# Journal of American Folk-Lore/Volume 12/Issue 46/Various Ethnographic Notes

VARIOUS ETHNOGRAPHIC NOTES.
African Masks and Secret Societies.—Secret societies and leagues belong to the most difficult historic topics to treat scientifically, because, as the name implies, they are founded for the purpose of acting in secrecy, and therefore have to be necessarily exclusive and opposed to publicity. "Mum is the word" is their motto, and if it was not for their symbols many of them would be entirely hidden from the knowledge of fellow-men and of posterity.
All this holds good also for other human races than the white, and, as far as Africa is concerned, the researches pursued for the last hundred years by Clapperton, Bastian, Golbery, Zenker, Spieth, Büttikofer and others have succeeded in discovering only disconnected facts pertaining to this recondite but highly interesting feature of African life. A number of European museums had their ethnographic departments stocked with masks, symbols, and curios, evidently festive garments and other toggery, long before plausible explanations were or could be furnished for their use and origin. The nations inhabiting the western coasts and slopes of that vast continent have furnished more of these implements than those of the obverse side, but that mask-wearing was here intimately connected with secret societies has become apparent but recently. The African mask, whether it is an imitation or a caricature of the human face, or a reproduction of an animal's head, constantly undergoes certain modifications by custom or by reflection; it is inseparable from certain ceremonials enacted by secret societies, and also appears with regularity at funerals. After the dissolution of these societies in a tribe, the mask-symbols of the tribe increase in variety and in composing elements, the motives remaining closely associated with religion. In Western Africa the human mind is thoroughly imbued with the influence and working of the deceased, coming near to what is commonly called ancestor worship. When rain fails to appear in time, sacrifices are offered to propitiate the dead; sickness of people and cattle-plagues are due to the spiteful influence of some one deceased, and this influence has to be removed. These "manistic" views direct the veneration and worship of their genii: the souls of those who perished are called upon to appear in wooden images and to be consulted as oracles ; their spirits must be made serviceable; parts of their bodies are carried around to serve as amulets.
But, besides this ancestral and funeral tendency, secret societies will favor also ideas more intimately connected with public life and containing educational views. Ascetic views are inculcated by some ​Various Ethnographic Notes. 209
of them on portions of the community, and exoteric persons have to be forcibly excluded. Such societies are of a sexual character ; some are formed of men only, others of women, both of whom are jealous of the other's influence.
Some spirit may be set up as a mummery god, like Mwetyi, the great " ghost " of the Shekiani, who lives underground. A " dark house " is set up by masked club-members as his oracular office. Feasts are celebrated in his honor on stated days, and the din, war, and noise heard on such days by shouting, howling, and all kinds of instrumental music is terrific. From the dark house Mwetyi's voice is heard to resound like the roar of a tiger.
There are others of these freaks in other districts, called Kioke, Amakhwa, Sowa or Mukish, who conceal their identity, but are known as rain-makers, medicine-men, jugglers, policemen, and ragamuffins, and are all accompanied by a number of young mas- queraders, intent on frightening slaves and especially women.
Mumbo Jumbo is by his very name an attraction to us. The above "character" is Mahammah Jamboh in his unabridged name, and he is a noisy man of the woods among the Mande or Mandingos in Western Africa. The traveller Moore was the first person to introduce him to white folks ; he is the savage man of the forest, and is more important through the noisy train of followers that accompany him than by any authority of his own. This mysterious personage always appears in a horrid disguise and at night only. The scope of his existence, or his raison d'etre" is that of frighten- ing the women of these West African settlements ; and, to tell the truth, they are terribly afraid of him. Nobody who hears him first will admit that the shouts and cries he emits are those of a human being. He wraps himself in a long dress made of tree-barks, up to nine feet in length, and crowned by a wisp of straw. When a man has a quarrel with his wife, Mumbo Jumbo is asked to interfere and pacify, but in nine times out of ten the husband is found to be right and the wife all wrong. Persons dressed in this queer suit are free to give any orders they see fit, and all present have to uncover their heads. When women see him coming, they run away to hide, but the man in the Mumbo Jumbo dress will immediately call them back, and make them sit down or dance. Should they remonstrate or resist, they are seized and whipped severely. His followers constitute a society or club, with strict rules and pledges of secrecy, to which they are bound by oath. One of these is not to divulge anything about the "order" to any woman nor to any man not initiated. Boys under sixteen years are not admitted. Any oath sworn to in Mumbo Jumbo's name is absolutely binding, and contraventions
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are punished with severity. The members are said to speak also a dialect of their own, which is kept secret from the females ; another stratagem by which the men seek to keep the females in awe and subjection.
