The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3)

S >> Sir James George Frazer >> The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3)

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[Sidenote: Guardian spirits (_tapum_) in Tumleo.]

So far as appears, the spirits who dwell in the temples are not supposed
to be ancestors. Father Erdweg describes them as guardian spirits or
goddesses, for they are all of the female sex. Every village has several
of them; indeed in the village of Sapi almost every family has its own
guardian spirit. The name for these guardian spirits is _tapum_, which
seems to be clearly connected with the now familiar word _tapu_ or
taboo, in the sense of sacred, which is universally understood in the
islands of the Pacific. On the whole the _tapum_ are kindly and
beneficent spirits, who bring good luck to such as honour them. A hunter
or a fisherman ascribes his success in the chase or in fishing to the
protection of his guardian spirit; and when he is away from home trading
for sago and other necessaries of life, it is his guardian spirit who
gives him favour in the eyes of the foreigners with whom he is dealing.
Curiously enough, though these guardian spirits are all female, they
have no liking for women and children. Indeed, no woman or child may set
foot in a temple, or even loiter in the open space in front of it. And
at the chief festivals, when the temples are being repaired, all the
women and children must quit the village till the evening shadows have
fallen and the banquet of their husbands, fathers, and brothers at the
temple is over.[379]

On the whole, then, we conclude that a belief in the continued existence
of the spirits of the dead, and in their power to help or harm their
descendants, plays a considerable part in the life of the Papuans of
Tumleo. Whether the guardian spirits or goddesses, who are worshipped in
the temples, were originally conceived as ancestral spirits or not, must
be left an open question for the present.

[Sidenote: The Monumbo of Potsdam Harbour.]

Passing eastward from Tumleo along the northern coast of German New
Guinea we come to Monumbo or Potsdam Harbour, situated about the 145th
degree of East Longitude. The Monumbo are a Papuan tribe numbering about
four hundred souls, who inhabit twelve small villages close to the
seashore. Their territory is a narrow but fertile strip of country, well
watered and covered with luxuriant vegetation, lying between the sea and
a range of hills. The bay is sheltered by an island from the open sea,
and the natives can paddle their canoes on its calm water in almost any
weather. The villages, embowered on the landward side in groves of trees
of many useful sorts and screened in front by rows of stately coco-nut
palms, are composed of large houses solidly built of timber and are kept
very clean and tidy. The Monumbo are a strongly-built people, of the
average European height, with what is described as a remarkably Semitic
type of features. The men wear their hair plaited about a long tube,
decorated with shells and dogs' teeth, which sticks out stiffly from the
head. The women wear their hair in a sort of mop, composed of countless
plaits, which hang down in tangle. In disposition the Monumbo are
cheerful and contented, proud of themselves and their country; they
think they are the cleverest and most fortunate people on earth, and
look down with pity and contempt on Europeans. According to them the
business of the foreign settlers in their country is folly, and the
teaching of the missionaries is nonsense. They subsist by agriculture,
hunting, and fishing. Their well-kept plantations occupy the level
ground and in some places extend up the hill-sides. Among the plants
which they cultivate are taro, yams, sweet potatoes, bananas, various
kinds of vegetables, and sugar-cane. Among their fruit-trees are the
sago-palm, the coco-nut palm, and the bread-fruit tree. They make use
both of earthenware and of wooden vessels. Their dances, especially
their masked dances, which are celebrated at intervals of four or five
years, have excited the warm admiration of the despised European.[380]

[Sidenote: Beliefs of the Monumbo concerning the spirits of the dead.
Dread of ghosts.]

