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.Many North American Indian tribes and mostAustralian are totemistic, and there is reason to believe that theidea goes far back into the past.However, it does not exhaust byany means the modes of relationship of the hunting world to thatof their neighbors and companions in life, the beasts.For the ani-mals are great shamans and great teachers, as well as co-descend-ants of the totem ancestors.They fill the world of the hunter, in-side and out.And any beast that may pass, whether flying as abird, trotting as a quadruped, or wriggling in the way of a snake,may be a messenger signaling some wonder perhaps the trans-formation of a shaman, or one's personal guardian come to bestowits warning or protection.III.The Ritual of the Returned BloodOne of the most illuminating glimpses into the very deep wellof past into which we are about to plunge, where in the long agesbefore mankind was struck by the principle of destiny of the296 PRI MI TIVE MYTHOLOGYvegetable kingdom it was the mystery of the deathless animalherd and the laws of the hunt that ruled his spirit, Frobenius re-cords in one of his accounts of his journeys in Africa:In the year 1905, in the jungle area between Kasai andLuebo [in the Belgian Congo], I encountered some representa-tives of those hunting tribes, driven from the plateau to therefuge of the Congo jungle, who have become known to theliterature of Africa as "Pygmies." Four of their number,three men and a woman, then accompanied the expeditionfor about a week.One day it was toward evening and wehad already begun to get along with each other famouslythere was again a pressing need for replenishments in thecamp kitchen and I asked the three little men if they wouldget us an antelope, which for them, as hunters, would be aneasy task.They looked at me, however, in amazement, andone of them finally came out with the answer that, surely,they would be glad to do that little thing for us, but today itwould of course be impossible, since no preparations had beenmade.The conclusion of what turned out to be the very longtransaction was that the hunters declared themselves readyto make their preparations next morning at dawn.And withthat, we parted.The men then began scouting about andfinally settled upon a high place on a nearby hill.Since I was very curious to know whereof the preparationsof these people might consist, 1 got up before sunrise andhid in some bushes near the clearing that the little fellowshad chosen the night before for their preparations.When itwas still dark the men arrived; but not alone.They were ac-companied by the woman.The men crouched on the groundand cleared the area of all bits of growth, after which theysmoothed it flat.One of them then drew something in the sandwith his finger, while the other men and the woman mutteredformulae of some kind and prayers; after which silence fell,while they waited for something.The sun appeared on thehorizon.One of the men, with an arrow in his drawn bow,stepped over to the cleared ground.In a couple of momentsthe rays of the sun struck the drawing and at the same in-stant the following took place at lightning speed: the womanlifted her hands as though reaching for the sun and utteredloudly some unintelligible syllables; the man released his ar-row; the woman cried out again; then the men dashed intothe forest with their weapons.The woman remained standinga few minutes and then returned to the camp.When she hadTHE ANI MAL MASTER 297left, I came out of my hiding and saw that what had beendrawn on the ground was an antelope, some four feet long:and the arrow was stuck in its neck.While the men were gone I wanted to return to the placeto try to take a photograph, but the woman, who stayed closeto me, kept me from doing so, and begged me earnestly togive up my plan.And so, the expedition went on.The hunterscaught up with us that afternoon with a beautiful buck.It hadbeen shot with an arrow through the neck.The little peopledelivered their quarry and went, then, with a few tufts of itshair and a calabash full of its blood back to their place onthe hill.They caught up with us again only two days later andthat evening, to the froth of palm wine, I brought myself tospeak about the matter with the most trusting of my littletrio.He was the oldest of the three.And he told me simplythat he and the others had run back to plaster the hair andblood on their drawing of the antelope, pull out the arrow, andthen erase the picture.As to the sense of the operation, noth-ing could be learned, except that he said that if they did notdo this the "blood" of the antelope would be destroyed.Andthe erasure had to be effected at sunrise too.He pleaded earnestly that I should not let the woman knowthat he had talked to me about these things.And he seemed,indeed, to be greatly worried about the consequences of histalk; for the next day our Pygmies left us without saying asmuch as good-bye undoubtedly at his request, who had beenthe leader of the little team.11We need only recall the words of the Caribou Eskimo Igjugarjukto understand the meaning, and therewith, also, the antiquity anddurability of this ideology which is found to be the same, funda-mentally, whether in the jungles of the Congo or on the tundrasof Hudson Bay: "The blood and entrails must be covered upafter a caribou has been killed.So we see that life is endless.""It takes a powerful magic," is the comment of Frobenius, "tospill blood and not be overtaken by the blood-revenge." 12One thing more: The crucial point of the Pygmy ceremony wasthat the rite should take place at dawn, the arrow flying into theantelope precisely when it was struck by a ray of the sun.For thesun is in all hunting mythologies a great hunter [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]