Partridge says: " The use of intoxicants in pubertal rites is very common, especially among the American Indians. The Tuscaroras of North Carolina, among other initiatory ordeals for boys, adminis- ter to them some kind of a bark and several stimulating plants, which reduce them to a state of raving intoxication. When the Creek boys were to be initiated into manhood, they gathered two handfuls of a certain plant which intoxicates and maddens, and continued eating the bitter root for a whole day, and then steeped the leaves in water and drank from this decoction."
SAVAGE PUBIC INITIATIONS 239 On the first sign of puberty, the Brazilian1 girl, secluded for a month previously indoors and fed on bread and water, is brought out naked before all relations and friends, and each person present gives her five or six severe blows with a sipo across back and breast till she falls senseless, and sometimes dead. If she recovers, it is repeated by them every six hours, and it is considered an offense to parents not to strike hard. Pots of meat and fish are prepared and the sipos dipped in them and given her to lick; then she is a woman, can eat anything, and may marry.
Boys undergo a similar ordeal but not so severe, which allows them to see the Jurupari — pipes or trumpets made of bamboo or palm stems and hollowed, each pair producing a distinct note — a mystery which no woman can see on pain of death. If they are heard, every woman hides, and if she is thought to have seen them she is killed by poison. On the Rio de la Plata the girl is sewn up in her hammock as if she were dead, with only a small breathing hole. Very many dietary customs are enforced on pubescent girls. These ceremonies are for first menstruation only.
Among the ancient Aztecs, children from the earliest years were trained to endure hunger, cold, and heat; they were made to sleep on a mat, and when they reached the age of puberty were taught the use of arms; they accompanied their fathers on military expeditions, and were taught trades. If detected in lies, their tongues were pricked with agave thorns; the feet of those who ran away were bound; quarrelsome children were whipped with nettles. Two ancient documents, of too great length to quote here, containing some of a father's teaching to his son and that of a mother to her daughter, con- stitute an admirable code of morals and manners, which with a few changes in detail would be helpful in any land and age.3 Pritchard 3 says: " A certain stage in the life of each girl is cele- brated by a festivity in the camp. An ornamented toldo is put up temporarily for the girl's occupation, and the young men of the tribe march around it singing, while the women howl, probably with a view of exorcising any evil spirit which may be lingering about the camp. The ceremony is followed by a feast, and the evening winds up with a dance. The men alone take part in this, and it consists in circling around the fire, pacing sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. A few dance at a time, accompanying their movements by a constant bowing or nodding of the head, which is adorned with tufts of ostrich feathers. When one party is tired out, another takes its place."
(6) The Far East. — Haddon4 describes many ceremonies of initia- tion of boys into manhood, such as are found throughout the greater II The Aztecs: Their History, Manners, and Customs, by Lucien Biart. Trans, by J. L. Garner. Chicago, 1900, p. 2\\etseq.
3 Through the Heart of Patagonia. New York, 1902, p. 92.
4 Head Hunters, Black, White, and Brown. London, 1901, chap, iv et seq.
240 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE part of the Melanesian and the Indonesian Archipelago. These begin when lads first show a sprouting beard. They are secluded in a tabooed spot in the bush, instructed in the moral code, social customs, and sacred legends, which a man must know, especially those con- nected with the totemic animal, plant, or object peculiar to the clan. Many of these customs are in various stages of disintegration, and old men often weep over the profanation of ancient mysteries, of which only just enough echoes are preserved to enable us to under- stand some of their old solemnity. It is very hard to get all of the sacred words, formulae, and myths, but Haddon has found more of them in the East than any one else, and has even obtained masks and other paraphernalia, photographed some of the scenes of the cere- monies, obtained songs in phonographs, etc.
The Malu mysteries are cherished somewhat as we cherish the church and school. They take the young man out of the family and weld him into a solidarity with the community in which he lives. They often follow the death dances. Boys that have been good are treated easily, while the bad ones may be initiated with great cruelty. The morality taught, as far as it goes, is often high, and one common exhortation is not to be like women in various enumerated respects.
