over his own family. His children accordingly, when they grow
* This custom of twisting the horns of cattle is a very ancient one, as it is represented on the Egyptian
monuments as having been practised in that country, as well as in Ethiopia, in early times.
238 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
up, build their huts around his, and thus it happens that the greater a man's family the more
powerful he is. This is the reason why children are looked upon as great blessings, and,
independently of any natural affection on the part of the parent, is also a cogent reason for
treating them kindly. In the centre of each circle of huts there is a place called the kotla, with
a, fire, which is used as the central meeting-place for the family. Here they sit all day long,
eating, working, or gossiping over the tribal or village news. " A poor man attaches himself to
the kotla of a rich one, and is considered a child of the latter. An under-chief has a number of
these circles around his, and the collection of kotlas around the great one in the middle of the
whole, namely, that of the principal chief, constitutes the town. The circle of huts immediately
around the kotla of the chief is composed of the huts of his wives, and those of his blood
relations. He attaches the under chiefs to himself and his government by marrying their
daughters, or inducing his brothers to do so. They are fond of the relationship to great families.
If you meet a party of strangers, and the head man's relationship to some uncle of a certain chief
is not at once proclaimed by his attendants, you may hear him whispering ' Tell him who I am/
This usually involves a counting on the fingers of a part of his genealogical tree, and ends in
the important announcement that the head of the party is half -cousin to some well-known ruler."
In fact, so far as this pride of being related even to the fortieth cousinship to some "big chief"
is concerned, we might have been discussing the custom of Kelt-land instead of Kaffirland.
Both regions were at one time under a similar feudal system, and the result is much the same
in the two regions — the Kaffir having the advantage, if anything, over the Scottish Highlander
in this respect.
MARRIAGE.
The Kaffirs believe in marrying early — and often. Polygamy is an institution amongst
them, a man's wives being only limited by his ability and willingness to buy them. The
price of this article of domestic economy in the Kaffir ready reckoner we have already
incidentally noted — viz., eight cows = one wife, though in the case of exceptionally ugly or useless
damsels the price may be lowered to five ; or when she is a lady of extraordinary beauty or
rank the price set against her may be as high as fourteen.* Beyond that quotation there are
no records of transactions having been effected in the matrimonial market of Kaffirland.
Occasionally it will happen that a poor man, anxious to curry favour, or for the sake of the
honour and influence which such a high connection may be expected to secure, will come
humbly and proffer his daughter as a wife to the king or to some high chief, without payment;.
but these are exceptional cases, and cannot be looked upon as even a distant approximation
to the universal rule of Kaffirland, which is, no cow, no wife. The wives do all the work,
and bsar all the blows and hard usage. It is the old, old story of savage married life over
again. From her youth upward she knows no other lot than that of a household drudge.
From building the house, to planting the sesd and preparing the food, all the work falls to he
lot. Accordingly, polygamy, if not popular with the women, is at least tolerated by thn
in so far that it divides the household duties among several, and so makes their life less
* Of course all this is very barbarous. But we must remember that cattle v. wives was an old method
commerce among the primitive inhabitants of Britain, and that union"1 the same people, as well as in compara
ti\vly recent times in Brittany and Wales, " marriage by force" prevailed.
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: MARRIAGE; THE WIFE'S PRIVILEGES; ORPHANS. 239
wearisome and irksome than it would otherwise be. The first wife, as is usual among all
savages, has also a pre-eminence over the others, though it commonly happens that the youngest
and strongest is the favourite of the husband. Each wife has a hut of her own ; nevertheless,
much jealousy and bickering prevail amongst them, and not unfrequently the husband has
to call in the sharp arbitrator of the stick to settle disputes, or to protect the favourite wife
from ill-usage by the other older and less-favoured ones. If you ask a native how he can treat
his wife so hardly, he will, with the most unabashed countenance, inform you that he bought
her and paid for her ; therefore, is she not his own ? When he pays for an ox he works it,
does he not ? what more is a wife ? This is, perhaps, the extreme view, but it is absolutely
the gist of a recorded conversation with a native. Still, in many cases the wife is a woman
of some importance. The civilisation of the Kaffir is comparatively high ; and accordingly,
we might expect, that though woman has to suffer much, yet that the natural laws of society
would extend some protection over her, if for nothing else than to protect the males of her
family. Accordingly, when a man marries a wife for the first time, all the cows that he
possesses are regarded as her property. The milk she uses for the support of herself and family,
and after the birth of her first son, they are called his property. " Theoretically ," writes Mr.
Shooter — one of the best authorities on Kaffir customs — " the husband can neither sell nor
dispose of them [the cattle] without the wife's consent. If he wish to take a second wife, and
require any of these cattle for the purpose, he must obtain her concurrence. When I asked a
native how this was to be procured, he said by flattery and coaxing, or if that did not
succeed, by bothering her until she yielded, and told him not to do so to-morrow — i.e., for the
future. Sometimes she becomes angry, and tells him to take all, for they are not hers, but
his. If she comply with her husband's polygamous desires, and furnish cattle to purchase
a new wife, shs will be entitled to her services, and will call her my wife. She will also
be entitled to the cattle received for a new wife's eldest daughter. The cattle assigned to the
second wife are subject to the same rules, and so on, while fresh wives are taken. Any wife
may furnish the cattle necessary to add a new member to the harem, and with the same
consequences as resulted to the first wife ; but it seems that the queen, as the first is called, can
claim the right of refusal/' If a man dies, his property is equally divided among his children —
i.e., supposing the first or head wife had no son. But if she had, then he inherits all that his
father has, though, if there be several wives and each has a son, then this eldest son of each
house inherits the property belonging to that house, though the eldest son of the head wife
exercises much authority over the others. If a man dies without sons, then the nearest of
male kin inherits his property, and if he has no male relatives, the chief becomes (as amongst
us) the ultima hares. The women only in very exceptional cases inhei'it anything, being
looked upon as so much property to be disposed of, and inherited like the cattle and other
effects. A girl who, therefore, becomes an orphan, goes to the house of the man who inherits
her father's property, and who acts to her, at least so far as disposing of her in marriage goes,
3xactly as her father — that is, he finds her a husband, and receives the bovine equivalent in
3xchange for her. Even should she have no male relatives, the chief is then bound to act
in loco parentis. She may even go to another tribe (and the exigencies of war will sometimes
compel an orphan to do so), and claim the protection of the chief or some other man. She
always received cordially, and for the simple reason that she can always be made useful, and
240
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
at the worst is good for eight cows. If, however, the girl's male relatives should turn up, then
the temporary guardian is bound to hand her over to them ; or if she has been married, to pay
over the cows he had received for her, with, however, a deduction for her maintenance, and any
other expenses incurred on her behalf. To sell a girl is no degradation in the parent's eye ; to
be sold is an honour ; it is looked upon by the girl herself as a tribute of respect, and her
purchaser is quite proud of what he has paid. The parents and the girl regard a high price
as complimentary to the beauty or other merits of the damsel, and she sits by, an interested and
proud listener, to the haggling going on in reference to the price put on her charms. A Kaffir
ZULU " DOCTOR."
suitor would, on the other hand, think himself demeaned did he accept a wife without paying for
her. It would look like as if he was so poor that he could not afford to pay for the luxury.
Here again we will place ourselves under obligations to Mr. Shooter. Before giving this
extract I may mention that payment, unless under very exceptional circumstances, is made in
advance, "time bargains" not being in favour with gentlemen in Kaffraria having uxorial stock
to dispose of. As soon as the payment is made she is delivered over to her husband, though
usually she gets a few weeks' notice of her fate. " Barbarous as they are," writes Mr. Shooter,
" the Kaffirs are aware that it is better to reason with a woman than to beat her; and I am inclined
to think that moral means are usually employed to induce a girl to adopt her parents' choice
before physical arguments are resorted to. Sometimes very elaborate efforts are made, as I have
been told, to produce this effect. The first step is to speak well of the man in her presence; the
THE KAFFIR FAMILY : A MATRIMONIAL BARGAIN ; GIRL v. CATTLE.
211
kraal conspire to praise him, her sisters praise him, all the admirers of his cattle praise him, he
was never so praised before. Unless she is very resolute, the girl may now perhaps be prevailed
on to see him, and a messenger is despatched to communicate the hopeful fact, and to summon
him to the kraal. Without loss of time he prepares to show himself to the best advantage ; he
goes down to the river, and having carefully washed his dark person, he comes up again,
dripping and shining like a dusky Triton; but the sun soon dries his skin, and now he ehines
again with grease. His dancing attire is put on, a vessel of water serving for a mirror, and
thus clothed in his best, and carrying shield and assegai, he sets forth with beating heart and
KAFFIR SERVANTS IN EUROPEAN DRESS.
gallant step to do battle with the scornful belle. Having reached the kraal, he is received with
a hearty welcome, and squatting down in the family ' circle ' (which is here something more
than a figure of speech), he waits the lady's appearance. Then having surveyed him sufficiently
in his present attitude, she desires him, through her brother (for she will not speak to him) , to
stand up and exhibit his proportions. The modest man is embarrassed, but the mother
encourages him, and while the young ones laugh and jeer, he rises before the damsel. She
now scrutinises him in this position, and having balanced the merits and defects of a first view,
desires him (through the same medium as before) to turn round and favour her with a different
aspect. At length he receives permission to squat again, when she retires as mute as she came.
The family troop rush after her, impatient to learn her decision ; but she declines to be hasty —
she has not seen him walk, and perhaps he limps. So, next morning, the unfortunate man
71
24>2 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
appears in the cattle-fold to exhibit his paces before a large assembly. A volley of praises is
showered upon him by the interested spectators j and perhaps the girl has come to think as they
think, and signifies her approval. In this case arrangements are made for the betrothal."
In most cases the acceptance or not of a man lies with the girl herself, and cases .have
occurred where the suitor has been so very ugly as to be unable to obtain a wife anywhere. In
this respect the Kaffir ladies show better taste than their sisters in Europe,, where this operates
as no obstacle in a matrimonial adventure so long as the cow equivalent is possessed by the
ill-favoured lover. Elopements are also not unknown, but the pride of a Kaffir in most cases
rebels against this; he likes to have the credit of paying for his wife after the legitimate
manner. That much affection is wasted, as a rule, by the Kaffir husband on his wife or wives
can hardly be expected, but it is too sweeping an assertion to say, as Lichtensteiii has in regard
to the Koussa Kaffir, that in every case there is no feeling of love in marriage.*
Among the Makololo the wife occupies a higher rank than is usual among other tribes.
True, she is purchased, but her purchase money is only looked upon as an equivalent to her
father for the loss of her services, and as payment for any children which she may bear to her
husband, and which by law belong not to the father but to the grandfather. The wife, even
when purchased, is still not wholly her husband's, her father's right of property in her being-
so far secured that if she dies her husband must pay her parents an ox as compensation.
Though polygamy prevails among the Makololo, yet, unlike most of the other Kaffir tribes, the
men take their share of work, carving boxes, making wooden pots, bowls, jars, &c., while each
wife cultivates a piece of land, and so adds to the family wealth. Here we see polygamy in its
best form, and not altogether an unmitigated evil. The widely. spread savage custom of
marriage by force prevails also among some of the Kaffir tribes. The Kambas (Wakamba
Ukambia), &c., living 400 miles from the coast, and the special traders of South Africa, have still
preserved this habit. The wealthy men amongst them marry ten or more wives, who attend
to the husband's property — in fact, are simply so many slaves. These marriages are made at
fifteen, and even twelve years of age, though it is not uncommon to find persons of twenty or
twenty-five years old still unmarried. Dr. Krapf thinks that marriage is checked by the lavi>v
sum required to be paid for a wife, and also by the fact that the bride must be married off by
force after the preliminaries are completed. This is attempted by all the friends and relatives
whom the bridegroom can muster up, while it is resisted by the friends and relatives of the
woman. Now and then the unlucky husband is discomfited, in which case he is driven to seixe
his wife by stealth, when she is alone in the woods or fetching water from the spring. AYhen
she is brought home the price is paid, and the contest is at an end.
The marriage ceremony is rather an elaborate affair. Briefly described, the following are
the main features of it. The girl, gaily arrayed in her bridal dress, her head shaved with an
(ixveijai (or javelin), and the shaving-brush-like tuft on her crown painted red, starts in
joyous procession to her husband's house, escorted by all her female friends and male
relatives, armed to the teeth, but otherwise in gala dress. Oxen are then presented to the
bride's mother to cater for the marriage feast, and much by-play ensues, with not a little
rough joking on either side. A feast then follows, accompanied with dancing, in which the
* " Travels in South Africa," vol. i., p. 261 ; also the works of Leslie, Jenkinson, Selous, Grout, Houlden,
Fleming, Noble, Theal, and the nnmerous writers whom the Zulu war produced.
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: MARRIAGE; DIVORCE; MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 243
Kaffir youth exerts himself to an extent that threatens, in the eyes of the bystander unac-
customed to such scenes, to every moment dislocate one or more of his limbs. Then the women
address the bride in speeches which are anything but complimentary, the substance being chiefly
depreciative of herself, her beauty, and her housewifely abilities, accompanied with a hint that
her husband must be classed among the individuals with more cows than brain, to have given
so much for her. If the object of all this is to keep her pride at being elevated to matronhood
in subjection, it seams to have little effect, for both this and the subsequent praises which shs
receives are well known to be only little pieces of empty Kaffir etiquette, which flow lightly
from the glib tongues of the women, and are received for exactly what they are worth. In
the intervals of the dance the bride's father gives the young couple many sage advices regarding
their course in life — a course suggested by his experience of the wicked and deceitful world they
are beginning to traverse in company. More especially does his fatherly regard for his
daughter instigate him to suggest to his future son-in-law that the stick is not necessary to the
proper government of a wife or any number of wives, provided the proprietors of these trouble-
some household goods know the exact way to rule them, and so on in the same strain.
The bride then dances before her husband, taking an opportunity of doing what she will
never have another chance of doing with impunity — viz., insulting him and using all sorts of
opprobrious epithets towards him, to show that as yet he is not her master : the lady is just now
making the most of the short hours of freedom which remain to her. Lastly, the bridegroom
presents an ox to the girl. This ox is slaughtered, and now the marriage is complete, the last
link of the rather elaborate ceremony having been forged. The girl is then taken home to her
husband's house. But the ceremony, though now completed in all its essential forms, is not yet
over. After they arrive home the bride's father sends an ox to the young couple, as a token that
he is satisfied with the price paid, or that the wife must not be looked upon as property paid
for by any number of oxen. The ceremony of which the above is an outline is practised among
the Zulus of Natal, but many of the more civilised races are now beginning to abandon many
of the old forms, and in any case their fear of being " laughed at " by the whites renders them
exceedingly diffident about allowing a stranger to witness their marriage or other rites.
Infidelity on a wife's part is punishable by dismissal or death, while the co-respondent is also
liable to death, or to pay a fine to the injured husband. Divorce is allowable for various
reasons, such as incurable idleness, disobedience to the husband's orders, childlessness, &c.
We have, in former pages of this work, noted with what respect that not universally
popular lady, the mother-m-law, is looked upon by many barbarous or savage races, and
how redeeming a feature it is in their otherwise not over-amiable character. We have also
to observe the same among the Kaffirs. A man must not look upon his mother-in-law, or
speak to her, except in the most formal manner possible. A wife, again, is not allowed to
pronounce the name of her husband or of his brothers, though she can communicate with them
by any of the various names which every Kaffir takes in addition to that which he receives at
birth — these " birth-names " being given owing to the most trivial causes — such as that of a
lion or hyaena, from the fact that this particular wild animal had been heard to roar on the
night the child was born, and so on. A father-in-law is further prohibited from entering the
hut in which the wives of any of his sons maybe. If he happens to be in a hut, the daughters-
in-law are, on the other hand, not allowed to enter until he has left. Like all pieces of
24L
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
etiquette too strict, and therefore too troublesome in their application, this rule is not very
riskily carried out ; and a father-in-law too lazy and too careless to be courtier-like in his
manner, may buy from his sons the privilege of treating their wives in a manner savouring a
little less of the aboriginal Lord Chesterfield.
In every other respect, however, the Kaffir women — whether maids or matrons — are treated
as inferiors, and accordingly, owing to the continued ill-usage which they receive, and the
hard work to which they are soon subjected, they are, except in early youth, by no means so
good looking as the men, a rule pretty universal among all savage tribes among whom the
same method of ordering the women prevails.
Before dismissing the marriage-customs of the Kaffirs, I may mention a curious law which
prevails among the Makololos. Among this nation it is the custom for the son to inherit his
father's wives with the rest of the paternal property, and to adopt them as his own if so it
seems fit in his eyes. The children by these wives are, however, in these cases, termed
CAPE BULLOCK-WAGGON.
" brothers." If an elder brother dies, the same method is adopted in disposing of his wives
as among the ancient Jews — the brother next in age takes them, and the children that may be
born of these wives are also styled his " brothers." The chieftainship among the Makololos is
inherited by the eldest son of the " queen," or head- wife of the chief. If she dies, another wife is
selected for the same position, and enjoys the same privileges, even though it happens that she
may be a younger woman than the rest of the surviving wives. In some cases the wives of a
dead chief are presented to influential sub-chiefs, as another means of strengthening the influence
of the new ruler. Owing to the fact that the men among the Makololos are now fewer than
formerly (many of them having been cut off by fevers), the women complain that on account of
this disproportion of the sexes, they are not so highly valued as before. The women have
generally escaped the fevers, but they are less fruitful than they were, and to their complaint of
bring undervalued on account of the disproportion of the sexes, they now add the scarcely less
grievous one of the want of children, for whom, Livingstone tells us, their affection is excessive.
K\<-ept in the way of beautifying their huts and courtyards, the Makololo women have the
lightest labours of all the Kaffir sisterhood. " They drink/' writes the famous traveller and
missionary quoU'il, " large quantities of boyulou, or o-dlo, the band of the Arabs, which, being
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: THE MAKOLOLO WOMEX.
245
made of the grain called Holcus sorghum, or dursaifi, in a minute state of subdivision, is very
nutritious, and gives that plumpness of form which is considered beautiful. They dislike being
seen at their potations by persons of the opposite sex. They cut their woolly hair quite short,
and delight in having the whole person shining with butter. Their dress is a kilt reaching to
the knees ; its material is ox-hide, made as soft as cloth. It is not ungraceful. A soft skin
mantle is thrown across the shoulders when the lady is unemployed, but when engaged in any
KAFFIR SEEK ENGAGED IX DIVINATION.
sort of labour she throws this aside and works in the kilt alone. The ornaments most coveted
are large brass anklets as thick as the little finger, and armlets of both brass and ivory, the
latter often an inch broad. The rings are so heavy that the ankles are often blistered by the
weight pressing on them ; but it is the fashion, and is borne as magnanimously as tight-lacing
and tight shoes among ourselves. Strings of beads are hung around the neck, and the
fashionable colours being light green and pink, a trader could get almost anything he chose for
beads of these colours. At our religious services in the Jcotla, the Makololo women always
behaved with decorum from the first, except at the conclusion of the prayer. When all knelt
246 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
down, many of those who had children, in following the example of the rest, bent over the
little ones ; the children, in terror of being crushed to death, set up a simultaneous yell, which
so tickled the whole assembly that there was often a subdued titter, to be turned into a hearty
laugh as soon as they heard 'amen/ This was not so difficult to overcome in them as similar
peccadilloes were in the case of the women farther south. Long after we had settled at
Mabotfsa* when preaching on the most solemn subjects, a woman might be observed to look
round, and seeing a neighbour seated on her dress, give her a hunch writh her elbow to make
her move off ; and the other would return it with interest, and perhaps the remark, ' Take the
nasty thing away, will you ? ' Then three or four would begin to hustle the first offenders,
and the men to swear at them all, by way of enforcing silence."
CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH BIRTH.
As soon as a child is born incisions are made in its arms. Into these cuts the medicine-
man rubs "medicine," an operation which, though it causes great pain to the children, is
renewed for several days in succession, until it is believed that the end sought for — the
prosperity of the child in its future life — is secured. The infant is then washed and dried in
the smoke. It is then painted red, and if the somewhat strong vitality of the Kaffir child can bear
it through this rather rough usage, it is slung in a piece of skin (often highly ornamented)
and carried on its mother's back, whilst she is busy at her heavy tasks. Children are generally
treated kindly, but if twins are born, then one is always destroyed. This custom is common
among some tribes of Indians (Vol. I., p. 87) and other people, and is capable of receiving
curious comment. It prevails in the island of Bali (one of the Malayan group) where twins
are looked upon as an unlucky omen, " and immediately on its being known, the woman, with
her husband and children, is obliged to go and live on the sea-shore, or among the tombs, for
the space of a month, to purify themselves ; after which, they may return into the village, upon
a suitable sacrifice being made."* The superstition is, however, widespread, being found in
Hindostan, among the Ainos of the islands north of Japan, New Guinea, &c. The reason for
this prejudice against twins has been attempted to be explained in various ways, but the reason
I have heard assigned for it by the North American tribes who practise it is, that twins reflect
on the character of the woman, and moreover, lowers to the level of the inferior animals those
who produce many young at a birth. A similar idea seems to be held by other tribes.
Boys are well treated, because they will become warriors, and therefore increase the power
of the house. For a similar selfish reason — viz., that they can be sold as wives — girls are also
treated well, and not too hard worked, in case it should spoil their good looks, and accordingly
Ihcir market value, until they receive an offer of marriage. An excellent trait in the Kaffir
domestic economy is, that with the exception of destroying one of the twins, infanticide is an
unknown crime amongst them. When a boy arrives at the years of maturity, this event is
accompanied with certain mysterious ceremonies, the exact nature of which is not clearly known^
but the probability is that circumcision is then performed. He receives a three months'
holiday, during which period he follows his own devices, before for ever abandoning boyhood
and all its frivolous amusements, and entering into the cares of Kaffirdom. He then, by
* Moore, "Notices of the Indian A rchipelagn, " p. 90.
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: PHYSIQUE; GOVERNMENT, ETC. 247
special permission of the chief, assumes the head-ring, which is the distinctive feature of man-
hood. This badge, however, cannot be assumed until he has signalised himself in the chief's eyes
by some great exploit in war or cattle-stealing. The young man may then marry as many wives
as he has cows to purchase them with. The Kaffir young men are, as a rule, magnificent
specimens of manhood, though rather high-shouldered. They possess a wonderful swiftness
of foot, and great endurance, and their body is rubbed with grease until it shines as if polished.
The little beauty which the woman may possess is, however, very transient. At thirty, when
a " well-kept/'' healthy European woman is hardly at her prime, the Kaffir wife is getting old,
and at forty or fifty she is a hideous, smoke-dried hag. Grey hairs are much dreaded among
all the Kaffir tribes, and nothing — not even a medicine to make them shoot well, is in so
much demand from travellers who go amongst them as — hair dye !
GOVERNMENT.
The general rule of the Kaffir tribes is an absolute monarchy, the villages and kraals being
governed by chiefs equally absolute ; while in others there is a patriarchal form of government,
each man, as we have already mentioned (p. 236), being, by virtue of his fatherhood, the chief
of his family. No doubt originally this system was the sole form of government, but every
now and again there has arisen amongst them some powerful individual who, by dint of his
genius, has consolidated into a kingdom the various isolated tribes. Hence the Kaffir " kings "
who have so frequently caused wars among the aborigines, and have given much trouble
to the colonists. Cetewayo, who figured so extensively in the Zulu war, was one of these,
and a more perfect specimen of the aboriginal despot it would be difficult to select from the
rather extensive assortment which in the course of our ethnological studies has been passed in
review before us. Among the Bechuanas there are traces of " very ancient partitions and
lordships of tribes." Thus the elder brother of Sechele, a chief very powerful at the time
Livingstone resided amongst them, becoming blind, gave over the chieftainship to Sechele's
father. At the time Livingstone wrote, the descendants of this man paid no tribute to
Sechele, though he was their actual ruler, superior of the head of the family to which they
belonged, and was recognised in every other respect as such. Other tribes, again, will not
begin to eat the early pumpkins of a new crop until they hear that the Ba-roze has " bitten
it," and there is a public ceremony on the occasion, the son of the chief being the first to taste
of the new harvest,* thus pointing out that in former times the one tribe owed a sort of
jillegiance to the other as their Suzerains. Among the Bechuanas, though the government is
monarchical, yet it is not altogether an absolute despotism, the king being checked and guided
by a pieho, or parliament, in the midst of which the king sits, and after opening it with a
short speech remains silent till all the members have spoken. He then replies, often working
himself up into a state of wild, almost frantic excitement, heaping abuse on his opponents, and
generally scattering the flowers of South African rhetoric upon the dusky circles of the
assembly with reckless profusion.
