SCATALOGIC RITES
OF ALL NATIONS.

A Dissertation upon the Employment of Excrementitious Remedial Agents in Religion, Therapeutics, Divination, Witchcraft, Love-Philters, etc., in all Parts of the Globe.

Based upon Original Notes and Personal Observation, and upon Compilation from over One Thousand Authorities.

BY
CAPTAIN JOHN G. BOURKE,
Third Cavalry, U. S. A.,

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Member of the Anthropological Society, of Washington, D.C.; Member of the “Congres des Américanistes;” Associate Member of the Victoria Institute and Philosophical Society of Great Britain; Member of the Society of American Folk-Lore;

Author of the “Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona;” “An Apache Campaign;” “Notes on the Theogony and Cosmogony of the Mojaves”; “The Gentile Organization of the Apaches;” “Mackenzie’s Last Fight with the Cheyennes,” and other works.

NOT FOR GENERAL PERUSAL.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
W. H. LOWDERMILK & CO.
1891.

Copyright, 1891,
By John G. Bourke.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

PREFACE.

The subject of Scatalogic or Stercoraceous Rites and Practices, however repellent it may be under some of its aspects, is none the less deserving of the profoundest consideration,—if for no other reason than that from the former universal dissemination of such aberrations of the intellect, as well as of the religious impulses of the human race, and their present curtailment or restriction, the progress of humanity upward and onward may best be measured.

Philosophical and erudite thinkers of past ages have published tomes of greater or less magnitude upon this subject; among these authors, it may be sufficient, at this moment, to mention Schurig, Etmuller, Flemming, Paullini, Beckherius, Rosinus Lentilius, and Levinus Lemnius. The historian Buckle regarded the subject as one well worthy of examination and study, as will appear in the text from the memoranda found in his scrap-books after his death.

The philosopher Boyle is credited with the paternity of a work which appeared over the signature “B,” bearing upon the same topic.

The anonymous author or authors of the very learned pamphlet “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” for the perusal of which I am indebted to the courtesy of Surgeon John S. Billings, collected a mass of most valuable bibliographical references.

Quite recently there have appeared in the “Mitterlungen Gesselsch.,” Wien, 1888, two pages of the work of Dr. M. Hofler, “Volksmedicin und Aberglaube in Oberbayern Gegenwart und Vergangenheit,” describing some of the excrementitious remedies still existing in the folk-medicine of Bavaria.

But while treatises upon this subject are by no means rare, they are not accessible, except to those scholars who are within reach of the largest libraries; and while all, or nearly all, indicate the association of these practices with sorcery and witchcraft, as well as with folk-medicine, no writer has hitherto ventured to suggest the distinctively religious derivation to be ascribed to them.

From the moment when the disgusting “Urine Dance of the Zuñis” was performed in the author’s presence down to the hour of concluding this work, a careful examination has been made of more than one thousand treatises of various kinds and all sizes, from the musty pig-skin covered black letter of the fifteenth century to the more modest but not less valuable pamphlet of later years. These treatises have covered the field of primitive religion, medicine, and magic, and have likewise included a most liberal portion of the best books of travel and observation among primitive peoples in every part of the world; not only English authorities, but also the writings of the best French, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Celtic authors are here presented, together with an examination of what has come down to us from leaders of Eastern religious thought and from the monastic “leeches” of the Anglo-Saxons.

A great number of examples of the use of stercoraceous remedies has been inserted under the head of “Therapeutics,” for two excellent reasons: first, to show that the use of such remedies was most widely disseminated; and secondly, to demonstrate that this use had been handed down from century to century.

Had any other course been followed, objection might have been raised that unusual remedies, or those of eccentric practitioners only, had been sought for and quoted for the purpose of proving that Filth Pharmacy was a thoroughly consistent and fully developed school in the science of therapeutics, from the most primitive times down to and even overlapping our own days.

A perusal of this volume cannot fail to convince the most critical that it has been written in a spirit of fairness as much as is possible to human nature, and without prepossession or prejudice in any direction.

The fact that so many citations have been incorporated in this compilation without comment, may be claimed as an additional proof of the unbiassed character of the work.

No collection of facts constitutes a science. All that can properly be done with facts not positively known to be related, is to place them, as here placed, in juxtaposition, leaving the reader to frame his own conclusions; by no other method can an author escape the imputation of distorting or perverting evidence.

The great number of letters received from distinguished scholars in all parts of the world, from Edinburgh to New South Wales, attests the interest felt in this treatise, and at the same time places the author under obligations which words cannot express. Special acknowledgments are due to:—

Professor W. Robertson Smith, Editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Major-General J. G. Forlong, author of “The Rivers of Life,” Edinburgh.

Havelock Ellis, Esq., Editor of the Contemporary Science Series.

Prof. Tyrrell S. Leith, of Bombay (since dead).

Frank Rede Fowke, Esq., South Kensington Museum, London.

James G. Frazer, Esq., M. A., author of “The Golden Bough,” Trinity College, Cambridge.

Dr. Gustav Jaeger, of Stuttgart.

Dr. J. W. Kingsley, of Cambridge.

Prof. E. B. Tylor, Oxford.

Prof. E. N. Horsford, Harvard University.

Prof. F. W. Putnam, Peabody Archæological Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

Surgeon Washington Matthews, U. S. Army.

Surgeon B. J. D. Irwin, U. S. Army.

F. B. Kyngdon, Esq., Secretary Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales.

J. F. Mann, Esq., Sydney, New South Wales.

John Frazer, Esq., LL.D., Sydney, New South Wales.

Capt. Henri Jouan, French Navy.

Dr. Bernard, Cannes, France.

Dr. Robert Fletcher.

Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.

Dr. Henry Stricker, Frankfort, Germany.

Chief Engineer Melville, U. S. Navy.

Prof. Otis T. Mason, National Museum, Washington, D. C.

William H. Gilder, the Arctic explorer and writer.

Dr. Albert S. Gatschet, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, Editor of “The Sunday School Times,” of Philadelphia, Penn.

Hon. Lambert Tree, ex-minister to Russia.

Andrew Lang.

J. S. Hittel, San Francisco, Cal.

M. M. H. Gaidoz, editor of “Mélusine,” Paris.

Dr. S. B. Evans, Ottumwa, Ia.

Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.

Mr. W. W. Rockhill, the distinguished Oriental scholar and explorer.

Hon. H. T. Allen, Secretary Corean Legation.

Mrs. F. D. Bergen, and many other correspondents.

Last, but not least, to Dr. J. Hampden Porter, of the city of Washington, whose friendly offices amounted practically to a collaboration.

All papers of this series which relate to the manners and usages of the Indians of the southwestern portion of our territory, especially those concerning the urine dances, phallic dances, snake dances of the Zuñis, Mokis, and other Pueblos; the Navajoes of New Mexico; the sun dance of the Sioux, etc., have been compiled from memoranda gathered under the direction of Lieutenant-General P. H. Sheridan, in 1881 and 1882. Those referring to Apaches, etc., of Arizona; to Northern Mexico; to pueblo ruins and cliff and cave dwellings; to Sioux, Cheyennes, Crows, Arapahoes, Pawnees, Shoshones, Utes, and other tribes, extending back to 1869, were mainly obtained while the author was serving as aide-de-camp upon the staff of Brigadier-General George Crook, during the campaigns conducted by that officer against hostile tribes west of the Missouri, from the British line down into Mexico, and to a considerable extent under General Crook’s direction, and with his encouragement and assistance.

The translations from German texts were made by Messrs. Smith, Pratz, and Bunnemeyer, while for the analysis of the pills made out of the ordure of the Grand Lama of Thibet, the author desires to express his acknowledgments to Dr. W. M. Mew.

J. G. B.

CONTENTS.

SCATALOGIC RITES
OF ALL NATIONS.

I.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

“The proper study of mankind is man.”

“The study of man is the study of man’s religion.”—Max Müller.

“Few who will give their minds to master the general principles of savage religion will ever again think it ridiculous.... Far from its beliefs and practices being a rubbish heap of miscellaneous folly, they are consistent and logical in so high a degree as to begin, as soon as even roughly classified, to display the principles of their formation and development; and these principles prove to be essentially rational, though working in a mental condition of intense and inveterate ignorance.”—Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, New York, 1874, vol. i. p. 21.

The object of the present monograph is to arrange in a form for easy reference such allusions as have come under the author’s notice bearing upon the use of human or animal ordure or urine or articles apparently intended as substitutes for them, whether in rites of a clearly religious or “medicine” type, or in those which, while not pronouncedly such, have about them suggestions that they may be survivals of former urine dances or ur-orgies among tribes and peoples from whose later mode of life and thought they have been eliminated.

The difficulties surrounding the elucidation of this topic will no doubt occur to every student of anthropology or ethnology. The rites and practices herein spoken of are to be found only in communities isolated from the world, and are such as even savages would shrink from revealing unnecessarily to strangers; while, too frequently, observers of intelligence have failed to improve opportunities for noting the existence of rites of this nature, or else, restrained by a false modesty, have clothed their remarks in vague and indefinite phraseology, forgetting that as a physician, to be skilful, must study his patients both in sickness and in health, so the anthropologist must study man, not alone wherein he reflects the grandeur of his Maker, but likewise in his grosser and more animal propensities.

When the first edition of “Notes and Memoranda,” etc., upon this subject, was distributed by the Smithsonian Institution, the author was prepared to believe that, to a large and constantly increasing circle of scholars, the subject would prove of unusual interest, and that, to repeat the words of a great emperor, as quoted by a greater philosopher, all belonging to primitive man was worthy of scrutiny and examination by those who would become familiar with his history and evolution.

“We ought to be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, ‘homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,’ or translating his words literally, ‘I am a man; nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.’”—(Max Müller, “Chips from a German Workshop.” Maximilian was using a citation from Terence.)

