The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

Some savages preserve the bones of the animals they kill in order that the animals may come to life again

With some savages a special reason for respecting the bones of game, and generally of the animals which they eat, is a belief that, if the bones are preserved, they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and thus the animal will come to life again. It is, therefore, clearly for the interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact, since to destroy them would be to diminish the future supply of game. Many of the Minnetaree Indians “believe that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and divested of flesh rise again clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and become fat, and fit for slaughter the succeeding June.”742 Hence on the western prairies of America, the skulls of buffaloes may be seen arranged in circles and symmetrical piles, awaiting the resurrection.743 After feasting on a dog, the Dacotas carefully collect the bones, scrape, wash, and bury them, “partly, as it is said, to testify to the dog-species, that in feasting upon one of their number no disrespect was meant to the species itself, and partly also from [pg 257] a belief that the bones of the animal will rise and reproduce another.”744 Among the Esquimaux of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay, when a boy has killed his first seal, his mother gathers all the bones and throws them into a seal-hole. They think that these bones will become seals which the boy will catch in later life.745 The Yuracares Indians of Bolivia are at great pains to collect all the bones of the beasts, birds, and fishes which they eat, and to throw them into a stream, bury them in the depths of the forest, or burn them in the fire, “in order that the animals of the sort killed may not be angry and may allow themselves to be killed again.”746 In sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes, ears, heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a morsel of flesh from each limb. Then, after eating the remainder of the flesh, they laid the bones and the rest in anatomical order in a coffin and buried them with the usual rites, believing that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed would reclothe the bones with flesh and restore the animal to life in Jabme-Aimo, the subterranean world of the dead. Sometimes, as after feasting on a bear, they seem to have contented themselves with thus burying the bones.747 Thus the Lapps expected the resurrection of the slain animal to take place in another world, resembling in this respect the Kamtchatkans, who believed that every creature, down to the smallest fly, would rise from the dead and live underground.748 On the other hand, the North American Indians looked for the resurrection of the animals in the present world. The habit, observed especially by Mongolian peoples, of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed [pg 258] animal, or stretching it on a framework,749 points rather to a belief in a resurrection of the latter sort. The objection commonly entertained by primitive peoples to break the bones of the animals which they have eaten or sacrificed750 [pg 259] may be based either on a belief in the resurrection of the animals, or on a fear of intimidating other creatures of the same species and offending the ghosts of the slain animals. The reluctance of North American Indians and Esquimaux to let dogs gnaw the bones of animals751 is perhaps only a precaution to prevent the bones from being broken.

Some savages preserve or destroy the bones of men in order to assist or prevent their resurrection

We have already seen that some rude races believe in a resurrection of men752 as well as of beasts, and it is quite natural that people who entertain such a belief should take care of the bones of their dead in order that the original owners of the bones may have them to hand at the critical moment. Hence in the Mexican territories of Guazacualco and Yluta, where the Indians thought that the dead would rise again, the bones of the departed were deposited in baskets and hung up on trees, that their spirits might not be obliged to grub in the earth for them at the resurrection.753 [pg 260] On the other hand, the Luritcha tribe of Central Australia, who eat their enemies, take steps to prevent their coming to life again, which might prove very inconvenient, by destroying the bones and especially the skulls of the bodies on which they have banqueted.754

Unquestioning faith of savages in the immortality of animals. The savage faith in human immortality is commonly supposed to be deduced from a primitive theory of dreams

