naturally hysterical and nervous constitution. "He hears the spirits who speak by whistlings speaking to him."(1) Whistling is also the language of the ghosts in New Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs us that he has occasionally put an able-bodied Kaneka to ignominious flight by whistling softly in the dusk. The ghosts in Homer make a similar sound, "and even as bats flit gibbering in the secret place of a wondrous cavern, … even so the souls gibbered as they fared together" (Odyssey, xxiv. 5). "The familiar spirits make him" (that Zulu sorcerer) "acquainted with what is about to happen, and then he divines for the people." As the Birraarks learn songs and dance-music from the Mrarts, so the Zulu Inyanga or diviners learn magical couplets from the Itongo or spirits.(2)
(1) Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 265.
(2) On all this, see "Possession" in The Making of Religion.
The evidence of institutions confirms the reports about savage belief in magic. The political power of the diviners is very great, as may be observed from the fact that a hereditary chief needs their consecration to make him a chief de jure.(1) In fact, the qualities of the diviner are those which give his sacred authority to the chief. When he has obtained from the diviners all their medicines and information as to the mode of using the isitundu (a magical vessel), it is said that he often orders them to be killed. Now, the chief is so far a medicine-man that he is lord of the air. "The heaven is the chief's," say the Zulus; and when he calls out his men, "though the heaven is clear, it becomes clouded by the great wind that arises". Other Zulus explain this as the mere hyperbole of adulation. "The word of the chief gives confidence to his troops; they say, 'We are going; the chief has already seen all that will happen in his vessel'. Such then are chiefs; they use a vessel for divination."(2) The makers of rain are known in Zululand as "heaven-herds" or "sky-herds," who herd the heaven that it may not break out and do its will on the property of the people. These men are, in fact, (Greek text omitted), "cloud-gatherers," like the Homeric Zeus, the lord of the heavens. Their name of "herds of the heavens" has a Vedic sound. "The herd that herds the lightning," say the Zulus, "does the same as the herder of the cattle; he does as he does by whistling; he says, 'Tshu-i-i-i. Depart and go yonder. Do not come here.'" Here let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-clouds and lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded like sheep. There is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,(3) and no forgetfulness of the original meaning of words. The cloud-herd is just like the cowherd, except that not every man, but only sorcerers, and they who have eaten the "lightning-bird" (a bird shot near the place where lightning has struck the earth), can herd the clouds of heaven. The same ideas prevail among the Bushmen, where the rainmaker is asked "to milk a nice gentle female rain"; the rain-clouds are her hair. Among the Bushmen Rain is a person. Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it is said that "it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the east". The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird(4) behind Little Crow's village on the Missouri. It had a face like a man with a nose like an eagle's bill.(5)
(1) Callaway, p. 340.
(2) Callaway, Religions System of the Amazules, p. 343.
(3) Ibid., p. 385.
(4) Schoolcraft, iii. 486.
(5) Compare Callaway, p. 119.
The political and social powers which come into the hands of the sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians. Tribes and individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid of the man who listens to the ghosts. Only he can foretell the future, and, in the case of the natural death of a member of the tribe, can direct the vengeance of the survivors against the hostile magician who has committed a murder by "bar" or magic. Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the sanction to the power of the chief. "The winds and weather are at the command" of Bosman's "great fetisher". Inland from the Gold Coast,(1) the king of Loango, according to the Abbe Proyart, "has credit to make rain fall on earth". Similar beliefs, with like political results, will be found to follow from the superstition of magic among the Red Indians of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers among the Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence. Charlevoix and the other early Jesuit missionaries found that the jongleurs, as Charlevoix calls the Jossakeeds or medicine-men, were their chief opponents. As among the Scotch Highlanders, the Australians and the Zulus, the Red Indian jongleur is visited by the spirits. He covers a hut with the skin of the animal which he commonly wears, retires thither, and there converses with the bodiless beings.(2) The good missionary like Mr. Moffat in Africa, was convinced that the exercises of the Jossakeeds were verily supernatural. "Ces seducteurs ont un veritable commerce avec le pere du mensonge."(3) This was denied by earlier and wiser Jesuit missionaries. Their political power was naturally great. In time of war "ils avancent et retardent les marches comme il leur plait". In our own century it was a medicine-man, Ten Squa Ta Way, who by his magical processes and superstitious rites stirred up a formidable war against the United States.(4) According to Mr. Pond,(5) the native name of the Dacotah medicine-men, "Wakan," signifies "men supernaturally gifted". Medicine-men are believed to be "wakanised" by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings. The business of the wakanised man is to discern future events, to lead and direct parties on the war-trail, "to raise the storm or calm the tempest, to converse with the lightning or thunder as with familiar friends".(6) The wakanised man, like the Australian Birraark and the Zulu diviner, "dictates chants and prayers". In battle "every Dacotah warrior looks to the Wakan man as almost his only resource". Belief in Wakan men is, Mr. Pond says, universal among the Dacotahs, except where Christianity has undermined it. "Their influence is deeply felt by every individual of the tribe, and controls all their affairs." The Wakan man's functions are absorbed by the general or war-chief of the tribe, and in Schoolcraft (iv. 495), Captain Eastman prints copies of native scrolls showing the war-chief at work as a wizard. "The war-chief who leads the party to war is always one of these medicine-men." In another passage the medicine-men are described as "having a voice in the sale of land". It must be observed that the Jossakeed, or medicine-man, pure and simple, exercises a power which is not in itself hereditary. Chieftainship, when associated with inheritance of property, is hereditary; and when the chief, as among the Zulus, absorbs supernatural power, then the same man becomes diviner and chief, and is a person of great and sacred influence. The liveliest account of the performances of the Maori "tohunga" or sorcerer is to be found in Old New Zealand,(7) by the Pakeha Maori, an English gentleman who had lived with the natives like one of themselves. The tohunga, says this author,(8) presided over "all those services and customs which had something approaching to a religious character. They also pretended to power by means of certain familiar spirits, to foretell future events, and even in some cases to control them. … The spirit 'entered into' them, and, on being questioned, gave a response in a sort of half whistling, half-articulate voice, supposed to be the proper language of spirits." In New South Wales, Mrs. Langlot Parker has witnessed a similar exhibition. The "spirits" told the truth in this case. The Pakeha Maori was present in a darkened village-hall when the spirit of a young man, a great friend of his own, was called up by a tohunga. "Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a voice came out of the darkness. … The voice all through, it is to be remembered, was not the voice of the tohunga, but a strange melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing into a hollow vessel. 'It is well with me; my place is a good place.' The spirit gave an answer to a question which proved to be correct, and then 'Farewell,' cried the spirit FROM DEEP BENEATH THE GROUND. 'Farewell,' again, FROM HIGH IN AIR. 'Farewell,' once more came moaning through the distant darkness of the night." As chiefs in New Zealand no less than tohungas can exercise the mystical and magical power of tabu, that is, of imparting to any object or person an inviolable character, and can prevent or remit the mysterious punishment for infringement of tabu, it appears probable that in New Zealand, as well as among the Zulus and Red Indians, chiefs have a tendency to absorb the sacred character and powers of the tohungas. This is natural enough, for a tohunga, if he plays his cards well, is sure to acquire property and hereditary wealth, which, in combination with magical influence, are the necessary qualifications for the office of the chieftain.
(1) Pinkerton, xvi. 401.
(2) Charlevoix, i. 105. See "Savage
