Passing over many modifications and developments of this general notion — ^passing over, too, those filiations upon it which early civilizations show us, such as the Scripture story of the expelled devils who entered into the swine, and the were-wolf legends of the middle ages; let us turn to the interpretations. We have seen that his experiences prepare the savage for supposing metamorphoses, if circumstances suggest, them; but we must not assume him to suppose them without suggestive circumstances. What, then, are these? We shall find three kinds/ leading to three groups of allied, but partially-difEerent, beliefs.
§ 167. ''The Amatongo are snakes," say the Zulus; and, as we have repeatedly seeu, Amatongo is their name for ancestral ghosts. But now why have these people fixed on snakes as being transformed ancestors? Some extracts S52 THX DATA OF SOCIOLOOT.
from Canon Callaway's cross-examination^ I place in an order that will prepare the reader for the answer.
" The snakes into which men torn are not many; they are distinct and well known. They are the black Imamba, and the green Imamba, which is called Inyandezulu. Chiefs turn into these. Common people turn into the Umthlwazi."
" These snakes are known to be human beings when they enter a hut; they do not usually enter by the doorway. Perhaps they enter when no one is there, and go to the upper part of the hut» and stay there coiled up."
*' If the snake has a soar on the side, some one who knew a certain dead man of that place who also had such a scar, comes forward and says, ' It is So-and-so. Do you not see the scar on his side?' It is left alone, and they go to sleep."
*' Those which are men are known by their frequenting huts, and by their not eating mice, and by their not being frightened at the noise of men."
Now join with these statements the facts set forth in §§ 110^ 137^ and the genesis of this belief becomes manifest. All over the world there prevails the idea that the ghost of the dead man haonts the old home. What^ then^ is meant by the coming of these snakes into the huts f Are they not returned relations f Do not the individual marks they sometimes bear yield proof f Just as the Australian settler who had a bent arm^ was concluded to be the other-self of the dead native who had a bent arm (§ 92); so here^ the scar common to the man and the snake proves identity. When, therefore, the Zulus say—" Neither does a snake that is an Itongo excite fear in men. * * * When men see it, it is as though it said as they look at it, ' Be not afraid. It is I '; '' we are shown that recognition of the snake as a human being come back in another shape, is suggested by several circumstances: frequentation of the house being the chief. This recognition is utilized and confirmed by the diviners. As was said by some who, through them, sought supernatural aid — "We wondered that we should continually hear the spirits, which we could not see, speaking in the wattles, and telling us many things without our ANIMAL-WORSHIP. 853 seKing £hem/' And elsewhere we read — "The voice was like that of a very little child; it cannot speak aloud^ for it speaks above, among the wattles of the hut/' The trick is obvious. Practising ventriloquism, the diviner makes the replies of the ancestral ghost seem to come from places in which these house-haunting snakes conceal themselves.
Though most men are supposed to turn into the harmless snakes which frequent huts, some turn into the ''imamba which frequents open places." Concerning this we are told — " The imamba is said especially to be chiefs "; it is "a poisonous snake,'' and has "the stare of an enemy^ which makes one afraid." Whence we may conclude that as special bodily marks suggest identity with individual men who bore kindred marks, so traits of behaviour and character in snakes of a certain species, lead to identification with a class of individuals. This conclusion we shall presently find verified elsewhere in Africa, Among the Amazulu, belief in the return of ancestors disguised as serpents, has not led to worship of serpents as such: propitiation of them is mingled with propitiation of ancestral ghosts in an indefinite way. Other peoples, too, present us with kindred ideas, probably generated in like manner, which have not assumed distinctly religious forms; as witness the statement of Nunc de Guzman, that " in the province of Culiacan tamed serpents were found in the dwellings of the natives, which they feared and venerated." But, carrying with us the clue thus given, we find that along with a developed cult and advanced arts, a definite serpent-worship results. Ophiolatry prevails especially in hot coantries; and in hot countries certain kinds of ophidia secrete themselves in dark comers of rooms, and even in beds. India supplies us with a clear case. Serpent-gods are there common; and the serpent habitually sculptured as a god, is the cobra. Either in its natural form or united to a human body, the cobra with expanded hood in attitude to strike, is adored in numerous temples. And then, on A A A A ihqttiryi vre learn that the cobhi is one of the commonest Intruders in houses. Yet another instance is furnished by the Egyptian asp> a species of cobra. Figuring everywhere as this does in theil* sacred paintings and sculptures, we find that, greatly reverenced throughout Egypt, it was a frequienter of gardens and houses, and was so far domesticated that it tsame at a signal to be fed from the table.