The Makololo also govern by means of a parliament or council of a similar character. The
punishment is awarded by this picho, which appoints two men to perform the execution by
* " Missionary Travels," p. 45.
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
leading the criminal outside the kraal, and then quietly spearing him to death. At other times
death by drowning or throwing into a part of the river where crocodiles abound is the punish-
ment meted out to the offender. Lesser charges are heard before the chief and expiated by a
fine. No oaths are administered, and false witnessing and untruthful ness of any kind are
exceedingly rare in the " courts of justice." And here it ought to be remarked that the
Makololo, even in their present shattered condition, are by no means savages in the ordinary
sense of the term, both Holub and Serpa Pinto describing the ceremony with which they were
received by the king and chiefs as approaching what might be expected in a European court.
The absence of the " poison ordeal " among them is one proof of this. This form of adminis-
tering an oath is, according to Capello and Ivens, styled by the Bangala, m'bambit ; by the
Banbonda, n'dua; by the Balunda, muaji ; by the Kaffirs, muavi; and by the southern
tribes, n'gace. But among the Makololos the plan pursued was as follows : — " The com-
plainant asks the man against whom he means to lodge his complaint to come with him to
PIT. MOFFAT 8 KAFFIR ATTENDANTS.
the chief. This is never refused. AYhen both are in the kotla, the complainant stands up and
states the whole case before the chief and people usually assembled there. He stands a few
seconds after he has done this to recollect if he has forgotten anything. The witnesses to
whom he has referred then rise up and tell all that they themselves have seen or heard, but
nothing that they have heard from others. The defendant, after allowing some minutes to
elapse, so that he may not interrupt any of the opposite party, slowly rises, folds his cloak
about him, and in the most quiet and deliberate way he can assume, yawning, blowing his nose,
&c., begins to explain the affair, denying the charge, or admitting it, as the case may be.
Sometimes, when galled by his remarks, the complainant utters a sentence of dissent. The
accused turns quietly to him, and says, ' Be silent, I sat still while you were speaking ; cannot
you do the same? Do you want to have it all to yourself?' And as the audience acquiesce in
this bantering, and enforce silence, he goes on until he has finished all he wishes to say in his
defence. If he has any witnesses to the truth of the facts of his defence, they give theii
i-vidence. No oath is administered, but occasionally, when a statement is questioned, a mai
will say, 'By my father/ or 'by the chief, it is so/ Their truthfulness among each other
quite remarkable, but their system of government is such that Europeans arc not in a positioi
to realise it readily. A poor man will say in his defence against a rich one, ' I am astonished
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: KING'S PRIVILEGES; DESPOTISM; BECHUANA COURTIERS. 21U
to near a man so great as he make a false accusation/ as if the offence of falsehood were felt
to be one against society which the individual referred to had the greatest interest in
upholding." All the ivory belongs of right to the king, so that whenever an elephant is
killed the tusks are brought to him ; but the king in reality only holds it in trust for the people,
among whom he shares it. The chiefs are always looked up to with profound respect, though
they often exercise their authority in a most despotic and arbitrary manner. When Livingstone
first went among the Bechuanas, Sechele, the chief, said to him, " Do you imagine these people
A K.AFFIK WA11UIOR.
will ever believe by your merely talking to them ? I can make them do nothing except by
thrashing them, and, if you like, I shall call my head-man, and with our Zitiepa (whips of
rhinoceros-hide) we will soon make all believe together." The idea of using entreaty and
argument seems never to have entered his head. His mode of converting his people to
Christianity was of the nature of King Olaf s of Norway. At one period of Livingstone's stay
the country was suffering from the effects of a drought, and nobody except Sechele's own
family, whom he ordered to attend, came near the meeting. "In former times/' said he,
" when a chief was fond of hunting, all his people got dogs, and became fond of hunting too.
If he was fond of dancing or music, all showed a liking to these amusements. If the chief
loved beer, they all rejoiced in strong drink." They were, in a word, perfect courtiers,
imitation being with them the most sincere form of flattery.
* "Missionary Travels," p. 183.
72
250 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
AMUSEMENTS.
They have many pastimes, but dancing surpasses all the others in popularity. Toys are
rare among the children, but the young folk have, nevertheless, abundant games with which
to while away their too many leisure hours. One of these games is described by Dr. Living-
stone. " The children have merry times, especially in the cool of the evening. One of their
games consists of a little girl being carried on the shoulders of two others. She sits with
outstretched arms as they walk about with her, and all the rest clap their hands, and stopping
before each hut, sing pretty airs, some beating time on their little kilts of cow-skin, and others
making a curious humming sound between the songs. Excepting this and the skipping-rope,
the play of the girls consists in imitation of the serious work of their mothers, building
little huts, making small pots and cooking, and pounding corn in miniature mortars, or hoeing
tiny gardens. The boys play with spears of reeds pointed with wood, and small shields, or
bows and arrows; or amuse themselves in making little cattle-pens, or cattle in clay; they
show great ingenuity in the imitation of the variously-shaped horns. Some too are said to use
slings, but as soon as they can watch the goats or calves, they are sent to the field. We saw
many boys riding on the calves they had in charge, but this is an innovation since the arrival
of the English with their horses."
Livingstone's looking-glass was ever a source of amusement to them. " They came
frequently and asked for the looking-glass ; and the remarks they made — while I was engaged
in reading, and apparently not attending to them — on first seeing themselves therein, were
amazingly ridiculous. ' Is that me?' 'What a big mouth I have !' ' My ears are as big
as pumpkin leaves \' 'I have no chin at all ! ' or ' I would have been pretty, but am spoiled
by these high cheek-bones;' ' See how my head shoots up in the middle!' laughing
vociferously all the. time at their own jokes. They readily perceive any defect in each other,
and give nick-names accordingly. One man came along to have a quiet gaze at his own
features once, when he thought I was asleep ; after twisting his mouth about in various
directions, he remarked to himself, ' People say I am ugly, and how ugly I am, indeed ! '
Of the beauty of the whites they have no great opinion. A Makololo woman was good enough
to remark that they were not so ugly after all, if they only had toes ! She evidently laboured
under the belief that the black box-like shoe in which the feet were encased was the foot itself,
and she was only convinced of her error when the foot-gear was removed."
WAR.
This royal game the Kaffirs are very fond of, and have always an excuse ready for
indulging in it. At one time they fought in the rude undisciplined way most savages do, but
of late years the people of Zululand, until the system was broken up in the war of 1879, were
organised into fighting bodies of much the same nature as our regiments ; armed with the assegais,
or spears, battle-axes, short clubs, and shields of ox-hide. The Nyambanas, one of these fighting
tribes, are — according to Sir John Lubbock — chai-acterised by a row of pimples or warts about
the size of a pea, and extending from the upper part of the forehead to the tip of the nose.
Among the Bachapin Kaffirs, those who have distinguished themselves in battle are allowed the
privilege of marking one of their thighs with a long scar, which is "rendered indelibly of a
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: "HONOURABLE SCARS;" HUNTING; THE HOPO. 251
Mulsh colour, by rubbing ashes into the fresh wound/' The chiefs in addressing- the people
before battle frequently speak of these " honourable scars." These scars are made by the priests,
and the conferring- of this " order " is celebrated by a dance, which is kept up all night, and is
attended with the disgusting ceremony of each warrior who receives this distinction, exhibiting
a little bit of the flesh of his dead enemy with the skin attached, and afterwards roasting
and eating it ; a custom no doubt due to the belief so universal among savage and barbarian
people, that, by so doing, a part of the courage of the dead man passes via the stomach into
the heart of the eater of his flesh.
In war, the Kaffirs are cruel and merciless, making no distinction in their barbarous
slaughter of age or sex. The Bachapins — a sub-tribe of the Bechuanas — do not eat the
trophy referred to, but dry it and hang it about their necks as a sort of charm. These people,
however, indulge in the scarcely less reprehensible custom of eating a portion of the liver of
their fallen enemy.
HUNTING, AGRICULTURE, ETC.
Of the pursuit of wild animals — an occupation not so essential to their existence as is
usual among non-pastoral people — the Kaffirs are very fond. The chief game hunted by them
are zebras, ostriches, elephants, and rhinoceri, in killing and trapping which they are
exceedingly skilful. The means they adopt to take these animals are pitfalls, spearing, and
stunning them with short, heavy, round-headed clubs, which are thrown with great nicety
and effect. Dances and rejoicings celebrate the termination of a successful hunt. In these
great battues enormous quantities of game are taken, and the whole country around is gorged
for days to come with a redundancy of meat. The most murderously successful method which
they adopt to secure great quantities of game is the kopo, or V-shaped fence, for the descrip-
tion of which we may again borrow from Livingstone, though it has been long well known : —
Very great numbers of the large g-ame — buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessebes, kamas, or
lartebeests, kogongs, or gnus, pallas, rhinoceri, &c. — congregated at some fountains near Kobe-
long, and the trap called hopo was constructed in the lands adjacent for their destruction.
le hopo consists of two hedges in the form of the letter V, which are very high and thick
lear the angle. Instead of the hedges being joined there, they are made to form a lane of
almost fifty yards in length, at the extremity of which a pit is formed, six or eight feet deep,
and about twelve or fifteen in breadth and length. Trunks of trees are laid across the margin
of the pit, and more especially over that nearest the lane wrhcre the animals are expected to
leap in, and over that farthest from the lane where it is supposed they will attempt to escape
after they are in. The trees form an overlapping border, and render escape almost impossible.
The whole is carefully decked with short green rushes, making the pit like a concealed pitfall.
As the hedges are frequently about a mile long, and about as much apart at their extremities,
a tribe making a circle three or four miles round the country adjacent to the opening, and
gradually closing up, are almost sure to enclose a large body of game. Driving it up with
shouts to the narrow part of the hojio, men secreted there throw their javelins into the
affrighted herds, and the animals rush to the opening at the converging hedges, and into
the pit, till that is full of a living mass. Some escape by running over the others, as a Smith-
field cattle-dog does over the sheeps' backs. It is a frightful scene. The men, wild with
•excitement, spear the lively animals with mad delight; others of the poor creatures, borne
252
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
down by the weight of their dead and dying companions, every now and then make the whole
mass heave in their smoking agonies. The Backwains often killed between sixty and seventv
head of large game at the different hopos in a single week ; and as every one, both rich and
poor, partook of the prey, the meat counteracted the bad effects of an exclusively vegetable
diet. When the poor, who had no salt, were forced to live entirely on roots, they were often
troubled with indigestion."
In agriculture, great proficiency can scarcely be looked for from the Kaffirs. What crops-
they rear they leave entirely to the care of the women, any pastoral or agricultural work,
ZULU " PROPHET."
beyond tending or milking the cattle, being thought beneath the dignity of one of these South
African lords of creation. The women clear the ground by the axe, aided by fire, while the
earth is scarcely trenched, being so fertile that though merely tickled by a hoe it blossoms
with abundant crops of maize, pumpkins, and other vegetables. The country being, however,
arid, the prosperity of the crops is greatly dependent on rain, and accordingly the profession
of a "rain-maker" is among the Kaffirs, as elsewhere, a very prosperous one. In their
gardens they grow not only maize and pumpkins, but millet and sweet-reed sugar-cane, and
their chief food consists of a maize-porridge. In the centre of each garden is erected a watch-
tower, in which a woman or girl stations herself and guards the unenclosed plots from the
attacks of wild boars and other animals. To frighten birds off the corn-fields an ingenious
apparatus is used. A number of long slender poles are set up over the field, and connect
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: FOOD; FEASTS; EATING CUSTOMS.
253
with one another by bark strings, all of which terminate in the garden-tower. As soon as a
Hock of birds alight, the watcher in the tower pulls the string violently, setting all the poles in
vibration, and so frightening the birds off the ground. A species of Spondias forms a portion
of the Kaffir food. It is a tuberous root, growing in sandy ground, and containing a large
quantity of a mucilaginous or starchy fluid. To find these roots they employ a baboon —
whose regular food they constitute — in the same manner as a pig is trained to search for
truffles, only with this difference, that the wretched monkey is kept without water for a time
until its instincts in search of the watery roots are sharpened greatly. It is then taken out, led
by a string, and when it comes to a place where one grows under ground, it commences,
scraping, and thus enables its master to collect a considerable quantity in a short time. Not
[infrequently a troop of hungry elephants will charge upon their garden-plots and fields at
night, and speedily, what with eating and trampling, make short work of the Kaffir crops. As
soon as the alarm of elephants is given, the whole kraal is out, and the men and women attempt
to frighten them off by the most unearthly din and shouts ; and to utilise the noise of the
younger members of the village to the utmost extent, an ingenious method is adopted. Every
mother instantly administers a sound whipping to her family all round, and the result in the
way of yells is most satisfactory. This receipt is most respectfully dedicated to those philan-
thropists who are lost in vain endeavours to devise a method of making these youthful
citizens of some use to the general community. The banana and other wild fruits are common
in most portions of their territory, and abundance of pasture grasses — which are every now and
again burnt over and spring up with renewed freshness — afford excellent grazing for their
numerous cattle. The locust in some portions of the country is at uncertain intervals very
destructive, but the insects are not an unmitigated evil, being used as food by the Kaffirs in
much the same' way as they are by the Arabs and other African nationalities.
FEASTS, EATING CUSTOMS, ETC.
The Kaffirs are far from being an unsociable people at any time, and at their meals, under
the elevating influence of the good things then provided, are absolutely hilarious. Before any
great feast singing is invariably indulged in, and in the intervals of eating and drinking the
utmost good humour prevails. Their singing is usually in concert, and to the ear uneducated
the beauties of Kaffir music is deafening in the extreme. Many of their songs are naturally
in praise of great warriors and doughty men generally. A couple of verses of one of these odes
in honour of the celebrated Tchaka, who founded and despotically ruled the Zulu Kingdom,
which refers to this exploit, may be quoted as an example : —
" Thou hast finished — finished the nations !
When -will you go out to battle now ?
Hey ! when will you go out to battle now ?
Thou hast conquered kings !
"Where you going to battle now ?
Thou hast finished— finished the nations,
Where are you going to battle now ?
Hurrah ! hurrah ! hurrah !
Where are you going to battle now ? "
* The translation is by Mr. Shootei.
25-1 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Unlike most savages they use a spoon, often elaborately cawed and ornamented, in eating.
Their food is varied. The locusts, which eat up every green thing, are, we have said, eaten by
the Kaffirs in great number. They are gathered into sacks at night — when they cannot fly —
and are generally ground and made into a sort of " porridge/' much relished by the people of
.all ranks. Monkey, hyaena, eland, zebra, hartebeest, and rhinoceros are rejected by all the Zulu
tribes as articles of food, while the crocodile is looked upon with such horror that they will
hesitate to eat food which has been cooked in a pot in which this reptile has been boiled or which
it has in any way defiled. Fish, oddly enough, are looked upon with prejudice. Livingstone
mentions that the Bechuanas, who had no scruple against eating the pig, would, in spite of their
unconsciousness of any cause of disgust, after eating pork, vomit it again. These same people,
in addition to the prejudice against eating fish, allege a disgust to eating anything like a
serpent. This may arise, the celebrated traveller quoted thinks, from remnants of serpent-
worship floating in their minds, as, in addition to this horror of eating snakes, or snake-like
animals, " they sometimes render a sort of obeisance to living serpents by clapping their hands
to them, and refusing to destroy the reptiles ; but in the case of the hog they are conscious of
no superstitious feeling." Kidneys are not eaten by the young people among the Bechuanas,
from a superstitious belief that if they do they will have no children. In feeding, like most
barbarians, they are by no means cleanly, rubbing their fingers while cooking on their dirty
bodies for the sake of the grease, and again applying them to the meat. They eat meat in
much the same way as do the Eskimo, Chippewayans, and Abyssinians — viz., taking up a piece
of meat, seizing it with the teeth, and then with a sweep of the sharp knife severing the piece
to be chewed from the lump held in the hand. If food cannot be had, then, with stoical
indifference, they draw a little tighter the belt which, with a view to such exigencies, they
always wear about their waists. This seems to have the effect of easing the gnawing feeling
they have at their stomachs. I have known backwoodsmen and hunters, when hard pressed for
food, resorting to a similar method of supplying the place of a dinner. In addition to an
ample indulgence in the necessaries of life, the Kaffirs are not indifferent to its luxuries. Snuff-
taking and smoking they have learned in comparatively modern times, but the art of brewing
beer from barley, which they kept in very tightly-woven baskets, is of very ancient date
amongst them. They are not, however, drunken, whey, buttermilk, or water forming their
common drink. Wild honey is also sought for as an article of food, and fowls are kept and
eaten. Another favourite article of diet among some of the Kaffir tribes is a huge frog,
which the Bechuanas called matlam&lo, * and which even Dr. Livingstone's children partook of
with eagerness. When cooked, these huge frogs look like chickens. They also smoke them-
selves into a state of convulsive excitement with Indian hemp, either pure or mixed with
tobacco, but as a rule the Kaffirs, as a nation, are not much addicted to the more common
sensual gratifications of the neighbouring savage tribes, though no better than they should be.
Their skill in art is not great, though in this they are superior to the negro tribes. Their
pipes and snuff-boxes often show considerable ingenuity in ornamentation, yet they find much
difficulty in understanding the import of a drawing; but the same difficulty is common even
in England; students in universities, I have more than once found, not clearly understanding
* J'y.i-i<rj>/mlus adxpersus of Sir Andrew Smith, who first described it in his "Zoology of South Africa."
THE KAFFIR FAMILY: SKILL IN ART; DEATH CUSTOMS; BURIAL. 255
the nature of a scientific diagram, even when lucidly explaining to any one in the slightest
degree trained in the first principles of drawing, the object represented. They are far from
inferior musicians, and make baskets, pottery, &c., with great nicety, and no inconsiderable
degree of ingenuity. The Bechuanas dress skins admirably, and in addition to this are
skilful workers in metal, and carry on a considerable traffic with the neighbouring tribes,
Some of the Bechuana knife handles and sheaths are very beautifully carved.
When death overtakes the Kaffir, he is buried in a sitting position in a circular hole, or
in an empty ant-hill. The chief is honoured above the rest of his tribe by reposing in the
cattle-enclosure. Beside the body are laid the spoon, mat, pillow, &c., of. the deceased, and if he
io buried on the outside of the kraal enclosure, then a fence of stones is placed around the-
grave to prevent its being disturbed by wild beasts or wizards. Criminals or other offenders
killed by order of the king or chiefs receive no burial. All who have touched the body must
endure a long fast before they are sufficiently purified to again enter upon their ordinary
duties. The body of a child is washed before being buried, but otherwise, the ceremony is of
the simplest character, the father himself digging the grave, while the mother, and perhaps
another relative or two looks on. The burial of a chief or of his near relatives is celebrated
with great pomp, and is accompanied by the slaughter of oxen and even of men. Very often a
number of the best-looking young girls in the tribe are buried alive in the grave with the
deceased magnate. In the case of Mnande, the mother of the Zulu King Teh aka, a guard
of 12,000 men were stationed over the grave for a whole year, and were maintained by the
goodwill of the tribesmen. The orgies on this occasion were horrible ; and so wild did the
people become, that it was proposed, and even partially carried into execution, that all who had
not been present at her funeral should be slaughtered, and that the earth should be compelled
to join in the general mourning, by being allowed to lie waste for a whole year. All the
children born within one year after her decease, and their parents as well, were executed. Mr.
Francis Galton, so well known as a savant who in early life travelled extensively in South
Africa, thus describes a more horrible form of death, of which he wras a witness. " I saw a
terrible sight on the way, which has often haunted me since. We had taken a short cut,
and were a day and a half from our wagon, when I observed some smoke in front, and rode
to see what it was. An immense blackthorn-tree was smouldering, and from the quantities
of ash about, there was all the appearance of its having burnt for a long time. By it were
tracks that we could make nothing of, no footmarks, and only an impression of a hand here
and there. We followed them, and found a wretched woman, most horribly emaciated ; both
her feet were burnt quite off, and the wounds were open and unhealed. Her account was,
that many days back, she and others were encamping there, and when she was asleep, a dry
but standing tree, which they had set fire to, fell clown, and entangled her among its
branches ; thus she was burnt before she could extricate herself, and her people left her.
She had lived since on gum al.one, of which there were vast quantities about; it oozes
from the trees, and forms large cakes in the sand. There was water close by, for she was
on the edge of a river-bed. I did not know what to do with her; I had no means of
conveying her anywhere, or any place to convey her to. The Dammaras kill useless and
worn-out people ; even sons smother their sick fathers, and death was not far from her. I
256
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
had three sheep with me, so I off-packed and killed one. She seemed ravenous ; and though
I had purposely off-packed some two hundred yards from her, the poor wretch kept crawling
and dragging herself up to me, and would not be withheld, for fear I should forget to give
her the food I promised. When it was ready, and she had devoured what I gave her, the
meat acted as it often does in such cases, and fairly intoxicated her ; she attempted to stand,
regardless of the pain, and sang, and tossed her lean arms about. It was perfectly sickening
to witness the spectacle. I did the only thing I could ; I cut the rest of the meat into strips,
and hung it within her reach, and where the sun would jerk* it. It was many days' provisions
ZULU TAKING SHELTER PROM A HAILSTORM.
for her. I saw she had water, firewood, and gum in abundance, and then I left her to
her fate." The sick are often, even among the Zulus, one of the best of Kaffir tribes, put to
death by drowning, thrown to crocodiles, or carried to the bush and there left to die of slow
starvation, unless a wild beast mercifully cuts their life short. The sick — especially if poor —
have a slender chance for their lives, though, if they can pay for the love and attention
that they require in such straits, they may obtain a little alleviation of their suffering, and
with this, the possibility of survival.
The religious and superstitious observances of the Kaffirs are endless. Religion they have
abundance of, but of religion, regarded as inseparable from a code of morals, they are ignorant.
Dry and preserve.
Till! KAFFIR FAMILY: RELIGION; BELIEF IN A SUPREME BEING, ETC.
257
ft is mere superstition — a rude mystical set of observances, the strictest follower of which may
be morally one of the vilest scoundrels it is possible to imagine. They have been said by
unthinking', superficial travellers, like Vanderkemp, and even by men of a much higher type —
viz., Dr. Moffat — to be destitute of a belief in a Supreme Being; but that is a mistake. They
worship a Supreme Being, viz., Uhlunga ("the supreme''), or by the Hottentot name, Utika
(" the beautiful "} . They also hold to the immortality of the soul, but to no place of rewards
and punishments. They believe in the efficacy of prayer, and in war and hunting offer up
petitions for success to the Supreme Being. The souls of deceased relatives are, according to
""^ssa
THE " HOTTENTOT VENUS."
their notions, never far away from them, and they will often invoke their aid. Thunder proceeds
directly from the Deity, and lightning is the manifestation of his presence. To pay respect to
the presence of Uhlunga, they will sometimes sacrifice an ox during a thunder-storm. If a
person has been killed by an elephant, they will offer up a sacrifice to appease the demon which
actuated the ferocious animal; and when they believe that some particular spirit inhabits a
particular ox, they will offer up prayers to it when they go on their hunting expeditions.
When a person dies they sacrifice cattle, because they believe that by so doing the cattle
will go to " the herds below " — in other words, will accompany the deceased to the land whither
he has proceeded ; a country where everything is much the same as it is here. This is also the
reason why at the burial of a great chief a number of: girls are buried with him — they are to
be wives to him in the other world. Their idea of the creation is materialistic in the extreme ;
73
258 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
it is evolution to an intensified degree. "Everything made itself, and the trees and herbage
grew by their own will."