The author also felt that to such a circle it would not be necessary for him to make an apology analogous to that with which Pellegrini sought to defend the noble profession of medicine in the early days of printing.[1] But it was with no inconsiderable amount of pride that he saw his pamphlet honored by the earnest attention of men eminent in the world of thought, who by suggestion and criticism, given in kindness and received with gratitude, have contributed to the amplification of the original “Notes and Memoranda” into the present treatise.

That these disgusting rites are distinctively religious in origin, no one, after a careful perusal of all that is to be presented upon that head, will care to deny; and that their examination will be productive of important results will be equally incontrovertible when that examination shall be conducted on the broad principle that the benefit or detriment mankind may have received from religion in general or from any particular form of religion, can be ascertained only by a comparison between man’s actions and principles of conduct in the earliest stages of culture, and those observable while actuated by the religious sentiment of the present day.

Hebrews and Christians will discover a common ground of congratulation in the fact that believers in their systems are now absolutely free from any suggestion of this filth taint, every example to the contrary being in direct opposition to the spirit and practice of those two great bodies to which the world’s civilization is so deeply indebted.

But under another point of view, the study of primitive man is an impossibility and an absurdity unless prosecuted as an investigation into his mode of religious thought, since religion guided every thought and deed of his daily life. Rink, after saying that the “whole study of prehistoric man ... which has hitherto almost exclusively been founded upon the study of the ornaments, weapons, and other remains of primitive peoples,” must in future be based upon an inquiry into their spiritual thought, remarks that “The time will surely come when any relic of spiritual life brought down to us from prehistoric mankind, which may still be found in the folk-lore of the more isolated and primitive nations, will be valued as highly as those primitive remains.”—(“Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Rink, Edinburgh, 1875, page 6 of Preface.)

Repugnant, therefore, as the subject is under most points of view, the author has felt constrained to reproduce all that he has seen and read, hoping that, in the fuller consideration that all forms of primitive religion are now receiving, this, the most brutal, possibly, of all, may claim some share of examination and discussion. To serve as a nucleus for notes and memoranda since gleaned, the author has reproduced his original monograph, first published in the Transactions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1885, and read by title at the Ann Arbor, Michigan, meeting, in the same year.

II.
THE URINE DANCE OF THE ZUÑIS.

On the evening of November 17, 1881, during my stay in the village of Zuñi, New Mexico, the Nehue-Cue, one of the secret orders of the Zuñis, sent word to Mr. Frank H. Cushing,[2] whose guest I was, that they would do us the unusual honor of coming to our house to give us one of their characteristic dances, which, Cushing said, was unprecedented.

The squaws of the governor’s family put the long living-room to rights, sweeping the floor and sprinkling it with water to lay the dust. Soon after dark the dancers entered; they were twelve in number, two being boys. The centre men were naked, with the exception of black breech-clouts of archaic style. The hair was worn naturally, with a bunch of wild-turkey feathers tied in front, and one of corn husks over each ear. White bands were painted across the face at eyes and mouth. Each wore a collar or neckcloth of black woollen stuff. Broad white bands, one inch wide, were painted around the body at the navel, around the arms, the legs at mid-thighs, and knees. Tortoise-shell rattles hung from the right knee. Blue woollen footless leggings were worn with low-cut moccasins, and in the right hand each waved a wand made of an ear of corn, trimmed with the plumage of the wild turkey and macaw. The others were arrayed in old, cast-off American Army clothing, and all wore white cotton night-caps, with corn-husks twisted into the hair at top of head and ears. Several wore, in addition to the tortoise-shell rattles, strings of brass sleigh-bells at knees. One was more grotesquely attired than the rest, in a long India-rubber gossamer “overall,” and with a pair of goggles, painted white, over his eyes. His general “get-up” was a spirited take-off upon a Mexican priest. Another was a very good counterfeit of a young woman.

To the accompaniment of an oblong drum and of the rattles and bells spoken of they shuffled into the long room, crammed with spectators of both sexes and of all sizes and ages. Their song was apparently a ludicrous reference to everything and everybody in sight, Cushing, Mindeleff, and myself receiving special attention, to the uncontrolled merriment of the red-skinned listeners. I had taken my station at one side of the room, seated upon the banquette, and having in front of me a rude bench or table, upon which was a small coal-oil lamp. I suppose that in the halo diffused by the feeble light, and in my “stained-glass attitude,” I must have borne some resemblance to the pictures of saints hanging upon the walls of old Mexican churches; to such a fancied resemblance I at least attribute the performance which followed.

The dancers suddenly wheeled into line, threw themselves on their knees before my table, and with extravagant beatings of breast began an outlandish but faithful mockery of a Mexican Catholic congregation at vespers. One bawled out a parody upon the pater-noster, another mumbled along in the manner of an old man reciting the rosary, while the fellow with the India-rubber coat jumped up and began a passionate exhortation or sermon, which for mimetic fidelity was incomparable. This kept the audience laughing with sore sides for some moments, until, at a signal from the leader, the dancers suddenly countermarched out of the room in single file as they had entered.

An interlude followed of ten minutes, during which the dusty floor was sprinkled by men who spat water forcibly from their mouths. The Nehue-Cue re-entered; this time two of their number were stark naked. Their singing was very peculiar, and sounded like a chorus of chimney-sweeps, and their dance became a stiff-legged jump, with heels kept twelve inches apart. After they had ambled around the room two or three times, Cushing announced in the Zuñi language that a “feast” was ready for them, at which they loudly roared their approbation, and advanced to strike hands with the munificent “Americanos,” addressing us in a funny gibberish of broken Spanish, English, and Zuñi. They then squatted upon the ground and consumed with zest large “ollas” full of tea, and dishes of hard tack and sugar. As they were about finishing this a squaw entered, carrying an “olla” of urine, of which the filthy brutes drank heartily.

I refused to believe the evidence of my senses, and asked Cushing if that were really human urine. “Why, certainly,” replied he, “and here comes more of it.” This time it was a large tin pailful, not less than two gallons. I was standing by the squaw as she offered this strange and abominable refreshment. She made a motion with her hand to indicate to me that it was urine, and one of the old men repeated the Spanish word mear (to urinate), while my sense of smell demonstrated the truth of their statements.

The dancers swallowed great draughts, smacked their lips, and, amid the roaring merriment of the spectators, remarked that it was very, very good. The clowns were now upon their mettle, each trying to surpass his neighbors in feats of nastiness. One swallowed a fragment of corn-husk, saying he thought it very good and better than bread; his vis-à-vis attempted to chew and gulp down a piece of filthy rag. Another expressed regret that the dance had not been held out of doors, in one of the plazas; there they could show what they could do. There they always made it a point of honor to eat the excrement of men and dogs.

For my own part, I felt satisfied with the omission, particularly as the room, stuffed with one hundred Zuñis, had become so foul and filthy as to be almost unbearable. The dance, as good luck would have it, did not last many minutes, and we soon had a chance to run into the refreshing night air.

To this outline description of a disgusting rite, I have little to add. The Zuñis, in explanation, stated that the Nehue-Cue were a Medicine Order, which held these dances from time to time to inure the stomachs of members to any kind of food, no matter how revolting. This statement may seem plausible enough when we understand that religion and medicine, among primitive races, are almost always one and the same thing, or at least so closely intertwined, that it is a matter of difficulty to decide where one begins and the other ends.[3]

Religion, in its dramatic ceremonial, preserves, to some extent, the history of the particular race in which it dwells. Among nations of high development, miracles, moralities, and passion plays have taught, down to our own day, in object lessons, the sacred history in which the spectators believed. Some analogous purpose may have been held in view by the first organizers of the urine dance. In their early history, the Zuñis and other Pueblos suffered from constant warfare with savage antagonists and with each other. From the position of their villages, long sieges must of necessity have been sustained, in which sieges famine and disease, no doubt, were the allies counted upon by the investing forces. We may have in this abominable dance a tradition of the extremity to which the Zuñis of the long ago were reduced at some unknown period. A similar catastrophe in the history of the Jews is intimated in 2 Kings xviii. 27; and again in Isaiah xxxvi. 12: “But Rab-shakeh said unto them: hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you?” In the course of my studies I came across a reference to a very similar dance, occurring among one of the fanatical sects of the Arabian Bedouins, but the journal in which it was recorded, the “London Lancet,” I think, was unfortunately mislaid.[4]

As illustrative of the tenacity with which such vile ceremonial, once adopted by a sect, will adhere to it and become ingrafted upon its life, long after the motives which have suggested or commended it have vanished in oblivion, let me quote a few lines from Max Müller’s “Chips from a German Workshop,” “Essay upon the Parsees,” pp. 163, 164, Scribner’s edition, 1869: “The nirang is the urine of a cow, ox, or she-goat, and the rubbing of it over the face and hands is the second thing a Parsee does after getting out of bed. Either before applying the nirang to the face and hands, or while it remains on the hands after being applied, he should not touch anything directly with his hands; but, in order to wash out the nirang, he either asks somebody else to pour water on his hands, or resorts to the device of taking hold of the pot through the intervention of a piece of cloth, such as a handkerchief or his sudra,—that is, his blouse. He first pours water on his hand, then takes the pot in that hand and washes his other hand, face, and feet.”—(Quoting from Dadabhai-Nadrosi’s “Description of the Parsees.”)

Continuing, Max Müller says: “Strange as this process of purification may appear, it becomes perfectly disgusting when we are told that women, after childbirth, have not only to undergo this sacred ablution, but actually to drink a little of the nirang, and that the same rite is imposed on children at the time of their investiture with the Sudra and Koshti,—the badges of the Zoroastrian faith.”

Before proceeding further it may be advisable to clinch the fact that the Urine Dance of the Zuñis was not a sporadic instance, peculiar to that pueblo, or to a particular portion of that pueblo; it was a tribal rite, recognized and commended by the whole community, and entering into the ritual of all the pueblos of the Southwest.