The preceding review of customs observed by savages for the conciliation and multiplication of animals which they hunt and kill, is fitted to impress us with a lively sense of the unquestioning faith which primitive man reposes in the immortality of the lower creatures. He appears to assume as an axiom too obvious to be disputed that beasts, birds, and fishes have souls like his own, which survive the death of their bodies and can be reborn in other bodies to be again killed and eaten by the hunter. The whole series of customs described in the foregoing pages – customs which are apt to strike the civilised reader as quaint and absurd – rests on this fundamental assumption. A consideration of them suggests a doubt whether the current explanation of the savage belief in human immortality is adequate to account for all the facts. That belief is commonly deduced from a primitive theory of dreams. The savage, it is said, fails to distinguish the visions of sleep from the realities of waking life, and accordingly when he has dreamed of his dead friends he necessarily concludes that they have not wholly perished, but that their spirits continue to exist in some place and some form, though in the ordinary course of events they elude the perceptions of his senses. On this theory the conceptions, whether gross or refined, whether repulsive or beautiful, which savages and perhaps civilised men have formed of the state of the departed, would seem to be no more than elaborate hypotheses constructed to account for appearances in dreams; these towering structures, for all their radiant or gloomy grandeur, for all the massy strength and solidity with which they present themselves to the imagination of many, may turn out on inspection to be mere visionary castles built of clouds and vapour, which a breath of reason suffices to melt into air.[pg 261]

But can a theory of dreams account for the savage belief in the immortality of animals?

But even if we grant for the sake of argument that this theory offers a ready explanation of the widespread belief in human immortality, it is less easy to see how the theory accounts for the corresponding belief of so many races in the immortality of the lower animals. In his dreams the savage recognises the images of his departed friends by those familiar traits of feature, voice, and gesture which characterised them in life. But can we suppose that he recognises dead beasts, birds, and fishes in like manner? That their images come before him in sleep with all the particular features, the minute individual differences, which distinguished them in life from their fellows, so that when he sees them he can say to himself, for example, “This is the very tiger that I speared yesterday; his carcase is dead, but his spirit must be still alive”; or, “That is the very salmon I caught and ate this morning; I certainly killed his body but clearly I have not succeeded in destroying his soul”? No doubt it is possible that the savage has arrived at his theory of animal immortality by some such process of reasoning, but the supposition seems at least more far-fetched and improbable than in the case of human immortality. And if we admit the insufficiency of the explanation in the one case, we seem bound to admit it, though perhaps in a less degree, in the other case also. In short, we conclude that the theory of dreams appears to be hardly enough by itself to account for the widespread belief in the immortality of men and animals; dreams have probably done much to confirm that belief, but would they suffice to originate it? We may reasonably doubt it.

Apparently the savage conceives life as an indestructible form of energy. Analogy of the conception to the modern scientific conception of the conservation of energy

Accordingly we are driven to cast about for some more adequate explanation of this prevalent and deeply rooted persuasion. In search of such an explanation perhaps we need go no further than the sense of life which every man feels in his own breast.755 We have seen that to the savage death presents itself not as a natural necessity but as a lamentable accident or crime that cuts short an existence which, but for it, might have lasted for ever.756 Thus arguing apparently from his own sensations he conceives of life as an indestructible [pg 262] kind of energy, which when it disappears in one form must necessarily reappear in another, though in the new form it need not be immediately perceptible by us; in other words, he infers that death does not destroy the vital principle nor even the conscious personality, but that it merely transforms both of them into other shapes, which are not the less real because they commonly elude the evidence of our senses. If I am right in thus interpreting the thought of primitive man, the savage view of the nature of life singularly resembles the modern scientific doctrine of the conservation of energy. According to that doctrine, no material energy ever perishes or is even diminished; when it seems to suffer diminution or extinction, all that happens is that a portion or the whole of it has been transmuted into other shapes which, though qualitatively different from, are quantitatively equivalent to, the energy in its original form. In short, if we listen to science, nothing in the physical world is ever lost, but all things are perpetually changing: the sum of energy in the universe is constant and invariable, though it undergoes ceaseless transformations.757 A similar theory of the indestructibility of energy is implicitly applied by the savage to explain the phenomena of life and death, and logically enough he does not limit the application to human beings but extends it to the lower animals. Therein he shews himself a better reasoner than his civilised brother, who commonly embraces with avidity the doctrine of human immortality but rejects with scorn, as derogatory to human dignity, the idea that animals have immortal souls. And when he attempts to confirm his own cherished belief in a life after death by appealing to similar beliefs among savages and inferring from them a natural instinct of immortality, it is well to [pg 263] remind him that, if he stands by that appeal, he must, like the savage, consistently extend the privilege of immortality to the despised lower animals; for surely it is improper for him to pick and choose his evidence so as to suit his prepossessions, accepting those parts of the savage creed which tally with his own and rejecting those which do not. On logical and scientific grounds he seems bound to believe either more or less: he must hold that men and animals are alike immortal or that neither of them is so.

