| Henry E. Krehbiel, "Folk Music in Chicago," NY Daily Tribune (August 13, 1893) Henry E. Krehbiel, "Folk Music in Chicago," New-York Daily Tribune (August 13, 1893). III. A CANNIBAL SONG OF THE IROQUOIS. --------------------------- MAN-EATING AMONG THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES--TEXT OF THE HAMATSA SONG. Last summer, while I was making studies in the ceremonial music of the Iroquois Indians on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Mr. Allen W. Johnson, of Brantford, sang for me the man-eating song printed herewith. Mr. Johnson is the son of Chief George H. M. Johnson, a Mohawk, who was the son of Chief John Smoke Johnson. There was a strain of white blood in the family of the mother of Chief George H. M. Johnson, whose widow is a relative of William D. Howells. Allen W. Johnson was educated at the Mohawk Institute and in Toronto, and though he is proud of his Indian blood and keeps up his acquaintances on the Reserve, his culture is wholly that of the white man. It is not surprising therefore that he knew nothing about the song beyond that he had learned it along with other Iroquois songs from his father. What its words mean and how the Iroquois came to have a cannibal song neither he nor any of his friends could say. Now, there is a savage fierceness in the song which fits it admirably for the purposes to which we imagine it having been applied, and which may, therefore, be set down as evidence of its authenticity and antiquity. This means that, like the hamatsa dance of the tribes of British Columbia, it is a relic of the cannibalism which once prevailed among the aborigines of America. That our Indians were ever eaters of human flesh is a thought with which few students have cultiuvated familiarity. Mr. Horatio Hale, the eminent ethnologist and philologist, to whom I sent a copy of the song, in his letter of acknowledgment wrote: "I do not think that any tribes of North America were addicted to cannibalism from predilection like some Polynesian and African tribes. The Iroquois occasionally ate portions of their slain enemies with the idea of thus striking terror into their living foes. The 'cannibal songs' of the Iroquois would, I presume, merely be designed to frighten their adversaries by way of bravado." There is an amiable purpose in Mr. Hale's defence of the people whom he has studied so long and so well which is easily pardoned. Where there was so much nobility of character and real moral and intellectual gentleness in a people as was the case with the Iroquois, it is unpleasant if not difficult to think of them as indulging in practices which seem to lower them to the level of the lowest African and South Sea savages. It was probably this feeling quite as much as anything which prompted the American editor of the Marquis de Nadaillac's recent work to qualify that author's assertion that cannibalism existed among the Algonquins, Iroquois, Maumees, Kickapoos and other tribes, by calling attention to the fact that cannibalism in many cases was not a mere devotion to the diet of human flesh but a "rite of observance of a superstitious or religious character not so far removed from the anthropomorphism which in the Middle Ages claimed for the chief Christian rite the 'real presence of body and blood' of the victim sacrificed for the welfare of the race." It may be, however, that this is after all a distinction without a difference. Certain is that those ethnologists who are inclined to look upon cannibalism as a condition through which all races pass in their progress toward civilization can find evidence for their contention here as well as elsewhere. The reports made by Jeffries Wyman and Manly Hardy to the Peabody Museum on the Kitchen-middens, or shell heaps, found by the former in Florida and the latter in Maine, indicate that the prehistoric peoples who built those shell-heaps were cannibals. Human bones, broken for the extraction of the marrow, were found in these shell-heaps; they have also been found in the structures of the mound-builders. I have an impression, moreover, that I saw similar evidences of man-eating in the relics of the cliff-dwellers exhibited at the World's Fair; but of this I am not now certain. If the current belief among ethnologists, that there is no racial difference between the present Indians and the occupants of the continent in prehistoric times be correct, it would seem to follow that the aborigines of America were once cannibals in the same sense that some of the Polynesians and Africans were, and are cannibals. Of this something more presently. It is interesting, nevertheless, in connection with the questions of motive and period in time, to note that there is now as a rule among the tribes within the boundaries of the United States a very general repugnance to the thought of human flesh as a diet. Mr. Francis La Flesche, an educated Omaha in the employ of the Indian Bureau at Washington, told me that he had never heard of a tradition in his tribe pointing to the existence at ever so remote a period of cannibalism. The attitude of his people on the subject he illustrated by recounting a legend which in brief is as follows: "Once before going upon the war-path an Omaha warrior went into retreat, as is the custom, to obtain a sign by fasting and prayer. Days passed and no vision came to guide him. He then took a vow that if a vision came to point him to success he would eat his enemy. Soon