Diseases they attribute to one of three causes — to enchantment by an enemy, to the
anger ot evil spirits, whose abode is in rivers, to the power of evil spirits generally. They
have no idea of a man dying, except from hunger, violence, or witchcraft. No matter at
what age a man dies, if he did not die of hunger or violence, the Kaffir knows well that he was
bewitched by somebody, whose offence must be expiated by the man's relatives with bloodshed.
Storms are sent like thunder by the Deity, and they will sometimes shoot poisoned arrows into
the air to drive them away. The Bechuanas, as the late Mr. Chapman tells us, will sometimes
freely curse the Deity for sending thunder. When the Basuto Kaffirs are on a plundering
expedition, they give vent to the cries and hisses which cattle-drivers indulge in when driving
a herd before them, thinking merely to persuade the poor divinities of the country they are
attacking, that the marauders are bringing cattle to them as worshippers, instead of coming to
take it from them.* They have no idea of a Supreme Being whom they cannot touch and
handle. When Moffat tried to explain to them the idea of the white man's God, a chief,
whose judgment on other subjects would command attention, exclaimed, " Would that I could
catch it ! I would transfix it with my spear ! "
To give a concise view of the religion of the Kaffirs as a whole would be no easy task ;
different tribes having different opinions, and the accounts even of those who have resided
amongst them, being too contradictory to allow the opinion of all "the authorities" to be
received with equal weight. The dead can again come back to the earth when it suits their
convenience, and can do much mischief to those against whom they have an illwill, or who have
in any way offended. Accordingly with the Kaffirs the policy of a wise man is, J)e inort///*
n'll nisi bonum, a piece of morality which probably originated amongst Europeans from a similar
motive. Dead men, however, do not usually come to earth in their former guise, but enter
into the bodies of various animals, chief among which are serpents and lizards. If a snake
Hnds its way into a Kaffir's hut, it is not instantly destroyed, as among the whites it would
be; on the contrary, the Kaffir has an utter dislike to killing these animals on any occasion, and
especially so when it enters his house. He will touch the snake gently with a stick, and if it
shows no sign of irritation, then he will conclude that it must be one of his forefathers in this
disguise come on earth to warn him that if he is not treated with more respect, some grievous
harm will befall the person who inhabits the kraal it has visited. To propitiate the irate pro-
genitor a sacrifice will be immediately offered up. If a sheep, or most other animals, except a
cow, calf, or a beast of prey, enters a dwelling, the Kaffir concludes in like manner that they
have called for the same reason that the snake has — viz., to give warning of some evil about
to befall the head of the house. To avert danger in battle sacrifices will also be offered up to
their ancestors, or if they have been fortunate in war, in the hunt, or on any other occasion,
as proofs of gratitude, either to the spirits who have assisted them, or to the departed guardians,
who in this manner have shown their goodwill to those on earth. These sacrifices consist of
cattle, generally bulls, and are tendered with an infinite amount of ceremony and form.
In omens the Kaffir believes implicitly. If a sheep bleat while it is being slaughtered, this
* Cussilis ••
THE KAFFIRS: EVIL OMENS; SUPERSTITIOUS KITES, ETC. 251)
Is a very evii omen ; if a dog or a sheep were to leap on a hut — one of the most natural things in
the world — no worse luck could befall the hapless inhabitants, and would be looked upon almost
01 :i jcir with the ill-omen of a cow pushing the lid off a vessel of grain and eating it. Yet
the result of all this is not morality. Morality, those who know the Kaffir best declare,
depends so entirely upon social order, that all political " disorganisation is immediately
followed by a state of degeneracy, which the re-establishment of order can alone rectify."
Their language contains words signifying most of the virtues and vices, but to these words
no moral qualities are attached — at least, Mr. Cassalis seems to think so. The fact of the
language containing such words, seems, however, to militate against this theory, because the
Kutchin Indians in Alaska, who are a race not nearly so high in the social scale as the Kaffirs,
and who treat their wives in the most cruel and brutal manner, have no words in their language
lor "love" or "beloved," the feelings expressed by the words being unknown to them, and
therefore entirely unnecessary to be preserved even in the fossil condition of phrases.
The superstitious rites of the Kaffirs are dispensed by prophets, who must in every case
be descended from a seer, the prophetic afflatus being supposed to be hereditary, and even then
one can only be admitted into the " faculty " after long preparations and rites made and
provided for such occasions. Mr. Shooter mentions a case in which the grandson of a prophet
by his mother's side began to show signs of the hereditary prophetic spirit coming upon him.
His father, unwilling to incur the expense, in the slaughter of cattle, which such an event in his
family would have entailed, employed a noted seer, cunning at checking such signs in precocious
youth, to nip the disease in the bud. All was, however, in vain, for when he grew to man's
estate the inspiration returned. He was for ever dreaming about lions, leopards, elephants,
boa-constrictors, and all manner of wild beasts and creeping things; he dreamed about the
Zulu country, from which he had been long an exile, and that he had a vehement desire to
return to it. " After a while he became very sick; his wives, thinking he was dying, poured
cold water over his prostrate person, and the priest whose intlnna (or subject) he was, sent a
messenger to a prophet. The latter declared that the man was becoming inspired, and directed
the chief to supply an ox for sacrifice. This was disagreeable, but that personage did not dare
refuse, and the animal was sent; he contrived, however, to delay the sacrifice, and prudently
ordered that if the patient died in the meantime the ox should be returned. Having begun to
recover his strength, our growing prophet cried and raved like a delirious being, suffering no one
to enter his hut except two of his younger children, a girl and a boy. Many of the tribe came
to see him, but he did not permit them to approach his person, and motioned them away. In
a few days he rushed out of his tmt, tore away through the fence, ran like a maniac across the
grass, and disappeared in the bush. The two children went after him, and the boy (his sister
being tired) eventually discovered him on the sea-shore. Before the child could approach, the
n-al or pretended madman disappeared again, and was seen no more for two other days. He
then returned home, a strange and frightful spectacle; sickness and fasting had reduced him
almost to a skeleton ; his eyes glared and stood out from his shrunken face; the ring had been
torn from his head, which he had covered with long shaggy grass, while, to complete the
hideous picture, a living serpent was twisted round his neck. Having entered the krnul, where
his wives were in tears, and all the inmates in sorrow, he saluted them with a wild howl to this
effect — 'People call me mad, I know they say I am mad; that is nothing; the spirits are
260
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
influencing- me — the spirits of Majolo, of Unhlovu, and of my father/ After this a sort of
dance took place, in which he sang or chanted, ' I thought I was dreaming while asleep ; to my
surprise I was not asleep/ The women (previously instructed) broke into a shrill chorus,
referring to his departure from home, his visit to the sea, and to his wanderings from river to
river; while the men did their part by singing two or three unmeaning syllables. The dance
and the accompanying chants were several times repeated, the chief actor conducting himself
consistently with his previous behaviour. His dreams continued, and the people were told that
he had seen a boa-constrictor in a vision, and could point out the spot where it was to be found.
KAFFIR HUTS.
They accompanied him, and when he had indicated the place, they dug and discovered two of
the reptiles. He endeavoured to seize one, but the people held him back, and his son struck
the animal with sufficient force to disable but not to kill it. He was then allowed to take the
serpent, which he placed round his neck, and the party returned home. Subsequently, having
(as he alleged) dreamed about a leopard, the people accompanied him, and found it. The beast
was slain, and carried in triumph to the kraal. When our growing prophet returned home
after his absence at the sea, he began to slaughter his cattle, according to custom, and continued
to do so at intervals until the whole were consumed. Some of them were offered in sacrifice.
As the general rule, when there is beef at a kraal, the neighbours assemble to eat it; but when
an embryo-seer slays his cattle, those who wish to eat must previously give him something.
If, however, the chief were to give him a cow, the people of the tribe would be free to go.
262 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
In this ease the chief had not done so, and the visitors were obliged to buy their entertainment,
one man giving a knife, another a shilling. An individual who was unable or unwilling to
pay, having ventured to present himself with empty hands, our neophyte was exceedingly
wroth, and seeing a stick, gave the intruder a significant hint, which the latter was not slow
to comprehend. During the consumption of his cattle, the neophyte disappeared again for
two days. "NVhen it was finished he went to a prophet, with whom he resided two moons,
his children taking him food ; and afterwards, to receive further instruction, visited another
seer. He was then considered qualified for practice/' though usually some time must elapse
between the novitiate and the admission of the neophyte into the prophetic order. Sometimes
the prophet will precipitate himself into the water, thinking (or pretending to think) that the
spirits may, in that situation, reveal to him what they will otherwise conceal from mortal
ken. Among other peculiar ceremonies and abominations indulged in, while undergoing
his training, he hangs about his person the bladders and gall-bags of the oxen which he has
slaughtered, in addition to the snakes, which we have seen are commonly worn by these
individuals. " He enters pools of water/' writes Mr. Grant, " abounding in serpents and
alligators. And now, if he catches a snake, he has power over that; or if he catches a
leopard, he has power over the leopard ; or if he catches a deadly poisonous serpent, he has
power over the most poisonous serpent. And thus he takes his degree : the degree of leopard,
that he may catch leopards, and of serpents, that he may catch serpents." Finally, he
commences medical and prophetic practice, and best of all, exacts fees — a power, which, until
he has been "registered" in the manner described, he has no power to do (pp. 240, 245, 252).
AVith such a fear of being bewitched, and credence in the power of witchcraft, it might
be expected that the prophets would be in full employment, especially as with so very
difficult a curriculum to pursue before being qualified to practise, their number must be
always select. A man has fallen sick, or has got bewitched in some other way, which
necessitates the service of the prophet. His friends go to consult him, without, however,
informing him what is the special object of their visit. He is supposed to know their
thoughts, and not to be required to be informed upon such a trifle. As a preliminary,
if he decides to proceed to business just then, he demands his assegai (or spear), a figurative
mode of asking for his fees. His clients plead poverty — that they have nothing just now —
but will pay him by-and-by. But with them, it is no pay, no advice, and no credit on any
condition. Finding that it is utterly impossible to get his advice without the fee in advance,
it is paid, not without an abundance of grumbling on the part of the wizard, that it is
too little. The clients sit around him, he shouts, " Beat and hear, my people ; " each of the
persons present having snapped his fingers, replies, " I hear." The seer now pretends
to have a vision, indistinct at first, but becoming more distinct gradually, until he sees
the actual thing which has occurred. As the vision breaks on his view, he keeps up a
running commentary in a loud voice on what he sees; all the time his clients abstaining
from enlightening him in any way whether he is right or wrong in regard to his vision — until
at last he strikes upon the right one. Mr. Shooter, whom we have already repeatedly referred
to as an excellent authority in Kaffir customs, considers that the prophet's simulated vision
i> n.. 1 a series of guesswork, in which he may possibly tell the truth, but "asvstematic
enumeration of particulars, in which he can scarcely miss it. Thus, he may begin by saying1,
THE KAFFIRS: PROPHETS; CHARMS; IIAIN-MAKERS, ETC. 203
that the thing which the applicants wish to know relates to some animal with hair, and going
through each division of that class, suggests whatever may be likely to occur to a cow, a calf,
or a dog. If he finds no indication that the matter relates to one of this class, he takes
another, such as human beings, and proceeds through it in the same manner. It is obvious that
a tolerably clever practitioner may, in this way, discover from the applicants whatever may
have happened to them, and send them away with a deep impression of his prophetic abilities,
especially if he have any previous knowledge of their circumstances. The following sketch
will give the reader a general idea of the prophet's manner of proceeding. A few particulars
only as being sufficient for illustration are given : —
" ' Beat and hear, my people/ They snap their fingers and say, ( I hear/ ' Attend, my
people/ They beat and say, ' I hear/ ' I don't know what you want ; you want to know
something about an animal with hair. A cow is sick; what's the matter with her? I
see a wound on her side — no ; I'm wrong. A cow is lost ; I see a cow in the bush. Nay,
don't beat, my people ; I'm wrong. It's a dog ; a dog has ascended a hut. Nay, that's not
it. I see now, beat vigorously ; the thing relates to people. Somebody is ill — a man is ill —
he is an old man. No, I see a woman — she has been married a year ; where is she ? I'm
wrong; I don't see her yet/ Perhaps he takes snuff and rests awhile. 'Beat and hear, my
people. I see now ; it's a boy — beat vigorously. He is sick, where is he sick ? Let me see —
there' (placing his hand on some part of his person). 'No, beat and attend, my people. I see
now. There ' (indicating the actual place) . ' Where is he ? Not at his kraal ; he is working
with a white man. How has he been hurt ? I see him going to the bush — he has gone to
fetch wood ; a piece of wood has fallen on him ; he is fainting ; he is very ill. The spirits
are angry with him — his father is angry; he wants beef. The boy receives a cow for his
wages ; it is a black cow. No, I see white. "Where is the white? A little 011 the side. The
spirits want that cow ; kill it, and the boy will recover/ '
<( Prevention is better than cure." Accordingly, the Kaffir resorts to the use of an infinite
variety of charms, such as bits of bone, scraps of skin, claws, teeth — in fact, anything, which he
wears about his person with a view to warding off the " evil eye," and the hundred other
efforts of witchcraft. In battle, in the hunt, and in the daily walk of life, there are always ills
to be guarded against, and for each and all of these there are charms potent enough to protect
the all-believing Kaffir. The reader will already have seen traces of animal- worship among the
Kaffirs. If further proof were wanting of the prevalence — at least at one period in their
history — of this, one of the widest-spread forms of religious superstition, it is afforded by the
fact, related by Livingstone, that the Bechuana tribes are named after certain animals. Thus,
the names of the various tribes signify, " they of the monkey," " they of the alligator," " they
of the fish," each tribe holding in superstitious dread the animal after which it is named.
They also use the word bena (to dance) in reference to this custom of naming them, so
that in order to ascertain what tribe they belong to, all you have to do is to ask, " What do you
dance ? " A tribe never eats the animal which it is named after, which may be regarded as a
type of" totism" (Vol I. pp. 86, 134). Lastly, in reference to this subject of prophets and seers,
we may mention that women may attain this rank. Indeed, some of the most noted of the order
have been women. Rain-makers are a profession by themselves, and though paid large fees if
successful, yet are often killed if they fail to get what it is the raison d'etre of their calling to
204
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
secure for their employers. To obtain rain, even without the aid of the prophets as regular
practitioners, there are a number of empirical preparations in great favour with the population
who choose to try their hands at what is the work of professional people proper. For instance,
the Back wains use charcoal made from the bones of bats, inspissated renal deposits of the
mountain cony, the internal parts of different animals — such as the livers of jackals and baboons,
ZULU TOP — SHOWING MODE OF DliKSSIXf; THE 1IAIU.
the hearts of lions, hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows — serpents' skin and vertebra?, and
every kind of tuber, root, and plant tD be found in the country. If these prophets — no matter
what branch of the profession they follow — are ordinarily successful or lucky, they soon accumu-
late considerable wealth, and are held in high honour. The following description, by the Rev.
Dr. Moffat, of the proceedings of one of these weather-prophets, is so graphic that I may Uv
exrused quoting it in its entirety. The rain-maker in this instance had gone to another part oi
the country, and found the clouds much more difficult to control than in the one he had left.
He considered that there was some secret machination at work against him. "When urged tc
make repeated trials, he would reply, 'You can only give me sheep and goats to kill, therefore
(THE KAFFIRS: RAIN-MAKERS; DESCRIPTION OF TIIEIU
265
can only make goat-rain : give me for slaughter oxen, and I shall let you see ox- rain/ One
clay, as he was taking a sound sleep, a shower fell, on which one of the principal men entered
his house to congratulate him, but to his utter astonishment found him totally insensible to what
was transpiring. 'Helaka rare ! ' (Hallo, my father !) ' I thought you were making rain/ said
the intruder ; when, arising from his slumber, and seeing his wife sitting on the floor shaking
a milk-sack in order to obtain a little butter to anoint her hair, he replied, pointing to the opera-
tion of churning, ' Do you not see my wife churning rain as fast as she can ? ' His reply gave
entire satisfaction, and it presently spread through the length and breadth of the town that the
ZULU WOMEN AT THEIR TOILETTE.
rain-maker had churned the shower out of a milk-sack. The moisture caused by the shower
was dried up by a scorching sun, and many long weeks followed without a single cloud, and
when it did appear, they might sometimes be seen, to the great mortification of the conjurer,
to discharge their watery treasures at an immense distance. This disappointment was increased
when a heavy cloud would pass over with tremendous thunder, but not one drop of rain. There
had been several successive years of drought, during which water had not been seen to flow
ipon the ground ; and in that climate, if rain does not fall continuously and in considerable
quantities, it is all exhaled in a couple of hours. In digging graves, we have found the earth
dry as dust at four or five feet, when the surface was saturated with rain. The women had
sultivated extensive fields, but the seed was lying in the soil as it had been thrown from the
land -, the cattle were dying for want of pasture, and hundreds of living skeletons were going
74
206 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
to the fields in quest of unwholesome roots and reptiles, while many were dying with hunger.
Our sheep were soon likely to be devoured, and finding- their numbers daily diminish, we
slaughtered the remainder, and put the meat in salt, which of course \vas far from being
agrivable in such a climate, and when vegetables were so scarce. All these circumstances
irritated the rain-maker very much ; but he was often puzzled to find something on which to
lay the blame, for he had exhausted his skill. One night a small cloud passed over,, and the
only flash of lightning from which a heavy peal of thunder burst, struck a tree in the town.
Next day the rain-maker and a number of people met to perform the usual ceremony in such an
event. It was ascended, and ropes of grass and grass roots were bound round different parts
of the trunk, which in the Acacia glraffa is seldom much injui'ed. A limb may be torn off, but
of numerous trees of that species which I have seen struck by lightning, the trunk appears to
resist its power, as the fluid only produces a stripe or groove along the bark to the ground.
When these bandages wrere made he deposited some of his nostrums, and got quantities of water
handed up, which he poured with great solemnity on the wounded tree, while the assembled
multitude shouted, ' Pula <pula.' This done, the tree was hewn down, dragged out of the town,,
and burnt to ashes. Soon after this unmeaning ceremony, he got large bowls of water, with
which was mingled an infusion of bulbs. All the men of the town then came together, and
passed in succession before him, when he sprinkled each with a zebra's tail, which he had dipped
in the water. As all this and much more did not succeed, he had recourse to another stratagem.
He knew well that baboons were not very easily caught among the rocky glens and shelving
precipices ; therefore, in order to gain time, he informed the men that to make rain he must
have a baboon ; that the animal must be without blemish, not a hair wanting on its body.
One wroukl have thought that a simpleton would have seen through his tricks, as their being
able to present him with a baboon in that condition w^as impossible, even though they caught
him asleep. Forth sallied a band of chosen runners, wrho ascended the neighbouring mountain.
The baboons from their lofty domiciles had been in the habit of looking down on the plain
beneath at the natives encircling and pursuing the quaggas and antelopes, little dreaming that
one day they would themselves be the objects of pursuit. They hobbled off in consternation,
grunting and screaming, and leaping from rock to rock, occasionally looking down on their
pursuers, grinning and gnashing- their teeth. After a long pursuit, with wounded limbs,
scratched bodies, and broken toes, a young one was secured and brought to the town, the captors
exulting as if they had obtained a great spoil. The wily rogue, on seeing the animal, put on a
co mtenance exhibiting the most intense sorrow, exclaiming, ' My heart is rent in pieces; I am
dumb with grief/ and pointing to the ear of the baboon, which wTas scratched, and the tail,
U'hich had lost some hairs, added, ( Did I not tell you I could not make rain if there was one
hair wanting?' After some days another was obtained; but there was still some imperfection,
real or alleged. He had often said that if they could procure him the heart of a lion he woulc
show them that he could make rain so abundant that a man might think himself well off to
under shelter, as when it fell it might sweep whole towns away. He had discovert1. 1 that the
clouds required strong medicine, and a lion's heart would do the business. To obtain this the
rain-maker well knew was no joke. One day it was announced that a lion had attacked one of
the cattle outposts not far from the town, and a party set off for the two-1'old pur] OSP of gvttinj.
v to the clouds and disposing of a dangerous enemy. The orders were imperative
THE KAFFIRS: CONJURERS; RELIGIOUS BELIEFS; MISTAKEN IDEAS. 207
whatever the consequences might be, which, in this instance, might have been very serious, had
not one of our men shot the terrific animal dead with a gun. This was no sooner done than it
was cut up for roasting and boiling; no matter if it had previously eaten some of their
relatives, they ate it in its turn. Nothing could exceed their enthusiasm when they returned
to the town bearing the lion's heart, and singing the conqueror's song in full chorus ; the rain-
maker prepared his medicines, kindled his fires, and might be seen upon the top of the hill,
stretching forth his puny hands, and beckoning the clouds to draw near ; or even shaking his
spear, and threatening that if they disobeyed they should feel his ire. The deluded population
believed all this, and wondered the rains would not fall.'" The end of it all was, that to
account for the " hardheartedness of the clouds," the blame was laid on the missionaries for
bringing a bag of salt in their wagon from another place to their station. And here it may be
noted that the blame of ill-success on the prophet's part is often laid on the white men who may
happen to be in the country. It would, however, be injustice to these medicine-men to think
that they are in every case rank impostors. Futile as, of course, their work always is, and
always must be, they are firmly believed in, and, what is more extraordinary, they firmly believe
in their own powers. So rooted is this belief that not unfrequently they will order certain
things to be done, though, if unsuccessful, they know that they will forfeit their lives.
Like all their order among different nations, they are great adepts at sleight of hand, and in
this manner perform certain feats which are sufficiently extraordinary to Europeans accustomed to
such tricks, and viewing them with no superstitious awe, far more to rude savages, who look
both on the person and the acts of the " conjurer " with a dread amounting to veneration, as a
person having direct power over the elements, and holding intercourse at will with the unseen
spirits who lord it over lower mortals. In general they are by no means thoughtful. There
are, however, exceptions, as the following remarks, made by Sekeso, a very respectable Kaffir, to
M. Arbrousset, prove : — " ' Your tidings/ he said, ' are what I want ; and I was seeking before
I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourselves. Twelve years ago I went to feed my
flocks. The weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock and asked myself sorrowful questions;
yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his
hands? On what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters are never weary; they
know no other law than to flow, without ceasing^ from morning till night, and from night till
morning; but when do they stop? and who makes them flow thus ? The clouds also come and
go, and burst in water over the earth : whence come they ? who sends them ? The diviners certainly
do not give us rain, for how could they do it? and why do I not see them with my own eyes when
they go up to heaven to fetch it ? I cannot see the wind, but what is it ? who brings it, and
'makes it blow, and roar, and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was
not a blade in my field ; to-day I returned to the field, and found some : wrho can have given to
the earth the wisdom and power to produce it ? Then I buried my face in both rny hands/ y'
Among the Ama-Kosas Lichtcnstein declared that "there is no appearance of any religious wor-
ship whatever/' Such a statement, however, though frequently ma4e regarding different savage
people f — among others, some tribes of Eskimo, some Canadian Indians, the California!! tribes,
many of the Brazilians, some of the Polynesians, Andamaners, and certain tribes of Hiudostan
* Cassalis, " Basutos," p. 239. t Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," p. ;364.
268
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
:iiul East Africa, &c. — cannot be received with too great caution. I have already shown that
some of the so-called godless tribes are not in reality so. No portion of the habits of wild
races is so difficult to get at, even by travellers intimately acquainted with their languages, and
living long amongst them, as their religious or superstitious beliefs — for they are synonymous.
The hearsay ideas picked up by travellers are almost valueless on such a difficult point.