All the manifold Australian rites agree in being tests of endurance of pain. In almost all, the boys lose one or more teeth. There is an elaborate ceremony with a grass effigy of a kangaroo, by which the young are given power over this animal. The men personate the kangaroo, with grass tails, leaping, looking about, lying on their sides, while others act the part of hunters and pretend to kill them. In some forms the operators deliberately cut long gashes on the back and shoulders, and if the youth groans or even winces, three long yells indicate that he is unworthy to be a warrior, and he is handed over to the women, to be forever ranked with them and to do their tasks. In a mental trial a crystal with magic power is given to each candidate, and the old men try all their arts of persuasion to induce him to give it up. If he does not resist all their threats and cajoleries, he is rejected as a warrior. When the ceremony is over, with loud yells the women are summoned, and great dances and feasts occur. The young men who have passed through these ceremonies think very highly of themselves, and go out to hunt the largest game.
The most careful study of pubertal rites yet made is by Mathews.1 Some Australian tribes have typical and elaborate initiation cere- monies, called Burbung or Bora, for their adolescents. In an open- ing in the woods a round cleared space of eighty to ninety feet in diameter is marked by a groove in the soil. In the center is a short pole, to the top of which bushes and emu feathers are tied. From 1 R. H. Mathews: Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. xxiv, pp. 411-427; xxv, pp. 297-330; xxvi, pp. 272-285, 320-340. See also his interesting variant: The Toara Ceremony of the Dippil Tribes of Queensland. Am. Anthropologist, January-March, 1900, p. 139.
SAVAGE PUBIC INITIATIONS 241 this circle a track about four feet wide runs several hundred yards into brush and scrub. First, beside this path is a hole three feet by eighteen inches, to represent the place where a girl must sit during her first menstruation. A few yards farther is a human figure and an emu, life size, cut in the ground. Next come two spiral strips cut in a tree and other zigzags to represent lightning; then a fire, which is kept burning during all the days of the ceremony, and a gigantic human figure, twenty-one feet long, with the dent of his fist in the ground where he fell, always made beside his figure by puddling clay. This figure represents Baiamai, the culture hero who slew Dhurmoo- lan, an awful being, with a voice like thunder, by whom boys used to be taken to the brush to be instructed in the customs, laws, and traditions of the community, that they might take part in councils and do all the duties of tribesmen. Each boy, it was said, he cut up, burned, formed the ashes to human shape, and restored to life, with the exception of one upper front tooth, which he kept and the loss of which was a sign of initiation. It was found out, however, that he bit out the tooth, and often devoured a boy. So after killing him Baiamai put his voice into the trees, from which it could be charmed into bull-roarers made from their wood. Farther along this walk is a tree with an imitation of an eagle's nest, figures representing the sun and moon cut large through the bark to the white, an immense fabulous snake-like monster fifty-nine feet long, four little mounds of earth, making a square, with native weapons stuck in them for decoration, and between these, four seats made of saplings dug up with their roots, formed to a seat stained with human blood and their stems inverted in 'the ground, while turtles, iguanas, and fish, pointed up and down, carved on tree-trunks, with other mystic lines and pat- terns, complete the scenes for this long walk, which is terminated by a screen of boughs.
Early in the spring two messengers are sent to invite the neigh- boring tribes. They carry kilts and bull-roarers, and arrive at the camp at about sundown, when the men come home. A council is held, at which the invitation is presented and discussed and word sent to the next camp. They all muster, so as to arrive on the prepared ground together, and are ceremoniously received in the circle; some- times two or three weeks are spent before the arrival of the last con- tingent. For several days there is much marching, stamping, and beating the ground with resonant pandamelon skins, and other per- formances. Finally all assemble, the men painted in full savage re- galia, tramping and waving their arms or dancing a corroboree, and the women throwing leaves at them. Sometimes the men represent dogs running after each other, or kangaroos, or they parody an emu hunt, and the wizards perform their mummeries. Recent initiates are taken over the walk, and all the devices of the sacred ground where they had been inducted the year before are fully explained to them. During the night bull-roarers are sounded, and the boys are told that the dreadful Dhurmoolan is coming for them the next morn- 242 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE ing. At dawn all assemble in the circle, each tribe distinct, the boys to be initiated sitting naked on bark back of the circle, looking at the earth, each with his sister near by and her husband, who acts as the boy's guardian during the ceremony. The two latter paint each boy all over with red ochre, put pipe marks on his breast, swan feathers in his hair, and gird him with a band with four kilts depend- ing, representing a man's dress, while his head is bound with two bands. The headsman then shouts: " He is coming — lie down! " All the women and boys are then securely covered with blankets, and men stay to watch that they