Upon this point a few words from the author’s personal journal of Nov. 24, 1881, may well be introduced to prove its existence among the Moquis,—the informant, Nana-je, being a young Moqui of the strictest integrity and veracity: “In the circle I noticed Nana-je and the young Nehue-cue boy who was with us a few nights since. During a pause in the conversation I asked the young Nehue if he had been drinking any urine lately. This occasioned some laughter among the Indians; but to my surprise Nana-je spoke up and said: ‘I am a Nehue also. The Nehue of Zuñi are nothing to the same order among the Moquis. There the Nehue not only drink urine, as you saw done the other night, but also eat human and animal excrement. They eat it here too; but we eat all that is set before us. We have a medicine which makes us drunk like whiskey; we drink a lot of that before we commence; it makes us drunk. We don’t care what happens; and nothing of that kind that we eat or drink can ever do us any harm.’ The Nehue-cue are to be found in all the pueblos on the Rio Grande and close to it; only there they don’t do things openly.”

In addition to the above, we have the testimony of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, who has lived for many years among the Moquis, and who confirms from personal observation all that has been here said.

The extracts from personal correspondence with Professor Bandelier are of special value, that gentleman having devoted years of painstaking investigation to the history of the Pueblos, and acquired a most intimate knowledge of them, based upon constant personal observation and scholarship of the highest order.

In a personal letter, dated Santa Fé, N. M., June 7, 1888, he tells, among much other most interesting information, that he saw at the Pueblo of Cochiti, on Nov. 10, 1880, “the Koshare eating their own excrement.”

The following description of the “Club-house” of the Nehue-cue may be of interest: “It was twenty-one paces long, nine paces wide, with a banquette running round on three sides; in front of the altar were sacred bowls of earthenware, with paintings of tadpoles to typify water of summer, frogs for perennial water, and the sea-serpent for ocean water. (They describe the sea-serpent (vibora del mar) as very large, with feathers (spray?) on its head, eating people who went into the water, and when cut up with big knives yielding a great deal of oil.) In the first of the sacred dishes was a conch-shell from the sea, wands made of ears of corn, with hearts of chalchihuitl, and exterior ornamentation of the plumage of the parrot and turkey. Bowls of sacred meal (kunque) were on the floor; this sacred meal, to be found in niches in the house of every Zuñi, or for that matter of almost every pueblo throughout New Mexico and Arizona, is generally made of a mixture of blue corn-meal, shells, and chalchihuitl; but for more solemn occasions, as the old Indian Pedro Pino assured me, sea-sand is added. Around the room at intervals were pictographs of birds,—ducks and others,—nine in number on one side, and nine of clown-gods on the other. These pictures were fairly well delineated in black and in red and yellow ochre. The god of “The Winged Knife” was represented back of the altar. In this room were also kept several of the painted oblong wooden drums seen in every sacred dance.”—(Extract from personal notes of Captain Bourke, Nov. 17, 1881.)

“Have you ever, while in New Mexico, witnessed the dance of that cluster or order called the “Ko-sha-re” among the Queres, “Ko-sa-re” among the Tehuas, and “Shu-re” among the Tiguas? I have witnessed it several times; and these gentlemen, many of whom belong to the circle of my warm personal friends, display a peculiar appetite for what the human body commonly not only rejects, but also ejects. I am sorry that I did not know of your work any sooner, as else I could have given you very full descriptions of these dances. The cluster in question have a very peculiar task, inasmuch as the ripening of all kinds of fruits is at their charge, even the fruit in the mother’s womb, and their rites are therefore of sickening obscenity. The swallowing of excrements is but a mild performance in comparison with what I have been obliged to see and witness.”—(Letter from Professor Bandelier, dated at Santa Fé, N. M., April 25, 1888.)

Major Ferry, whom the author met in the office of General Robert McFeely, Acting Secretary of War, Oct. 5, 1888, stated that he was the son of the first Protestant missionary to build a church at Mackinaw, and that the Indians of the Ojibway tribe who lived in the neighborhood of that post indulged from time to time in orgies in which the drinking of urine was a feature.

Mr. Daniel W. Lord, a gentleman who was for a time associated with Mr. Frank H. Cushing in his investigations among the Zuñis of New Mexico, makes the following statement:—

“In June, 1888, I was a spectator of an orgy at the Zuñi pueblo in New Mexico. The ceremonial dance of that afternoon had been finished in the small plaza generally used for dances in the northwestern part of the pueblo when this supplementary rite took place. One of the Indians brought into the plaza the excrement to be employed, and it was passed from hand to hand and eaten. Those taking part in the ceremony were few in number, certainly not more than eight or ten. They drank urine from a large shallow bowl, and meanwhile kept up a running fire of comments and exclamations among themselves, as if urging one another to drink heartily, which indeed they did. At last one of those taking part was made sick, and vomited after the ceremony was over. The inhabitants of the pueblo upon the housetops overlooking the plaza were interested spectators of the scene. Some of the sallies of the actors were received with laughter, and others with signs of disgust and repugnance, but not of disapprobation. The ceremony was not repeated, to my knowledge, during my stay at the pueblo, which continued till July, 1889.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke, dated Washington, D. C., May 26, 1890.)

III.
THE FEAST OF FOOLS IN EUROPE.

Closely corresponding to this urine dance of the Zuñis was the Feast of Fools in Continental Europe, the description of which here given is quoted from Dulaure:—

“La grand’messe commençait alors; tous les ecclésiastiques y assistaient, le visage barbouillé de noir, ou couvert d’un masque hideux ou ridicule. Pendant la célébration, les uns, vêtus en baladins ou en femmes, dansaient au milieu du chœur et y chantaient des chansons bouffones ou obscènes. Les autres venaient manger sur l’autel des saucisses et des boudins, jouer aux cartes ou aux dez, devant le prêtre célébrant, l’encensaient avec un encensoir, ou brûlaient de vieilles savates, et lui en faisaient respirer la fumée.

“Après la messe, nouveaux actes d’extravagance et d’impiété. Les prêtres, confondus avec les habitants des deux sexes, couraient, dansaient dans l’église, s’excitaient à toutes les folies, à toutes les actions licencieuses que leur inspirait une imagination effrénée. Plus de honte, plus de pudeur; aucune digue n’arrêtait le débordement de la folie et des passions....

“Au milieu du tumulte, des blasphêmes et des chants dissolus, on voyait les uns se dépouiller entièrement de leurs habits, d’autres se livrer aux actes du plus honteux libertinage.

“ ... Les acteurs, montés sur des tombereaux pleins d’ordures, s’amusaient à en jeter à la populace qui les entouraient.... Ces scènes étaient toujours accompagnées de chansons ordurières et impies.”—(Dulaure, “Des Divinités Génératrices,” chap. xv. p. 315 et seq., Paris, 1825.)

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE FEAST OF FOOLS AND THE URINE DANCE.

In the above description may be seen that the principal actors (taking possession of the church during high mass) had their faces daubed and painted, or masked in a harlequin manner; that they were dressed as clowns or as women; that they ate upon the altar itself sausages and blood-puddings. Now the word “blood-pudding” in French is boudin; but boudin also meant “excrement.”[5] Add to this the feature that these clowns, after leaving the church, took their stand in dung-carts (tombereaux), and threw ordure upon the by-standers; and finally that some of these actors appeared perfectly naked (“on voyait les uns se dépouiller entièrement de leurs habits”), and it must be admitted that there is certainly a wonderful concatenation of resemblances between these filthy and inexplicable rites on different sides of a great ocean.

THE FEAST OF FOOLS TRACED BACK TO MOST ANCIENT TIMES.

Dulaure makes no attempt to trace the origin of these ceremonies in France; he contents himself with saying, “Ces cérémonies ... ont subsisté pendant douze ou quinze siècles,” or, in other words, that they were of Pagan origin. In twelve or fifteen hundred years the rite might have been well sublimed from the eating of pure excrement, as among the Zuñis, to the consumption of the boudin, the excrement symbol.[6] Conceding for the moment that this suspicion is correct, we have a proof of the antiquity of the urine dance among the Zuñis. So great is the resemblance between the Zuñi rite and that just described by Dulaure that we should have reason for believing that the new country borrowed from the old some of the features transmitted to the present day; and were there not evidence of a wider distribution of this observance, it might be assumed that the Catholic missionaries (who worked among the Zuñis from 1580, or thereabout, and excepting during intervals of revolt remained on duty in Zuñi down to the period of American occupation) found the obscene and disgusting orgy in full vigor, and realizing the danger, by unwise precipitancy, of destroying all hopes of winning over this people, shrewdly concluded to tacitly accept the religious abnormality and to engraft upon it the plant flourishing so bravely in the vicinity of their European homes.

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE FEAST OF FOOLS.

In France the Feast of Fools disappeared only with the French Revolution; in other parts of Continental Europe it began to wane about the time of the Reformation. In England, “the abbot of unreason,” whose pranks are outlined by Sir Walter Scott in his novel “The Abbot,” the miracle plays which had once served a good purpose in teaching Scriptural lessons to an illiterate peasantry, and the “moralities” of the same general purport, faded away under the stern antagonism of the Puritan iconoclast. The Feast of Fools, as such, was abolished by Henry VIII. A.D. 1541.—(See “The English Reformation,” Francis Charles Massingberd, London, 1857, p. 125.)[7]

Picart’s account of the Feast of Fools is similar to that given by Dulaure. He says that it took place in the church, at Christmas tide, and was borrowed from the Roman Saturnalia; was never approved of by the Christian church as a body, but fought against from the earliest times:—

“Les uns étoient masqués ou avec des visages barbouillés qui faisoìent peur ou qui faisoìent rire; les autres en habits de femmes ou de pantomimes, tels que sont les ministres du théatre.

“Ils dansoient dans le chœur, en entrant, et chantoient des chansons obscènes. Les Diacres et les sou-diacres prenoient plaisir à manger des boudins et des saucisses sur l’autel, au nez du prêtre célébrant; ils jouoient à des jeux aux cartes et aux dés; ils mettoient dans l’encensoir quelques morceaux de vieilles savates pour lui faire respirer une mauvaise odeur.