Mungo Park and other explorers noticed the use of this ragamuffin accoutrement in most towns along the Gambia River, and always for the drastical purpose aforementioned ; indeed, the men, decked with this scarecrow dress, were dealing out with whips and clubs the most unmitigated and brutal kind of "justice " against women either guilty or suspected of guilt, always amid the acclamations of the "mob power." No doubt this singular society acts as a sort of police against wrong-doers, but none can define the arbitrary princi- ples which prompt them to action.
At the mouth of the Congo River, in the Loango country, there is a society organized chiefly for the purpose of producing rain-show- ers, and whose masquerading pageants belong to the most burlesque things to be seen anywhere. These "Sindungo" dress in feathers, palm-leaves, and reeds, and look like monsters. One purpose for which they may be hired is that of collecting outstanding debts, and, since they ever remain unknown on account of their strange raiment, it may well be imagined that in their exactions they are not always moderate.
It is one of the privileges of the Mumbo Jumbo league above mentioned to watch the young people at the time of the circumci- sion solemnities, which in Bambuk (Senegambia) last forty days. No person of either sex is allowed to marry before passing that "ordeal." Then boys and girls are kept under a severe moral or ascetic control, but when the " act " is over, none will interfere even with the grossest licentiousness of the jeunesse doree. They leave their villages, roam in the fields, get food and drinks wherever they call for them, but are not allowed to enter lodges unless invited to do so.
It is the task of the " police agents " of the Mumbo Jumbo to keep the youngsters of both sexes separate during these forty days ; and so they tie, as badges of their office, straw and leaves around their bodies, take whips in hand, hide their faces behind masks, and line their bodies with clay.
Masked men in Africa always provide themselves with the instru- ment called bullroarer, and with sticks, twigs, or wands called spirit- piles, and intended to be run into the ground, bearing on their upper end an image recalling a dead man's spirit. No woman is ever allowed to be present at a bullroarer-pageant. Dangerous spirits are banished by the jugglers into a limb of a tree, and, when this is done, the bough is cut off, and, with the spirit in it, planted in the centre of the village.
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��Dr. Frobenius in his publication is figuring many samples of African masks made of wood, bark, leaves, parts of skulls, and other substances. None of them shows any noteworthy artistic develop- ment, or other spark of natural geuius, but they all typify the coarse and brutish naturalism which we are accustomed to find with the populations living within the tropics. 1
The Deities of the Early New England Indians. — These are better known to us than the so-called "gods" of most of the present North American tribes. We owe this interesting informa- tion to Capt. John Smith, Strachey, Roger Williams, and a few other authors. In these parts, the teachers of Christianity called God and Jehovah manit, mundtu, " he is God ; " manittw, which properly stands for spirit, ghost ; for the plural number gods, they used ma- nittowok, spirits. When manit serves to form compounds, the prefix m- y which is impersonal and indefinite, is retrenched, and what re- mains is -anit, -ant, -and. Roger Williams, who had settled in Rhode Island, states that Indians around him "have given me the names of thirty-seven, which I have, all which, in their solemn worships, they invocate." (Chapt. 21st.) From J. H. Trumbull's lexical manuscript, " On Eliot's Bible," I copy a list of them, accom- panied by his own comments : —
" Kautantowwit, the great southwest god, to whose house all souls go, and from whom came their corn and beans, as they say. This name is found again in Keih-tannit (the ' great God,' kehte-dnit,) and thus they called Jehovah. Capt. J. Smith says the Massachu- setts call their great god Kiehtan ; the Penobscots, Tantum. Lech- ford states that they worship Kitan, their good God, or Hobbamoco, their evil God. Tantum is a contraction of Keihtanit-om, my (or our) great God. Winslow, 1624, is of opinion that Kiehtan is their principal God, and the maker of all the rest [of the gods], and to be made by none ; . . . who dwelleth above in the heavens far . . . westward, whither all good men go when they die. About Squantam Josselyn says that ' they acknowledge a god whom they call Squan- tam, but worship him they do not.' This name explains itself by the verb musquantam (he is angry,) and by Roger Williams's remark, ' They (the Narraganset Indians) will say, when an ordinary acci- dent, as a fall, has occurred to somebody : musquantam manit (God was angry and did it).' "
The Devil, or evil spirit of Indian mythology, was called Hobba- moco, Habamouk, Abbamocho or Chepie by the Massachusetts In- dians. Josselyn also says that this spirit " many times smites them with incurable diseases, scares them with his apparitions and panic terrors, by reason of which they live in a wretched consternation, 1 Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbiinde Afrikas. Halle, 1S9S, illustr.