With regard to their religion and morality I will quote the evidence of
a Catholic missionary who has laboured among them. "The Monumbo are
acquainted with no Supreme Being, no moral good or evil, no rewards, no
place of punishment or joy after death, no permanent immortality....
When people die, their souls go to the land of spirits, a place where
they dwell without work or suffering, but which they can also quit.
Betel-chewing, smoking, dancing, sleeping, all the occupations that they
loved on earth, are continued without interruption in the other world.
They converse with men in dreams, but play them many a shabby trick,
take possession of them and even, it may be, kill them. Yet they also
help men in all manner of ways in war and the chase. Men invoke them,
pray to them, make statues in their memory, which are called _dva_
(plural _dvaka_), and bring them offerings of food, in order to obtain
their assistance. But if the spirits of the dead do not help, they are
rated in the plainest language. Death makes no great separation. The
living converse with the dead very much as they converse with each
other. Time alone brings with it a gradual oblivion of the departed.
Falling stars and lightning are nothing but the souls of the dead, who
stick dry banana leaves in their girdles, set them on fire, and then fly
through the air. At last when the souls are old they die, but are not
annihilated, for they are changed into animals and plants. Such animals
are, for example, the white ants and a rare kind of wild pig, which is
said not to allow itself to be killed. Such a tree, for example, is the
_barimbar_. That, apparently, is the whole religion of the Monumbo. Yet
they are ghost-seers of the most arrant sort. An anxious superstitious
fear pursues them at every step. Superstitious views are the motives
that determine almost everything that they do or leave undone."[381]
Their dread of ghosts is displayed in their custom of doing no work in
the plantations for three days after a death, lest the ghost, touched to
the quick by their heartless indifference, should send wild boars to
ravage the plantations. And when a man has slain an enemy in war, he has
to remain a long time secluded in the men's clubhouse, touching nobody,
not even his wife and children, while the villagers celebrate his
victory with song and dance. He is believed to be in a state of
ceremonial impurity (_bolobolo_) such that, if he were to touch his wife
and children, they would be covered with sores. At the end of his
seclusion he is purified by washings and other purgations and is clean
once more.[382] The reason of this uncleanness of a victorious warrior
is not mentioned, but analogy makes it nearly certain that it is a dread
of the vengeful ghost of the man whom he has slain. A similar fear
probably underlies the rule that a widower must abstain from certain
foods, such as fish and sauces, and from bathing for a certain time
after the death of his wife.[383]

[Sidenote: The Tamos of Astrolabe Bay. Mistake of attempting to combine
descriptive with comparative anthropology.]

Leaving Potsdam Harbour and the Monumbo, and moving still eastward along
the coast of German New Guinea, we come to a large indentation known as
Astrolabe Bay. The natives of this part of the coast call themselves
Tamos. The largest village on the bay bears the name of Bogadyim and in
1894 numbered about three hundred inhabitants.[384] Our principal
authority on the natives is a German ethnologist, Dr. B. Hagen, who
spent about eighteen months at Stefansort on Astrolabe Bay.
Unfortunately he has mixed up his personal observations of these
particular people not merely with second-hand accounts of natives of
other parts of New Guinea but with discussions of general theories of
the origin and migrations of races and of the development of social
institutions; so that it is not altogether easy to disentangle the facts
for which he is a first-hand witness, from those which he reports at
second, third, or fourth hand. Scarcely anything, I may observe in
passing, more impairs the value and impedes the usefulness of personal
observations of savage races than this deplorable habit of attempting to
combine the work of description with the work of comparison and
generalisation. The two kinds of work are entirely distinct in their
nature, and require very different mental qualities for their proper
performance; the one should never be confused with the other. The task
of descriptive anthropology is to record observations, without any
admixture of theory; the task of comparative anthropology is to compare
the observations made in all parts of the world, and from the comparison
to deduce theories, more or less provisional, of the origin and growth
of beliefs and institutions, always subject to modification and
correction by facts which may afterwards be brought to light. There is
no harm, indeed there is great positive advantage, in the descriptive
anthropologist making himself acquainted with the theories of the
comparative anthropologist, for by so doing his attention will probably
be called to many facts which he might otherwise have overlooked and
which, when recorded, may either confirm or refute the theories in
question. But if he knows these theories, he should keep his knowledge
strictly in the background and never interlard his descriptions of facts
with digressions into an alien province. In this way descriptive
anthropology and comparative anthropology will best work hand in hand
for the furtherance of their common aim, the understanding of the nature
and development of man.

[Sidenote: The religion of the Tamos. Beliefs of the Tamos as to the
souls of the dead.]

