Some travellers and writers have asserted that the Indian has no religion. In the vulgarly-accepted meaning of the word he may have none. There is great variation among the groups, the tribes even—I venture to say—among the individuals. So far as they believe in anything they believe in the existence of supreme good and bad spirits; but their beliefs are always indefinite, only half understood even by themselves. To a certain extent it is open to the medicine-man, the chief priest of their magico-religious system, to vary, or even to disregard any current belief. Among individuals are to be found sceptics of every grade. On the whole their religion is a theism, inasmuch as their God has a vague, personal, anthropomorphic existence. His habitat is above the skies, the blue dome of heaven, which they look upon as the roof of the world that descends on all sides in contact with the earth. Yet again it is a pantheism, this God being represented in all beneficent nature; for every good thing is imbued with his spirit, or with individual spirits subject to him.

In essence the idea of God is not that of a Supreme Being, and not entirely that of a Creator, but rather that of a Superior Being, possessed by an indulgent tolerance for all mankind. But he suggests only the negative idea. He is a spirit of benevolent passivity. He is good for no other reason than that he is not evil. There is no particularised sanctity in his name, no adoration of his nebulous personality, only an unquestioning acquiescence in his benignity. True, he is held in high esteem, but that is because he permeates all in nature that is not inimical, and thus demonstrates his kindly disposition. If the harvest fails it is due to the malevolence of their Diabolus, or some of his agents, yet if it be a good one the credit is due not to the Good Spirit, but rather to the medicine-man for having with his magic frustrated the machinations of the Bad Spirit.

This Devil, or Bad Spirit, is affirmative in character, and is always active. He must not be invoked, but he is to be prevented by charms and magic from wreaking his vengeance on mankind, and must be placated at all costs as the supreme author of sickness and misfortunes, and the controlling power of malevolent nature.

Both the Good and the Bad Spirit are attended by lesser spirits with similar characteristics. So far as I could ascertain, there is no suggestion that any of these supernatural beings ever lived in this world, though they influence it so entirely, and can visit it at will.

The Good Spirit may be more potent, but he is certainly more remote than the Bad Spirit—too remote for ordinary people to be brought into any degree of contact with him whatsoever. His influence, his benefits, are, as he is, passive. The Bad Spirit, on the contrary, is of a ceaseless energy. His active influence is invariably present. He is always exerting his power in some definite, some concrete form. Poison, for example, is an active agent. The devil in it works vigorously to the undoing of his victim, definitely exercises a deleterious effect upon his enemy, man. So, too, the rocks that bar the way upstream are more active than passive. They repel, they may defeat the traveller, and, therefore, are to be regarded also as the active agents of a hostile power.

It is noteworthy in this connection that the Bad Spirit may be materialised sufficiently to be able to carry a child bodily away, or to steal a woman, should she stray out into the forest by herself.[343] For this reason usually no woman will go alone into the bush, she will take a companion with her, especially at night, for the demon is popularly supposed to be unable to tackle more than one at a time, even if the second be only a young child.[344] Women who run away from their husbands are consequently said by them to have been taken by the devil. This is a favourite theory, as the man may thereby avoid the censure or hostility of the tribe. The men also do not care to be far in the bush alone, and after dark nothing will induce an Indian voluntarily to embark on the risk of adventuring into the forest by himself.

One of the first difficulties met with when dealing in detail with the religion of these peoples is their refusal to use the true name of any spirit or deity. This has root in the same reason that ordains they shall never disclose their own names, nor voluntarily except on rare occasions, that is without questioning, the name of their tribe.

In the Boro language we have the word Neva as an equivalent for God, the good or sympathetic deity, and the word Navena for the Devil, the great evil or antipathetic spirit, in fact the negative of all represented by Neva. But inasmuch as neva stands also for the sun, the dawn, and the morning, while navena is used for any spirit however humble—whether the soul-part of a thing, animate or inanimate, or the ghost or disembodied soul of the dead—we have a right to postulate that such are not the true, or supposed self-appellated names of these deities, but those that may be used without offence, and therefore free of the consequent evils that the mention of the true name would entail on the users.

