and friendship. The Mambettu people, after having inflicted small wounds upon each other's arms, reciprocally suck the blood which flows from the incision. In the Unyora country the parties dip two coffee-berries into the blood and eat them. Amongst the Sandeh the proceedings are not so repulsive; the operator, armed with two sharp knives, inoculates the blood of one person into the wound of the other."1 The exact manner in which this last operation is performed is described by Mr. Ward, who himself submitted to it. After noting that blood-brotherhood is "a form of cementing friendship and a guarantee of good faith, popular with all Upper Congo tribes," he proceeds: "An incision was made in both our right arms, in the outer muscular swelling just below the elbow, and as the blood flowed in a tiny stream, the charm doctor sprinkled powdered chalk and potash on the wounds, delivering the while, in rapid tones, an appeal to us to maintain unbroken the sanctity of the contract; and then our arms being rubbed together, so that the flowing blood intermingled, we were declared to be brothers of one blood, whose interests henceforth should be united as our blood now was." 2 In Surinam, when natives make a compact, the Godoman (priest) draws blood from the contracting parties, pours some on the ground, and gives them the rest to drink. The ancient Scyths preferred to drink the blood. Herodotus * says they poured into a great bowl wine mixed with the blood of the contracting parties; then they dipped into the bowl a dagger, some arrows, an axe, and a javelin, and when they had done that, they made many imprecations and drank of the bowl, both they and the most distinguished of their followers. Again, " the drinking of blood on the occasion of an alliance, compact, or oath, was common among the ancient Magyars. The anonymous Notarius of King Béla (c. 5. says, more paganismo fusis propriis sanguinibus in unum vas ratum fecerunt iuramentum."5 Among the Southern Slavs to this day blood-feuds are common, and may be terminated by the parties to the feud becoming blood-brothers. This is effected 1 Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria, i. 177. 2 Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, 131. 3 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 299. • Am Urquell, iii. 270. 4 Hdt. iv. 70. 6) by a representative of one bratstva sucking blood from the vein of the right wrist of a representative of the other bratstva, whereby all the members of the one clan become blood-brothers to all the members of the other. Mohammedan women do not veil themselves in the presence of such bloodbrothers, even if Christians, any more than they would before their other blood-relations.1 This last instance is important, because it faithfully preserves the primitive view that the blood-brotherhood thus established is not a relationship personal to the two parties alone, but extends to the whole of each clan my brother is, or becomes, the brother of all my brethren; the blood which flows in the veins of either party to the blood-covenant flows in the veins of all his kin. Thus in this the most primitive form of society, men were divided into clans or tribes; these tribes were usually hostile to one another, but might by means of the blood-covenant make alliance with one another. The individual only existed as long as he was protected by his clan; he can scarcely be said to have had an individual existence, so crushing was the solidarity which bound kinsmen together under the pressure of the clan's struggle for existence with other clans. If the individual kinsman slew a stranger, the whole kin were responsible; if he was slain by a stranger, they all required satisfaction. If the individual kinsman made a bloodcovenant with a stranger, the whole of each tribe was bound thereby. It was inevitable, therefore, that man, who imagined all things, animate or inanimate, to think and act and feel like himself, should imagine that the societies of these other spirits was organised like the only society of which he had any knowledge, namely, that form of human society into which he himself was born. In so doing, primitive man was but anticipating the Homeric Greek who modelled the society of Olympus on an earthly pattern. Now, the things by which man is surrounded are as a matter of fact divided into natural kinds, genera and species; and it is small wonder if man detected a resemblance between the natural kinds of animals, plants, etc., and the kins or clans into which human society 1 Am Urquell, i. 196. 1 was divided. That he actually did consider these classes of objects as organisations of the same kind as human clans, is shown by the fact that savages have blood-feuds with these natural kinds as they would with clans of human beings. Amongst the Kookies, a man's whole tribe takes vengeance if one of them is killed by an animal or any wild beast; and if a tree has fallen on him and killed him, it is cut up by them into the finest splinters, which are scattered to the winds:1 it is not essential that the very animal should be killed, but only that it should be one of the same species. On the other hand, it is believed that the whole of the animal's clan will take up the blood-feud on behalf of any one of them against men. The Lapps and Ostiaks dread a blood-feud with the Bear clan, and accordingly, before killing a bear, they try to persuade him to fall a willing sacrifice, by explaining to him at length the exalted and flattering uses to which his flesh, fat, and pelt will be put.3 The Arabs in the same way must apologise to an animal before killing it.