“Après la messe, chacun couroit, sautoit et dansoit par l’église avec tant d’impudence, que quelques uns n’àvoient pas honte de se porter à toutes sortes d’indécences et de se dépouillier entièremênt; ensuite, ils se faisoìent trainer par les rues dans des tombereaux pleins d’ordures, d’ou ils prenoient plaisir d’en jeter à la populace qui s’assembloit autour d’eux.

“Ils s’arrétoient et faisoient de leurs corps des mouvements et des postures lascives qu’ils accompagnoient de paroles impudiques.

“Les plus impudiques d’entre les séculiers se mêloient parmi le clergé, pour faire aussi quelques personnages de Foux en habits ecclésiastiques de Moines et de Religieuses.”—(Picart, “Coûtumes et Cérémonies réligieuses de toutes les Nations du Monde,” Amsterdam, Holland, 1729, vol. ix. pp. 5, 6).

Diderot and d’Alembert use almost the same terms; the officiating clergy were clad “les uns comme des bouffons, les autres en habits de femmes ou masqués d’une façon monstrueuse ... ils mangeaient et jouaient aux dés sur l’autel à côté du prêtre qui célébroit la messe. Ils mettoient des ordures dans les encensoirs.” They say that the details would not bear repetition. This feast prevailed generally in Continental Europe from Christmas to Epiphany, and in England, especially in York.—(Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopædia, “Fête des Fous,” Geneva, Switzerland, 1779.)

Markham discovers a resemblance between the “Monk of Misrule” of Christendom in the Middle Ages, and “Gylongs dressed in parti-colored habits ... singing and dancing before the Teshu Lama in Thibet.”—(See Markham’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, page 95, footnote. See also Bogle’s description of the ceremonies in connection with the New Year, in presence of the Teshu Lama, in Markham’s “Thibet,” p. 106.)

The Mandans had an annual festival one of the features of which was “the expulsion of the devil.... He was chased from the village ... the women pelting him with dirt.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, London, 1890, vol. ii. p. 184, quoting Catlin’s “North American Indians,” page 166.)

The authors who have referred at greater or less length, and with more or less preciseness, to the Feast of Fools, Feast of Asses, and others of that kind, are legion; unfortunately, without an exception, they have contented themselves with a description of the obscene absurdities connected with these popular religious gatherings, without attempting an analysis of the underlying motives which prompted them, or even making an intelligent effort to trace their origin. Where the last has been alluded to at all, it has almost invariably been with the assertion that the Feast of Fools was a survival from the Roman Saturnalia.

This can scarcely have been the case; in the progress of this work it is purposed to make evident that the use of human and animal egestæ in religious ceremonial was common all over the world, antedating the Roman Saturnalia, or at least totally unconnected with it. The correct interpretation of the Feast of Fools would, therefore, seem to be that which recognized it as a reversion to a pre-Christian type of thought dating back to the earliest appearance of the Aryan race in Europe.

The introduction of the Christian religion was accompanied by many compromises; wherever it was opposed by too great odds, in point of numbers, it permitted the retention of practices repugnant to its own teachings; or, if the term “permitted” be an objectionable one to some ears, we may substitute the expression “acquiesced in” for “permitted,” and then follow down the course of persistent antagonism, which, after a while, modified permanent retention into a periodical, perhaps an irregular, resumption, and this last into burlesque survival.

Ducange, in his “Glossarium,” introduces the Ritual of the Mass at the Feast of the Ass, familiar to most readers,—but he adds nothing to what has already been quoted in regard to the Feast of Fools itself.

This reference from Ducange will also be found in Schaff-Herzog, “Religious Encyclopædia,” New York, 1882, article “Festival.” This Ritual was written out in 1369 at Viviers in France.

Fosbroke gives no information on the subject of the Feast of Fools not already incorporated in this volume. He simply says: “In the Feast of Fools they put on masks, took the dress, etc., of women, danced and sung in the choir, ate fat cakes upon the horn of the altar, where the celebrating priest played at dice, put stinking stuff from the leather of old shoes in the censer, jumped about the church, with the addition of obscene jests, songs, and unseemly attitudes. Another part of this indecorous buffoonery was shaving the precentor of fools upon a stage, erected before the church, in the presence of the people; and during the operation he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses and gestures. They also had carts full of ordure which they threw occasionally upon the populace. This exhibition was always in Christmas time or near it, but was not confined to a particular day.”—(Rev. Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, “Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. 2, article “Festivals.” Most of his information seems to be derived from Ducange.)

“The Feast of Fools was celebrated as before in various masquerades of Women, Lions, Players, etc. They danced and sung in the choir, ate fat cakes upon the horn of the altar, where the celebrating priest played at dice, put stinking stuff from the leather of old shoes into the censer, ran, jumped, etc., through the church.”[8]

In Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1873, vol. 3, pp. 497-505, will be found a pretty full description of the Lords of Misrule, but the only reference of value for our purposes is one from Polydorus Virgil, who recognized the derivation of these Feasts from the Roman Saturnalia. “There is nothing,” says the author of the essay to retrieve the Ancient Celtic, “that will bear a clearer demonstration than that the primitive Christians, by way of conciliating the Pagans to a better worship, humored their prejudices by yielding to a conformity of names and even of customs, where they did not interfere with the fundamentals of the Christian doctrine.... Among these, in imitation of the Roman Saturnalia, was the Festum Fatuorum, when part of the jollity of the season was a burlesque election of a mock-pope, mock-cardinals, mock-bishops, attended with a thousand ridiculous and indecent ceremonies, gambols, and antics, such as singing and dancing in the churches, in lewd attitudes, to ludicrous anthems, all allusively to the exploded pretensions of the Druids whom these sports were calculated to expose to scorn and derision. This Feast of Fools,” continues he, “had its designed effect, and contributed perhaps more to the extermination of these heathens than all the collateral aids of fire and sword, neither of which were spared in the persecution of them.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 36.)

Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” edition of London, 1855, article “Festival of Fools,” in lib. iv. cap. 3, contains nothing not already learned.

Jacob Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology” (Stallybrass), London, 1882, vol. i. p. 92, has the following:—

“The collection of the Letters of Boniface has a passage lamenting the confusion of Christian and heathen rites into which foolish or reckless priests had suffered themselves to fall.”

Banier shows that on the First of January the people of France ran about the streets of their towns, disguised as animals, masked and playing all sorts of pranks. This custom was derived from the Druids and lasted in full vigor “to the twelfth century of the Christian era.”—(“Mythology,” Banier, vol. iii. p. 247.)

“The heathen gods even, though represented as feeble in comparison with the true God, were not always pictured as powerless in themselves; they were perverted into hostile, malignant powers, into demons, sorcerers, and giants, who had to be put down, but were nevertheless credited with a certain mischievous activity and influence. Here and there a heathen tradition or a superstitious custom lived on by merely changing the names and applying to Christ, Mary, and the saints what had formerly been related and believed of idols.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Jacob Grimm (Stallybrass), London, 1882, vol. i. Introduction, page 5.) ... “At the time when Christianity began to press forward, many of the heathen seem to have entertained the notion, which the missionaries did all in their power to resist, of combining the new doctrine with the ancient faith and even of fusing them into one.—(Idem, p. 7.) ... Of Norsemen, as well as of Anglo-Saxons, we are told that some believed at the same time in Christ and in heathen gods, or at least continued to invoke the latter in particular cases in which they had formerly proved helpful to them. So even by Christians much later the old deities seem to have been named and their aid invoked in enchantments and spells.—(Idem, pp. 7 and 8.) ... The Teutonic races forsook the faith of their fathers very gradually and slowly from the fourth to the eleventh century.”—(Idem, p. 8.)

On the following pages, 9, 10, and 11, Grimm shows us how little is really known of the religions of ancient Europe, whether of the Latin or of the Teutonic or Celtic races; he alludes to “the gradual transformation of the gods into devils, of the wise women into witches, of the worship into superstitious customs.—(Idem, p. 11.) Heathen festivals and customs were transformed into Christian.—(Idem, p. 12.) ... Private sacrifices, intended for gods or spirits, could not be eradicated among the people for a long time, because they were bound up with customs and festivals, and might at last become an unmeaning practice.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 1009.)

“It is a natural and well-known fact that the gods of one nation become the devils of their conquerors or successors.”—(Folk-Medicine, William George Black, London, 1883, p. 12.)

“Few things are so indestructible as a superstitious belief once implanted in human credulity.... The sacred rites of the superseded faith become the forbidden magic of its successors.”—(“History of the Inquisition,” Henry Charles Lea, New York, 1888, vol. iii. p. 379.) “Its gods become evil spirits.”—(Idem, p. 379.) ... The same views are advanced in Madame Blavatsky’s “Isis Unveiled.”

THE “SZOMBATIAKS” OF TRANSYLVANIA.

In further explanation of the tenacity with which older cults survive long after the newer religions seem to have gained predominance in countries and nations, it is extremely appropriate to introduce a passage from an article in the “St. James’ Gazette,” entitled “Crypto-Jews,” reprinted in the Sunday edition of the “Sun,” New York, sometime in October, 1888.

The writer, in speaking of the Szombatiaks of Transylvania, remarks: “The crypto-Judaism of the Szombatiaks was suspected for centuries, but not until twenty years ago was it positively known. Then, on the occasion of a Jewish emancipation act for Hungary, the sturdy old peasants, indistinguishable in dress, manners, and language from the native Szeklers, sent a deputation to Pesth to ask that their names might be erased from the church rolls. They explained that they were Jews whose forefathers had settled in Hungary at the time of the expedition of Titus to Dacia. Though baptized, married, and buried as Christians, maintaining Christian pastors, and attending Christian churches, they had always in secret observed their ancient religion.”