do not see. A group of men advance from the sacred path, beating the ground with sonorous pieces of bark, tramp around, sound the bull-roarers, and with a great noise throw brands near the women and children, to make them think Dhurmoolan tried to burn them. Each guardian then catches his boy under the arm, and leads him along the path, all the men follow- ing with terrific din. They are then taken a few miles away, seated, and given advice on the conduct of life and on the coming ceremony, when the blankets are removed from their heads. Here they are kept two or three days, watched and taught, and join the men for the first time in hunting. Every night the men steal off and make a great noise, pretending to drive off the giant who seeks to burn the boys. Meanwhile those in camp form a yard, shaped like a horseshoe, and thickly walled with boughs, and here on a platform opposite the open- ing they await them. When they arrive each boy gets on the shoul- ders of his guardian, and the sisters or mothers spirt pipe-clay into their faces. After a night here, four days more are spent in the brush, and they are still further instructed in the tribal ordinances and taught songs and dances which women and the uninitiated never know and which it is unlawful to hear or teach elsewhere. Each boy is given a new name, known only to the initiated, each animal is given a secret name, and there are many ceremonials and sham fights, panto- mimes, and trick magic, leaping on the four mounds, running among the inverted roots of saplings above described, shouting the names of other bora grounds, squatting in black paint and with horrid grimaces, long and silent gazing at the feet, tableaux often disgustingly obscene, songs and dancing, during all of which the boys are not allowed to question or speak, and thus by these and other devices they are well seasoned to fear. At the last afternoon the boys' heads are again covered with blankets and a big fire is kindled, where they are told they are likely to be burned. Then the blankets are taken off and the boys are shown the men with bull-roarers, fumigated, and in- formed that Dhurmoolan is only they; his story is told, the rites explained, and death threatened for any revelation of what they have learned. They are told that when they marry it must be according to the totem laws, which are explained. All the symbols of every ob- ject beside the path and the rites are also explained. Formerly human ordure was eaten, a tooth extracted, and the hair cut.
The ceremonies differ in detail among different tribes. In one SAVAGE PUBIC INITIATIONS 243 form of the ceremony the novitiates, when taken from their mothers and relatives, are made to believe that a giant has slain them all, while mothers loudly lament, that the young girls may think the boys are all slain. The boys are initiated into many forms of gross ob- scenity. Instead of a blanket over his head, the novice may have to sit and walk all day with his head and eyes bent down so low that he faints on being allowed to straighten up after dark. In the bush he may be required to go off alone and sustain himself by hunting. The mode of death threatened for revealing what is seen or heard or for speaking of or letting women know of the bull-roarer differs, as does the mode of impressing the form and meaning of the figures cut in the trees or on the ground. If a tooth is removed, the boy's feet are confined in a hole in the ground. His hair may be singed and his body painted white, so that his mother can not recognize him. The annual dances vary, and the camp is often daily split into small groups. There is a wide field of exceeding difficulty yet to be explored before it can be known just what the novices are taught and what is the esoteric significance of these mysteries. Great precautions are taken that none but the initiated shall ever penetrate them. Many ceremonies are according to a minutely prescribed ritual, and on the other hand the program is often made up anew each night for the next day.
Among the Victorian aborigines 1 boys of thirteen are taken away from the camp by old men for about a month, during which time they are instructed in the legends of the tribe. At the end of this time each is held by two men, while two others bore the flesh around one of his front teeth with a piece of bone, and then knock it out with a bit of wood used as a punch. The nakedness is then covered, and he returns to the camp. At eighteen years of age he is again taken away and the initiation completed. The tribes of the Xarra River eat human excrement as one part of the symbolic ceremonies of initia- tion. In another form of the ceremony, known as Tit-but, the boys of fourteen or fifteen are led away, and the hair cut close with chips of quartzite, except a strip half an inch wide from the middle of the forehead to the neck. Naked save at the hips, which are covered with opossum skin and strings of the fur, the initiated is daubed with clay and every kind of filth, and with a basket full of the same material he wanders throughout the camp, casting it at every one. He is isolated, and no one speaks to him till his hair begins to grow, when he is given over to the women, who wash and paint him and dance before him. Among some tribes the novitiate is simply clothed with man's attire ceremonially. Probably most accounts here and else- where are mere fragments of far more elaborate ceremonials, which are so carefully guarded that it is very difficult to gain access to the rites and far more so to learn their meaning, which latter is often for- 1 The Victoria Aborigines: Their Initiation Ceremonies, etc., by R. H. Mathews. Am. Anthropologist, November, 1898, p. 325 et seq.