The resurrection of the body in tales and legends

We have seen that many savages look forward to a joyful resurrection of men and beasts, if only a proper care is taken of their skeletons; the same old bones, they imagine, will do duty over again in the next life, when they have been decently clad in a new garment of flesh. This quaint fancy is reflected in many popular tales; not uncommonly the animal or man in the story comes to life lame of a limb, because one of his bones has been eaten, broken, or lost.758 In a Magyar tale, the hero is cut in pieces, but the serpent-king lays the bones together in their proper order, and washes them with water, whereupon the hero revives. His shoulder-blade, however, has been lost, so the serpent-king supplies its place with one of gold and ivory.759 Such stories, as Mannhardt has seen, explain why Pythagoras, who claimed to have lived many lives, one after the other, was said to have exhibited his golden leg as a proof of his supernatural pretensions.760 Doubtless he explained that at one of his resurrections a leg had been broken or mislaid, and that he had replaced it, like Miss Kilmansegg, with one of gold. Similarly, when the murdered Pelops was restored to life, the shoulder which Demeter had eaten was made good with one of ivory,761 which was publicly exhibited [pg 264] at Elis down to historical times.762 The story that one of the members of the mangled Osiris was eaten by fish, and that, when Isis collected his scattered limbs, she replaced the missing member with one of wood,763 may perhaps belong to the same circle of beliefs.

The sinew of the thigh regularly cut out and thrown away by some American Indians

There is a certain rule observed by savage hunters and fishers which, enigmatical at first sight, may possibly be explained by this savage belief in resurrection. A traveller in America in the early part of the nineteenth century was told by a half-breed Choctaw that the Indians “had an obscure story, somewhat resembling that of Jacob wrestling with an angel; and that the full-blooded Indians always separate the sinew which shrank, and that it is never seen in the venison exposed for sale; he did not know what they did with it. His elder brother, whom I afterwards met, told me that they eat it as a rarity; but I have also heard, though on less respectable authority, that they refrain from it, like the ancient Jews. A gentleman, who had lived on the Indian frontier, or in the nation, for ten or fifteen years, told me that he had often been surprised that the Indians always detached this sinew; but it had never occurred to him to inquire the reason.”764 James Adair, who knew the Indians of the South-Eastern States intimately, and whose absurd theories appear not to have distorted his view of the facts, observes that “when in the woods, the Indians cut a small piece out of the lower part of the thighs of the deer they kill, lengthways and pretty deep. Among the great number of venison-hams they bring to our trading-houses, I do not remember to have observed one without it… And I have been assured by a gentleman of character, who is now an inhabitant of South Carolina, and well acquainted with the customs of the northern Indians, that they also cut a piece out of the thigh of every deer they kill, and throw it away; and reckon it such a dangerous pollution to eat it as to occasion sickness and other misfortunes of sundry kinds, especially by spoiling their guns from shooting with proper force and direction.”765[pg 265]

