Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/504

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486
ANIMISM.

sacrifice men and beasts with the intention of conveying their souls to the other world, also sacrifice lifeless things indiscriminately with them. The second group is that in which the phantoms of the objects sacrificed are traced distinctly into the possession of the human phantom.

The Caribs, holding that after decease man's soul found its way to the land of the dead, sacrificed slaves on a chief's grave to serve him in the new life, and for the same purpose buried dogs with him, and also weapons.[1] The Guinea negroes, at the funeral of a great man, killed several wives and slaves to serve him in the other world, and put fine clothes, gold fetishes, coral, beads, and other valuables, into the coffin, to be used there too.[2] When the New Zealand chief had slaves killed at his death for his service, and the mourning family gave his chief widow a rope to hang herself with in the woods and so rejoin her husband,[3] it is not easy to discern here a motive different from that which induced them at the same time to provide the dead man also with his weapons. Nor can an intellectual line well be drawn between the intentions with which the Tunguz has buried with him his horse, his bow and arrows, his smoking apparatus and kettle. In the typical description which Herodotus gives of the funeral of the ancient Scythian chiefs, the miscellaneous contents of the burial-mound, the strangled wife and household servants, the horses, the choice articles of property, the golden vessels, fairly represent the indiscriminate purpose which actuated the barbaric sacrifice of creatures and things.[4] So in old Europe, the warrior with his sword and spear, the horse with his saddle, the hunter's hound and hawk and his bow and arrow, the wife with her gay clothes and jewels, lie together in the burial-mound. Their common purpose has become one of the most undisputed inferences of Archæology.

  1. J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 222, see 420.
  2. Bosman, 'Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 430.
  3. Polack, 'M. of New Zealanders,' vol. ii. pp. 66, 78, 116, 127.
  4. Georgi, 'Russ. R.' vol. i. p. 266; Herodot. iv. 71, see note in Rawlinon's Tr. &c. &c.