To give another example: In Witoto Usiyamoi has the same meaning as God in ordinary parlance; Taife is the Devil, whereas Taifeno is any bad spirit whatever. But, again, the Taife, the dread of these people, the all-pervading evil genius, is named Apuehana, a word never pronounced above a whisper. Here then we may have reached a true secret name.

The Boro Neva and the Witoto Usiyamoi are the Tupano of the Tupi-Guarani tribes of the east and the Negro River. This we find is the Apunchi-Yaya of the Guichua of the west, the Cachimana of the Orinoco. Navena and Taife or Apuehana are the same as the Jurupari of the north, the Iolokiamo of the Orinoco, and the Locazy of the Ticuna.[345]

To return to the personal characteristics of the two regnant powers, the Good and the Bad Spirit, the former, though vague, is yet an omnipotent tempestipresent deity, and, although passive, something more than sympathetic and benevolent. He made the world, or it might be more correct to put it that he permitted it to be created, for his amusement and pleasure. When not otherwise engaged in his mysterious happy hunting-grounds he keeps a watch over earth and over mankind. But so great is he that no prayer or invocation is offered to him, nor, were it offered, could he be thereby influenced.[346] It is because he is so big a Chief that his attitude is entirely passive. Once Neva had forgotten the puny human factor, so he took the guise of a man and came to earth. The open spaces—the natural savannahs or geological outcrops—are where he spoke to the Indians, and it is a sign of his speaking and of his erstwhile presence that these are now open to the sun and the sky. But one Indian vexed Neva, the Good Spirit, and he was wrath with all men, so he went again to sit on the roof of the world. But before he departed he whispered into the ears of all the tigers that they were to kill the Indians and their children, and that is why the tigers to-day are wicked and sometimes are the habitations of the most evil spirits. Before this time the tigers were good to men, and they hunted together like brothers; they lived together in the houses; they ate and drank and licked tobacco in amity round the fire.[347]

Such, so far as I could gather, is the Indian’s belief. The tale was told me by a Boro, but the belief is approximately the same with all these tribes. On the occasion of hearing this story of the visit of the Good Spirit to earth I related, to the best of my ability, the Christian story. The result may be of value in determining the possession of logic by the Indian. After they had listened to my story the tribesmen held a tobacco palavar, which lasted some six hours. Then the chief—the medicine-man was surly and remote—appeared, and this was the burden of his wisdom. His own people were greater than the people from the clouds—the white people—for the Good Spirit, Neva himself, came to the Indians, whereas only the Young Chief visited the clouds. And the Indians were better than the white people, for the white people killed the Young Chief, but the Indians listened to Neva, and only one among them vexed him.

I had heard the story of the Good Spirit’s manifestation before, but doubted its genuineness, until one day when I inquired of a Boro what a savannah was he answered me that it was where Neva spoke to the Indians. When I questioned him further he told me the above. It is impossible to say how far this story may be a genuine folk-tale, how far it is a perverted version of the Biblical account. Tales travel far. They are adopted from one people to another, with resultant variations. We know that the Jesuits penetrated to the Rio Negro as early as 1668-69. There have been missionaries of that Society on the Napo. But I met with no traces of them on the upper waters, nor have any of these peoples anything in the least resembling the Christian symbol in their designs. One might expect to find so simple a figure as a cross reproduced in native art if once known, but it certainly is not. On the face of it we may here be dealing with a variant that has passed from tribe to tribe, that has trickled through centuries, to reappear now as a tribal tradition among peoples who have never been in any direct contact with Christian influences.[348]