It is a matter of surprise to find so little on the subject of the Feast of Fools in Forlong’s comprehensive work on Religion. All that he says is that “the Yule-tide fêtes were noted for men disguising themselves as women, and vice versa, showing their connection with the old Sigillaria of the Saturnalia, which, formerly observed on the 14th of January, were afterwards continued to three, four, five, and some say seven days, and by the common people even until Candlemas Day. Both were prohibited when their gross immoralities became apparent to better educated communities. ‘In Paris,’ says Trusler in his ‘Chronology,’ ‘the First of January was observed as Mask Day for two hundred and forty years, when all sorts of indecencies and obscene rites occurred.’”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 434.)

In addition to the above, there is evidence of its survival among the rustic population of Germany. Brand enumerates many curious practices of the carnival just before Ash Wednesday, and even on that day, after the distribution of the ashes. Young maidens in Germany were carried “in a cart or tumbrel” by the youths of the village to the nearest brook or pond, and there thoroughly ducked, the drawers of the cart throwing dust and ashes on all near them. In Oxfordshire it was the custom for bands of boys to stroll from house to house singing and demanding largess of eggs and bacon, not receiving which, “they commonly cut the latch of the door or stop the key-hole with dirt” (“Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. pp. 94 et seq., article “Ash Wednesday”), “or leave some more nasty token of displeasure” (idem). This may have been a survival from the Feast of Fools. Brand refers to Hospinian, “De Origine Festorum Christianorum,” “for several curious customs and ceremonies observed abroad during the three first days of the Quinquagesima week” (p. 99).

Turning from the Teutonic race to the Slav, we find that the Feast of Fools seems still to linger among the Russian peasantry. “At one time a custom prevailed of going about from one friend’s house to another masked, and committing every conceivable prank. Then the people feasted on blinnies,—a pancake similar to the English crumpet” (“A Hoosier in Russia,” Perry S. Heath, New York, 1888, p. 109); all this at Christmas-tide.

Something very much like it, without any obscene features, was noted by Blunt in the early years of the present century. See his “Vestiges,” p. 119.

Hone (“Ancient Mysteries Described,” London, 1823, pp. 148 et seq.) thinks that a Jewish imitation of the Greek drama of the close of the second century, whose plot, characters, etc., were taken from the Exodus, was the first miracle play. The author was one Ezekiel, who was believed to have written it with a patriotic purpose after the destruction of Jerusalem. The early Fathers—Cyril, Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Augustine—inveighed against sacred dramas; but the outside pressure was too great, and the Church was forced to yield to popular demand.

As late as the fifteenth century Pius II. said that the Italian priests had probably never read the New Testament; and Robert Stephens made the same charge against the doctors of the Sorbonne in the same age.

The necessity of dramatic representation would therefore soon outweigh objections made on the score of historical anachronism or doctrinal inaccuracy in these miracle plays.

Theophylact, Patriarch of Constantinople in the tenth century, is credited by the Byzantine historian Cedranus with the introduction of the Feast of Fools and Feast of the Ass, “thereby scandalizing God and the memory of his saints, by admitting into the sacred service diabolical dances, exclamations of ribaldry, and ballads borrowed from the streets and brothels.”—(Hone, quoting Wharton, “Miscellaneous Writings upon the Drama and Fiction,” vol. ii. p. 369.)

In 1590, at Paris, the mendicant orders, led by the Bishop of Senlis, paraded the streets with tucked up robes, representing the Church Militant. These processions were believed to be the legitimate offspring of heathen pageants,—that is, that of Saint Peter in Vinculis was believed to be the transformed spectacle in honor of Augustus’s victory at Actium, etc.

Beletus describes the Feast of Fools as he saw it in the twelfth century. His account, given by Hone (p. 159), agrees word for word with that of Dulaure, excepting that, through an error of translation perhaps, he is made to say that the participants “ate rich puddings on the corners of the altar;” but as the word “pudding” meant even in the English language a meat pudding or sausage, the error is an immaterial one.

Victor Hugo describes in brief the Feast of Fools as seen at Paris in 1482, on the 6th of January. He says that the “Fête des Rois and the Fête des Fous were united in a double holiday since time immemorial.” His description is very meagre, but from it may be extracted the information that in these feasts of fools female actresses appeared masked; that the noblest and greatest personages in the kingdom of France were among the prominent spectators; but there is not much else. (See the opening chapters of “Notre Dame.”)

The Festival of Moharren in Persia is a kind of miracle play, or Passion play, commemorating the rise and progress of Islamism. “Among these occurrences are the deaths of Hassein and Hossein, the birth of the prophet, the martyrdom of the Imam Rezah, and the death of Fatimeh, daughter of Mahomet.”—(Benjamin, “Persia,” London, 1887.)

This reference to the use of pudding or sausage on the altar itself is the most persistent feature in the descriptions of the whole ceremony. But little difficulty will be experienced in showing that it was originally an excrement sausage, prepared and offered up, perhaps eaten, for a definite purpose. This phase of the subject will be considered further on; for the present only one citation need be introduced to show that in carnival time human excrement itself, and not the symbol, made its appearance:—

“The following extract from Barnaby Googe’s translation of ‘Naogeorgus’ will show the extent of these festivities (that is, those of the carnival at Shrove Tuesday). After describing the wanton behavior of men dressed as women and of women arrayed in the garb of men, of clowns dressed as devils, as animals, or running about perfectly naked, the account goes on to say:—

“‘But others bear a torde, that on a cushion soft they lay;

And one there is that with a flap doth keep the flies away:

I would there might another be, an officer of those,

Whose room might serve to take away the scent from every nose.’”—

(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 66, article “Shrove Tuesday.”)

The Puritan’s horror of heathenish rites and superstitious vestiges had for its basis something far above unreasoning fanaticism; he realized, if not through learned study, by an intuition which had all the force of genius, that every unmeaning practice, every rustic observance, which could not prove its title clear to a noble genealogy was a pagan survival, which conscience required him to tear up and destroy, root and branch.

The Puritan may have made himself very much of a burden and a nuisance to his neighbors before his self-imposed task was completed, yet it is worthy of remark and of praise that his mission was a most effectual one in wiping from the face of the earth innumerable vestiges of pre-Christian idolatry.

This being understood, some importance attaches to the following otherwise vague couplet from “Hudibras.”

“Butler mentions the black pudding in his ‘Hudibras,’ speaking of the religious scruples of some of the fanatics of his time:—

“‘Some for abolishing black pudding,

And eating nothing with the blood in.’”—

(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 400, article “Martinmas.”)

These sausages, made in links, certainly suggest the boudins of the Feast of Fools. They were made from the flesh, blood, and entrails of pork killed by several families in common on the 17th day of December, known as “Sow Day.”

In the early days of the Reformation in Germany, in the May games, the Pope was “portrayed in his pontificalibus riding on a great sow, and holding before her taster a dirty pudding.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)

The most sensible explanation of the Feast of Fools that has as yet appeared is to be found in Frazer’s “Golden Bough” (London, 1890, vol. i. pp. 218 et seq., article “Temporary Kings”). He shows that the regal power was not in ancient times a life tenure, but was either revoked under the direction of the priestly body when the incumbent began to show signs of increasing age and diminishing mental powers, or at the expiration of a fixed period,—generally about twelve years. In the lapse of time the king’s abdication became an empty form, and his renunciation of powers purely farcical, his temporary successor a clown who amused the fickle populace during his ephemeral assumption of honors. Examples are drawn from Babylonia, Cambodia, Siam, Egypt, India, etc., the odd feature being that these festivals occur at dates ranging from our February to April. During the festival in Siam, in the month of April, “the dancing Brahmans carry buffalo horns with which they draw water from a large copper caldron and sprinkle it on the people; this is supposed to bring good luck.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Fraser, M.A., London, 1890, vol. i. p. 230.)

In the preceding paragraph we have a distinct survival. The buffalo horns may represent phalli, and the water may be a substitute for a liquid which to the present generation might be more objectionable.

But upon another matter stress should be laid; in both the Feast of Fools and in the Urine Dance of the Zuñis, it has been shown that some of the actors were naked or disguised as women.

No attempt is made to prove anything in regard to the European orgy, because research has thrown no light upon the reasons for which the participants assumed the raiment of the opposite sex.

In the case of the Zuñis, the author has had, from the first, a suspicion, which he took occasion to communicate to Professor F. W. Putnam three years since, that these individuals were of the class called by Father Lafitau “hommes habillés en femme,” and referred to with such frequency by the earliest French and Spanish authorities. This suspicion has been strengthened by correspondence lately received from Professor Bandelier which is, however, suppressed at the request of the latter.

In this connection, the student should not fail to read the remarkable contribution of A. B. Holder, M. D., of Memphis, Tennessee, in the New York Medical Journal of Dec. 7, 1889, entitled “The Boté: description of a peculiar sexual perversion found among the North American Indians.”

An explanation of the “hommes habillés en femme,” may be suggested in the following from Boas, descriptive of certain religious dances of the Eskimo: “Those who were born in abnormal presentations, wear women’s dresses at this feast, and must make their round in a direction opposite to the movement of the sun.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in Sixth Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1888, p. 611.)

IV.
THE COMMEMORATIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS.

The opinion expressed above concerning the commemorative character of religious festivals echoes that which Godfrey Higgins enunciated several generations ago. The learned author of “Anacalypsis” says that festivals “accompanied with dancing and music” ... “were established to keep in recollection victories or other important events.” (Higgins’ “Anacalypsis,” London, 1810, vol. ii. p. 424.) He argues the subject at some length on pages 424-426, but the above is sufficient for the present purpose.

“In the religious rites of a people I should expect to find the earliest of their habits and customs.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 15.)

Applying the above remark to the Zuñi dance, it may be interpreted as a dramatic pictograph of some half-forgotten episode in tribal history. To strengthen this view by example, let us recall the fact that the army of Crusaders under Peter the Hermit was so closely beleaguered by the Moslems in Nicomedia in Bithynia that they were compelled to drink their own urine. We read the narrative set out in cold type. The Zuñis would have transmitted a record of the event by a dramatic representation which time would incrust with all the veneration that religion could impart.