244 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE gotten by the natives themselves. Many of the forms seem to be pro- bationary or degenerate.
Among the natives of the Murray River another ceremony occurs when lads are about sixteen. They are seized and conducted to the chosen field amidst the cries and self-mutilations of the women. The boys lie down, and their new beards and hair are torn from their bodies.
Among another tribe there are three ceremonies: the first very simple, where the boys are merely carried away from the women and blindfolded. Here the Witarna must cease using their natural voices, and not speak above a whisper for some months and perhaps a year or two. The initiates of the second degree wear a bell-shaped apron and can marry, although they are not yet warriors, for they have not suffered sufficient pain to take their full rank. They still bear the trivial names given them by their mothers. In the third ceremony they are taken to a secluded spot, covered with kangaroo skins, laid out on a platform of boughs, while each lad sucks the open vein of an adult and is rudely tattooed with broad gashes, that are pulled opened by the fingers as far as possible. Their faces and upper bodies are blackened, and they are again enjoined to whisper, and given all sorts of advice about hunting, etc.1 In New Zealand there seems to be no definite ceremony of admis- sion to manhood. The tattoo is a sign that it is done; but there seems to be a long process, extending over years, which can not be consid- ered an initiatory rite, like those of the Australians.
According to J. L. Holmes,2 the lads of the Papuan gulf are in- itiated by being first isolated in the eraro or clubhouse till their hair is grown to its full length. Their bodies must not be exposed to the sun, and they are subject to several taboos. The bull-roarer is shown and explained, and masks play a great part in the more important ceremonies.
In Korea puberty and betrothal ceremonies often coincide, and the ritualists of that country celebrate these events by elaborate formulae, implying that the full responsibilities of manhood are assumed. Three days before, the head of the clan must announce the approaching ceremony to the tablets of the ancestral temple. The day in ancient times was chosen by divination. When capped, the boy adds a new link, says Sandis,3 to the chain of descent. Even the tutor was once chosen by lot, and he must be virtuous and well versed in the cere- monial law. Besides the black paper cap, twenty other objects — belt, embroidered shoes, hood, cowl, cord, trays and tables, dried meats, horn spoons, etc. — are exactly arranged in a room partitioned from a larger hall. All the relatives, in ceremonial or holiday dress, are 1 J. G. Wood: Natural History of Man, vol. ii, p. 76 et seq. a Nature, October 30, 1902.
* The Capping Ceremony of Korea, by E. B. Sandis, M.D., Jour, of the An« thropological Inst., May, 1898, p. 525.
SAVAGE PUBIC INITIATIONS 245 grouped in a prescribed order, and a tutor, prompter, and assistant in- vest with the virile cap and cowl, and invoke three blessings. Liba- tions, a new name, salutations, genuflections, presents, etc., follow. The ceremony for girls is somewhat similar, and is called tying of the hair, with jackets, corsets, a new name, and presentation in the ances- tral temple.
Nearly every Buddhist boy in Burma becomes a monk for a time before he is fourteen, according to Fielding Hall, taking the vows of chastity and poverty, but always for a limited time, to be renewed or not at the end of the term according to inclination.
Professor E. Washburn Hopkins, of Yale, writes me, May 16, 1903, of ancient India: " There is only one rite connected with puberty by inference. That is the Upanayana, or admission into caste, when a cord is bound around the boy at ages from eight to twenty-four years. It seems to be the same as the Avestan circling with a holy cord at fifteen years, and for this reason, with the wide-spread analogy of some such ceremony, it has been connected by ethnologists (Lip- pert, Culturgeschichte, vol. if, p. 320) and by Oldenberg (Religion des Veda) with a puberty rite, though in Hindu form it is quite made over into an introduction of a boy into the study of the Veda and admission into caste privileges, at ages according to caste. There is no other rite at this time, and this is recognized as a puberty rite, more by analogy than by inner evidence, since all reference to puberty is lacking in the Brahmanical rite, and which only in the secondary stage of the literature receives recognition. The earliest Veda has absolutely no reference to anything of the sort. It appears to be a faint survival of the old rite, much modified through the influence of the caste system. Latin literature, so far as I know, refers only to this rite and has nothing new, except that at this epoch the (warrior caste) boys at sixteen were admitted into the rank of warriors after proving their ability at a joust of arms."