Among the Ama-Kosas — another Kaffir tribe — before a party goes out hunting, one of
them takes a handful of grass in his mouth and crawls on all-fours, so as to represent some kind
A NKiJIT SlKJ'UlSii I.\ THE KALAHARI D1CSE11T.
of wild animal. The rest then run after him, just as if they were pursuing some kind of game,
threatening him with their spears, and all the time shouting the hunting-cry. The pantomimic
business continues for some time, until the hunted man pretends to fall down dead. If this
man, however, afterwards kills a head of game, he hangs the claws on his arm as a trophy, but
the skin and flesh of the animal must be shared with the rest. The same traveller who relates
this trait of Kaffir life — Dr. Lichtenstein — also relates how, when a Kaffir kills an elephant, it
may U- after a long and wearisome chase, he will apologise humbly to the slain animal, exculpat-
ing himself on the plea that the affair was an entire mistake, and not done by design, but owing
t<> a misunderstanding on the hunter's part. The trunk of the elephant is then cut off and
buried, with many flattering words, the humble apology being then supposed to be complete.
A similar idea prevails among many other savage people. For instance, the wild Eskimo in
THE KAFFIRS: ANIMAL WORSHIP; ITS WIDESPREAD PREVALENCE, ETC.
269
Smith's Sound (Vol. I., p. 32) are very careful in. hunting the walrus, not to offend, by any
infractions of the laws made and provided by tradition for the hunting of that huge pachyderm,
the majesty of the great guardian walrus, who lives far away beyond the icy hills, and whose
monk, aw uk-like bellowing may be heard echoing through the stillness of the long
Arctic night. Again, the Chippewayan and Dogrib Indian women will not touch or even step
over a bear- skin, so that one laid at the door of a tent is an effectual barrier against intruders
of the female sex. When these Indians kill a bear, Mr. Alex. Henry, a well-known traveller
and trader among these people, informs us that they take its head in their hands, stroking and
THE ZULU CEUEMONY OF " UKUXCIXSA," IN WHICH THE CHIEF EXHORTS HIS MEN BEFORE BATTLE.
kissing it several times, begging a thousand pardons for taking away its life, calling it their
relation and grandmother, and requesting it not to lay the fault upon them, since it was, in
truth, not they who killed it but an Englishman. When the bear is being eaten tobacco-smoke
is blown into the nostrils of the animal. Again, the Laplanders term the bear the " dog of God,"
and say that it has the strength of ten men and the sense of twelve. They never presume to
call it by its proper name of guonzJiga, lest it should revenge the insult upon their flocks, but
style it m-fedda aigia, or the " old man in the fur cloak." Their females are not allowed to
cat its ramp, nor will they deliver to them the meat through the door of the hut, but through
a hole in another part of the wall. Some of the American Indians observe a similar custom
in regard to the moose-deer. Among the Kamschatkans, the bear is looked upon as a great
authority in medicine, surgery, and all the polite arts. When they are ill they resort to him
for a cure, and acknowledge that as a dancing-master he has no superior. In Siberia, also,
.270 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
when the Yoguls kill a bear, they address it in a formal manner, and maintain that the blame?
is to be laid on the arrows and iron which were forged by the Russians. Lastly, not to
multiply other instances, the Indians on the northern coast of British Columbia (Tsimseans,
&c.), when the fishing1 season commences in the rivers, propitiate the fish by speaking and
paying court to them in such flattery as, " You fish, you fish ; you are all chiefs, you are ;
you are all chiefs/-' These facts may be mentioned to show how similar ideas permeate
through savage races, and how widespread is the religious respect paid to animals.
Unlike the Polynesians, the Kaffirs are poor arithmeticians, and make but little use of
numbers. It is affirmed that few of the Ama-Kosas can reckon beyond ten. They have no
word for eight, and many of them did not know the names of any numerals. Yet they will
immediately notice if a single animal is missing out of a herd of several hundred, but simply
because they miss a familiar face. The Zulu tolitisupa means six, though literally the transla-
tion is " take the thumb " — e.g., having counted as far as five on the fingers of one hand, take
the thumb of the next. Lichtenstein mentions that among the Bechuana tribe " the numbers
are commonly expressed by fingers held up, so that the word is rarely spoken; many are even
unacquainted with these numerals, .and never employ anything but the sign. It therefore
occasioned me no small trouble to learn the numerals, and I could by no means arrive at any
denomination for the numbers five and nine. Beyond ten even the most learned could not
reckon, nor could I make out by what signs they even designated these higher numbers."
Livingstone, however, ridicules the idea of the Bechuanas not being able to count more than
ten — a story which arose about the very time when the father of the chief Sechele counted out
one thousand cattle as the beginning of his son's stock ! He considers that the origin of this
impression regarding their inability to count more than a low number originated in the fact
that every member of the tribe is bound to tell his chief everything which comes to his
knowledge, and when questioned by strangers either gives answers which exhibit the utmost
stupidity, or such as he knows will be agreeable to the chief. I may fittingly conclude this
part of our subject by a description of the curious rites attending the initiation of boys into the
ranks of men and of girls into the ranks of women. The first is known as logucra (or circum-
cision), and is practised by all the Kaffir tribes — including the Bechuana — south of the Zambesi,
but the rites are carefully concealed. None but the initiated know anything of the first portion
of the ceremony, but of the second part, or secho, Livingstone had an opportunity of being
a spectator in the village of one of the Bechuana tribes. " Just at the dawn of day, a row of
boys, nearly fourteen years of age, stood naked in the hot-lo, each having a pair of sandals as a
shield on his hands. Facing them stood the men of the town in a similar state of nudity, all
armed with long, thin wands, of a tough, strong, supple bush called n/<>r<'(l<Ht ((', fcn-li Jlttcci),
and engaged in a dance named koha, in which questions are put to the boys, as — ' AA ill you
guard the chief well?' '"NYill you herd the cattle well?' And while the latter give an
affirmative response, the men rush forward to them, and each aims a full-weight Mow at the
back of on2 of the boys, who shields himself with the sandals. But the former causes the
supple wand to descend and bend into his back, and every stroke thus inflicted ma\es the blor
sipiirt oiu (.!' a wound a foot or eighteen inches long. At the end of the dance, the boys' backs
arc .-ramc 1 with wounds and weals, the scars of which remain through life. This is intende<
to harden the young soldiers, and prepare them for the rank of men. After this ceremony,
THE KAFFIRS: THE BOGUERA AND SECHO RITES; DISCIPUXK; INITIATION. 271
and after killing a rhinoceros, they may marry a wife. In the Icol/a, the same respect is shown
to ag%e as in many other of their customs. A younger man rushing from the ranks to exercise
his wand on the backs of the youths, may be himself the object of chastisement by the older,
and on the occasion referred to Sekomi (the chief) received a severe cut on the leg from one of
his grey-haired people. On my joking with some of the young men on their want of courage,
notwithstanding all the beatings of which they bore marks, and hinting that our soldiers were
brave without suffering so much, one rose up and said, ' Ask him if, when he and I weiv
compelled by a lion to stop and make a fire, if I did not lie down and sleep as well as himself/
In other parts, a challenge to try a race would have been given, and you may frequently se3
grown-up men adopting that means of testing superiority, like so many children.
" The seclio is practised by three tribes only. Boguera is observed by all the Bechuanas
and Kaffirs, but not by the negro tribes beyond 20° south. The boguera is a civil rather than
a religious rite. All the boys of an age between ten and fourteen or fifteen are selected to be
the companions for life of one of the sons of the chief. They are taken out to some retired spot
in the forest, and huts are erected for their accommodation ; the old men go out and teach them
to dance, initiating them at the same time into all the mysteries of African politics or govern-
ment. Each one is expected to compose an oration in praise of himself, calling a leisia or
name, and to be able to repeat it with sufficient fluency. A good deal of beating is required to
bring them up to the required excellency in different matters, so that they have generally a
number of scars to show on their backs. These bands or regiments — named mepato in the
plural, and mopato in the singular — receive particular appellations ; as, the Matsatsi, the suns ;
the Malitsa, the rulers ; equivalent to our Coldstreams or Enniskillens ; and though living in
different parts of the town, they turn out at the call, and act under the chief's son as their
commander. They recognise a sort of equality and partial communism ever afterwards, and
address each other by the title of mokelane (or comrade) . In cases of offence against their rulers,
as eating alone when any of their comrades are within call, or in cases of cowardice or
dereliction of duty, they may strike one another, or any member of a younger mopato, but
nsvar any one of an older band; and when three or four companies have been made, the oldest
no longer takes the field in time of war, but remains as a guard over the women and children.
"When a fugitive comes to a tribe, he is directed to the mopato analogous to that to which in
his own tribe he belongs, and does duty as a member. No one of the natives knows how old
he is. If asked his age, he answers by putting another question : ' Doss a man remember
when he was born ? ' Age is reckoned by the number of mepato they have seen pass through
the formula of admission. When they see four or five mepato younger than themselves, they
r.ro no longer obliged to bear arms. The oldest individual I ever met boasted he had seen
eleven sets of boys submitted to the loguera. Supposing him to have been fifteen when he
sa\v his own, and fresh bands were added every six or seven years, he must have been about
forty when he saw the fifth, and may have attained seventy-five or eighty years, which is no
great age ; but it seemed so to them, for he had now doubled the age for superannuation among
them. It is an ingenious plan for attaching the members of the tribe to the chiefs family,
anJ for imparting a discipline which renders the tribe easy of command. On their return to
the town from attendance on the ceremonies of initiation, a pipe is given to the lad who can
run fastest, the article being placed where all may see the winner run up 'to snatch it. They
272
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
aiv then considered men (banona), and can sit among the elders in the kolln. Formerly they
were only boys {basimane). The first missionaries set their faces ag-ainst the Ixxjncra, on
account of its connection with heathenism, and the fact that the youths learned much evil and
became disobedient to their parents. From the general success of these men, it is perhaps
better that younger missionaries should tread in their footsteps ; for so much evil may result
from breaking down the authority on which, to those who cannot read, the whole system of
such influence appears to rest, that the innovation ought to be made of proposing measures
as the Locrians did new laws — with ropes round their necks. Probably the boynera was only a
ZULU WOMEN SELLING PUMPKINS.
sanitary and political privilege; and there being no continuous chain of tribes practising the rite
between the Arabs and the Bechuanas, or Kaffirs, and as it is not a religious ceremony, it can
scarcely be traced, as is often done, to a Mohammedan source/' A somewhat similar ceremony
(the boi/ale) takes place for the young women, who, under the surveillance of an old lady, are
drilled to the carrying of water. During the whole time they ai-e engaged in this useful but
by no means dignified occupation, they are clad in a dress made of ropes of alternate pumpkin-
seeds and bits of reed, strung together and wound round the body in a figure »>f eight fashion.
Tins "fatigue drill" is gone through, I suppose, in order to inure them to hardship, and
probably under a similar idea bits of burning charcoal are applied to their arms, in order to
accustom them to bear pain, or to test their power of enduring it.
THE KAFFIRS: MORAL CHARACTER; CONDUCT OF THE WHITES.
273
The Kaffirs, except in some cases where their fears of witchcraft render them half insane,
are, unlike some African races, by no means either cruel or vindictive as a people. Tl e
13echuanas are probably the least amiable of all the Kaffir tribes, being arrant thieves, boastful,
and inclined to cherish vengeance against any one who has wronged them, or whom they
believe to have done so. Unlike most Kaffir tribes, they are cruel and heartless to their aged
relatives, showing no affection, or even natural feelings of regard toward their wife or wives,
such as an ordinary human being would have towards his horse or dog. Yet he is not quarrel-
some, and is persevering and industrious — virtues which go a long way in savage life to make
CAMP OF BUSHMEN.
up for what are looked upon in civilised society as gross offences, but which are, from a savage
point of view, very venial indeed.
Rude, cruel, and heartless, however, would the Kaffir be, did he show a tithe of the
heartlessness, cruelty, and injustice towards his fellow-tribesmen, or towards the tribe, which the
whites have shown to him. We Britons are not blameless in this respect, and among our
inglorious " little wars " those known by the name of " the Kaffir " do not shine first on our
bead-roll of glory. But our colonists (it was Livingstone's opinion) become absolutely vir-
tuous in this relation compared with the Boer Dutchmen of South Africa, and the Governments
of the Free, or Orange State, and the Transvaal Republic, in former days at least.
The word "boer" means simply a " farmer" — and doubtless the original meaning of our
word " beor " was the same, though now used in an offensive sense. In the Cape Colony the
term is applied to the Dutch farmers, who are an industrious, honest, and excessively prosaic race
of people, clinging, even beyond Batavian tenacity, to the language and customs of the mud-
begotten home of their ancestors in dear old Holland. From this people — no more than from
75
271 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
the mass of English colonists — the unfortunate aborigines had little to fear, so long as they kept
their " lifting" propensities in re cattle within reputable grounds. But with the dissatisfied
Boers, who fled beyond the Cashan, or Magaliesberg Mountains, and where (according to Living-
stone), aided by English deserters and other bad characters of every sort, they established the
wished for Republic, the case is different. The great objection which these gentlemen already
had to the English law — viz., that, theoretically at least, it made no difference between white and
black — they were determined should not exist either in a passive or active state in their new
home beyond the reach of any law except of their own making. In the republic, aggrieved
by the emancipation of their Hottentot slaves — a wrong to which the farmers had to
submit soon after the Cape Colony passed into the hands of the English Government — they
determined, Livingstone tells us, to pursue the course which he proceeds to describe.
In the land to which they had fled, and where " the king's writ goeth not/' they were
welcomed with joy by the Bechuanas, a tribe who looked upon them as deliverers from the sway
of the cruel Zulu chief Mosilkatze. But they soon found out their mistake, as the true
character of their Dutch visitors began to show itself. f( Mosilkatze/' the poor wretches soon
began to cry out, " was cruel to his enemies and kind to those he conquered ; but the Boers
destroy their enemies and make slaves of their friends." The tribes who still maintained a
semblance of independence were forced to perform all labours of the fields, such as manuring,
weeding, reaping, making dams and canals, and at the same time to support themselves. Nor
were they ashamed of their meanness in thus making use of unpaid labour. On the contrary,
the heathen being thus "given them for an inheritance/' they were, like Clive, " astonished
at their own moderation," and were never weary in praising the equity of the regulations they
had enforced on the duped natives. " We make the people work for us on consideration of
allowing them to live in our country," was the placid precis of the aboriginal policy of the
African descendants of a nation never remarkable for too delicate a conscience in dealing with
the aboriginal population of the countries in which they settle, and at no period of their history
distinguished for loftiness of soul when guilders or copper bars were in view.
This species of slavery served only to supply field labour. To obtain domestic servants
recourse was had to forays on the neighbouring tribes which had abundant flocks of cattle.
The Bechuanas have never been engaged in the slave trade, and accordingly have never sold
man, woman, or child, far less sold themselves, as some of the negroes of other tribes, degraded
by strong drink, have done. Consequently, in these forays by the Dutch Boers -children
were seized, even by the more humane farmers, who were tempted by the hope of a division-of
the captured cattle, or impelled by a well-devised story of an " uprising " of the devoted tribe.
In order that they might not be so liable to escape, the long-headed burghers generally contrived
to take the youthful at an age so early that they soon forgot their parents and their native
language, ^ et the Dutch in this region are extremely pious — as piety goes in South Africa —
talking Of themselves as "Christians," while all the coloured race are "black property " or
"creatures," to whom, like the Jews of old in refei-ence to the neighbouring people, they are
the chosen people who are to be a rod of Divine vengeance for their backsliding*. Living in the
midst o|' a much more numerous native population, they were continually in dread of the blacks
whom they had treated so cruelly, taking dire vengeance on them. Accordingly, at the first
svmptoin of alarm, the innocent natives were ruthlessly fallen on, and no matter how brutal the
BOERS AND KAFFIRS: HOTTENTOTS: THEIR ORIGIN AND RANGE. 275
lassarrc which ensued, it was always excused on the plea of " state necessity " — a .soothing lialin
for any qualms of conscience which might linger in the minds of these degenerate sons of
Holland. The Bechuanas are a comparatively effeminate race, little inclined to quarrel with
the whites, against whom they have, unlike the Kaffirs proper, never been the aggressors,
otherwise their Boer enemies would have another tale to tell — if, indeed, they were left to tell
any tale whatever. The Dutch have always avoided Kaftirland proper, and when they have
embroiled themselves with the war-like savages of that region, have left their quarrels to bo
settled, as Livingstone puts it, " by the English, and their wars to be paid for by English gold."
Such is the account which the celebrated traveller gives us as the result of his own observation.
The circumstances, however, under which the Transvaal Republic was first annexed by
Great Britain, and subsequently receded under certain conditions, have imported into the dis-
cussion of slavery among the Boers an amount of political rancour which now makes it difficult
to consider the facts calmly. But after carefully sifting the voluminous literature to which
the recent petty wars in South Africa have given rise, it may be stated as the writer's belief
that the slave hunts which Livingstone describes in the preceding paragraphs have not
been practised of late years, and that President Burgers, in pleading that these black spots
related to an early period of Transvaal history, was stating the simple truth. The sj^stem
of " apprenticeship," which was only slavery in disguise, continued up to a later date, and
possibly is not even yet quite extinct. But apart from the higher moral tone which prevails
among the emigrant Boers, and the pride which a jealousy for the national honour inspires, the
vigilance of the British resident and their not always friendly neighbours renders any such
proceedings as those on which Livingstone so bitterly animadverts all but impossible. The
disagreements between them and the Kaffirs, however, are likely to still continue : indeed, soon
after the cession of the State, the burghers and some of the contiguous tribes were engaged
in the kind of guerilla hostility which is unhappily so common in South Africa.*
CHAPTER XI.
HOTTENTOTS, BUSHMEN, AND ALLIED TRIBES : THEIR ORIGIN AND RANGE.
AFRICA is such a wide ethnographical region that were we to attempt to describe in even the
most abstract manner the various tribes inhabiting ifc, and were there as many volumes at our
disposal for doing so as there are chapters, our space would speedily be filled, without, at the
same time, exhausting the subject. Remembering how many interesting African tribes we
have still to touch upon, and how broad is the world outside of Africa, the numerous nationalities
of which we must describe in some detail, it is only possible to take the more important
joples, and content ourselves with simply naming the less important ones. For this
reason we must pass lightly over the Ovambos, Damaras, and some other races more closely
* "Missionary Travels," p. 33; Thcal's "Kaffir Folk Lore" (1882); Callaway's "Religious System of the
izulu and Nursery Tales of the Zulu" (1868); South African Folk Lore Journal, 1879 et sey., &c.
27G
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
allied to the true negro races than the Kaffirs, and who seem in some cases to be now-
only the broken remnants of what were once, if not great nations, at least tribal organisations
hardly inferior in power to the Kaffirs themselves. The works of the late Carl Andersson,
zri.r OIULS IN DANCING DKKSS.
Francis Galton, and my lamented friend, Thomas Baines, will supply almost all that is
known in regard to the habits of these dissevered members of the "Bantu" family.
The richer ones have cattle, while the poorer, who are treated like inferior beings, and
enslaved by the richer, are content to live by hunting and root-digging. Some of the young
OVAMBOS: THEIR RANGE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
277
girls and warriors are rather handsome, though black and negro-like, but in their character and
customs are not more amiable than the very zV/-noble savage generally.
The Ocambos (or Ovampos) inhabit the country in or about latitude 17° or 18° south,
A ZULU LAD.
and 15° east longitude. The term by which they designate themselves means " the merry
people." It may require an African education to appreciate their mirth, but the fact is
undeniable that they are humane to their sick and aged, industrious cultivators, and skilful and
rich herdsmen, possessing large droves of cattle and flocks of goats, and, above all, bear the
reputation of being the noblest but at the same time rarest work of God — honest African
:27S THE 1'EOl'LES OF THE WORLD.
savages ! They are good hunters, and, unlike the Kaffirs, also keen and skilful fishermen.
They have an excellent opinion of themselves, and a low one of the white men, hesitating,
as Mr. Galton tells us, to believe there existed a land on the earth where he lived or reigned
as lord, preferring to regard him rather as a migratory animal of considerable intelligence.
The Damaras (p. 228) inhabit the country around Walfisch Bay, north of the Namaquas
and inland by Lake N'gami, and ethnological ly are allied more to the negro races of the Congo
than to the Kaffirs.
HOTTENTOTS.
AVhat the origin of this name is it is now all but impossible to discover. It has been
applied to the South African people we are about to describe from the very earliest period, and
in all likelihood is the name of some particular Hottentot tribe now extinct. At all events, the
Hottentots do appear to have been an aboriginal population of South Africa, though they may
possibly have driven out some earlier race, just as they in their turn were ousted by the
Kaffirs, and the Kaffirs, in the whirligig of events, had to make room for the Europeans. At
one time they seem to have been a more widely spread race than at present, for people of Hot-
tentot origin are said to be found scattered at unknown distances, to the very heart of Africa.
According to the testimony of Owen, Morrell, and other trustworthy travellers, little com-
munities of Hottentots, in some instances still unchanged by contact with Europeans, are found
scattered along the West African coast as far north as lat. 70° south, broken fragments of a
once wide-spread and homogeneous nationality. The Kaffirs, who are still their untiring per-
secutors, and who were the first cause of their national ruin, they hate with an undying hatred
to which the history of tribal malignity shows no parallel. Silently and patiently they will
track their foes, singly or in small bodies, until, in the darkness of the night and safely they
can glut their dire vengeance. In a pitched battle, undisciplined and unaccustomed to fight
under • leaders in bodies, they have no chance with the more warlike Kaffirs, but in cunning
and insidiousness they make up for what they lose in military skill. "When Hottentot sights
Kaffir, then comes the tug of war. This hatred of their conquerors is intuitive, for the
civilised Hottentots have the same lively feeling towards them as the most savage, whose
ferocity is continually stimulated by the sight of acts of cruelty and oppression heaped upon
their devoted race by the Kaffirs in their vicinity. The result of this hatred was utilised by tin-
British in the last Kaffir war, by the employment of the Hottentots as scouts and guides, and
to this day the " Totties," with a quick eye for a Kaffir cow-stealing thief, make the best
herdsmen in the colony, just as the London pickpockets, with their senses acutely trained in
early life by unlawful predatory pursuit in quest of snuff-boxes and pocket-handkerchiefs, were
found, when in an evil day their ill-fortune landed them at the Antipodes, to be able to turn
their quick ears and sharp eyes to good purpose as shepherds, in which calling their reputation
for skill stood high among the Australian squatters.
In colour the Hottentots, unlike the other African natives, are not dark, but yellowish —
like the more pronounced form of Chinese: the face shows high cheek-bones and a long
narrow chin, features also seen in Griquas and Korranas, who are of the Hottentot race.
Having long mingled with Europeans they have now in almost every instance adopted
European <-L,thing and habits, so that it would be simply a waste of time to describe what their
HOTTENTOTS: APPEARANCE; MORAL CHARACTER ; MAUKIA(JKS.
3s was in former times. In Le Vaillant's Travels it is fully described, though the pictures
of their dresses, as depicted in supposed likeness of them, are as often founded on fancy a;-; on
fact. In the heyday of youth some of them are rather handsome in figure, though their faces
are generally rather ugly, but when they pass middle life they get prematurely old and
wrinkled, and the aged people are absolutely hideous. The most peculiar physical feature,
however, in Hottentots is the extraordinary development of fat posteriority, which in the
women serves all the purpose of the " dress improver " among their more civilised sisters. On
this remarkable foot-board, which shakes in walking, the child stands, and it is so firm that it
can support a full-grown person, though the possession is said to in no way inconvenience the
bearer. The head is generally covered with a coat of grease and paint composed of some
powdered ore of iron with shining bangles of mica in it, almost concealing the woolly hair
which, unlike that of the true negro, does not cover the whole head, but is scattered in isolated
tufts — not over an inch in length when straightened — over the bare scalp. The salient
features of their physique may be summed up in the words of Sir John Barrow, who first
described this people with anything like accuracy. They " are well-proportioned, erect, of
delicate and effeminate make, not muscular ; their joints and extremities small ; their faces
generally ugly, but different in different families, some having the nose remarkably flat, others
considerably raised. Their eyes are of a deep chestnut colour, long and narrow, distinct from
each other, the inner angle being rounded, as in the Chinese, to whom the Hottentots bear a
striking resemblance. The cheek-bones are high and prominent, and, with the narrow-pointed
chin, form nearly a triangle. Their teeth are very white." Our impressions of Hottentot physique
are, in Europe, to a great extent derived from the description of a woman of that tribe who wa<
exhibited under the name of the " Hottentot Venus/' and died in Paris in 1821. Her features
are shown in our figure (p. 257) taken from a cast in the Paris Museum of Natural History.