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worshipping the Devil for fear ; " and Winslow, in his " Relation," " Another power they worship, whom they call Hobbamock, and, to the northward of us, Hobbamoqui. This, as far as we can conceive, is the Devil." Chepie, or "separate apart," is the locality where the soul is separated or severed from the body, and must have been their name for Hades, or the ruler of it. Tchipaya is the soul after death, ghost, spectre, also corpse, skeleton, in all eastern Algonkian languages.
Another name for the Devil, obviously made by Christianized In- dians or their teachers, was Mattanit, in the plural Mattanni'toog, properly the "not-god, the evil-god," a contraction either of mata- dnito, or of matche-anitto. Even now the Indians of eastern Maine call him Matchehant, "evil spirit," the -ant, or -anit, "spirit," oc- curring again in the last syllable.
Kesuckqu-and, or " the sun God," was, according to Roger Wil- liams, a name of the sun, " by which they acknowledge and adore the sun for a god or divine power."
Chekesuw-and, the " western God," from chekesu, northwest wind, and this from cheke, "it is violent." The names for the other points of the compass were formed in the same manner : Wompan-and, the eastern God, " the genius of dawn or daylight," Wunnaname-anit, the northern God, from nanumiye-u, the north ; Sowwan-and, the south- ern God, or that of the southwest. For Roger Williams states : " They have a tradition that to the southwest, which they call so- wainiu, the gods chiefly dwell, and hither the souls of all their great and good men and women go."
Other genii of beneficial influence, were the House God, We- tuom-anit ; the woman's God, Squau-anit ; the children's God, Muck- wathuckqu-and, properly referring to boys only ; the Moon God, Nanepaushat, "genius of the one who travels at night;" the Sea God, Paumpagussit, or, as Williams has it, " that deity or godhead which they conceive to be in the sea ; " the Fire God, Yota-anit, from yote or note, fire.
The Kalapuya People. — The Kalapuya Indians were once liv- ing in numerous settlements throughout northwestern Oregon, and even now the remnants of their seven tribes are not inconsiderable. They kept strictly within the confines of Willamet Valley : and only one section, the Yonkalla, called by themselves Ayankeld, occupied some territory south of it in the Umpqua River basin. They were not warlike, and are not known to have participated in any war ex- peditions. The coast tribes of the Alsi and the other tribes now gathered upon the Siletz or Coast reservation kept them in terror.
About the Atfalati or Tualati Indians we possess more special
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information than of the Yamhill (properly Yamel), the Santiam, the Pineifu or Marysville Kalapuyas, the Lakmiuk or Eugene City In- dians, the Ahantchuyuk or Pudding River and other Kalapuya tribes. Their language is sonorous and vocalic, the verb excessively rich in forms, prefixes not frequent, and most words end in conso- nants. There is a wealth of folk-lore among them, but it awaits the scientific collector. The only " divine being " they have is Ayuthl- me-i, which is an abstraction only, tantamount to our term " miracu- lous " and to the Chinook " itamdnuish."