As regards the rule of these supreme spirits over the lesser spirits of good and evil they stand in the relation of great chief. The good spirits are the spirits of trees that bear edible fruits, of the trees from which arrows are made, of the Coca erythroxylon, of the astringent properties of various herbs, of the medicine-man’s magic stones that may be used as a prophylactic. These are not only the subjects of the Good Spirit, they were made by him. He made all the good things of the forest; and he also made the rivers and the skies. The Bad Spirit placed the rocks in the rivers, the poison in the mandiocca and in all noxious growths of the bush. He made the liana to trip the unwary walker, in short all things hurtful. These malevolent elements are the bad spirits which, as the name in Witoto appears to imply—the Taifeno,—are all subject to the Taife. As the Good Spirit lives above the world so the Bad Spirit inhabits the nether regions. The lesser spirits of evil go to him by way of the earth holes,[349] for these are the passages to his kingdom. The visit of the Good Spirit to earth as a corporate being was a unique event never repeated, but the Bad Spirit wanders with his myrmidons in the forest every night. Sometimes he takes the form of a tiger, or other fierce animal; sometimes, as alternative to the tiger-lifting theory, he resembles a man who can disappear at will. He imitates the call of the hunter who has found game, or the call of an animal to be hunted. He entices his victim by these and similar contrivances to venture deeper and deeper into the bush, until the wretched wanderer is utterly lost. According to tribal belief he is then destroyed, or spirited bodily away. As has been said, the Bad Spirit never appears to more than one at a time, and that one is usually spirited away, so can give no account of the appearance, but as confirmation of his real presence an Indian will sometimes whisper the evil name as he points out the track of an abnormal-sized tapir, which is curiously reminiscent to the European of the cloven hoof of his own Devil.

The child-lifting story is a favourite one, and some amount of corroborative evidence is forthcoming, for in the awful loneliness of the bush a child naturally would become half demented with fear and apprehension, and if ever found again would be only too honestly willing to believe he had been in the very real clutches of a very real devil. The juvenile adventurer, answering in this way to leading questions, gives to these simple people all the proof they look for, and adds an immediate and local authenticity to the accepted myth.

As there is no prayer to the Good Spirit, so there is no supplication to the Bad. The medicine-man, as I have said, invokes neither; he appeals to neither; but he attempts by magic to force the Bad Spirit into quiescence, to discover some more potent influence that shall make him powerless to hurt, for unless coerced he is all-powerful.

Indefinite as these beliefs in a deity, good or evil, may be, faith as to the after-life of the soul is possibly still vaguer. Yet faith there certainly is, for the existence of the spirits of the dead is an accepted fact, acknowledged in the Indian ritual of burial.

Of spirits there are four kinds:

Permanent disembodied spirits, or the souls of the dead, their ghosts.

Temporarily disembodied spirits, that is to say the souls of living men, with power to send them forth out of their material bodies.

Extra-mundane spirits, or those from other worlds.

Spirits of, or in, all natural objects, animate and inanimate.

Any of these four classes of spirits are good or bad, according as they are benevolently or malevolently inclined.

These Indians all believe in the temporary transmission of the disembodied soul into the form of an animal, bird, or reptile, not a regular and enforced series of such transmissions. This temporary transmission is for the pursuance of a certain aim, perhaps for some indefinite length of time. It appears that the spirit has the power of transmigration into other animal bodies, or back again to its extra-mundane form at will. Whether the animal is human, whether, when so invaded, it incorporates two spirits and becomes dual-souled, the Indian does not relate.

Man’s soul in Indian belief is immortal, that is to say it exists as long as it is felt to exist, whilst it continues to appear in the dreams, in the thoughts of the survivors—for so long, in fact, as it is remembered. Surely this is immortality. A thing forgotten has never existed; and, per contra, the soul of a remembered being lives for ever. The disembodied spirit or ghost lingers near the body after death, in the woods near the house, or may even lodge in the house itself. And then indefinitely, indeterminately, after the body is buried the soul wanders farther afield, and goes at length to the happy grounds of the Good Spirit. Among some tribes this paradise is located above the skies, among others it is away up some river, in the far and mythical distance. The latter heaven is situated, as has already been mentioned, upstream, and that, in this country where the trend of the land is north-west and south-east, is also approximately towards the setting sun.[350]