(c} Africa. — Frazer tells us that among the Zulus and neighbor- ing South African tribes when the first signs of puberty appear in a girl she must hide, not be seen by men, cover her head, lest the sun shrivel her, and seclude herself for some time in a hut. In New Ire- land girls at this age are confined for four or five years in small cages, kept in the dark, and not allowed to set foot on the ground. These cages are conical, ten or twelve feet in circumference and seven or eight high, made of pandanus leaves sewed tight, and three feet from the ground. The cages are very hot, but clean, and the girls are taken out once a day to bathe; in these cages they remain until they are taken out to be married, and attend the great feast which is a part of this ceremony. Poor people can afford to keep their daughters thus shut up for only a few weeks, but the time in- creases with wealth and station.1 The Borneo girl is also shut up at eight or ten; none save a slave waitress must see her, not even 1 Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, vol. ii, p. 197 et seq.
246 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE her family. Sometimes she remains here six or seven years, doing handiwork. Her body growth is stunted and her complexion becomes waxy. On coming out she is shown sun, water, earth, flowers, and trees as if she were new-born; the great feast is held, a -slave killed, and she is smeared in his blood. In New Guinea, Vancouver, Ceram, and among some Alaskan tribes, girls are isolated in cells or huts for periods of varying length. Commonly the longer she stays the greater honor to her parents. Hoods and veils are worn, that the sun may not see her.
" From the age of eleven to thirteen among the Pygmies,1 begins, for individuals of both sexes, a period of abstinence called akayaba, which for the young girls extends nearly to the time of their mar- riage and for the young men to the time of puberty. While it lasts they can not eat turtle, pork, fish, or honey, that is to say, the food forming the staple of their usual diet. They must also abstain from the use of certain delicacies, such as the meat of iguana, the larvae of a large beetle, etc. They may, however, satisfy their hunger with any other native dishes. This kind of taboo can only be removed by the chiefs, who keep it in force until the time when the candidates have given sufficient proof of their perseverance. The akayaba comprises three periods, named from the three principal kinds of food tabooed — the meat of the turtle, honey, and the fat of pork kidneys. At the expiration of the time a feast is celebrated, during which the neophyte must observe silence, deprive himself of sleep for twenty-four hours, and then with ceremony eat one of those dishes, the use of which is henceforth permitted him. The ceremony closes with a special dance, reserved for these kinds of initiations."
Among the Bechuanas, when boys are admitted to manhood at the age of about fourteen, they are stripped and stood in a row opposite an equal number of men, each with a long torch and supple switch. First they dance the odd Koha, and each boy has a pair of sandals on his hands. At intervals the men put certain questions to the boys con- cerning their future, when they are admitted to manhood, e. g., " Will you herd the cattle well?" "I will," says the boy, lifting his san- daled hands. The man then strikes with full force at the boy's head; the blow is received on the sandals, but the elastic rod curls over with such force as to make a deep gash on his back from twelve to eighteen inches long, from which the blood spurts as if it were made with a knife. The lesson of cattle guarding is thought thus to be in- eradicably impressed. " Will you guard the chief well? " etc., and other questions are repeated through a long series. The boys must look happy and continue to dance through it all, though their backs are scarred for life, on pain of rejection. It may be remembered, how- ever, that where nudity is common the skin seems less sensitive. Only older and otherwise qualified men can take part. These ceremonies are kept very secret, and are common to many tribes. At another stage 1 Quatrefages: The Pygmies, p. 102.
SAVAGE PUBIC INITIATIONS 247 of the rite boys are gathered together every few years, under the com- mand of one of the sons of the chief, and taken into the woods by the old men for some time. What takes place is unknown, but they come back lean and scarred, and are henceforth comrades and address each other by a new familiar name.1