The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Part 16

Tylor_, p. 180.]

[Footnote 286: A. C. Haddon, _l.c._]

[Footnote 287: A. C. Haddon, _op. cit._ pp. 182 _sq._; _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 127.]

[Footnote 288: A. C. Haddon, _op. cit._ p. 183.]

[Footnote 289: T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_ (London, 1911), p. 43.]

[Footnote 290: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, v. 355 _sq._, vi. 252. In the former pa.s.sage Dr. Haddon seems to identify Boigu with the island of that name off the south coast of New Guinea; in the latter he prefers to regard it as mythical.]

[Footnote 291: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 127.]

[Footnote 292: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, v. 248 _sq._]

[Footnote 293: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, v. 250 _sq._]

[Footnote 294: Diodorus Siculus, i. 91.]

[Footnote 295: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, v. 258.]

[Footnote 296: _Id._, p. 362.]

[Footnote 297: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, v. 252-256.]

[Footnote 298: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, v. 256.]

[Footnote 299: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 129-133.]

[Footnote 300: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 133 _sq._]

[Footnote 301: _Id._, pp. 135, 154.]

[Footnote 302: (Sir) George Grey, _Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia_ (London, 1841), ii. 335.]

[Footnote 303: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 135.]

[Footnote 304: _Op. cit._ p. 136.]

[Footnote 305: _Op. cit._ pp. 138, 153, 157 _sq._]

[Footnote 306: _Op. cit._ pp. 154 _sq._]

[Footnote 307: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 139-141.]

[Footnote 308: _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 148 _sq._ As to divination with skulls or waxen models, see _id._, pp. 266 _sqq._]

[Footnote 309: W. Ridgeway, _The Origin of Tragedy, with special reference to the Greek Tragedians_ (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 26 _sqq._]

LECTURE IX

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF BRITISH NEW GUINEA

[Sidenote: The two races of New Guinea, the Papuan and the Melanesian.]

In my last lecture I dealt with the islanders of Torres Straits, and shewed that these savages firmly believe in the existence of the human soul after death, and that if their beliefs and customs in this respect do not always amount to an actual wors.h.i.+p of the departed, they contain at least the elements out of which such a wors.h.i.+p might easily be developed. To-day we pa.s.s from the small islands of Torres Straits to the vast neighbouring island, almost continent, of New Guinea, the greater part of which is inhabited by a race related by physical type and language to the Torres Straits Islanders, and exhibiting approximately the same level of social and intellectual culture. New Guinea, roughly speaking, appears to be occupied by two different races, to which the names of Papuan and Melanesian are now given; and it is to the Papuan race, not to the Melanesian, that the Torres Straits Islanders are akin. The Papuans, a tall, dark-skinned, frizzly-haired race, inhabit apparently the greater part of New Guinea, including the whole of the western and central portions of the island. The Melanesians, a smaller, lighter-coloured, frizzly-haired race, inhabit the long eastern peninsula, including the southern coast from about Cape Possession eastward,[310] and tribes speaking a Melanesian language are also settled about Finsch Harbour and Huon Gulf in German New Guinea.[311] These Melanesians are most probably immigrants who have settled in New Guinea from the north and east, where the great chain of islands known as Melanesia stretches in an immense semicircle from New Ireland on the north to New Caledonia on the south-east. The natives of this chain of islands or series of archipelagoes are the true Melanesians; their kinsmen in New Guinea have undergone admixture with the Papuan aborigines, and accordingly should rather be called Papuo-Melanesians than Melanesians simply. Their country appears to be wholly comprised within the limits of British and German New Guinea; so far as I am aware, the vast area of Dutch New Guinea is inhabited solely by tribes of the Papuan race. In respect of material culture both races stand approximately on the same level: they live in settled villages, they practise agriculture, they engage in commerce, and they have a fairly developed barbaric art. Thus they have made some progress in the direction of civilisation; certainly they have far outstripped the wandering savages of Australia, who subsist entirely on the products of the chase and on the natural fruits of the earth.

[Sidenote: Scantiness of our information as to the natives of New Guinea.]