after he had the desired dream, and set out confidently with his war party. A camp of Sioux were surprised and the Omaha were victorious. Then the warrior minded him of his vow and undertook its fulfilment, which, it would seem from the recital, did not require a literal, but only a constructive performance. From behind the ear of a slain Sioux he cut a piece of flesh as large as a pea, and this he tried to eat. But his stomach revolted at the thought, and he was unable to swallow the morsel until he had rolled it to ashes. Afterwards for days he felt ill at ease in his gastric region." The significance of this story is increased when it is borne in mind that the Omahas belong to the Dakotas of whom Sir Richard Burton relates that they were in the habit of eating the heart of a slain enemy who had displayed bravery in order to get his courage. It is a singular coincidence that the Omaha of the story followed a custom of the Halones of the Philippine Islands, who not only drink the blood of their slain enemies, but also eat a part of the back of the head in the belief that thus they acquire the attribute which they admired in him. But to get back to the Iroquois song. It came to me from a Mohawk, or, to speak correctly, a Cantenga, for Mr. Hale tells us in his "Iroquois Book of Rites" that Cantenga, or "Flint people," is their real name, and Mohawk only a term of opprobrium applied to them by their enemies. "As the Iroquois, and especially the Catengas," he says, "became more and more a terror to the surrounding nations, the feelings of aversion and dread thus awakened found vent in an opprobrious epithet which the southern and eastern Algonkins applied to their obnoxious neighbors. They were styled by these enemies Mohak, or Mowawak, a word which has been corrupted to Mohawk. It is the third person plural, in the sixth 'transition' of the Algonkin word 'mowa,' which means 'to eat,' but which is only used of food that has had life. Literally it means 'they eat them'; but the force of the word and the prominent inflection suffices to give to the word, when used as an appellative [name, label], the meaning of 'those who eat men,' or, in other words, 'the cannibals.'" If it is true, as the Marquis de Nadaillac says, that the Algonquins were themselves once cannibals, they must have put aside the practice of cannibalism a long time before it would occur to them to stigmatize their hated and feared enemies as "those who eat men." Unfortunately we know from the writings of the Jesuit missionaries how true the charge against the Iroquois was. Father Hennepin, who visited the Iroquois in January, 1679, tells of the treatment of prisoners captured by them in Virginia of which he was a witness. The children of the victors cut pieces of flesh from the bodies of the victims, and after roasting them compelled the miserable creatures to eat them. Meanwhile the fathers and mothers of the "little anthropaphagi" [cannibals] themselves ate the roasted flesh and gave the blood to their children to drink, "afin de les animer d'avantage a exterminer leurs enemis" [in order to arouse them to an advantage in exterminating their enemies]. To arrive at the motive at the bottom of the practice of cannibalism in any given locality would seem to be a difficult task. It is generally admitted by writers that some of the Indian tribes of South America were what Mr. Hale would call cannibals by predilection. The Caribs are said to have fattened their victims to make them palatable. Prescott tells in his "Conquest of Peru" of how Pizarro on making a landing with a small party of his men fell in with an Indian hamlet, whose denizens ran away at the approach of the white man, leaving everything behind them. "One spectacle, however, chilled their blood with horror. This was the sight of human flesh, which they found roasting before the fire, as the barbarians had left it preparatory to their obscene repast [meal]. The Spaniards, conceiving they had fallen in with a tribe of Caribs, the only race in that part of the New World known to be cannibals, retreated precipitately to their vessels." Necessity would no more have driven these natives to cannibalism than it drove the ancient Mexicans, whose social system, says Herbert Spencer, "was rooted in cannibalism," or the Peruvians, whose system of human sacrifice may also be looked upon as a relic of their primitive cannibalism. In all cases the nature of the motive may have depended somewhat upon the powers of observation of the reporters of the fact. Not long after Pizarro's expedition to Peru a German named Hans Staden made a voyage to Brazil, and there was captured by a tribe of Indians whom he calls Tuppinambas. His singular book on the manners and customs of these Indians contains a short chapter on the reason why these people ate their enemies. It is not because they lack food, he says, but because of hatred. "During a fight one cries out to his adversary: 'Misfortunes light on you who I am going to eat! I shall crack your head for you to-day! I shall take revenge for my friends whom you have killed! I shall roast your flesh before sunset!' " In a subsequent chapter the author gives the details of the cannibal feast. The principal chief approaches the victim in company with the executioner. The latter hands him his weapon and the chief passes it between the legs of the executioner as a mark of honor and returns it. Then approaching the prisoner he says: "Here I am, you see; I am going to kill you for the reason that your friends have killed and eaten many of mine." The prisoner replies: "When I am dead my friends will avenge me." Thereupon the executioner dashes his brains out with a blow, the body is cut up and the feast begins. This was over 125 years before Father Hennepin visited the Iroquois, yet the purpose of the Tuppinambas in their practice of cannibalism and that of the Iroquois seems to have been the same. It was not that they loved their enemies dead, but because they hated them alive. Leaving out the question of diet, the practice seemed to serve a threefold purpose: a savage feeling of revenge was glutted by the deliberation and cruelty of the killing; the eater robbed the victim of his virtues by taking them to himself; he punished him here and hereafter by destroying him beyond the possibility of resurrection. None of these elements necessarily presupposes a liking for human flesh per se; but neither does it exclude such a predilection as a primitive impulse. Our Iroquois man-eating song suggests a ceremonial in connection with the practice and thus finds an explanation readily enough in harmony with the idea that only the objective indignity and the subjective benefit were the motives of Iroquois cannibalism. The case is not so simple with the hamatsa ceremony of the Kwakiutl Indians described in the TRIBUNE of last Sunday. In this it seems to me (I speak with proper modesty in the presence of the ethnologists) a primitive predilection, or something akin to it, is manifest. Through the very great kindness of Dr. Franz Boas I am able this week to make good a deficiency of last Sunday's article. Dr. Boas has sent me the full text of the song from the dictation of my singers, and a translation as well. I print the first verse with its opening burden [chorus, refrain], together with Dr. Boas's translation, and explanation of the whole: "Ham, ham a'mai, ham, ham a'mai, hamai hamaima, hamai, etc. "Hellix'se (take it) ha'mats' Ela'qum (the hamatsa sound) qai (his) ha'mats' Elaqum (hamatsa sound) qui (his) La'owis Kyas (standing really) o'wa (good) qai (his), gua'pa-alitses loua (at the north end of the world) Lo'kualnskyas owe (the supernatural real good)." The meaning of the song is as follows: The newly initiated hamats'a (or man-eater, cannibal) has inherited the membership of the society from his grandfather, who lived in Northern British Columbia. The song which is made for the initiation of the new hamats'a by the father of the latter states that he is given the right to use the hamats'a songs. The song of each of the numerous secret societies of the Kwakiutl have different burdens [choruses, refrains]; those who have a number of presiding spirits have several burdens. The hamats'a society have the following: " 'Hap, hap' (or in songs also 'ham, hamai,' the p being transformed into m)--the sound of the spirit Baxbakua- nuXsi'nae. " 'Qato,' 'qato,' the sound of the raven, the slave of BaxbakualnuXsi'nae: "Furthermore there is the spirit (Hauxhauq, who initiates the hamats'a, who has a peculiar sound). This, then, is the text of the song: " 'Take the hamats'a song of the great one who lived at the north end of the world and had supernatural powers. " 'Take the BaxbakualnuXsi'nae song of the great one who lived, etc. " 'Take the Hauxhauk song of the great one who lived, etc. " 'Take the Raven song of the great one who lived, etc. "The letters are pronounced as follows: Vowels have their continental [European] sounds. Capital e as in flower; q, guttural k; x, German ch as in Bach; x', German ch as in 'ich' spoken near the posterior end of the hard palate; L an explosive, I articulated with the back of the tongue posterior portion of the hard palate, somewhat like tl." So far Dr. Boas's letter. The origin of the cannibal custom is to be explained from the folklore of the Kwakiutl. It seems to me (influenced greatly by the behavior of the dancer himself and features of folklore for which we are indebted to Dr. Boas) that the prevalent Indian belief that they are descended from animals may have much to do with the matter. The winter dances of the Kwakiutl are said to have been established by the son of their deity, who "descended in the shape of an eagle from heaven, wandered all over the world, and made friends with many a mighty chief while he transformed those who were his enemies into animals." Animal love for blood is suggested in the legend which is told of the spirit chiefly active in the initiation of the hamatsa. This is the BaxbakualnuXsi'nae who figure in our song. The gentleman of the formidable name is the old giant of our fairy tales who says "Fee, fi, fo, fum" and is deceived and slain by valiant little Jack. In the Indian story he has a son with an abnormally large head, who gives the alarm to the hero by licking the blood which drips from the latter's wounded leg. The cannibal is enticed into the house of the hero, whom he pursues, and is slain. Instead of "fee, fi, fo, fum," his refrain in the story is "Ham, ham" (i.e. "to eat! to eat!"). An element in the story of curious interest to the comparative folklorist is this: While the cannibal is pursuing the hero the latter creates obstacles behind him by throwing over his head a whetstone, a comb and some fishgrease, which are respectively turned into a mountain, a thicket and a lake. The incident belongs also to Old World folk-tales. H. E. K. |