164 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 



destroy one of these reptiles, believing that were they to do so the 

 whole race of rattle-snakes would rise up and bite them. Under the 

 influence of the white man, however, their respect for their grand- 

 father the rattle-snake gradually died away, till at last they killed 

 him without compunction or ceremony whenever they met him. 

 The writer who records the old custom observes that he had often 

 reflected on the curious connection which appears to subsist in the 

 mind of an Indian between man and the brute creation ; " all 

 animated nature," says he, "in whatever degree, is in their eyes a 

 great whole, from which they have not yet ventured to separate 

 themselves 1 ." 



Some of the Indians of Peru boasted of being descended from the 

 puma or American lion ; hence they adored the lion as a god and 

 appeared at festivals like Hercules dressed in the skins of lions with 

 the heads of the beasts fixed over their own. Others claimed to be 

 sprung from condors and attired themselves in great black and white 

 wings, like that enormous bird 2 . The Wanika of East Africa look 

 upon the hyaena as one of their ancestors or as associated in some 

 way with their origin and destiny. The death of a hyaena is mourned 

 by the whole people, and the greatest funeral ceremonies which they 

 perform are performed for this brute. The wake held over a chief 

 is as nothing compared to the wake held over a hyaena ; one 

 tribe only mourns the death of its chief, but all the tribes unite 

 to celebrate the obsequies of a hyaena 3 . Some Malagasy families 

 claim to be descended from the babacoote (Lichanotus brevi- 

 caudatus), a large lemur of grave appearance and staid demeanour, 

 which lives in the depth of the forest. When they find one of 

 these creatures dead, his human descendants bury it solemnly, 

 digging a grave for it, wrapping it in a shroud, and weeping and 

 lamenting over its carcase. A doctor who had shot a babacoote was 

 accused by the inhabitants of a Betsimisaraka village of having killed 

 "one of their grandfathers in the forest," and to appease their 

 indignation he had to promise not to skin the animal in the village 

 but in a solitary place where nobody could see him 4 . Many of the 



1 Rev. John Heckewelder, "An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs, of the 

 Indian Nations, who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States," Trans- 

 actions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society, i. 

 (Philadelphia, 1819), pp. 245, 247, 248. . 



2 Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, Vol. I. 

 p. 323, Vol. ii. p. 156 (Markham's translation). 



3 Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa (London, 1873), p. 122. 

 * Father Abinal, "Croyances fabuleuses des Malgaches," Les Hissio?is Catholiques, xii. 



(1880), p. 526; G. H. Smith, "Some Betsimisaraka superstitions," The Antananarivo 

 Annual and Madagascar Magazine, No. 10 (Antananarivo, 1886), p. 239 ; H. W. Little, 

 Madagascar, its History and People (London, 1884), pp. 321 sq. ; A. van Gennep, Tabou et 

 Totemisme a Madagascar (Paris, 1904), pp. 214 sqq. 