Story told by the Indians to explain the custom

In more recent times the statement of Adair's informant has been confirmed by a French missionary, who has also published the “obscure story” to which the English traveller Hodgson refers. The Loucheux and Hare-skin Indians who roam the bleak steppes and forests that stretch from Hudson's Bay to the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the frozen sea, are forbidden by custom to eat the sinew of the legs of animals. To explain this custom they tell the following “sacred story.” Once upon a time a man found a burrow of porcupines, and going down into it after the porcupines he lost his way in the darkness, till a kind giant called “He who sees before and behind” released him by cleaving open the earth. So the man, whose name was “Fireless and Homeless,” lived with the kind giant, and the giant hunted elans and beavers for him, and carried him about in the sheath of his flint knife. “But know, my son,” said the giant, “that he who uses the sky as his head is angry with me, and has sworn my destruction. If he slays me the clouds will be tinged with my blood; they will be red with it, probably.” Then he gave the man an axe made of the tooth of a gigantic beaver, and went forth to meet his foe. But from under the ice the man heard a dull muffled sound. It was a whale which was making this noise because it was naked and cold. Warned by the man, the giant went toward the whale, which took human shape, and rushed upon the giant. It was the wicked giant, the kind giant's enemy. The two struggled together for a long time, till the kind giant cried, “Oh, my son! cut, cut the sinew of the leg.” The man cut the sinew, and the wicked giant fell down and was slain. That is why the Indians do not eat the sinew of the leg. Afterwards, one day the sky suddenly flushed a fiery red, so Fireless and Homeless knew that the kind giant was no more, and he wept.766[pg 266]

The custom of cutting out the sinew of the thigh in animals seems to be based on the principle of sympathetic magic

This myth, it is almost needless to observe, does not really explain the custom. People do not usually observe a custom because on a particular occasion a mythical being is said to have acted in a certain way. But, on the contrary, they very often invent myths to explain why they practise certain customs. Dismissing, therefore, the story of Fireless and Homeless as a myth invented to explain why the Indians abstain from eating a particular sinew, it may be suggested767 that the original reason for observing the custom was a belief that the sinew in question was necessary to reproduction, and that deprived of it the slain animals could not come to life again and stock the steppes and prairies either of the present world or of the spirit land. We have seen that the resurrection of animals is a common article of savage faith, and that when the Lapps bury the skeleton of the male bear in the hope of its resurrection they are careful to bury the genital parts along with it. However, subsequent enquiries make it probable that the Indian practice of cutting out the hamstring of deer has no other object than that of preventing eaters of venison from going lame. Among the Cherokee, we are told, “on killing a deer the hunter always makes an incision in the hind quarter and removes the hamstring, because this tendon, when severed, draws up into the flesh; ergo, any one who should unfortunately partake of the hamstring would find his limbs drawn up in the same manner.”768 Thus the superstition [pg 267] seems to rest on the common principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic, that an eater infects himself with the qualities of the animal of whose flesh he partakes. Many instances of the application of that principle have met us already.769

Some hunters hamstring the dead game in order to lame the ghosts of the animals. Some savages put out the eyes of dead game in order perhaps to blind the ghosts of the animals