* Tlie like happens with some other house-haunting creatui'es. In many countries lizards are often found indoors; and among the Amazulu, the " Isalukazana, a kind of liiard," is the form supposed to be taken by old women. Whether the belief of the New Zealanders that the spirits of their ancestors re-visit them as lizards, refers to lizards which enter houses, I haVe failed to learn. Then, too, ^e have the wasp, Ivhich is one of the animate shapes supposed to be taken by the dead among the Amazulu; and the wasp is an insect Which often joins the domestic circle to share the food on the table. Alongside this belief I may place i eiiriouS passage from the flood-legend of the Babyloniiins. Hasisadra, describing his sacrifice after the deluge, says — '^ The gods collected at its burning, the gods collected at its good burning; the gods, like flies, over the sacrifice gathered.*' Once inore, of house-haunting creatures similarly regarded, we have the dove. Describing animal-worship Among the ancients, Mr. McLennan remarks that ** the dove, in fact * * * is almost as great a god as the serpent/^ The still-extant symbolism of Christianity * Since writing tbe above I have re-read Mr. M'Leunan's essay on Animalworship, and in it find a fact Which confirms this view. I have italicized the significant words. '' To support the superstition there are two ai'tides in the treaty made and sanctioned by Her Britannic Majesty's Consul for the Bight of Biafra and the Island of Fernando Po, on November 17, 1856, one of which runa thus: — ' Article 12. That long detention having heretofore occurred in trade, and much aDg^*y feeling having been excited in the natives from the destruction by white men, in their ignorance, of a certain species of boa- constrictor that vfiiiis ^ houses, tcad which ift jH-Jtt, or sacred, to the Brassmen, it is hereby forbiddcta to ail British subjects to harm or destroy any such snake.' " shows US the sai'viving effect of tliis belief m the ghostly characttjr of the dove.
§ 168. Au allied group of ideas will now be ^adily understood. Where house-burial prevails, the ghost has but one place to haunt; but otherwise it is believed now to re-visit the habitation it has left, and now to be where the body lies. If, then, creatures which frequent houses are supposed to bo metamorphosed ancestors, will not creatures habitually found with corpses be also considered as animal forms assumed by the dead? That they will, we may conclude; and that they are, we have proofs.
The prevalence of cave-burial among early peoples everywhere, has been shown. What animals habitually occm* in these dark recesses? Above all others, those which shun the light — ^bats and owls. Where th^re are ho forests with hollow trees, etc., crevices and caverns are the most available places for these night-flyiiig creatures; and often in such places they are very numerous. An explorer of the Egyptian cave known from its embalmed contents as "Cfocodilopolis," tells me that he was nearly fetiflEocated with the dust raised by the bats, whose flight nearly put out the totches. Now join with these facts the following passage from the Izdnbar legend translated by M^. Smith: — " Retam we from Hades, the land of my knofdedg^; from the honse of the d^arted, the seat of the god Irkalla; from ihe house within which is no exit; from the road the course oi which never returns; from the place within which they long for light — the place where dust is their nourishment and their food mud. Its chiefis also, like birds, are clothed ^vith ^vings."
In Mr. Talbot's rendering of the legend of the descent of Ishtar, Hades, described as ^' a cavern of great rocks,'' is again said to be '^ the abode of darkness and famine, where earth is their food: their nourishment clay: light is not soon: in darkness they dwell: ghosts, like birds, flutter tkfjir wings/' Amid minor difierences, the agreement respecting the cavernous nature of the place, its gloom, AA 2 its lack of food, its dust, and the winged structore of its inhabitants, clearly points to the development of the bnrialcave with its tenanting creatures, into Hades with its inhabiting spirits. In the same way that, as we before saw, Sheol, meaning primarily a cave, expanded into an underworld; so here we see that the winged creatures habitually found along with the corpses in the cave, and supposed to bo the transformed dead, originated the winged ghosts who inhabit the imder-world. Verification is yielded by an already-quoted passage from the Bible, where sorcerers, referred to as consulting the dead, are said to chirp like bats: the explanation being that their arts, akin to those of the Zulu diviners lately named, had a like aim. '* These ventriloquists,'' says Delitzsch, ''imitated the chirping of bats, which was supposed to proceed from the shades of Hades/' Further verification comes to us from the legends of the Greeks, which grew up in adjacent regions under like conditions. The spirits of the dead are said in the Od/ysaey to twitter like bats and scream like frightened birds.* The experience that bats were found in caves with great constancy and in large numbers, while owls more generally frequented the dark comers of deserted houses, may have tended to differentiate the associated conceptions. '' Mother of ruins " is an Arabian name for the owL Mr. Talbot, in translations embodying the religious beliefs of the Assyrians, has the following prayer uttered on a man's death: — '' Like a bird may it [the soul] fly to a lofty place!" With this we may join the fact that, in common with modem Arabs, * Since tbe above was put in t^pc I hare met with a confirmatory fact in the Travels in the Philippines of Mr. F. Jagor. Before Europeans conquered them, the people had the ideas and customs of ancestor* worship highly developed; and they anciently buried in caves, which were held sacred. Mr. Jagor narrates his visit to a cavern " tenanted by multitudes of bats." The few natives who dared enter, " were in a state of great agitation, and were careful first to enjoin upon each other the respect to be obsen'ed by them towards CalapnUun " —literally " lord of the bats."— P. 169.