This land of the After-Life is a diminutive replica of the ordinary world, but with evil things eliminated and joyful things emphasised. All is on a lower scale, stunted forests and pigmy game. This idea of a world in miniature approximates to the Malay conception of a spirit, the “diminutive but exact counterpart of its own embodiment,” appertaining to all animal, vegetable, and mineral bodies.[351] The Indian miniature world would thus be, it seems, constructed of the spirits of the material world. Colour is given to this theory by the fact that individual possessions are buried with the dead, and the Kuretu confess that this is done to prevent the return of the soul in search of them. Were such properties to pass into the possession of survivors the soul part of each object, needed to represent it in the spiritual world, would be detained in the material world. Burial sets it at liberty, presumably, to accompany the soul part of its owner, to take in the miniature world of the After-Life a position corresponding in every detail to that which has been held here on earth. The soul is pictured as the body, in miniature also, visible or invisible at will, for these people, like the majority of many of a higher culture, are unable to imagine the soul except in some material guise.[352] Life in this enigmatic sphere has everything most prized in this world. Hunting is fruitful always; women are beautiful and amenable, and the men are all the old familiar friends of earth. The means of attainment to this desirable state are so vague as to be unassignable. Good and evil have no part in this scheme of heavenly philosophy. Broken tabus, crimes against tribal jurisprudence, apparently bring only temporary evil influences into play. Their punishment is immediate and material. The happy land is open to all the tribe with whom the Good Spirit is not vexed. It is closed to all their enemies.

These lost souls, the spirits of those divinely damned, must still frequent the earthly forests, or perhaps ally themselves with the spirits of evil and wander down the holes in the earth to join the legions of the nether world.

I have heard, but not very definitely, of the Zaparo belief that the good and brave souls will pass into birds of beautiful plumage and feed on the most delicate fruits, while the bad and cowardly are condemned to a future existence in the guise of objectionable reptiles.[353]

This belief in, at least, a partial presence of the spirits of the dead has possibly a bearing on the Indian dislike, to use no stronger term, of mentioning his proper name. In the case of some tribes, as has been noted, the name of a dead man is given as a special honour to his greatest friend among the survivors. With other tribes names of the living may, and probably have once been those of persons now dead. To mention such a name aloud might conceivably be to attract the attention of the defunct erstwhile owner.[354] Therefore the name is only whispered, lest the spirit hearing it might come and bother the speaker or the individual named.[355] There is, of course, the further reason that the knowledge of a man’s name gives an enemy power to work him magical evil. But that is a point already dealt with, except in so far as it argues some identity of the name with the essential ego.

Not only do the Indians hold that a man’s soul leaves his body at death, but, further, they believe that it may do so during life for a limited period. We have examples in sleep, they argue, when the spirit is out of the body and wanders about; for in dreams, they say, the soul passes through the mouth and has adventures in the outer world.[356] Dreams are, in fact, a portion of the man’s real life. His spirit has ventured forth and actually gone through the experience his fancy paints. They realise, therefore, that individuality is not in the body itself, but in the spirit that inhabits the body. So if a man dreams he will not hesitate to declare that he has done what he dreamed he was doing.

This is an example of involuntary disembodiment, differing only from actual death in that it is of temporary duration. The soul has gone quietly, and will return. But if the soul make a violent effort to escape that apparently entails fatal consequences, for the Indians declare when anybody sneezes it is the soul attempting to leave the body and so cause death.

Voluntary disembodiment is believed to be possible in certain favoured cases.[357] This power is said to be possessed by the medicine-man. He may free his spirit for magical purposes, to fight unseen enemies on better terms, or for the pursuit of some nefarious end. He may either remain disembodied and invisible, or lurk for a time in the form of some animal or object, a tree, a stone—where stones exist—or even in the wind, the rain, or the river. The layman Indian, though perfectly aware that he cannot of his own accord and free-will loose his own soul from its fleshy trappings to adventure in some foreign sort, is quite willing to believe that other more fortunate mortals can accomplish a feat to him so impossible.[358] No alternative explanation offers to his mind to elucidate sundry mysterious happenings.