Like the Papuans in general, the Tamos of Astrolabe Bay are a settled
agricultural people, who dwell in fixed villages, subsist mainly by the
produce of the ground which they cultivate, and engage in a commerce of
barter with their neighbours.[385] Their material culture thus does not
differ essentially from that of the other Papuans, and I need not give
particulars of it. With regard to their religious views Dr. Hagen tells
us candidly that he has great hesitation in expressing an opinion.
"Nothing," he says very justly, "is more difficult for a European than
to form an approximately correct conception of the religious views of a
savage people, and the difficulty is infinitely increased when the
enquirer has little or no knowledge of their language." Dr. Hagen had,
indeed, an excellent interpreter and intelligent assistant in the person
of a missionary, Mr. Hoffmann; but Mr. Hoffmann himself admitted that he
had no clear ideas as to the religious views of the Tamos; however, in
his opinion they are entirely destitute of the conception of God and of
a Creator. Yet among the Tamos of Bogadyim, Dr. Hagen tells us, a belief
in the existence of the soul after death is proved by their assertion
that after death the soul (_gunung_) goes to _buka kure_, which seems to
mean the village of ghosts. This abode of the dead appears to be
situated somewhere in the earth, and the Tamos speak of it with a
shudder. They tell of a man in the village of Bogadyim who died and went
away to the village of the ghosts. But as he drew near to the village,
he met the ghost of his dead brother who had come forth with bow and
arrows and spear to hunt a wild boar. This boar-hunting ghost was very
angry at meeting his brother, who had just died, and drove him back to
the land of the living. From this narrative it would seem that in the
other world the ghosts are thought to pursue the same occupations which
they followed in life. The natives are in great fear of ghosts (_buka_).
Travelling alone with them in the forest at nightfall you may mark their
timidity and hear them cry anxiously, "Come, let us be going! The ghost
is roaming about." The ghosts of those who have perished in battle do
not go to the Village of Ghosts (_buka kure_); they repair to another
place called _bopa kure_. But this abode of the slain does not seem to
be a happy land or Valhalla; the natives are even more afraid of it than
of the Village of Ghosts (_buka kure_). They will hardly venture at
night to pass a spot where any one has been slain. Sometimes fires are
kindled by night on such spots; and the sight of the flames flickering
in the distance inspires all the beholders with horror, and nothing in
the world would induce them to approach such a fire. The souls of men
who have been killed, but whose death has not been avenged, are supposed
to haunt the village. For some time after death the ghost is believed to
linger in the neighbourhood of his deserted body. When Mr. Hoffmann went
with some Tamos to another village to bring back the body of a fellow
missionary, who had died there, and darkness had fallen on them in the
forest, his native companions started with fear every moment, imagining
that they saw the missionary's ghost popping out from behind a
tree.[386]

[Sidenote: Treatment of the corpse. Secret Society called _Asa_.]

When death has taken place, the corpse is first exposed on a scaffold in
front of the house, where it is decked with ornaments and surrounded
with flowers. If the deceased was rich, a dog is hung on each side of
the scaffold, and the souls of the animals are believed to accompany the
ghost to the spirit-land. Taros, yams, and coco-nuts are also suspended
from the scaffold, no doubt for the refreshment of the ghost. Then the
melancholy notes of a horn are heard in the distance, at the sound of
which all the women rush away. Soon the horn-blower appears, paints the
corpse white and red, crowns it with great red hibiscus roses, then
blows his horn, and vanishes.[387] He is a member of a secret society,
called _Asa_, which has its lodge standing alone in the forest. Only men
belong to the society; women and children are excluded from it and look
upon it with fear and awe. If any one raises a cry, "_Asa_ is coming,"
or the sound of the musical instruments of the society is heard in the
distance, all the women and children scamper away. The natives are very
unwilling to let any stranger enter one of the lodges of the society.
The interior of such a building is usually somewhat bare, but it
contains the wooden masks which are worn in the ceremonial dances of the
society, and the horns and flutes on which the members discourse their
awe-inspiring music. In construction it scarcely differs from the
ordinary huts of the village; if anything it is worse built and more
primitive. The secrets of the society are well kept; at least very
little seems to have been divulged to Europeans. The most important of
its ceremonies is that of the initiation of the young men, who on this
occasion are circumcised before they are recognised as full-grown men
and members of the secret society. At such times the men encamp and
feast for weeks or even months together on the open space in front of
the society's lodge, and masked dances are danced to the accompaniment
of the instrumental music. These initiatory ceremonies are held at
intervals of about ten or fifteen years, when there are a considerable
number of young men to be initiated together.[388] Although we are still
in the dark as to the real meaning of this and indeed of almost all
similar secret societies among savages, the solemn part played by a
member of the society at the funeral rites seems very significant. Why
should he come mysteriously to the melancholy music of the horn, paint
the corpse red and white, crown it with red roses, and then vanish again
to music as he had come? It is scarcely rash to suppose that this
ceremony has some reference to the state of the dead man's soul, and we
may conjecture that just as the fruits hung on the scaffold are
doubtless intended for the consumption of the ghost, and the souls of
the dogs are expressly said to accompany him to the spirit-land, so the
painting of the corpse and the crown of red roses may be designed in
some way to speed the parting spirit on the way to its long home. In the
absence of exact information as to the beliefs of these savages touching
the state of the dead we can only guess at the meaning which they attach
to these symbols. Perhaps they think that only ghosts who are painted
red and white and who wear wreaths of red roses on their heads are
admitted to the Village of the Ghosts, and that such as knock at the
gate with no paint on their bodies and no wreath of roses on their brows
are refused admittance and must turn sorrowfully away, to haunt their
undutiful friends on earth who had omitted to pay the last marks of
respect and honour to the dead.