ANIMAL-WOBSHIP. 357 their anoient kindred preferred to bury in high places when they could. We may also join with it the following passage from M. de Perceval's Esaai aur I'histoire des Arabes: — " In their opinion the soul, when leaving the body, fled away in the form of a certain bird called H&ma or 8ada (a sort of owlj, and did not cease flying round the tomb and crying pitifully."
The Egyptians also, along with kindred experiences of these cave-hiding and ruin-haunting creatures, had a belief in winged souls. One of their wall-paintings given, by Wilkinson, represents, over the face of a corpse, a humanheaded bird about to fly away, carrying with it the sign of life and the symbol of transmigration. Moreover, on their mummy cases they figured either a bird with out-stretched wings, or such a bird with a human head, or a winged symbol. Thus it seems likely that by them, too, the creatures frequently found in the places of the dead were supposed to be forms assumed by the dead.
It may be that these ancient peoples of the East had not enough knowledge of insect-metamorphoses to be struck by the illusive analogy on which modem theologians dwell; but there is one variety of those metamorphoses which, if they observed it, must have seemed to furnish a complete parallel. With moths of many kinds, it is the habit of the lurva to bury itself in the earth, and after a time there is found near the chrysalis-case a winged creature. Why, then, should not the winged creature found along with the human body which has been buried in a Ciive, be concluded to have come out of it? * § 169. Before dealing with supposed transformations of a * As originally ghosts, not classed as good and bad» were indiscriminatelj spokc!! of as gods, demons, angels; and as the differentiation which eventually arose was naturally nocompanicd by specialized beliefs respecting these Hying forms nsiumed by them; it seems not improbable that while from the owl with its feathered wings, came the conception of the good spirit or nngcl, there cainc from the hnt with its membranous wings, the conception of the bad spirit or devil.
358 THE DATA 09 SOCIOLOGY.
third kinciA like the i^boye aa identifying aniinaU with deceased men^ bat unlike them as being otherwise suggested^ two explanatory descriptions are needed: one of primitive language and the other of primitive naming.
The group of words used as signs of ideas by a savage^ is very small. Hence of the many things and acts around, either but few can have signs, or those signs must be indiscriminately applicable to different things and acts: whence inevitable misunderstandings. If, as Burton says of the Dacotahs, '^ colours are expressed by a comparison with some object in sight,'' an intended assertion about a colour must often be taken for an assertion about the illustrative object. If, as Schweinfurth tells us of the Bongo dialect, oneVord means either " shadow" or "cloud,*' another ''rain" or ''the sky," another "night" or "to-day"; the interpretations of statements must be in part guessed at, and the guesses must often be wrong. Indefiniteness, implied by this paucity of words, is farther implied by the want of terms expressing degree. A Damara cannot understand the question whether of two stages the next is longer than the last. The question must be — "The last is little; the next, is it great?" and the only reply is — " It is so," or " It is not so." In some cases, as among the Abipones, the only mode of expressing superlatives is that of raising the voice. And then the uncertainties of meaning resulting from such indefinitenesses, dre made greater by the rapid changes in primitive dialects. Superstitions lead to frequent substitutions of new words for those previously in use; and hence statements current in one generation, otherwise expressed in the next, are misconstrued. Incoherence is an additional cause of confusion. Spix and Martins tell us that, in the aboriginal languages of South Brazil, " there are no such tilings as declensions and conjugations, and still less a regular construction of the sentences. They always speak iu the infinitive, with, or mostly without, pronouns or substantives. The accent, which is chiefly on the second syllable^ the slowne&s or quiokAaaa of pronuneiation^ ^^rtain signs with the handj the mouthy or other gestures^ ara neceesary to domplete the senae of the sentence. If the Indian, for instance, means to say, <I will go into the wood/ he says ' Wood-go: ' pushing out his mouth to indicate the quarter which he intends to visit/' Qlearly^ oo propositions implying even moderate degrees of discrimination, can be communicated by such people. The relative homo* geneity of early speech, thus implied by the absence of modifying terminations to words or the auxiliaries serving in place of them, is further implied by the ab;3ence of general and abstract words. Eve|\ the first grades of generality and abstractness are inwpressible. Dobria-. hoffer says that both the Abipones and the Quaranis "want the verb substantive to be. They want the verb to have. They have no words whereby to express man, body, God, place, time, never, ever, everywhere.'' Simi-' larly, Lichtenstein describes the K^affir language as having " no proper article, no auxiliary verbs, no inflections either of their verbs or substantives. The simple^ abstract propor sition, I am, cannot be expressed in their language.'