Their moral character is not bad. They are somewhat humorous — a good trait in itself,
and invariably the sign and precursor of many others — but impatient of restraint, and unable to
bear the irksomeness of any regular employment. They are excellent hunters, and accordingly
make admirable irregular soldiers, which are invaluable in our " little wars " with the Kaffirs.
They have, however, no idea of discipline, and that intangible entity called " honour " finds no
place in the aboriginal bosom. They are by no means unwilling to enlist as scouts and irregular
skirmishers, but at the same time with the passive understanding that they may not only
fight when it so seems good to them as well as to their commander, but also run away when it
seems that the " continuity of tissue " can be best preserved by this summary process. To seek
plunder and vengeance, rather than the " bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth," is the aim
of the Hottentot "guerilla/' Callous to pain, stolid, and unexcitable, like most savages, he is
very tenacious of life, injuries which would be fatal to a white having apparently no other
effect upon him than to act as a stimulus, and cause a little passing1 inconvenience. \et his
constitution is more susceptible to poison than that of the whites, probably for the reason that
his nervous system, being little acute, is apt to get sooner depressed under the action of poisons
than that of the more excitable denizen of civilisation.
Marriage ceremony they are said to have none. Marriage with them means simply to pay
for the wife and take her home to her husband's abode, though in an earlier stage of society
le wife was, according to Mr. Noble, not bought, while a priest besprinkled the happy pair.
28U
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
When ill, the patient removes, or is removed by his or her friends, to a little hut at a
distance from the kraal, with the denizens of which he will not mix until he is again
convalescent. The Hottentot patient has thus a great advantage over the sick man among
savages generally, and notably over his Kaffir neighbours : he lies quiet, undisturbed by the
noise and discordant din of the village, or the shouts and dances of the witch-doctors.
Professional advisers of this sort the Hottentots are unblessed with, what little medicine their
simple philosophy places credence in being possessed as a necessary knowledge by almost any of
the tribesmen. Small-pox is their most dreaded disease. With it the most skilful of their
ZULU KUAALS UNDER ZWART HOP, NEAR PIETERMARITZBVJIO.
medicine-men cannot cope. When a family is seized with it the other members of the tribe,
including the nearest relatives of the sick person, instantly remove their encampment, and flee
to the desert, leaving the smitten one to his fate, the relatives often not looking near the
plague-stricken hut for months and even years afterwards.
When a person dies the body is doubled up and wrapped in a kaross (or fur cloak), th<
aims and legs being previously tightly bound to the body, and is buried in a shallow grave, th<
kinsmen being generally too lazy to dig one deep enough to prevent the corpse being disinterred
by wild beasts. As a slight protection against this outrage they usually heap a few stones on
tin- body, but even they are in most cases so few that the jackals, scenting the carrion froi
afar, collect round the grave after nightfall, and soon disinter the body, and tear and devour
HOTTENTOTS: DEATH CEREMONIES AXD FUNERAL RITES; RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, 281
it with hideous howls, within earshot of the stolid relatives. Over the grave there is little
mourning. The plaintive wailing, which is so characteristic and general a feature of savage
lamentation over the place of burial, is, among the more prosaic Hottentots, reserved for their
A ZULU BELLE.
head-men. Religion they are said to ignore. At all events, they no more confide the exercise
of the holy rites to professional priests than they do the cure of their sick to professional
doctors. They are wonderfully free from superstition, though, if this is so, I doubt whether we
are to look upon this mental characteristic as expressing a high or low moral organisation.
Superstition is the first anxious gropings in the dark of the rude mind searching after a God—
the wanderings which, after weary and devious paths, land the anxious seekers at that culmi-
76
282
THK PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
nating point where a belief in a supremo, all-wise all-mereiful Being regulates the conduct,
tempers the sorrows, and controls the lawless passions of men. In all religion there must be,
therefore, much superstition which has failed to get eliminated in the wondrous crucible of
thought. In a word — in the purifying alembic of the human mind, superstitions go in one
side and come out at the other — it may be after long ages — it may be that the process is too
long for the life of the nation — in an elevating and ennobling theology. Where there is not
the first rough materials to work upon there cannot, therefore, be a religion. The Hottentots
arc in this lamentable condition, but I qtiestion exceedingly the truth of the statement as to
the religionless condition of this nation. They are also said not to believe in the immortality
of the soul — a more likely statement — though Kolbeu,* a poor authority at the best, declares
that the assertion is unfounded. The fact that they are " free from superstition " — if fact it
is — must, of course, be received only as expressing that, compared with the Kaffirs and other
savage tribes, they have wonderfully little of it, for Thunberg — a famous scientific traveller —
tells us that in his day they believed in an evil spirit which occasioned sickness, death, and
every other calamity, and Halm has described their supreme being as "Tsuni-Ggoam."
Their language is plentifully intermixed with four peculiar kinds of clicks, very difficult for
a European to imitate, and which give inflexions and often an entirely different meaning to
particular words, which would otherwise sound the same. For a foreigner to speak it is ex-
ceedingly difficult, and no two people can write it, so that if the words so written were pronounced
they could not be understood. The early Dutch compared it to the " gobbling of a turkey-cock/'
Yet, paradoxical though it may seem, the people speaking this sputtering, choking,
" jaw-breaking " language are rather musical, and have many national melodies — suited to words
which celebrate some personal adventure, which they will sing all through the cool night,
continually — negro-like — repeating the same words over and over again. " "When they are
desirous," writes Le Vaillant — a pleasant French traveller of last century, " of indulging in
this amusement, they join hands and form a circle of greater or less extent, in proportion to the
number of male and female dancers, who are alwrays mixed with a kind of symmetry. When
the chain is made, they turn round from one side to another, separating at certain intervals to
mark the measure, and from time to time to clap their hands, without interrupting the cadence,
while with their voices they accompanv the sound of the instruments, and continually chant
' Hoo ! hoo \' This is the general burden of their songs. Sometimes one of the dancers quits
the circle, and going to the centre, performs there, alone, a fewr steps, after the English manner,
all the merit and beauty of which consist in performing them with equal quickness and
precision, without stirring from the spot where he stands. After this they all quit each other's
hands, follow one another carelessly, with an air of terror and melancholy, their heads leaning
to one shoulder, and their eyes cast down towards the ground, which they look at with attention,
and in a moment after they break forth into the liveliest demonstrations of joy and the most
extravagant merriment. They are highly delighted with this contrast when it is well
performed. All this is at bottom but an alternate assemblage of very droll and amusing
pantomime. It must be observed that the dancers make a hollow, monotonous kind of
* "Cape of Good Hope," vol. i., p. 314; Fritsch : "Die Eingeborncn Sud-Afrikas " (1873); arid an admirable
mi l.y Mr. Noble in "Encyclopedia Hritannica," vol. xii., pp. 309—313; Hahn: " Tsuni-Ggoam " (1881), &c.
HOTTENTOTS: LANGUAGE; AMUSEMENTS; HOVING PROPENSITY; OCCUPATIONS. 285
humming, which never ceases, except when they join the spectators, and sing the wonderful
chorus ' Hoo ! hoo ! ' which appears to be the life and soul of their magnificent music. Thcy
usually conclude with a ball — the ring is broken, and they all dance in confusion as each
chooses, and upon this occasion they display all their strength and agility. The most expert
dancers repeat, by way of defiance to each other, those dangerous leaps and musical quavers of
our grand academies, which excite laughter as deservedly as the ' Hoo ! hoo ! ' of Africa/' Dr.
Bleek describes the grammatical construction of the Hottentot language as beautiful and regular.
Dancing is a never-failing amusement after the desultory labours of the day are over, but
numerous other games, as well as a prodigious amount of sleep, fill up the leisure which hangs
so heavy and in such a quantity on the hands of the Kkoi-Khoi, as they call themselves.
In intellect they are not bright, and it is with great difficulty that any information
involving resource to arithmetical calculations or figures can be extracted from them. The innv
moon is their unit, and on it all their calculations regarding time are based.
Unlike the Kaffirs, who live in stationary towns, the Hottentots are especially nomads
roving about from place to place, living a few days here and a few years in another place, bu1
never certain where to be found at any particular time. Their huts are round cage-like frame'
covered with reed-mats or skins, and which can be taken down or put up with marvellous?
rapidity. They are warm and tolerably water-tight, but these very qualities, which render them
impervious to wind and water, also render them impervious to the smoke of their fires, the result
of which is that nobody but a Hottentot can exist for long in a Hottentot hut. The atmosphere
is suffocating, and redolent with stenches indescribable, while the floor, and every article into
which these disagreeable members of the insect world can insinuate themselves, are swarming
with fleas, which sit nestling in wait for some skin more pervious to their bites than the tanned
dirt-and-grease-covered hides of the Hottentots. If even a white man — not altogether a savage
— could endure the atmosphere of the hut, those disagreeable bedfellows, with which his South
African travel makes him acquainted, effectually drive from his eyelids any inclination for sleep.
Even to the Hottentot they sometimes become so troublesome that he will be forced to remove
his dwelling to another place, a remarkable instance of removing a house rather than removing
the fleas (p. 232).
Among their occupations may be mentioned the tanning of cattle hides, an art, however,
which, though now improved by some aboriginal inventions, has probably been originally learnt
from the early Dutch settlers. Making hide-ropes, much used in picketing cattle, and well suited
to the climate, forms also a branch of industry greatly cultivated among these rude people. They
also do a little in carving bowls and other utensils, but show little artistic taste, the chief value
of these carved works being, not in the skill displayed, but in the untiring patience with which
the artists, to whom time is no object — an article, indeed, made for slaves, not for them — have
worked out the designs. It is an ingenious piece of trifling. Agriculture is as yet an almost
unknown art to them, notwithstanding the long period they have resided among or in the vicinity
of Europeans, and witnessed the very process of tilling the soil, and the advantages of reserve stores
of food. Doubtless the Hottentot women have made a rude attempt with little sharp-pointed
sticks, weighted in the middle, to scratch up a bit of soil, but the attempt only shows the
281
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
miileness of their ideas on the subject. Hence they are obliged to wander about in search of
subsistence, or wherever they can obtain grass and water for their cattle, many of which, and of
rather good quality, they possess. It is said that at one time they had a peculiar breed of cattle,
which they trained up to guard their kraals. These bovine sentries would allow no stranger,
unless accompanied by a person whose face was familiar to them, to enter the enclosure, and
accordingly we can understand that such a watch-cow would be a rather formidable concierge,
if — the tale is true. The training of such oxen is at all events now a " lost art."
They show a wonderful skill in knowing all their cattle by sight. If an ox is missing in
the herd they will know, because a familiar face is missing. If they see the stolen ox, even
after several months, they will immediately detect it among a herd, and cases are on record in
which a Hottentot has detected a stolen ox by the spoor (or track) alone, and — which seems
almost incredible — the fact of a particular stolen one being in a herd, because he knew a calf
running about by its likeness to its mother.
Their weapons are the bow and arrows, and the assegai (or spear), which they do not,
however, care much about, instead of carrying, as most of the African tribes do, a sheaf of
them. They are rather unskilful in their use, and do not depend much on them in actual
warfare or in the hunt. For killing small animals they use the short, round-headed club
(Kerne), the use of which probably the Kaffirs learned from them (pp. 229, 201).
When food can be got the Hottentots are enormous eaters. Suppose an elephant or any
other large animal is killed, the kraal, as soon as the news reaches it, strike their tents, and
remove to the vicinity of the carcase, finding it easier to remove their houses to the game than
to bring the game to their houses. Then ensues a scene of gorging. The meat is roughly
boiled, and men, women, and children — supposing there is enough and to spare for all —
commence to gorge themselves until, full to repletion, they throw themselves back and sleep
for a few hours in a torpid condition, only to wake up and again attack the provender, until
the picked bones attest the trencher powers of the assembled village. In a hot climate meat
must be soon eaten, but semi-putrefaction is no barrier to a Hottentot ; if anything, he rather
likes his game " high." We have hinted that sleep is one of the blessings of life which the
Hottentot makes use of in no stinted measure. He can sleep at any time. If he has taken
a full meal, he takes his sleep ; if he is gorged after an eating bout, he is forced to sleep ; and
if he is hungry, he simply tightens his belt and drops off to sleep as a relief to his hungry
thoughts and the pain of gnawing hunger. Like Sancho Panza he says, if not in words at
least in sentiment, "God bless the man that first invented sleep. It covers a man all over,
longings and all, as with a garment; it is food for the hungry and drink for the thirsty ; heat
for the cold and cold for the hot; God bless the man that first invented sleep." In the C;ijv
Colony about 98,000 people are returned as " Hottentots/' but many are of mixed blood. It
is only, we are told by Mr. Noble, at the mission stations or their vicinity that the original
stock is to be found. Halm considers that in Great Namaqualand and Damaraland there arc
still about 17,000 Hottentots or their near allies.
BUSHMEN.
The Bushmen, or Bosjesmen of the Boers (p. 226), the former name being simply a transla-
BUSHMEN: THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE HOTTENTOTS; OUTCAST RACES, ETC. 285
tion of the latter, are called by themselves Saqna or Sauls, and, in common with the Hottentots,
the term K/ioi-Khoi is also used to designate them. They inhabit the outskirts and desert places
of the same country as do the Hottentots, and if forced to choose between the rival theories as
to whether they are the aboriginal race which the Hottentots displaced, an entirely distinct
people, or only degenerate Hottentots, I should choose the latter view. The reasons in favour of
it are cogent. In appearance they do not differ widely from the Hottentots, and many of their
habits are the same. Again, many other facts support the theory that they are degraded mem-
bers of the same race, who, driven to the desert by persecution, and, living for ages under adverse
circumstances of shelter, food, and other agencies, have gradually deteriorated. We must not,
however, suppose that this deterioration is of modern date, or caused, as some have supposed,
by the Dutch settlers having driven their ancestors, plundered of their cattle, into the desert.
The late Sir Andrew Smith, well known as the Director-General of the Army Medical Depart-
ment during the period of the Crimean War, and in earlier life distinguished by his travels and
researches in South Africa, conclusively proved that the Kaffirs and Hottentots were of one
stock, and had originally spoken the same language, and that in all probability they existed as
separate bands long before the first denizens of the flat shores of the Zuyder Zee ever set foot
in the Cape of Good Hope, though augmented from time to time by outcasts from other tribes
joining them. Almost every South African nationality which has adopted the first forms of
civilisation — in so far as conforming to well-understood or fixed laws, and arranging them-
selves into communities under recognised heads, is civilisation — is surrounded by wandering
hordes of outcasts and vagabonds, veritable Caves of Adullarn, to which resort all who are in
trouble, whom the terrors of the law induce to seek a refuge among the lawless, or where the
avenger of blood cannot find them. To use the language of Mr. Galton, " Two African tribes
never live close up to a common frontier ; they are always fighting and robbing, and therefore
a broad frontier-land is essential, and in these border-lands, so far as I have seen, the Bushmen
and other tribes live." There are, therefore, Kaffir Bushmen, though the people so known to
the Cape colonists are outcast Hottentots. In like manner the Balalas are outcasts of the
Bechuanas, while the Balakahari are the refuse population of the different nationalities in their
immediate neighbourhood. The Fingoes were a servile tribe of this kind at one time under
the dominion of the Ama-Kosa Kaffirs, but were, in 1835, emancipated, to the number of
17,000, by the English, and settled on lands given to them between the Lower Keiskamma
and the Great Fish River. And there are various mixed tribes, such as the " bastard Griquas."
In appearance, and in their mode of speaking, they resemble the Hottentots, though
the vocabulary of their language greatly differs from that of the nationality mentioned.
As the structure and other cardinal characteristics are the same, the mere difference in tin-
vocabulary matters very little. We have already seen how rapidly an unwritten, vacillating,
language will change in a short time. The Bushmen having apparently been a separate people
for centuries, and being continually recruited from alien tribes, could scarcely be expected to
have long retained the Hottentot language in its purity, though purity is hardly the strict
term to apply to a rude speech ever changing according to the humours and tastes of the
speakers. The Bushman language is, however, so imperfect and bald that the words require to-
be eked out by signs, and accordingly, like a party of prairie Indians (Vol. I., p. 159), they
require the aid of daylight or a fire before they can prop?rly express themselves, the mere
£SG THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
words being insufficient without signs to render their meaning intelligible. Some of the
Bushmen tribes affect a peculiar mode of utterance, and adopt new words, with the design of
rendering their language unintelligible to all except the members of their own community.'55'
This singular custom they designate as cit~e cat. Though this dialect is more or less understood
by the various Bushmen tribes, it is an unknown language to the Hottentots, and accordingly
it is considered as very useful in concealing their designs and plots from their enemies. Their
language has been described as a " mixture of chattering, hissing, and nasal grunts/' but the
peculiar mode of utterance can be so modified by them when they have lived long in the
vicinity of the white or Hottentot settlements as to render their language intelligible to their
more civilised neighbours. They are admirable mimics, and soon ape the customs as well as
the language of their neighbours, so that they are not so low in the intellectual scale as has
been sometimes asserted. They are small in stature, the men not being on an average over
five feet in height, and the women less. Their skin is not black or brown, but yellowish,
though it is always so filthy and smeared with grease that it looks much darker than it really
is. In his appearance there is certainly nothing intellectual. On the contrary, in his tort
euscmlle there is something disagreeably animal-looking. This idea seems to have forcibly
impressed Lichtenstein, who describes a Bushman in the following graphic terms : — " One
ok' our present guests, wrho appeared about fifty years of age, who had grey hair and a bristlv
beard, whose forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin were all smeared over with black grease — having-
only a white circle round the eye washed clean with the tears occasioned by smoking, this
man had the true physiognomy of the small blue ape of Kaffraria. What gives the more
verity to such a comparison was the vivacity of his eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows,
which he worked up and down with every change of countenance. Even his nostrils and the
corners of his mouth, nay, his very ears, moved involuntarily, expressing his hasty transition
from eager desire to watchful distrust. There wras not, on the contrary, a single feature in his
Countenance that evinced a consciousness of mental powers, or anything that denoted emotions
of the mind of a milder species than what belong to man in his mere animal nature. When a
piece of meat was given him, and half-rising he stretched out a distrustful arm to take it, he
snatched it hastily, and stuck it immediately into the fire, peering around with his little keen
<iyes, as if fearing lest some one should take it away again; all this was done with such looks
and gestures, that any one must have been ready to swear he had taken example of them
entirely from an ape. He soon took the meat from the embers, wiped it hastily with his right
hand upon his left arm, and tore out half-raw bits with his teeth, which 1 could see going entire
down his meagre throat. "f
If this description seems exaggerated — though there is no ground for supposing it is
on the contrary, it bears internal evidence of truthfulness — perhaps the words of the missionary
Adolphe Bonatx, who attempted, but attempted in vain, to introduce Christianity amongst
them, may be substituted. The following are his words : — "These people are of small stature
and dirty yellow colour; their countenance is repulsive — a prominent forehead, small, deeply-
seated and roguish eyes, a much-depressed nose, and thick projecting lips are their dial
t eristic features. Their constitution is so much injured by their dissolute habits and the consti
* Smith: "Report of the Expedition," &c. (183G). f " Travels," &c., Vol. II., p. 224.
SKXMEXT; MA
smoking1 of diirtia, that Loth old and young look wrinkled and decrepit; nevertheless, they an-
I'ond of ornament, and dec-orate their ears, arms, and legs with beads, iron, copper or bra--
rings. The women also stain their faces red, or paint them wholly or in part. Their onl\
clothing, by day or night, is a mantle of sheep-skin thrown over their bodies, which they term
a /,-aross. The dwelling of the Bushman is a low hut, or a circular cavity, on the open plain, into
which he creeps at night with his wife and children, and which, though it shelters him from
the wind, leaves him exposed to the rain. They had formerly their habitation among tin-
rocks, in which are still seen rude figures of horses, oxen, and serpents. Many of them still
live, like wild beasts, in their rocky retreats, to which they return with joy after escaping from
the service of the colonists. I have never seen these fugitives otherwise occupied than with
their bows and arrows ; the bows are small ; the arrows are barbed, and steeped in a potent
poison, of a resinous appearance, distilled from the leaves of an indigenous tree. These they
prefer to fire-arms : as weapons that make no report. On their return from the chase they feast
till they become drowsy, and hunger only rouses them to renewed exertion. In seasons of
scarcity they devour wild roots, ants' eggs, locusts, and snakes. As enemies, the Bushmen are
not to be despised. Their languages seem to consist of snapping, hissing, grunting sounds,
nil of them nasal." In a word, the Bushmen are to the South African tribes what the
"Diggers''' are to the North American ones. A few words in expansion of this concise account
of the old German missionary may suffice as a sketch of Bushman life and manners.
Government, in the strict meaning of the term, they have none. They have no head or
distinctions of rank. The sh'ongest man is the head-inaii, until some stronger one can
dispossess him, or take possession of whatever plunder or privileges attach to the office.
The marriafje-tle is dissoluble at the will of the husband, and the men show little jealousy
of the women, whose conduct, indeed, will scarcely bear too close criticism. The strange
custom of a man not looking at the face of his newly-married wife for long after marriage, but
being compelled to visit after dark, prevails among this rude race as well as among some of the
more polished ones, of whom we have already had occasion to speak (Vol. I., p. 197).
Again, the custom that if a man take a fancy to another man's wife, he can challenge the
husband to compete for her, prevails, just as it does (or did) among some of the Hudson's
Bay Indians. If the challenger win her, she meekly follows him to his den, and is his
until a stronger disputes his right to the uxorial possession. It is said that there is no word
amongst them to express the distinction between a married and an unmarried woman, which, if
true, appears to indicate a strange state of affairs, to designate it by no stronger term.
Unlike the Hottentots, the Bushmen have never altered by contact with the surrounding
civilisation. They are Bushmen, as they were centuries ago, and in their habits are not
materially different from what they were when the first pioneer set his foot on their arid land.
Civilisation has had no other effect on them than simply driving them further into the desert.
Christianity has been attempted to be introduced amongst them, but the attempt has been an
utter failure. They are not without superstition, and believe, if not in a future state, at least
in the person not being annihilated by death. Thus Lichtenstein tells us that a Bushman
magician, having put a woman to death, dashed her head to pieces with large stones, buried
the corpse, and made a large fire over the grave, lest she should rise again and " trouble him."
So perfectly untamable and unintelligent are they, that they are of little use as servants,
288 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
and even after being tolerably well " licked into shape " (and here the phrase must be taken
almost literally) by the rude discipline of the colonist, the ungrateful young- vagabond will
take the first opportunity of escaping into the bush. The Dutch held them in slavery, and the
Kaffirs also treated them in much the same manner, but they made little of them. Almost
their only use to the colonist is as a " fore louper," or lad to walk ahead of the great bullock-
teams in use at the Cape, and pick out a path for the oxen (p. 244).
Dress he troubles himself little about; he has not even the universal savage desire for
the cast-off clothing of the white man, but prefers his kaross as a covering, and a triangular
apron subserves the purposes of modesty — so far as this is possessed by the little yellow man.
The women wear the apron in front, like the Hottentot. A few ornaments of the money
cowry, so extensively in use among some of the African tribes as a medium of exchange,
ice., serve to gratify what feelings of vanity the stern struggle for existence allows to remain
in the Bushman's bosom. Their wool is clotted with red ochre and grease, and adorned(?)
with fragments of ostrich-shells, bits of metal, birds' heads, &c.