[Sidenote: Burial customs of the Tamos. Removal of the lower jawbone.]

When the corpse has lain in all its glory, with its ornaments, its paint
and its flowers, for a short time on the scaffold, it is removed and
buried. The exposure never lasts more than a day. If the man died in the
morning, he is buried at night. The grave is dug in the house itself. It
is only about three feet deep and four feet long. If the corpse is too
long for the grave, as usually happens, the legs are remorselessly
doubled up and trampled in. It is the relations on the mother's side who
dig the grave and lower the body, shrouded in mats or leaves, into its
narrow bed. Before doing so they take care to strip it of its ornaments,
its rings, necklaces, boar's teeth, and so forth, which no doubt are
regarded as too valuable to be sacrificed. Yet a regard for the comfort
of the dead is shewn by the custom of covering the open grave with wood
and then heaping the mould on the top, in order, we are told, that the
earth may not press heavy on him who sleeps below. _Sit tibi terra
levis!_ After some months the grave is opened and the lower jaw removed
from the corpse and preserved. This removal of the jaw is the occasion
of solemnities and ceremonial washings, in which the whole male
population of the village takes part. But as to the meaning of these
ceremonies, and as to what is done with the jawbone, we have no exact
information.[389] According to the Russian traveller, Baron N. von
Miklucho-Maclay, who has also given us an account of the Papuans of
Astrolabe Bay,[390] though not apparently of the villages described by
Dr. Hagen, the whole skull is dug up and separated from the corpse after
the lapse of about a year, but only the lower jawbone is carefully kept
by the nearest kinsman as a memorial of the deceased. Baron
Miklucho-Maclay had great difficulty in inducing a native to part with
one of these memorials of a dead relation.[391] In any case the
preservation of this portion of the deceased may be supposed to have for
its object the maintenance of friendly relations between the living and
the dead. Similarly in Uganda the jawbone is the only part of the body
of a deceased king which, along with his navel-string, is carefully
preserved in his temple-tomb and consulted oracularly.[392] We may
conjecture that the reason for preserving this part of the human frame
rather than any other is that the jawbone is an organ of speech, and
that therefore it appears to the primitive mind well fitted to maintain
intercourse with the dead man's spirit and to obtain oracular
communications from him.

[Sidenote: Sham fight as a funeral ceremony at Astrolabe Bay.]