^ With these a posteriori verifications of the a priori expectation, that early speech is meagre, incoherent, indefi* nite, we may anticipate countless erroneous beliefs caused by misapprehensions. We read in DobrizhofEer that among the Guaranis, "Abache lias three meanings — I am a Quaraniy I am a rawn, or I am a hiishand; which of these is meant must be gathered from the tenor of the conversation.*' On asking what will happen with traditions narrated in such speech, we must answer that the resulting distortions will be extreme and multitudinous.
§ 170. Proper names were not always possessed by men: they are growths. It never occurred to the uninventive savage to distinguish this person from that by special sounds. An individual was at first signified by something 360 THE DATA OP BOCIOLOOT.
connected with Iiim^ wliich^ when mentioned^ called him to mind — an incident, a joxta-position, a personal trait.
A descriptive name is commonly assumed to be the earliest. We suppose that just as objects and places in our own island acquired their names by the establishment of what was originally an impromptu description; so, names of savages, such as "Broad face/' "Head without hair/' "Curly head/' "Horse-tail/' are the significant sobriquets with which naming begins. But it is not so. Under pressure of the need for indicating a child while yet it has no peculiarities, it is referred to in connexion with some circumstance attending its birth. Angas tells us that the Lower Murray Australians derive their names either from some trivial occurrence, from the spot where they were bom, or from a natural object seen by the mother soon after the birth of the child. This is typical. According to Andersson, Damara " children are named after great public incidents." Hodgson states that " most of the Bodo and Dhim^ bear meaningless designations, or any passing event of the moment may suggest a significant term." The name given to a Kaffir child soon after birth, says Shooter, " usually refers to some circumstance connected with that event, or happening about the same time"; and concerning the Mandingoes we learn the like from Park. By Schoolcraft we are told that among the Comanches, " the children are named from some circumstance in tender years "; and Heame describes the names of the Chippewayan boys as "generally derived from some place, season, or animal." Even with so superior a type as the Bedouins, the like happens. "A name/' says Burckhardt, " is given to the infant immediately on his birth. The name is derived from some trifling accident, or from some object which has struck the fancy of the mother or any of the women present at the child's birth. Thus, if the dog happened to be near on this occasion, the infant is probably named Kelab (from Kelb^ a dog)."
This vague mode of identification, which arises first in the ANDIAL-WORSHIF. 361 histoiy of the race, and long sorviyes as a birth-naming in the life of each individual^ is by-and-by habitually followed by a re-naming of a more specific kind: a personal trait that becomes decided in the course of growth, a strange accident, or a remarkable achievement, furnishing the second name. Among the peoples above mentioned, the Comanches, the Damaras, the Kaffirs^ illustrate this. Speaking of the Kaffirs, Mann says — " Thus ' Umgodi' is simply ' the boy who was bom in a hole.' That is a birth name. ' XJmginqisago' is 'the hunter who made the game roll over.' That is a name of renown.'^ Omitting multitudinous illastrations, let us note some which immediately concern us. Speaking of the additional names gained by the Tupis after successes in battle, Southey says — " lliey selected their appellations from visible objects, pride or ferocity influencing their choice": whence obviously results naming after savage animals. Writing of the Karens, Mason enumerates among animal-names — * Tiger,' 'Yellow-Tiger,' ' Fierce-Tiger,' ' Gaur,' ' Goat-antelope,' ' Horn-bill,' * Heron,' ' Prince-bird,' and 'Mango-fish ': the preference for the formidable beast being obvious. In New Zealand a native swift of foot is called ' Kawaw,' a bird or fowl; and Burton gives as names of the Dacotah women, the ' White Martin,' the ' Toung Mink,' the ' Muskrat's Paw.' All over the world this nicknaming after animals is habitual. Lauder speaks of it among the Yorubans; Thunberg, among the Hottentots; and that it prevails throughout Korth America every one knows. As implied in cases above, selfexaltation is sometimes the cause, and sometimes exaltation by others. Livingstone tells us that when a Makololo chief arrives at a village, the people salute him with the titld, ' Great Lion.' The writers of Four Years in Ashantee, describe King Koffi's attendants as exclaiming — '' Look before thee, 0 Lion." In the Harris papyrus. King Men-cheperra (Tothmes III.) is called ' the Furious Lion.' In early Assyrian inscriptions we read — " Like a bull thou shalt nile S0S THE DATA OV SOCIOLOGY.