But although the natives of New Guinea have now been under the rule of European powers, Britain, Germany, and Holland, for many years, we unfortunately possess little detailed information as to their mental and social condition. It is true that the members of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits visited some parts of the southern coasts of British New Guinea, and several years later, in 1904, Dr. Seligmann was able to devote somewhat more time to the investigation of the same region and has given us the results of his enquiries in a valuable book. But the time at his disposal did not suffice for a thorough investigation of this large region; and accordingly his information, eked out though it is by that of Protestant and Catholic missionaries, still leaves us in the dark as to much which we should wish to know. Among the natives of British New Guinea our information is especially defective in regard to the Papuans, who occupy the greater part of the possession, including the whole of the western region; for Dr. Seligmann's book, which is the most detailed and systematic work yet published on the ethnology of British New Guinea, deals almost exclusively with the Melanesian portion of the population. Accordingly I shall begin what I have to say on this subject with the Melanesian or rather Papuo-Melanesian tribes of south-eastern New Guinea.

[Sidenote: The Motu, their beliefs and customs concerning the dead.]

Amongst these people the best known are the Motu, a tribe of fishermen and potters, who live in and about Port Moresby in the Central District of British New Guinea. Their language conforms to the Melanesian type.

They are immigrants, but the country from which they came is unknown.[312] In their opinion the spirits of the dead dwell in a happy land where parted friends meet again and never suffer hunger. They fish, hunt, and plant, and are just like living men, except that they have no noses. When they first arrive in the mansions of the blest, they are laid out to dry on a sort of gridiron over a slow fire in order to purge away the grossness of the body and make them ethereal and light, as spirits should be. Yet, oddly enough, though they have no noses they cannot enter the realms of bliss unless their noses were pierced in their lifetime. For these savages bore holes in their noses and insert ornaments, or what they regard as such, in the holes. The operation is performed on children about the age of six years; and if children die before it has been performed on them, the parents will bore a hole in the nose of the corpse in order that the spirit of the child may go to the happy land. For if they omitted to do so, the poor ghost would have to herd with other whole-nosed ghosts in a bad place called Tageani, where there is little food to eat and no betelnuts to chew. The spirits of the dead are very powerful and visit bad people with their displeasure. Famine and scarcity of fish and game are attributed to the anger of the spirits. But they hearken to prayer and appear to their friends in dreams, sometimes condescending to give them directions for their guidance in time of trouble.[313]

[Sidenote: The Koita or Koitapu.]

Side by side with the Motu live the Koita or Koitapu, who appear to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the country and to belong to the Papuan stock. Their villages lie scattered for a distance of about forty miles along the coast, from a point about seven miles south-east of Port Moresby to a point on Redscar Bay to the north-west of that settlement.

They live on friendly terms with the Motu and have intermarried with them for generations. The villages of the two tribes are usually built near to or even in direct continuity with each other. But while the Motu are mainly fishers and potters, the Koita are mainly tillers of the soil, though they have learned some arts or adopted some customs from their neighbours. They say to the Motu, "Yours is the sea, the canoes, the nets; ours the land and the wallaby. Give us fish for our flesh, and pottery for our yams and bananas." The Motu look down upon the Koita, but fear their power of sorcery, and apply to them for help in sickness and for the weather they happen to require; for they imagine that the Koita rule the elements and can make rain or suns.h.i.+ne, wind or calm by their magic. Thus, as in so many cases, the members of the immigrant race confess their inability to understand and manage the G.o.ds or spirits of the land, and have recourse in time of need to the magic of the aboriginal inhabitants. While the Koita belong to the Papuan stock and speak a Papuan language, most of the men understand the Motu tongue, which is one of the Melanesian family. Altogether these two tribes, the Koita and the Motu, may be regarded as typical representatives of the mixed race to which the name of Papuo-Melanesian is now given.[314]

[Sidenote: Beliefs of the Koita concerning the human soul.]