The hands of both sexes are small and delicate, though when we state this wre liave almost
exhausted the points of beauty in the male or female Bushman. Like the Hottentots, the
women soon get wrinkled and excessively ugly, thirty or even younger being about the limits
during which even the very small modicum of good looks which, under the most favourable
circumstances, falls to the lot of the Bushman, remains. He leads an animal existence, and
we have seen how terribly animal are all his traits of character. Like them, also, his senses are
preternaturally acute. His eyesight is keen as a hawk's, or his native vulture's, while his ears
are open to every sound, and his nose to every oclour, though seemingly his olfactory nerves are
dead to the stench which pervades every corner of the wild beast-like lair in which he shelters
himself.
Their Jiouses are, as the old missionary described them, mere holes in the rocks, or bushes
bent into the form of rude shelter, where the Bushman and his family can lie concealed when
travelling. If there are no caverns, and the family is stationary for a little while, then he
erects a cage-like wicker tent, under which the brood ensconce themselves (p. 273).
Their food consists of every creeping, running, and flying thing which they can lay hands
on. Not that their ambition never soars beyond snakes, roots, and slugs. On the contrarv,
they are bold and not unskilful hunters of the ostrich, the lion, and the leopard, in the pursuit
of which, what they lack in strength, the want of horses, and firearms, is amply compensated by
the little deadly poisoned arrows writh which they are provided. In hunting the ostrich thev
show great ingenuity. To pursue this bird on foot would be a hopeless task. Horses they
never had. Accordingly, before they can send their arrow into the swift-footed bird they must
contrive to get within range. In the open, flat, treeless, sandy country frequented by the
•'-Inch this is no easy matter. The little hunter, however, manages to effect this by mounting
the skin of an ostrich on his back, the whole being skilfully arranged so as to delude the birds
into the belief that it is only another ostrich feeding in their vicinity, while the legs of the
liunter look like bird's legs, and are coloured yellow, the better to keep up the deception.
Approaching in this manner within shooting distance, the poisoned arrow soon does its work,
:ind the yellow-legged hunter despoils the bird of its tail-feathers, destined in time to figure in
the head-dresses of lady courtiers all over the civilised world (p. 2-37).
BUSHMEN: SKILL AS HUNTERS; CAT"]
BALING ;
In addition to his skill as a hunter, the Bushman also excels in an art quite as useful to
him, but on the whole hardly so popular among his neighbours on whom it is practised. He is
an adroit cattle-thief. The result of this is, that he is hated alike by Kaffir and Hottentot,
who will even for a time forget their own never-dying feud to unite in taking vengeance on
the common enemy. If he cannot carry off the cattle, he will take to the inaccessible places
;^sft»l&a8»»tMg
ZULU DANDY, SHOWING A MODE OF DRESSING THE HAIR.
where he can conceal himself, and leave the cattle to his pursuers ; but not before a poisoned
arrow has been left in each of the herd. If pursued, he will poison the watering-places on the
way, and invariably endeavours to escape with his herd through places where horsemen or
pedestrians less hardy than himself cannot follow. To follow the Bushman into his haunts
among the mountains or inaccessible places is, however, not a pleasant task. Lurking behind
stones, under bushes, or among the long grass, the first intimation the unsuspecting traveller
has of the vicinity of the enemy is one of these fearful little arrows entering his flesh. To
77
290 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
escape with life after this is rare. Accordingly the Bushman is hunted down whenever a
chance occurs, though he is everywhere feared, and is never, unless under very favourable
circumstances, openly attacked, as we have already hinted. These arrows, which render him
such an object of dread, he keeps in a quiver on his back, though those for immediate u-e
are carried in his hair, from which they can be instantly removed and strung on the bow. They
are about eighteen inches long, and unfeathered, so that they are only effective at short
distances. The poison with which they are tipped is derived from the milky juice of various-
.Euphorbia (or spurges), and the juice of the bulb of Amaryllis toxicaria, mixed with poison taken
from the poison-gland of various venomous serpents, the mixture rendering an effectual antidote
to it difficult to discover. The mixed juice is boiled down to a thick consistency, and spread
over the barbs of the arrows. So deadly is this poison, that even the lion can be successfully
attacked by the Bushmen armed only with the bow and arrows. Dr. Livingstone remarks that
these animals — which, contrary to the usual story-book myth, evince no trait which can by the
wridest licence be called " noble," — seem to have a wholesome dread of the Bushmen, " wh< >,
when they observe evidence of a lion's having made a full meal, follow up his spoor (trail) so
quietly that his slumbers are not disturbed. One discharges a poisoned arrow from a distance
of only a few feet, while his companion simultaneously throws his skin-cloak over the beast's
head. The sudden surprise makes the lion lose his presence of mind, and he bounds away in
the greatest confusion and terror. Our friends here showed me the poison which they use on
these occasions. It is the entrails of a caterpillar called n'giva, half an inch long. They
squeeze out these, and place them all around the bottom of the barb, and allow the poison to-
dry in the sun. They are very careful in cleaning their nails after working with it, as a small
portion introduced into a scratch acts like morbid poison in dissection wounds. The agony is
so great that the person cuts himself, calls for his mother's breast as if he were returned in
idea to his childhood again, or flies from human habitations a raging maniac. The effects < n
the lion are equally terrible. He is heard moaning in distress, biting the trees and ground in
rage. As the Bushmen have the reputation of curing the wounds of this poison, I asked
how this was effected. They said that they administer the caterpillar itself in combination
with fat ; they also rub fat into the wounds, saying that f the n'giva wants fat, and when it
does not find it in the body, kills the man ; we give it what it wants, and it is content • ' — a
reason which will commend itself to the enlightened among ourselves. The poison more
generally used is the milky juice of the tree Euphorbia (/:'. arborescent). This is particularly
obnoxious to the equine race. "When a quantity is mixed with the water of a pond, a whole
hord of zebras will fall dead from the effects of the poison before they have moved away two
mil 's. It does not, however, kill oxen or men. On them it acts as a drastic purgative only.
This substance is used all over the country, though in some places the venom of serpents and a
certain bulb (Amaryllis toxicaria] are " (as we have already mentioned) " added, in order to
increase their virulence. Father Pedro, a Jesuit, who lived at Zumbo, made a balsam con-
tiining a number of plants and castor-oil, as a remedy for the poisoned arrow-wounds. It is
probable that he derived his knowledge from the natives, as I did, and that the reputed efficacy
i-f the balsam is owing to its fatty constituents." It is well for the hunted Bushman that he
lias these deadly arrows, as they are his only defence. Had he not this protection, he would
I r soon exterminated by his ruthless enemies, who are only kept at arm's length by the
BUSHMEN: THEIR MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS; VIND1CTIVEXESS; ART, ETC. 21)1
knowledge of the effect of this little weapon. A single Bushman lurking in the neighbour-
hood will keep a settlement in terror.
Dancing, singing, and playing on rude musical instruments, are the Bushman's chief
imusements. The chief of these musical instruments is the goura (or wind-bow), the descrip-
tion of which we may borrow from Le Vaillant : — " The goura is shaped like the bow of a
.savage Hottentot. It is of the same size, and a string made of intestines fixed to one of its
extremities, is retained at the other by a knot in the barrel of a quill, which is flattened and
cleft. The quill being opened, forms a very long isosceles triangle, about two inches in length ;
and at the base of this triangle the hole is made that keeps the string fast, the end of which,
drawn back, is tied at the other end of the bow with a very thin thong of leather. The cord
may be stretched so as to have a greater or less degree of tension according to the pleasure of
the musician, but when several g our as play together they are never in unison. Such is the
instrument of a Hottentot, which one would not suppose to be a wind instrument, though it is
undoubtedly of that kind. It is held almost in the same manner as a huntsman's horn, with
that end where the quill is fixed towards the performer's mouth, which he applies to it, and,
either by aspiration or inspiration, draws from it very melodious tones. The savages, however,
who succeed best on this instrument cannot play any regular tune, they only emit certain
twangs, like those drawn in a particular manner from a violin or violoncello. I took great
pleasure in seeing one of my attendants, called John, who was accounted an adept, regale
himself with it, while his companions, transported and ravished, interrupted him every now and
then by exclaiming, ' Ah ! how charming it is; begin that again/ John began again, but his
.second performance had no resemblance to the first, for, as I have said, these people cannot
play any regular tune upon this instrument, the tunes of which are only the effect of chance
and of the quality of the quill. The best quills are those which are taken from the wings of a
certain species of bustard, and whenever I happened to kill one of these birds I was always
solicited to make a small sacrifice for the support of our orchestra." Of art they have
little knowledge, though they can understand drawings, and, indeed, have executed rude paint-
ings in caves, and some primitive chisellings of men, animals, and other natural objects.
Probably the worst quality in the Bushman is his implacable love of vengeance. To
gratify this savage passion they will commit the most frightful outrages. So keen are they to
glut their vengeance that it is immaterial on whom it is wreaked, so long as a victim can be
found. In this manner not unfrequently the innocent suffer for the guilty. Sir Andrew Smith
says he has known them, when under the influence of this semi-madness, exert iVc their
vengeance with as much rancour and cruelty on their own relatives as on strangers. Instances
ire known in which parents destroyed their own children, and even boasted afterwards of their
abominable deeds.
The Korannas and Namaquus are two of the few surviving offshoots of the Hottentots, and
:are, like them, wild nomads. The Korannas are entirely uncivilised, and in culture are even
inferior to the Bushmen ; they are, moreover, lazier, dirtier, and less trustworthy. The same
description applies to the Namaquas. Cowed and without martial spirit, they are a poor, down-
trodden, and hopelessly ignorant race. They are fond of wearing European costumes, and are
;said to be so rude that they have no names, and " cannot count beyond ten." Even in the absurd
292
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
statements with which the books of superficial ill-trained travellers abound — " sutores " who,
when generalising- on the religion of savage tribes after a few weeks' acquaintance with them,
and without knowing a single word of their language, are decidedly going " ultra crepidam" —
this statement is eminently incredible. They have, however, but faint traces of a religion,
unless we are to look upon this as represented by the abundant stock of superstition, of the
usual South African type, with which their mythology abounds. They are clever conjurers,
INTEKIOll OF A ZULU KUAAL OX THE TUGELA 11IVEU.
but believe that the Bushmen are sorcerers ; and their " folk-lore " abounds with stories of
Bushmen and Bushwomen turning themselves into various animals, and of the pranks they
played when in this guise. Rain-makers are in great repute among them, as well as those who
have skill to allay storms by shooting arrows at the clouds. Among other superstitions is that
of passers-by flinging each a stone on the graves of chiefs, a practice equivalent to that
referred to in the Scottish proverb about (< Hinging a stone on his cairn."
The children are in the habit of sucking goats ; but of this practice, and of that of eating
the hare (which, with them as with the seafaring population in Europe, is the object of
ninny superstitions), credulity deprives them when they grow up.
AMAQUAS: MARRIAGE CEREMONY; DIVORCE; DISPOSAL OF AGED PARENTS. 293
Marriage ceremony there is little of, and divorce is consummated without any, the woman
being simply packed off to her friends when the fickle husband tires of her, fancying herself
well content if this summary dismissal is not accompanied with a sound beating. Polygamy
ZULU CHIEF, SHOWING HEAD-DRESS.
prevails, and every man prefers to have as many wives as he is able to provide for. When
the parents become old they are considered to be a burden upon their children, and they are
" necessarily " abandoned. They are enclosed within a fence, and quietly left to die of
starvation. Altogether the Namaquas are not a more amiable tribe than the race from which
they, in common with the Korannas and Griquas, are offshoots.*
*Bleek: "A Brief Account of Bushman Folk Lore, and other Texts" (1875); Holub : " South Africa,"
vol. i., pp. 84, 96.
294
CHAPTER XII.
THE NEGRO AND NEGROID RACES ; GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
Africa is mentioned ninety-nine out of a hundred people instantly associate it
with the Negro race ; and if forced to give an idea regarding the population of this vast
continent, would doubtless assign to it the black-skinned, woolly-haired, high-cheek-boned,
thick-lipped, and prognathous or projecting-jawed people known as Negro. In reality,
however, this popular idea is erroneous. We have seen that Africa holds within its wide
borders a vast population, comprising many nationalities differing widely from each other,
and in many cases as apart from the true typical Negro as they are from the Europeans.
The preceding sketch of the African populations has left us to describe, in the pages
which follow, merely the area bounded by the southern frontier of the Sahara on the
north, by the region of the equator on the south, by the Atlantic on the west, and by
the water system of the Nile (there or thereabouts) on the east. In this limited but still
wide region most Negroes are to be found. The eminent philologist whose classification
we have, for the sake of convenience, followed, looks, however, upon the term " Negro " as
expressing a peculiar physiognomy, which is a mere matter of degree, " a simple question of
more or less.3' He points out that every African division of people has a Negro section,
or a section approaching the Negro, no matter how much its other members may be other
than Negro; while, on the other hand, the most Negro divisions on the whole continent
of Africa present instances of lighter-coloured varieties, departing more or less in other
respects also from the Negro type. Thus the Wadseags are a darker coloured or Negro
variety of the Berbers. Among the Kaffirs, the change from black to brown sets in between
Benguela and the Damara country. Again, the Sennaar people, and those living on the eastern
feeders of Lake Tshad, are the Negroes of the Nilotic group. Abyssinia comprises a Negro
division in the Shankali districts. "In fact," writes Dr. Latham — and I give his opinion as that
of one of our ablest ethnographers, without, however, expressing any opinion in regard to the
correctness of his views — " if we take the whole continent of Africa we may go so far as to say
that the Negro physiognomy is the exception rather than the rule. To verify this \ve may ask,
"What are the true Negro districts of Africa? what those other than Negro? To the former
belong the valleys of the Senegal, the Gambia, the Niger, and the intermediate rivers of the
coast, parts of Soudania, and parts about Sennaar, Kordofan, and Darfur ; to the latter the
whole coast of the Mediterranean, the Desert, the whole of the Kaffir and Hottentot area south
of the line, Abyssinia, and the Middle and Lower Nile. Truly this leaves but little room for
the typical Negro. AH the intertropical groups of Africa give us Negroes, but crcrt/ Xcf/ro </r<mp
fjir<'.<; i/.i xouie brown rather than Hack divisions. Thus, there is the great division of the
Fulahs; all its members are more brown than black; some have been designated by the epithet
red. There are the Nun of the old Red Sandstone district to the back of the delta of the
Niger; these, also, are brown rather than black. There are the Ediya of Fernando Po, which,
being one of the few African isles of any size, will be noticed more in detail. Within four
•degrees of the equator, and more than twenty miles from the parts about the Cameroons River
THE NEGRO: HIS DISTRIBUTION; CHARACTERISTIC OF THE EDIVA. 295
on the mainland, the island of Fernando Po rises boldly and abruptly from the sea, primitive
and volcanic in respect to its geological structure, and with one portion of it which rises to the
height of 11,000 feet; this is Clarence Peak, the highest part of its chief mountain range.
Of these ranges there are two, and they run in a north-easterly direction, breaking the island
up into precipices and ravines. From these there is a good supply of fresh water, but in
no part- of the island (and this is the expressive statement of Mr. Thomson) has there been
discovered any alluvial deposits. Fog and forest equally contribute to give it an insular
climate. The hills are thickly wooded, even to the highest ranges ; while the rainy season lasts
from May to December. Then comes what is called ' the smokes/ a thick fog enveloping the-
island, and covering a portion of the sea around it.
" The flora of Fernando Po exhibits marked differentia to that of the mainland : the
fauna does so still more. The human occupants, though referable from the evidence of their
language to a continental origin, are, nevertheless, members of a separate division of the family
to which they belong. Divided into about fifteen villages, and amounting to perhaps as high
a number as 15,000 for the whole island, the mutually unintelligible languages are at least
two. One of these is the Ediya, of which we have a sufficient vocabulary. The other is
wholly unrepresented. We are informed, however, that when the people from Clarence Cove
visit one of the villages on the south-east, for the sake of purchasing pottery, the trade is
carried on by signs. Again, in certain villages about West Bay, the language is also unin-
telligible to an Ediya, though whether it be so because it is identical with the form of speech
just noticed, or because it contributes by itself a third variety, is uncertain. On the other
hand, the physical appearance of the natives is the same throughout the island. The face is
rounder, [he nose less expanded, the cheek-bones less high, and the lips thinner, than in the
typical Negro. The skin, too, is lighter, and the hair longer and softer ; still the general
physiognomy is African. The lower extremities are disproportionately stout, and this makes
them appear stouter than they really are. Exercise on foot, and the habit of sitting with their
legs doubled up to the chin, are the accredited causes of this. The hands and feet are small.
Copper and olive are the terms which have been used to denote the colour of the Ediya ; and
as a proof that they have not been applied over-hastily, Captain Botelar checks himself from
assuming an intermixture of white blood to account for it, inasmuch as ' the features were all
of the same cast/
"Without insisting upon the degree of these olive or copper tints, as opposed to
black, I draw attention to the fact of their occurrence in what we call a high island of
equatorial Africa. Does this suggest the rule for the distribution of the Negro population of
Africa ? If not, let the reader remember Captain Beechy's observations regarding the darker
and lighter Polynesians. The latter occurs on the high, the former on the low island. A
Negro is an intertropical African in a humid locality. Hence no class named Negro can be
strictly ethnological, since the term denotes elements other than those of affiliation and descent.
Thus, in respect to descent, the Negro of Sennaar has his closest relations in the way of
language, manners, and blood with the Africans of Nubia, Abyssinia, and the parts about his
own country; not so, however, his physical conformation; these are with the Africans of
Senegambia and Guinea — a fact brought about by the common conditions of heat, moisture, and
low sea level. " This may or may not be, and for our purpose it is not very material either
£96 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
way. Accordingly, in the pages which follow, we will first describe the principal tribes of
Central Africa of Negro or Negroid character not yet touched on, and afterwards the "Africans
of the northern tropics/' that is, the West African Negroes, like the Fanti and Ashanti, the
Krumen, the Senegal Negroes, &c., who have much in common. First, however, a few general
remarks regarding the Negro races in general, their character and condition, may be useful.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEGRO.
In physique the Negro is a marked type, even when his skin is not of the usual sooty
black colour. His lips are thick and protruding, his forehead low, while the arches in which
VREE TOWN, SIERHA LEOXE.
his teeth — usually very white — are inserted project, giving the " prognathous " appearance
characteristic of his race. The hair is frizzled and " woolly," his beard thin, and the nose
usually so broad and flat that it seems, to use the simile of a recent traveller — Mr. Skertchly
— as if it had been put on in a liquid state and " allowed to run." His chin is retreating, and
his eyes round, with the sclerotica or white of a yellowish tint. Sometimes he is " bow-
legged/' though often tall and muscular, though in general he has little calf to his leg, and
in walking has a " stooping, tired gait/'
The masticating muscles of his jaws are powerful and animal-looking, on account of the
greater length of the jaw. In addition, he possesses various other anatomical peculiarities,
which need not be noticed further than cursorily. For instance, his hips are less prominent
than in the white, and his arms rather longer. The bones of his skull are very thick, so
ihat a blow over the head which will fracture the skull of most white men inconveniences the
Negro only slightly. His feet are large and flat, so that in walking on soft ground the print
20
FOREST OF FAN-LEAVED PALMS IN THE WESTERN SOUDAN.
THE NEGRO: HIS PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CIIARACTEKIS'l ! ' >.
297
left behind is simply a hole; it is easy to distinguish a Negro footprint after a little practice.
In addition to the excessive flatness of the sole, there are wide divisions between his toes, and
in some low-grade tribes the heel-bone projects after the monkey type.
His colour is in general jet or sooty black, and is owing, not to the sun primarily, but to
a black pigment which exists in the mucous tissue under the cuticle or scarf-skin, and which is
even present in the membranes which envelop the brain.
A Negro has, notwithstanding his black colour — which one soon gets reconciled to, and
after living long amongst without seeing white faces scarcely notices — often a pleasant face,
and travellers in Africa, albeit in no way prejudiced in their favour, frequently speak of both
handsome men and pretty women. The feel of the skin is often very satiny and soft to the
NATIVE TYPES OF FUTA-JALLON, NEAR THE MEAD WATERS OF THE SENEGAL AND GAMBIA EIA'EKS.
touch, though as a rule very porous and emitting a nauseous odour when heated, this odour
being a peculiar characteristic of the Negro race (pp. 319, 320).
The iris of the eye is so dark as to be confounded with the black of the pupil, while this
part is in Europeans usually red in black, blue, or grey eyes.
The Negro character is lethargic, dull, and " flabby." The strongest stimulants have little
effect on his brain or palate, and even under their excitement he shows a marked contrast to,
for instance, the North American Indian, who, when intoxicated, is an uncontrollable madman.
Accordingly, corporeal punishments do not give his dull insensitive body the same torture as
they would a man whose nervous system was more delicately strung. Whatever may be said
of individual instances — and they are sufficiently few — no unprejudiced observer can deny
that his intellectual abilities are not high ; while the average " facial angle," or angle at which
the forehead retreats from a line drawn perpendicular to it, is about 76 1°, in the Negro it is
to 63 °, and in the orang-outang 45 °. The brain is small, and has few convolutions, and is
78
298 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
especially small in front, where the intellectual — in contradistinction to the animal — facultic
are usually believed to have their seat.
In disposition he is childish and fickle, affectionate, and easily affected by kindness ov ill-
treatment. Like many savages, his powers of mimicry soon enable him to attain a certain
degree of superficial civilisation by aping the manners and conversation of those around him,
but if left to himself, like a wild plant brought into cultivation, he is apt again to relapse into
barbarism, in the same way as the Bush Negroes of Guinea (Vol I., p. 266). They arc very
prolific, otherwise their continual wars amongst each other, and the drain of the population
which centuries of the slave trade have caused, would soon have annihilated the race. Yet, so
far from doing so, there is, I believe, no instance of a Negro nation being entirely extirpated. It
is, I believe, a mistake to say that the Negro is as a whole a cruel race. Doubtless they are
guilty of brutalities, in, for instance, their " customs," which I will have occasion to notica more
fully ; but these cruelties are not exercised simply for the gratification of revenge or of their
passions, but as religious rites to propitiate the wrath of their gcds or of the being whose ire
it is necessary to assuage or avert. The torture of prisoners — so common among the North
American Indians — is practically unknown among the African races. Prisoners are frequently
slaughtered, but then it is in connection with their religious " customs " or fetish rites of some
kind or other. In "summing up this brief preliminary sketch of the Negro character I cannot
forbear giving the reader the benefit of the opinion of one, than whom 110 traveller is capable
of giving a more unbiassed opinion, based on extensive and intimate acquaintance with the
race ; I refer to Sir Samuel Baker. " The black man," writes this celebrated explorer, " is a
curious anomaly, the good and bad points of human nature bursting forth without any
arrangement, like the flowers and thorns of his own wilderness. A creature of impulse, seldom
actuated by reflection, the black man astounds by his complete obtuseness, and as suddenly
confounds you by an unexpected exhibition of sympathy. From a long experience with
African savages I think it is as absurd to condemn the Negro in loto, as it is preposterous to
compare his intellectual capacity with that of the white man. It is, unfortunately, the fashion
for one party to uphold the Negro as a superior being, while the other denies him the common
powers of reason. So great a difference of opinion has even existed upon the intrinsic value of
the Negro, that the very perplexity of the question is a proof that he is altogether a distinct
variety. So long as it is generally considered that the Negro and the white man are to be
governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so long will the former
remain a thorn in the side of every community to which he may unhappily belong. AVhen the
horse and the ass shall be found to match in double harness, the white man and the African
will pull together under the same regime. It is the grand error of equalising that which is
unequal that has lowered the Negro character and made the black man a reproach.