over tb^ obio& " i a simile whiohj as we shall see ia another case^ r^dily parses iato metaphor. Thus ia the third Salli^r papyrus it iq said of Bameses — -' As a bull, terrible with pointed horns h^ rose ''; and then in a subsequent passage tl\6 4^f^ted a4dr-es8 him — '^5orus, conquering bull.'^ Bemembering that this habit surviyes among ourselres, so that, the Q\umiiig person is called a lox, the rude a bear, the h^QcntiP^ A orpcQilile, the dirty a pig, the ]ceen a hawlc^ ai^A ^Q on-^=r^b9erving tliat in those ai^pient races who had prop^ U^mof} o( a developed l:ind, animal-oicknaming still pr^Yfliiled; \^% \)9 ask what resulted from it in the earliest stages, 5 X7l. Qu reeallipg th© extreme vagueness o| primitive sp^e^, th§ ftpsww will be manifest. Verbal sig^s being at &X^% so ina4e(iuat^ that gestui*e-sign^ are needful to eke them Wtj tb© dis^iAction betwee|[i metaphor c^nd fact cannot b§ eipvessedii i^uch less preserved in traditipn. If, as shown by iluBtauqea }lix. Tylor givps, even the higher ^^c^s mistake luetaphorp for facts — ^if the statement in the Koran that &o4 opened afid cleansed Mahomet^s heart, beoomes a belief th^t hi^ hpart was aotually taken out, washed, and replaced— =rif from tribes without governors, described as withQi:(t heads, th^re has arisen a^ong civilized people the belief that i]\ere are headless races of men; we oauuot be surprised i| the saVftg^i lacking knowledge and with rude language, gets the idoa that an ancestor named '^ the Tiger ^' was an actual tiger. From phildhood upwards he hears his father's father spoken of by this name. Ho one thinks of him as liable to misinterpret it: error beings indeed, a general notion the savage has scarcely reached* And there are no words serving to convey a correction, even if the need is peroeived. Inevitably, then, he grows up believing that his father descended fropi a tiger — thinking of himself as one of the tiger stock. Everywhere the results of such mistakes meet us.
'' A characteristio feature in O^iiti*^ ABifi.tiQ trii4itio9i||'^ says Mitohell, " is the derivatiou of th^ir origin from poiftQ animal/' According to Brooke^ the Sea Dyi^s shrink superstitioqsly from eating certain animalaj; bec^K9§ they suppose these animals hear a prozimity to some of ^heiv forefathers, who were begotten by them or hegot them. Of the Beohuana tribes I^iyingstone teUii us '^ the term iPiakatU means, ^ they of the monkey '; Sakuena, ' they of the ^li-e gator ' i!3atla@si, ' they of the fish ': each tribe having a superstitions dread of th^ animal after which it h called/^ Falkner describes the Patagonian^ ai^ possessing ^' a inulti*-plicity of these deities j each of whom they believe to preside over one particular caste or family of Indians, of which he is supposed to have been the creator. Some make th^msefyes of the caste of the tiger, some of the lion, some of the guanaco, and others of the ostrich." Leaving the many illustrations supplied by other regions, we will look more nearly at those coming from North America, Ross says the tribes north of the Columbia *' f)retend to be derived from a musk-rat/' In the words of Mr. Powers, " all the aboriginal inhabitants of Calif ornil^j without exception, believe that their first anqestors were created directly from the earth of their respective dweUing'plftces, and, in very many cases, that these ancei^tors were coyotes " [prairie- wolves]. And hero are extracts of Uka moaning from the elaborate work of Mr. Bancroft, Of the Zapoteoa it is said that -* some, to boast, of t^^ir valour^ made themselves out the sons of lions and diyers wild beastsi/' By the Haidahs, '' descent from tJie crows is quite gravely affii*med and steadfastly maintain^d," '^ Among tlie Abts of Vancouver Island, perhaps th^ commonest notion of origin is that men at first existed as bir4s, animals^ l^nd fishes." The Chipewayans " derive their prigin from a dog. At one time they were so strongly imbued with resppct for their canine ancestiy, that they entirely ceased to employ dogs in drawing their sledges," The Koniagaa ''have 364 THE DATA OF SOCIOU)GT.
