The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-07-22
HUMAN SACRIFICES.
The Savage Belief That They Check
Epidemics Not Yet Extant in the
Empire of the Gear.
Russian Letter In london Lancet.

! me savage Bel1ef That They Check
Epidemics Not Yet Extant in the
Empire of the Gear.
Russian Letter in London Lancet
A highly interested discussion recently
took place at the Anthropological Society
of the Army Medical Academy in St.
Petersburg, upon the subject of Human
Sacrifices" A paper with this title was
read by Prof. Ivanobsk;, who stated that
few years ago a legal case arose, in
which the Votiak inhabitants of certain
place in one of the northeastern govern
ments of Russia were charged with muir
! derlng peasant from neigh boring vii
lage IN order to obtain the internal organs
/ Tor use at some pagan sacrifice. The
| head had been cut of, and was, in fact,
never found; the upper part of the spinal
column and parts of the upper ribs at
tached 10 it had been removed,
and through this opening the whole
of the contents of the thorax had
| been extracted. 1t appears that there
are three forms of animal sacrifice among
the Votiaks: (D Private ones at certain
times of the year, when some small ami
NAL or bird is killed; (2) public ones, on
| some great holiday, when a large animal
IS put to death; (3) exceptional occasions,
! such as the occurrence OF some great dis
aster. famine, or epidemic. On these
! occasions it may be an animal, or it may
! be human being that the ''lretz' Cor
heather priest) selects as suita BILE sacri-
fee to the gods. Under the present con-
/ dltlOns of police supervision, extending
/ even to the remotest places, such an event
| as the sacrifice of human being is, of
! course, very rare; but the reader of the
paper brought forward complete proof
that it has occurred within recent times.
| In 1877 at 10 arrhaaolouipa.
held in Kazan, Mr.. Soloveif discussed this
! question, and the occurrence of snch Incl
| dents was fully confirmed by Mr. Smir-
nof, who pointed to certain persons
then living who had actually been con-
! demned to be sacrificed, but had sue
! ceeded in escaping. 1t seems, then, that
| there can be no doubt that there exists in
| Europe at the present moment race,
part of whose creed does not exclude the
murder of human being TO appease those
| evil spirits to whom all misfortunes are to
| be found all over the world, and it is not
a very great step from the belief that cpl
| denies and famines are the outward and
| visible signs of the anger of some offended
| evil spirit to the belief that the voluntary
sacrifice of living human being will APP
/ pease the spirits anger, and cause him or
her (for the spirit is sometimes a female
| one) to check the further course of the
! particular misfortune. The Votiaks are a
! Finnish race said to mum Der some 250, 900,
and living IN the eastern part of the gov
! eminent of Viatka Only a small num-
Der of them have embraced Christianity.
! But the paganiSm or Christianity of the
persons holding such superstitions
scarcely enters into the question. As
| Prof. Ivanovski pointed out, in the gov
eminent Of Minsk in 1855, an old woman
was burned alive in order to check the
cholera epidemic then raging He might
| have quoted a case much nearer the pres
ent day. In 1892 in Pelvinnaia, in the
government of TomSk, the inhabitants
were most DESTROYS of killing a healthy
man In order to appeaSe the cholera and
every night they went round the village
firing guns in order to kill the cholera, :"
which was supposed to be woman with
buckets in her hands. In Bielova, in the
same government, the peasants searched
everywhere to find the witch who had al
| lowed cholera to come to their village At
! last shepherd promised to find what
/ they wanted, and he named an old woman
who had, however, recently died from
! cholera. The wretched panic-mdddened
/ peasants dug up the corpse and imagined
/ they saw in its mouth a cross, They
Wrecked their vengeance on the body by
! all sorts OF mutations and then buried
it again. The only result was thatcholera
! spread worse than ever. The story is not
without its ludicrous side IN the fact that
| the peasants, finding that they had been
! deluded, beat the shepherd to a ielly,"
and sent him bound TO the volost authori-
ties. The main point of the incident is
that there can be little doubt that, had
the shepherd named living instead of a
dead person, the person would have been
killed TO appease the cholera.