The authority for the above statement in regard to the Crusaders is to be found in Purchas, “Pilgrims,” lib. 8, cap. 1, p. 1191. Neither Gibbon nor Michaud expresses this fact so clearly, but each speaks of the terrible sufferings which decimated the undisciplined hordes of Walter the Penniless and Peter, and reduced the survivors to cannibalism.

The urine of horses was drunk by the people of Crotta while besieged by Metellus.—(See, in Montaigne’s Essays, “On Horses,” cap. xlviii.; see also, in Harington, “Ajax”—“Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 42.)

Shipwrecked English seamen drank human urine for want of water. (See in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1188.) In the year 1877 Captain Nicholas Nolan, Tenth Cavalry, while scouting with his troop after hostile Indians on the Staked Plains of Texas, was lost; and as supplies became exhausted, the command was reduced to living for several days on the blood of their horses and their own urine, water not being discovered in that vicinity.—(See Hammersley’s Record of Living Officers of the United States Army.)

History is replete with examples of the same general character; witness the sieges of Jerusalem, Numantia, Ghent, the famine in France under Louis XIV., and many others.

THE GENERALLY SACRED CHARACTER OF DANCING.

“Dancing was originally merely religious, intended to assist the memory in retaining the sacred learning which originated previous to the invention of letters. Indeed, I believe that there were no parts of the rites and ceremonies of antiquity which were not adopted with a view to keep in recollection the ancient learning before letters were known.”—(Higgins’ “Anacalypsis,” vol. ii. p. 179.)

In one of the sieges of Samaria, it is recorded that “The fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung sold for five pieces of silver.”—(2 Kings, vi. 25.)

There is another interpretation of the meaning of this expression, not so literal, which it is well to insert at this point.

“When Samaria was besieged, the town was a prey to all the horrors of famine; hunger was so extreme that five pieces of silver was the price given for a small measure (fourth part of a cab) of dove’s dung. This seems, at first sight, ridiculous. But Bochart maintains very plausibly that this name was then and is now given by the Arabs to a species of vetch (pois chiches).”—(“Philosophy of Magic,” Eusebe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. i. p. 70.)

“The pulse called garbansos is believed by certain authors to be the dove’s dung mentioned at the siege of Samaria; ... they have likewise been taken for the pigeons’ dung mentioned at the siege of Samaria. And, indeed, as the cicer is pointed at one end and acquires an ash color in parching, the first of which circumstances answers to the figure, the other to the usual color of pigeons’ dung, the supposition is by no means to be disregarded.”—(“Shaw’s Travels in Barbary,” in “Pinkerton’s Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. xv. p. 600.)

FRAY DIEGO DURAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE MEXICAN FESTIVALS.

All that Higgins believed was believed and asserted by the Dominican missionary Diego Duran. Duran complains bitterly that the unwise destruction of the ancient Mexican pictographs and all that explained the religion of the natives left the missionaries in ignorance as to what was religion and what was not. The Indians, taking advantage of this, mocked and ridiculed the dogmas and ceremonies of the new creed in the very face of its expounders, who still lacked a complete mastery of the language of the conquered. The Indians never could be induced to admit that they still adhered to their old superstitions, or that they were boldly indulging in their religious observances; many times, says the shrewd old chronicler, it would appear that they were merely indulging in some pleasant pastime, while they were really engaged in idolatry; or that they were playing games, when truly they were casting lots for future events before the priest’s eyes; or that they were subjecting themselves to penitential discipline, when they were sacrificing to their gods. This remark applied to all that they did. In dances, in baths, in markets, in singing their songs, in their dramas (the word is “comedia,” a comedy, but a note in the margin of the manuscript says that probably this ought to be “comida,” food, or dinner, or feast), in sowing, in reaping, in putting away the harvest in their granaries, even in tilling the ground, in building their houses, in their funerals, in their burials, in marriages, in the birth of children, into everything they did entered idolatry and superstition.

“Parece muchas veces pensar que estan haciendo placer y estan idolatrando; y pensar que estan jugando y estan echando suertes de los sucesos delante de nuestros ojos y no los entendemos y pensamos que se disciplinan y estanse sacrificando.

“Y asi erraron mucho los que con bueno celo (pero no con mucha prudencia), quemaron y destruyeron al principio todas las pinturas de antiguallas que tenian; pues, nos dejaron tan sin luz que delante de nuestros ojos idolatran y no los entendemos.

“En los mitotes, en los baños, en los mercados, y en los cantares que cantan lamentando sus Dioses y sus Señores Antiguos, en las comedias, en los banquetes, y en el diferenciar en el de ellas, en todo se halla supersticion é idolátria; en el sembrar, en el coger, en el encerrar en los troges, hasta en el labrar la tierra y edificar las casas; pues en los mortuorios y entierros, y en los casamientos y en los nacimientos de los niños, especialmente si era hijo de algun Señor; eran estrañas las ceremonias que se le hacian; y donde todo se perfeccionaba era en la celebration de las fiestas; finalmente, en todo mezclaban supersticion é idolatria; hasta en irse á bañarse al rio los viejos, puesto escrúpulo á la republica sino fuese habiendo precedido tales y tales ceremonias; todo lo cual nos es encubierto por el gran secreto que tienen.”—(Diego Duran, lib. 2, concluding remarks.)

Fray Diego Duran, a Fray Predicador of the Dominican order, says, at the end of his second volume, that it was finished in 1581.

The very same views were held by Father Geronimo Boscána, a Franciscan, who ministered for seventeen years to the Indians of California. Every act of an Indian’s life was guided by religion.—(See “Chinigchinich,” included in A. A. Robinson’s “California,” New York, 1850.)

The Apaches have dances in which the prehistoric condition of the tribe is thus represented; so have the Mojaves and the Zuñis; while in the snake dance of the Moquis and the sun dance of the Sioux the same faithful adherence to traditional costume and manners is apparent.

THE URINE DANCE OF THE ZUÑIS MAY CONSERVE A TRADITION OF THE TIME WHEN VILE ALIMENT WAS IN USE.

The Zuñi dance may therefore not improperly be considered among other points of view, under that which suggests a commemoration of the earliest life of this people, when vile aliment of every kind may have been in use through necessity.

An examination of evidence will show that foods now justly regarded as noxious were once not unknown to nations of even greater development than any as yet attained by the Rio Grande Pueblos.

Necessity was not always the inciting motive; frequently religious frenzy was responsible for orgies of which only vague accounts and still vaguer explanations have come down to us.

The religious examples will be adduced at a later moment, as will those in which human or animal excreta have been employed in ordeals and punishments, terrestrial and supernal.

So long as the lines of investigation are included within civilized limits, the instances noticed very properly fall under the classification of mania and of abnormal appetite; and the latter, in turn, may be subdivided into the two classes of the innate and the acquired, the second of which has presented a constant decrease since physicians have rejected such disgusting remedial agents from the Materia Medica.

That both human ordure and urine have been, and that they may still to a limited extent be, added by the rustic population of portions of Europe to the contents of love-philters is a fact established beyond peradventure; and that the followers of the Grand Lama of Thibet stand accused, on what has the semblance of excellent authority, of obtaining from their priests the egestæ of that potent hierarch and adopting them as condiments, food, charms, amulets, and talismans, as well as internal medicines, will be fully stated in the chapters devoted to that purpose.

Schurig gives numerous examples of the eating of human and animal excrement by epileptics, by maniacs, by chlorotic young women, or by women in pregnancy, by children who had defiled their beds and dreading detection swallowed the evidences of their guilt, and finally by men and women with abnormal appetites.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, pp. 45, 81, 84, 780-782.)

Burton relates the story of a young German girl, Catherine Gualter, in 1571, as told by Cornelius Gemma, who vomited, “among other things, pigeons’ dung and goose-dung.” She was apparently a victim of hysteria, and in her paroxysms had previously swallowed all manner of objectionable matter.—(See “Anatomy of Melancholy,” edition of London, 1806, vol. i. p. 76.)

“On a vu, surtout dans les hôpitaux, des femmes se faire un jeu d’avaler clandestinement leurs urines à mesure qu’elles les rendaient, et essayer faire croire qu’elles n’en rendaient point du tout.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke from Mr. Frank Rede Fowke, dated Department of Science and Art, South Kensington Museum, London, S. W., June 18, 1888.)

V.
HUMAN EXCREMENT USED IN FOOD BY THE INSANE AND OTHERS.

The subject of excrement-eating among insane persons has engaged the attention of medical experts. H. B. Obersteiner, in a communication to the “Psychiatrisches Centralblatt,” Wien, 1871, vol. iii. p. 95, informs that periodical that Dr. A. Erlenmeyer, Jr., induced by a lecture delivered by Professor Lang in 1872, had prepared a tabulated series of data embodying the results of his observations upon the existence of coprophagy among insane persons. He found that one in a hundred of persons suffering from mental diseases indulged in this abnormal appetite; the majority of these were men. No particular relation could be established between excrement-eating and Onanism; and no deleterious effect upon the alimentary organs was detected.

“In pathological reversion of type, due to cerebral disease, there are certain stages in some forms of mental disease in which some of the actions to which you refer are not uncommon.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke from Surgeon John S. Billings, U. S. Army, in charge of the Army Medical Museum, dated Washington, D. C., April 23, 1888.)

“A boy of four years old had fouled in bed; but being much afraid of whipping, he ate his own dung, yet he could not blot the sign out of the sheets; wherefore, being asked by threatenings, he at length tells the chance. But being asked of its savor, he said it was of a stinking and somewhat sweet one.... A noble little virgin, being very desirous of her salvation, eats her own dung, and was weak and sick. She was asked of what savor it was, and she answered it was of a stinking and a waterishly sweet one.” These examples Von Helmont says were personally known to him, as was that of the painter of Brussels who, going mad, subsisted for twenty-three days on his own excrements.—(See Von Helmont’s “Oritrika” (English translation), London, 1662, pp. 211, 212. Von Helmont’s work is a folio of 1161 pages.)