Quite distinct from these disembodied spirits are the extra-mundane spirits, good and bad, that visit this world and benefit or plague its inhabitants. These may invade all natural objects, and, especially those evilly disposed, will work unceasingly as agents for the supreme powers to whom they owe allegiance. The bad spirits haunt the darkness, they lurk in the recesses of the woods, find a habitation in deep waters, and ride to destruction on the floods. Danger from them threatens the Indian at every turn. He can only be protected by the counter-magic of his medicine-man. For fear of possible mischief at their malicious hands no Indian will bathe at night unless supported by the presence of companions. If he lose his way in the forest it is due to their machinations;[359] and all that goes amiss in this by no means best-of-all-possible worlds is at least in part engineered by them, either at the suggestion of an enemy, or from their own innate badness of heart.

Sickness again is a concrete entity. The Indian knows not the microbe of science, but he recognises the existence of a definitely hostile and active enemy in the presence of disease. It is a spirit that wanders about, and at the instigation of an enemy attacks individuals or tribes. The attack is an actual invasion. Illness is due to the presence in the flesh of the sick person of a foreign and inimical body.[360]

Before a thunderstorm the Indian believes that the air is full of spirits, and the medicine-man is requisitioned literally “to clear the atmosphere.” Thunder is the noise of evil spirits making a turmoil and fuss; whilst, according to Bates, any inexplicable noises are made by another of this destructive band, Curupira, the wild spirit of the woods.[361] Thunder probably means that an enemy is sending sickness to destroy the tribe. Therefore if a man is ill a flash of lightning is quite sufficient to kill him through sheer fright and shock.

These extra-mundane spirits may be said to be the spirits of particularised evils, just as the Taife, the Navena, the Jurupari, is the supreme spirit of all evil.[362]

With the final division of the spirit world is enwrapped the total philosophy, the innermost meanings, in fact both the whole and the origin of the Indian magico-religious system. As men have souls—so truly felt in all—what is more natural than that animals who move and breathe, who live and die, who in many respects are more powerful, more clever than men, should be assigned souls also by the Indian’s primitive reasoning. I say soul deliberately, for Indian metaphysicians do not differentiate between soul and spirit—they are one and indivisible, the miniature self that may be seen in the pupil of a living eye but has vanished from the eye of the dead. The question of souls other than human is to the Indian too obvious to need elucidation; it admits, indeed, of no argument. There is a degree of belief in a spirit, “a transcendental x,”[363] in all objects, even those that are inanimate. What lives and grows must have a spirit. What can interfere with, or affect man in any way must possess some occult influence, some mysterious personality, that works for or against him, especially if that object be in any degree unfamiliar or abnormal in appearance. All these things, vegetable growths, rocks, are to the Indian as we have repeatedly seen, active agents in the scheme of things, and as such must also possess the intangible ego, the spiritual essence, that is the soul of all earthly forms. Evidence as to animistic beliefs among the Indians is universal and overwhelming. A point of interest to the psychologist comes in with the problem whether the belief that undoubtedly exists is a belief in a duality of spirits in one envelop, or whether, when the supernatural spirit, or the disembodied spirit of a man, is transmitted into extra-human forms, it being the stronger can oust the natural spirit of the animal or object which is entered, and if so what becomes of the finally evicted spirit. On this point I have unfortunately no information to adduce.

While these beliefs are in the main general among all the language-groups of the Issa-Japura regions, those of the Boro-speaking tribes are the most intricate. They have more definite notions of the spirit-world, a greater range of theories as to the powers and extent of supernatural phenomena. They fear the local devils more, take greater care to appease them and to avoid rousing their hostility. This is the natural result of the increased isolation secured by the Boro tribes. They have been influenced less by the outer world than the Witoto, for example. Both Boro and Andoke tribes invariably keep aloof so far as may be from any stranger.

