CHAPTER II: MEDICINE-MEN AND PRIESTS.

§ 589. A satisfactory distinction between priests and medicine-men is difficult to find. Both are concerned with supernatural agents, which in their original forms are ghosts; and their ways of dealing with these supernatural agents are so variously mingled, that at the outset no clear classification can be made.

Among the Patagonians the same men officiate in the “three-fold capacity of priests, magicians, and doctors;” and among the North American Indians the functions of “sorcerer, prophet, physician, exorciser, priest, and rain-doctor,” are united. The Pe-i-men of Guiana “act as conjurors, soothsayers, physicians, judges, and priests.” So, too, Ellis says that in the Sandwich Islands the doctors are generally priests and sorcerers. In other cases we find separation beginning; as witness the New Zealanders, who, in addition to priests, had at least one in each tribe who was a reputed sorcerer. And with advancing social organization there habitually comes a permanent separation.

In point of time the medicine-men takes precedence. Describers of the degraded Fuegians, speak only of wizards; and even of the relatively-advanced Mapuchés on the adjacent continent, we read that they have no priests, though they have diviners and magicians. In Australian tribes the only men concerned with the supernatural are the boyala-men or doctors; and the like is alleged by Bonwick of the Edition: current; Page: [38] Tasmanians. Moreover, in many other instances, those who are called priests among uncivilized peoples, do little else than practise sorcery under one or other form. The pajé or priest of the Mundurucús “fixes upon the time most propitious for attacking the enemy; exorcises evil spirits, and professes to cure the sick;” and the like is the case with the Uaupés. In various tribes of North America, as the Clallums, Chippewayans, Crees, the priests’ actions are simply those of a conjuror.

How shall we understand this confusion of the two functions, and the early predominance of that necromantic function which eventually becomes so subordinate?

§ 590. If we remember that in primitive thought the other world repeats this world, to the extent that its ghostly inhabitants lead similar lives, stand in like social relations, and are moved by the same passions; we shall see that the various ways of dealing with ghosts, adopted by medicine-men and priests, are analogous to the various ways men adopt of dealing with one another; and that in both cases the ways change according to circumstances.

See how each member of a savage tribe stands towards other savages. There are first the members of adjacent tribes, chronically hostile, and ever on the watch to injure him and his fellows. Among those of his own tribe there are parents and near relatives from whom, in most cases, he looks for benefit and aid; and towards whom his conduct is in the main amicable, though occasionally antagonistic. Of the rest, there are some inferior to himself over whom he habitually domineers; there are others proved by experience to be stronger and more cunning, of whom he habitually stands in fear, and to whom his behaviour is propitiatory; and there are many whose inferiority or superiority is so far undecided, that he deals with them now in one way and now in another as the occasion prompts—changing from bullying to submission or from submission to bullying, as he finds one Edition: current; Page: [39] or other answer. Thus to the living around him, he variously adapts his actions—now to conciliate, now to oppose, now to injure, according as his ends seem best subserved.

Men’s ghosts being at first conceived as in all things like their originals, it results that the assemblage of them to which dead members of the tribe and of adjacent tribes give rise, is habitually thought of by each person as standing to him in relations like those in which living friends and enemies stand to him. How literally this is so, is well shown by a passage from Bishop Callaway’s account of the Zulus, in which an interlocutor describes his relations with the spirit of his brother.

Ghosts and ghost-derived gods being thus thought of as repeating the traits and modes of behaviour of living men, it naturally happens that the modes of treating them are similarly adjusted—there are like efforts, now to please, now to deceive, now to coerce. Stewart tells us of the Nagas that they cheat one of their gods who is blind, by pretending that a small sacrifice is a large one. Among the Bouriats, the evil spirit to whom an illness is ascribed, is deluded by an effigy—is supposed “to mistake the effigy for the sick person,” and when the effigy is destroyed thinks he has succeeded. In Kibokwé, Cameron saw a “sham devil,” whose “functions were to frighten away the devils who haunted the woods.” Believing in spirits everywhere around, the Kamtschatkans “adored them when their wishes were fulfilled, and insulted them when their affairs went amiss.” The incantations over a sick New Zealander were made “with the expectation of either propitiating the angry deity, or of driving him away:” to which latter end threats to “kill and eat him,” or to burn him, were employed. The Wáralís, who worship Wághiá, on being asked—“Do you ever scold Wághiá?” replied—“To be sure, we do. We say, You fellow, Edition: current; Page: [40] we have given you a chicken, a goat, and yet you strike us! What more do you want?” And then to cases like these, in which the conduct towards certain ghosts and ghost-derived gods, is wholly or partially antagonistic, have to be added the cases, occurring abundantly everywhere, in which those ghosts who are supposed to stand in amicable relations with the living, are propitiated by gifts, by praises, and by expressions of subordination, with the view of obtaining their good offices—ghosts who receive extra propitiations when they are supposed to be angry, and therefore likely to inflict evils.