But some hunters hamstring the game for a different purpose; they hope thereby to prevent the dead beast or its ghost from getting up and running away. This is the motive alleged for the practice by Koui hunters in Laos; they think that the spells which they utter in the chase may lose their magical virtue, and that the slaughtered animal may consequently come to life again and escape. To prevent that catastrophe they therefore hamstring the beast as soon as they have butchered it.770 When an Esquimau of Alaska has killed a fox, he carefully cuts the tendons of all the animal's legs in order to prevent the ghost from reanimating the body and walking about.771 But hamstringing the carcase is not the only measure which the prudent savage adopts for the sake of disabling the ghost of his victim. In old days, when the Aino went out hunting and killed a fox first, they took care to tie its mouth up tightly in order to prevent the ghost of the animal from sallying forth and warning its fellows against the approach of the hunter.772 The Gilyaks of the Amoor River put out the eyes of the seals they have killed, lest the ghosts of the slain animals should know their slayers and avenge their death by spoiling the seal-hunt.773 The custom of putting out the eyes of slaughtered animals appears to be not uncommon among primitive peoples, and we may suspect that even where a different reason is alleged for it, the true [pg 268] original motive was to blind the dangerous ghost of the injured creature, and so to incapacitate it for retaliating on the slayer. Thus, when a Samoyed has killed a wild reindeer, one of the first things he does is to cut out the eyes and throw them away “in order to ensure a good bag in future”; and he buries the eyes in some place where no woman or adult girl is likely to step over them, since that also would spoil his luck in the chase.774 Among the tribes of South-east Africa hunters pluck out the right eye of any animal they have killed and pour a charmed medicine into the empty socket.775 Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia a man whose daughter has just arrived at puberty may not hunt or trap for a month, or he will have no luck. Moreover, he should cut off the head of the first grouse he snares, pluck out the eyes, and insert two small roots of the Zygadenus elegans Pursch. in the orbits and another in its mouth, and having done so he ought to hang up the bird's head above his pillow. If he neglects these precautions, he will not be able to snare any more grouse or other small game.776 No doubt the ceremonial pollution contracted by his daughter at this critical period of her life is supposed to infect the hunter and render him unacceptable to the game;777 hence it seems a mere elementary dictate of prudence to hoodwink the grouse effectually by putting out their eyes. Sometimes, perhaps, the cutting out of the eyes of fierce and powerful animals may be a rational, not a superstitious, precaution. Thus the Kamtchatkans, who stab with knives the eyes of slain bears before they cut the carcases up, allege as their reason for doing so that bears which seem to be dead [pg 269] of their wounds will sometimes revive and kill their would-be killers.778

The custom of cutting out the tongues of dead animals may sometimes be intended to prevent their ghosts from telling tales. Tongues of animals cut out in order to confer superhuman knowledge or power on their possessors

It appears to be a common custom with savage hunters to cut out the tongues of the animals which they kill. On the analogy of the foregoing customs we may conjecture that the removal of the tongues is sometimes a precaution to prevent the ghosts of the creatures from telling their sad fate to their sympathising comrades, the living animals of the same sort, who would naturally be frightened, and so keep out of the hunter's way. Thus, for example, Omaha hunters remove the tongue of a slain buffalo through an opening made in the animal's throat. The tongues thus removed are sacred and may not touch any tool or metal except when they are boiling in the kettles at the sacred tent. They are eaten as sacred food.779 Indian bear-hunters cut out what they call the bear's little tongue (a fleshy mass under the real tongue) and keep it for good luck in hunting or burn it to determine, from its crackling and so on, whether the soul of the slain bear is angry with them or not.780 In folk-tales the hero commonly cuts out the tongue of the wild beast which he has slain and preserves it as a token. The incident serves to shew that the custom was a common one, since folk-tales reflect with accuracy the customs and beliefs of a primitive age.781 On the other hand, the [pg 270] tongues of certain animals, as the otter and the eagle, are torn out and sometimes worn round their necks by Thlinkeet and Haida shamans as a means of conferring superhuman knowledge and power on their possessors.782 In particular, an otter's tongue is supposed to convey a knowledge of “the language of all inanimate objects, of birds, animals, and other living creatures” to the shaman, who wears it in a little bag hung round his neck.783 When a Galla priest sacrifices an animal and decides that the omens are favourable, he cuts out the tongue, sticks his thumb through it, and so flays the animal.784 In certain cases Gallas cut out the tongues of oxen and wear them on their heads as tokens.785 In Bohemia a fox's tongue is worn as an amulet to make a timid person bold;786 in Oldenburg and Belgium it is a remedy for erysipelas.787 In Bohemia the tongue of a male snake, if cut from the living animal on St. George's Eve and placed under a person's tongue, will confer the gift of eloquence.788 The Homeric Greeks cut out the tongues of sacrificial victims and burned them.789 According to some accounts, the tongues of the victims were assigned by the Greeks to Hermes, as the god of speech, or to his human representatives the heralds.790 [pg 271] On the principles of sympathetic magic we might expect that heralds should taste the tongues of sacrificial victims to strengthen their voices, or to acquire the gift of tongues.791