"In his savage home, what is the African? Certainly bad; but not so bad as white men
would (I believe) be under similar circumstances. He is acted upon by the bad passions
inherent in human nature, but there is no exaggerated vice, such as is found in civilised
countries. The strong takes from the weak ; one tribe fights the other — do not perhaps we
in Europe? They are the legitimate acts of independent tribes, authorised by their chiefs
They mutually enslave each other — how long is it since Amorica, and we niti-sdres, ceased to be
slaveholders? He is callous and ungrateful — in Europe is there no ingratitude? He is
THE NEGRO: HJS GENERAL, MENTAL, AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS. 299
cunning, and a liar by naturj — in Europe is all truth and sincerity ? Why should the black
man not be equal to the white ? He is as powerful in frame, why should he not be as exalted
in mind? In childhood, I believe the Negro to be in advance in intellectual quickness of
the white child of a similar age, but the mind does not expand ; it promises fruit, but does not
ripen ; and while the Negro man grows in body, he does not advance in intellect. The puppy
of three months old is superior in intelligence to a child of the same age ; but the mind of the
child expands, while that of the dog has arrived at its limit. The chicken of the common fowl
has sufficient power and instinct to run in search of food the moment that it leaves the
egg, while the young of the eagle lies helpless in its nest ; but the young eagle outstrips the
chicken in the course of time. The earth presents a wonderful example of variety in all
classes of the human race, the animal and vegetable kingdoms. People, beasts, and plants,
belonging to distinct classes exhibit special qualities and peculiarities. The existence of many
hundred varieties of dogs cannot interfere with the fact that they belong to one genus. The
greyhound, pug, bloodhound, pointer, poodle, mastiff, and toy -terrier, are all as entirely different
in their peculiar instincts as are the varieties of the human race. The different fruits and
flowers continue the example ; the wild grapes of the forest are grapes, but although they
belong to the same class, they are distinct from the luscious ' muscatel ; ' and the wild dog-
rose of the hedge, although of the same class, is inferior to the moss-rose of the garden.
" The national character of these races will alter with a change of locality, but the instincts
of each race will be developed in any country where they may be located. Thus, the English
are as English in Australia, India, and America, as they are in England; and in every locality
they exhibit the industry and energy of their native land. Even so the African will remain
Negro in all his natural instincts, although transplanted to other soils ; and his natui'al
instincts being a love of idleness and savagedom, he will assuredly relapse into an idle and
savage state, unless specially governed and forced to industry. The history of the Negro has
proved the correctness of this theory. In no instance has he evinced other than a retrogression,
when once freed from restraint. Like a horse without harness, he runs wild, but, if harnessed,
no animal is more useful. Unfortunately, this is contrary to public opinion in England, where
the vox populi assumes the right of dictation upon matters and men in which it has had no
experience. The English insist upon their own weights and measures as the scales for human
excellence, and it has been decreed by the multitude, inexperienced in the Negro personally, that
he has been a badly-treated brother ; that he is a worthy member of the human family, placed
in an inferior position through the prejudice and ignorance of the white man, with whom he
should be upon equality. The Negro has been, and still is, thoroughly misunderstood. How-
ever severely we may condemn the horrible system of slavery, the results of emancipation
have proved that the Negro does not appreciate the blessings of freedom, nor does he show the
slightest feeling of gratitude to the hand that broke the rivets of his fetters. His narrow mind
cannot embrace that feeling of pure philanthropy that first prompted England to declare
herself against slavery, and he only regards the anti-slavery movement as a proof of his own
importance. In his limited horizon he is himself the important object ; and as a sequence to
his self-conceit, he imag-ines that the whole world is at issue concerning the Unck man; the
9 O
Negro, therefore, being the important question, must be an important person, and he conducts
himself accordingly. He is far too great a man to work. Upon this point his natural
300
THE PEOPLES OF THE WOELD.
character exhibits itself most determinedly. Accordingly, he resists any attempt at coercion;
being free, his first impulse is to claim an equality with those whom he has lately served, and
to usurp a dignity, with absurd pretensions, that must inevitably ensure the disgust of the
white community. Ill-will thus engendered, a hatred and jealousy is not abolished between
the two races, combined with the errors that in such conditions must arise upon both sides.
" The final question remains, why was the Negro first introduced into our colonies and to
America? The sun is the great arbitrator between the white and the black man. There are pro-
ductions necessary to civilised countries that can alone be cultivated in tropical climates, where
NATIVE NEGRO HUTS AND BAOBAB TREE AT KOUROUNDINGKOTO, WESTERN SOUDAN.
the white man cannot live if exposed to labour in the sun. Thus, such fertile countries as the
\N est Indies and portions of America being without a native population, the Negro was originally
imported as a slave to fulfil the conditions of a labourer. In his own country he was a wild
ige, and enslaved his brother man; he thus became a victim to his system— to the institution
of slavery that is indigenous to the soil of Africa, and that has not leen tanylit to tlie African ?jy
the white man, as is currently reported, but that has ever been the peculiar characteristic of
African tubes. In his state of slavery the Negro was compelled to work, and, through his
labour, every country prospered where he had been introduced. He was suddenly freed, and
from that moment he refuse! t«. work ; and instead of being a useful member of society, he not
only became a useless burden to the community, but a plotter and intriguer, imbued with a
THE NEGRO: HIS GENERAL, MENTAL, AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS.
301
deadly hatred to the white man who had generously declared him free. Now as the Negro was
originally imported as a labourer, but now refuses to work, it is self-evident that he is a
KllVMEX OF WEST AFRICA.
lamentable failure. Either he must be compelled to work by some stringent law against
vagrancy, or those beautiful countries that prospered under the conditions of Negro forced
industry must yield to ruin under Negro freedom and independence. For an example of the
results, look to St. Domingo. Under peculiar guidance, and subject to a certain restraint, the
302 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
Negro may be an important and most useful being ; but if treated as an Englishman, he will
affect the vices but none of the virtues of civilisation, and his natural good qualities will be lost
in his attempt to become a white man." So much for Sir Samuel's opinion. That I agree
with all the conclusions of the " Pasha " would be overstating the truth. Yet I have considered
the space occupied by this extract well spent, since in it there is much truth, however much
this truth may gall the prejudices of certain well-meaning and kindly people. Somehow the
question of the Negro character — a purely ethnological matter — has got mixed up with the
arguments for and against slavery, and accordingly has brought into the arena the disturbing
elements of social and even theological acrimony. With these questions we, as ethnologists,
have nothing to do. I dare say most of us have an utter hatred for slavery in every form,
and look upon its principles with undisguised contempt. Still, what Negro slavery and the
Negro character have to do with each other I fail to perceive, any more than what slavery as it
exists among the Turks has to do with Circassian or Georgian character, or Roman slavery with
the history of the races they enslaved.
Turning from these disputed grounds of strife, we may note that the Negro is not
deficient in humour, though it is hardly necessary to say that the " Jack-puddingism," which
goes by the name of " Negro humour " and " Negro melodies " is as like the Negro humour
and songs as the personifiers of them are like Haydn and Mozart.
Music and musical instruments they possess in considerable variety, but they are rude
affairs, consisting chiefly of stringed instruments and drums, on which a never-ending
wearying series of monotones are beaten, rendering the still African night more horrible than
even the winged terrors that haunt it would make it. Art, he has none. His houses and
temples, if his " fetish house " can be so called, are poor, shapeless or conical huts, displaying
no trace of even the rudest architectural skill or taste. The Negro is, however, a good linguist,
quickly acquiring the languages of the countries in which he lives.
Woman among the Negroes, as among most of the African races, is held in subjection, all
the hard work falling to her lot. She is not the companion of her lord, but his slave for the
gratification of his pleasure and love of idleness.
The Negro's religion is as rude as the temple he erects for the shelter of the object of his
veneration or dread. A supreme being he knows nothing of. His only thoughts are to
propitiate the anger of evil beings by "fetishes"* or charms, combined with a belief in
destiny, " fatality, astrology, necromancy, charms, spells, omens, lucky and unlucky days,
fortune, and the good and evil genius of individuals," in a word, superstition of the lowest type.
This preliminary review being dismissed, we shall now illustrate our subject more fully
by a sketch of some of the more marked customs of the chief Negro and Negroid nationalities.
NKOROID TRIBES OF CENTRAL AFRICA.
AVe have already indicated the excessive difficulty the descriptive ethnologist labours under
in drawing the line between the purely Nilotic people and the Negroes proper. Again, scattered
i he wide regions of Central Africa, and in and about the lake basins that feed the Nile,
* From the Portuguese word " fetisso," a charm or spell. It is now naturalised in the language of the
Coast Negroes.
NEGROID TRIBES: THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS; HOSPITALITY. -'303
is a teeming1 population of wild tribes — black, woolly-haired, and Negro-like, but which yet are
no more Negroes than many of the tribes we have already enumerated. They are only negroid
(or Negro-like), and in many salient points differ widely from the thick-lipped worshippers of
Mumbo-Jumbo as found on the west coast. These Central African tribes differ from each
other in language and, in many respects, in customs. We prefer, however, treating of them as a
whole, the reader being, however, warned in advance that the classification adopted is only one
of expediency, and is neither founded on anatomical nor philological grounds. Indeed, did we
care to introduce our readers into such a tangled path as that which the wrangling of philo-
logists presents, the materials do not exist, or where we possess linguistic fragments, they are
of too vague a character to enable any one possessed of the caution which befits a writer in our
field of research to generalise on the subject. Again, where do the Kaffir and Hottentot
tribes end ? further complicates the question. There seems, indeed, to be a regular gradation
from the South African family up to those people of whom we speak in the following chapters.
The Bazeye and Makoba tribes, whose country is in the vicinity of Lake Ngami, seem to
be more allied to the Hottentots than to any other race, while the Batoka of the low-lying
lands of the Zambesi are more negro than negro-like in appearance. We can only mention
them by name, referring the reader to the works of Livingstone, Pinto, Elton, and others, for a
fuller account. With these prefatory remarks we may at once enter upon an account of the
Central African peoples, whose home is chiefly in the Lake basins, or near the head waters
of the rivers flowing out of these lakes.
To give a general characteristic of so many people is not an easy task. Their dispositions
vary ; some are good, others bad, none, however, of super-excellent disposition. Perhaps
hospitality is the pleasantest virtue we have to record to the credit of the Central African.
Among the Manganja tribe, who live on the banks of the Shire, a northern tributary of the
Zambesi, one of the chief ethnic boundaries of Africa, kindness to strangers is a national trait,
and among their otherwise rude unlettered laws there exists a well-understood code of etiquette
and ceremony for the reception and treatment of strangers. Let a stray stranger, black or
white, enter one of their villages, and he is immediately conducted to the boola or open space
in the middle of the village, where, shaded by spreading trees, the basket-makers cheerfully
pursue their work, and which is used as a place of resort by others engaged in similar out-of-door
occupations, or by the village gossips, who look upon dancing, smoking, singing, and beer-
drinking as the legitimate relaxation after a day's labour; in fact, it is something of the nature,
of an open-air cafe. Into this pleasant place the stranger is conducted, and seated on mats,,
while the chief or head-man of the village is sent for. The arrival of the great man is hailed
by loud clapping of hands, and this method of salutation is continued until he and the
accompanying councillors have taken their seats. The scene is described by Livingstone :
"Our guides," writes this famous traveller, "then sit down in front of the chief and his
councillors, and both parties lean forward and look earnestly at each other. The chief repeats
a word, such as ' Ambuiata' (our father, or master), or 'Moio' (life), and all clap their
hands. Another word is followed by two claps, a third by still more clapping, when each
touches the ground with both hands placed together. Then all rise and lean forward with
measured clap, and sit down again with clap, clap, clap, fainter and still fainter, until the last
304
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
dies away, or is brought to an end by a smart loud clap from the chief. They keep perfect
time in this species of court etiquette/' which, it may be remarked, is carefully valued amongst
them, and taught with great care to the young people, just as the " art of walking backwards "
_
:;--;
.:>~-J^.'~gj5_ ____ ^^^^
. ~ '.-.'-.
A GRIOT, oil "HOLY MAN" OF SEXEGAMBIA.
forms an indispensable part of the education of a prospective courtier in certain kingdoms
which we have all read of, but which are not situated in the centre of Africa. The hand-
< -lapping ceremonial over, the chief man among the strangers — supposing they are Africans, or
that Africans are the spokesmen, as they perforce must generally be — addresses the chief. In
rudely-improvised blank verse he narrates the style and quality of the visitors, who they are,
NEGROID TEIBES: THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS; POETRY.
where they come from, and where they are going to, and their business so far as he knows, and
if he does not know, what he supposes it to be. This art of improvising is also highly valued
among the common people; indeed, the Manganja may be said to be a nation of poets or
TALIBE IX WAR DRESS (SENEGAMBIA).
troubadours. The most common affairs of life have poetry enlisted in their aid. Let a traveller
ask his way to a hut in a village, and he addresses his prosaic interrogation in blank verse, and
is answered in the same.
Intemperance, both in eating and drinking, forms, however, a feature of not so pleasant
a nature in Central African character ; not that their indulgence in strong waters presents
79
306 THE PEOPLES OF THE WOULD.
features of such brutality as is usually seen in other countries, for African grog is of the
mildest of its kind. Beer made out of plantains or other vegetable forms the universal
drink, and even when of the best quality, it requires a large quantity before intoxication can be
the result from the use of it. This liquor is the famous " pombe wine" or beer of Africa.
As made by the Manganja it is very un-vinous or un-beer-like ; for in appearance it is thick
and opaque, looking like badly-made gruel — " fermented mud " one African traveller most
ungratefully designates it. It is manufactured by crushing maize with water, and then
boiling it, and allowing it to ferment. In flavour it is sweetish acid, and is refreshing to the
weary traveller, on whom these kindly people press it. I am told by Zambesi travellers that
they have in time learned to prefer it to English beer ; perhaps so, but the taste is surely an
acquired one. The beer is drunk when two days old, and as it begins to spoil in a few days,
the brewers are forced to consume the whole amount made within that time. Hence, a bout
of drinking is almost a necessity among such a people. When a rich man, like the hero of
Burns's poem, "brews a peck o' maut," he issues an invitation to his friends, and the assembled
company sing, dance, and drink, drink, sing, and dance (but especially drink), and get drunk,
until the whole is finished, after which they go back to their houses not much, if anything,
the worse of their beery debauch. Of course, it may be slow death, but death must be very
slow to the African drunkard, for in every tribe venerable topers who have swilled enormous
quantities of beer can be pointed out. Nor is this taste for malt liquor confined to the men, for
the ladies, whenever they can obtain it, indulge in it equally with their lords. For this reason
they are rarely allowed to obtain as much as they would desire; and hence, a superficial observer,
seeing fewer intoxicated women, might come to the conclusion that either they were more
temperate than the men, or else were able to carry their liquor better. Neither conclusion is,
however, true. Sir Samuel Baker tells of one noted bibulous chief who never went on a
journey without a good supply of the native beer to refresh himself on the way — taverns being
unknown luxuries in Obbo land. Horses were animals equally absent ; accordingly, when
Kutchiba, the magnate in question, travelled from one place to another, he rode upon the back
of a strong and very loyal subject, precisely as children ride, " pick-a-back." Two or three
"loose" men always accompanied him as escorts, guides, and spare ponies, while one of his
wives, like a dusky Hebe, ran alongside of her lord, bearing a huge jar of beer, to which he ever
and anon applied himself, so frequently, indeed, that unless Obbo scandal belied him, towards
the end of the journey he had to be carried not by one but by two men.
Plantain wine is a rather superior liquor to the muddy b:er aforesaid. This fruit is
iisivcly cultivated throughout Africa, and, indeed, forms a great portion of the vegetable
of numerous tribes. The " wine " is made in the following primitive manner. The ripe
plantains are placed in a tub made out of a hollow log, and placed in a sloping position by
tilting up one side. Across the middle is placed a strainer or barrier of dry grass, through
•ii the juices, pressed by the women's hands and feet, from the fruit placed in the upper
used part of the tub, strain. The straining process is repeated several times, until a
Hifii.-iciit quantity of clear liquid is collected. This is then placed into a clean tub, and allowed
me burnt sorghum l.-ii:^ a ld-d to aid the process. The liquid is supposed to bo
rrady |.,r OM :n three ..r four day-;, a> cording to the sfate of temperature, &e., to which it has
been subjected. It is then " bottled off" into calabashes made of hollowed gourds, with which
NEGROID TRIBES: THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS; DRUNKENNESS. 307
an African cellar is rarely long crowded. Every one, from the scarcely -weaned child to the
"oldest inhabitant" of the village, swigs this wine freely at all seasons, and on the smallest
provocation, more frequently without any provocation at all. The open calabashes are quite
good enough for its preservation. To put it into bottles, if even they possessed them, would
be simply an unnecessary labour, as three or four days suffice to finish the largest brew ever made.
The Wanyamuezi, or Weeze, as for brevity's sake they are called, bear the reputation of
being the greatest pombe-drinkers in all Africa. This superlative rank among such a wine-
bibbing generation bespeaks powers of suction at which even the bibulous Teutonic " biirsch "
must stand aghast with diminished glory. The Weeze is fond of eating, but, unlike the fat boy
in." Pickwick/' he prefers drinking — these two not very exalted occupations forming the sum-
total of the amusements — it might almost be said of the occupations — of the male portion of the
population. Some of the natives look upon pombe as both meat and drink, and almost subsist
on it without taking any solid nutriment at all. One of these inordinate tipplers was the
" Sultan " Ukulima. He commenced the day with a huge bowl of beer, and then continued in
the way he had begun the whole day, until he was in a state of stupidity. Yet, when the
reader remembers the impotency of the liquor, and how much perseverance it requires before a
sufficient quantity can be drunk to produce intoxication, no surprise need be excited when
Colonel Grant tells us that, notwithstanding his devotion to Bacchus, the Sultan was a hale
sturdy old man, of pleasant manners, and, when thoroughly sober, rather amusing than
otherwise. These were, however, as might be expected, rather rare occasions. In these
festive moments he would beg quinine from the traveller, mix it with pombe, and then proffer it
to some courtier, whose wry faces when imbibing the bitter draught the black monarch
enjoyed amazingly. His majesty was in the habit not only of drinking at home, but of
paying visits to his subjects on liquor intent, timing his visits nicely, as he knew of a good
pombe brewing being on the tapis, and rarely leaving until he had tried the quality of the tap.
The Weeze women are, equally with the men, devoted to the beer calabash. They do not,
however, drink in the men's company, but assemble for indulgence in potation under the
presidency of the Sultana, or chief's head wife. The drinking propensities of the Weeze seem
to interfere with everything in the shape of domestic regularity or order. The women do take
their meals at something like stated periods, but the men live in each other's houses, taking a
plantain here, a small potato there, a trifle of beef at another, and a bowl of pombe everywhere.
Lastly, it may be mentioned that among the Bolondo and other tribes a much more potent
liquor, a kind of mead, is made, though beer is still the staple drink.
The native of the interior is of a lively pleasant disposition, his cheery careless laugh
making him quite another being from the heavy sullen Negro of the West Coast. Beer does
not seem to stupefy even the Weeze ; they are characterised by the few travellers who have
ever visited them as a lively race, ever singing the jolliest of songs, and form the most
amusing of companions upon a journey, that is if they are properly humoured and have all
their own way, even to an indulgence in their not over cleanly habits and other little infirmities;
otherwise they are apt to get stubborn and sulky. Good travellers, they can manage to be
happy anywhere, and, unlike most savages, and African ones especially, they are not apt
to get home-sick, and accordingly to become correspondingly useless or unwilling to stir from
308 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
home. Indeed, they are noted travellers, always ready to move if a reasonable wage is offered,
and light-hearted under all hardships.
The women, like the majority of their barbarous sisterhood all the world over, are
especially good-natured, and some are even pretty, while handsome men — apart from their
colour — are by no means uncommonly seen amongst the Central African tribes. Some
travellers get even enthusiastic on the subject of the dusky negro belles, though whether this
is owing to their taste having been dulled by the long want of higher beauty to compare with
I will not presume to say. At all events, it is but right to let Colonel Grant speak for
himself. He is among the Watusi, a race of herdsmen living on either side of the equator,
and not unlike the Somaulis (p. 218) in appearance. What is most remarkable is that the
women are equally good-looking with the men, a rarity among savage women, whose early
ill-usage and hard work soon spoil the good looks or handsome figure they might have
possessed in girlhood. " One morning," he writes, " to my surprise, in a wild jungle, we came
upon cattle, then upon a f bomah/ or ring fence, concealed by beautiful umbrageousness, quite
the place for a gipsy camp. At the entry two strapping fellows met me, and invited my
approach. I mingled with the people, got water from them, and was asked ( would I prefer
some milk ? ' This sounded to me more civilised than I expected from Africans, so I followed
the men, who led me up to a beautiful lady-like creature, a Watusi woman, sitting alone under a
tree. She received me, without any expression of surprise, in the most dignified manner, and,
after talking with the men, rose smiling, showing great gentleness in her manner, and led me to
the hut. I had time to scrutinise the interesting stranger. She wore the usual Watusi
costume of a cow's skin reversed, teased into a fringe with a needle, coloured brown, and
wrapped round her body from below the chest to the ankles. Lappets showing zebra-like stripes
of many colours she wore as a ' turn-over ' round her waist, and, except where ornamented on
one arm with a highly-polished coil of thick brass wire, two bright and massy rings on the
right wrist, and neck-pendant of brass wire ; except these, and her becoming wrapper, she
was au naturelle. I was struck with her peculiarly formed head and graceful long neck ; the
beauty of her fine eyes, mouth, and nose ; the smallness cf her hands and naked feet — all were
faultless ; the only bad feature, which is considered one of beauty with them, was her large
ears. The arms and elbows were rounded off like an egg, the shoulders were sloping, and her
small breasts were those of a crouching Venus— a perfect beauty, though darker than a brunette.
Her temporary residence was peculiar ; it was formed of grass, was flat roofed, and so low,
that I could not stand upright in it. The fireplace consisted of three stones. Milk vessels of
wood, shining white from scouring, were ranged on one side of the abode. A good-looking
woman sat rocking a gourd between her knees, in the process of churning butter. After the
i'air one had examined my skin and my clothes, I expressed great regret that I had no beads
t<. present to her. fThey are not wanted/ she said, ' sit down, drink this butter-milk, and
is also some butter for you ! ' It was placed on a clean leaf. I shook hands, patted her
k, and took my leave; but sonic Vails were sent her, and she paid me a visit, bringing
1. -utt.-r jin.l butter-milk, And asking I',,,- more presents, which she of course got, and I had the
fcificatfoD to B66 li.-r eyes sparkle at the sight of them. This was one of the few women I
met during our win,],- journey that 1 admiiv.l. None of the belles in Tsui muld approach her;
hut they \\x-re of a ililleivnt cute, though div»iiig much in the same style. When cows' skins
310 THE PEOPLES OF TliK WOULD.
were not worn, these Usui women dressed very tidily in bark cloth, and had no marking;
or cuts eb-.-Tvable in their bodies. Circles of hair were often shaved oil the crowns of their
heads; and their neck-ornaments showed considerable taste in the selection of the beads. The
most becoming were a string of the M'Zizama spheres of marble-sized white porcelain, and
triangular pieces of shell rounded at the corners. An erect fair girl, daughter of a chief, paid
us a visit, accompanied by six maids, and sat silently for half an hour. She had a spiral circle
of wool shaved off the crown of her head ; her only ornament was a necklace of green beads ;
she wore the usual wrapper, and across her shoulders a strip of scarlet cloth was thrown ; her
other fineries were probably left at home. The women of the district generally had grace and
gentleness in their manner/''
Perhaps scarcely so elegant in manners or amiable in disposition was the female chieftain
who attached herself to Dr. Livingstone's cavalcade in the early years of his missionary explor-
ations. She was a Maneko — niece of Shinti, a Bolondo chief — married, but an Amazon, though
a kindly one withal. Though a little in advance of her age in Africa, yet she may be taken
as the type of the " strong-minded female," to be developed in future ages on that benighted
continent. In torrents of rain she marched on ahead of Livingstone's party, clad in a light and
closely-fitting garb, consisting of a coat of red grease and a charmed necklace ! She considered
it beneath the dignity o~f a lady of her exalted rank to consult the conventionalities of society
in the matter of such trifles as dress. In this style she unweariedly tramped on, until the men
of the party, exhausted with the toil of the journey, would beg her to halt. Yet, when the
camp was formed in the evening, the good-natured chief tainess would, woman-like, go from hut
to hut and beg a little maize for the white man's supper, which she would grind and cook
with her own hands, like any African woman of lowly rank. Maneko was most punctilious
as to all the respect and courtesies due to her rank, and if they were once infringed on she
speedily let her displeasure be known in the most decided manner. Careful as to the etiquette
of the country — the trifle of a wardrobe being excepted — she as carefully inculcated politeness
on others — how a village should be approached, a chief addressed and received, and all other such
affairs pertaining to the art of polite behavioui.