A French lady was in the habit of carrying about her pulverized human excrements, which she ate, and would afterwards lick her fingers. (Christian Franz Paullini, “Dreck Apothek,” Frankfort, 1696, p. 9.) Paullini also gives the instance of the painter of Brussels already cited on preceding page.

“Bouillon Lagrange, pharmacien à Paris, que ses confrères appellaient Bouillon à Pointu, a publié un ouvrage, intitulé la Chimie du Goût, sur la fabrication des liqueurs de table, et il donne la recette d’une préparation qu’il appelle Eau de Mille Fleurs qui se compose de bouse de vache, infusée dans l’eau de vie.”—(“Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” pp. 93-96.)

“As to the excrements of the cow, they are still used to form the so-called ‘eau de mille fleurs,’ recommended by several pharmacopœias as a remedy for cachexy.”—(“Zoological Mythology,” Angelo de Gubernatis, London, 1874, vol. i. p. 275-277.)

“Scatophagi. Ces gourmets d’un genre particulier, ces ruminants de nouvelle espèce, ces épicuriens blasés ou raffinés, s’appellaient scatophages, ou scybalophages. (De scybales, scybala, σκύβαλα. Voyez dans Dioscoride, lib. 5, c. 77, et Gorreus, Def. med. p. 579, les diverses acceptions de ce mot.) L’empereur Commode était de ceux-là; ‘Dicitur sæpe prætiosissimis cibis humana stercora miscuisse, nec abstinuisse gustu,’ dit Lampride (Vie de l’empereur Commode, p. 160). Riedlinus (Linear. Medic., an. 1697, mens. nov. obs. 23, p. 800) rapporte le cas d’une femme qui affirmait ‘nullum cibum in tota vita sua palato magis satisfecisse.’ Sauvage (Nosologie méthodique) dit qu’une fille lui a avoué qu’elle avait mangé jadis avec un plaisir infini la croûte qui s’attache aux murailles des latrines. Zacutus Lusitanus a connu une demoiselle qui, ayant par hasard goûté ses excréments, en fit dans la suite sa nourriture favorite, au point qu’elle ne pouvait en passer sans être malade.

“J. J. Wypffer, Dec. III? an. 2, obs. 135, schol., p. 199, rapporte un fait du même genre. De même: Ehrenfreid; Pagendornius (Obs. et hist. phys. med. cent. 3, hist. 95); Daniel Eremita (Descript. Helvet. oper. p. 402); P. Tollius (Epist. itinerar. 62, p. 247); Tob. Pfanner (Diatrib. de Charismati, seu miracul. et antiq. eccles., c. 2); [Citations are also made from Von Helmont, Frommann, Posinus Lentilius, and Paullini, which have been quoted elsewhere direct from those authors.] P. Borellus (Obs. phys. med. cent. 4, obs. 2); J. Johnstonus (Thaumagograph, admirand. homin. c. 2, art. 2); George Hanneous (Dec. II., an. 8, obs. 115); P. Romelius (Dec. III., an. 7 and 8, obs. 40); Mich. Bern. Valentin. (Novell. med. log. as. II). Nous croyons nous rappeler qu’il existe des exemples du même genre dans l’ouvrage de J. B. Cardan, intitulé: ‘De Abstinentis ab usu ciborum fetidorum,’ libellus imprimé à la suite du traité ‘De Utilitate ex adversis capienda’ de son père. On a connu à Paris un riche bourgeois, nommé Paperal, qui, par une étrange dépravation de goût, avalait des excréments de petits enfants. (Virey, Nouv. Dict. d’hist. nat. Deterville, tom. X.) La traduction même rapporte qu’ils les mangeait avec une cuiller d’or. Ce n’est pas le seul exemple d’un goût aussi bizarre. Bouillon portait toujours une boîte d’or remplie non de tabac, mais des excréments humains. (Voy. Dulaure, Hist. de Paris, edit. de 1825, t. VII. p. 262.)”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pages 93 to 96.)

“La fiente de bécasse, dont les fines gourmets, véritablement scatophages, sont, comme on sait, très friands.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, p. 133.)

In this curious book, full of learning and research, there are citations from more than three hundred authorities, some of them, of course, merely obscene and not coming within the purview of these notes, but others, as may be readily understood from reading the extracts taken from them, of the highest value in a scientific sense. Schurig gives an instance of voracity in which a certain glutton, after consuming all other food in sight, was wont to satisfy himself with urine and excrement: “Et si panes deerant, sua ipse excrementa comedebat et lotium bibebat.” (Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 52.) A case is given of a patient who having once experienced the beneficial effects of mouse-dung in some complaint, became a confirmed mouse-dung eater, and was in the habit of picking it up from the floor of his house before the servants could sweep it away.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 823 et seq.)

The enceinte wife of a farmer in the town of Hassfort, on the Main, ate the excrements of her husband, warm and smoking.—(See Christian Franz Paullini, “Dreck Apothek,” edition of Frankfort, 1696, page 8. See also quotation from “Ephemeridum Physico-Medicorum,” Leipsig. 1694, on page 212 of this volume.)

“Chacun en fait, en voit, en sent, en touche, en parle, souvent en écrit, quelquefois en lit, et si chacun n’en mange pas, c’est que nous ne sommes pas encore au temps où les bécasses tomberont toutes rôties; mais de celui-là en voudrait manger.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, p. 21, “Oratio pro Guano Humano.”)

An extract is here given from a letter sent to Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, Princess-Palatine, daughter of Charles Louis, Elector-Palatine of the Rhine, born at Heidelberg, in 1652; she married the brother of Louis XIV., the widower of Henrietta Maria of England.

The letter in question was sent her by her aunt, the wife of the Elector of Hanover, and may serve to give an idea of the boldness of the opinions entertained by the ladies of high rank in that era, and the coarseness with which they expressed them:—

“Hanovre, 31 Octobre, 1694.

“Si la viande fait la merde, il est vrai de dire que la merde fait la viande.... Est-ce que dans les tables les plus délicates, la merde n’y est pas servie en ragoûts?... Les boudins, les andouilles, les saucisses, ne sont-ce pas des ragoûts dans des sacs à merde?”

The letters here spoken of are to be found almost complete in the Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pages 17-21.

The following appeared in an article headed “The Last Cholera Epidemic in Paris,” in the “General Homœopathic Journal,” vol. cxiii., page 15, 1886: “The neighbors of an establishment famous for its excellent bread, pastry, and similar products of luxury, complained again and again of the disgusting smells which prevailed therein and which penetrated into their dwellings. The appearance of cholera finally lent force to these complaints, and the sanitary inspectors who were sent to investigate the matter found that there was a connection between the water-closets of these dwellings and the reservoir containing the water used in the preparation of the bread. This connection was cut off at once, but the immediate result thereof was a perceptible deterioration of the quality of the bread. Chemists have evidently no difficulty in demonstrating that water impregnated with ‘extract of water-closet,’ has the peculiar property of causing dough to rise particularly fine, thereby imparting to bread the nice appearance and pleasant flavor which is the principal quality of luxurious bread.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Gustav Jaeger, Stuttgart, Germany. See page 39.)

VI.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF EXCREMENT IN FOOD BY SAVAGE TRIBES.

The very earliest accounts of the Indians of Florida and Texas refer to the use of such aliment. Cabeza de Vaca, one of the survivors of the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez, was a prisoner among various tribes for many years, and finally, accompanied by three comrades as wretched as himself, succeeded in traversing the continent, coming out at Culiacan, on the Pacific Coast, in 1536. His narrative says that the “Floridians,” “for food, dug roots, and that they ate spiders, ants’ eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, earth, wood, the dung of deer, and many other things.”[9] The same account, given in Purchas’s “Pilgrims” (vol. iv. lib. 8, cap. 1, sec. 2, p. 1512) expresses it that “they also eat earth, wood, and whatever they can get; the dung of wild beasts.” These remarks may be understood as applying to all tribes seen by this early explorer east of the Rocky mountains.

Gómara identifies this loathsome diet with a particular tribe, the “Yaguaces” of Florida. “They eat spiders, ants, worms, lizards of two kinds, snakes, earth, wood, and ordure of all kinds of wild animals.”[10]

The California Indians were still viler. The German Jesuit, Father Jacob Baegert, speaking of the Lower Californians (among whom he resided continuously from 1748 to 1765), says:—

“They eat the seeds of the pitahaya (giant cactus) which have passed off undigested from their own stomachs; they gather their own excrement, separate the seeds from it, roast, grind, and eat them, making merry over the loathsome meal.” And again: “In the mission of Saint Ignatius, ... there are persons who will attach a piece of meat to a string and swallow it and pull it out again a dozen times in succession, for the sake of protracting the enjoyment of its taste.”—(Translation of Dr. Charles F. Rau, in Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1866, p. 363.)

A similar use of meat tied to a string is understood to have once been practised by European sailors for the purpose of teasing green comrades suffering from the agonies of sea-sickness.

(Fuegians.) “One of them immediately coughed up a piece of blubber which he had been eating and gave it to another, who swallowed it with much ceremony and with a peculiar guttural noise.”—(“Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. i. p. 315.)

The same information is to be found in Clavigero (“Historia de la Baja California,” Mexico, 1852, p. 24), and in H. H. Bancroft’s “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 561; both of whom derive from Father Baegert. Orozco y Berra also has the story; but he adds that oftentimes numbers of the Californians would meet and pass the delicious tid-bit from mouth to mouth.[11]

Castañeda alludes to the Californians as a race of naked savages, who ate their own excrement.[12]

The Indians of North America, according to Harmon, “boil the buffalo paunch with much of its dung adhering to it,”—a filthy mode of cooking which in itself would mean little, since it can be paralleled in almost all tribes. But in another paragraph the same author says: “Many consider a broth made by means of the dung of the cariboo and the hare to be a dainty dish” (Harmon’s “Journal,” etc., Andover, 1820, p. 324).[13]

The Abbé Domenech asserts the same of the bands near Lake Superior: “In boiling their wild rice to eat, they mix it with the excrement of rabbits,—a delicacy appreciated by the epicures among them” (Domenech, “Deserts,” vol. ii. p. 311).