As far as known, the earliest habitat of the Atfalati were the plains of the same name, the hills around Forest Grove and the sur- roundings of Wapatu Lake. Of their former village no trace has remained, and their customs and dress has wholly assimilated to that of the "white brother." But we know that they once were fond of attire and personal adornment ; they wore red feathers on their heads, long beads on the neck, and bright dentalium-shells were sus- pended from their pierced noses. The women as well as the men cut holes into their ear-rims to hang beads on, and thus tried to en- circle the whole face with this sort of attire. But they did not tattoo their skins, and even in the hottest of summer never divested themselves entirely of their garments, as was done by the California Indians.
As to their ideal of feminine beauty, the Atfalati thought that the shortest women were the prettiest, and to wear the hair long in braids was considered in good taste. To look pretty, the women had to wear their beads on the side of the head down to the waist, which were heard to tinkle, even at a distance. Their heads were flattened, and the forehead heightened thereby ; the more beads were seen to encircle the face, the more pleasant was the onlook. Even the boys wore beads. The females thought they improved the appearance of their eyes by passing their hands frequently over them. Their braids were made like those of the white women, two hanging from the backhead. Low foreheads were thought to be in better shape than high ones. Women were unacquainted with the habit of tight-lacing, but liked a full development of the waist, and wore the breast open, though some of them covered themselves up to the neck with a deer- skin chemise. With women, little feet were liked ; large feet with men, who also showed preference for moustaches but removed their beards by means of tin tweezers.
To "buy a woman," or to "purchase a wife," is a phrase incorrectly worded to express a transfer of values to parents or relatives for obtaining from them a marriageable female for the matrimonial state. To the white people of the West who see this transfer made, even now, before their eyes, by Indians, this seems to be the right expres-
�� � ​sion. But in fact it is an indemnity given by the bridegroom to her relations for the daily work or other services which the bride will henceforth no longer render to her family. Some circumstances accompanying this transfer among Indians go far to corroborate this explanation.
The commodities most frequently surrendered by the Atfálati for obtaining a female in marriage were slaves (awákasht), haiqua-beads (adshīpin), money, and horses. After the transfer, the bride's relations turned over to the groom, in reciprocation, some presents in kind, as guns or blankets, but only to one fourth or one third of the values they had received themselves. By a solemn pageant and ceremony, the bride now started with a retinue of her people for the bridegroom's lodge, to be formally surrendered to him. They dressed her in newly made garments or wrapped her up in blankets, painted her face red, adorned her head and neck with a profusion of beads (aká-udshan), and placed her on a horse to be conveyed to. the groom's dwelling. When arrived in sight of that dwelling, a robust male relative of hers took her upon his shoulders ("packed her"), and so brought her close to the house, stopping at a distance of about fifty yards. Meanwhile the "suite" sang and danced festively for one hour or longer, strewed her road full of beads, trinkets, and similar articles, and scattered costly strings of beads on her path.
But the happy bridegroom had to surrender some of his wardrobe when the party had arrived at his lodge. After blankets had been spread on the ground, his new-made female relations stripped him of his dress, shirts, and breeches, went also for his relatives and stripped them of their coats, hats, blankets, shirts, breeches, and guns, the women of their long dresses and shawls. This disorderly scene also involved the dividing of the purchase-money or values paid by the bridegroom to his wife's relatives, who through politeness returned him at least a part of the plunder in guns, powder, shirts, coats, and other articles of wardrobe.
Among the Oregonian tribes, the lot of slaves and bondsmen was not so hard as with other tribes farther north. No doubt the origin of slavery must be sought in capture through war; nevertheless, among the Atfálati, slaves were allowed to marry fellow-slaves, even free persons when horses were paid to their owner for the permission. This payment also insured them, later on, the right of personal liberty. Slaves of the same proprietor were allowed to marry, but slaves belonging to different owners could marry only when the owner bought the other slaves. After that, they were not sold away from each other. Their children remained in slavery, but could not be sold by the owner to other parties, or at least were not sold generally.
Albert S. Gatschet.
Washington, D. C.