After this description of the strong-minded chieftain of Bolondo, it may be unnecessary to
say that her husband — Sambanza — was the meekest of men, and quite knew his position in the
world.
Covelousness and extortionateness are failings in the savage character everywhere, and
nowhere more than in Africa, where the system of levying "black mail" from the traveller in
the savage chief's power has been reduced to a system. If the traveller is not robbed of every-
thing, he runs a chance of having his ;,.>o;ls turned over and pilfered, and his patience worn out
with tlu-ir greedy demands for everything which he has, or which they imagine he may be
enabled to obtain. Xo traveller need approach a village without sending a present in advance,
unless, indeed, he is entrapped into the village in order the better to "squeeze" him at their
leisure. This black-mail is known as a Inni'jn, and though no Central African tribe is anything
but tainted with the utmost greed and covetousness, the Wagogo bear the unenviable reputation
' -elling all their black brothers in these respects. In addition to the usual bribe for iK-ing
allowed t-> pass through his country, which was paid to the chief, the veriest slave in the tribe
NEGROID TRIBES: THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS; BE<;<;i.\< ;. Jill
is on the look-out for an excuse to rob the sorely-Lied traveller. Let the merest trifle be
injured., and a bribe ten times its value is instantly demanded. Let a present be (breed on the
traveller, and they immediately clamour for one in return of fifty times its value. When
residing among- this amiable people. Colonel Grant was accused by the chief of having shot a
sacred lizard, or one which at least it pleased him to call sacred for the purpose of extorting
goods from the offender. If the most ordinary question was asked of a native, he would refuse
to answer unless paid for it. Not content with this, they persuaded Captain Speke's porters to
run off with his goods, and then divide the plunder with them. No provisions could be bought
from them, except at rates extortionate beyond the experience of even an African traveller;
though, if the traveller killed any game, they flocked round the carcase from far and near, and
it was good luck if the rightful owner reached it before their greedy neighbours had disappeared
with the bulk of the meat. Captain Speke had killed a rhinoceros, and, to use his words, " We
had all now to hurry back to the carcase before the Wagogo could find it ; but this precaution
was quickly taken ; still, before the tough skin of the beast could be cut through, the Wagogo
began assembling like vultures, and fighting with my men. A more savage, filthy, disgusting,
and at the same time grotesque scene than that which followed cannot be described. All fell to
work with swords, spears, knives, and hatchets, cutting and slashing, thumping and bawling,
fighting, and tearing, up to their knees in filth and blood in the middle of the carcase. When
a tempting morsel fell to the possession of any one, a stronger neighbour would seize and bear
off the prize in triumph. All right was now a matter of pure might, and lucky it was that it
did not end in a fight between our men and the villagers. These might afterwards have been
seen, covered with blood, scampering home, each with his spoil — a piece of tripe, or liver, or
lights, or whatever else it might have been his fortune to get off with." Everywhere it
is the same story — everywhere extortion. The traveller is robbed at one village, a kongo is
extorted from him at a second, his goods are pilfered from him at a third, he is made to pay
very heavily for his food at a fourth, and at every one a tax is exacted from him for the
privilege of passing through the country, or for treading the desert waste which is supposed to
own the sway of some dirty scoundrel, who soon presents himself, with an enormous amount of
pseudo-dignity, to beg something in addition to what he had only an hour or two ago demanded
through his ambassador. This never-ending extortion is the pest of an African explorer's life,
and wears him out more than fever, hunger, or any of the hundred ills to which his life is
subjected while boring into that mysterious continent. A couple of examples will suffice to
expose this side of the African character. Captain Speke comes to the country of Uzinza,
more than half-way from the coast to the Victoria N'Yanza. After the usual piece of flattering*,
the object of which is all too transparent, he is visited by the chief, who inspects the traveller's
guns, clothes, and everything else he can lay his hands on, finishing by begging for them in
the most importunate manner ; examines the picture-books and stuffed specimens (which he
does his best to destroy by pushing his long finger-nails f under the feathers). He covets the
bull's-eye lantern, and begs for the lucifers, and is not to be persuaded that they cannot be
* " Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile,'' p. 61.
t The finger-nails among the chiefs of these people are worn long, to show that they have the privilege to
live on meat.
312
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
parted with. He is offered a knife instead, but he begs for the matches — "they would be so
valuable for his magical observances." At last, the storm waxing high, he is put off with a
pair of Speke's slippers, into which he had stuck his dirty feet without leave. He will not
" beat the drum " (the signal for the party to proceed) until he has been paid another lot
of cloth equal in amount to what he ought to have had. Next day he comes back again in
great good humour ; he will have the drums beat, but really he must have a gun and a box of
lucifers ; and so the begging goes on, until, as Speke says, the " perpetual worry had given
Baraka fever, and had made me quite sick/-'
A similar scene might be taken out of the narrative of any Central African traveller ; but
YOUNG GIRL OF SONINKK.
one from Sir Samuel Baker's experience may be given. He hears that Kamrasi, chief of the
AVanyoro, a noted beggar, who had robbed Speke and Grant of everything they had before
he would allow them to proceed on their journey, is going to honour him with a visit.
"Although I had but little remaining from my stock of luggage, except the guns, ammunition,
and astronomical instruments, I was obliged to hide everything underneath the beds, lest the
avaricious eyes of Kamrasi should detect a ' want.' True to his appointment, he appeared with
numerous attendants, and was ushered into my little hut. I had a very rude but serviceable
arm-chair that one of my men had constructed; in this the king was invited to sit. Hardly
was he seated, when he leant back, stretched out his legs, and making some remarks to his
•ncerning his personal comfort, he asked for the chair as a present. I promised to
have .-.Me made for him immediately. This being arranged, he surveyed tho barren little hut,
vainly endeavouring to fix his eyes on something that he could demand, but so fruitless was
NEGROID TRIBES: THEIR GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS; BEGGI.V;.
818
his search, that he laughingly turned to his people, and said, ' How was it that they wanted so
many porters if they had nothing to carry ? ' My interpreter explained that many things had
been spoiled during the storms on the lake, and had been left behind ; that our provisions had
long since been consumed, that our clothes were worn out, that we had nothing left but a few
beads. ' New varieties, no doubt/ he replied. ' Give me all you have of the small blue and
the large red ! ' We had carefully hidden the main stock, and a few had been arranged in
bags, to be produced as the occasion might require ; these were now unpacked by the boy Saal,
CHIEF OF THE SOMOXOS OF YAMINA.
and laid before the king. I told him to make his choice, which he did precisely as I had
anticipated, by making presents to his surrounding friends out of my stock, and monopolising
the remainder for his share. The division of the portions among his people was a modest way
of taking the whole, as he would immediately demand their return upon quitting my hut.
No sooner were the beads secured than he repeated the original demand for my watch, and
then the No. 24 double rifle ; these I resolutely refused (they had been repeatedly begged and as
repeatedly refused before) . He then requested permission to see the contents of a few of the
baskets and bags that formed our worn-out luggage. There was nothing that took his fancy
"except needles, thread, lancets, medicines, and a small tooth-comb ; the latter interested him
80
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
e\< •eedingly, as I had explained that the object of the Turks in collecting ivory was to sell it to
the Europeans, who manufactured it into many articles, among which were small tooth-combs,
such as he examined. He could not understand how the teeth could he so finely cut. L'pin
the use of the comb being explained, he immediately attempted to practise upon his woollv hem I;
failing in this operation, he adapted the instrument to a different purpose, and commenced
>< -mi diing beneath the wool most vigorously; the effect being satisfactory, he at once
demanded the comb, which was handed to each of the surrounding chiefs, all of whom had a
trial of its properties ; and every head having been scratched, it was returned to the king, who
handed it to Quanga, the head man that received his presents. So complete was the success
of the comb, that he proposed to send me one of the largest elephant's tusks, which I was to
take to England and cut into as many small tooth-combs as it would produce, for himself and
his chiefs. The lancets were next admired, and were declared to be admirably adapted for
paring his nails ; these were therefore presented to him. Then came the investigation of the
medicine-chest, and every bottle was applied to his nose, and a small quantity of the contents
was requested. On the properties of tartar-emetic being explained, he proposed to swallow a
<lose immediately, as he had been suffering from headache, but as he wras some distance from
home, I advised him to postpone the dose until his return. I accordingly made up about a
do/en powders, one of which (three grains) he was to take that evening. [It is satisfactory to
learn that they made him so ill that he thought he was dying.] The concave mirror, our
last looking-glass, w^as then discovered ; the distortion of face it produced was a great amuse-
ment, and after it had been repeatedly handed round it was added to his presents. More
gunpowder was demanded, and a pound canister and a box of caps were presented to him, but
I positively refused the desired bullets."* This royal but most pertinacious mendicant is not
yet done. A few days afterwards, during which time Baker had signally assisted him in an invasion
of his territories, he makes another call, in no way ashamed of the arrant cowardice he had
displayed on the occasion of the threatened attack. This time it was to beg the British flag, and
'" ii' you cannot give me the flag, give me at least that little double-barrelled rifle that you
do not require, as you are going home ; then I can defend myself should the Turks attack me ! "
This was the same rifle which he had been refused on more than twenty previous occasions ;
he had the satisfaction of being denied it one time more. From high to low it is just the
same. There seems no delicacy in asking for anything, and if any feeling is displayed at
being refused, it is not chagrin at the affront, only vexation that the begging has not been
a! i ended with the desired success. If two travellers are in company, two very ceremonious
'• presents " will be made to each separately. Let not the simple-minded men (if such there be
:imon<r travellers who have ever got out of Africa) be deceived. The only object is to demand
tw.i ]i<>,iijnn) in return, on the plea that the two represent two entirely different parties !
From what we have said it will be apparent that cfn/uel/e is highly valued in Central
Africa. Probably among no people in the world are there more ceremonies in every transaction
of lite than amongst these otherwise rude Africans, who in civilisation, however, are far nl'OVJ
the American and other savages, though in ability, and in most cases personal appearance, so
much their inferiors. Take the kingdom of Bolondo, for example. It is against the laws of
* " Albert N'Yanza" (new edition), p. 366.
NEGROID TRIBES: ETIQUETTE; SUPERSTITION, ETC. 315
good manners in this tribe to take food cooked by strangers, nor, unlike the old kings <>i'
France, will they eat in public. A Bolondo, no matter how humble he be, when travelling in
a caravan with other natives, must have his own fire and hut or tent to eat in, if he has no
opportunity of retiring aside to perform this function so dear to the African. Even \\ilh
Livingstone they would not eat; and one of the offshoots of the Bolondo tribe is remarkable in
so far that they will eat no meat, alleging that it is a sort of cannibalism to do so, as the nnv
lives at home in a domesticated manner just like themselves, though they will readily eat the
flesh of wild animals. Most of the Bolondo tribes are, however, like the rest of the African
natives, excessively fond of meat — the idea that because certain tropical natives eat little or no
meat because their system feels no want of it being absurd both in fact and theory. Other
African tribes, though glad enough to eat beef when they can get it, object to keep oxen,
alleging, with great political wisdom, that the possession of riches in the shape of cattle, though
very useful in some respects, yet is a source of misery to the tribe, in so far that, by incurring
the avarice of their neighbours, war and all sorts of misery are brought on the devoted tribe.
When Speke was in Uzinza he noted that all the attendants of the chief fawned on him
and snapped their fingers whenever he sneezed. Here I may note how remarkably connected
with superstition — or etiquette, if you will — are the customs in relation to sneezing. Scarcely a
people, no matter how polished or how rude, but has some custom in relation to this titillatioii
of the Schneiderian membrane, harmless as one would think it is. Mr. Haliburton has, indeed,
devoted a certain memoir to an illustration of the rites and superstitions attached to it. " God
bless you ! " or some such equivalent, is an almost universal expression when a person sneezes.
This seemingly arbitrary custom, odd as it is^ is anciently and widely extended. It is mentioned
by Homer, Aristotle, Apuleius, Pliny, and the Jewish Rabbis, and has been observed in
Koordistan, in Florida, in Otaheite, and in the Tonga Islands. Sir John Lubbock seems to
think that the universal custom of invoking the blessing of God on a person sneezing would
seem to show that the same idea possesses the mind of men throughout, viz., that sneezing is
caused by the cantrips of some evil-disposed spirit, and the aid of the Deity is necessary to
avert evil consequences to the sneezer.
The Zulus, according to Bishop Galloway, are firmly persuaded that good or evil spirits of
the dead are always hovering around them, to do them either good or harm, and will often
enter into them and cause disease.* Now, when a Zulu sneezes, he says " I am blessed. The
Idhlozi (ancestral spirit) is with me ; it has come to me. Let me hasten and praise it, for it is
it which causes me to sneeze!" Accordingly he praises the manes of his family around, and
asks them for an increase of his cattle, wives, and all other goods and chattels, and of blessings
all round. Among them sneezing is a sign that a person will be restored to health, so, after
sneezing, he returns thanks. If a man does not sneeze when he is ill, then this is looked upon
as a sign that the disease is severe. If a child sneezes, its well-wishers will say " Good ! " it
being a sign of health. In old times, when the King of Monomotapa sneezed, as well as drank
or coughed, Sir Thomas Browne tells us, on the authority of Godigno, that acclamations of
blessings passed from mouth to mouth through the city. In Guinea, in the last century, when
a principal personage sneezed, all present fell on their knees, kissed the earth, clapped their
* " Religion of Amazulu," pp. 64, 222-5, 263.
316
THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
hands, ami wished him all happiness. At Old Calabar on the West African coast, when a
child sneezes all will exclaim, " Far from you ! " with an appropriate gesture, as if throwing off
some evil. And so we might go on for page after page,* but enough has been given to show
the general ideas connected with the curious superstition of men both savage and civilised.
Every custom of these savage tribes is indeed tinctured with what we call superstition.'
Ill subsequent chapters their rites will be more fully described. Meanwhile, in the preliminary
•'^V ' '
JOLOI'F MARABOUT, OR PRIEST FROM SENEGAL.
observations with which the more special account of Central African and Negro habits
has been prefaced, it is well to observe the amount of ceremony and etiquette which
accompanies so many of their daily actions. Take, for example, the nominal king of what
u'as at one time the great empire of Congo, but who in our times is only chief of San
Salvador, and a f'«-w other small towns, and possesses not the smallest power in the land over
which he once ruled. Even the natives of Angola, who respect him as the possessor of the
• For a most interesting account of superstitions connected with sneezing, sec Dr. Tylor's "Primitive Cul-
ture," vol. i., 88—94, and the works and pap- rs theiv quoted ; to these add Burton's " Zanzibar," voL i., pp. 388—9.
NEGROID AND NEGRO TRIBES: FORMS AND ETIQUETTE; KINGS OF CONGO. 317
greatest " fetish " of all the kings and tribes, do not pay him tribute, yet the " Marquis of
Catende," as the Portuguese have dubbed him, insists on being treated with the utmost
ceremonial. During one of his visits to Bembe, the chief of the neighbouring village
came to pay him homage. These dignitaries, either to show their humility or from a fear
of exciting his Majesty's avarice, arrived clad in rags. When they dropped on their knees
and bowed their heads to him, " the Marquis '' replied by merely moving the forefinger of
his right hand. His secretary next took a scarlet cloak, and permitting it to dra.«* on the
ground behind him, like a long red tail, commenced a number of the most extraordinary antics,
GIRL OF MAKHANA, UPPER SENEGAL.
dancing about, " brandishing his sword, and pretending to cut off the heads of his sovereign's
supposititious enemies." After a series of variations in this performance, the suffragan
monarchs all approached the king's feet, and rubbed their foreheads and fingers in the dust,
while the secretary knelt and placed the sword across his knees, the entire proceedings
being ended, more Africano, as they had been interrupted, by a great blowing of horns and
beating of drums. The Kings of Congo, like some other savage potentates, are not per-
mitted to eat in public, and a story is told of one of them killing his son, who had been
so unfortunate as to witness this breach of etiquette on his father's part. It is also forbidden
for the Kings of Dahomey to drink in public ; and Mr. Thomson mentions that among the
Uguhas it is a gross infringement of custom for the chief to drink " pombe " before his
people, and especially before women. Another singular habit of the Congoese sovereigns —
318 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
as it was of the Peruvian Incas (Vol. I., p, 302) — is that of never expectorating on the
ground in sight of the people, it being "fetish" to do so, and likely to precipitate some
calamity. When they wish to clear their throats, they must do so in a bit of rag, which
is presented on bended knees by an attendant, and then, after being carefully doubled up,
and kissed, is replaced in the pouch from which it has been taken.
The eating habits of some of the Congo tribes are also curious. They are, like all the negro-
races, enormous feeders, as many as 300 oxen having been known to be killed and eaten
when a "soba" or chief of the Mundombes, dies, the feast lasting for several clays, the
gluttons often rolling on the ground in the agonies of indigestion, but only to rise again
and resume eating, abstaining meanwhile from drink, lest it should prevent them from
finding room for the solids. Among the natives of Novo Kedondo a singular custom
prevails. It consists in offering a visitor a dish of " infundi/' or " pirao/J and should
there not be a bit of meat in the larder, they send out to a neighbour for " lent rat/' as
it is called. This Mr. Monteiro describes as a field rat roasted on a skewer, and which
is presented to the guest, who, holding the skewer in his left hand, dabs bits of " infundi " on
the rat before he swallows them, as if to give them a flavour, but he is very careful not to
eat the rat, or even the smallest portion of it, as that would be considered a great crime
and offence, and would be severely punished by their laws. It is supposed that the host
has by this barmecidal hospitality duly preserved the dignity of his house and position, the
entire sham being a curious instance of elaborate politeness without sincerity existing
among a race which might reasonably be supposed unsophisticated.* The subject of salu-
tations would afford a theme for many chapters. For example, when two Monbuttoos of
the far Nile tributaries meet they join the right hands, and say, " Gassigy/' at the same
time cracking the joints of the middle fingers,t while in Uguha, on the western side of
Lake Tanganika, Mr. Stanley describes the people saluting each other as follows : — A man
appears before a party seated; he bends, takes up a bundle of earth or sand with his right
hand, and throws a little into his left. The left hand rubs the sand or earth over the right
elbow and the right side of the stomach, while the right hand performs the same operation
for the left part of the body, words of salutation being rapidly uttered in the meanwhile.
To his inferiors, however, the new-comer slaps his hand several times, and after each slap
lightly taps the region of the heart. J In like manner, as we shall see by-and-by, the modes
of taking an oath are so very extensive that a large space could very profitably be devoted
to this interesting phase of African life. In many tribes on the West Coast the common v,ay
among blacks to affirm the truth of a statement is, according to Monteiro, to go on their
knees, and rub the forefinger of each hand on the ground, and then touch their tongues
and forehead with the dusty tips. About Loanda, they make the sign of the cross on the
ground with a finger, for the same purpose; but this is evidently a remnant of old
: -nary teaching.
Titles — the love for them, and the endless variety of designations intended to express
•itoiro : "Angola and tho Kiver Congo" (1ST*)), vol. i., p. 220, vol. ii., p. 100
t Srhwcinfurth : "Tho Heart of Africa" (1878), vol. i., p. 41.
J "Through the Dark Continent," vol. ii., pp. 63, 54.
NEGROID AND NEGRO TRIBES: SOME OF THEIR PECULIARITIES ; SKIN, ETC, .'}]'.»
•dignity — might equally be enlarged on, without the subject being at all exhausted, while
the multiplicity of fashions adopted in dressing their woolly hair, filing their teeth,
splitting their ears, or generally improving upon nature, will be touched, as far as so
extensive a theme admits of, in the chapters which follow. We may, however, note in this
place a few singular customs, which give a better idea of African characteristics than more
laboured analyses of their mental traits. One custom said to be universal in Oriental
Africa is that of a woman tying a knot in any one's turban, thereby placing herself under
his protection in order to be revenged upon her husband, who may have beaten her for
some offence. In due time, when the husband comes to claim her, he is compelled to pay
a ransom, and to promise, in the presence of his chief, never again to maltreat her. In
nearly every village in Unyamwesi there are two or three public-houses, or perhaps they
might be called clubs. One is appropriated to the women, and another to the men, though
at the one frequented by the men all travellers of distinction are welcomed by the chiefs
and elders. As soon as a boy attains the age of seven or eight years, he throws off the
authority of his mother, and passes most of his time at the club, usually eating and often
sleeping there. On the death of a Wagogo chief, the son is supposed to look upon his
father's eldest surviving brother as his new and adopted father, but only in private and
not in public affairs.*
There are two other points connected with the black races of Africa to which a few
prefatory lines may be devoted. These are their hair and the peculiar odour which is
exhaled by their skin. The hair of most Africans — and universally of the Negro and Negroid
tribes — -'is short, inclined to split longitudinally, and much crimped. In South Africa the
Hottentot's hair is more matted into tufts than that of the Kaffir, while it is not uncommon
to find long hair, and even considerable beards, among some of the tribes inhabiting the
central plateau of the continent. Black is the almost universal colour of their hair.
In old age it becomes white ; but according to Walker there are cases among the Negroes of
the Gaboon in which red hair, red eyebrows and eyes are not uncommon, and Schwein-
furth speaks of Monbuttoos with ashy fair hair, and skin much fairer than that of their
fellow-tribesmen. It may also be mentioned that individuals with reddish hair are by no
means rarely seen among the mountaineers of the Atlas : indeed, during my brief acquaintance,
in the autumn of 1882, with some tribes from this portion of Morocco, I noticed several
men with decidedly red hair, though otherwise of pure Berber race, which is an entirely
different stock from the Negro family. Whiskers are rare, though not unknown, and long
beards are said to be found among the Niam-niam to the south of the Welle, and among the
papers left by Miani, the unfortunate Italian traveller, there is a notice of a man with a
beard half as long as his own, which, Dr. Schweinf urth remarks, was of " a remarkable length."
The colour of the Negro's skin passes through every gradation from ebony black to the copper
colour which Barth describes as existing among the Margi tribes,f and at Ebo in the
Niger country Burdo mentions seeing many copper-coloured Negroes with blue eyes.
There is, however, an unquestionable odour exhaled from the Negro's skin, and which, so far
* Cameron: "Across Africa" vol. i. (1877), pp. 79, 85, 101, 120, 181
f " Nord und Central Afrika," vol. ii., p. 465.
320 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
as we know, is peculiar to his race. This oclour is powerful when the skin perspires, and
travellers \\lio have been forced to scent it all day long- as they lay in a hammock borne
by Negroes through the still hot thickets of Africa, describe it as well-nigh overpowering.
Mr. Monteiro can only compare it "to a mixture of putrid onions and rancid butter well
rubbed on an old billy-goat." It is worse in some than in others, but as it is a natural
secretion of the skin, no individual is altogether without it, and of course no amount of
washing or cleanliness will remove it. In the Anglo-American States, where the blacks live
like whites, no diminution of it has been remarked. Among the Angola mulattoes it is not
so pronounced as in the pure black, in their case reminding one strongly of the caprylic
and similar acids, though the very contrary has been noticed elsewhere. The natives them-
selves do not notice it, and even Europeans, after a long residence in the country,
become comparatively insensible to the smell, which was at first so offensive to them; but
some individuals never get over their antipathy, even the late Sultan of Zanzibar, we are
informed kv Captain Burton, being all his life unable to eat or drink for hours after he
had been exposed to the infliction. The Portuguese know this Negro odour as " Catinga,"
and declare that freshly imported dogs and mules — and even old residents — share in their
master's dislike to the prevailing odour around them. Yet it is very singular that wild
animals in Africa will scent a white sooner than a black hunter, and, indeed, some savage
trilx's have affected to discover in our skins an odour quite as disagreeable to them as
their •'•' Catinga" is to us.
CA*JU.I., Pencil, OALI'I.V & Co., DELLE SAUVAOE WOKKS, LONDON, EC.
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