their legendary Bird and Dog, — ^the latter taking the place occupied in the mythology of many other tribes by the wolf or coyote."
So well-organized are these beliefs that, in some cases, accounts are given of the transitions. Galifomian Indians descending from the prairie-wolf, explain the loss of their tails: they say, '^ an acquired habit of sitting upright, has utterly erased and destroyed that beautiful member." Certain Northern Calif omians who ascribe their origin in part to grizzly bears, assert that in old times these walked '^ on their hind legs like men, and talked, and carried clubs, using the fore-limbs as men use their arms." Even more strangely are these ideas of relationship shown by Franklin's account of the Dog-rib Indians: — " These people take their names, in the first instance, from their dogs. A yonng man is the father of a certain dog, but when he is married and has a son, he styles himself the father of the boy. The women have a habit of reproving the dogs very tenderly when they observe them fighting. ' Are you not ashamed,' say they, ' to quarrel with your little brother?' " § 172. This last illustration introduces us to the various sequences from the conception of animal-ancestry, thus arising by misinterpretation of nicknames.
Animals must think and understand as men do; for are they not derived from the same progenitors as the tribe, or as other tribes? Hence the belief of the Papagos, that in primeval days ^'men and beasts talked together: a common language made all brethren." Hence the practice of the Kamtschadales, who, according to Grieve, when fishing, ^' entreat the whales or sea-horses not to overthrow their boats; and in hunting, beseech the bears and wolves not to hurt them." Hence the habit of the Dacotahs, who ask snakes to be friendly; and of whom Schoolcraft says — "^I have heard Indians talk and reason with a horse, the same as with a person." Hence the notion betrayed by the negro attendants of Livingstone, who tells us — "I asked ANIMAL-WOBSHIP. 865 my men wliat tRo hyaenas were laughing at; as they usnally give animals credit for a share of intelligence. They said they wore laughing because we could not take the whole [of the elephant]^ and that they would have pleniy to eat as well as we/* A second sequence is that animals^ thus conceived as akin to men^ are often treated with consideration. Schoolcraft states that the Chippewas^ thinking they will have to encounter in the other world the spirits of slain animals, apologized to a bear for killing him, asked forgiveness, and pretended that an American was to blame; and, similarly, we are told by Harris that the Ostyaks, after destroying a bear, '^ ask his pardon,'^ and tell him that the Russians were his murderers. In like maimer of the Kookies, we learn from M'Culloch that ''the capture of an elephant, tiger, bear, wild hog, or any savage wild beast, is followed by a feast in propitiation of its manes.'* Kindred practices are followed by the Stiens of Cambodia, the Sumatrans, the Dyaks, the Kaffirs, the Siamese, and even the Arabs.
Naturally, as a further sequence, there comes a special regard for the animal which gives the tribal name, and is considered a relative. As the ancestor conceived under the human form is thought able to work good or ill to his descendants, so, too, is the ancestor conceived under the brute-form. Hence, as Bancroft tells us, ''no Indian tracing his descent from the spirit mother and the grizzly, as here described, will kill a grizzly bear.'' In like manner the Osages will not destroy the beaver: believing themselves derived from it. "A tribe never eats of the animal which is its namesake," says Livingstone of the Bechuanas. Like ideas and practices occur in Australia in a less settled form. *' A member of the family will never kill an animal of the species to which his kobong [animal-namesake] belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed, he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance of escape." Joined with this regard for the animal-namesake considered 360 TUB DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
as a relative) there goes belief in its guardianship; and hence arises the faith> so widely diffused^ in omens derired from birds and quadrupeds. The ancestor under the brute form is supposed to be solicitous for the welfare of his kindred; and so tells them by signs and sounds of their dangw.