The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead

Fighting and stealing are unknown, and all are united in a common brotherhood."[348]

[Sidenote: The names of the dead not mentioned.]

In the south-eastern part of New Guinea the fear of the dead is further manifested by the common custom of avoiding the mention of their names.

If their names were those of common objects, the words are dropped from the language of the district so long as the memory of the departed persists, and new names are subst.i.tuted for them. For example, when a man named Binama, which means the hornbill, died at Wagawaga, the name of the bird was changed to _ambadina_, which means "the plasterer."[349]

In this way many words are either permanently lost or revived with modified or new meanings. Hence the fear of the dead is here, as in many other places, a fertile source of change in language. Another indication of the terror inspired by ghosts is the custom of abandoning or destroying the house in which a death has taken place; and this custom used to be observed in certain cases at Tubetube and Wagawaga.[350]


[Sidenote: Beliefs and customs concerning the dead in the island of Kiwai.]

Thus far I have dealt mainly with the beliefs and practices of the Papuo-Melanesians in the eastern part of British New Guinea. With regard to the pure Papuan population in the western part of the possession our information is much scantier. However, we learn that in Kiwai, a large island at the mouth of the Fly River, the dead are buried in the villages and the ghosts are supposed to live in the ground near their decaying bodies, but to emerge from time to time into the upper air and look about them, only, however, to return to their abode beneath the sod. Nothing is buried with the corpse; but a small platform is made over the grave, or sticks are planted in the ground along its sides, and on these are placed sago, yams, bananas, coco-nuts, and cooked crabs and fish, all for the spirit of the dead to eat. A fire is also kindled beside the grave and kept up by the friends for nine days in order that the poor ghost may not shiver with cold at night. These practices prove not merely a belief in the survival of the soul after death but a desire to make it comfortable. Further, when the deceased is a man, his bow and arrows are stuck at the head of the grave; when the deceased is a woman, her petticoat is hung upon a stick. No doubt the weapons and the garment are intended for the use of the ghost, when he or she revisits the upper air. On the ninth day after the burial a feast is prepared, the drum is beaten, the conch sh.e.l.l blown, and the chief mourner declares that no more fires need be lighted and no more food placed on the grave.[351]

[Sidenote: Adiri, the land of the dead, and Sido, the first man who went thither. The fear of ghosts.]

According to the natives of Kiwai the land of the dead is called Adiri or Woibu. The first man to go thither and to open up a road for others to follow him, was Sido, a popular hero about whom the people tell many tales. But whereas in his lifetime Sido was an admired and beneficent being, in his ghostly character he became a mischievous elf who played pranks on such as he fell in with. His adventures after death furnish the theme of many stories. However, it is much to his credit that, finding the land of the dead a barren region without vegetation of any sort, he, by an act of generation, converted it into a garden, where bananas, yams, taro, coco-nuts and other fruits and vegetables grew and ripened in a single night. Having thus fertilised the lower region, he announced to Adiri, the lord of the subterranean realm, that he was the precursor of many more men and women who would descend thereafter into the spirit world. His prediction has been amply fulfilled; for ever since then everybody has gone by the same road to the same place.[352]

However, when a person dies, his or her spirit may linger for a few days in the neighbourhood of its old home before setting out for the far country. During that time the spirit may occasionally be seen by ordinary people, and accordingly the natives are careful not to go out in the dark for fear of coming bolt on the ghost; and they sometimes adopt other precautions against the prowling spectre, who might otherwise haunt them and carry them off with him to deadland. Some cla.s.ses of ghosts are particularly dreaded on account of their malignity; such, for example, are the spirits of women who have died in childbed, and of people who have hanged themselves or been devoured by crocodiles. Such ghosts loiter for a long time about the places where they died, and they are very dangerous, because they are for ever luring other people to die the same death which they died themselves. Yet another troop of evil ghosts are the souls of those who were beheaded in battle; for they kill and devour people, and at night you may see the blood shining like fire as it gushes from the gaping gashes in their throats.[353]

[Sidenote: The path of the ghosts to Adiri. Adiri, the land of the dead.]

The road to Adiri or deadland is fairly well known, and the people can point to many landmarks on it. For example, in the island of Paho there is a tree called _dani_, under which the departing spirits sit down and weep. When they have cried their fill and rubbed their poor tear-bedraggled faces with mud, they make little pellets of clay and throw them at the tree, and anybody can see for himself the pellets sticking to the branches. It is true that the pellets resemble the nests of insects, but this resemblance is only fortuitous. Near the tree is a rocking stone, which the ghosts set in motion, and the sound that they make in so doing is like the m.u.f.fled roll of a drum. And while the stone rocks to and fro with a hollow murmur, the ghosts dance, the men on one side of the stone and the women on the other. Again at Mabudavane, where the Mawata people have gardens, you may sometimes hear, in the stillness of night, the same weird murmur, which indicates the presence of a ghost. Then everybody keeps quiet, the children are hushed to silence, and all listen intently. The murmur continues for a time and then ends abruptly in a splash, which tells the listeners that the ghost has leaped over the muddy creek. Further on, the spirits come to Boigu, where they swim in the waterhole and often appear to people in their real shape. But after Boigu the track of the ghosts is lost, or at least has not been clearly ascertained. The spirit world lies somewhere away in the far west, but the living are not quite sure of the way to it, and they are somewhat vague in their accounts of it. There is no difference between the fate of the good and the fate of the bad in the far country; the dead meet the friends who died before them; and people who come from the same village probably live together in the same rooms of the long house of the ghosts. However, some native sceptics even doubt whether there is such a place as Adiri at all, and whether death may not be the end of consciousness to the individual.[354]

[Sidenote: Appearance of the dead to the living in dreams.]