Of the negroes of Guinea an old authority relates that they “ate filthy, stinking elephant’s and buffalo’s flesh, wherein there is a thousand maggots, and many times stinks like carrion. They eat raw dogge guts, and never seethe nor roast them” (De Bry, Ind. Orient. in Purchas’s “Pilgrims,” vol. ii. p. 905). And another says that the Mosagueys make themselves a “pottage with milk and fresh dung of kine, which, mixed together and heat at the fire, they drinke, saying it makes them strong” (Purchas, lib. 9, cap. 12, sec. 4, p. 1555).

The Peruvians ate their meat and fish raw; but nothing further is said by Gómara. “Comen crudo la carne y el pescado” (Gómara, “Hist. de las Indias,” p. 234.)

The savages of Australia “make a sweet and luscious beverage by mixing taarp with water. Taarp is the excrement of a small green beetle, wherein the larvæ thereof are deposited.”—(“The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina,” P. Beveridge, Melbourne, 1889, p. 126; received through the kindness of the Royal Society of Sydney, New South Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)

“One of them (Snakes), who had seized about nine feet of the entrails, was chewing it at one end, while with his hand he was diligently clearing his way by discharging the contents of the other. It was indeed impossible to see these wretches ravenously feeding on the filth of animals, and the blood streaming from their mouths, without deploring how nearly the condition of savages approaches that of the brute creation.”—(Lewis and Clark, quoted by Spencer, “Descriptive Sociology: ‘Snakes.’”)

“Some authors have said that all the Hottentots devour the entrails of beasts, uncleansed of their filth and excrements, and that, whether sound or rotten, they consider them as the greatest delicacies in the world; but this is not true. I have always found that when they had entrails to eat they turned and stripped them of their filth and washed them in clear water.”—(“Peter Kolben’s Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope,” in Knox’s “Voyages and Travels,” London, 1777, vol. ii. p. 385.)

Atkinson declined to dine with a party of Kirghis who had killed a sheep, “having seen the entrails put into the pan after undergoing but a very slight purification.”—(“Siberia,” T. W. Atkinson, New York, 1865, p. 219, and again p. 433.)

“The entrails of animals and other refuse matter thrown overboard from the English ships is eagerly collected and eaten by the Cochi-Chinese, whom Mr. White even accuses of having a predilection for filth.”—(“Encyc. of Geography,” Philadelphia, 1845, vol. ii. p. 397, article “Farther India.”)

(Arabs of the Red Sea.) “The water of Dobelew and Irwee tasted strongly of musk, from the dung of the goats and antelopes, and the smell before you drink it is more nauseous than the taste.”—(“Travels to discover the Source of the Nile,” James Bruce, Dublin, 1790, vol. i. p. 367.)

From thus enduring water polluted with the excrements of animals to drinking beverages to which urine has been purposely added, as Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Chaille Long show to have been the custom of the negroes near Gondokoro with their milk, is but a very small step.

Chaille Long relates that in Central Africa he and his men were obliged to drink water which was a mixture of the excrements of the rhinoceros and the elephant (see “Central Africa,” New York, 1877, p. 86). Livingston tells us that the Africans living along the banks of the Zambesi are careful not to drink except from springs or wells which they dig in the sand. “During nearly nine months in the year ordure is deposited around countless villages along the thousands of miles drained by the Zambesi. When the heavy rains come down and sweep the vast fetid accumulation into the torrents the water is polluted with filth” (“Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 181).

Rev. J. Owen Dorsey reports that he has seen, while among the Ponkas, “a woman and a child devour the entrails of a beef, with the contents” (personal letter to Captain Bourke).

Réclus says that the Eastern Inuit eat excrement. “Ils ne reculent pas devant les intestins de l’ours, pas même devant ses excréments, et se jettent avec avidité sur la nourriture mal digérée qu’ils retirent du ventre des rennes” (“Les Primitifs,” Paris, 1885, pp. 31, 32). “Les Ygarrotes des Philippines, qui versent comme sauce à leur viande crue le jus des fientes d’un buffle fraîchement abattu” (idem, p. 31).

The tribes of Angola, West Africa, cook the entrails of deer without removing the contents; this is for the purpose of getting a flavor, as the excrement itself is not eaten (“Muhongo,” interpretation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain).

The Thibetan monk was not to eat entrails. “Ne pas manger des tripes” (“Pratimoksha Sutra,” W. W. Rockhill, Soc. Asiatique, Paris, 1885.)

(Tunguses of Siberia.) “They eat up every part of the animal which they kill, not throwing away even the impurities of the bowels, with which they make a sort of black pudding by a mixture of blood and fat.”—(Gavrila Sarytschew, in Phillips’s “Voyages,” London, 1807, vol. v.)

Natives of Eastern Siberia “ate with avidity the entrails of the seal without cleaning in the least the partly digested food from the intestines, the ordure of the seal being as offensive to civilized man as the fæces of men or dogs.”—(Personal letter from Chief Engineer Melville, U. S. Navy, to Captain Bourke.)

The Aleuts and Indians from the extreme northern coast of America with Melville’s party displayed the same appetite for the half-digested contents of the paunches of the seals killed by them. This appetite was not due to lack of food, as Melville takes care to explain. At another time he detected his “natives” in the act of eating “plentifully, though covertly, of the droppings of the reindeer” (idem).

VII.
URINE IN HUMAN FOOD.

CHINOOK OLIVES.

The addition of urine to human food is mentioned by various writers. Speaking of the Chinooks, Paul Kane describes a delicacy manufactured by some of the Indians among whom he travelled, and called by him “Chinook Olives.” They were nothing more nor less than acorns soaked for five months in human urine (see Kane, “Artist’s Wanderings in North America,” London, 1859, p. 187). Spencer copies Kane’s story in his “Descriptive Sociology,” article “Chinooks.”

“In Queensland, near Darlington, there is a tract of country covered with a peculiar species of pine, yielding an edible nut of which the natives are extremely fond.... The men would form large clay pans in the soil, into which they would urinate; they would then collect an abundance of these seeds and steep them in the urine. A fermentation took place, and all the seeds were devoured greedily, the effect being to cause a temporary madness among the men,—in fact a perfect delirium tremens. On these occasions it was dangerous for any one to approach them. The liquid was not used in any way.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq., Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales.)

This account not only recalls the story told by the artist Kane in the preceding paragraph, but establishes the fact that in Australia there is something with a marvellous resemblance to the Ur-Orgie of the people of Siberia.

Chief Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. Navy, author of “In the Lena Delta,” has had much experience with the natives of Northern Siberia, among whom it was his misfortune to be cast away. In a personal letter to Captain Bourke he states that he observed several instances of Siberian women drinking their own or their neighbor’s freshly voided urine. Once, in Sutke Harbor, Saint Lawrence Bay, near East Cape, when he “frowned at their unclean and unseemly act, they seemed very much amused, and after a moment’s talk, one of them voided her urine and another drank it, both being very much diverted by my disgust.” He further relates that when his “natives” could not obtain from his limited supplies all the alcohol they wanted, they made a mixture of alcohol and their own urine in equal parts and drank it down.

“On the morning of the 8th of May, while struggling with an attack of fever, I received a visit from Gilmoro, who brought me a gourd of milk as an expression of gratitude for saving him at an opportune moment his position. Burning with fever, I drained at one draught a goblet full of the foaming liquid ere the sense of taste could detect the nauseous mixture; my stomach, however, quickly rebelled, and rejected in violent retching the unsavory potion, seven eighths of which were simply the urine of the cow!—a practice, by the by, common to all Central Africans, who never drink milk unless thus mixed.”

“This fetish and superstition thereby insures protection for the cow here, as on the Bahr-el Abiad, mysteriously connected with the unknown,—a shadow possibly of the old Egyptian worship.”—(“Central Africa,” Chaille Long, New York, 1877, p. 70.)

URINE IN BREAD-MAKING.

A comparatively late writer says of the Moquis of Arizona: “They are not as clean in their housekeeping as the Navajoes, and it is hinted that they sometimes mix their meal with chamber-lye for these festive occasions; but I did not know that until I talked with Mormons who visited them” (J. H. Beadle, “Western Wilds,” Cincinnati, Ohio, 1878, p. 279).

Beadle lived and ate with the Moquis for a number of days. This story, coming from the Mormons, may refer to some imperfectly understood ceremonial.

There is some ground for suspecting that urine may have been employed by bakers in Europe prior to the introduction of the “barm” or ale yeast as a ferment. Ammonia is at the present time made use of by the Germans in this industry (see page 32).

It is possible that the following account of the manner of eating blubber among the Patagonians may mean that urine was poured over it: “He put the same piece on the fire again, and after an addition to it too offensive to mention, again sucked it” (“Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. i. p. 343).

As bearing upon the ingestion of human excreta, which would seem to excite a natural feeling of revulsion, the following statement may have some significance: Spencer Saint John, in his “Life in the Far East,” London, 1842, after describing a head feast among the Dyaks, says that, after certain preliminary rites and amusements, “they commence eating and drinking ... an extraordinary accumulation,—fowls roasted with their feathers on, eggs black with age, decayed fruit, rice of all colors and kinds, strong-smelling fish almost approaching a state of rottenness, and their drink having the appearance and thickness of curds, in which they mix pepper and other ingredients. It has a sickening effect upon them, and they swallow it more as a duty than because they relish it.”

Evidently nastiness is an object, since “before they have added any extraneous matter” this drink “is not unpleasant, having something the taste of spruce-beer” (p. 66).

If the ceremony in question partakes of the nature of a sacrifice,—which is not at all certain from the text, in which it is described as an “entertainment,” but which appears probable from its being connected with the organization and representation of the tribe and from its relation to head-hunting,—then it may be assumed that the spoiled food and nauseous drink are perfectly natural features, which have their counterparts in many places.