my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and with the absurdest
‘Medicine.’ I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find
it simply impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal
‘Medicine’ he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and
plasters the same with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a
gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws of his tribe. For
his religious ‘Medicine’ he puts on puffy white sleeves, little
black aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless
coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine stockings and gaiters
and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal
hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him. On
occasions when the Medicine Men in general, together with a large
number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both male
and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native
‘Medicine’ is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of
traders) and new things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red
cloth (of which he is particularly fond), and white and red and
blue paint for the face. The irrationality of this particular
Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from which many of the
squaws are borne out, much dilapidated. I need not observe how
unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James’s Palace.
The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my
Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death and mourning under
his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by
his preposterous enchantments. He is a great eater and drinker,
and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior.
His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for
which he charges very high. He impresses on the poor bereaved
natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such
scraps on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw
the deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his
decease), the more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead.
The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an
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expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of
birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with
black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one
understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the
grave, and are then brought back again.
In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that
when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, ‘His immortal part
has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.’ This belief
leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried, some of
his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike
implements, must be broken and buried with him. Superstitious and
wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of
antic scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere
belief.
Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on
some funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American
Indians, African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not
to be.
Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me for a
while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no
discretion. This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning
over the unexpected death of one very dear to him, in a solitary
cottage among the vineyards of an outlying village. The
circumstances of the bereavement were unusually distressing; and
the survivor, new to the peasants and the country, sorely needed
help, being alone with the remains. With some difficulty, but with
the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested,
and determined, my friend – Mr. Kindheart – obtained access to the
mourner, and undertook to arrange the burial.
There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as
Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the
spot. He was always highly flushed when rendering a service