Mortuary and sacrificial anthropophagy on the northwest coast of North America and its culture historical sources. - article ; n°2 ; vol.25, pg 335-366

William Christiemacleod

Description

Journal de la Société des Américanistes - Année 1933 - Volume 25 - Numéro 2 - Pages 335-366
32 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: JOURNAL_DE_LA_SOCIETE_DES_AMERICANISTES
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1933
• Nombre de lectures: 34
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

William Christie Mac Leod
Mortuary and sacrificial anthropophagy on the northwest coast
of North America and its culture historical sources.
In: Journal de la Société des Américanistes. Tome 25 n°2, 1933. pp. 335-366.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Leod William Christie Mac. Mortuary and sacrificial anthropophagy on the northwest coast of North America and its culture
historical sources. In: Journal de la Société des Américanistes. Tome 25 n°2, 1933. pp. 335-366.
doi : 10.3406/jsa.1933.1893
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/jsa_0037-9174_1933_num_25_2_1893MORTUARY
AND SACRIFICIAL ANTHROPOPHAGY
ON THE NORTHWEST COAST
OF NORTH AMERICA AND ITS CULTURE-
HISTORICAL SOURCES,
By William Christie Mac LEOD,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U. S. A.
Summary.
1. The Cannibal Dancers and their assistants : Fools, bears, and others, among
the Kwakiutl and their neighbors.
2. The Cannibal and his sister eat corpses of their own relatives.
3. Social aspects of the Cannibal Rite in peace and war.
4. Dummy corpses and the problem present among peoples who cremate.
5. The skin, bones, and purifications.
6. The aberrant Cannibal of 1904.
7. The Hamatsa as an eater of the raw flesh of captives or slaves.
8. The Cannibal as eater of bits of flesh from his enemies.
9. The historical problem of the relationships of two Cannibal Dances and the
elements of the rites.
10. The dates of diffusion of the Cannibal Dance.
11. An observer of distributions in 1843-1850.
12. The history of mortuary anthropophagy on the West Coast.
13. The of West Coast sacrificial anthropophagy and the technique of
flesh-stripping and disembowelling.
14. The history of the biting of " Enemies ," and Bits-of-Skin sacrifice and its
relation to hookswinging.
In archaic culture levels of the Old World, we find the custom of
having- Certain categories of relatives eat thtT disposing of theT dead by
corpses. In East Africa and in Australia this has persisted down to our
own day, and in Herodotus and other sources we find it present at the
beginning of our era in Ireland and in Scythia ; it has also been eviden
ced for South America, Mexico and India. In India, and in South Ameri- AND SACRIFICIAL ANTHROPOPHAGY 337 MORTUARY
ca and in a small portion of the southeastern United States, we find
prevalent the practice of having the jelatives drink the ashes of a cr
emated corpse. This is undoubtedly merely mortuary anthropophagy,
modified by cremation. Among certain other peoples in South America
and the Old World, we find that custom of having the relatives merely
smear exudations of the corpse over themselves ; this I think may later
be demonstrated to be a survival of mortuary anthropophagy.
The following paper aims to bring together interpretatively all the data
on mortuary anthropophagy on west coast North America. 1 omit consi
deration here of the Takwe rites of southern California (Luiseno and .
others) since it is possible that these rites may be of different signif
icance ; in any case these rites deserve separate analysis. In North
America, north of MexicOj aside from the possible example of the Takwe
rites, and aside from the drinking of ashes in the Atakapa-Chitimacha
area of the Southeastern Gulf coast, which is clearly an extension of mor
tuary anthropophagy among cremators from the Nueva Leon area in
northern Mexico, we find actual mortuary anthropophagy in North
America only on the northwest coast with survivals evidenced south
ward to the Pomo of California.
The " survivals" among the Pomo and other tribes up to and includ
ing the Tlingit would be of very doubtful significance were it not for the
very revealing facts noted for the Kwakiutl and their neighbours, so it is
to these tribes that we turn first * .
The Cannibal Dancers and their assistants : — Fools,
bears and others.
The most important dances in the secret societies of the southern
Kwakiutl are acquired through inspiration of two great spirits, whose
names in English may be rendered The Great Warrior spirit, and The
Cannibal spirit.
The Cannibal spirit is known to the Kwakiutl as Baxbakualanuxsi-
wae, translated by Curtis as " OwneTof the Mouth of the River Where