The Koita believe that the human spirit or ghost, which they call _sua_, leaves the body at death and goes away to live with other ghosts on a mountain called Idu. But they think that the spirit can quit the body and return to it during life; it goes away, for example, in dreams, and if a sleeper should unfortunately waken before his soul has had time to return, he will probably fall sick. Sneezing is a sign that the soul has returned to the body, and if a man does not sneeze for many weeks together, his friends look on it as a grave symptom; his soul, they imagine, must be a very long way off.[315] Moreover, a man's soul may be enticed from his body and detained by a demon or _tabu_, as the Koita call it. Thus, when a man who has been out in the forest returns home and shakes with fever, it is a.s.sumed that he has fallen down and been robbed of his soul by a demon. In order to recover that priceless possession, the sufferer and his friends repair to the exact spot in the forest where the supposed robbery was perpetrated. They take with them a long bamboo with some valuable ornaments tied to it, and two men support it horizontally over a pot which is filled with gra.s.s. A light is put to the gra.s.s, and as it crackles and blazes a number of men standing round the pot strike it with stones till it breaks, whereat they all groan.

Then the company returns to the village, and the sick man lies down in his house with the bamboo and its ornaments hung over him. This is supposed to be all that is needed to effect a perfect cure; for the demon has kindly accepted the soul of the ornaments and released the soul of the sufferer, who ought to recover accordingly.[316]

[Sidenote: Beliefs of the Koita concerning the state of the dead.

Alleged communications with the dead by means of mediums.]

However, at death the soul goes away for good and all; at least there appears to be no idea that it will ever return to life in the form of an infant, as the souls of the Central Australian aborigines are supposed to do. All Koita ghosts live together on Mount Idu, and their life is very like the one they led here on earth. There is no distinction between the good and the bad, the righteous and the wicked, the strong and the weak, the young and the old; they all fare alike in the spirit-land, with one exception. Like the Motu, the Koita are in the habit of boring holes in their noses and inserting ornaments in the holes; and they think that if any person were so unfortunate as to be buried with his nose whole and entire, his ghost would have to go about in the other world with a creature like a slow-worm depending from his nostrils on either side. Hence, when anybody dies before the operation of nose-boring has been performed on him or her, the friends take care to bore a hole in the nose of the corpse in order that the ghost may not appear disfigured among his fellows in dead man's land. There the ghosts dwell in houses, cultivate gardens, marry wives, and amuse themselves just as they did here on earth. They live a long time, but not for ever; for they grow weaker and weaker and at last die the second death, never to revive again, not even as ghosts. The exact length of time they live in the spirit-land has not been accurately ascertained; but there seems to be a notion that they survive only so long as their names and their memories survive among the living. When these are utterly forgotten, the poor ghosts cease to exist. If that is so, it is obvious that the dead depend for their continued existence upon the recollection of the living; their names are in a sense their souls, so that oblivion of the name involves extinction of the soul.[317] But though the spirits of the dead go away to live for a time on Mount Idu, they often return to their native villages and haunt the place of their death. On these visits they shew little benevolence or lovingkindness to their descendants. They punish any neglect in the performance of the funeral rites and any infringement of tribal customs, and the punishment takes the form of sickness or of bad luck in hunting or fis.h.i.+ng. This dread of the ghost commonly leads the Koita to desert a house after a death and to let it fall into decay; but sometimes the widow, or in rare cases a brother or sister, will continue to inhabit the house of the deceased. Children who play near dwellings which have been deserted on account of death may fall sick; and if people who are not members of the family partake of food which has been hung up in such houses, they also may sicken. It is in dreams that the ghosts usually appear to the survivors; but occasionally they may be seen or at least felt by people in the waking state. Some years ago four Motuan girls persuaded many natives of Port Moresby that they could evoke the spirit of a youth named Tamasi, who had died three years before. The mother and other sorrowing relatives of the deceased paid a high price to the princ.i.p.al medium, a young woman named Mea, for an interview with the ghost. The meeting took place in a house by night. The relations and friends squatted on the ground in expectation; and sure enough the ghost presented himself in the darkness and went round shaking hands most affably with the a.s.sembled company.