The dead often appear to the living in dreams, warning them of danger or furnishing them with useful information with regard to the cultivation of their gardens, the practice of witchcraft, and so on. In order to obtain advice from his dead parents a man will sometimes dig up their skulls from the grave and sleep beside them; and to make sure of receiving their prompt attention he will not infrequently provide himself with a cudgel, with which he threatens to smash their skulls if they do not answer his questions. Some persons possess a special faculty of communicating with the departing spirit of a person who has just died. Should they desire to question it they will lurk beside the road which ghosts are known to take; and in order not to be betrayed by their smell, which is very perceptible to a ghost, they will chew the leaf or bark of a certain tree and spit the juice over their bodies. Then the ghost cannot detect them, or rather he takes them to be ghosts like himself, and accordingly he may in confidence impart to them most valuable information, such for example as full particulars with regard to the real cause of his death. This priceless intelligence the ghost-seer hastens to communicate to his fellow tribesmen.[355]

[Sidenote: Offerings to the dead.]

When a man has just died and been buried, his surviving relatives lay some of his weapons and ornaments, together with presents of food, upon his grave, no doubt for the use of the ghost; but some of these things they afterwards remove and bring back to the village, probably considering, with justice, that they will be more useful to the living than to the dead. But offerings to the dead may be presented to them at other places than their tombs. "The great power," says Dr. Landtman, "which the dead represent to the living has given rise to a sort of simple offering to them, almost the only kind of offering met with among the Kiwai Papuans. The natives occasionally lay down presents of food at places to which spirits come, and utter some request for a.s.sistance which the spirits are supposed to hear."[356] In such offerings and prayers we may detect the elements of a regular worship of the dead.

[Sidenote: Dreams as a source of the belief in immortality.]

With regard to the source of these beliefs among the Kiwai people Dr.

Landtman observes that "undoubtedly dreams have largely contributed in supplying the natives with ideas about Adiri and life after death. A great number of dreams collected by me among the Kiwai people tell of wanderings to Adiri or of meetings with spirits of dead men, and as dreams are believed to describe the real things which the soul sees while roaming about outside the body, we understand that they must greatly influence the imagination of the people."[357]

That concludes what I have to say as to the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead among the natives of British New Guinea. In the following lectures I shall deal with the same rudimentary aspect of religion as it is reported to exist among the aborigines of the vast regions of German and Dutch New Guinea.

[Footnote 310: C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_ (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 1 _sq._]

[Footnote 311: See below, pp. 242, 256, 261 _sq._, 291.]

[Footnote 312: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_ (London, 1901), pp. 249 _sq._ As to the Motu and their Melanesian or Polynesian affinities, see Rev. W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the Motu," _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, vii. (1878) pp. 470 _sqq._]

[Footnote 313: Rev. J. Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_ (London, 1887), pp. 168-170. Compare Rev. W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the Motu," _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, vii. (1878) pp. 484 _sqq._; Rev. W. G. Lawes, "Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and Koiari Tribes of New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, viii. (1879) pp. 370 _sq._]

[Footnote 314: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_, pp.

249 _sq._; C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp.

16, 41. As to the Koita (or Koitapu) and the Motu, see further the Rev.

W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the Motu," _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, vii. (1878) pp. 470 _sqq._; Rev. W. G.

Lawes, "Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and Koiari Tribes of New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, viii. (1879) pp.

369 _sq._]

[Footnote 315: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 189-191.]

[Footnote 316: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 185 _sq._]

[Footnote 317: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 192.]

[Footnote 318: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 190-192. As to the desertion of the house after death, see _id._, pp. 89 _sq._]

[Footnote 319: The territory of the Roro-speaking tribes extends from Kevori, east of Waimatuma (Cape Possession), to Hiziu in the neighbourhood of Galley Reach. Inland of these tribes lies a region called by them Mekeo, which is inhabited by two closely related tribes, the Biofa and Vee. Off the coast lies Yule Island, which is commonly called Roro. See C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 195.]

[Footnote 320: V. Jouet, _La Societe des Missionaires du Sacre Coeur dans les Vicariats Apostoliques de la Melanesie et de la Micronesie_ (Issoudun, 1887), p. 30; Father Guis, "Les Canaques: Mort-deuil,"

_Missions Catholiques_, x.x.xiv. (1902) pp. 186, 200.]

[Footnote 321: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 274 _sq._]

[Footnote 322: Father Guis, "Les Canaques: Mort-deuil," _Missions Catholiques_, x.x.xiv. (1902) pp. 208 _sq._ See _Psyche's Task_, pp. 75 _sq._]

[Footnote 323: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 310.]

[Footnote 324: R. W. Williamson, _The Mafulu Mountain People of British New Guinea_ (London, 1912), pp. 2 _sq._, 297 _sqq._]

[Footnote 325: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 243 _sq._, 246, 266-269.]

[Footnote 326: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 245-250.]

[Footnote 327: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 256-258, 261-263.]

[Footnote 328: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 125-152.]

[Footnote 329: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 270 _sq._]

[Footnote 330: J. Chalmers and W. Wyatt Gill, _Work and Adventure in New Guinea_ (London, 1885), pp. 84-86.]

[Footnote 331: R. E. Guise, "On the Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the Wanigela River, New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, xxviii. (1899) p. 205.]

[Footnote 332: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_, p.

213.]

[Footnote 333: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ pp. 216 _sq._]

[Footnote 334: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ pp. 210 _sq._]

[Footnote 335: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ p. 211.]

[Footnote 336: R. E. Guise, _op. cit._ pp. 213 _sq._]

[Footnote 337: _Psyche's Task_, pp. 52 _sqq._; _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, pp. 167 _sqq._]

[Footnote 338: C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 607.]