1. For the Old World, see the data and discussions in Roheim, Bendann, and
the articles in Hastings. For South American ashes-drinking- see Schmidt ; and for
mortuary eating of the flesh in Peru, see Perroud (among the Cashidas and Huit-
totes). For ashes-drinking in southeastern North America see MacLeod : Drinking of
Ashes. On the Takwe of southern California see Kroeber, Boscana, Davis ; and for
related phenomena, Bogoras and Roheim. For Nueva Leon and other Mexico see
Beals ; and for the Antilles in relation to North and South America see Linne,
pp. 229, 234-235. 338 SOCIÉTÉ DES AMÉR1CAMSTES
" and by Boas as " The First One There Is The Sound of Man-Eating
to eat Man at the Mouth of the,R\ver ". The Kwakiutl conceive of the
ocean as a stream running northward. The river of the cannibal is the
ocean, and its mouth is at the north1.
The cannibal lives in a house in the mountains and is always in
pursuit of men to eat them. In the myth of the Wikeno Kwakiutl we
see that he eats living human flesh and also dried corpses2. Certain other
spirits live with him in his house.
A youth who, in his quest for a vision preparatory to initiation in the
Kwakiutl societies, meets the great Cannibal spirit of any of the canni
bal's attendants, acquires the dance derivable from the spirit met with,
so that among the Kwakiutl л\е have a group of dances either cannibali
stic or related to the cannibal dance.
If the novitiate has seen the great Cannibal himself, in his dance he
eats raw human flesh and also dried corpses3. "
Living with the Cannibal spirit are :
" 1. Kinqalala. Boas says that she is the female slave of the cannibal,
who captures men and gathers corpses for him. In his dance she carried
the corpses for the cannibal dancer. But again we read that " she is
always one of his female relatives " 4. And in a story recorded by Curt
is we have a case where the Kinqalala is the Cannibal dancer's sis
ter К
In this story we see her picking up the bones of the corpse as it is
eaten by her cannibal brother, — the bones to be later disposed of.
And in this same story wre see the cannibal dancer's father coming
forward in the dance house (but not as a dancer, it appears) to crack
skulls for his son, the cannibal dancer'3.
Furthermore, we note that the Kinqalala in her dance takes four bites
out of the corpse at the time the dried corpse is to be devoured by her
cannibal brother7.
2. The Grizzly Bear spirit, source of the Bear Dance, also lived with
1. Cui-tis : Kwakiutl, p. 160; Boas, 1895, pp. 458-59.
2. Curtis, pp. 168-9; for the Tsimshian cannibal myths see Boas : Tsimshian,
pp. 350-354.
3. Since dance rights are hereditary, the novice knows what spirit he is going
to meet (see Boas, 1895, pp. 437-38).
4. Boas, 1895, pp. 438, 441 ; for the Kinqalala songs see p. 461.
5. Curtis, p. 224.
6.p. 226.
7. Boas, 1895, p. 442; and Boas, 1913-14, pp. 1008-1010, where she also helps eat
a corpse. MORTUARY AND SACRIFICIAL ASLTHROPOPHAGY 339
the great cannibal. No instance is given in our narratives of the Bears
actually partaking of human flesh or of any ilesh ; but they serve to hold
up the raw human slave flesh for the cannibal dancer to eat, when it is
cut up for him by the Fools '.
3. There also lived with the great cannibal, Qominoqa, his servant
(or, possibly, properly, his wife) who also has the task of getting human
flesh for him, The Qominoqa dance is nowhere described, but we are
told that she danced with corpses7 heads which the cannibal later ate2.
4. The Raven also lived with him. The Raven ate the eyes of the
dead.
5. And also the Hoxhok, a mythical bird who ate human brains. The
Raven and the Hoxhok dances are nowhere described.
We are told, further, that the dance of the Hamtshamtses, another
cannibal dancer, is inspired by á vision of the great Cannibal spirit. And
that this same spirit also inspires the dances of the Fire-Eater (Nonsis-
talal), and Nanaqualalil, and the Haialikilal. These dances also our
ethnographers have not described.
The Fools or Fool dancers are not inspired, it seems by the great can
nibal. These P'ools (Noonlemala) carry lances and axes3. They are the
tribal police during the winter period of aggregation and ceremonial.
They have the duty of cutting up the raw flesh of slain slaves for the
cannibal dancer to eat. They do not appear to have anything to do with
the eating of dried corpses by the cannibal, however. The Fools, in the
hookswinging rite or war dance of the Kwakiutl, are always prepared
to tear the hookswinger to pieces for the cannibal to eat. (The Kwakiutl
hookswinger is in ritual conception to be considered a captive of war
being put to death ritually4.
The cannibal dancer is assisted also by twelve servants known as
heliga, or salalil, who prepare the dried