Thus, then, arises a general contrast between the actions and characters of men who deal antagonistically with supernatural beings and men who deal sympathetically. Hence the difference between medicine-men and priests; and hence, too, the early predominance of medicine-men.

§ 591. For in primitive societies relations of enmity, both outside the tribe and inside the tribe, are more general and marked than relations of amity; and therefore the doubles of the dead are more frequently thought of as foes than as friends.

As already shown at length in §§ 118, 119, one of the first corollaries drawn from the ghost-theory is, that ghosts are the causes of disasters. Numerous doubles of the dead supposed to haunt the neighbourhood, are those of enemies to the tribe. Of the rest, the larger number are those with whom there have been relations of antagonism or jealousy. The ghosts of friends, too, and even of relatives, are apt to take offence and to revenge themselves. Hence, accidents, misfortunes, diseases, deaths, perpetually suggest the agency of malevolent spirits and the need for combating them. Modes of driving them away are devised; and the man who gains repute for success in using such modes becomes an important personage. Led by the primitive conception of ghosts as like their originals in their sensations, emotions, Edition: current; Page: [41] and ideas, he tries to frighten them by threats, by grimaces, by horrible noises; or to disgust them by stenches and by things to which they are averse; or, in cases of disease, to make the body a disagreeable habitat by subjecting it to intolerable heat or violent ill-usage. And the medicine-man, deluding himself as well as others into the belief that spirits have been expelled by him, comes to be thought of as having the ability to coerce them, and so to get supernatural aid: as instance a pagé of the Uaupés, who is “believed to have power to kill enemies, to bring or send away rain, to destroy dogs or game, to make the fish leave a river, and to afflict with various diseases.”

The early predominance of the medicine-man as distinguished from the priest, has a further cause. At first the only ghosts regarded as friendly are those of relatives, and more especially of parents. The result is that propitiatory acts, mostly performed by descendants, are relatively private. But the functions of the medicine-man are not thus limited in area. As a driver away of malicious ghosts, he is called upon now by this family and now by that; and so comes to be a public agent, having duties co-extensive with the tribe. Such priestly character as he occasionally acquires by the use of propitiatory measures, qualifies but little his original character. He remains essentially an exorcist.

It should be added that the medicine-man proper, has some capacity for higher development as a social factor, though he cannot in this respect compare with the priest. Already in § 474, instances have been given showing that repute as a sorcerer sometimes conduces to the attainment and maintenance of political power; and here is another.

We also saw in § 198 that the medicine-man, regarded with fear, occasionally becomes a god.

§ 592. In subsequent stages when social ranks, from head ruler downwards, have been formed, and when there has evolved a mythology having gradations of supernatural beings—when, simultaneously, there have grown up priesthoods ministering to those superior supernatural beings who cannot be coerced but must be propitiated; a secondary confusion arises between the functions of medicine-men and priests. Malevolent spirits, instead of being expelled directly by the sorcerer’s own power, are expelled by the aid of some superior spirit. The priest comes to play the part of an exorcist by calling on the supernatural being with whom he maintains friendly relations, to drive out some inferior supernatural being who is doing mischief.

This partial usurpation by the priest of the medicine-man’s functions, we trace alike in the earliest civilizations and in existing civilizations. At the one extreme we have the fact that the Egyptians “believed . . . in the incessant intervention of the gods; and their magical literature is based on the notion of frightening one god by the terrors of a more powerful divinity;” and at the other extreme we have the fact that in old editions of our Book of Common Prayer, unclean spirits are commanded to depart “in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

There may be added the evidence which early records yield, that the superior supernatural beings invoked to expel inferior supernatural beings, had been themselves at one time medicine-men. Summarizing a tablet which he translates, Smith says—

§ 593. Thus, after recognizing the fact that in primitive belief the doubles of the dead, like their originals in all things, admit of being similarly dealt with, and may therefore be induced to yield benefits or desist from inflicting evils, by bribing them, praising them, asking their forgiveness, or by deceiving and cajoling them, or by threatening, frightening, or coercing them; we see that the modes of dealing with ghosts, broadly contrasted as antagonistic and sympathetic, initiate the distinction between medicine-man and priest.

It is needless here to follow out the relatively unimportant social developments which originate from the medicine-man. Noting, as we have done, that he occasionally grows politically powerful, and sometimes becomes the object of a cult after his death, it will suffice if we note further, that during civilization he has varieties of decreasingly-conspicuous descendants, who, under one or other name, using one or other method, are supposed to have supernatural power or knowledge. Scattered samples of them still survive under the forms of wise women and the like, in our rural districts.

But the other class of those who are concerned with the supernatural, becoming, as it does, conspicuous and powerful, and acquiring as society develops an organization often very elaborate, and a dominance sometimes supreme, must be dealt with at length.