However, a sceptic who happened to a.s.sist at this spiritual sitting, had the temerity to hold on tight to the proffered hand of the ghost, while another infidel a.s.sisted him to obtain a sight as well as a touch of the vanished hand by striking a light. It then turned out that the supposed apparition was no spirit but the medium Mea herself. She was brought before a magistrate, who sentenced her to a short term of imprisonment and relieved her of the property which she had ama.s.sed by the exercise of her spiritual talents.[318] It is hardly for us, or at least for some of us, to cast stones at the efforts of ignorant savages to communicate by means of such intermediaries with their departed friends. Similar attempts have been made in our own country within our lifetime, and I believe that they are still being made, in perfect good faith, by educated ladies and gentlemen, who like their black brethren and sisters in the faith are sometimes made the dupes of designing knaves. If New Guinea has its Meas, Europe has its Eusapias. Human credulity and vulgar imposture are much the same all the world over.

[Sidenote: Fear of the dead.]

The fear of the dead is strongly marked in some funeral customs which are observed by the Roro-speaking tribes who occupy a territory at the mouth of the St. Joseph river in British New Guinea.[319] When a death takes place, the female relations of the deceased lacerate their skulls, faces, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, bellies, arms, and legs with sharp sh.e.l.ls, till they stream with blood and fall down exhausted. Moreover, a fire is kindled on the grave and kept up almost continually for months for the purpose, we are told, of warming the ghost.[320] These attentions might be interpreted as marks of affection rather than of fear; but in other customs of these people the dread of the ghost is unmistakable. For when the corpse has been placed in the grave a near kinsman strokes it twice with a branch from head to foot in order to drive away the dead man's spirit; and in Yule Island, when the ghost has thus been brushed away from the body, he is pursued by two men brandis.h.i.+ng sticks and torches from the village to the edge of the forest, where with a last curse they hurl the sticks and torches after him.[321]

[Sidenote: Ghost of dead wife feared by widower.]

Among these people the visits of ghosts, though frequent, are far from welcome, for all ghosts are supposed to be mischievous and to take no delight but in injuring the living. Hence, for example, a widower in mourning goes about everywhere armed with an axe to defend himself against the spirit of his dead wife, who might play him many an ill turn if she caught him defenceless and off his guard. And he is subject to many curious restrictions and has to lead the life of an outcast from society, apparently because people fear to come into contact with a man whose steps are dogged by so dangerous a spirit.[322] This account of the terrors of ghosts we owe to a Catholic missionary. But according to the information collected by Dr. Seligmann among these people the dread inspired by the souls of the dead is not so absolute. He tells us, indeed, that ghosts are thought to make people ill by stealing their souls; that the natives fear to go alone outside the village in the dark lest they should encounter a spectre; and that if too many quarrels occur among the women, the spirits of the dead may manifest their displeasure by visiting hunters and fishers with bad luck, so that it may be necessary to conjure their souls out of the village. On the other hand, it is said that if the ghosts abandoned a village altogether, the luck of the villagers would be gone, and if such a thing is supposed to have happened, measures are taken to bring back the spirits of the departed to the old home.[323]

[Sidenote: Beliefs of the Mafulu concerning the dead.]

Inland from the Roro-speaking tribes, among the mountains at the head of the St. Joseph River, there is a tribe known to their neighbours as the Mafulu, though they call themselves Mambule. They speak a Papuan language, but their physical characteristics are believed to indicate a strain of Negrito blood.[324] The Mafulu hold that at death the human spirit leaves the body and becomes a malevolent ghost. Accordingly they drive it away with shouts. It is supposed to go away to the tops of the mountains there to become, according to its age, either a s.h.i.+mmering light on the ground or a large sort of fungus, which is found only on the mountains. Hence natives who come across such a s.h.i.+mmering light or such a fungus are careful not to tread on it; much less would they eat the fungus. However, in spite of their transformation into these things, the ghosts come down from the mountains and prowl about the villages and gardens seeking what they may devour, and as their intentions are always evil their visits are dreaded by the people, who fill up the crevices and openings, except the doors, of their houses at night in order to prevent the incursions of these unquiet spirits. When a mission station was founded in their country, the Mafulu were amazed that the missionaries should sleep alone in rooms with open doors and windows, through which the ghosts might enter.[325]

[Sidenote: Burial customs of the Mafulu.]