Two of the forest denizens, the jaguar and the anaconda, occupy outstanding positions in this connection with spirits and magic to all the other beasts of the wild. Any animal may be utilised by a spirit as a temporary abiding-place, but the “tiger” and the great water-snake independently of such spiritual possession are magical beasts. Tales gather round them; differential treatment is their portion. As regards the jaguar this may be due to the fact that it is seldom seen, and therefore the more mysterious in its evil doings. It is also a dangerous beast, bold and fearless, and to be dreaded for this if for no other reason. But the anaconda is no such aggressive enemy of man. Yet, though the Indian is an omnivorous eater, he will never kill either the tiger or the anaconda for food.[364]

The anaconda is looked upon as an evil spirit. It is the embodiment of the water spirit, the Yacu-mama,[365] whose coils may bar the passage of the streams, and the Indian goes in terror of it, nor would he bathe in its vicinity, though, so far as my experience went, the gigantic reptile will not attack human beings unprovoked.[366] The Yacu-mama, as the name signifies, is the mother, the spirit of the streams. Among some tribes, though not in my field of exploration, a relationship is held to exist between this water-spirit and Jurupari, so it is said.[367] It occupies the place in Amazonian folk-tales filled by the sea-serpent of Europe; while the manatee and the dolphin are the Amazonian mermaids. The cow-fish, or manatee,[368] is an object of wonder on the main stream, but is unknown on the upper rivers. I have never seen one nearer than the mouth of the Issa river. The dolphin also is not found in the higher waters. On the lower rivers it abounds, but, according to Bates, no Indian willingly kills one; and though dolphin fat makes good oil the belief is current that when burnt in lamps it causes blindness.[369]

Tigers are not killed unless they be the aggressors, that is to say they are never killed wantonly. The reason for this is not cowardice, but fear of further aggression on the part of the tiger family, or from the family of the medicine-man who has assumed tiger form. Indians look upon animals as having the same instincts as themselves, and therefore capable of a prolonged blood-feud with humans who may have wronged them. The tribesman is accordingly anxious not to provoke war with the tiger tribe, but if Indians are challenged by the death of one of their number the case is altered, and they will immediately accept combat. To hunt a jaguar without provocation merely for food or for sport would be foolishly to kindle the animosity of the whole tiger family, to rouse the violent enmity of the wandering spirit domiciled for a time in the body of the hunted beast. But when an Indian is killed, or a child lost—and tigers are usually credited with the destruction of any child missing from its home—the medicine-man is called upon, and he proceeds to discover that it was a tribal enemy working in disguise, probably the spirit of a hostile medicine-man, intent to destroy the tribe by thus slaying potential warriors or mothers of warriors. The tiger is in these circumstances to be treated as a human enemy. A big tribal hunt is organised, and if the quarry be secured a feast of tiger-flesh follows, a feast of revenge, very similar in detail to the anthropophagous orgies already described.[370] At no other time does the Indian eat jaguar meat. The tiger-skin becomes the property of the medicine-man, whose magic has thus triumphed over the magic of a rival.

I have already noted that anything abnormal or unknown is regarded with suspicious dread. My camera was naturally endowed by Indian imagination with magical properties, the most general idea among the Boro being that it was an infernal machine, designed to steal the souls of those who were exposed to its baleful eye. In like manner my eyeglass was supposed to give me power to see what was in their hearts. When I first attempted to take photographs the natives were considerably agitated by my use of a black cloth to envelop the evil thing; and when my own head went under it they had but one opinion, it also was some strange magic-working that would enable me to read their minds, their unprofessed intentions, and steal their souls away; or rather become master of their souls, and thus make them amenable to my will at any time or in any place. This was undoubtedly due in part to the fact that I was able to reproduce the photograph. The Indian was brought face to face with his naked soul, represented by the miniature of himself in the photographic plate. One glance, and one only, could he be induced to give. Never again would he be privy to such magic. The Witoto women believed that I was working more material magic, and feared should they suffer exposure to the camera that they would bear resultant offspring to whom the camera—or the photographer—would stand in paternal relation.

PLATE L.

GROUP OF WITOTO WOMEN BY DOUBLE-STEMMED PALM TREE

GROUP OF WITOTO MEN BY DOUBLE-STEMMED PALM TREE