* "It is generally believed by the natives of Madagascar, that the crocodile never, except to avenge an injury, destroys innocent persons"; an aged native about to cross a river "addressed himself to the crocodile, urging him to do him no injury, because he had never done him (the crocodile) any; and assuring him that he had never engaged in war against any of his species . . at the same time adding, that if he came to attack him, vengeance, sooner or later, would follow; and that if he devoured him, all his relatives and all his race would declare war against him." The Indians of Guiana endeavour also to avert blood-feuds with animals. "Before leaving a temporary camp in the forest, where they have killed a tapir and dried the meat on a babracot, Indians invariably destroy this babracot, saying that should a tapir, passing that way, find traces of the slaughter of one of his kind, he would come by night on the next occasion when Indians slept at that place, and, taking a man, would 1 Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 25. 2 5 6 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 286, referring to As. Res. vii. 189. 3 Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 5. 5 Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 53. Ibid. 6. 6 Ibid, 57, quoting "Monsieur de V., whose voyage to Madagascar was published in 1722." babracot him in revenge."1 It is not, therefore, surprising if man can have blood-feuds with animal clans as he has with human, that he should seek to establish an alliance with one of these kinds of beings, in the same way and on the same principle as with one of the various human kins with which he came in contact. It is to be presumed that in the choice of an ally he would prefer the kind which he believed to possess supernatural powers, or if several possessed such powers, then the kind or species which possessed the greatest power. In any case, however, it was not, and from the nature of the circumstances could not be, an individual supernatural being with which he sought alliance, but a class or kind of beings with supernatural powers. But this is precisely a totem. "A totem is never an isolated individual, but always a class of objects, generally a species of animals or of plants, more rarely a class of inanimate natural objects, very rarely a class of artificial objects."2 "It is not merely an individual, but the species that is reverenced." Thus, if the owl be a totem, as in Samoa, and an owl was found dead, "this was not the death of the god: he was supposed to be yet alive and incarnate in all the owls in existence." But just as it was impossible in the then stage of society to make an alliance with a single member of another kin or kind, and therefore it was always the species and never an individual merely that became a totem, so it was impossible for the compact to be made between the totem species and one individual man it was also and necessarily a covenant between the clan and the class of objects chosen as a totem. In other words, from the beginning religion was not an affair which concerned the individual only, but one which demanded the co-operation of the whole community; and a religious community was the earliest form of society. As a clan consists of those in whose veins the same blood runs, and who are therefore one flesh, the totem animal is spoken of, by the Mount Gambier tribe for instance, as being their tumanang, i.e. their flesh, and is treated in all respects as a clansman. Now, in the primitive, nomad stage, the most sacred and inviolable duty is to respect the blood of the kin: 1 Im Thurn, Indians of Guiana, 352. Frazer, Totemism, 2. Turner, Samoa, 21. 3 Ibid. 15. 2 a clan in which the kinsmen should shed each other's blood would speedily perish; only those clans could survive in the struggle for existence which rigorously observed this fundamental duty. All blood, even of animals, was, as we have seen, taboo, but the blood of a kinsman was even more, it was sacred: the restriction, by this change in its content, is raised from the taboo-level to the plane of morality. In times when it became possible or customary to accept compensation, wer-geld, for the slaying of a clansman, in lieu of the blood which could alone originally atone for his death, no compensation could be accepted for the killing of a clansman by a clansman. It was the unpardonable offence; the Erinyes of a dead kinsman were implacable. In this case, and this case alone, killing was murder. Now the totem animal is a clansman, and its life therefore is sacred: a man never kills his totem; to do so would be murder. Thus the Osages "abstained from hunting the beaver, because in killing that animal they killed a brother of the Osages.' Abstaining from killing his totem, he also endeavours to protect it from being killed by others; and if he fails to do so, then, amongst the Indians of Columbia, "he will demand compensation," as he would for the death of any other kinsman. The dead totem animal is mourned for and buried with the same ceremonies as a clansman. In Samoa, "if a man found a dead owl by the roadside, and if that happened to be the incarnation of his village god, he would sit down and weep over it and beat his forehead with stones till the blood flowed." 3 Of all food, the totem is most taboo; death and sicknesses of various kinds are believed to be the consequence, if a man eats, even unwittingly, of his totem animal or plant. other things taboo, the totem as food is dangerous even to see; and it is well generally to avoid mentioning its name. "1 "2 As the totem animal becomes a member of the human clan, so the human clansman becomes a member of the animal's clan. This he indicates "by dressing in the skin or other part of the totem animal, arranging his hair and mutilating his body so as to resemble the totem." Thus, among the Thlinkets, at a funeral feast a relative of the 1 Frazer, 8, quoting Lewis and Clark, i. 12. 2 Frazer, 8. |