The Russian traveller, Baron Miklucho-Maclay, has described a curious
funeral ceremony which is observed by some of the Papuans of Astrolabe
Bay. I will give the first part of his description in his own words,
which I translate from the German. He says: "The death of a man is
announced to the neighbouring villages by a definite series of beats on
the drum. On the same day or the next morning the whole male population
assembles in the vicinity of the village of the deceased. All the men
are in full warlike array. To the beat of drum the guests march into the
village, where a crowd of men, also armed for war, await the new-comers
beside the dead man's hut. After a short parley the men divide into two
opposite camps, and thereupon a sham fight takes place. However, the
combatants go to work very gingerly and make no use of their spears. But
dozens of arrows are continually discharged, and not a few are wounded
in the sham fight, though not seriously. The nearest relations and
friends of the deceased appear especially excited and behave as if they
were frantic. When all are hot and tired and all arrows have been shot
away, the pretended enemies seat themselves in a circle and in what
follows most of them act as simple spectators." Thereupon the nearest
relations bring out the corpse and deposit it in a crouching position,
with the knees drawn up to the chin, on some mats and leaves of the
sago-palm, which had previously been spread out in the middle of the
open space. Beside the corpse are laid his things, some presents from
neighbours, and some freshly cooked food. While the men sit round in a
circle, the women, even the nearest relatives of the deceased, may only
look on from a distance. When all is ready, some men step out from the
circle to help the nearest of kin in the next proceedings, which consist
in tying the corpse up tightly into a bundle by means of rattans and
creepers. Then the bundle is attached to a stout stick and carried back
into the house. There the corpse in its bundle is fastened under the
roof by means of the stick, and the dead man's property, together with
the presents of the neighbours and the food, are left beside it. After
that the house is abandoned, and the guests return to their own
villages. A few days later, when decomposition is far advanced, the
corpse is taken down and buried in a grave in the house, which continues
to be inhabited by the family. After the lapse of about a year, the body
is dug up, the skull separated from it, and the lower jawbone preserved
by the nearest relation, as I have already mentioned.[393]

[Sidenote: The sham fight perhaps intended to deceive the ghost.]

What is the meaning of this curious sham fight which among these people
seems to be regularly enacted after a death? The writer who reports the
custom offers no explanation of it. I would conjecture with all due
caution that it may possibly be intended as a satisfaction to the ghost
in order to make him suppose that his death has been properly avenged.
In a former lecture I shewed that natural deaths are regularly imagined
by many savages to be brought about by the magical practices of enemies,
and that accordingly the relations of the deceased take vengeance on
some innocent person whom for one reason or another they regard as the
culprit. It is possible that these Papuans of Astrolabe Bay, instead of
actually putting the supposed sorcerer to death, have advanced so far as
to abandon that cruel and unjust practice and content themselves with
throwing dust in the eyes of the ghost by a sham instead of a real
fight. But that is only a conjecture of my own, which I merely suggest
for what it is worth.

Altogether, looking over the scanty notices of the beliefs and practices
of these Papuans of Astrolabe Bay concerning the departed, we may say in
general that while the fear of ghosts is conspicuous enough among them,
there is but little evidence of anything that deserves to be called a
regular worship of the dead.

[Footnote 358: P. Mathias Josef Erdweg, "Die Bewohner der Insel Tumleo,
Berlin-hafen, Deutsch-Neu-Guinea," _Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen
Gesellschaft in Wien_, xxxii. (1902) pp. 274-310, 317-399.]

[Footnote 359: R. Parkinson, "Die Berlinhafen Section, ein Beitrag zur
Ethnographie der Neu-Guinea-Kueste," _Internationales Archiv fuer
Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) pp. 18-54.]

[Footnote 360: See the note of Father P. W. Schmidt on Father Erdweg's
paper, _op. cit._ p. 274.]

[Footnote 361: Erdweg, _op. cit._ p. 274.]

[Footnote 362: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 277 _sq_. The frizzly character of
the hair is mentioned by Mr. R. Parkinson, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 363: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 355 _sqq._]

[Footnote 364: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 342-346.]

[Footnote 365: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 335 _sqq._]

[Footnote 366: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 330 _sqq._]

[Footnote 367: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 350 _sqq._]

[Footnote 368: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 363 _sqq._]

[Footnote 369: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 374.]

[Footnote 370: R. Parkinson, "Die Berlinhafen Section, ein Beitrag zur
Ethnographie der Neu-Guinea-Kueste," _Internationales Archiv fuer
Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) pp. 33-35. Father Erdweg speaks of the
_parak_ as a spirit-temple or spirit-house in which the deities of the
Tumleo dwell (_op. cit._ p. 377): he tells us that as a rule each
village has only one _parak_. As to the spirits which dwell in these
temples, see below, pp. 226 _sq._]

[Footnote 371: R. Parkinson, _op. cit._ pp. 35, 42 _sq._; Erdweg, _op.
cit._ pp. 292 _sq._, 306.]

[Footnote 372: Erdweg, _op. cit._ pp. 284-287.]

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